Transcribed from the Mills and Boon “War Price” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY
JACK LONDON
AUTHOR OF “VALLEY OF THE MOON,” “JOHN BARLEYCORN”
“MUTINY OF THE ELSINORE,” ETC.
“Yes have heard the beat of the offshore wind,
And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
You have heard the song—how long! how long!
Pull out on the trail again!”
MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
49 RUPERT STREET
LONDON, W.1
Copyright in the United States of America by The Macmillan Company
To
CHARMIAN
THE MATE OF THE “SNARK”
WHO TOOK THE WHEEL, NIGHT OR DAY,
WHEN ENTERING
OR LEAVING PORT OR RUNNING A PASSAGE,
WHO TOOK THE WHEEL IN EVERY EMERGENCY, AND
WHO WEPT
AFTER TWO YEARS OF SAILING, WHEN THE
VOYAGE WAS DISCONTINUED
CHAPTER |
| PAGE |
I. | Foreword | |
II. | The Inconceivable and Monstrous | |
III. | Adventure | |
IV. | Finding One’s Way About | |
V. | The First Landfall | |
VI. | A Royal Sport | |
VII. | The Lepers of Molokai | |
VIII. | The House of the Sun | |
IX. | A Pacific Traverse | |
X. | Typee | |
XI. | The Nature Man | |
XII. | The High Seat of Abundance | |
XIII. | The Stone-fishing of Bora Bora | |
XIV. | The Amateur Navigator | |
XV. | Cruising in the Solomons | |
XVI. | Bêche de Mer English | |
XVII. | The Amateur M.D. | |
Backword | ||
It began in the swimming pool at Glen Ellen. Between swims it was our wont to come out and lie in the sand and let our skins breathe the warm air and soak in the sunshine. Roscoe was a yachtsman. I had followed the sea a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about boats. We talked about small boats, and the seaworthiness of small boats. We instanced Captain Slocum and his three years’ voyage around the world in the Spray.
We asserted that we were not afraid to go around the world in a small boat, say forty feet long. We asserted furthermore that we would like to do it. We asserted finally that there was nothing in this world we’d like better than a chance to do it.
“Let us do it,” we said . . . in fun.
Then I asked Charmian privily if she’d really care to do it, and she said that it was too good to be true.
The next time we breathed our skins in the sand by the swimming pool I said to Roscoe, “Let us do it.”
I was in earnest, and so was he, for he said:
“When shall we start?”
I had a house to build on the ranch, also an orchard, a vineyard, and several hedges to plant, and a number of other things to do. We thought we would start in four or five years. Then the lure of the adventure began to grip us. Why not start at once? We’d never be younger, any of us. Let the orchard, vineyard, and hedges be growing up while we were away. When we came back, they would be ready for us, and we could live in the barn while we built the house.
So the trip was decided upon, and the building of the Snark began. We named her the Snark because we could not think of any other name—this information is given for the benefit of those who otherwise might think there is something occult in the name.
Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder, and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state of mind comes of an undue prominence of the ego. They cannot get away from themselves. They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody else’s line of least resistance. They make of their own bundle of desires, likes, and dislikes a yardstick wherewith to measure the desires, likes, and dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me. They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us.
The ultimate word is I LIKE. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says, in an instant, “I LIKE,” and does something else, and philosophy goes glimmering. It is I LIKE that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love, and another God. Philosophy is very often a man’s way of explaining his own I LIKE.
But to return to the Snark, and why I, for one, want to journey in her around the world. The things I like constitute my set of values. The thing I like most of all is personal achievement—not achievement for the world’s applause, but achievement for my own delight. It is the old “I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!” But personal achievement, with me, must be concrete. I’d rather win a water-fight in the swimming pool, or remain astride a horse that is trying to get out from under me, than write the great American novel. Each man to his liking. Some other fellow would prefer writing the great American novel to winning the water-fight or mastering the horse.
Possibly the proudest achievement of my life, my moment of highest living, occurred when I was seventeen. I was in a three-masted schooner off the coast of Japan. We were in a typhoon. All hands had been on deck most of the night. I was called from my bunk at seven in the morning to take the wheel. Not a stitch of canvas was set. We were running before it under bare poles, yet the schooner fairly tore along. The seas were all of an eighth of a mile apart, and the wind snatched the whitecaps from their summits, filling. The air so thick with driving spray that it was impossible to see more than two waves at a time. The schooner was almost unmanageable, rolling her rail under to starboard and to port, veering and yawing anywhere between south-east and south-west, and threatening, when the huge seas lifted under her quarter, to broach to. Had she broached to, she would ultimately have been reported lost with all hands and no tidings.
I took the wheel. The sailing-master watched me for a space. He was afraid of my youth, feared that I lacked the strength and the nerve. But when he saw me successfully wrestle the schooner through several bouts, he went below to breakfast. Fore and aft, all hands were below at breakfast. Had she broached to, not one of them would ever have reached the deck. For forty minutes I stood there alone at the wheel, in my grasp the wildly careering schooner and the lives of twenty-two men. Once we were pooped. I saw it coming, and, half-drowned, with tons of water crushing me, I checked the schooner’s rush to broach to. At the end of the hour, sweating and played out, I was relieved. But I had done it! With my own hands I had done my trick at the wheel and guided a hundred tons of wood and iron through a few million tons of wind and waves.
My delight was in that I had done it—not in the fact that twenty-two men knew I had done it. Within the year over half of them were dead and gone, yet my pride in the thing performed was not diminished by half. I am willing to confess, however, that I do like a small audience. But it must be a very small audience, composed of those who love me and whom I love. When I then accomplish personal achievement, I have a feeling that I am justifying their love for me. But this is quite apart from the delight of the achievement itself. This delight is peculiarly my own and does not depend upon witnesses. When I have done some such thing, I am exalted. I glow all over. I am aware of a pride in myself that is mine, and mine alone. It is organic. Every fibre of me is thrilling with it. It is very natural. It is a mere matter of satisfaction at adjustment to environment. It is success.
Life that lives is life successful, and success is the breath of its nostrils. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment to a sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. Thus it is with the man who leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool, and with a backward half-revolution of the body, enters the water head first. Once he leaves the springboard his environment becomes immediately savage, and savage the penalty it will exact should he fail and strike the water flat. Of course, the man does not have to run the risk of the penalty. He could remain on the bank in a sweet and placid environment of summer air, sunshine, and stability. Only he is not made that way. In that swift mid-air moment he lives as he could never live on the bank.
As for myself, I’d rather be that man than the fellows who sit on the bank and watch him. That is why I am building the Snark. I am so made. I like, that is all. The trip around the world means big moments of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am I, a little animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move—for ever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.
Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life—it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces—colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death—and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.
In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck of pulsating jelly to feel godlike is a far more glorious feeling than for a god to feel godlike.
Here is the sea, the wind, and the wave. Here are the seas, the winds, and the waves of all the world. Here is ferocious environment. And here is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is delight to the small quivering vanity that is I. I like. I am so made. It is my own particular form of vanity, that is all.
There is also another side to the voyage of the Snark. Being alive, I want to see, and all the world is a bigger thing to see than one small town or valley. We have done little outlining of the voyage. Only one thing is definite, and that is that our first port of call will be Honolulu. Beyond a few general ideas, we have no thought of our next port after Hawaii. We shall make up our minds as we get nearer, in a general way we know that we shall wander through the South Seas, take in Samoa, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, and Sumatra, and go on up through the Philippines to Japan. Then will come Korea, China, India, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. After that the voyage becomes too vague to describe, though we know a number of things we shall surely do, and we expect to spend from one to several months in every country in Europe.
The Snark is to be sailed. There will be a gasolene engine on board, but it will be used only in case of emergency, such as in bad water among reefs and shoals, where a sudden calm in a swift current leaves a sailing-boat helpless. The rig of the Snark is to be what is called the “ketch.” The ketch rig is a compromise between the yawl and the schooner. Of late years the yawl rig has proved the best for cruising. The ketch retains the cruising virtues of the yawl, and in addition manages to embrace a few of the sailing virtues of the schooner. The foregoing must be taken with a pinch of salt. It is all theory in my head. I’ve never sailed a ketch, nor even seen one. The theory commends itself to me. Wait till I get out on the ocean, then I’ll be able to tell more about the cruising and sailing qualities of the ketch.
As originally planned, the Snark was to be forty feet long on the water-line. But we discovered there was no space for a bath-room, and for that reason we have increased her length to forty-five feet. Her greatest beam is fifteen feet. She has no house and no hold. There is six feet of headroom, and the deck is unbroken save for two companionways and a hatch for’ard. The fact that there is no house to break the strength of the deck will make us feel safer in case great seas thunder their tons of water down on board. A large and roomy cockpit, sunk beneath the deck, with high rail and self-bailing, will make our rough-weather days and nights more comfortable.
There will be no crew. Or, rather, Charmian, Roscoe, and I are the crew. We are going to do the thing with our own hands. With our own hands we’re going to circumnavigate the globe. Sail her or sink her, with our own hands we’ll do it. Of course there will be a cook and a cabin-boy. Why should we stew over a stove, wash dishes, and set the table? We could stay on land if we wanted to do those things. Besides, we’ve got to stand watch and work the ship. And also, I’ve got to work at my trade of writing in order to feed us and to get new sails and tackle and keep the Snark in efficient working order. And then there’s the ranch; I’ve got to keep the vineyard, orchard, and hedges growing.
When we increased the length of the Snark in order to get space for a bath-room, we found that all the space was not required by the bath-room. Because of this, we increased the size of the engine. Seventy horse-power our engine is, and since we expect it to drive us along at a nine-knot clip, we do not know the name of a river with a current swift enough to defy us.
We expect to do a lot of inland work. The smallness of the Snark makes this possible. When we enter the land, out go the masts and on goes the engine. There are the canals of China, and the Yang-tse River. We shall spend months on them if we can get permission from the government. That will be the one obstacle to our inland voyaging—governmental permission. But if we can get that permission, there is scarcely a limit to the inland voyaging we can do.
When we come to the Nile, why we can go up the Nile. We can go up the Danube to Vienna, up the Thames to London, and we can go up the Seine to Paris and moor opposite the Latin Quarter with a bow-line out to Notre Dame and a stern-line fast to the Morgue. We can leave the Mediterranean and go up the Rhône to Lyons, there enter the Saône, cross from the Saône to the Maine through the Canal de Bourgogne, and from the Marne enter the Seine and go out the Seine at Havre. When we cross the Atlantic to the United States, we can go up the Hudson, pass through the Erie Canal, cross the Great Lakes, leave Lake Michigan at Chicago, gain the Mississippi by way of the Illinois River and the connecting canal, and go down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. And then there are the great rivers of South America. We’ll know something about geography when we get back to California.
People that build houses are often sore perplexed; but if they enjoy the strain of it, I’ll advise them to build a boat like the Snark. Just consider, for a moment, the strain of detail. Take the engine. What is the best kind of engine—the two cycle? three cycle? four cycle? My lips are mutilated with all kinds of strange jargon, my mind is mutilated with still stranger ideas and is foot-sore and weary from travelling in new and rocky realms of thought.—Ignition methods; shall it be make-and-break or jump-spark? Shall dry cells or storage batteries be used? A storage battery commends itself, but it requires a dynamo. How powerful a dynamo? And when we have installed a dynamo and a storage battery, it is simply ridiculous not to light the boat with electricity. Then comes the discussion of how many lights and how many candle-power. It is a splendid idea. But electric lights will demand a more powerful storage battery, which, in turn, demands a more powerful dynamo.
And now that we’ve gone in for it, why not have a searchlight? It would be tremendously useful. But the searchlight needs so much electricity that when it runs it will put all the other lights out of commission. Again we travel the weary road in the quest after more power for storage battery and dynamo. And then, when it is finally solved, some one asks, “What if the engine breaks down?” And we collapse. There are the sidelights, the binnacle light, and the anchor light. Our very lives depend upon them. So we have to fit the boat throughout with oil lamps as well.
But we are not done with that engine yet. The engine is powerful. We are two small men and a small woman. It will break our hearts and our backs to hoist anchor by hand. Let the engine do it. And then comes the problem of how to convey power for’ard from the engine to the winch. And by the time all this is settled, we redistribute the allotments of space to the engine-room, galley, bath-room, state-rooms, and cabin, and begin all over again. And when we have shifted the engine, I send off a telegram of gibberish to its makers at New York, something like this: Toggle-joint abandoned change thrust-bearing accordingly distance from forward side of flywheel to face of stern post sixteen feet six inches.
Just potter around in quest of the best steering gear, or try to decide whether you will set up your rigging with old-fashioned lanyards or with turnbuckles, if you want strain of detail. Shall the binnacle be located in front of the wheel in the centre of the beam, or shall it be located to one side in front of the wheel?—there’s room right there for a library of sea-dog controversy. Then there’s the problem of gasolene, fifteen hundred gallons of it—what are the safest ways to tank it and pipe it? and which is the best fire-extinguisher for a gasolene fire? Then there is the pretty problem of the life-boat and the stowage of the same. And when that is finished, come the cook and cabin-boy to confront one with nightmare possibilities. It is a small boat, and we’ll be packed close together. The servant-girl problem of landsmen pales to insignificance. We did select one cabin-boy, and by that much were our troubles eased. And then the cabin-boy fell in love and resigned.
And in the meanwhile how is a fellow to find time to study navigation—when he is divided between these problems and the earning of the money wherewith to settle the problems? Neither Roscoe nor I know anything about navigation, and the summer is gone, and we are about to start, and the problems are thicker than ever, and the treasury is stuffed with emptiness. Well, anyway, it takes years to learn seamanship, and both of us are seamen. If we don’t find the time, we’ll lay in the books and instruments and teach ourselves navigation on the ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii.
There is one unfortunate and perplexing phase of the voyage of the Snark. Roscoe, who is to be my co-navigator, is a follower of one, Cyrus R. Teed. Now Cyrus R. Teed has a different cosmology from the one generally accepted, and Roscoe shares his views. Wherefore Roscoe believes that the surface of the earth is concave and that we live on the inside of a hollow sphere. Thus, though we shall sail on the one boat, the Snark, Roscoe will journey around the world on the inside, while I shall journey around on the outside. But of this, more anon. We threaten to be of the one mind before the voyage is completed. I am confident that I shall convert him into making the journey on the outside, while he is equally confident that before we arrive back in San Francisco I shall be on the inside of the earth. How he is going to get me through the crust I don’t know, but Roscoe is ay a masterful man.
P.S.—That engine! While we’ve got it, and the dynamo, and the storage battery, why not have an ice-machine? Ice in the tropics! It is more necessary than bread. Here goes for the ice-machine! Now I am plunged into chemistry, and my lips hurt, and my mind hurts, and how am I ever to find the time to study navigation?
“Spare no money,” I said to Roscoe. “Let everything on the Snark be of the best. And never mind decoration. Plain pine boards is good enough finishing for me. But put the money into the construction. Let the Snark be as staunch and strong as any boat afloat. Never mind what it costs to make her staunch and strong; you see that she is made staunch and strong, and I’ll go on writing and earning the money to pay for it.”
And I did . . . as well as I could; for the Snark ate up money faster than I could earn it. In fact, every little while I had to borrow money with which to supplement my earnings. Now I borrowed one thousand dollars, now I borrowed two thousand dollars, and now I borrowed five thousand dollars. And all the time I went on working every day and sinking the earnings in the venture. I worked Sundays as well, and I took no holidays. But it was worth it. Every time I thought of the Snark I knew she was worth it.
For know, gentle reader, the staunchness of the Snark. She is forty-five feet long on the waterline. Her garboard strake is three inches thick; her planking two and one-half inches thick; her deck-planking two inches thick and in all her planking there are no butts. I know, for I ordered that planking especially from Puget Sound. Then the Snark has four water-tight compartments, which is to say that her length is broken by three water-tight bulkheads. Thus, no matter how large a leak the Snark may spring, Only one compartment can fill with water. The other three compartments will keep her afloat, anyway, and, besides, will enable us to mend the leak. There is another virtue in these bulkheads. The last compartment of all, in the very stern, contains six tanks that carry over one thousand gallons of gasolene. Now gasolene is a very dangerous article to carry in bulk on a small craft far out on the wide ocean. But when the six tanks that do not leak are themselves contained in a compartment hermetically sealed off from the rest of the boat, the danger will be seen to be very small indeed.
The Snark is a sail-boat. She was built primarily to sail. But incidentally, as an auxiliary, a seventy-horse-power engine was installed. This is a good, strong engine. I ought to know. I paid for it to come out all the way from New York City. Then, on deck, above the engine, is a windlass. It is a magnificent affair. It weighs several hundred pounds and takes up no end of deck-room. You see, it is ridiculous to hoist up anchor by hand-power when there is a seventy-horse-power engine on board. So we installed the windlass, transmitting power to it from the engine by means of a gear and castings specially made in a San Francisco foundry.
The Snark was made for comfort, and no expense was spared in this regard. There is the bath-room, for instance, small and compact, it is true, but containing all the conveniences of any bath-room upon land. The bath-room is a beautiful dream of schemes and devices, pumps, and levers, and sea-valves. Why, in the course of its building, I used to lie awake nights thinking about that bath-room. And next to the bath-room come the life-boat and the launch. They are carried on deck, and they take up what little space might have been left us for exercise. But then, they beat life insurance; and the prudent man, even if he has built as staunch and strong a craft as the Snark, will see to it that he has a good life-boat as well. And ours is a good one. It is a dandy. It was stipulated to cost one hundred and fifty dollars, and when I came to pay the bill, it turned out to be three hundred and ninety-five dollars. That shows how good a life-boat it is.
I could go on at great length relating the various virtues and excellences of the Snark, but I refrain. I have bragged enough as it is, and I have bragged to a purpose, as will be seen before my tale is ended. And please remember its title, “The Inconceivable and Monstrous.” It was planned that the Snark should sail on October 1, 1906. That she did not so sail was inconceivable and monstrous. There was no valid reason for not sailing except that she was not ready to sail, and there was no conceivable reason why she was not ready. She was promised on November first, on November fifteenth, on December first; and yet she was never ready. On December first Charmian and I left the sweet, clean Sonoma country and came down to live in the stifling city—but not for long, oh, no, only for two weeks, for we would sail on December fifteenth. And I guess we ought to know, for Roscoe said so, and it was on his advice that we came to the city to stay two weeks. Alas, the two weeks went by, four weeks went by, six weeks went by, eight weeks went by, and we were farther away from sailing than ever. Explain it? Who?—me? I can’t. It is the one thing in all my life that I have backed down on. There is no explaining it; if there were, I’d do it. I, who am an artisan of speech, confess my inability to explain why the Snark was not ready. As I have said, and as I must repeat, it was inconceivable and monstrous.
The eight weeks became sixteen weeks, and then, one day, Roscoe cheered us up by saying: “If we don’t sail before April first, you can use my head for a football.”
Two weeks later he said, “I’m getting my head in training for that match.”
“Never mind,” Charmian and I said to each other; “think of the wonderful boat it is going to be when it is completed.”
Whereat we would rehearse for our mutual encouragement the manifold virtues and excellences of the Snark. Also, I would borrow more money, and I would get down closer to my desk and write harder, and I refused heroically to take a Sunday off and go out into the hills with my friends. I was building a boat, and by the eternal it was going to be a boat, and a boat spelled out all in capitals—B—O—A—T; and no matter what it cost I didn’t care. So long as it was a B O A T.
And, oh, there is one other excellence of the Snark, upon which I must brag, namely, her bow. No sea could ever come over it. It laughs at the sea, that bow does; it challenges the sea; it snorts defiance at the sea. And withal it is a beautiful bow; the lines of it are dreamlike; I doubt if ever a boat was blessed with a more beautiful and at the same time a more capable bow. It was made to punch storms. To touch that bow is to rest one’s hand on the cosmic nose of things. To look at it is to realize that expense cut no figure where it was concerned. And every time our sailing was delayed, or a new expense was tacked on, we thought of that wonderful bow and were content.
The Snark is a small boat. When I figured seven thousand dollars as her generous cost, I was both generous and correct. I have built barns and houses, and I know the peculiar trait such things have of running past their estimated cost. This knowledge was mine, was already mine, when I estimated the probable cost of the building of the Snark at seven thousand dollars. Well, she cost thirty thousand. Now don’t ask me, please. It is the truth. I signed the cheques and I raised the money. Of course there is no explaining it, inconceivable and monstrous is what it is, as you will agree, I know, ere my tale is done.
Then there was the matter of delay. I dealt with forty-seven different kinds of union men and with one hundred and fifteen different firms. And not one union man and not one firm of all the union men and all the firms ever delivered anything at the time agreed upon, nor ever was on time for anything except pay-day and bill-collection. Men pledged me their immortal souls that they would deliver a certain thing on a certain date; as a rule, after such pledging, they rarely exceeded being three months late in delivery. And so it went, and Charmian and I consoled each other by saying what a splendid boat the Snark was, so staunch and strong; also, we would get into the small boat and row around the Snark, and gloat over her unbelievably wonderful bow.
“Think,” I would say to Charmian, “of a gale off the China coast, and of the Snark hove to, that splendid bow of hers driving into the storm. Not a drop will come over that bow. She’ll be as dry as a feather, and we’ll be all below playing whist while the gale howls.”
And Charmian would press my hand enthusiastically and exclaim: “It’s worth every bit of it—the delay, and expense, and worry, and all the rest. Oh, what a truly wonderful boat!”
Whenever I looked at the bow of the Snark or thought of her water-tight compartments, I was encouraged. Nobody else, however, was encouraged. My friends began to make bets against the various sailing dates of the Snark. Mr. Wiget, who was left behind in charge of our Sonoma ranch was the first to cash his bet. He collected on New Year’s Day, 1907. After that the bets came fast and furious. My friends surrounded me like a gang of harpies, making bets against every sailing date I set. I was rash, and I was stubborn. I bet, and I bet, and I continued to bet; and I paid them all. Why, the women-kind of my friends grew so brave that those among them who never bet before began to bet with me. And I paid them, too.
“Never mind,” said Charmian to me; “just think of that bow and of being hove to on the China Seas.”
“You see,” I said to my friends, when I paid the latest bunch of wagers, “neither trouble nor cash is being spared in making the Snark the most seaworthy craft that ever sailed out through the Golden Gate—that is what causes all the delay.”
In the meantime editors and publishers with whom I had contracts pestered me with demands for explanations. But how could I explain to them, when I was unable to explain to myself, or when there was nobody, not even Roscoe, to explain to me? The newspapers began to laugh at me, and to publish rhymes anent the Snark’s departure with refrains like, “Not yet, but soon.” And Charmian cheered me up by reminding me of the bow, and I went to a banker and borrowed five thousand more. There was one recompense for the delay, however. A friend of mine, who happens to be a critic, wrote a roast of me, of all I had done, and of all I ever was going to do; and he planned to have it published after I was out on the ocean. I was still on shore when it came out, and he has been busy explaining ever since.
And the time continued to go by. One thing was becoming apparent, namely, that it was impossible to finish the Snark in San Francisco. She had been so long in the building that she was beginning to break down and wear out. In fact, she had reached the stage where she was breaking down faster than she could be repaired. She had become a joke. Nobody took her seriously; least of all the men who worked on her. I said we would sail just as she was and finish building her in Honolulu. Promptly she sprang a leak that had to be attended to before we could sail. I started her for the boat-ways. Before she got to them she was caught between two huge barges and received a vigorous crushing. We got her on the ways, and, part way along, the ways spread and dropped her through, stern-first, into the mud.
It was a pretty tangle, a job for wreckers, not boat-builders. There are two high tides every twenty-four hours, and at every high tide, night and day, for a week, there were two steam tugs pulling and hauling on the Snark. There she was, stuck, fallen between the ways and standing on her stern. Next, and while still in that predicament, we started to use the gears and castings made in the local foundry whereby power was conveyed from the engine to the windlass. It was the first time we ever tried to use that windlass. The castings had flaws; they shattered asunder, the gears ground together, and the windlass was out of commission. Following upon that, the seventy-horse-power engine went out of commission. This engine came from New York; so did its bed-plate; there was a flaw in the bed-plate; there were a lot of flaws in the bed-plate; and the seventy-horse-power engine broke away from its shattered foundations, reared up in the air, smashed all connections and fastenings, and fell over on its side. And the Snark continued to stick between the spread ways, and the two tugs continued to haul vainly upon her.
“Never mind,” said Charmian, “think of what a staunch, strong boat she is.”
“Yes,” said I, “and of that beautiful bow.”
So we took heart and went at it again. The ruined engine was lashed down on its rotten foundation; the smashed castings and cogs of the power transmission were taken down and stored away—all for the purpose of taking them to Honolulu where repairs and new castings could be made. Somewhere in the dim past the Snark had received on the outside one coat of white paint. The intention of the colour was still evident, however, when one got it in the right light. The Snark had never received any paint on the inside. On the contrary, she was coated inches thick with the grease and tobacco-juice of the multitudinous mechanics who had toiled upon her. Never mind, we said; the grease and filth could be planed off, and later, when we fetched Honolulu, the Snark could be painted at the same time as she was being rebuilt.
By main strength and sweat we dragged the Snark off from the wrecked ways and laid her alongside the Oakland City Wharf. The drays brought all the outfit from home, the books and blankets and personal luggage. Along with this, everything else came on board in a torrent of confusion—wood and coal, water and water-tanks, vegetables, provisions, oil, the life-boat and the launch, all our friends, all the friends of our friends and those who claimed to be their friends, to say nothing of some of the friends of the friends of the friends of our crew. Also there were reporters, and photographers, and strangers, and cranks, and finally, and over all, clouds of coal-dust from the wharf.
We were to sail Sunday at eleven, and Saturday afternoon had arrived. The crowd on the wharf and the coal-dust were thicker than ever. In one pocket I carried a cheque-book, a fountain-pen, a dater, and a blotter; in another pocket I carried between one and two thousand dollars in paper money and gold. I was ready for the creditors, cash for the small ones and cheques for the large ones, and was waiting only for Roscoe to arrive with the balances of the accounts of the hundred and fifteen firms who had delayed me so many months. And then—
And then the inconceivable and monstrous happened once more. Before Roscoe could arrive there arrived another man. He was a United States marshal. He tacked a notice on the Snark’s brave mast so that all on the wharf could read that the Snark had been libelled for debt. The marshal left a little old man in charge of the Snark, and himself went away. I had no longer any control of the Snark, nor of her wonderful bow. The little old man was now her lord and master, and I learned that I was paying him three dollars a day for being lord and master. Also, I learned the name of the man who had libelled the Snark. It was Sellers; the debt was two hundred and thirty-two dollars; and the deed was no more than was to be expected from the possessor of such a name. Sellers! Ye gods! Sellers!
But who under the sun was Sellers? I looked in my cheque-book and saw that two weeks before I had made him out a cheque for five hundred dollars. Other cheque-books showed me that during the many months of the building of the Snark I had paid him several thousand dollars. Then why in the name of common decency hadn’t he tried to collect his miserable little balance instead of libelling the Snark? I thrust my hands into my pockets, and in one pocket encountered the cheque-hook and the dater and the pen, and in the other pocket the gold money and the paper money. There was the wherewithal to settle his pitiful account a few score of times and over—why hadn’t he given me a chance? There was no explanation; it was merely the inconceivable and monstrous.
To make the matter worse, the Snark had been libelled late Saturday afternoon; and though I sent lawyers and agents all over Oakland and San Francisco, neither United States judge, nor United States marshal, nor Mr. Sellers, nor Mr. Sellers’ attorney, nor anybody could be found. They were all out of town for the weekend. And so the Snark did not sail Sunday morning at eleven. The little old man was still in charge, and he said no. And Charmian and I walked out on an opposite wharf and took consolation in the Snark’s wonderful bow and thought of all the gales and typhoons it would proudly punch.
“A bourgeois trick,” I said to Charmian, speaking of Mr. Sellers and his libel; “a petty trader’s panic. But never mind; our troubles will cease when once we are away from this and out on the wide ocean.”
And in the end we sailed away, on Tuesday morning, April 23, 1907. We started rather lame, I confess. We had to hoist anchor by hand, because the power transmission was a wreck. Also, what remained of our seventy-horse-power engine was lashed down for ballast on the bottom of the Snark. But what of such things? They could be fixed in Honolulu, and in the meantime think of the magnificent rest of the boat! It is true, the engine in the launch wouldn’t run, and the life-boat leaked like a sieve; but then they weren’t the Snark; they were mere appurtenances. The things that counted were the water-tight bulkheads, the solid planking without butts, the bath-room devices—they were the Snark. And then there was, greatest of all, that noble, wind-punching bow.
We sailed out through the Golden Gate and set our course south toward that part of the Pacific where we could hope to pick up with the north-east trades. And right away things began to happen. I had calculated that youth was the stuff for a voyage like that of the Snark, and I had taken three youths—the engineer, the cook, and the cabin-boy. My calculation was only two-thirds off; I had forgotten to calculate on seasick youth, and I had two of them, the cook and the cabin boy. They immediately took to their bunks, and that was the end of their usefulness for a week to come. It will be understood, from the foregoing, that we did not have the hot meals we might have had, nor were things kept clean and orderly down below. But it did not matter very much anyway, for we quickly discovered that our box of oranges had at some time been frozen; that our box of apples was mushy and spoiling; that the crate of cabbages, spoiled before it was ever delivered to us, had to go overboard instanter; that kerosene had been spilled on the carrots, and that the turnips were woody and the beets rotten, while the kindling was dead wood that wouldn’t burn, and the coal, delivered in rotten potato-sacks, had spilled all over the deck and was washing through the scuppers.
But what did it matter? Such things were mere accessories. There was the boat—she was all right, wasn’t she? I strolled along the deck and in one minute counted fourteen butts in the beautiful planking ordered specially from Puget Sound in order that there should be no butts in it. Also, that deck leaked, and it leaked badly. It drowned Roscoe out of his bunk and ruined the tools in the engine-room, to say nothing of the provisions it ruined in the galley. Also, the sides of the Snark leaked, and the bottom leaked, and we had to pump her every day to keep her afloat. The floor of the galley is a couple of feet above the inside bottom of the Snark; and yet I have stood on the floor of the galley, trying to snatch a cold bite, and been wet to the knees by the water churning around inside four hours after the last pumping.
Then those magnificent water-tight compartments that cost so much time and money—well, they weren’t water-tight after all. The water moved free as the air from one compartment to another; furthermore, a strong smell of gasolene from the after compartment leads me to suspect that some one or more of the half-dozen tanks there stored have sprung a leak. The tanks leak, and they are not hermetically sealed in their compartment. Then there was the bath-room with its pumps and levers and sea-valves—it went out of commission inside the first twenty hours. Powerful iron levers broke off short in one’s hand when one tried to pump with them. The bath-room was the swiftest wreck of any portion of the Snark.
And the iron-work on the Snark, no matter what its source, proved to be mush. For instance, the bed-plate of the engine came from New York, and it was mush; so were the casting and gears for the windlass that came from San Francisco. And finally, there was the wrought iron used in the rigging, that carried away in all directions when the first strains were put upon it. Wrought iron, mind you, and it snapped like macaroni.
A gooseneck on the gaff of the mainsail broke short off. We replaced it with the gooseneck from the gaff of the storm trysail, and the second gooseneck broke short off inside fifteen minutes of use, and, mind you, it had been taken from the gaff of the storm trysail, upon which we would have depended in time of storm. At the present moment the Snark trails her mainsail like a broken wing, the gooseneck being replaced by a rough lashing. We’ll see if we can get honest iron in Honolulu.
Man had betrayed us and sent us to sea in a sieve, but the Lord must have loved us, for we had calm weather in which to learn that we must pump every day in order to keep afloat, and that more trust could be placed in a wooden toothpick than in the most massive piece of iron to be found aboard. As the staunchness and the strength of the Snark went glimmering, Charmian and I pinned our faith more and more to the Snark’s wonderful bow. There was nothing else left to pin to. It was all inconceivable and monstrous, we knew, but that bow, at least, was rational. And then, one evening, we started to heave to.
How shall I describe it? First of all, for the benefit of the tyro, let me explain that heaving to is that sea manœuvre which, by means of short and balanced canvas, compels a vessel to ride bow-on to wind and sea. When the wind is too strong, or the sea is too high, a vessel of the size of the Snark can heave to with ease, whereupon there is no more work to do on deck. Nobody needs to steer. The lookout is superfluous. All hands can go below and sleep or play whist.
Well, it was blowing half of a small summer gale, when I told Roscoe we’d heave to. Night was coming on. I had been steering nearly all day, and all hands on deck (Roscoe and Bert and Charmian) were tired, while all hands below were seasick. It happened that we had already put two reefs in the big mainsail. The flying-jib and the jib were taken in, and a reef put in the fore-staysail. The mizzen was also taken in. About this time the flying jib-boom buried itself in a sea and broke short off. I started to put the wheel down in order to heave to. The Snark at the moment was rolling in the trough. She continued rolling in the trough. I put the spokes down harder and harder. She never budged from the trough. (The trough, gentle reader, is the most dangerous position all in which to lay a vessel.) I put the wheel hard down, and still the Snark rolled in the trough. Eight points was the nearest I could get her to the wind. I had Roscoe and Bert come in on the main-sheet. The Snark rolled on in the trough, now putting her rail under on one side and now under on the other side.
Again the inconceivable and monstrous was showing its grizzly head. It was grotesque, impossible. I refused to believe it. Under double-reefed mainsail and single-reefed staysail the Snark refused to heave to. We flattened the mainsail down. It did not alter the Snark’s course a tenth of a degree. We slacked the mainsail off with no more result. We set a storm trysail on the mizzen, and took in the mainsail. No change. The Snark roiled on in the trough. That beautiful bow of hers refused to come up and face the wind.
Next we took in the reefed staysail. Thus, the only bit of canvas left on her was the storm trysail on the mizzen. If anything would bring her bow up to the wind, that would. Maybe you won’t believe me when I say it failed, but I do say it failed. And I say it failed because I saw it fail, and not because I believe it failed. I don’t believe it did fail. It is unbelievable, and I am not telling you what I believe; I am telling you what I saw.
Now, gentle reader, what would you do if you were on a small boat, rolling in the trough of the sea, a trysail on that small boat’s stern that was unable to swing the bow up into the wind? Get out the sea-anchor. It’s just what we did. We had a patent one, made to order and warranted not to dive. Imagine a hoop of steel that serves to keep open the mouth of a large, conical, canvas bag, and you have a sea-anchor. Well, we made a line fast to the sea-anchor and to the bow of the Snark, and then dropped the sea-anchor overboard. It promptly dived. We had a tripping line on it, so we tripped the sea-anchor and hauled it in. We attached a big timber as a float, and dropped the sea-anchor over again. This time it floated. The line to the bow grew taut. The trysail on the mizzen tended to swing the bow into the wind, but, in spite of this tendency, the Snark calmly took that sea-anchor in her teeth, and went on ahead, dragging it after her, still in the trough of the sea. And there you are. We even took in the trysail, hoisted the full mizzen in its place, and hauled the full mizzen down flat, and the Snark wallowed in the trough and dragged the sea-anchor behind her. Don’t believe me. I don’t believe it myself. I am merely telling you what I saw.
Now I leave it to you. Who ever heard of a sailing-boat that wouldn’t heave to?—that wouldn’t heave to with a sea-anchor to help it? Out of my brief experience with boats I know I never did. And I stood on deck and looked on the naked face of the inconceivable and monstrous—the Snark that wouldn’t heave to. A stormy night with broken moonlight had come on. There was a splash of wet in the air, and up to windward there was a promise of rain-squalls; and then there was the trough of the sea, cold and cruel in the moonlight, in which the Snark complacently rolled. And then we took in the sea-anchor and the mizzen, hoisted the reefed staysail, ran the Snark off before it, and went below—not to the hot meal that should have awaited us, but to skate across the slush and slime on the cabin floor, where cook and cabin-boy lay like dead men in their bunks, and to lie down in our own bunks, with our clothes on ready for a call, and to listen to the bilge-water spouting knee-high on the galley floor.
In the Bohemian Club of San Francisco there are some crack sailors. I know, because I heard them pass judgment on the Snark during the process of her building. They found only one vital thing the matter with her, and on this they were all agreed, namely, that she could not run. She was all right in every particular, they said, except that I’d never be able to run her before it in a stiff wind and sea. “Her lines,” they explained enigmatically, “it is the fault of her lines. She simply cannot be made to run, that is all.” Well, I wish I’d only had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board the Snark the other night for them to see for themselves their one, vital, unanimous judgment absolutely reversed. Run? It is the one thing the Snark does to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor fast for’ard and a full mizzen flattened down aft. Run? At the present moment, as I write this, we are bowling along before it, at a six-knot clip, in the north-east trades. Quite a tidy bit of sea is running. There is nobody at the wheel, the wheel is not even lashed and is set over a half-spoke weather helm. To be precise, the wind is north-east; the Snark’s mizzen is furled, her mainsail is over to starboard, her head-sheets are hauled flat: and the Snark’s course is south-south-west. And yet there are men who have sailed the seas for forty years and who hold that no boat can run before it without being steered. They’ll call me a liar when they read this; it’s what they called Captain Slocum when he said the same of his Spray.
As regards the future of the Snark I’m all at sea. I don’t know. If I had the money or the credit, I’d build another Snark that would heave to. But I am at the end of my resources. I’ve got to put up with the present Snark or quit—and I can’t quit. So I guess I’ll have to try to get along with heaving the Snark to stern first. I am waiting for the next gale to see how it will work. I think it can be done. It all depends on how her stern takes the seas. And who knows but that some wild morning on the China Sea, some gray-beard skipper will stare, rub his incredulous eyes and stare again, at the spectacle of a weird, small craft very much like the Snark, hove to stern-first and riding out the gale?
P.S. On my return to California after the voyage, I learned that the Snark was forty-three feet on the water-line instead of forty-five. This was due to the fact that the builder was not on speaking terms with the tape-line or two-foot rule.
No, adventure is not dead, and in spite of the steam engine and of Thomas Cook & Son. When the announcement of the contemplated voyage of the Snark was made, young men of “roving disposition” proved to be legion, and young women as well—to say nothing of the elderly men and women who volunteered for the voyage. Why, among my personal friends there were at least half a dozen who regretted their recent or imminent marriages; and there was one marriage I know of that almost failed to come off because of the Snark.
Every mail to me was burdened with the letters of applicants who were suffocating in the “man-stifled towns,” and it soon dawned upon me that a twentieth century Ulysses required a corps of stenographers to clear his correspondence before setting sail. No, adventure is certainly not dead—not while one receives letters that begin:
“There is no doubt that when you read this soul-plea from a female stranger in New York City,” etc.; and wherein one learns, a little farther on, that this female stranger weighs only ninety pounds, wants to be cabin-boy, and “yearns to see the countries of the world.”
The possession of a “passionate fondness for geography,” was the way one applicant expressed the wander-lust that was in him; while another wrote, “I am cursed with an eternal yearning to be always on the move, consequently this letter to you.” But best of all was the fellow who said he wanted to come because his feet itched.
There were a few who wrote anonymously, suggesting names of friends and giving said friends’ qualifications; but to me there was a hint of something sinister in such proceedings, and I went no further in the matter.
With two or three exceptions, all the hundreds that volunteered for my crew were very much in earnest. Many of them sent their photographs. Ninety per cent. offered to work in any capacity, and ninety-nine per cent. offered to work without salary. “Contemplating your voyage on the Snark,” said one, “and notwithstanding its attendant dangers, to accompany you (in any capacity whatever) would be the climax of my ambitions.” Which reminds me of the young fellow who was “seventeen years old and ambicious,” and who, at the end of his letter, earnestly requested “but please do not let this git into the papers or magazines.” Quite different was the one who said, “I would be willing to work like hell and not demand pay.” Almost all of them wanted me to telegraph, at their expense, my acceptance of their services; and quite a number offered to put up a bond to guarantee their appearance on sailing date.
Some were rather vague in their own minds concerning the work to be done on the Snark; as, for instance, the one who wrote: “I am taking the liberty of writing you this note to find out if there would be any possibility of my going with you as one of the crew of your boat to make sketches and illustrations.” Several, unaware of the needful work on a small craft like the Snark, offered to serve, as one of them phrased it, “as assistant in filing materials collected for books and novels.” That’s what one gets for being prolific.
“Let me give my qualifications for the job,” wrote one. “I am an orphan living with my uncle, who is a hot revolutionary socialist and who says a man without the red blood of adventure is an animated dish-rag.” Said another: “I can swim some, though I don’t know any of the new strokes. But what is more important than strokes, the water is a friend of mine.” “If I was put alone in a sail-boat, I could get her anywhere I wanted to go,” was the qualification of a third—and a better qualification than the one that follows, “I have also watched the fish-boats unload.” But possibly the prize should go to this one, who very subtly conveys his deep knowledge of the world and life by saying: “My age, in years, is twenty-two.”
Then there were the simple straight-out, homely, and unadorned letters of young boys, lacking in the felicities of expression, it is true, but desiring greatly to make the voyage. These were the hardest of all to decline, and each time I declined one it seemed as if I had struck Youth a slap in the face. They were so earnest, these boys, they wanted so much to go. “I am sixteen but large for my age,” said one; and another, “Seventeen but large and healthy.” “I am as strong at least as the average boy of my size,” said an evident weakling. “Not afraid of any kind of work,” was what many said, while one in particular, to lure me no doubt by inexpensiveness, wrote: “I can pay my way to the Pacific coast, so that part would probably be acceptable to you.” “Going around the world is the one thing I want to do,” said one, and it seemed to be the one thing that a few hundred wanted to do. “I have no one who cares whether I go or not,” was the pathetic note sounded by another. One had sent his photograph, and speaking of it, said, “I’m a homely-looking sort of a chap, but looks don’t always count.” And I am confident that the lad who wrote the following would have turned out all right: “My age is 19 years, but I am rather small and consequently won’t take up much room, but I’m tough as the devil.” And there was one thirteen-year-old applicant that Charmian and I fell in love with, and it nearly broke our hearts to refuse him.
But it must not be imagined that most of my volunteers were boys; on the contrary, boys constituted a very small proportion. There were men and women from every walk in life. Physicians, surgeons, and dentists offered in large numbers to come along, and, like all the professional men, offered to come without pay, to serve in any capacity, and to pay, even, for the privilege of so serving.
There was no end of compositors and reporters who wanted to come, to say nothing of experienced valets, chefs, and stewards. Civil engineers were keen on the voyage; “lady” companions galore cropped up for Charmian; while I was deluged with the applications of would-be private secretaries. Many high school and university students yearned for the voyage, and every trade in the working class developed a few applicants, the machinists, electricians, and engineers being especially strong on the trip. I was surprised at the number, who, in musty law offices, heard the call of adventure; and I was more than surprised by the number of elderly and retired sea captains who were still thralls to the sea. Several young fellows, with millions coming to them later on, were wild for the adventure, as were also several county superintendents of schools.
Fathers and sons wanted to come, and many men with their wives, to say nothing of the young woman stenographer who wrote: “Write immediately if you need me. I shall bring my typewriter on the first train.” But the best of all is the following—observe the delicate way in which he worked in his wife: “I thought I would drop you a line of inquiry as to the possibility of making the trip with you, am 24 years of age, married and broke, and a trip of that kind would be just what we are looking for.”
Come to think of it, for the average man it must be fairly difficult to write an honest letter of self-recommendation. One of my correspondents was so stumped that he began his letter with the words, “This is a hard task”; and, after vainly trying to describe his good points, he wound up with, “It is a hard job writing about one’s self.” Nevertheless, there was one who gave himself a most glowing and lengthy character, and in conclusion stated that he had greatly enjoyed writing it.
“But suppose this: your cabin-boy could run your engine, could repair it when out of order. Suppose he could take his turn at the wheel, could do any carpenter or machinist work. Suppose he is strong, healthy, and willing to work. Would you not rather have him than a kid that gets seasick and can’t do anything but wash dishes?” It was letters of this sort that I hated to decline. The writer of it, self-taught in English, had been only two years in the United States, and, as he said, “I am not wishing to go with you to earn my living, but I wish to learn and see.” At the time of writing to me he was a designer for one of the big motor manufacturing companies; he had been to sea quite a bit, and had been used all his life to the handling of small boats.
“I have a good position, but it matters not so with me as I prefer travelling,” wrote another. “As to salary, look at me, and if I am worth a dollar or two, all right, and if I am not, nothing said. As to my honesty and character, I shall be pleased to show you my employers. Never drink, no tobacco, but to be honest, I myself, after a little more experience, want to do a little writing.”
“I can assure you that I am eminently respectable, but find other respectable people tiresome.” The man who wrote the foregoing certainly had me guessing, and I am still wondering whether or not he’d have found me tiresome, or what the deuce he did mean.
“I have seen better days than what I am passing through to-day,” wrote an old salt, “but I have seen them a great deal worse also.”
But the willingness to sacrifice on the part of the man who wrote the following was so touching that I could not accept: “I have a father, a mother, brothers and sisters, dear friends and a lucrative position, and yet I will sacrifice all to become one of your crew.”
Another volunteer I could never have accepted was the finicky young fellow who, to show me how necessary it was that I should give him a chance, pointed out that “to go in the ordinary boat, be it schooner or steamer, would be impracticable, for I would have to mix among and live with the ordinary type of seamen, which as a rule is not a clean sort of life.”
Then there was the young fellow of twenty-six, who had “run through the gamut of human emotions,” and had “done everything from cooking to attending Stanford University,” and who, at the present writing, was “A vaquero on a fifty-five-thousand-acre range.” Quite in contrast was the modesty of the one who said, “I am not aware of possessing any particular qualities that would be likely to recommend me to your consideration. But should you be impressed, you might consider it worth a few minutes’ time to answer. Otherwise, there’s always work at the trade. Not expecting, but hoping, I remain, etc.”
But I have held my head in both my hands ever since, trying to figure out the intellectual kinship between myself and the one who wrote: “Long before I knew of you, I had mixed political economy and history and deducted therefrom many of your conclusions in concrete.”
Here, in its way, is one of the best, as it is the briefest, that I received: “If any of the present company signed on for cruise happens to get cold feet and you need one more who understands boating, engines, etc., would like to hear from you, etc.” Here is another brief one: “Point blank, would like to have the job of cabin-boy on your trip around the world, or any other job on board. Am nineteen years old, weigh one hundred and forty pounds, and am an American.”
And here is a good one from a man a “little over five feet long”: “When I read about your manly plan of sailing around the world in a small boat with Mrs. London, I was so much rejoiced that I felt I was planning it myself, and I thought to write you about filling either position of cook or cabin-boy myself, but for some reason I did not do it, and I came to Denver from Oakland to join my friend’s business last month, but everything is worse and unfavourable. But fortunately you have postponed your departure on account of the great earthquake, so I finally decided to propose you to let me fill either of the positions. I am not very strong, being a man of a little over five feet long, although I am of sound health and capability.”
“I think I can add to your outfit an additional method of utilizing the power of the wind,” wrote a well-wisher, “which, while not interfering with ordinary sails in light breezes, will enable you to use the whole force of the wind in its mightiest blows, so that even when its force is so great that you may have to take in every inch of canvas used in the ordinary way, you may carry the fullest spread with my method. With my attachment your craft could not be UPSET.”
The foregoing letter was written in San Francisco under the date of April 16, 1906. And two days later, on April 18, came the Great Earthquake. And that’s why I’ve got it in for that earthquake, for it made a refugee out of the man who wrote the letter, and prevented us from ever getting together.
Many of my brother socialists objected to my making the cruise, of which the following is typical: “The Socialist Cause and the millions of oppressed victims of Capitalism has a right and claim upon your life and services. If, however, you persist, then, when you swallow the last mouthful of salt chuck you can hold before sinking, remember that we at least protested.”
One wanderer over the world who “could, if opportunity afforded, recount many unusual scenes and events,” spent several pages ardently trying to get to the point of his letter, and at last achieved the following: “Still I am neglecting the point I set out to write you about. So will say at once that it has been stated in print that you and one or two others are going to take a cruize around the world a little fifty- or sixty-foot boat. I therefore cannot get myself to think that a man of your attainments and experience would attempt such a proceeding, which is nothing less than courting death in that way. And even if you were to escape for some time, your whole Person, and those with you would be bruised from the ceaseless motion of a craft of the above size, even if she were padded, a thing not usual at sea.” Thank you, kind friend, thank you for that qualification, “a thing not usual at sea.” Nor is this friend ignorant of the sea. As he says of himself, “I am not a land-lubber, and I have sailed every sea and ocean.” And he winds up his letter with: “Although not wishing to offend, it would be madness to take any woman outside the bay even, in such a craft.”
And yet, at the moment of writing this, Charmian is in her state-room at the typewriter, Martin is cooking dinner, Tochigi is setting the table, Roscoe and Bert are caulking the deck, and the Snark is steering herself some five knots an hour in a rattling good sea—and the Snark is not padded, either.
“Seeing a piece in the paper about your intended trip, would like to know if you would like a good crew, as there is six of us boys all good sailor men, with good discharges from the Navy and Merchant Service, all true Americans, all between the ages of 20 and 22, and at present are employed as riggers at the Union Iron Works, and would like very much to sail with you.”—It was letters like this that made me regret the boat was not larger.
And here writes the one woman in all the world—outside of Charmian—for the cruise: “If you have not succeeded in getting a cook I would like very much to take the trip in that capacity. I am a woman of fifty, healthy and capable, and can do the work for the small company that compose the crew of the Snark. I am a very good cook and a very good sailor and something of a traveller, and the length of the voyage, if of ten years’ duration, would suit me better than one. References, etc.”
Some day, when I have made a lot of money, I’m going to build a big ship, with room in it for a thousand volunteers. They will have to do all the work of navigating that boat around the world, or they’ll stay at home. I believe that they’ll work the boat around the world, for I know that Adventure is not dead. I know Adventure is not dead because I have had a long and intimate correspondence with Adventure.
“But,” our friends objected, “how dare you go to sea without a navigator on board? You’re not a navigator, are you?”
I had to confess that I was not a navigator, that I had never looked through a sextant in my life, and that I doubted if I could tell a sextant from a nautical almanac. And when they asked if Roscoe was a navigator, I shook my head. Roscoe resented this. He had glanced at the “Epitome,” bought for our voyage, knew how to use logarithm tables, had seen a sextant at some time, and, what of this and of his seafaring ancestry, he concluded that he did know navigation. But Roscoe was wrong, I still insist. When a young boy he came from Maine to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and that was the only time in his life that he was out of sight of land. He had never gone to a school of navigation, nor passed an examination in the same; nor had he sailed the deep sea and learned the art from some other navigator. He was a San Francisco Bay yachtsman, where land is always only several miles away and the art of navigation is never employed.
So the Snark started on her long voyage without a navigator. We beat through the Golden Gate on April 23, and headed for the Hawaiian Islands, twenty-one hundred sea-miles away as the gull flies. And the outcome was our justification. We arrived. And we arrived, furthermore, without any trouble, as you shall see; that is, without any trouble to amount to anything. To begin with, Roscoe tackled the navigating. He had the theory all right, but it was the first time he had ever applied it, as was evidenced by the erratic behaviour of the Snark. Not but what the Snark was perfectly steady on the sea; the pranks she cut were on the chart. On a day with a light breeze she would make a jump on the chart that advertised “a wet sail and a flowing sheet,” and on a day when she just raced over the ocean, she scarcely changed her position on the chart. Now when one’s boat has logged six knots for twenty-four consecutive hours, it is incontestable that she has covered one hundred and forty-four miles of ocean. The ocean was all right, and so was the patent log; as for speed, one saw it with his own eyes. Therefore the thing that was not all right was the figuring that refused to boost the Snark along over the chart. Not that this happened every day, but that it did happen. And it was perfectly proper and no more than was to be expected from a first attempt at applying a theory.
The acquisition of the knowledge of navigation has a strange effect on the minds of men. The average navigator speaks of navigation with deep respect. To the layman navigation is a deed and awful mystery, which feeling has been generated in him by the deep and awful respect for navigation that the layman has seen displayed by navigators. I have known frank, ingenuous, and modest young men, open as the day, to learn navigation and at once betray secretiveness, reserve, and self-importance as if they had achieved some tremendous intellectual attainment. The average navigator impresses the layman as a priest of some holy rite. With bated breath, the amateur yachtsman navigator invites one in to look at his chronometer. And so it was that our friends suffered such apprehension at our sailing without a navigator.
During the building of the Snark, Roscoe and I had an agreement, something like this: “I’ll furnish the books and instruments,” I said, “and do you study up navigation now. I’ll be too busy to do any studying. Then, when we get to sea, you can teach me what you have learned.” Roscoe was delighted. Furthermore, Roscoe was as frank and ingenuous and modest as the young men I have described. But when we got out to sea and he began to practise the holy rite, while I looked on admiringly, a change, subtle and distinctive, marked his bearing. When he shot the sun at noon, the glow of achievement wrapped him in lambent flame. When he went below, figured out his observation, and then returned on deck and announced our latitude and longitude, there was an authoritative ring in his voice that was new to all of us. But that was not the worst of it. He became filled with incommunicable information. And the more he discovered the reasons for the erratic jumps of the Snark over the chart, and the less the Snark jumped, the more incommunicable and holy and awful became his information. My mild suggestions that it was about time that I began to learn, met with no hearty response, with no offers on his part to help me. He displayed not the slightest intention of living up to our agreement.
Now this was not Roscoe’s fault; he could not help it. He had merely gone the way of all the men who learned navigation before him. By an understandable and forgivable confusion of values, plus a loss of orientation, he felt weighted by responsibility, and experienced the possession of power that was like unto that of a god. All his life Roscoe had lived on land, and therefore in sight of land. Being constantly in sight of land, with landmarks to guide him, he had managed, with occasional difficulties, to steer his body around and about the earth. Now he found himself on the sea, wide-stretching, bounded only by the eternal circle of the sky. This circle looked always the same. There were no landmarks. The sun rose to the east and set to the west and the stars wheeled through the night. But who may look at the sun or the stars and say, “My place on the face of the earth at the present moment is four and three-quarter miles to the west of Jones’s Cash Store of Smithersville”? or “I know where I am now, for the Little Dipper informs me that Boston is three miles away on the second turning to the right”? And yet that was precisely what Roscoe did. That he was astounded by the achievement, is putting it mildly. He stood in reverential awe of himself; he had performed a miraculous feat. The act of finding himself on the face of the waters became a rite, and he felt himself a superior being to the rest of us who knew not this rite and were dependent on him for being shepherded across the heaving and limitless waste, the briny highroad that connects the continents and whereon there are no mile-stones. So, with the sextant he made obeisance to the sun-god, he consulted ancient tomes and tables of magic characters, muttered prayers in a strange tongue that sounded like Indexerrorparallaxrefraction, made cabalistic signs on paper, added and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the Grail—I mean the Chart—he placed his finger on a certain space conspicuous for its blankness and said, “Here we are.” When we looked at the blank space and asked, “And where is that?” he answered in the cipher-code of the higher priesthood, “31-15-47 north, 133-5-30 west.” And we said “Oh,” and felt mighty small.
So I aver, it was not Roscoe’s fault. He was like unto a god, and he carried us in the hollow of his hand across the blank spaces on the chart. I experienced a great respect for Roscoe; this respect grew so profound that had he commanded, “Kneel down and worship me,” I know that I should have flopped down on the deck and yammered. But, one day, there came a still small thought to me that said: “This is not a god; this is Roscoe, a mere man like myself. What he has done, I can do. Who taught him? Himself. Go you and do likewise—be your own teacher.” And right there Roscoe crashed, and he was high priest of the Snark no longer. I invaded the sanctuary and demanded the ancient tomes and magic tables, also the prayer-wheel—the sextant, I mean.
And now, in simple language. I shall describe how I taught myself navigation. One whole afternoon I sat in the cockpit, steering with one hand and studying logarithms with the other. Two afternoons, two hours each, I studied the general theory of navigation and the particular process of taking a meridian altitude. Then I took the sextant, worked out the index error, and shot the sun. The figuring from the data of this observation was child’s play. In the “Epitome” and the “Nautical Almanac” were scores of cunning tables, all worked out by mathematicians and astronomers. It was like using interest tables and lightning-calculator tables such as you all know. The mystery was mystery no longer. I put my finger on the chart and announced that that was where we were. I was right too, or at least I was as right as Roscoe, who selected a spot a quarter of a mile away from mine. Even he was willing to split the distance with me. I had exploded the mystery, and yet, such was the miracle of it, I was conscious of new power in me, and I felt the thrill and tickle of pride. And when Martin asked me, in the same humble and respectful way I had previously asked Roscoe, as to where we were, it was with exaltation and spiritual chest-throwing that I answered in the cipher-code of the higher priesthood and heard Martin’s self-abasing and worshipful “Oh.” As for Charmian, I felt that in a new way I had proved my right to her; and I was aware of another feeling, namely, that she was a most fortunate woman to have a man like me.
I couldn’t help it. I tell it as a vindication of Roscoe and all the other navigators. The poison of power was working in me. I was not as other men—most other men; I knew what they did not know,—the mystery of the heavens, that pointed out the way across the deep. And the taste of power I had received drove me on. I steered at the wheel long hours with one hand, and studied mystery with the other. By the end of the week, teaching myself, I was able to do divers things. For instance, I shot the North Star, at night, of course; got its altitude, corrected for index error, dip, etc., and found our latitude. And this latitude agreed with the latitude of the previous noon corrected by dead reckoning up to that moment. Proud? Well, I was even prouder with my next miracle. I was going to turn in at nine o’clock. I worked out the problem, self-instructed, and learned what star of the first magnitude would be passing the meridian around half-past eight. This star proved to be Alpha Crucis. I had never heard of the star before. I looked it up on the star map. It was one of the stars of the Southern Cross. What! thought I; have we been sailing with the Southern Cross in the sky of nights and never known it? Dolts that we are! Gudgeons and moles! I couldn’t believe it. I went over the problem again, and verified it. Charmian had the wheel from eight till ten that evening. I told her to keep her eyes open and look due south for the Southern Cross. And when the stars came out, there shone the Southern Cross low on the horizon. Proud? No medicine man nor high priest was ever prouder. Furthermore, with the prayer-wheel I shot Alpha Crucis and from its altitude worked out our latitude. And still furthermore, I shot the North Star, too, and it agreed with what had been told me by the Southern Cross. Proud? Why, the language of the stars was mine, and I listened and heard them telling me my way over the deep.
Proud? I was a worker of miracles. I forgot how easily I had taught myself from the printed page. I forgot that all the work (and a tremendous work, too) had been done by the masterminds before me, the astronomers and mathematicians, who had discovered and elaborated the whole science of navigation and made the tables in the “Epitome.” I remembered only the everlasting miracle of it—that I had listened to the voices of the stars and been told my place upon the highway of the sea. Charmian did not know, Martin did not know, Tochigi, the cabin-boy, did not know. But I told them. I was God’s messenger. I stood between them and infinity. I translated the high celestial speech into terms of their ordinary understanding. We were heaven-directed, and it was I who could read the sign-post of the sky!—I! I!
And now, in a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and charts, and instruments and teach himself navigation. Now I must not be misunderstood. Seamanship is an entirely different matter. It is not learned in a day, nor in many days; it requires years. Also, navigating by dead reckoning requires long study and practice. But navigating by observations of the sun, moon, and stars, thanks to the astronomers and mathematicians, is child’s play. Any average young fellow can teach himself in a week. And yet again I must not be misunderstood. I do not mean to say that at the end of a week a young fellow could take charge of a fifteen-thousand-ton steamer, driving twenty knots an hour through the brine, racing from land to land, fair weather and foul, clear sky or cloudy, steering by degrees on the compass card and making landfalls with most amazing precision. But what I do mean is just this: the average young fellow I have described can get into a staunch sail-boat and put out across the ocean, without knowing anything about navigation, and at the end of the week he will know enough to know where he is on the chart. He will be able to take a meridian observation with fair accuracy, and from that observation, with ten minutes of figuring, work out his latitude and longitude. And, carrying neither freight nor passengers, being under no press to reach his destination, he can jog comfortably along, and if at any time he doubts his own navigation and fears an imminent landfall, he can heave to all night and proceed in the morning.
Joshua Slocum sailed around the world a few years ago in a thirty-seven-foot boat all by himself. I shall never forget, in his narrative of the voyage, where he heartily indorsed the idea of young men, in similar small boats, making similar voyage. I promptly indorsed his idea, and so heartily that I took my wife along. While it certainly makes a Cook’s tour look like thirty cents, on top of that, amid on top of the fun and pleasure, it is a splendid education for a young man—oh, not a mere education in the things of the world outside, of lands, and peoples, and climates, but an education in the world inside, an education in one’s self, a chance to learn one’s own self, to get on speaking terms with one’s soul. Then there is the training and the disciplining of it. First, naturally, the young fellow will learn his limitations; and next, inevitably, he will proceed to press back those limitations. And he cannot escape returning from such a voyage a bigger and better man. And as for sport, it is a king’s sport, taking one’s self around the world, doing it with one’s own hands, depending on no one but one’s self, and at the end, back at the starting-point, contemplating with inner vision the planet rushing through space, and saying, “I did it; with my own hands I did it. I went clear around that whirling sphere, and I can travel alone, without any nurse of a sea-captain to guide my steps across the seas. I may not fly to other stars, but of this star I myself am master.”
As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the deep sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then comes the reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with red. Still nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate stripes and showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral banks. Through and over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles and thunders a magnificent surf. As I say, I lift my eyes to all this, and through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it. And the picture of that coloured sea and that flying sea-god Kanaka becomes another reason for the young man to go west, and farther west, beyond the Baths of Sunset, and still west till he arrives home again.
But to return. Please do not think that I already know it all. I know only the rudiments of navigation. There is a vast deal yet for me to learn. On the Snark there is a score of fascinating books on navigation waiting for me. There is the danger-angle of Lecky, there is the line of Sumner, which, when you know least of all where you are, shows most conclusively where you are, and where you are not. There are dozens and dozens of methods of finding one’s location on the deep, and one can work years before he masters it all in all its fineness.
Even in the little we did learn there were slips that accounted for the apparently antic behaviour of the Snark. On Thursday, May 16, for instance, the trade wind failed us. During the twenty-four hours that ended Friday at noon, by dead reckoning we had not sailed twenty miles. Yet here are our positions, at noon, for the two days, worked out from our observations:
Thursday | 20° | 57′ | 9″ | N |
| 152° | 40′ | 30″ | W |
Friday | 21° | 15′ | 33″ | N |
| 154° | 12′ |
|
|
The difference between the two positions was something like eighty miles. Yet we knew we had not travelled twenty miles. Now our figuring was all right. We went over it several times. What was wrong was the observations we had taken. To take a correct observation requires practice and skill, and especially so on a small craft like the Snark. The violently moving boat and the closeness of the observer’s eye to the surface of the water are to blame. A big wave that lifts up a mile off is liable to steal the horizon away.
But in our particular case there was another perturbing factor. The sun, in its annual march north through the heavens, was increasing its declination. On the 19th parallel of north latitude in the middle of May the sun is nearly overhead. The angle of arc was between eighty-eight and eighty-nine degrees. Had it been ninety degrees it would have been straight overhead. It was on another day that we learned a few things about taking the altitude of the almost perpendicular sun. Roscoe started in drawing the sun down to the eastern horizon, and he stayed by that point of the compass despite the fact that the sun would pass the meridian to the south. I, on the other hand, started in to draw the sun down to south-east and strayed away to the south-west. You see, we were teaching ourselves. As a result, at twenty-five minutes past twelve by the ship’s time, I called twelve o’clock by the sun. Now this signified that we had changed our location on the face of the world by twenty-five minutes, which was equal to something like six degrees of longitude, or three hundred and fifty miles. This showed the Snark had travelled fifteen knots per hour for twenty-four consecutive hours—and we had never noticed it! It was absurd and grotesque. But Roscoe, still looking east, averred that it was not yet twelve o’clock. He was bent on giving us a twenty-knot clip. Then we began to train our sextants rather wildly all around the horizon, and wherever we looked, there was the sun, puzzlingly close to the sky-line, sometimes above it and sometimes below it. In one direction the sun was proclaiming morning, in another direction it was proclaiming afternoon. The sun was all right—we knew that; therefore we were all wrong. And the rest of the afternoon we spent in the cockpit reading up the matter in the books and finding out what was wrong. We missed the observation that day, but we didn’t the next. We had learned.
And we learned well, better than for a while we thought we had. At the beginning of the second dog-watch one evening, Charmian and I sat down on the forecastle-head for a rubber of cribbage. Chancing to glance ahead, I saw cloud-capped mountains rising from the sea. We were rejoiced at the sight of land, but I was in despair over our navigation. I thought we had learned something, yet our position at noon, plus what we had run since, did not put us within a hundred miles of land. But there was the land, fading away before our eyes in the fires of sunset. The land was all right. There was no disputing it. Therefore our navigation was all wrong. But it wasn’t. That land we saw was the summit of Haleakala, the House of the Sun, the greatest extinct volcano in the world. It towered ten thousand feet above the sea, and it was all of a hundred miles away. We sailed all night at a seven-knot clip, and in the morning the House of the Sun was still before us, and it took a few more hours of sailing to bring it abreast of us. “That island is Maui,” we said, verifying by the chart. “That next island sticking out is Molokai, where the lepers are. And the island next to that is Oahu. There is Makapuu Head now. We’ll be in Honolulu to-morrow. Our navigation is all right.”
“It will not be so monotonous at sea,” I promised my fellow-voyagers on the Snark. “The sea is filled with life. It is so populous that every day something new is happening. Almost as soon as we pass through the Golden Gate and head south we’ll pick up with the flying fish. We’ll be having them fried for breakfast. We’ll be catching bonita and dolphin, and spearing porpoises from the bowsprit. And then there are the sharks—sharks without end.”
We passed through the Golden Gate and headed south. We dropped the mountains of California beneath the horizon, and daily the surf grew warmer. But there were no flying fish, no bonita and dolphin. The ocean was bereft of life. Never had I sailed on so forsaken a sea. Always, before, in the same latitudes, had I encountered flying fish.
“Never mind,” I said. “Wait till we get off the coast of Southern California. Then we’ll pick up the flying fish.”
We came abreast of Southern California, abreast of the Peninsula of Lower California, abreast of the coast of Mexico; and there were no flying fish. Nor was there anything else. No life moved. As the days went by the absence of life became almost uncanny.
“Never mind,” I said. “When we do pick up with the flying fish we’ll pick up with everything else. The flying fish is the staff of life for all the other breeds. Everything will come in a bunch when we find the flying fish.”
When I should have headed the Snark south-west for Hawaii, I still held her south. I was going to find those flying fish. Finally the time came when, if I wanted to go to Honolulu, I should have headed the Snark due west, instead of which I kept her south. Not until latitude 19° did we encounter the first flying fish. He was very much alone. I saw him. Five other pairs of eager eyes scanned the sea all day, but never saw another. So sparse were the flying fish that nearly a week more elapsed before the last one on board saw his first flying fish. As for the dolphin, bonita, porpoise, and all the other hordes of life—there weren’t any.
Not even a shark broke surface with his ominous dorsal fin. Bert took a dip daily under the bowsprit, hanging on to the stays and dragging his body through the water. And daily he canvassed the project of letting go and having a decent swim. I did my best to dissuade him. But with him I had lost all standing as an authority on sea life.
“If there are sharks,” he demanded, “why don’t they show up?”
I assured him that if he really did let go and have a swim the sharks would promptly appear. This was a bluff on my part. I didn’t believe it. It lasted as a deterrent for two days. The third day the wind fell calm, and it was pretty hot. The Snark was moving a knot an hour. Bert dropped down under the bowsprit and let go. And now behold the perversity of things. We had sailed across two thousand miles and more of ocean and had met with no sharks. Within five minutes after Bert finished his swim, the fin of a shark was cutting the surface in circles around the Snark.
There was something wrong about that shark. It bothered me. It had no right to be there in that deserted ocean. The more I thought about it, the more incomprehensible it became. But two hours later we sighted land and the mystery was cleared up. He had come to us from the land, and not from the uninhabited deep. He had presaged the landfall. He was the messenger of the land.
Twenty-seven days out from San Francisco we arrived at the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. In the early morning we drifted around Diamond Head into full view of Honolulu; and then the ocean burst suddenly into life. Flying fish cleaved the air in glittering squadrons. In five minutes we saw more of them than during the whole voyage. Other fish, large ones, of various sorts, leaped into the air. There was life everywhere, on sea and shore. We could see the masts and funnels of the shipping in the harbour, the hotels and bathers along the beach at Waikiki, the smoke rising from the dwelling-houses high up on the volcanic slopes of the Punch Bowl and Tantalus. The custom-house tug was racing toward us and a big school of porpoises got under our bow and began cutting the most ridiculous capers. The port doctor’s launch came charging out at us, and a big sea turtle broke the surface with his back and took a look at us. Never was there such a burgeoning of life. Strange faces were on our decks, strange voices were speaking, and copies of that very morning’s newspaper, with cable reports from all the world, were thrust before our eyes. Incidentally, we read that the Snark and all hands had been lost at sea, and that she had been a very unseaworthy craft anyway. And while we read this information a wireless message was being received by the congressional party on the summit of Haleakala announcing the safe arrival of the Snark.
It was the Snark’s first landfall—and such a landfall! For twenty-seven days we had been on the deserted deep, and it was pretty hard to realize that there was so much life in the world. We were made dizzy by it. We could not take it all in at once. We were like awakened Rip Van Winkles, and it seemed to us that we were dreaming. On one side the azure sea lapped across the horizon into the azure sky; on the other side the sea lifted itself into great breakers of emerald that fell in a snowy smother upon a white coral beach. Beyond the beach, green plantations of sugar-cane undulated gently upward to steeper slopes, which, in turn, became jagged volcanic crests, drenched with tropic showers and capped by stupendous masses of trade-wind clouds. At any rate, it was a most beautiful dream. The Snark turned and headed directly in toward the emerald surf, till it lifted and thundered on either hand; and on either hand, scarce a biscuit-toss away, the reef showed its long teeth, pale green and menacing.
Abruptly the land itself, in a riot of olive-greens of a thousand hues, reached out its arms and folded the Snark in. There was no perilous passage through the reef, no emerald surf and azure sea—nothing but a warm soft land, a motionless lagoon, and tiny beaches on which swam dark-skinned tropic children. The sea had disappeared. The Snark’s anchor rumbled the chain through the hawse-pipe, and we lay without movement on a “lineless, level floor.” It was all so beautiful and strange that we could not accept it as real. On the chart this place was called Pearl Harbour, but we called it Dream Harbour.
A launch came off to us; in it were members of the Hawaiian Yacht Club, come to greet us and make us welcome, with true Hawaiian hospitality, to all they had. They were ordinary men, flesh and blood and all the rest; but they did not tend to break our dreaming. Our last memories of men were of United States marshals and of panicky little merchants with rusty dollars for souls, who, in a reeking atmosphere of soot and coal-dust, laid grimy hands upon the Snark and held her back from her world adventure. But these men who came to meet us were clean men. A healthy tan was on their cheeks, and their eyes were not dazzled and bespectacled from gazing overmuch at glittering dollar-heaps. No, they merely verified the dream. They clinched it with their unsmirched souls.
So we went ashore with them across a level flashing sea to the wonderful green land. We landed on a tiny wharf, and the dream became more insistent; for know that for twenty-seven days we had been rocking across the ocean on the tiny Snark. Not once in all those twenty-seven days had we known a moment’s rest, a moment’s cessation from movement. This ceaseless movement had become ingrained. Body and brain we had rocked and rolled so long that when we climbed out on the tiny wharf kept on rocking and rolling. This, naturally, we attributed to the wharf. It was projected psychology. I spraddled along the wharf and nearly fell into the water. I glanced at Charmian, and the way she walked made me sad. The wharf had all the seeming of a ship’s deck. It lifted, tilted, heaved and sank; and since there were no handrails on it, it kept Charmian and me busy avoiding falling in. I never saw such a preposterous little wharf. Whenever I watched it closely, it refused to roll; but as soon as I took my attention off from it, away it went, just like the Snark. Once, I caught it in the act, just as it upended, and I looked down the length of it for two hundred feet, and for all the world it was like the deck of a ship ducking into a huge head-sea.
At last, however, supported by our hosts, we negotiated the wharf and gained the land. But the land was no better. The very first thing it did was to tilt up on one side, and far as the eye could see I watched it tilt, clear to its jagged, volcanic backbone, and I saw the clouds above tilt, too. This was no stable, firm-founded land, else it would not cut such capers. It was like all the rest of our landfall, unreal. It was a dream. At any moment, like shifting vapour, it might dissolve away. The thought entered my head that perhaps it was my fault, that my head was swimming or that something I had eaten had disagreed with me. But I glanced at Charmian and her sad walk, and even as I glanced I saw her stagger and bump into the yachtsman by whose side she walked. I spoke to her, and she complained about the antic behaviour of the land.
We walked across a spacious, wonderful lawn and down an avenue of royal palms, and across more wonderful lawn in the gracious shade of stately trees. The air was filled with the songs of birds and was heavy with rich warm fragrances—wafture from great lilies, and blazing blossoms of hibiscus, and other strange gorgeous tropic flowers. The dream was becoming almost impossibly beautiful to us who for so long had seen naught but the restless, salty sea. Charmian reached out her hand and clung to me—for support against the ineffable beauty of it, thought I. But no. As I supported her I braced my legs, while the flowers and lawns reeled and swung around me. It was like an earthquake, only it quickly passed without doing any harm. It was fairly difficult to catch the land playing these tricks. As long as I kept my mind on it, nothing happened. But as soon as my attention was distracted, away it went, the whole panorama, swinging and heaving and tilting at all sorts of angles. Once, however, I turned my head suddenly and caught that stately line of royal palms swinging in a great arc across the sky. But it stopped, just as soon as I caught it, and became a placid dream again.
Next we came to a house of coolness, with great sweeping veranda, where lotus-eaters might dwell. Windows and doors were wide open to the breeze, and the songs and fragrances blew lazily in and out. The walls were hung with tapa-cloths. Couches with grass-woven covers invited everywhere, and there was a grand piano, that played, I was sure, nothing more exciting than lullabies. Servants—Japanese maids in native costume—drifted around and about, noiselessly, like butterflies. Everything was preternaturally cool. Here was no blazing down of a tropic sun upon an unshrinking sea. It was too good to be true. But it was not real. It was a dream-dwelling. I knew, for I turned suddenly and caught the grand piano cavorting in a spacious corner of the room. I did not say anything, for just then we were being received by a gracious woman, a beautiful Madonna, clad in flowing white and shod with sandals, who greeted us as though she had known us always.
We sat at table on the lotus-eating veranda, served by the butterfly maids, and ate strange foods and partook of a nectar called poi. But the dream threatened to dissolve. It shimmered and trembled like an iridescent bubble about to break. I was just glancing out at the green grass and stately trees and blossoms of hibiscus, when suddenly I felt the table move. The table, and the Madonna across from me, and the veranda of the lotus-eaters, the scarlet hibiscus, the greensward and the trees—all lifted and tilted before my eyes, and heaved and sank down into the trough of a monstrous sea. I gripped my chair convulsively and held on. I had a feeling that I was holding on to the dream as well as the chair. I should not have been surprised had the sea rushed in and drowned all that fairyland and had I found myself at the wheel of the Snark just looking up casually from the study of logarithms. But the dream persisted. I looked covertly at the Madonna and her husband. They evidenced no perturbation. The dishes had not moved upon the table. The hibiscus and trees and grass were still there. Nothing had changed. I partook of more nectar, and the dream was more real than ever.
“Will you have some iced tea?” asked the Madonna; and then her side of the table sank down gently and I said yes to her at an angle of forty-five degrees.
“Speaking of sharks,” said her husband, “up at Niihau there was a man—” And at that moment the table lifted and heaved, and I gazed upward at him at an angle of forty-five degrees.
So the luncheon went on, and I was glad that I did not have to bear the affliction of watching Charmian walk. Suddenly, however, a mysterious word of fear broke from the lips of the lotus-eaters. “Ah, ah,” thought I, “now the dream goes glimmering.” I clutched the chair desperately, resolved to drag back to the reality of the Snark some tangible vestige of this lotus land. I felt the whole dream lurching and pulling to be gone. Just then the mysterious word of fear was repeated. It sounded like Reporters. I looked and saw three of them coming across the lawn. Oh, blessed reporters! Then the dream was indisputably real after all. I glanced out across the shining water and saw the Snark at anchor, and I remembered that I had sailed in her from San Francisco to Hawaii, and that this was Pearl Harbour, and that even then I was acknowledging introductions and saying, in reply to the first question, “Yes, we had delightful weather all the way down.”
That is what it is, a royal sport for the natural kings of earth. The grass grows right down to the water at Waikiki Beach, and within fifty feet of the everlasting sea. The trees also grow down to the salty edge of things, and one sits in their shade and looks seaward at a majestic surf thundering in on the beach to one’s very feet. Half a mile out, where is the reef, the white-headed combers thrust suddenly skyward out of the placid turquoise-blue and come rolling in to shore. One after another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests, the white battalions of the infinite army of the sea. And one sits and listens to the perpetual roar, and watches the unending procession, and feels tiny and fragile before this tremendous force expressing itself in fury and foam and sound. Indeed, one feels microscopically small, and the thought that one may wrestle with this sea raises in one’s imagination a thrill of apprehension, almost of fear. Why, they are a mile long, these bull-mouthed monsters, and they weigh a thousand tons, and they charge in to shore faster than a man can run. What chance? No chance at all, is the verdict of the shrinking ego; and one sits, and looks, and listens, and thinks the grass and the shade are a pretty good place in which to be.
And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears the dark head of a man. Swiftly he rises through the rushing white. His black shoulders, his chest, his loins, his limbs—all is abruptly projected on one’s vision. Where but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect, full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement, not buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on which he stands. He is a Mercury—a brown Mercury. His heels are winged, and in them is the swiftness of the sea. In truth, from out of the sea he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is riding the sea that roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back. But no frantic outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea’s depth from which he rose. And straight on toward shore he flies on his winged heels and the white crest of the breaker. There is a wild burst of foam, a long tumultuous rushing sound as the breaker falls futile and spent on the beach at your feet; and there, at your feet steps calmly ashore a Kanaka, burnt, golden and brown by the tropic sun. Several minutes ago he was a speck a quarter of a mile away. He has “bitted the bull-mouthed breaker” and ridden it in, and the pride in the feat shows in the carriage of his magnificent body as he glances for a moment carelessly at you who sit in the shade of the shore. He is a Kanaka—and more, he is a man, a member of the kingly species that has mastered matter and the brutes and lorded it over creation.
And one sits and thinks of Tristram’s last wrestle with the sea on that fatal morning; and one thinks further, to the fact that that Kanaka has done what Tristram never did, and that he knows a joy of the sea that Tristram never knew. And still further one thinks. It is all very well, sitting here in cool shade of the beach, but you are a man, one of the kingly species, and what that Kanaka can do, you can do yourself. Go to. Strip off your clothes that are a nuisance in this mellow clime. Get in and wrestle with the sea; wing your heels with the skill and power that reside in you; bit the sea’s breakers, master them, and ride upon their backs as a king should.
And that is how it came about that I tackled surf-riding. And now that I have tackled it, more than ever do I hold it to be a royal sport. But first let me explain the physics of it. A wave is a communicated agitation. The water that composes the body of a wave does not move. If it did, when a stone is thrown into a pond and the ripples spread away in an ever widening circle, there would appear at the centre an ever increasing hole. No, the water that composes the body of a wave is stationary. Thus, you may watch a particular portion of the ocean’s surface and you will see the same water rise and fall a thousand times to the agitation communicated by a thousand successive waves. Now imagine this communicated agitation moving shoreward. As the bottom shoals, the lower portion of the wave strikes land first and is stopped. But water is fluid, and the upper portion has not struck anything, wherefore it keeps on communicating its agitation, keeps on going. And when the top of the wave keeps on going, while the bottom of it lags behind, something is bound to happen. The bottom of the wave drops out from under and the top of the wave falls over, forward, and down, curling and cresting and roaring as it does so. It is the bottom of a wave striking against the top of the land that is the cause of all surfs.
But the transformation from a smooth undulation to a breaker is not abrupt except where the bottom shoals abruptly. Say the bottom shoals gradually for from quarter of a mile to a mile, then an equal distance will be occupied by the transformation. Such a bottom is that off the beach of Waikiki, and it produces a splendid surf-riding surf. One leaps upon the back of a breaker just as it begins to break, and stays on it as it continues to break all the way in to shore.
And now to the particular physics of surf-riding. Get out on a flat board, six feet long, two feet wide, and roughly oval in shape. Lie down upon it like a small boy on a coaster and paddle with your hands out to deep water, where the waves begin to crest. Lie out there quietly on the board. Sea after sea breaks before, behind, and under and over you, and rushes in to shore, leaving you behind. When a wave crests, it gets steeper. Imagine yourself, on your hoard, on the face of that steep slope. If it stood still, you would slide down just as a boy slides down a hill on his coaster. “But,” you object, “the wave doesn’t stand still.” Very true, but the water composing the wave stands still, and there you have the secret. If ever you start sliding down the face of that wave, you’ll keep on sliding and you’ll never reach the bottom. Please don’t laugh. The face of that wave may be only six feet, yet you can slide down it a quarter of a mile, or half a mile, and not reach the bottom. For, see, since a wave is only a communicated agitation or impetus, and since the water that composes a wave is changing every instant, new water is rising into the wave as fast as the wave travels. You slide down this new water, and yet remain in your old position on the wave, sliding down the still newer water that is rising and forming the wave. You slide precisely as fast as the wave travels. If it travels fifteen miles an hour, you slide fifteen miles an hour. Between you and shore stretches a quarter of mile of water. As the wave travels, this water obligingly heaps itself into the wave, gravity does the rest, and down you go, sliding the whole length of it. If you still cherish the notion, while sliding, that the water is moving with you, thrust your arms into it and attempt to paddle; you will find that you have to be remarkably quick to get a stroke, for that water is dropping astern just as fast as you are rushing ahead.
And now for another phase of the physics of surf-riding. All rules have their exceptions. It is true that the water in a wave does not travel forward. But there is what may be called the send of the sea. The water in the overtoppling crest does move forward, as you will speedily realize if you are slapped in the face by it, or if you are caught under it and are pounded by one mighty blow down under the surface panting and gasping for half a minute. The water in the top of a wave rests upon the water in the bottom of the wave. But when the bottom of the wave strikes the land, it stops, while the top goes on. It no longer has the bottom of the wave to hold it up. Where was solid water beneath it, is now air, and for the first time it feels the grip of gravity, and down it falls, at the same time being torn asunder from the lagging bottom of the wave and flung forward. And it is because of this that riding a surf-board is something more than a mere placid sliding down a hill. In truth, one is caught up and hurled shoreward as by some Titan’s hand.
I deserted the cool shade, put on a swimming suit, and got hold of a surf-board. It was too small a board. But I didn’t know, and nobody told me. I joined some little Kanaka boys in shallow water, where the breakers were well spent and small—a regular kindergarten school. I watched the little Kanaka boys. When a likely-looking breaker came along, they flopped upon their stomachs on their boards, kicked like mad with their feet, and rode the breaker in to the beach. I tried to emulate them. I watched them, tried to do everything that they did, and failed utterly. The breaker swept past, and I was not on it. I tried again and again. I kicked twice as madly as they did, and failed. Half a dozen would be around. We would all leap on our boards in front of a good breaker. Away our feet would churn like the stern-wheels of river steamboats, and away the little rascals would scoot while I remained in disgrace behind.
I tried for a solid hour, and not one wave could I persuade to boost me shoreward. And then arrived a friend, Alexander Hume Ford, a globe trotter by profession, bent ever on the pursuit of sensation. And he had found it at Waikiki. Heading for Australia, he had stopped off for a week to find out if there were any thrills in surf-riding, and he had become wedded to it. He had been at it every day for a month and could not yet see any symptoms of the fascination lessening on him. He spoke with authority.
“Get off that board,” he said. “Chuck it away at once. Look at the way you’re trying to ride it. If ever the nose of that board hits bottom, you’ll be disembowelled. Here, take my board. It’s a man’s size.”
I am always humble when confronted by knowledge. Ford knew. He showed me how properly to mount his board. Then he waited for a good breaker, gave me a shove at the right moment, and started me in. Ah, delicious moment when I felt that breaker grip and fling me.
On I dashed, a hundred and fifty feet, and subsided with the breaker on the sand. From that moment I was lost. I waded back to Ford with his board. It was a large one, several inches thick, and weighed all of seventy-five pounds. He gave me advice, much of it. He had had no one to teach him, and all that he had laboriously learned in several weeks he communicated to me in half an hour. I really learned by proxy. And inside of half an hour I was able to start myself and ride in. I did it time after time, and Ford applauded and advised. For instance, he told me to get just so far forward on the board and no farther. But I must have got some farther, for as I came charging in to land, that miserable board poked its nose down to bottom, stopped abruptly, and turned a somersault, at the same time violently severing our relations. I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under the downfalling breaker. And I realized that if it hadn’t been for Ford, I’d have been disembowelled. That particular risk is part of the sport, Ford says. Maybe he’ll have it happen to him before he leaves Waikiki, and then, I feel confident, his yearning for sensation will be satisfied for a time.
When all is said and done, it is my steadfast belief that homicide is worse than suicide, especially if, in the former case, it is a woman. Ford saved me from being a homicide. “Imagine your legs are a rudder,” he said. “Hold them close together, and steer with them.” A few minutes later I came charging in on a comber. As I neared the beach, there, in the water, up to her waist, dead in front of me, appeared a woman. How was I to stop that comber on whose back I was? It looked like a dead woman. The board weighed seventy-five pounds, I weighed a hundred and sixty-five. The added weight had a velocity of fifteen miles per hour. The board and I constituted a projectile. I leave it to the physicists to figure out the force of the impact upon that poor, tender woman. And then I remembered my guardian angel, Ford. “Steer with your legs!” rang through my brain. I steered with my legs, I steered sharply, abruptly, with all my legs and with all my might. The board sheered around broadside on the crest. Many things happened simultaneously. The wave gave me a passing buffet, a light tap as the taps of waves go, but a tap sufficient to knock me off the board and smash me down through the rushing water to bottom, with which I came in violent collision and upon which I was rolled over and over. I got my head out for a breath of air and then gained my feet. There stood the woman before me. I felt like a hero. I had saved her life. And she laughed at me. It was not hysteria. She had never dreamed of her danger. Anyway, I solaced myself, it was not I but Ford that saved her, and I didn’t have to feel like a hero. And besides, that leg-steering was great. In a few minutes more of practice I was able to thread my way in and out past several bathers and to remain on top my breaker instead of going under it.
“To-morrow,” Ford said, “I am going to take you out into the blue water.”
I looked seaward where he pointed, and saw the great smoking combers that made the breakers I had been riding look like ripples. I don’t know what I might have said had I not recollected just then that I was one of a kingly species. So all that I did say was, “All right, I’ll tackle them to-morrow.”
The water that rolls in on Waikiki Beach is just the same as the water that laves the shores of all the Hawaiian Islands; and in ways, especially from the swimmer’s standpoint, it is wonderful water. It is cool enough to be comfortable, while it is warm enough to permit a swimmer to stay in all day without experiencing a chill. Under the sun or the stars, at high noon or at midnight, in midwinter or in midsummer, it does not matter when, it is always the same temperature—not too warm, not too cold, just right. It is wonderful water, salt as old ocean itself, pure and crystal-clear. When the nature of the water is considered, it is not so remarkable after all that the Kanakas are one of the most expert of swimming races.
So it was, next morning, when Ford came along, that I plunged into the wonderful water for a swim of indeterminate length. Astride of our surf-boards, or, rather, flat down upon them on our stomachs, we paddled out through the kindergarten where the little Kanaka boys were at play. Soon we were out in deep water where the big smokers came roaring in. The mere struggle with them, facing them and paddling seaward over them and through them, was sport enough in itself. One had to have his wits about him, for it was a battle in which mighty blows were struck, on one side, and in which cunning was used on the other side—a struggle between insensate force and intelligence. I soon learned a bit. When a breaker curled over my head, for a swift instant I could see the light of day through its emerald body; then down would go my head, and I would clutch the board with all my strength. Then would come the blow, and to the onlooker on shore I would be blotted out. In reality the board and I have passed through the crest and emerged in the respite of the other side. I should not recommend those smashing blows to an invalid or delicate person. There is weight behind them, and the impact of the driven water is like a sandblast. Sometimes one passes through half a dozen combers in quick succession, and it is just about that time that he is liable to discover new merits in the stable land and new reasons for being on shore.
Out there in the midst of such a succession of big smoky ones, a third man was added to our party, one Freeth. Shaking the water from my eyes as I emerged from one wave and peered ahead to see what the next one looked like, I saw him tearing in on the back of it, standing upright on his board, carelessly poised, a young god bronzed with sunburn. We went through the wave on the back of which he rode. Ford called to him. He turned an airspring from his wave, rescued his board from its maw, paddled over to us and joined Ford in showing me things. One thing in particular I learned from Freeth, namely, how to encounter the occasional breaker of exceptional size that rolled in. Such breakers were really ferocious, and it was unsafe to meet them on top of the board. But Freeth showed me, so that whenever I saw one of that calibre rolling down on me, I slid off the rear end of the board and dropped down beneath the surface, my arms over my head and holding the board. Thus, if the wave ripped the board out of my hands and tried to strike me with it (a common trick of such waves), there would be a cushion of water a foot or more in depth, between my head and the blow. When the wave passed, I climbed upon the board and paddled on. Many men have been terribly injured, I learn, by being struck by their boards.
The whole method of surf-riding and surf-fighting, learned, is one of non-resistance. Dodge the blow that is struck at you. Dive through the wave that is trying to slap you in the face. Sink down, feet first, deep under the surface, and let the big smoker that is trying to smash you go by far overhead. Never be rigid. Relax. Yield yourself to the waters that are ripping and tearing at you. When the undertow catches you and drags you seaward along the bottom, don’t struggle against it. If you do, you are liable to be drowned, for it is stronger than you. Yield yourself to that undertow. Swim with it, not against it, and you will find the pressure removed. And, swimming with it, fooling it so that it does not hold you, swim upward at the same time. It will be no trouble at all to reach the surface.
The man who wants to learn surf-riding must be a strong swimmer, and he must be used to going under the water. After that, fair strength and common-sense are all that is required. The force of the big comber is rather unexpected. There are mix-ups in which board and rider are torn apart and separated by several hundred feet. The surf-rider must take care of himself. No matter how many riders swim out with him, he cannot depend upon any of them for aid. The fancied security I had in the presence of Ford and Freeth made me forget that it was my first swim out in deep water among the big ones. I recollected, however, and rather suddenly, for a big wave came in, and away went the two men on its back all the way to shore. I could have been drowned a dozen different ways before they got back to me.
One slides down the face of a breaker on his surf-board, but he has to get started to sliding. Board and rider must be moving shoreward at a good rate before the wave overtakes them. When you see the wave coming that you want to ride in, you turn tail to it and paddle shoreward with all your strength, using what is called the windmill stroke. This is a sort of spurt performed immediately in front of the wave. If the board is going fast enough, the wave accelerates it, and the board begins its quarter-of-a-mile slide.
I shall never forget the first big wave I caught out there in the deep water. I saw it coming, turned my back on it and paddled for dear life. Faster and faster my board went, till it seemed my arms would drop off. What was happening behind me I could not tell. One cannot look behind and paddle the windmill stroke. I heard the crest of the wave hissing and churning, and then my board was lifted and flung forward. I scarcely knew what happened the first half-minute. Though I kept my eyes open, I could not see anything, for I was buried in the rushing white of the crest. But I did not mind. I was chiefly conscious of ecstatic bliss at having caught the wave. At the end of the half-minute, however, I began to see things, and to breathe. I saw that three feet of the nose of my board was clear out of water and riding on the air. I shifted my weight forward, and made the nose come down. Then I lay, quite at rest in the midst of the wild movement, and watched the shore and the bathers on the beach grow distinct. I didn’t cover quite a quarter of a mile on that wave, because, to prevent the board from diving, I shifted my weight back, but shifted it too far and fell down the rear slope of the wave.
It was my second day at surf-riding, and I was quite proud of myself. I stayed out there four hours, and when it was over, I was resolved that on the morrow I’d come in standing up. But that resolution paved a distant place. On the morrow I was in bed. I was not sick, but I was very unhappy, and I was in bed. When describing the wonderful water of Hawaii I forgot to describe the wonderful sun of Hawaii. It is a tropic sun, and, furthermore, in the first part of June, it is an overhead sun. It is also an insidious, deceitful sun. For the first time in my life I was sunburned unawares. My arms, shoulders, and back had been burned many times in the past and were tough; but not so my legs. And for four hours I had exposed the tender backs of my legs, at right-angles, to that perpendicular Hawaiian sun. It was not until after I got ashore that I discovered the sun had touched me. Sunburn at first is merely warm; after that it grows intense and the blisters come out. Also, the joints, where the skin wrinkles, refuse to bend. That is why I spent the next day in bed. I couldn’t walk. And that is why, to-day, I am writing this in bed. It is easier to than not to. But to-morrow, ah, to-morrow, I shall be out in that wonderful water, and I shall come in standing up, even as Ford and Freeth. And if I fail to-morrow, I shall do it the next day, or the next. Upon one thing I am resolved: the Snark shall not sail from Honolulu until I, too, wing my heels with the swiftness of the sea, and become a sun-burned, skin-peeling Mercury.
When the Snark sailed along the windward coast of Molokai, on her way to Honolulu, I looked at the chart, then pointed to a low-lying peninsula backed by a tremendous cliff varying from two to four thousand feet in height, and said: “The pit of hell, the most cursed place on earth.” I should have been shocked, if, at that moment, I could have caught a vision of myself a month later, ashore in the most cursed place on earth and having a disgracefully good time along with eight hundred of the lepers who were likewise having a good time. Their good time was not disgraceful; but mine was, for in the midst of so much misery it was not meet for me to have a good time. That is the way I felt about it, and my only excuse is that I couldn’t help having a good time.
For instance, in the afternoon of the Fourth of July all the lepers gathered at the race-track for the sports. I had wandered away from the Superintendent and the physicians in order to get a snapshot of the finish of one of the races. It was an interesting race, and partisanship ran high. Three horses were entered, one ridden by a Chinese, one by an Hawaiian, and one by a Portuguese boy. All three riders were lepers; so were the judges and the crowd. The race was twice around the track. The Chinese and the Hawaiian got away together and rode neck and neck, the Portuguese boy toiling along two hundred feet behind. Around they went in the same positions. Halfway around on the second and final lap the Chinese pulled away and got one length ahead of the Hawaiian. At the same time the Portuguese boy was beginning to crawl up. But it looked hopeless. The crowd went wild. All the lepers were passionate lovers of horseflesh. The Portuguese boy crawled nearer and nearer. I went wild, too. They were on the home stretch. The Portuguese boy passed the Hawaiian. There was a thunder of hoofs, a rush of the three horses bunched together, the jockeys plying their whips, and every last onlooker bursting his throat, or hers, with shouts and yells. Nearer, nearer, inch by inch, the Portuguese boy crept up, and passed, yes, passed, winning by a head from the Chinese. I came to myself in a group of lepers. They were yelling, tossing their hats, and dancing around like fiends. So was I. When I came to I was waving my hat and murmuring ecstatically: “By golly, the boy wins! The boy wins!”
I tried to check myself. I assured myself that I was witnessing one of the horrors of Molokai, and that it was shameful for me, under such circumstances, to be so light-hearted and light-headed. But it was no use. The next event was a donkey-race, and it was just starting; so was the fun. The last donkey in was to win the race, and what complicated the affair was that no rider rode his own donkey. They rode one another’s donkeys, the result of which was that each man strove to make the donkey he rode beat his own donkey ridden by some one else, Naturally, only men possessing very slow or extremely obstreperous donkeys had entered them for the race. One donkey had been trained to tuck in its legs and lie down whenever its rider touched its sides with his heels. Some donkeys strove to turn around and come back; others developed a penchant for the side of the track, where they stuck their heads over the railing and stopped; while all of them dawdled. Halfway around the track one donkey got into an argument with its rider. When all the rest of the donkeys had crossed the wire, that particular donkey was still arguing. He won the race, though his rider lost it and came in on foot. And all the while nearly a thousand lepers were laughing uproariously at the fun. Anybody in my place would have joined with them in having a good time.
All the foregoing is by way of preamble to the statement that the horrors of Molokai, as they have been painted in the past, do not exist. The Settlement has been written up repeatedly by sensationalists, and usually by sensationalists who have never laid eyes on it. Of course, leprosy is leprosy, and it is a terrible thing; but so much that is lurid has been written about Molokai that neither the lepers, nor those who devote their lives to them, have received a fair deal. Here is a case in point. A newspaper writer, who, of course, had never been near the Settlement, vividly described Superintendent McVeigh, crouching in a grass hut and being besieged nightly by starving lepers on their knees, wailing for food. This hair-raising account was copied by the press all over the United States and was the cause of many indignant and protesting editorials. Well, I lived and slept for five days in Mr. McVeigh’s “grass hut” (which was a comfortable wooden cottage, by the way; and there isn’t a grass house in the whole Settlement), and I heard the lepers wailing for food—only the wailing was peculiarly harmonious and rhythmic, and it was accompanied by the music of stringed instruments, violins, guitars, ukuleles, and banjos. Also, the wailing was of various sorts. The leper brass band wailed, and two singing societies wailed, and lastly a quintet of excellent voices wailed. So much for a lie that should never have been printed. The wailing was the serenade which the glee clubs always give Mr. McVeigh when he returns from a trip to Honolulu.
Leprosy is not so contagious as is imagined. I went for a week’s visit to the Settlement, and I took my wife along—all of which would not have happened had we had any apprehension of contracting the disease. Nor did we wear long, gauntleted gloves and keep apart from the lepers. On the contrary, we mingled freely with them, and before we left, knew scores of them by sight and name. The precautions of simple cleanliness seem to be all that is necessary. On returning to their own houses, after having been among and handling lepers, the non-lepers, such as the physicians and the superintendent, merely wash their faces and hands with mildly antiseptic soap and change their coats.
That a leper is unclean, however, should be insisted upon; and the segregation of lepers, from what little is known of the disease, should be rigidly maintained. On the other hand, the awful horror with which the leper has been regarded in the past, and the frightful treatment he has received, have been unnecessary and cruel. In order to dispel some of the popular misapprehensions of leprosy, I want to tell something of the relations between the lepers and non-lepers as I observed them at Molokai. On the morning after our arrival Charmian and I attended a shoot of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, and caught our first glimpse of the democracy of affliction and alleviation that obtains. The club was just beginning a prize shoot for a cup put up by Mr. McVeigh, who is also a member of the club, as also are Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann, the resident physicians (who, by the way, live in the Settlement with their wives). All about us, in the shooting booth, were the lepers. Lepers and non-lepers were using the same guns, and all were rubbing shoulders in the confined space. The majority of the lepers were Hawaiians. Sitting beside me on a bench was a Norwegian. Directly in front of me, in the stand, was an American, a veteran of the Civil War, who had fought on the Confederate side. He was sixty-five years of age, but that did not prevent him from running up a good score. Strapping Hawaiian policemen, lepers, khaki-clad, were also shooting, as were Portuguese, Chinese, and kokuas—the latter are native helpers in the Settlement who are non-lepers. And on the afternoon that Charmian and I climbed the two-thousand-foot pali and looked our last upon the Settlement, the superintendent, the doctors, and the mixture of nationalities and of diseased and non-diseased were all engaged in an exciting baseball game.
Not so was the leper and his greatly misunderstood and feared disease treated during the middle ages in Europe. At that time the leper was considered legally and politically dead. He was placed in a funeral procession and led to the church, where the burial service was read over him by the officiating clergyman. Then a spadeful of earth was dropped upon his chest and he was dead-living dead. While this rigorous treatment was largely unnecessary, nevertheless, one thing was learned by it. Leprosy was unknown in Europe until it was introduced by the returning Crusaders, whereupon it spread slowly until it had seized upon large numbers of the people. Obviously, it was a disease that could be contracted by contact. It was a contagion, and it was equally obvious that it could be eradicated by segregation. Terrible and monstrous as was the treatment of the leper in those days, the great lesson of segregation was learned. By its means leprosy was stamped out.
And by the same means leprosy is even now decreasing in the Hawaiian Islands. But the segregation of the lepers on Molokai is not the horrible nightmare that has been so often exploited by yellow writers. In the first place, the leper is not torn ruthlessly from his family. When a suspect is discovered, he is invited by the Board of Health to come to the Kalihi receiving station at Honolulu. His fare and all expenses are paid for him. He is first passed upon by microscopical examination by the bacteriologist of the Board of Health. If the bacillus lepræ is found, the patient is examined by the Board of Examining Physicians, five in number. If found by them to be a leper, he is so declared, which finding is later officially confirmed by the Board of Health, and the leper is ordered straight to Molokai. Furthermore, during the thorough trial that is given his case, the patient has the right to be represented by a physician whom he can select and employ for himself. Nor, after having been declared a leper, is the patient immediately rushed off to Molokai. He is given ample time, weeks, and even months, sometimes, during which he stays at Kalihi and winds up or arranges all his business affairs. At Molokai, in turn, he may be visited by his relatives, business agents, etc., though they are not permitted to eat and sleep in his house. Visitors’ houses, kept “clean,” are maintained for this purpose.
I saw an illustration of the thorough trial given the suspect, when I visited Kalihi with Mr. Pinkham, president of the Board of Health. The suspect was an Hawaiian, seventy years of age, who for thirty-four years had worked in Honolulu as a pressman in a printing office. The bacteriologist had decided that he was a leper, the Examining Board had been unable to make up its mind, and that day all had come out to Kalihi to make another examination.
When at Molokai, the declared leper has the privilege of re-examination, and patients are continually coming back to Honolulu for that purpose. The steamer that took me to Molokai had on board two returning lepers, both young women, one of whom had come to Honolulu to settle up some property she owned, and the other had come to Honolulu to see her sick mother. Both had remained at Kalihi for a month.
The Settlement of Molokai enjoys a far more delightful climate than even Honolulu, being situated on the windward side of the island in the path of the fresh north-east trades. The scenery is magnificent; on one side is the blue sea, on the other the wonderful wall of the pali, receding here and there into beautiful mountain valleys. Everywhere are grassy pastures over which roam the hundreds of horses which are owned by the lepers. Some of them have their own carts, rigs, and traps. In the little harbour of Kalaupapa lie fishing boats and a steam launch, all of which are privately owned and operated by lepers. Their bounds upon the sea are, of course, determined: otherwise no restriction is put upon their sea-faring. Their fish they sell to the Board of Health, and the money they receive is their own. While I was there, one night’s catch was four thousand pounds.
And as these men fish, others farm. All trades are followed. One leper, a pure Hawaiian, is the boss painter. He employs eight men, and takes contracts for painting buildings from the Board of Health. He is a member of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, where I met him, and I must confess that he was far better dressed than I. Another man, similarly situated, is the boss carpenter. Then, in addition to the Board of Health store, there are little privately owned stores, where those with shopkeeper’s souls may exercise their peculiar instincts. The Assistant Superintendent, Mr. Waiamau, a finely educated and able man, is a pure Hawaiian and a leper. Mr. Bartlett, who is the present storekeeper, is an American who was in business in Honolulu before he was struck down by the disease. All that these men earn is that much in their own pockets. If they do not work, they are taken care of anyway by the territory, given food, shelter, clothes, and medical attendance. The Board of Health carries on agriculture, stock-raising, and dairying, for local use, and employment at fair wages is furnished to all that wish to work. They are not compelled to work, however, for they are the wards of the territory. For the young, and the very old, and the helpless there are homes and hospitals.
Major Lee, an American and long a marine engineer for the Inter Island Steamship Company, I met actively at work in the new steam laundry, where he was busy installing the machinery. I met him often, afterwards, and one day he said to me:
“Give us a good breeze about how we live here. For heaven’s sake write us up straight. Put your foot down on this chamber-of-horrors rot and all the rest of it. We don’t like being misrepresented. We’ve got some feelings. Just tell the world how we really are in here.”
Man after man that I met in the Settlement, and woman after woman, in one way or another expressed the same sentiment. It was patent that they resented bitterly the sensational and untruthful way in which they have been exploited in the past.
In spite of the fact that they are afflicted by disease, the lepers form a happy colony, divided into two villages and numerous country and seaside homes, of nearly a thousand souls. They have six churches, a Young Men’s Christian Association building, several assembly halls, a band stand, a race-track, baseball grounds, shooting ranges, an athletic club, numerous glee clubs, and two brass bands.
“They are so contented down there,” Mr. Pinkham told me, “that you can’t drive them away with a shot-gun.”
This I later verified for myself. In January of this year, eleven of the lepers, on whom the disease, after having committed certain ravages, showed no further signs of activity, were brought back to Honolulu for re-examination. They were loath to come; and, on being asked whether or not they wanted to go free if found clean of leprosy, one and all answered, “Back to Molokai.”
In the old days, before the discovery of the leprosy bacillus, a small number of men and women, suffering from various and wholly different diseases, were adjudged lepers and sent to Molokai. Years afterward they suffered great consternation when the bacteriologists declared that they were not afflicted with leprosy and never had been. They fought against being sent away from Molokai, and in one way or another, as helpers and nurses, they got jobs from the Board of Health and remained. The present jailer is one of these men. Declared to be a non-leper, he accepted, on salary, the charge of the jail, in order to escape being sent away.
At the present moment, in Honolulu, there is a bootblack. He is an American negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before the bacteriological tests, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a ward of the state he developed a superlative degree of independence and fomented much petty mischief. And then, one day, after having been for years a perennial source of minor annoyances, the bacteriological test was applied, and he was declared a non-leper.
“Ah, ha!” chortled Mr. McVeigh. “Now I’ve got you! Out you go on the next steamer and good riddance!”
But the negro didn’t want to go. Immediately he married an old woman, in the last stages of leprosy, and began petitioning the Board of Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife. There was no one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his poor wife as well as he could. But they saw through his game, and he was deported on the steamer and given the freedom of the world. But he preferred Molokai. Landing on the leeward side of Molokai, he sneaked down the pali one night and took up his abode in the Settlement. He was apprehended, tried and convicted of trespass, sentenced to pay a small fine, and again deported on the steamer with the warning that if he trespassed again, he would be fined one hundred dollars and be sent to prison in Honolulu. And now, when Mr. McVeigh comes up to Honolulu, the bootblack shines his shoes for him and says:
“Say, Boss, I lost a good home down there. Yes, sir, I lost a good home.” Then his voice sinks to a confidential whisper as he says, “Say, Boss, can’t I go back? Can’t you fix it for me so as I can go back?”
He had lived nine years on Molokai, and he had had a better time there than he has ever had, before and after, on the outside.
As regards the fear of leprosy itself, nowhere in the Settlement among lepers, or non-lepers, did I see any sign of it. The chief horror of leprosy obtains in the minds of those who have never seen a leper and who do not know anything about the disease. At the hotel at Waikiki a lady expressed shuddering amazement at my having the hardihood to pay a visit to the Settlement. On talking with her I learned that she had been born in Honolulu, had lived there all her life, and had never laid eyes on a leper. That was more than I could say of myself in the United States, where the segregation of lepers is loosely enforced and where I have repeatedly seen lepers on the streets of large cities.
Leprosy is terrible, there is no getting away from that; but from what little I know of the disease and its degree of contagiousness, I would by far prefer to spend the rest of my days in Molokai than in any tuberculosis sanatorium. In every city and county hospital for poor people in the United States, or in similar institutions in other countries, sights as terrible as those in Molokai can be witnessed, and the sum total of these sights is vastly more terrible. For that matter, if it were given me to choose between being compelled to live in Molokai for the rest of my life, or in the East End of London, the East Side of New York, or the Stockyards of Chicago, I would select Molokai without debate. I would prefer one year of life in Molokai to five years of life in the above-mentioned cesspools of human degradation and misery.
In Molokai the people are happy. I shall never forget the celebration of the Fourth of July I witnessed there. At six o’clock in the morning the “horribles” were out, dressed fantastically, astride horses, mules, and donkeys (their own property), and cutting capers all over the Settlement. Two brass bands were out as well. Then there were the pa-u riders, thirty or forty of them, Hawaiian women all, superb horsewomen dressed gorgeously in the old, native riding costume, and dashing about in twos and threes and groups. In the afternoon Charmian and I stood in the judge’s stand and awarded the prizes for horsemanship and costume to the pa-u riders. All about were the hundreds of lepers, with wreaths of flowers on heads and necks and shoulders, looking on and making merry. And always, over the brows of hills and across the grassy level stretches, appearing and disappearing, were the groups of men and women, gaily dressed, on galloping horses, horses and riders flower-bedecked and flower-garlanded, singing, and laughing, and riding like the wind. And as I stood in the judge’s stand and looked at all this, there came to my recollection the lazar house of Havana, where I had once beheld some two hundred lepers, prisoners inside four restricted walls until they died. No, there are a few thousand places I wot of in this world over which I would select Molokai as a place of permanent residence. In the evening we went to one of the leper assembly halls, where, before a crowded audience, the singing societies contested for prizes, and where the night wound up with a dance. I have seen the Hawaiians living in the slums of Honolulu, and, having seen them, I can readily understand why the lepers, brought up from the Settlement for re-examination, shouted one and all, “Back to Molokai!”
One thing is certain. The leper in the Settlement is far better off than the leper who lies in hiding outside. Such a leper is a lonely outcast, living in constant fear of discovery and slowly and surely rotting away. The action of leprosy is not steady. It lays hold of its victim, commits a ravage, and then lies dormant for an indeterminate period. It may not commit another ravage for five years, or ten years, or forty years, and the patient may enjoy uninterrupted good health. Rarely, however, do these first ravages cease of themselves. The skilled surgeon is required, and the skilled surgeon cannot be called in for the leper who is in hiding. For instance, the first ravage may take the form of a perforating ulcer in the sole of the foot. When the bone is reached, necrosis sets in. If the leper is in hiding, he cannot be operated upon, the necrosis will continue to eat its way up the bone of the leg, and in a brief and horrible time that leper will die of gangrene or some other terrible complication. On the other hand, if that same leper is in Molokai, the surgeon will operate upon the foot, remove the ulcer, cleanse the bone, and put a complete stop to that particular ravage of the disease. A month after the operation the leper will be out riding horseback, running foot races, swimming in the breakers, or climbing the giddy sides of the valleys for mountain apples. And as has been stated before, the disease, lying dormant, may not again attack him for five, ten, or forty years.
The old horrors of leprosy go back to the conditions that obtained before the days of antiseptic surgery, and before the time when physicians like Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann went to live at the Settlement. Dr. Goodhue is the pioneer surgeon there, and too much praise cannot be given him for the noble work he has done. I spent one morning in the operating room with him and of the three operations he performed, two were on men, newcomers, who had arrived on the same steamer with me. In each case, the disease had attacked in one spot only. One had a perforating ulcer in the ankle, well advanced, and the other man was suffering from a similar affliction, well advanced, under his arm. Both cases were well advanced because the man had been on the outside and had not been treated. In each case. Dr. Goodhue put an immediate and complete stop to the ravage, and in four weeks those two men will be as well and able-bodied as they ever were in their lives. The only difference between them and you or me is that the disease is lying dormant in their bodies and may at any future time commit another ravage.
Leprosy is as old as history. References to it are found in the earliest written records. And yet to-day practically nothing more is known about it than was known then. This much was known then, namely, that it was contagious and that those afflicted by it should be segregated. The difference between then and now is that to-day the leper is more rigidly segregated and more humanely treated. But leprosy itself still remains the same awful and profound mystery. A reading of the reports of the physicians and specialists of all countries reveals the baffling nature of the disease. These leprosy specialists are unanimous on no one phase of the disease. They do not know. In the past they rashly and dogmatically generalized. They generalize no longer. The one possible generalization that can be drawn from all the investigation that has been made is that leprosy is feebly contagious. But in what manner it is feebly contagious is not known. They have isolated the bacillus of leprosy. They can determine by bacteriological examination whether or not a person is a leper; but they are as far away as ever from knowing how that bacillus finds its entrance into the body of a non-leper. They do not know the length of time of incubation. They have tried to inoculate all sorts of animals with leprosy, and have failed.
They are baffled in the discovery of a serum wherewith to fight the disease. And in all their work, as yet, they have found no clue, no cure. Sometimes there have been blazes of hope, theories of causation and much heralded cures, but every time the darkness of failure quenched the flame. A doctor insists that the cause of leprosy is a long-continued fish diet, and he proves his theory voluminously till a physician from the highlands of India demands why the natives of that district should therefore be afflicted by leprosy when they have never eaten fish, nor all the generations of their fathers before them. A man treats a leper with a certain kind of oil or drug, announces a cure, and five, ten, or forty years afterwards the disease breaks out again. It is this trick of leprosy lying dormant in the body for indeterminate periods that is responsible for many alleged cures. But this much is certain: as yet there has been no authentic case of a cure.
Leprosy is feebly contagious, but how is it contagious? An Austrian physician has inoculated himself and his assistants with leprosy and failed to catch it. But this is not conclusive, for there is the famous case of the Hawaiian murderer who had his sentence of death commuted to life imprisonment on his agreeing to be inoculated with the bacillus lepræ. Some time after inoculation, leprosy made its appearance, and the man died a leper on Molokai. Nor was this conclusive, for it was discovered that at the time he was inoculated several members of his family were already suffering from the disease on Molokai. He may have contracted the disease from them, and it may have been well along in its mysterious period of incubation at the time he was officially inoculated. Then there is the case of that hero of the Church, Father Damien, who went to Molokai a clean man and died a leper. There have been many theories as to how he contracted leprosy, but nobody knows. He never knew himself. But every chance that he ran has certainly been run by a woman at present living in the Settlement; who has lived there many years; who has had five leper husbands, and had children by them; and who is to-day, as she always has been, free of the disease.
As yet no light has been shed upon the mystery of leprosy. When more is learned about the disease, a cure for it may be expected. Once an efficacious serum is discovered, and leprosy, because it is so feebly contagious, will pass away swiftly from the earth. The battle waged with it will be short and sharp. In the meantime, how to discover that serum, or some other unguessed weapon? In the present it is a serious matter. It is estimated that there are half a million lepers, not segregated, in India alone. Carnegie libraries, Rockefeller universities, and many similar benefactions are all very well; but one cannot help thinking how far a few thousands of dollars would go, say in the leper Settlement of Molokai. The residents there are accidents of fate, scapegoats to some mysterious natural law of which man knows nothing, isolated for the welfare of their fellows who else might catch the dread disease, even as they have caught it, nobody knows how. Not for their sakes merely, but for the sake of future generations, a few thousands of dollars would go far in a legitimate and scientific search after a cure for leprosy, for a serum, or for some undreamed discovery that will enable the medical world to exterminate the bacillus lepræ. There’s the place for your money, you philanthropists.
There are hosts of people who journey like restless spirits round and about this earth in search of seascapes and landscapes and the wonders and beauties of nature. They overrun Europe in armies; they can be met in droves and herds in Florida and the West Indies, at the Pyramids, and on the slopes and summits of the Canadian and American Rockies; but in the House of the Sun they are as rare as live and wriggling dinosaurs. Haleakala is the Hawaiian name for “the House of the Sun.” It is a noble dwelling, situated on the Island of Maui; but so few tourists have ever peeped into it, much less entered it, that their number may be practically reckoned as zero. Yet I venture to state that for natural beauty and wonder the nature-lover may see dissimilar things as great as Haleakala, but no greater, while he will never see elsewhere anything more beautiful or wonderful. Honolulu is six days’ steaming from San Francisco; Maui is a night’s run on the steamer from Honolulu; and six hours more if he is in a hurry, can bring the traveller to Kolikoli, which is ten thousand and thirty-two feet above the sea and which stands hard by the entrance portal to the House of the Sun. Yet the tourist comes not, and Haleakala sleeps on in lonely and unseen grandeur.
Not being tourists, we of the Snark went to Haleakala. On the slopes of that monster mountain there is a cattle ranch of some fifty thousand acres, where we spent the night at an altitude of two thousand feet. The next morning it was boots and saddles, and with cow-boys and packhorses we climbed to Ukulele, a mountain ranch-house, the altitude of which, fifty-five hundred feet, gives a severely temperate climate, compelling blankets at night and a roaring fireplace in the living-room. Ukulele, by the way, is the Hawaiian for “jumping flea” as it is also the Hawaiian for a certain musical instrument that may be likened to a young guitar. It is my opinion that the mountain ranch-house was named after the young guitar. We were not in a hurry, and we spent the day at Ukulele, learnedly discussing altitudes and barometers and shaking our particular barometer whenever any one’s argument stood in need of demonstration. Our barometer was the most graciously acquiescent instrument I have ever seen. Also, we gathered mountain raspberries, large as hen’s eggs and larger, gazed up the pasture-covered lava slopes to the summit of Haleakala, forty-five hundred feet above us, and looked down upon a mighty battle of the clouds that was being fought beneath us, ourselves in the bright sunshine.
Every day and every day this unending battle goes on. Ukiukiu is the name of the trade-wind that comes raging down out of the north-east and hurls itself upon Haleakala. Now Haleakala is so bulky and tall that it turns the north-east trade-wind aside on either hand, so that in the lee of Haleakala no trade-wind blows at all. On the contrary, the wind blows in the counter direction, in the teeth of the north-east trade. This wind is called Naulu. And day and night and always Ukiukiu and Naulu strive with each other, advancing, retreating, flanking, curving, curling, and turning and twisting, the conflict made visible by the cloud-masses plucked from the heavens and hurled back and forth in squadrons, battalions, armies, and great mountain ranges. Once in a while, Ukiukiu, in mighty gusts, flings immense cloud-masses clear over the summit of Haleakala; whereupon Naulu craftily captures them, lines them up in new battle-formation, and with them smites back at his ancient and eternal antagonist. Then Ukiukiu sends a great cloud-army around the eastern-side of the mountain. It is a flanking movement, well executed. But Naulu, from his lair on the leeward side, gathers the flanking army in, pulling and twisting and dragging it, hammering it into shape, and sends it charging back against Ukiukiu around the western side of the mountain. And all the while, above and below the main battle-field, high up the slopes toward the sea, Ukiukiu and Naulu are continually sending out little wisps of cloud, in ragged skirmish line, that creep and crawl over the ground, among the trees and through the canyons, and that spring upon and capture one another in sudden ambuscades and sorties. And sometimes Ukiukiu or Naulu, abruptly sending out a heavy charging column, captures the ragged little skirmishers or drives them skyward, turning over and over, in vertical whirls, thousands of feet in the air.
But it is on the western slopes of Haleakala that the main battle goes on. Here Naulu masses his heaviest formations and wins his greatest victories. Ukiukiu grows weak toward late afternoon, which is the way of all trade-winds, and is driven backward by Naulu. Naulu’s generalship is excellent. All day he has been gathering and packing away immense reserves. As the afternoon draws on, he welds them into a solid column, sharp-pointed, miles in length, a mile in width, and hundreds of feet thick. This column he slowly thrusts forward into the broad battle-front of Ukiukiu, and slowly and surely Ukiukiu, weakening fast, is split asunder. But it is not all bloodless. At times Ukiukiu struggles wildly, and with fresh accessions of strength from the limitless north-east, smashes away half a mile at a time of Naulu’s column and sweeps it off and away toward West Maui. Sometimes, when the two charging armies meet end-on, a tremendous perpendicular whirl results, the cloud-masses, locked together, mounting thousands of feet into the air and turning over and over. A favourite device of Ukiukiu is to send a low, squat formation, densely packed, forward along the ground and under Naulu. When Ukiukiu is under, he proceeds to buck. Naulu’s mighty middle gives to the blow and bends upward, but usually he turns the attacking column back upon itself and sets it milling. And all the while the ragged little skirmishers, stray and detached, sneak through the trees and canyons, crawl along and through the grass, and surprise one another with unexpected leaps and rushes; while above, far above, serene and lonely in the rays of the setting sun, Haleakala looks down upon the conflict. And so, the night. But in the morning, after the fashion of trade-winds, Ukiukiu gathers strength and sends the hosts of Naulu rolling back in confusion and rout. And one day is like another day in the battle of the clouds, where Ukiukiu and Naulu strive eternally on the slopes of Haleakala.
Again in the morning, it was boots and saddles, cow-boys, and packhorses, and the climb to the top began. One packhorse carried twenty gallons of water, slung in five-gallon bags on either side; for water is precious and rare in the crater itself, in spite of the fact that several miles to the north and east of the crater-rim more rain comes down than in any other place in the world. The way led upward across countless lava flows, without regard for trails, and never have I seen horses with such perfect footing as that of the thirteen that composed our outfit. They climbed or dropped down perpendicular places with the sureness and coolness of mountain goats, and never a horse fell or baulked.
There is a familiar and strange illusion experienced by all who climb isolated mountains. The higher one climbs, the more of the earth’s surface becomes visible, and the effect of this is that the horizon seems up-hill from the observer. This illusion is especially notable on Haleakala, for the old volcano rises directly from the sea without buttresses or connecting ranges. In consequence, as fast as we climbed up the grim slope of Haleakala, still faster did Haleakala, ourselves, and all about us, sink down into the centre of what appeared a profound abyss. Everywhere, far above us, towered the horizon. The ocean sloped down from the horizon to us. The higher we climbed, the deeper did we seem to sink down, the farther above us shone the horizon, and the steeper pitched the grade up to that horizontal line where sky and ocean met. It was weird and unreal, and vagrant thoughts of Simm’s Hole and of the volcano through which Jules Verne journeyed to the centre of the earth flitted through one’s mind.
And then, when at last we reached the summit of that monster mountain, which summit was like the bottom of an inverted cone situated in the centre of an awful cosmic pit, we found that we were at neither top nor bottom. Far above us was the heaven-towering horizon, and far beneath us, where the top of the mountain should have been, was a deeper deep, the great crater, the House of the Sun. Twenty-three miles around stretched the dizzy walls of the crater. We stood on the edge of the nearly vertical western wall, and the floor of the crater lay nearly half a mile beneath. This floor, broken by lava-flows and cinder-cones, was as red and fresh and uneroded as if it were but yesterday that the fires went out. The cinder-cones, the smallest over four hundred feet in height and the largest over nine hundred, seemed no more than puny little sand-hills, so mighty was the magnitude of the setting. Two gaps, thousands of feet deep, broke the rim of the crater, and through these Ukiukiu vainly strove to drive his fleecy herds of trade-wind clouds. As fast as they advanced through the gaps, the heat of the crater dissipated them into thin air, and though they advanced always, they got nowhere.
It was a scene of vast bleakness and desolation, stern, forbidding, fascinating. We gazed down upon a place of fire and earthquake. The tie-ribs of earth lay bare before us. It was a workshop of nature still cluttered with the raw beginnings of world-making. Here and there great dikes of primordial rock had thrust themselves up from the bowels of earth, straight through the molten surface-ferment that had evidently cooled only the other day. It was all unreal and unbelievable. Looking upward, far above us (in reality beneath us) floated the cloud-battle of Ukiukiu and Naulu. And higher up the slope of the seeming abyss, above the cloud-battle, in the air and sky, hung the islands of Lanai and Molokai. Across the crater, to the south-east, still apparently looking upward, we saw ascending, first, the turquoise sea, then the white surf-line of the shore of Hawaii; above that the belt of trade-clouds, and next, eighty miles away, rearing their stupendous hulks out of the azure sky, tipped with snow, wreathed with cloud, trembling like a mirage, the peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa hung poised on the wall of heaven.
It is told that long ago, one Maui, the son of Hina, lived on what is now known as West Maui. His mother, Hina, employed her time in the making of kapas. She must have made them at night, for her days were occupied in trying to dry the kapas. Each morning, and all morning, she toiled at spreading them out in the sun. But no sooner were they out, than she began taking them in, in order to have them all under shelter for the night. For know that the days were shorter then than now. Maui watched his mother’s futile toil and felt sorry for her. He decided to do something—oh, no, not to help her hang out and take in the kapas. He was too clever for that. His idea was to make the sun go slower. Perhaps he was the first Hawaiian astronomer. At any rate, he took a series of observations of the sun from various parts of the island. His conclusion was that the sun’s path was directly across Haleakala. Unlike Joshua, he stood in no need of divine assistance. He gathered a huge quantity of coconuts, from the fibre of which he braided a stout cord, and in one end of which he made a noose, even as the cow-boys of Haleakala do to this day. Next he climbed into the House of the Sun and laid in wait. When the sun came tearing along the path, bent on completing its journey in the shortest time possible, the valiant youth threw his lariat around one of the sun’s largest and strongest beams. He made the sun slow down some; also, he broke the beam short off. And he kept on roping and breaking off beams till the sun said it was willing to listen to reason. Maui set forth his terms of peace, which the sun accepted, agreeing to go more slowly thereafter. Wherefore Hina had ample time in which to dry her kapas, and the days are longer than they used to be, which last is quite in accord with the teachings of modern astronomy.
We had a lunch of jerked beef and hard poi in a stone corral, used of old time for the night-impounding of cattle being driven across the island. Then we skirted the rim for half a mile and began the descent into the crater. Twenty-five hundred feet beneath lay the floor, and down a steep slope of loose volcanic cinders we dropped, the sure-footed horses slipping and sliding, but always keeping their feet. The black surface of the cinders, when broken by the horses’ hoofs, turned to a yellow ochre dust, virulent in appearance and acid of taste, that arose in clouds. There was a gallop across a level stretch to the mouth of a convenient blow-hole, and then the descent continued in clouds of volcanic dust, winding in and out among cinder-cones, brick-red, old rose, and purplish black of colour. Above us, higher and higher, towered the crater-walls, while we journeyed on across innumerable lava-flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a bottomless pit and along and over the main stream of the latest lava-flow for seven miles.
At the lower end of the crater was our camping spot, in a small grove of olapa and kolea trees, tucked away in a corner of the crater at the base of walls that rose perpendicularly fifteen hundred feet. Here was pasturage for the horses, but no water, and first we turned aside and picked our way across a mile of lava to a known water-hole in a crevice in the crater-wall. The water-hole was empty. But on climbing fifty feet up the crevice, a pool was found containing half a dozen barrels of water. A pail was carried up, and soon a steady stream of the precious liquid was running down the rock and filling the lower pool, while the cow-boys below were busy fighting the horses back, for there was room for one only to drink at a time. Then it was on to camp at the foot of the wall, up which herds of wild goats scrambled and blatted, while the tent arose to the sound of rifle-firing. Jerked beef, hard poi, and broiled kid were the menu. Over the crest of the crater, just above our heads, rolled a sea of clouds, driven on by Ukiukiu. Though this sea rolled over the crest unceasingly, it never blotted out nor dimmed the moon, for the heat of the crater dissolved the clouds as fast as they rolled in. Through the moonlight, attracted by the camp-fire, came the crater cattle to peer and challenge. They were rolling fat, though they rarely drank water, the morning dew on the grass taking its place. It was because of this dew that the tent made a welcome bedchamber, and we fell asleep to the chanting of hulas by the unwearied Hawaiian cow-boys, in whose veins, no doubt, ran the blood of Maui, their valiant forebear.
The camera cannot do justice to the House of the Sun. The sublimated chemistry of photography may not lie, but it certainly does not tell all the truth. The Koolau Gap may be faithfully reproduced, just as it impinged on the retina of the camera, yet in the resulting picture the gigantic scale of things would be missing. Those walls that seem several hundred feet in height are almost as many thousand; that entering wedge of cloud is a mile and a half wide in the gap itself, while beyond the gap it is a veritable ocean; and that foreground of cinder-cone and volcanic ash, mushy and colourless in appearance, is in truth gorgeous-hued in brick-red, terra-cotta rose, yellow ochre, and purplish black. Also, words are a vain thing and drive to despair. To say that a crater-wall is two thousand feet high is to say just precisely that it is two thousand feet high; but there is a vast deal more to that crater-wall than a mere statistic. The sun is ninety-three millions of miles distant, but to mortal conception the adjoining county is farther away. This frailty of the human brain is hard on the sun. It is likewise hard on the House of the Sun. Haleakala has a message of beauty and wonder for the human soul that cannot be delivered by proxy. Kolikoli is six hours from Kahului; Kahului is a night’s run from Honolulu; Honolulu is six days from San Francisco; and there you are.
We climbed the crater-walls, put the horses over impossible places, rolled stones, and shot wild goats. I did not get any goats. I was too busy rolling stones. One spot in particular I remember, where we started a stone the size of a horse. It began the descent easy enough, rolling over, wobbling, and threatening to stop; but in a few minutes it was soaring through the air two hundred feet at a jump. It grew rapidly smaller until it struck a slight slope of volcanic sand, over which it darted like a startled jackrabbit, kicking up behind it a tiny trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust diminished in size, until some of the party said the stone had stopped. That was because they could not see it any longer. It had vanished into the distance beyond their ken. Others saw it rolling farther on—I know I did; and it is my firm conviction that that stone is still rolling.
Our last day in the crater, Ukiukiu gave us a taste of his strength. He smashed Naulu back all along the line, filled the House of the Sun to overflowing with clouds, and drowned us out. Our rain-gauge was a pint cup under a tiny hole in the tent. That last night of storm and rain filled the cup, and there was no way of measuring the water that spilled over into the blankets. With the rain-gauge out of business there was no longer any reason for remaining; so we broke camp in the wet-gray of dawn, and plunged eastward across the lava to the Kaupo Gap. East Maui is nothing more or less than the vast lava stream that flowed long ago through the Kaupo Gap; and down this stream we picked our way from an altitude of six thousand five hundred feet to the sea. This was a day’s work in itself for the horses; but never were there such horses. Safe in the bad places, never rushing, never losing their heads, as soon as they found a trail wide and smooth enough to run on, they ran. There was no stopping them until the trail became bad again, and then they stopped of themselves. Continuously, for days, they had performed the hardest kind of work, and fed most of the time on grass foraged by themselves at night while we slept, and yet that day they covered twenty-eight leg-breaking miles and galloped into Hana like a bunch of colts. Also, there were several of them, reared in the dry region on the leeward side of Haleakala, that had never worn shoes in all their lives. Day after day, and all day long, unshod, they had travelled over the sharp lava, with the extra weight of a man on their backs, and their hoofs were in better condition than those of the shod horses.
The scenery between Vieiras’s (where the Kaupo Gap empties into the sea) and Lana, which we covered in half a day, is well worth a week or month; but, wildly beautiful as it is, it becomes pale and small in comparison with the wonderland that lies beyond the rubber plantations between Hana and the Honomanu Gulch. Two days were required to cover this marvellous stretch, which lies on the windward side of Haleakala. The people who dwell there call it the “ditch country,” an unprepossessing name, but it has no other. Nobody else ever comes there. Nobody else knows anything about it. With the exception of a handful of men, whom business has brought there, nobody has heard of the ditch country of Maui. Now a ditch is a ditch, assumably muddy, and usually traversing uninteresting and monotonous landscapes. But the Nahiku Ditch is not an ordinary ditch. The windward side of Haleakala is serried by a thousand precipitous gorges, down which rush as many torrents, each torrent of which achieves a score of cascades and waterfalls before it reaches the sea. More rain comes down here than in any other region in the world. In 1904 the year’s downpour was four hundred and twenty inches. Water means sugar, and sugar is the backbone of the territory of Hawaii, wherefore the Nahiku Ditch, which is not a ditch, but a chain of tunnels. The water travels underground, appearing only at intervals to leap a gorge, travelling high in the air on a giddy flume and plunging into and through the opposing mountain. This magnificent waterway is called a “ditch,” and with equal appropriateness can Cleopatra’s barge be called a box-car.
There are no carriage roads through the ditch country, and before the ditch was built, or bored, rather, there was no horse-trail. Hundreds of inches of rain annually, on fertile soil, under a tropic sun, means a steaming jungle of vegetation. A man, on foot, cutting his way through, might advance a mile a day, but at the end of a week he would be a wreck, and he would have to crawl hastily back if he wanted to get out before the vegetation overran the passage way he had cut. O’Shaughnessy was the daring engineer who conquered the jungle and the gorges, ran the ditch and made the horse-trail. He built enduringly, in concrete and masonry, and made one of the most remarkable water-farms in the world. Every little runlet and dribble is harvested and conveyed by subterranean channels to the main ditch. But so heavily does it rain at times that countless spillways let the surplus escape to the sea.
The horse-trail is not very wide. Like the engineer who built it, it dares anything. Where the ditch plunges through the mountain, it climbs over; and where the ditch leaps a gorge on a flume, the horse-trail takes advantage of the ditch and crosses on top of the flume. That careless trail thinks nothing of travelling up or down the faces of precipices. It gouges its narrow way out of the wall, dodging around waterfalls or passing under them where they thunder down in white fury; while straight overhead the wall rises hundreds of feet, and straight beneath it sinks a thousand. And those marvellous mountain horses are as unconcerned as the trail. They fox-trot along it as a matter of course, though the footing is slippery with rain, and they will gallop with their hind feet slipping over the edge if you let them. I advise only those with steady nerves and cool heads to tackle the Nahiku Ditch trail. One of our cow-boys was noted as the strongest and bravest on the big ranch. He had ridden mountain horses all his life on the rugged western slopes of Haleakala. He was first in the horse-breaking; and when the others hung back, as a matter of course, he would go in to meet a wild bull in the cattle-pen. He had a reputation. But he had never ridden over the Nahiku Ditch. It was there he lost his reputation. When he faced the first flume, spanning a hair-raising gorge, narrow, without railings, with a bellowing waterfall above, another below, and directly beneath a wild cascade, the air filled with driving spray and rocking to the clamour and rush of sound and motion—well, that cow-boy dismounted from his horse, explained briefly that he had a wife and two children, and crossed over on foot, leading the horse behind him.
The only relief from the flumes was the precipices; and the only relief from the precipices was the flumes, except where the ditch was far under ground, in which case we crossed one horse and rider at a time, on primitive log-bridges that swayed and teetered and threatened to carry away. I confess that at first I rode such places with my feet loose in the stirrups, and that on the sheer walls I saw to it, by a definite, conscious act of will, that the foot in the outside stirrup, overhanging the thousand feet of fall, was exceedingly loose. I say “at first”; for, as in the crater itself we quickly lost our conception of magnitude, so, on the Nahiku Ditch, we quickly lost our apprehension of depth. The ceaseless iteration of height and depth produced a state of consciousness in which height and depth were accepted as the ordinary conditions of existence; and from the horse’s back to look sheer down four hundred or five hundred feet became quite commonplace and non-productive of thrills. And as carelessly as the trail and the horses, we swung along the dizzy heights and ducked around or through the waterfalls.
And such a ride! Falling water was everywhere. We rode above the clouds, under the clouds, and through the clouds! and every now and then a shaft of sunshine penetrated like a search-light to the depths yawning beneath us, or flashed upon some pinnacle of the crater-rim thousands of feet above. At every turn of the trail a waterfall or a dozen waterfalls, leaping hundreds of feet through the air, burst upon our vision. At our first night’s camp, in the Keanae Gulch, we counted thirty-two waterfalls from a single viewpoint. The vegetation ran riot over that wild land. There were forests of koa and kolea trees, and candlenut trees; and then there were the trees called ohia-ai, which bore red mountain apples, mellow and juicy and most excellent to eat. Wild bananas grew everywhere, clinging to the sides of the gorges, and, overborne by their great bunches of ripe fruit, falling across the trail and blocking the way. And over the forest surged a sea of green life, the climbers of a thousand varieties, some that floated airily, in lacelike filaments, from the tallest branches others that coiled and wound about the trees like huge serpents; and one, the ei-ei, that was for all the world like a climbing palm, swinging on a thick stem from branch to branch and tree to tree and throttling the supports whereby it climbed. Through the sea of green, lofty tree-ferns thrust their great delicate fronds, and the lehua flaunted its scarlet blossoms. Underneath the climbers, in no less profusion, grew the warm-coloured, strangely-marked plants that in the United States one is accustomed to seeing preciously conserved in hot-houses. In fact, the ditch country of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are unfamiliar, from the tiniest maidenhair to the gross and voracious staghorn, the latter the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with itself in tangled masses five or six feet deep and covering acres.
Never was there such a ride. For two days it lasted, when we emerged into rolling country, and, along an actual wagon-road, came home to the ranch at a gallop. I know it was cruel to gallop the horses after such a long, hard journey; but we blistered our hands in vain effort to hold them in. That’s the sort of horses they grow on Haleakala. At the ranch there was great festival of cattle-driving, branding, and horse-breaking. Overhead Ukiukiu and Naulu battled valiantly, and far above, in the sunshine, towered the mighty summit of Haleakala.
Sandwich Islands to Tahiti.—There is great difficulty in making this passage across the trades. The whalers and all others speak with great doubt of fetching Tahiti from the Sandwich islands. Capt. Bruce says that a vessel should keep to the northward until she gets a start of wind before bearing for her destination. In his passage between them in November, 1837, he had no variables near the line in coming south, and never could make easting on either tack, though he endeavoured by every means to do so.
So say the sailing directions for the South Pacific Ocean; and that is all they say. There is not a word more to help the weary voyager in making this long traverse—nor is there any word at all concerning the passage from Hawaii to the Marquesas, which lie some eight hundred miles to the northeast of Tahiti and which are the more difficult to reach by just that much. The reason for the lack of directions is, I imagine, that no voyager is supposed to make himself weary by attempting so impossible a traverse. But the impossible did not deter the Snark,—principally because of the fact that we did not read that particular little paragraph in the sailing directions until after we had started. We sailed from Hilo, Hawaii, on October 7, and arrived at Nuka-hiva, in the Marquesas, on December 6. The distance was two thousand miles as the crow flies, while we actually travelled at least four thousand miles to accomplish it, thus proving for once and for ever that the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line. Had we headed directly for the Marquesas, we might have travelled five or six thousand miles.
Upon one thing we were resolved: we would not cross the Line west of 130° west longitude. For here was the problem. To cross the Line to the west of that point, if the southeast trades were well around to the southeast, would throw us so far to leeward of the Marquesas that a head-beat would be maddeningly impossible. Also, we had to remember the equatorial current, which moves west at a rate of anywhere from twelve to seventy-five miles a day. A pretty pickle, indeed, to be to leeward of our destination with such a current in our teeth. No; not a minute, nor a second, west of 130° west longitude would we cross the Line. But since the southeast trades were to be expected five or six degrees north of the Line (which, if they were well around to the southeast or south-southeast, would necessitate our sliding off toward south-southwest), we should have to hold to the eastward, north of the Line, and north of the southeast trades, until we gained at least 128° west longitude.
I have forgotten to mention that the seventy-horse-power gasolene engine, as usual, was not working, and that we could depend upon wind alone. Neither was the launch engine working. And while I am about it, I may as well confess that the five-horse-power, which ran the lights, fans, and pumps, was also on the sick-list. A striking title for a book haunts me, waking and sleeping. I should like to write that book some day and to call it “Around the World with Three Gasolene Engines and a Wife.” But I am afraid I shall not write it, for fear of hurting the feelings of some of the young gentlemen of San Francisco, Honolulu, and Hilo, who learned their trades at the expense of the Snark’s engines.
It looked easy on paper. Here was Hilo and there was our objective, 128° west longitude. With the northeast trade blowing we could travel a straight line between the two points, and even slack our sheets off a goodly bit. But one of the chief troubles with the trades is that one never knows just where he will pick them up and just in what direction they will be blowing. We picked up the northeast trade right outside of Hilo harbour, but the miserable breeze was away around into the east. Then there was the north equatorial current setting westward like a mighty river. Furthermore, a small boat, by the wind and bucking into a big headsea, does not work to advantage. She jogs up and down and gets nowhere. Her sails are full and straining, every little while she presses her lee-rail under, she flounders, and bumps, and splashes, and that is all. Whenever she begins to gather way, she runs ker-chug into a big mountain of water and is brought to a standstill. So, with the Snark, the resultant of her smallness, of the trade around into the east, and of the strong equatorial current, was a long sag south. Oh, she did not go quite south. But the easting she made was distressing. On October 11, she made forty miles easting; October 12, fifteen miles; October 13, no easting; October 14, thirty miles; October 15, twenty-three miles; October 16, eleven miles; and on October 17, she actually went to the westward four miles. Thus, in a week she made one hundred and fifteen miles easting, which was equivalent to sixteen miles a day. But, between the longitude of Hilo and 128° west longitude is a difference of twenty-seven degrees, or, roughly, sixteen hundred miles. At sixteen miles a day, one hundred days would be required to accomplish this distance. And even then, our objective, 128° west longitude, was five degrees north of the Line, while Nuka-hiva, in the Marquesas, lay nine degrees south of the Line and twelve degrees to the west!
There remained only one thing to do—to work south out of the trade and into the variables. It is true that Captain Bruce found no variables on his traverse, and that he “never could make easting on either tack.” It was the variables or nothing with us, and we prayed for better luck than he had had. The variables constitute the belt of ocean lying between the trades and the doldrums, and are conjectured to be the draughts of heated air which rise in the doldrums, flow high in the air counter to the trades, and gradually sink down till they fan the surface of the ocean where they are found. And they are found where they are found; for they are wedged between the trades and the doldrums, which same shift their territory from day to day and month to month.
We found the variables in 11° north latitude, and 11° north latitude we hugged jealously. To the south lay the doldrums. To the north lay the northeast trade that refused to blow from the northeast. The days came and went, and always they found the Snark somewhere near the eleventh parallel. The variables were truly variable. A light head-wind would die away and leave us rolling in a calm for forty-eight hours. Then a light head-wind would spring up, blow for three hours, and leave us rolling in another calm for forty-eight hours. Then—hurrah!—the wind would come out of the west, fresh, beautifully fresh, and send the Snark along, wing and wing, her wake bubbling, the log-line straight astern. At the end of half an hour, while we were preparing to set the spinnaker, with a few sickly gasps the wind would die away. And so it went. We wagered optimistically on every favourable fan of air that lasted over five minutes; but it never did any good. The fans faded out just the same.
But there were exceptions. In the variables, if you wait long enough, something is bound to happen, and we were so plentifully stocked with food and water that we could afford to wait. On October 26, we actually made one hundred and three miles of easting, and we talked about it for days afterwards. Once we caught a moderate gale from the south, which blew itself out in eight hours, but it helped us to seventy-one miles of easting in that particular twenty-four hours. And then, just as it was expiring, the wind came straight out from the north (the directly opposite quarter), and fanned us along over another degree of easting.
In years and years no sailing vessel has attempted this traverse, and we found ourselves in the midst of one of the loneliest of the Pacific solitudes. In the sixty days we were crossing it we sighted no sail, lifted no steamer’s smoke above the horizon. A disabled vessel could drift in this deserted expanse for a dozen generations, and there would be no rescue. The only chance of rescue would be from a vessel like the Snark, and the Snark happened to be there principally because of the fact that the traverse had been begun before the particular paragraph in the sailing directions had been read. Standing upright on deck, a straight line drawn from the eye to the horizon would measure three miles and a half. Thus, seven miles was the diameter of the circle of the sea in which we had our centre. Since we remained always in the centre, and since we constantly were moving in some direction, we looked upon many circles. But all circles looked alike. No tufted islets, gray headlands, nor glistening patches of white canvas ever marred the symmetry of that unbroken curve. Clouds came and went, rising up over the rim of the circle, flowing across the space of it, and spilling away and down across the opposite rim.
The world faded as the procession of the weeks marched by. The world faded until at last there ceased to be any world except the little world of the Snark, freighted with her seven souls and floating on the expanse of the waters. Our memories of the world, the great world, became like dreams of former lives we had lived somewhere before we came to be born on the Snark. After we had been out of fresh vegetables for some time, we mentioned such things in much the same way I have heard my father mention the vanished apples of his boyhood. Man is a creature of habit, and we on the Snark had got the habit of the Snark. Everything about her and aboard her was as a matter of course, and anything different would have been an irritation and an offence.
There was no way by which the great world could intrude. Our bell rang the hours, but no caller ever rang it. There were no guests to dinner, no telegrams, no insistent telephone jangles invading our privacy. We had no engagements to keep, no trains to catch, and there were no morning newspapers over which to waste time in learning what was happening to our fifteen hundred million other fellow-creatures.
But it was not dull. The affairs of our little world had to be regulated, and, unlike the great world, our world had to be steered in its journey through space. Also, there were cosmic disturbances to be encountered and baffled, such as do not afflict the big earth in its frictionless orbit through the windless void. And we never knew, from moment to moment, what was going to happen next. There were spice and variety enough and to spare. Thus, at four in the morning, I relieve Hermann at the wheel.
“East-northeast,” he gives me the course. “She’s eight points off, but she ain’t steering.”
Small wonder. The vessel does not exist that can be steered in so absolute a calm.
“I had a breeze a little while ago—maybe it will come back again,” Hermann says hopefully, ere he starts forward to the cabin and his bunk.
The mizzen is in and fast furled. In the night, what of the roll and the absence of wind, it had made life too hideous to be permitted to go on rasping at the mast, smashing at the tackles, and buffeting the empty air into hollow outbursts of sound. But the big mainsail is still on, and the staysail, jib, and flying-jib are snapping and slashing at their sheets with every roll. Every star is out. Just for luck I put the wheel hard over in the opposite direction to which it had been left by Hermann, and I lean back and gaze up at the stars. There is nothing else for me to do. There is nothing to be done with a sailing vessel rolling in a stark calm.
Then I feel a fan on my cheek, faint, so faint, that I can just sense it ere it is gone. But another comes, and another, until a real and just perceptible breeze is blowing. How the Snark’s sails manage to feel it is beyond me, but feel it they do, as she does as well, for the compass card begins slowly to revolve in the binnacle. In reality, it is not revolving at all. It is held by terrestrial magnetism in one place, and it is the Snark that is revolving, pivoted upon that delicate cardboard device that floats in a closed vessel of alcohol.
So the Snark comes back on her course. The breath increases to a tiny puff. The Snark feels the weight of it and actually heels over a trifle. There is flying scud overhead, and I notice the stars being blotted out. Walls of darkness close in upon me, so that, when the last star is gone, the darkness is so near that it seems I can reach out and touch it on every side. When I lean toward it, I can feel it loom against my face. Puff follows puff, and I am glad the mizzen is furled. Phew! that was a stiff one! The Snark goes over and down until her lee-rail is buried and the whole Pacific Ocean is pouring in. Four or five of these gusts make me wish that the jib and flying-jib were in. The sea is picking up, the gusts are growing stronger and more frequent, and there is a splatter of wet in the air. There is no use in attempting to gaze to windward. The wall of blackness is within arm’s length. Yet I cannot help attempting to see and gauge the blows that are being struck at the Snark. There is something ominous and menacing up there to windward, and I have a feeling that if I look long enough and strong enough, I shall divine it. Futile feeling. Between two gusts I leave the wheel and run forward to the cabin companionway, where I light matches and consult the barometer. “29-90” it reads. That sensitive instrument refuses to take notice of the disturbance which is humming with a deep, throaty voice in the rigging. I get back to the wheel just in time to meet another gust, the strongest yet. Well, anyway, the wind is abeam and the Snark is on her course, eating up easting. That at least is well.
The jib and flying-jib bother me, and I wish they were in. She would make easier weather of it, and less risky weather likewise. The wind snorts, and stray raindrops pelt like birdshot. I shall certainly have to call all hands, I conclude; then conclude the next instant to hang on a little longer. Maybe this is the end of it, and I shall have called them for nothing. It is better to let them sleep. I hold the Snark down to her task, and from out of the darkness, at right angles, comes a deluge of rain accompanied by shrieking wind. Then everything eases except the blackness, and I rejoice in that I have not called the men.
No sooner does the wind ease than the sea picks up. The combers are breaking now, and the boat is tossing like a cork. Then out of the blackness the gusts come harder and faster than before. If only I knew what was up there to windward in the blackness! The Snark is making heavy weather of it, and her lee-rail is buried oftener than not. More shrieks and snorts of wind. Now, if ever, is the time to call the men. I will call them, I resolve. Then there is a burst of rain, a slackening of the wind, and I do not call. But it is rather lonely, there at the wheel, steering a little world through howling blackness. It is quite a responsibility to be all alone on the surface of a little world in time of stress, doing the thinking for its sleeping inhabitants. I recoil from the responsibility as more gusts begin to strike and as a sea licks along the weather rail and splashes over into the cockpit. The salt water seems strangely warm to my body and is shot through with ghostly nodules of phosphorescent light. I shall surely call all hands to shorten sail. Why should they sleep? I am a fool to have any compunctions in the matter. My intellect is arrayed against my heart. It was my heart that said, “Let them sleep.” Yes, but it was my intellect that backed up my heart in that judgment. Let my intellect then reverse the judgment; and, while I am speculating as to what particular entity issued that command to my intellect, the gusts die away. Solicitude for mere bodily comfort has no place in practical seamanship, I conclude sagely; but study the feel of the next series of gusts and do not call the men. After all, it is my intellect, behind everything, procrastinating, measuring its knowledge of what the Snark can endure against the blows being struck at her, and waiting the call of all hands against the striking of still severer blows.
Daylight, gray and violent, steals through the cloud-pall and shows a foaming sea that flattens under the weight of recurrent and increasing squalls. Then comes the rain, filling the windy valleys of the sea with milky smoke and further flattening the waves, which but wait for the easement of wind and rain to leap more wildly than before. Come the men on deck, their sleep out, and among them Hermann, his face on the broad grin in appreciation of the breeze of wind I have picked up. I turn the wheel over to Warren and start to go below, pausing on the way to rescue the galley stovepipe which has gone adrift. I am barefooted, and my toes have had an excellent education in the art of clinging; but, as the rail buries itself in a green sea, I suddenly sit down on the streaming deck. Hermann good-naturedly elects to question my selection of such a spot. Then comes the next roll, and he sits down, suddenly, and without premeditation. The Snark heels over and down, the rail takes it green, and Hermann and I, clutching the precious stove-pipe, are swept down into the lee-scuppers. After that I finish my journey below, and while changing my clothes grin with satisfaction—the Snark is making easting.
No, it is not all monotony. When we had worried along our easting to 126° west longitude, we left the variables and headed south through the doldrums, where was much calm weather and where, taking advantage of every fan of air, we were often glad to make a score of miles in as many hours. And yet, on such a day, we might pass through a dozen squalls and be surrounded by dozens more. And every squall was to be regarded as a bludgeon capable of crushing the Snark. We were struck sometimes by the centres and sometimes by the sides of these squalls, and we never knew just where or how we were to be hit. The squall that rose up, covering half the heavens, and swept down upon us, as likely as not split into two squalls which passed us harmlessly on either side while the tiny, innocent looking squall that appeared to carry no more than a hogshead of water and a pound of wind, would abruptly assume cyclopean proportions, deluging us with rain and overwhelming us with wind. Then there were treacherous squalls that went boldly astern and sneaked back upon us from a mile to leeward. Again, two squalls would tear along, one on each side of us, and we would get a fillip from each of them. Now a gale certainly grows tiresome after a few hours, but squalls never. The thousandth squall in one’s experience is as interesting as the first one, and perhaps a bit more so. It is the tyro who has no apprehension of them. The man of a thousand squalls respects a squall. He knows what they are.
It was in the doldrums that our most exciting event occurred. On November 20, we discovered that through an accident we had lost over one-half of the supply of fresh water that remained to us. Since we were at that time forty-three days out from Hilo, our supply of fresh water was not large. To lose over half of it was a catastrophe. On close allowance, the remnant of water we possessed would last twenty days. But we were in the doldrums; there was no telling where the southeast trades were, nor where we would pick them up.
The handcuffs were promptly put upon the pump, and once a day the water was portioned out. Each of us received a quart for personal use, and eight quarts were given to the cook. Enters now the psychology of the situation. No sooner had the discovery of the water shortage been made than I, for one, was afflicted with a burning thirst. It seemed to me that I had never been so thirsty in my life. My little quart of water I could easily have drunk in one draught, and to refrain from doing so required a severe exertion of will. Nor was I alone in this. All of us talked water, thought water, and dreamed water when we slept. We examined the charts for possible islands to which to run in extremity, but there were no such islands. The Marquesas were the nearest, and they were the other side of the Line, and of the doldrums, too, which made it even worse. We were in 3° north latitude, while the Marquesas were 9° south latitude—a difference of over a thousand miles. Furthermore, the Marquesas lay some fourteen degrees to the west of our longitude. A pretty pickle for a handful of creatures sweltering on the ocean in the heat of tropic calms.
We rigged lines on either side between the main and mizzen riggings. To these we laced the big deck awning, hoisting it up aft with a sailing pennant so that any rain it might collect would run forward where it could be caught. Here and there squalls passed across the circle of the sea. All day we watched them, now to port or starboard, and again ahead or astern. But never one came near enough to wet us. In the afternoon a big one bore down upon us. It spread out across the ocean as it approached, and we could see it emptying countless thousands of gallons into the salt sea. Extra attention was paid to the awning and then we waited. Warren, Martin, and Hermann made a vivid picture. Grouped together, holding on to the rigging, swaying to the roll, they were gazing intently at the squall. Strain, anxiety, and yearning were in every posture of their bodies. Beside them was the dry and empty awning. But they seemed to grow limp and to droop as the squall broke in half, one part passing on ahead, the other drawing astern and going to leeward.
But that night came rain. Martin, whose psychological thirst had compelled him to drink his quart of water early, got his mouth down to the lip of the awning and drank the deepest draught I ever have seen drunk. The precious water came down in bucketfuls and tubfuls, and in two hours we caught and stored away in the tanks one hundred and twenty gallons. Strange to say, in all the rest of our voyage to the Marquesas not another drop of rain fell on board. If that squall had missed us, the handcuffs would have remained on the pump, and we would have busied ourselves with utilizing our surplus gasolene for distillation purposes.
Then there was the fishing. One did not have to go in search of it, for it was there at the rail. A three-inch steel hook, on the end of a stout line, with a piece of white rag for bait, was all that was necessary to catch bonitas weighing from ten to twenty-five pounds. Bonitas feed on flying-fish, wherefore they are unaccustomed to nibbling at the hook. They strike as gamely as the gamest fish in the sea, and their first run is something that no man who has ever caught them will forget. Also, bonitas are the veriest cannibals. The instant one is hooked he is attacked by his fellows. Often and often we hauled them on board with fresh, clean-bitten holes in them the size of teacups.
One school of bonitas, numbering many thousands, stayed with us day and night for more than three weeks. Aided by the Snark, it was great hunting; for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean half a mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged along abreast of the Snark on either side, pouncing upon the flying-fish her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing astern the flying-fish that survived for several flights, they were always overtaking the Snark, and at any time one could glance astern and on the front of a breaking wave see scores of their silvery forms coasting down just under the surface. When they had eaten their fill, it was their delight to get in the shadow of the boat, or of her sails, and a hundred or so were always to be seen lazily sliding along and keeping cool.
But the poor flying-fish! Pursued and eaten alive by the bonitas and dolphins, they sought flight in the air, where the swooping seabirds drove them back into the water. Under heaven there was no refuge for them. Flying-fish do not play when they essay the air. It is a life-and-death affair with them. A thousand times a day we could lift our eyes and see the tragedy played out. The swift, broken circling of a guny might attract one’s attention. A glance beneath shows the back of a dolphin breaking the surface in a wild rush. Just in front of its nose a shimmering palpitant streak of silver shoots from the water into the air—a delicate, organic mechanism of flight, endowed with sensation, power of direction, and love of life. The guny swoops for it and misses, and the flying-fish, gaining its altitude by rising, kite-like, against the wind, turns in a half-circle and skims off to leeward, gliding on the bosom of the wind. Beneath it, the wake of the dolphin shows in churning foam. So he follows, gazing upward with large eyes at the flashing breakfast that navigates an element other than his own. He cannot rise to so lofty occasion, but he is a thorough-going empiricist, and he knows, sooner or later, if not gobbled up by the guny, that the flying-fish must return to the water. And then—breakfast. We used to pity the poor winged fish. It was sad to see such sordid and bloody slaughter. And then, in the night watches, when a forlorn little flying-fish struck the mainsail and fell gasping and splattering on the deck, we would rush for it just as eagerly, just as greedily, just as voraciously, as the dolphins and bonitas. For know that flying-fish are most toothsome for breakfast. It is always a wonder to me that such dainty meat does not build dainty tissue in the bodies of the devourers. Perhaps the dolphins and bonitas are coarser-fibred because of the high speed at which they drive their bodies in order to catch their prey. But then again, the flying-fish drive their bodies at high speed, too.
Sharks we caught occasionally, on large hooks, with chain-swivels, bent on a length of small rope. And sharks meant pilot-fish, and remoras, and various sorts of parasitic creatures. Regular man-eaters some of the sharks proved, tiger-eyed and with twelve rows of teeth, razor-sharp. By the way, we of the Snark are agreed that we have eaten many fish that will not compare with baked shark smothered in tomato dressing. In the calms we occasionally caught a fish called “haké” by the Japanese cook. And once, on a spoon-hook trolling a hundred yards astern, we caught a snake-like fish, over three feet in length and not more than three inches in diameter, with four fangs in his jaw. He proved the most delicious fish—delicious in meat and flavour—that we have ever eaten on board.
The most welcome addition to our larder was a green sea-turtle, weighing a full hundred pounds and appearing on the table most appetizingly in steaks, soups, and stews, and finally in a wonderful curry which tempted all hands into eating more rice than was good for them. The turtle was sighted to windward, calmly sleeping on the surface in the midst of a huge school of curious dolphins. It was a deep-sea turtle of a surety, for the nearest land was a thousand miles away. We put the Snark about and went back for him, Hermann driving the granes into his head and neck. When hauled aboard, numerous remora were clinging to his shell, and out of the hollows at the roots of his flippers crawled several large crabs. It did not take the crew of the Snark longer than the next meal to reach the unanimous conclusion that it would willingly put the Snark about any time for a turtle.
But it is the dolphin that is the king of deep-sea fishes. Never is his colour twice quite the same. Swimming in the sea, an ethereal creature of palest azure, he displays in that one guise a miracle of colour. But it is nothing compared with the displays of which he is capable. At one time he will appear green—pale green, deep green, phosphorescent green; at another time blue—deep blue, electric blue, all the spectrum of blue. Catch him on a hook, and he turns to gold, yellow gold, all gold. Haul him on deck, and he excels the spectrum, passing through inconceivable shades of blues, greens, and yellows, and then, suddenly, turning a ghostly white, in the midst of which are bright blue spots, and you suddenly discover that he is speckled like a trout. Then back from white he goes, through all the range of colours, finally turning to a mother-of-pearl.
For those who are devoted to fishing, I can recommend no finer sport than catching dolphin. Of course, it must be done on a thin line with reel and pole. A No. 7, O’Shaughnessy tarpon hook is just the thing, baited with an entire flying-fish. Like the bonita, the dolphin’s fare consists of flying-fish, and he strikes like lightning at the bait. The first warning is when the reel screeches and you see the line smoking out at right angles to the boat. Before you have time to entertain anxiety concerning the length of your line, the fish rises into the air in a succession of leaps. Since he is quite certain to be four feet long or over, the sport of landing so gamey a fish can be realized. When hooked, he invariably turns golden. The idea of the series of leaps is to rid himself of the hook, and the man who has made the strike must be of iron or decadent if his heart does not beat with an extra flutter when he beholds such gorgeous fish, glittering in golden mail and shaking itself like a stallion in each mid-air leap. ’Ware slack! If you don’t, on one of those leaps the hook will be flung out and twenty feet away. No slack, and away he will go on another run, culminating in another series of leaps. About this time one begins to worry over the line, and to wish that he had had nine hundred feet on the reel originally instead of six hundred. With careful playing the line can be saved, and after an hour of keen excitement the fish can be brought to gaff. One such dolphin I landed on the Snark measured four feet and seven inches.
Hermann caught dolphins more prosaically. A hand-line and a chunk of shark-meat were all he needed. His hand-line was very thick, but on more than one occasion it parted and lost the fish. One day a dolphin got away with a lure of Hermann’s manufacture, to which were lashed four O’Shaughnessy hooks. Within an hour the same dolphin was landed with the rod, and on dissecting him the four hooks were recovered. The dolphins, which remained with us over a month, deserted us north of the line, and not one was seen during the remainder of the traverse.
So the days passed. There was so much to be done that time never dragged. Had there been little to do, time could not have dragged with such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes—dawns that were like burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith; sunsets that bathed the purple sea in rivers of rose-coloured light, flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing rays were of the purest blue. Overside, in the heat of the day, the sea was an azure satiny fabric, in the depths of which the sunshine focussed in funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. And now and again, from out of the darkness on either hand, just under the surface, larger phosphorescent organisms flashed up like electric lights, marking collisions with the careless bonitas skurrying ahead to the good hunting just beyond our bowsprit.
We made our easting, worked down through the doldrums, and caught a fresh breeze out of south-by-west. Hauled up by the wind, on such a slant, we would fetch past the Marquesas far away to the westward. But the next day, on Tuesday, November 26, in the thick of a heavy squall, the wind shifted suddenly to the southeast. It was the trade at last. There were no more squalls, naught but fine weather, a fair wind, and a whirling log, with sheets slacked off and with spinnaker and mainsail swaying and bellying on either side. The trade backed more and more, until it blew out of the northeast, while we steered a steady course to the southwest. Ten days of this, and on the morning of December 6, at five o’clock, we sighted land “just where it ought to have been,” dead ahead. We passed to leeward of Ua-huka, skirted the southern edge of Nuka-hiva, and that night, in driving squalls and inky darkness, fought our way in to an anchorage in the narrow bay of Taiohae. The anchor rumbled down to the blatting of wild goats on the cliffs, and the air we breathed was heavy with the perfume of flowers. The traverse was accomplished. Sixty days from land to land, across a lonely sea above whose horizons never rise the straining sails of ships.
To the eastward Ua-huka was being blotted out by an evening rain-squall that was fast overtaking the Snark. But that little craft, her big spinnaker filled by the southeast trade, was making a good race of it. Cape Martin, the southeasternmost point of Nuku-hiva, was abeam, and Comptroller Bay was opening up as we fled past its wide entrance, where Sail Rock, for all the world like the spritsail of a Columbia River salmon-boat, was making brave weather of it in the smashing southeast swell.
“What do you make that out to be?” I asked Hermann, at the wheel.
“A fishing-boat, sir,” he answered after careful scrutiny.
Yet on the chart it was plainly marked, “Sail Rock.”
But we were more interested in the recesses of Comptroller Bay, where our eyes eagerly sought out the three bights of land and centred on the midmost one, where the gathering twilight showed the dim walls of a valley extending inland. How often we had pored over the chart and centred always on that midmost bight and on the valley it opened—the Valley of Typee. “Taipi” the chart spelled it, and spelled it correctly, but I prefer “Typee,” and I shall always spell it “Typee.” When I was a little boy, I read a book spelled in that manner—Herman Melville’s “Typee”; and many long hours I dreamed over its pages. Nor was it all dreaming. I resolved there and then, mightily, come what would, that when I had gained strength and years, I, too, would voyage to Typee. For the wonder of the world was penetrating to my tiny consciousness—the wonder that was to lead me to many lands, and that leads and never pails. The years passed, but Typee was not forgotten. Returned to San Francisco from a seven months’ cruise in the North Pacific, I decided the time had come. The brig Galilee was sailing for the Marquesas, but her crew was complete and I, who was an able-seaman before the mast and young enough to be overweeningly proud of it, was willing to condescend to ship as cabin-boy in order to make the pilgrimage to Typee. Of course, the Galilee would have sailed from the Marquesas without me, for I was bent on finding another Fayaway and another Kory-Kory. I doubt that the captain read desertion in my eye. Perhaps even the berth of cabin-boy was already filled. At any rate, I did not get it.
Then came the rush of years, filled brimming with projects, achievements, and failures; but Typee was not forgotten, and here I was now, gazing at its misty outlines till the squall swooped down and the Snark dashed on into the driving smother. Ahead, we caught a glimpse and took the compass bearing of Sentinel Rock, wreathed with pounding surf. Then it, too, was effaced by the rain and darkness. We steered straight for it, trusting to hear the sound of breakers in time to sheer clear. We had to steer for it. We had naught but a compass bearing with which to orientate ourselves, and if we missed Sentinel Rock, we missed Taiohae Bay, and we would have to throw the Snark up to the wind and lie off and on the whole night—no pleasant prospect for voyagers weary from a sixty days’ traverse of the vast Pacific solitude, and land-hungry, and fruit-hungry, and hungry with an appetite of years for the sweet vale of Typee.
Abruptly, with a roar of sound, Sentinel Rock loomed through the rain dead ahead. We altered our course, and, with mainsail and spinnaker bellying to the squall, drove past. Under the lea of the rock the wind dropped us, and we rolled in an absolute calm. Then a puff of air struck us, right in our teeth, out of Taiohae Bay. It was in spinnaker, up mizzen, all sheets by the wind, and we were moving slowly ahead, heaving the lead and straining our eyes for the fixed red light on the ruined fort that would give us our bearings to anchorage. The air was light and baffling, now east, now west, now north, now south; while from either hand came the roar of unseen breakers. From the looming cliffs arose the blatting of wild goats, and overhead the first stars were peeping mistily through the ragged train of the passing squall. At the end of two hours, having come a mile into the bay, we dropped anchor in eleven fathoms. And so we came to Taiohae.
In the morning we awoke in fairyland. The Snark rested in a placid harbour that nestled in a vast amphitheatre, the towering, vine-clad walls of which seemed to rise directly from the water. Far up, to the east, we glimpsed the thin line of a trail, visible in one place, where it scoured across the face of the wall.
“The path by which Toby escaped from Typee!” we cried.
We were not long in getting ashore and astride horses, though the consummation of our pilgrimage had to be deferred for a day. Two months at sea, bare-footed all the time, without space in which to exercise one’s limbs, is not the best preliminary to leather shoes and walking. Besides, the land had to cease its nauseous rolling before we could feel fit for riding goat-like horses over giddy trails. So we took a short ride to break in, and crawled through thick jungle to make the acquaintance of a venerable moss-grown idol, where had foregathered a German trader and a Norwegian captain to estimate the weight of said idol, and to speculate upon depreciation in value caused by sawing him in half. They treated the old fellow sacrilegiously, digging their knives into him to see how hard he was and how deep his mossy mantle, and commanding him to rise up and save them trouble by walking down to the ship himself. In lieu of which, nineteen Kanakas slung him on a frame of timbers and toted him to the ship, where, battened down under hatches, even now he is cleaving the South Pacific Hornward and toward Europe—the ultimate abiding-place for all good heathen idols, save for the few in America and one in particular who grins beside me as I write, and who, barring shipwreck, will grin somewhere in my neighbourhood until I die. And he will win out. He will be grinning when I am dust.
Also, as a preliminary, we attended a feast, where one Taiara Tamarii, the son of an Hawaiian sailor who deserted from a whaleship, commemorated the death of his Marquesan mother by roasting fourteen whole hogs and inviting in the village. So we came along, welcomed by a native herald, a young girl, who stood on a great rock and chanted the information that the banquet was made perfect by our presence—which information she extended impartially to every arrival. Scarcely were we seated, however, when she changed her tune, while the company manifested intense excitement. Her cries became eager and piercing. From a distance came answering cries, in men’s voices, which blended into a wild, barbaric chant that sounded incredibly savage, smacking of blood and war. Then, through vistas of tropical foliage appeared a procession of savages, naked save for gaudy loin-cloths. They advanced slowly, uttering deep guttural cries of triumph and exaltation. Slung from young saplings carried on their shoulders were mysterious objects of considerable weight, hidden from view by wrappings of green leaves.
Nothing but pigs, innocently fat and roasted to a turn, were inside those wrappings, but the men were carrying them into camp in imitation of old times when they carried in “long-pig.” Now long-pig is not pig. Long-pig is the Polynesian euphemism for human flesh; and these descendants of man-eaters, a king’s son at their head, brought in the pigs to table as of old their grandfathers had brought in their slain enemies. Every now and then the procession halted in order that the bearers should have every advantage in uttering particularly ferocious shouts of victory, of contempt for their enemies, and of gustatory desire. So Melville, two generations ago, witnessed the bodies of slain Happar warriors, wrapped in palm-leaves, carried to banquet at the Ti. At another time, at the Ti, he “observed a curiously carved vessel of wood,” and on looking into it his eyes “fell upon the disordered members of a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and with particles of flesh clinging to them here and there.”
Cannibalism has often been regarded as a fairy story by ultracivilized men who dislike, perhaps, the notion that their own savage forebears have somewhere in the past been addicted to similar practices. Captain Cook was rather sceptical upon the subject, until, one day, in a harbour of New Zealand, he deliberately tested the matter. A native happened to have brought on board, for sale, a nice, sun-dried head. At Cook’s orders strips of the flesh were cut away and handed to the native, who greedily devoured them. To say the least, Captain Cook was a rather thorough-going empiricist. At any rate, by that act he supplied one ascertained fact of which science had been badly in need. Little did he dream of the existence of a certain group of islands, thousands of miles away, where in subsequent days there would arise a curious suit at law, when an old chief of Maui would be charged with defamation of character because he persisted in asserting that his body was the living repository of Captain Cook’s great toe. It is said that the plaintiffs failed to prove that the old chief was not the tomb of the navigator’s great toe, and that the suit was dismissed.
I suppose I shall not have the chance in these degenerate days to see any long-pig eaten, but at least I am already the possessor of a duly certified Marquesan calabash, oblong in shape, curiously carved, over a century old, from which has been drunk the blood of two shipmasters. One of those captains was a mean man. He sold a decrepit whale-boat, as good as new what of the fresh white paint, to a Marquesan chief. But no sooner had the captain sailed away than the whale-boat dropped to pieces. It was his fortune, some time afterwards, to be wrecked, of all places, on that particular island. The Marquesan chief was ignorant of rebates and discounts; but he had a primitive sense of equity and an equally primitive conception of the economy of nature, and he balanced the account by eating the man who had cheated him.
We started in the cool dawn for Typee, astride ferocious little stallions that pawed and screamed and bit and fought one another quite oblivious of the fragile humans on their backs and of the slippery boulders, loose rocks, and yawning gorges. The way led up an ancient road through a jungle of hau trees. On every side were the vestiges of a one-time dense population. Wherever the eye could penetrate the thick growth, glimpses were caught of stone walls and of stone foundations, six to eight feet in height, built solidly throughout, and many yards in width and depth. They formed great stone platforms, upon which, at one time, there had been houses. But the houses and the people were gone, and huge trees sank their roots through the platforms and towered over the under-running jungle. These foundations are called pae-paes—the pi-pis of Melville, who spelled phonetically.
The Marquesans of the present generation lack the energy to hoist and place such huge stones. Also, they lack incentive. There are plenty of pae-paes to go around, with a few thousand unoccupied ones left over. Once or twice, as we ascended the valley, we saw magnificent pae-paes bearing on their general surface pitiful little straw huts, the proportions being similar to a voting booth perched on the broad foundation of the Pyramid of Cheops. For the Marquesans are perishing, and, to judge from conditions at Taiohae, the one thing that retards their destruction is the infusion of fresh blood. A pure Marquesan is a rarity. They seem to be all half-breeds and strange conglomerations of dozens of different races. Nineteen able labourers are all the trader at Taiohae can muster for the loading of copra on shipboard, and in their veins runs the blood of English, American, Dane, German, French, Corsican, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Paumotan, Tahitian, and Easter Islander. There are more races than there are persons, but it is a wreckage of races at best. Life faints and stumbles and gasps itself away. In this warm, equable clime—a truly terrestrial paradise—where are never extremes of temperature and where the air is like balm, kept ever pure by the ozone-laden southeast trade, asthma, phthisis, and tuberculosis flourish as luxuriantly as the vegetation. Everywhere, from the few grass huts, arises the racking cough or exhausted groan of wasted lungs. Other horrible diseases prosper as well, but the most deadly of all are those that attack the lungs. There is a form of consumption called “galloping,” which is especially dreaded. In two months’ time it reduces the strongest man to a skeleton under a grave-cloth. In valley after valley the last inhabitant has passed and the fertile soil has relapsed to jungle. In Melville’s day the valley of Hapaa (spelled by him “Happar”) was peopled by a strong and warlike tribe. A generation later, it contained but two hundred persons. To-day it is an untenanted, howling, tropical wilderness.
We climbed higher and higher in the valley, our unshod stallions picking their steps on the disintegrating trail, which led in and out through the abandoned pae-paes and insatiable jungle. The sight of red mountain apples, the ohias, familiar to us from Hawaii, caused a native to be sent climbing after them. And again he climbed for cocoa-nuts. I have drunk the cocoanuts of Jamaica and of Hawaii, but I never knew how delicious such draught could be till I drank it here in the Marquesas. Occasionally we rode under wild limes and oranges—great trees which had survived the wilderness longer than the motes of humans who had cultivated them.
We rode through endless thickets of yellow-pollened cassi—if riding it could be called; for those fragrant thickets were inhabited by wasps. And such wasps! Great yellow fellows the size of small canary birds, darting through the air with behind them drifting a bunch of legs a couple of inches long. A stallion abruptly stands on his forelegs and thrusts his hind legs skyward. He withdraws them from the sky long enough to make one wild jump ahead, and then returns them to their index position. It is nothing. His thick hide has merely been punctured by a flaming lance of wasp virility. Then a second and a third stallion, and all the stallions, begin to cavort on their forelegs over the precipitous landscape. Swat! A white-hot poniard penetrates my cheek. Swat again!! I am stabbed in the neck. I am bringing up the rear and getting more than my share. There is no retreat, and the plunging horses ahead, on a precarious trail, promise little safety. My horse overruns Charmian’s horse, and that sensitive creature, fresh-stung at the psychological moment, planks one of his hoofs into my horse and the other hoof into me. I thank my stars that he is not steel-shod, and half-arise from the saddle at the impact of another flaming dagger. I am certainly getting more than my share, and so is my poor horse, whose pain and panic are only exceeded by mine.
“Get out of the way! I’m coming!” I shout, frantically dashing my cap at the winged vipers around me.
On one side of the trail the landscape rises straight up. On the other side it sinks straight down. The only way to get out of my way is to keep on going. How that string of horses kept their feet is a miracle; but they dashed ahead, over-running one another, galloping, trotting, stumbling, jumping, scrambling, and kicking methodically skyward every time a wasp landed on them. After a while we drew breath and counted our injuries. And this happened not once, nor twice, but time after time. Strange to say, it never grew monotonous. I know that I, for one, came through each brush with the undiminished zest of a man flying from sudden death. No; the pilgrim from Taiohae to Typee will never suffer from ennui on the way.
At last we arose above the vexation of wasps. It was a matter of altitude, however, rather than of fortitude. All about us lay the jagged back-bones of ranges, as far as the eye could see, thrusting their pinnacles into the trade-wind clouds. Under us, from the way we had come, the Snark lay like a tiny toy on the calm water of Taiohae Bay. Ahead we could see the inshore indentation of Comptroller Bay. We dropped down a thousand feet, and Typee lay beneath us. “Had a glimpse of the gardens of paradise been revealed to me I could scarcely have been more ravished with the sight”—so said Melville on the moment of his first view of the valley. He saw a garden. We saw a wilderness. Where were the hundred groves of the breadfruit tree he saw? We saw jungle, nothing but jungle, with the exception of two grass huts and several clumps of cocoanuts breaking the primordial green mantle. Where was the Ti of Mehevi, the bachelors’ hall, the palace where women were taboo, and where he ruled with his lesser chieftains, keeping the half-dozen dusty and torpid ancients to remind them of the valorous past? From the swift stream no sounds arose of maids and matrons pounding tapa. And where was the hut that old Narheyo eternally builded? In vain I looked for him perched ninety feet from the ground in some tall cocoanut, taking his morning smoke.
We went down a zigzag trail under overarching, matted jungle, where great butterflies drifted by in the silence. No tattooed savage with club and javelin guarded the path; and when we forded the stream, we were free to roam where we pleased. No longer did the taboo, sacred and merciless, reign in that sweet vale. Nay, the taboo still did reign, a new taboo, for when we approached too near the several wretched native women, the taboo was uttered warningly. And it was well. They were lepers. The man who warned us was afflicted horribly with elephantiasis. All were suffering from lung trouble. The valley of Typee was the abode of death, and the dozen survivors of the tribe were gasping feebly the last painful breaths of the race.
Certainly the battle had not been to the strong, for once the Typeans were very strong, stronger than the Happars, stronger than the Taiohaeans, stronger than all the tribes of Nuku-hiva. The word “typee,” or, rather, “taipi,” originally signified an eater of human flesh. But since all the Marquesans were human-flesh eaters, to be so designated was the token that the Typeans were the human-flesh eaters par excellence. Not alone to Nuku-hiva did the Typean reputation for bravery and ferocity extend. In all the islands of the Marquesas the Typeans were named with dread. Man could not conquer them. Even the French fleet that took possession of the Marquesas left the Typeans alone. Captain Porter, of the frigate Essex, once invaded the valley. His sailors and marines were reinforced by two thousand warriors of Happar and Taiohae. They penetrated quite a distance into the valley, but met with so fierce a resistance that they were glad to retreat and get away in their flotilla of boats and war-canoes.
Of all inhabitants of the South Seas, the Marquesans were adjudged the strongest and the most beautiful. Melville said of them: “I was especially struck by the physical strength and beauty they displayed . . . In beauty of form they surpassed anything I had ever seen. Not a single instance of natural deformity was observable in all the throng attending the revels. Every individual appeared free from those blemishes which sometimes mar the effect of an otherwise perfect form. But their physical excellence did not merely consist in an exemption from these evils; nearly every individual of the number might have been taken for a sculptor’s model.” Mendaña, the discoverer of the Marquesas, described the natives as wondrously beautiful to behold. Figueroa, the chronicler of his voyage, said of them: “In complexion they were nearly white; of good stature and finely formed.” Captain Cook called the Marquesans the most splendid islanders in the South Seas. The men were described, as “in almost every instance of lofty stature, scarcely ever less than six feet in height.”
And now all this strength and beauty has departed, and the valley of Typee is the abode of some dozen wretched creatures, afflicted by leprosy, elephantiasis, and tuberculosis. Melville estimated the population at two thousand, not taking into consideration the small adjoining valley of Ho-o-u-mi. Life has rotted away in this wonderful garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to be found in the world. Not alone were the Typeans physically magnificent; they were pure. Their air did not contain the bacilli and germs and microbes of disease that fill our own air. And when the white men imported in their ships these various micro-organisms or disease, the Typeans crumpled up and went down before them.
When one considers the situation, one is almost driven to the conclusion that the white race flourishes on impurity and corruption. Natural selection, however, gives the explanation. We of the white race are the survivors and the descendants of the thousands of generations of survivors in the war with the micro-organisms. Whenever one of us was born with a constitution peculiarly receptive to these minute enemies, such a one promptly died. Only those of us survived who could withstand them. We who are alive are the immune, the fit—the ones best constituted to live in a world of hostile micro-organisms. The poor Marquesans had undergone no such selection. They were not immune. And they, who had made a custom of eating their enemies, were now eaten by enemies so microscopic as to be invisible, and against whom no war of dart and javelin was possible. On the other hand, had there been a few hundred thousand Marquesans to begin with, there might have been sufficient survivors to lay the foundation for a new race—a regenerated race, if a plunge into a festering bath of organic poison can be called regeneration.
We unsaddled our horses for lunch, and after we had fought the stallions apart—mine with several fresh chunks bitten out of his back—and after we had vainly fought the sand-flies, we ate bananas and tinned meats, washed down by generous draughts of cocoanut milk. There was little to be seen. The jungle had rushed back and engulfed the puny works of man. Here and there pai-pais were to be stumbled upon, but there were no inscriptions, no hieroglyphics, no clues to the past they attested—only dumb stones, builded and carved by hands that were forgotten dust. Out of the pai-pais grew great trees, jealous of the wrought work of man, splitting and scattering the stones back into the primeval chaos.
We gave up the jungle and sought the stream with the idea of evading the sand-flies. Vain hope! To go in swimming one must take off his clothes. The sand-flies are aware of the fact, and they lurk by the river bank in countless myriads. In the native they are called the nau-nau, which is pronounced “now-now.” They are certainly well named, for they are the insistent present. There is no past nor future when they fasten upon one’s epidermis, and I am willing to wager that Omer Khayyám could never have written the Rubáiyat in the valley of Typee—it would have been psychologically impossible. I made the strategic mistake of undressing on the edge of a steep bank where I could dive in but could not climb out. When I was ready to dress, I had a hundred yards’ walk on the bank before I could reach my clothes. At the first step, fully ten thousand nau-naus landed upon me. At the second step I was walking in a cloud. By the third step the sun was dimmed in the sky. After that I don’t know what happened. When I arrived at my clothes, I was a maniac. And here enters my grand tactical error. There is only one rule of conduct in dealing with nau-naus. Never swat them. Whatever you do, don’t swat them. They are so vicious that in the instant of annihilation they eject their last atom of poison into your carcass. You must pluck them delicately, between thumb and forefinger, and persuade them gently to remove their proboscides from your quivering flesh. It is like pulling teeth. But the difficulty was that the teeth sprouted faster than I could pull them, so I swatted, and, so doing, filled myself full with their poison. This was a week ago. At the present moment I resemble a sadly neglected smallpox convalescent.
Ho-o-u-mi is a small valley, separated from Typee by a low ridge, and thither we started when we had knocked our indomitable and insatiable riding-animals into submission. As it was, Warren’s mount, after a mile run, selected the most dangerous part of the trail for an exhibition that kept us all on the anxious seat for fully five minutes. We rode by the mouth of Typee valley and gazed down upon the beach from which Melville escaped. There was where the whale-boat lay on its oars close in to the surf; and there was where Karakoee, the taboo Kanaka, stood in the water and trafficked for the sailor’s life. There, surely, was where Melville gave Fayaway the parting embrace ere he dashed for the boat. And there was the point of land from which Mehevi and Mow-mow and their following swam off to intercept the boat, only to have their wrists gashed by sheath-knives when they laid hold of the gunwale, though it was reserved for Mow-mow to receive the boat-hook full in the throat from Melville’s hands.
We rode on to Ho-o-u-mi. So closely was Melville guarded that he never dreamed of the existence of this valley, though he must continually have met its inhabitants, for they belonged to Typee. We rode through the same abandoned pae-paes, but as we neared the sea we found a profusion of cocoanuts, breadfruit trees and taro patches, and fully a dozen grass dwellings. In one of these we arranged to pass the night, and preparations were immediately put on foot for a feast. A young pig was promptly despatched, and while he was being roasted among hot stones, and while chickens were stewing in cocoanut milk, I persuaded one of the cooks to climb an unusually tall cocoanut palm. The cluster of nuts at the top was fully one hundred and twenty-five feet from the ground, but that native strode up to the tree, seized it in both hands, jack-knived at the waist so that the soles of his feet rested flatly against the trunk, and then he walked right straight up without stopping. There were no notches in the tree. He had no ropes to help him. He merely walked up the tree, one hundred and twenty-five feet in the air, and cast down the nuts from the summit. Not every man there had the physical stamina for such a feat, or the lungs, rather, for most of them were coughing their lives away. Some of the women kept up a ceaseless moaning and groaning, so badly were their lungs wasted. Very few of either sex were full-blooded Marquesans. They were mostly half-breeds and three-quarter-breeds of French, English, Danish, and Chinese extraction. At the best, these infusions of fresh blood merely delayed the passing, and the results led one to wonder whether it was worth while.
The feast was served on a broad pae-pae, the rear portion of which was occupied by the house in which we were to sleep. The first course was raw fish and poi-poi, the latter sharp and more acrid of taste than the poi of Hawaii, which is made from taro. The poi-poi of the Marquesas is made from breadfruit. The ripe fruit, after the core is removed, is placed in a calabash and pounded with a stone pestle into a stiff, sticky paste. In this stage of the process, wrapped in leaves, it can be buried in the ground, where it will keep for years. Before it can be eaten, however, further processes are necessary. A leaf-covered package is placed among hot stones, like the pig, and thoroughly baked. After that it is mixed with cold water and thinned out—not thin enough to run, but thin enough to be eaten by sticking one’s first and second fingers into it. On close acquaintance it proves a pleasant and most healthful food. And breadfruit, ripe and well boiled or roasted! It is delicious. Breadfruit and taro are kingly vegetables, the pair of them, though the former is patently a misnomer and more resembles a sweet potato than anything else, though it is not mealy like a sweet potato, nor is it so sweet.
The feast ended, we watched the moon rise over Typee. The air was like balm, faintly scented with the breath of flowers. It was a magic night, deathly still, without the slightest breeze to stir the foliage; and one caught one’s breath and felt the pang that is almost hurt, so exquisite was the beauty of it. Faint and far could be heard the thin thunder of the surf upon the beach. There were no beds; and we drowsed and slept wherever we thought the floor softest. Near by, a woman panted and moaned in her sleep, and all about us the dying islanders coughed in the night.
I first met him on Market Street in San Francisco. It was a wet and drizzly afternoon, and he was striding along, clad solely in a pair of abbreviated knee-trousers and an abbreviated shirt, his bare feet going slick-slick through the pavement-slush. At his heels trooped a score of excited gamins. Every head—and there were thousands—turned to glance curiously at him as he went by. And I turned, too. Never had I seen such lovely sunburn. He was all sunburn, of the sort a blond takes on when his skin does not peel. His long yellow hair was burnt, so was his beard, which sprang from a soil unploughed by any razor. He was a tawny man, a golden-tawny man, all glowing and radiant with the sun. Another prophet, thought I, come up to town with a message that will save the world.
A few weeks later I was with some friends in their bungalow in the Piedmont hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. “We’ve got him, we’ve got him,” they barked. “We caught him up a tree; but he’s all right now, he’ll feed from the hand. Come on and see him.” So I accompanied them up a dizzy hill, and in a rickety shack in the midst of a eucalyptus grove found my sunburned prophet of the city pavements.
He hastened to meet us, arriving in the whirl and blur of a handspring. He did not shake hands with us; instead, his greeting took the form of stunts. He turned more handsprings. He twisted his body sinuously, like a snake, until, having sufficiently limbered up, he bent from the hips, and, with legs straight and knees touching, beat a tattoo on the ground with the palms of his hands. He whirligigged and pirouetted, dancing and cavorting round like an inebriated ape. All the sun-warmth of his ardent life beamed in his face. I am so happy, was the song without words he sang.
He sang it all evening, ringing the changes on it with an endless variety of stunts. “A fool! a fool! I met a fool in the forest!” thought I, and a worthy fool he proved. Between handsprings and whirligigs he delivered his message that would save the world. It was twofold. First, let suffering humanity strip off its clothing and run wild in the mountains and valleys; and, second, let the very miserable world adopt phonetic spelling. I caught a glimpse of the great social problems being settled by the city populations swarming naked over the landscape, to the popping of shot-guns, the barking of ranch-dogs, and countless assaults with pitchforks wielded by irate farmers.
The years passed, and, one sunny morning, the Snark poked her nose into a narrow opening in a reef that smoked with the crashing impact of the trade-wind swell, and beat slowly up Papeete harbour. Coming off to us was a boat, flying a yellow flag. We knew it contained the port doctor. But quite a distance off, in its wake, was a tiny out rigger canoe that puzzled us. It was flying a red flag. I studied it through the glasses, fearing that it marked some hidden danger to navigation, some recent wreck or some buoy or beacon that had been swept away. Then the doctor came on board. After he had examined the state of our health and been assured that we had no live rats hidden away in the Snark, I asked him the meaning of the red flag. “Oh, that is Darling,” was the answer.
And then Darling, Ernest Darling flying the red flag that is indicative of the brotherhood of man, hailed us. “Hello, Jack!” he called. “Hello, Charmian!” He paddled swiftly nearer, and I saw that he was the tawny prophet of the Piedmont hills. He came over the side, a sun-god clad in a scarlet loin-cloth, with presents of Arcady and greeting in both his hands—a bottle of golden honey and a leaf-basket filled with great golden mangoes, golden bananas specked with freckles of deeper gold, golden pine-apples and golden limes, and juicy oranges minted from the same precious ore of sun and soil. And in this fashion under the southern sky, I met once more Darling, the Nature Man.
Tahiti is one of the most beautiful spots in the world, inhabited by thieves and robbers and liars, also by several honest and truthful men and women. Wherefore, because of the blight cast upon Tahiti’s wonderful beauty by the spidery human vermin that infest it, I am minded to write, not of Tahiti, but of the Nature Man. He, at least, is refreshing and wholesome. The spirit that emanates from him is so gentle and sweet that it would harm nothing, hurt nobody’s feelings save the feelings of a predatory and plutocratic capitalist.
“What does this red flag mean?” I asked.
“Socialism, of course.”
“Yes, yes, I know that,” I went on; “but what does it mean in your hands?”
“Why, that I’ve found my message.”
“And that you are delivering it to Tahiti?” I demanded incredulously.
“Sure,” he answered simply; and later on I found that he was, too.
When we dropped anchor, lowered a small boat into the water, and started ashore, the Nature Man joined us. Now, thought I, I shall be pestered to death by this crank. Waking or sleeping I shall never be quit of him until I sail away from here.
But never in my life was I more mistaken. I took a house and went to live and work in it, and the Nature Man never came near me. He was waiting for the invitation. In the meantime he went aboard the Snark and took possession of her library, delighted by the quantity of scientific books, and shocked, as I learned afterwards, by the inordinate amount of fiction. The Nature Man never wastes time on fiction.
After a week or so, my conscience smote me, and I invited him to dinner at a downtown hotel.
He arrived, looking unwontedly stiff and uncomfortable in a cotton jacket. When invited to peel it off, he beamed his gratitude and joy, and did so, revealing his sun-gold skin, from waist to shoulder, covered only by a piece of fish-net of coarse twine and large of mesh. A scarlet loin-cloth completed his costume. I began my acquaintance with him that night, and during my long stay in Tahiti that acquaintance ripened into friendship.
“So you write books,” he said, one day when, tired and sweaty, I finished my morning’s work.
“I, too, write books,” he announced.
Aha, thought I, now at last is he going to pester me with his literary efforts. My soul was in revolt. I had not come all the way to the South Seas to be a literary bureau.
“This is the book I write,” he explained, smashing himself a resounding blow on the chest with his clenched fist. “The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his chest till the noise of it can be heard half a mile away.”
“A pretty good chest,” quoth I, admiringly; “it would even make a gorilla envious.”
And then, and later, I learned the details of the marvellous book Ernest Darling had written. Twelve years ago he lay close to death. He weighed but ninety pounds, and was too weak to speak. The doctors had given him up. His father, a practising physician, had given him up. Consultations with other physicians had been held upon him. There was no hope for him. Overstudy (as a school-teacher and as a university student) and two successive attacks of pneumonia were responsible for his breakdown. Day by day he was losing strength. He could extract no nutrition from the heavy foods they gave him; nor could pellets and powders help his stomach to do the work of digestion. Not only was he a physical wreck, but he was a mental wreck. His mind was overwrought. He was sick and tired of medicine, and he was sick and tired of persons. Human speech jarred upon him. Human attentions drove him frantic. The thought came to him that since he was going to die, he might as well die in the open, away from all the bother and irritation. And behind this idea lurked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not die after all if only he could escape from the heavy foods, the medicines, and the well-intentioned persons who made him frantic.
So Ernest Darling, a bag of bones and a death’s-head, a perambulating corpse, with just the dimmest flutter of life in it to make it perambulate, turned his back upon men and the habitations of men and dragged himself for five miles through the brush, away from the city of Portland, Oregon. Of course he was crazy. Only a lunatic would drag himself out of his death-bed.
But in the brush, Darling found what he was looking for—rest. Nobody bothered him with beefsteaks and pork. No physicians lacerated his tired nerves by feeling his pulse, nor tormented his tired stomach with pellets and powders. He began to feel soothed. The sun was shining warm, and he basked in it. He had the feeling that the sun shine was an elixir of health. Then it seemed to him that his whole wasted wreck of a body was crying for the sun. He stripped off his clothes and bathed in the sunshine. He felt better. It had done him good—the first relief in weary months of pain.
As he grew better, he sat up and began to take notice. All about him were the birds fluttering and chirping, the squirrels chattering and playing. He envied them their health and spirits, their happy, care-free existence. That he should contrast their condition with his was inevitable; and that he should question why they were splendidly vigorous while he was a feeble, dying wraith of a man, was likewise inevitable. His conclusion was the very obvious one, namely, that they lived naturally, while he lived most unnaturally; therefore, if he intended to live, he must return to nature.
Alone, there in the brush, he worked out his problem and began to apply it. He stripped off his clothing and leaped and gambolled about, running on all fours, climbing trees; in short, doing physical stunts,—and all the time soaking in the sunshine. He imitated the animals. He built a nest of dry leaves and grasses in which to sleep at night, covering it over with bark as a protection against the early fall rains. “Here is a beautiful exercise,” he told me, once, flapping his arms mightily against his sides; “I learned it from watching the roosters crow.” Another time I remarked the loud, sucking intake with which he drank cocoanut-milk. He explained that he had noticed the cows drinking that way and concluded there must be something in it. He tried it and found it good, and thereafter he drank only in that fashion.
He noted that the squirrels lived on fruits and nuts. He started on a fruit-and-nut diet, helped out by bread, and he grew stronger and put on weight. For three months he continued his primordial existence in the brush, and then the heavy Oregon rains drove him back to the habitations of men. Not in three months could a ninety-pound survivor of two attacks of pneumonia develop sufficient ruggedness to live through an Oregon winter in the open.
He had accomplished much, but he had been driven in. There was no place to go but back to his father’s house, and there, living in close rooms with lungs that panted for all the air of the open sky, he was brought down by a third attack of pneumonia. He grew weaker even than before. In that tottering tabernacle of flesh, his brain collapsed. He lay like a corpse, too weak to stand the fatigue of speaking, too irritated and tired in his miserable brain to care to listen to the speech of others. The only act of will of which he was capable was to stick his fingers in his ears and resolutely to refuse to hear a single word that was spoken to him. They sent for the insanity experts. He was adjudged insane, and also the verdict was given that he would not live a month.
By one such mental expert he was carted off to a sanatorium on Mt. Tabor. Here, when they learned that he was harmless, they gave him his own way. They no longer dictated as to the food he ate, so he resumed his fruits and nuts—olive oil, peanut butter, and bananas the chief articles of his diet. As he regained his strength he made up his mind to live thenceforth his own life. If he lived like others, according to social conventions, he would surely die. And he did not want to die. The fear of death was one of the strongest factors in the genesis of the Nature Man. To live, he must have a natural diet, the open air, and the blessed sunshine.
Now an Oregon winter has no inducements for those who wish to return to Nature, so Darling started out in search of a climate. He mounted a bicycle and headed south for the sunlands. Stanford University claimed him for a year. Here he studied and worked his way, attending lectures in as scant garb as the authorities would allow and applying as much as possible the principles of living that he had learned in squirrel-town. His favourite method of study was to go off in the hills back of the University, and there to strip off his clothes and lie on the grass, soaking in sunshine and health at the same time that he soaked in knowledge.
But Central California has her winters, and the quest for a Nature Man’s climate drew him on. He tried Los Angeles and Southern California, being arrested a few times and brought before the insanity commissions because, forsooth, his mode of life was not modelled after the mode of life of his fellow-men. He tried Hawaii, where, unable to prove him insane, the authorities deported him. It was not exactly a deportation. He could have remained by serving a year in prison. They gave him his choice. Now prison is death to the Nature Man, who thrives only in the open air and in God’s sunshine. The authorities of Hawaii are not to be blamed. Darling was an undesirable citizen. Any man is undesirable who disagrees with one. And that any man should disagree to the extent Darling did in his philosophy of the simple life is ample vindication of the Hawaiian authorities verdict of his undesirableness.
So Darling went thence in search of a climate which would not only be desirable, but wherein he would not be undesirable. And he found it in Tahiti, the garden-spot of garden-spots. And so it was, according to the narrative as given, that he wrote the pages of his book. He wears only a loin-cloth and a sleeveless fish-net shirt. His stripped weight is one hundred and sixty-five pounds. His health is perfect. His eyesight, that at one time was considered ruined, is excellent. The lungs that were practically destroyed by three attacks of pneumonia have not only recovered, but are stronger than ever before.
I shall never forget the first time, while talking to me, that he squashed a mosquito. The stinging pest had settled in the middle of his back between his shoulders. Without interrupting the flow of conversation, without dropping even a syllable, his clenched fist shot up in the air, curved backward, and smote his back between the shoulders, killing the mosquito and making his frame resound like a bass drum. It reminded me of nothing so much as of horses kicking the woodwork in their stalls.
“The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his chest until the noise of it can be heard half a mile away,” he will announce suddenly, and thereat beat a hair-raising, devil’s tattoo on his own chest.
One day he noticed a set of boxing-gloves hanging on the wall, and promptly his eyes brightened.
“Do you box?” I asked.
“I used to give lessons in boxing when I was at Stanford,” was the reply.
And there and then we stripped and put on the gloves. Bang! a long, gorilla arm flashed out, landing the gloved end on my nose. Biff! he caught me, in a duck, on the side of the head nearly knocking me over sidewise. I carried the lump raised by that blow for a week. I ducked under a straight left, and landed a straight right on his stomach. It was a fearful blow. The whole weight of my body was behind it, and his body had been met as it lunged forward. I looked for him to crumple up and go down. Instead of which his face beamed approval, and he said, “That was beautiful.” The next instant I was covering up and striving to protect myself from a hurricane of hooks, jolts, and uppercuts. Then I watched my chance and drove in for the solar plexus. I hit the mark. The Nature Man dropped his arms, gasped, and sat down suddenly.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “Just wait a moment.”
And inside thirty seconds he was on his feet—ay, and returning the compliment, for he hooked me in the solar plexus, and I gasped, dropped my hands, and sat down just a trifle more suddenly than he had.
All of which I submit as evidence that the man I boxed with was a totally different man from the poor, ninety-pound weight of eight years before, who, given up by physicians and alienists, lay gasping his life away in a closed room in Portland, Oregon. The book that Ernest Darling has written is a good book, and the binding is good, too.
Hawaii has wailed for years her need for desirable immigrants. She has spent much time, and thought, and money, in importing desirable citizens, and she has, as yet, nothing much to show for it. Yet Hawaii deported the Nature Man. She refused to give him a chance. So it is, to chasten Hawaii’s proud spirit, that I take this opportunity to show her what she has lost in the Nature Man. When he arrived in Tahiti, he proceeded to seek out a piece of land on which to grow the food he ate. But land was difficult to find—that is, inexpensive land. The Nature Man was not rolling in wealth. He spent weeks in wandering over the steep hills, until, high up the mountain, where clustered several tiny canyons, he found eighty acres of brush-jungle which were apparently unrecorded as the property of any one. The government officials told him that if he would clear the land and till it for thirty years he would be given a title for it.
Immediately he set to work. And never was there such work. Nobody farmed that high up. The land was covered with matted jungle and overrun by wild pigs and countless rats. The view of Papeete and the sea was magnificent, but the outlook was not encouraging. He spent weeks in building a road in order to make the plantation accessible. The pigs and the rats ate up whatever he planted as fast as it sprouted. He shot the pigs and trapped the rats. Of the latter, in two weeks he caught fifteen hundred. Everything had to be carried up on his back. He usually did his packhorse work at night.
Gradually he began to win out. A grass-walled house was built. On the fertile, volcanic soil he had wrested from the jungle and jungle beasts were growing five hundred cocoanut trees, five hundred papaia trees, three hundred mango trees, many breadfruit trees and alligator-pear trees, to say nothing of vines, bushes, and vegetables. He developed the drip of the hills in the canyons and worked out an efficient irrigation scheme, ditching the water from canyon to canyon and paralleling the ditches at different altitudes. His narrow canyons became botanical gardens. The arid shoulders of the hills, where formerly the blazing sun had parched the jungle and beaten it close to earth, blossomed into trees and shrubs and flowers. Not only had the Nature Man become self-supporting, but he was now a prosperous agriculturist with produce to sell to the city-dwellers of Papeete.
Then it was discovered that his land, which the government officials had informed him was without an owner, really had an owner, and that deeds, descriptions, etc., were on record. All his work bade fare to be lost. The land had been valueless when he took it up, and the owner, a large landholder, was unaware of the extent to which the Nature Man had developed it. A just price was agreed upon, and Darling’s deed was officially filed.
Next came a more crushing blow. Darling’s access to market was destroyed. The road he had built was fenced across by triple barb-wire fences. It was one of those jumbles in human affairs that is so common in this absurdest of social systems. Behind it was the fine hand of the same conservative element that haled the Nature Man before the Insanity Commission in Los Angeles and that deported him from Hawaii. It is so hard for self-satisfied men to understand any man whose satisfactions are fundamentally different. It seems clear that the officials have connived with the conservative element, for to this day the road the Nature Man built is closed; nothing has been done about it, while an adamant unwillingness to do anything about it is evidenced on every hand. But the Nature Man dances and sings along his way. He does not sit up nights thinking about the wrong which has been done him; he leaves the worrying to the doers of the wrong. He has no time for bitterness. He believes he is in the world for the purpose of being happy, and he has not a moment to waste in any other pursuit.
The road to his plantation is blocked. He cannot build a new road, for there is no ground on which he can build it. The government has restricted him to a wild-pig trail which runs precipitously up the mountain. I climbed the trail with him, and we had to climb with hands and feet in order to get up. Nor can that wild-pig trail be made into a road by any amount of toil less than that of an engineer, a steam-engine, and a steel cable. But what does the Nature Man care? In his gentle ethics the evil men do him he requites with goodness. And who shall say he is not happier than they?
“Never mind their pesky road,” he said to me as we dragged ourselves up a shelf of rock and sat down, panting, to rest. “I’ll get an air machine soon and fool them. I’m clearing a level space for a landing stage for the airships, and next time you come to Tahiti you will alight right at my door.”
Yes, the Nature Man has some strange ideas besides that of the gorilla pounding his chest in the African jungle. The Nature Man has ideas about levitation. “Yes, sir,” he said to me, “levitation is not impossible. And think of the glory of it—lifting one’s self from the ground by an act of will. Think of it! The astronomers tell us that our whole solar system is dying; that, barring accidents, it will all be so cold that no life can live upon it. Very well. In that day all men will be accomplished levitationists, and they will leave this perishing planet and seek more hospitable worlds. How can levitation be accomplished? By progressive fasts. Yes, I have tried them, and toward the end I could feel myself actually getting lighter.”
The man is a maniac, thought I.
“Of course,” he added, “these are only theories of mine. I like to speculate upon the glorious future of man. Levitation may not be possible, but I like to think of it as possible.”
One evening, when he yawned, I asked him how much sleep he allowed himself.
“Seven hours,” was the answer. “But in ten years I’ll be sleeping only six hours, and in twenty years only five hours. You see, I shall cut off an hour’s sleep every ten years.”
“Then when you are a hundred you won’t be sleeping at all,” I interjected.
“Just that. Exactly that. When I am a hundred I shall not require sleep. Also, I shall be living on air. There are plants that live on air, you know.”
“But has any man ever succeeded in doing it?”
He shook his head.
“I never heard of him if he did. But it is only a theory of mine, this living on air. It would be fine, wouldn’t it? Of course it may be impossible—most likely it is. You see, I am not unpractical. I never forget the present. When I soar ahead into the future, I always leave a string by which to find my way back again.”
I fear me the Nature Man is a joker. At any rate he lives the simple life. His laundry bill cannot be large. Up on his plantation he lives on fruit the labour cost of which, in cash, he estimates at five cents a day. At present, because of his obstructed road and because he is head over heels in the propaganda of socialism, he is living in town, where his expenses, including rent, are twenty-five cents a day. In order to pay those expenses he is running a night school for Chinese.
The Nature Man is not bigoted. When there is nothing better to eat than meat, he eats meat, as, for instance, when in jail or on shipboard and the nuts and fruits give out. Nor does he seem to crystallize into anything except sunburn.
“Drop anchor anywhere and the anchor will drag—that is, if your soul is a limitless, fathomless sea, and not dog-pound,” he quoted to me, then added: “You see, my anchor is always dragging. I live for human health and progress, and I strive to drag my anchor always in that direction. To me, the two are identical. Dragging anchor is what has saved me. My anchor did not hold me to my death-bed. I dragged anchor into the brush and fooled the doctors. When I recovered health and strength, I started, by preaching and by example, to teach the people to become nature men and nature women. But they had deaf ears. Then, on the steamer coming to Tahiti, a quarter-master expounded socialism to me. He showed me that an economic square deal was necessary before men and women could live naturally. So I dragged anchor once more, and now I am working for the co-operative commonwealth. When that arrives, it will be easy to bring about nature living.
“I had a dream last night,” he went on thoughtfully, his face slowly breaking into a glow. “It seemed that twenty-five nature men and nature women had just arrived on the steamer from California, and that I was starting to go with them up the wild-pig trail to the plantation.”
Ah, me, Ernest Darling, sun-worshipper and nature man, there are times when I am compelled to envy you and your carefree existence. I see you now, dancing up the steps and cutting antics on the veranda; your hair dripping from a plunge in the salt sea, your eyes sparkling, your sun-gilded body flashing, your chest resounding to the devil’s own tattoo as you chant: “The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his chest until the noise of it can be heard half a mile away.” And I shall see you always as I saw you that last day, when the Snark poked her nose once more through the passage in the smoking reef, outward bound, and I waved good-bye to those on shore. Not least in goodwill and affection was the wave I gave to the golden sun-god in the scarlet loin-cloth, standing upright in his tiny outrigger canoe.
On the arrival of strangers, every man endeavoured to obtain one as a friend and carry him off to his own habitation, where he is treated with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants of the district; they place him on a high seat and feed him with abundance of the finest food.—Polynesian Researches.
The Snark was lying at anchor at Raiatea, just off the village of Uturoa. She had arrived the night before, after dark, and we were preparing to pay our first visit ashore. Early in the morning I had noticed a tiny outrigger canoe, with an impossible spritsail, skimming the surface of the lagoon. The canoe itself was coffin-shaped, a mere dugout, fourteen feet long, a scant twelve inches wide, and maybe twenty-four inches deep. It had no lines, except in so far that it was sharp at both ends. Its sides were perpendicular. Shorn of the outrigger, it would have capsized of itself inside a tenth of a second. It was the outrigger that kept it right side up.
I have said that the sail was impossible. It was. It was one of those things, not that you have to see to believe, but that you cannot believe after you have seen it. The hoist of it and the length of its boom were sufficiently appalling; but, not content with that, its artificer had given it a tremendous head. So large was the head that no common sprit could carry the strain of it in an ordinary breeze. So a spar had been lashed to the canoe, projecting aft over the water. To this had been made fast a sprit guy: thus, the foot of the sail was held by the main-sheet, and the peak by the guy to the sprit.
It was not a mere boat, not a mere canoe, but a sailing machine. And the man in it sailed it by his weight and his nerve—principally by the latter. I watched the canoe beat up from leeward and run in toward the village, its sole occupant far out on the outrigger and luffing up and spilling the wind in the puffs.
“Well, I know one thing,” I announced; “I don’t leave Raiatea till I have a ride in that canoe.”
A few minutes later Warren called down the companionway, “Here’s that canoe you were talking about.”
Promptly I dashed on deck and gave greeting to its owner, a tall, slender Polynesian, ingenuous of face, and with clear, sparkling, intelligent eyes. He was clad in a scarlet loin-cloth and a straw hat. In his hands were presents—a fish, a bunch of greens, and several enormous yams. All of which acknowledged by smiles (which are coinage still in isolated spots of Polynesia) and by frequent repetitions of mauruuru (which is the Tahitian “thank you”), I proceeded to make signs that I desired to go for a sail in his canoe.
His face lighted with pleasure and he uttered the single word, “Tahaa,” turning at the same time and pointing to the lofty, cloud-draped peaks of an island three miles away—the island of Tahaa. It was fair wind over, but a head-beat back. Now I did not want to go to Tahaa. I had letters to deliver in Raiatea, and officials to see, and there was Charmian down below getting ready to go ashore. By insistent signs I indicated that I desired no more than a short sail on the lagoon. Quick was the disappointment in his face, yet smiling was the acquiescence.
“Come on for a sail,” I called below to Charmian. “But put on your swimming suit. It’s going to be wet.”
It wasn’t real. It was a dream. That canoe slid over the water like a streak of silver. I climbed out on the outrigger and supplied the weight to hold her down, while Tehei (pronounced Tayhayee) supplied the nerve. He, too, in the puffs, climbed part way out on the outrigger, at the same time steering with both hands on a large paddle and holding the mainsheet with his foot.
“Ready about!” he called.
I carefully shifted my weight inboard in order to maintain the equilibrium as the sail emptied.
“Hard a-lee!” he called, shooting her into the wind.
I slid out on the opposite side over the water on a spar lashed across the canoe, and we were full and away on the other tack.
“All right,” said Tehei.
Those three phrases, “Ready about,” “Hard a-lee,” and “All right,” comprised Tehei’s English vocabulary and led me to suspect that at some time he had been one of a Kanaka crew under an American captain. Between the puffs I made signs to him and repeatedly and interrogatively uttered the word sailor. Then I tried it in atrocious French. Marin conveyed no meaning to him; nor did matelot. Either my French was bad, or else he was not up in it. I have since concluded that both conjectures were correct. Finally, I began naming over the adjacent islands. He nodded that he had been to them. By the time my quest reached Tahiti, he caught my drift. His thought-processes were almost visible, and it was a joy to watch him think. He nodded his head vigorously. Yes, he had been to Tahiti, and he added himself names of islands such as Tikihau, Rangiroa, and Fakarava, thus proving that he had sailed as far as the Paumotus—undoubtedly one of the crew of a trading schooner.
After our short sail, when he had returned on board, he by signs inquired the destination of the Snark, and when I had mentioned Samoa, Fiji, New Guinea, France, England, and California in their geographical sequence, he said “Samoa,” and by gestures intimated that he wanted to go along. Whereupon I was hard put to explain that there was no room for him. “Petit bateau” finally solved it, and again the disappointment in his face was accompanied by smiling acquiescence, and promptly came the renewed invitation to accompany him to Tahaa.
Charmian and I looked at each other. The exhilaration of the ride we had taken was still upon us. Forgotten were the letters to Raiatea, the officials we had to visit. Shoes, a shirt, a pair of trousers, cigarettes, matches, and a book to read were hastily crammed into a biscuit tin and wrapped in a rubber blanket, and we were over the side and into the canoe.
“When shall we look for you?” Warren called, as the wind filled the sail and sent Tehei and me scurrying out on the outrigger.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “When we get back, as near as I can figure it.”
And away we went. The wind had increased, and with slacked sheets we ran off before it. The freeboard of the canoe was no more than two and a half inches, and the little waves continually lapped over the side. This required bailing. Now bailing is one of the principal functions of the vahine. Vahine is the Tahitian for woman, and Charmian being the only vahine aboard, the bailing fell appropriately to her. Tehei and I could not very well do it, the both of us being perched part way out on the outrigger and busied with keeping the canoe bottom-side down. So Charmian bailed, with a wooden scoop of primitive design, and so well did she do it that there were occasions when she could rest off almost half the time.
Raiatea and Tahaa are unique in that they lie inside the same encircling reef. Both are volcanic islands, ragged of sky-line, with heaven-aspiring peaks and minarets. Since Raiatea is thirty miles in circumference, and Tahaa fifteen miles, some idea may be gained of the magnitude of the reef that encloses them. Between them and the reef stretches from one to two miles of water, forming a beautiful lagoon. The huge Pacific seas, extending in unbroken lines sometimes a mile or half as much again in length, hurl themselves upon the reef, overtowering and falling upon it with tremendous crashes, and yet the fragile coral structure withstands the shock and protects the land. Outside lies destruction to the mightiest ship afloat. Inside reigns the calm of untroubled water, whereon a canoe like ours can sail with no more than a couple of inches of free-board.
We flew over the water. And such water!—clear as the clearest spring-water, and crystalline in its clearness, all intershot with a maddening pageant of colours and rainbow ribbons more magnificently gorgeous than any rainbow. Jade green alternated with turquoise, peacock blue with emerald, while now the canoe skimmed over reddish purple pools, and again over pools of dazzling, shimmering white where pounded coral sand lay beneath and upon which oozed monstrous sea-slugs. One moment we were above wonder-gardens of coral, wherein coloured fishes disported, fluttering like marine butterflies; the next moment we were dashing across the dark surface of deep channels, out of which schools of flying fish lifted their silvery flight; and a third moment we were above other gardens of living coral, each more wonderful than the last. And above all was the tropic, trade-wind sky with its fluffy clouds racing across the zenith and heaping the horizon with their soft masses.
Before we were aware, we were close in to Tahaa (pronounced Tah-hah-ah, with equal accents), and Tehei was grinning approval of the vahine’s proficiency at bailing. The canoe grounded on a shallow shore, twenty feet from land, and we waded out on a soft bottom where big slugs curled and writhed under our feet and where small octopuses advertised their existence by their superlative softness when stepped upon. Close to the beach, amid cocoanut palms and banana trees, erected on stilts, built of bamboo, with a grass-thatched roof, was Tehei’s house. And out of the house came Tehei’s vahine, a slender mite of a woman, kindly eyed and Mongolian of feature—when she was not North American Indian. “Bihaura,” Tehei called her, but he did not pronounce it according to English notions of spelling. Spelled “Bihaura,” it sounded like Bee-ah-oo-rah, with every syllable sharply emphasized.
She took Charmian by the hand and led her into the house, leaving Tehei and me to follow. Here, by sign-language unmistakable, we were informed that all they possessed was ours. No hidalgo was ever more generous in the expression of giving, while I am sure that few hidalgos were ever as generous in the actual practice. We quickly discovered that we dare not admire their possessions, for whenever we did admire a particular object it was immediately presented to us. The two vahines, according to the way of vahines, got together in a discussion and examination of feminine fripperies, while Tehei and I, manlike, went over fishing-tackle and wild-pig-hunting, to say nothing of the device whereby bonitas are caught on forty-foot poles from double canoes. Charmian admired a sewing basket—the best example she had seen of Polynesian basketry; it was hers. I admired a bonita hook, carved in one piece from a pearl-shell; it was mine. Charmian was attracted by a fancy braid of straw sennit, thirty feet of it in a roll, sufficient to make a hat of any design one wished; the roll of sennit was hers. My gaze lingered upon a poi-pounder that dated back to the old stone days; it was mine. Charmian dwelt a moment too long on a wooden poi-bowl, canoe-shaped, with four legs, all carved in one piece of wood; it was hers. I glanced a second time at a gigantic cocoanut calabash; it was mine. Then Charmian and I held a conference in which we resolved to admire no more—not because it did not pay well enough, but because it paid too well. Also, we were already racking our brains over the contents of the Snark for suitable return presents. Christmas is an easy problem compared with a Polynesian giving-feast.
We sat on the cool porch, on Bihaura’s best mats while dinner was preparing, and at the same time met the villagers. In twos and threes and groups they strayed along, shaking hands and uttering the Tahitian word of greeting—Ioarana, pronounced yo-rah-nah. The men, big strapping fellows, were in loin-cloths, with here and there no shirt, while the women wore the universal ahu, a sort of adult pinafore that flows in graceful lines from the shoulders to the ground. Sad to see was the elephantiasis that afflicted some of them. Here would be a comely woman of magnificent proportions, with the port of a queen, yet marred by one arm four times—or a dozen times—the size of the other. Beside her might stand a six-foot man, erect, mighty-muscled, bronzed, with the body of a god, yet with feet and calves so swollen that they ran together, forming legs, shapeless, monstrous, that were for all the world like elephant legs.
No one seems really to know the cause of the South Sea elephantiasis. One theory is that it is caused by the drinking of polluted water. Another theory attributes it to inoculation through mosquito bites. A third theory charges it to predisposition plus the process of acclimatization. On the other hand, no one that stands in finicky dread of it and similar diseases can afford to travel in the South Seas. There will be occasions when such a one must drink water. There may be also occasions when the mosquitoes let up biting. But every precaution of the finicky one will be useless. If he runs barefoot across the beach to have a swim, he will tread where an elephantiasis case trod a few minutes before. If he closets himself in his own house, yet every bit of fresh food on his table will have been subjected to the contamination, be it flesh, fish, fowl, or vegetable. In the public market at Papeete two known lepers run stalls, and heaven alone knows through what channels arrive at that market the daily supplies of fish, fruit, meat, and vegetables. The only happy way to go through the South Seas is with a careless poise, without apprehension, and with a Christian Science-like faith in the resplendent fortune of your own particular star. When you see a woman, afflicted with elephantiasis wringing out cream from cocoanut meat with her naked hands, drink and reflect how good is the cream, forgetting the hands that pressed it out. Also, remember that diseases such as elephantiasis and leprosy do not seem to be caught by contact.
We watched a Raratongan woman, with swollen, distorted limbs, prepare our cocoanut cream, and then went out to the cook-shed where Tehei and Bihaura were cooking dinner. And then it was served to us on a dry-goods box in the house. Our hosts waited until we were done and then spread their table on the floor. But our table! We were certainly in the high seat of abundance. First, there was glorious raw fish, caught several hours before from the sea and steeped the intervening time in lime-juice diluted with water. Then came roast chicken. Two cocoanuts, sharply sweet, served for drink. There were bananas that tasted like strawberries and that melted in the mouth, and there was banana-poi that made one regret that his Yankee forebears ever attempted puddings. Then there was boiled yam, boiled taro, and roasted feis, which last are nothing more or less than large mealy, juicy, red-coloured cooking bananas. We marvelled at the abundance, and, even as we marvelled, a pig was brought on, a whole pig, a sucking pig, swathed in green leaves and roasted upon the hot stones of a native oven, the most honourable and triumphant dish in the Polynesian cuisine. And after that came coffee, black coffee, delicious coffee, native coffee grown on the hillsides of Tahaa.
Tehei’s fishing-tackle fascinated me, and after we arranged to go fishing, Charmian and I decided to remain all night. Again Tehei broached Samoa, and again my petit bateau brought the disappointment and the smile of acquiescence to his face. Bora Bora was my next port. It was not so far away but that cutters made the passage back and forth between it and Raiatea. So I invited Tehei to go that far with us on the Snark. Then I learned that his wife had been born on Bora Bora and still owned a house there. She likewise was invited, and immediately came the counter invitation to stay with them in their house in Born Bora. It was Monday. Tuesday we would go fishing and return to Raiatea. Wednesday we would sail by Tahaa and off a certain point, a mile away, pick up Tehei and Bihaura and go on to Bora Bora. All this we arranged in detail, and talked over scores of other things as well, and yet Tehei knew three phrases in English, Charmian and I knew possibly a dozen Tahitian words, and among the four of us there were a dozen or so French words that all understood. Of course, such polyglot conversation was slow, but, eked out with a pad, a lead pencil, the face of a clock Charmian drew on the back of a pad, and with ten thousand and one gestures, we managed to get on very nicely.
At the first moment we evidenced an inclination for bed the visiting natives, with soft Iaoranas, faded away, and Tehei and Bihaura likewise faded away. The house consisted of one large room, and it was given over to us, our hosts going elsewhere to sleep. In truth, their castle was ours. And right here, I want to say that of all the entertainment I have received in this world at the hands of all sorts of races in all sorts of places, I have never received entertainment that equalled this at the hands of this brown-skinned couple of Tahaa. I do not refer to the presents, the free-handed generousness, the high abundance, but to the fineness of courtesy and consideration and tact, and to the sympathy that was real sympathy in that it was understanding. They did nothing they thought ought to be done for us, according to their standards, but they did what they divined we wanted to be done for us, while their divination was most successful. It would be impossible to enumerate the hundreds of little acts of consideration they performed during the few days of our intercourse. Let it suffice for me to say that of all hospitality and entertainment I have known, in no case was theirs not only not excelled, but in no case was it quite equalled. Perhaps the most delightful feature of it was that it was due to no training, to no complex social ideals, but that it was the untutored and spontaneous outpouring from their hearts.
The next morning we went fishing, that is, Tehei, Charmian, and I did, in the coffin-shaped canoe; but this time the enormous sail was left behind. There was no room for sailing and fishing at the same time in that tiny craft. Several miles away, inside the reef, in a channel twenty fathoms deep, Tehei dropped his baited hooks and rock-sinkers. The bait was chunks of octopus flesh, which he bit out of a live octopus that writhed in the bottom of the canoe. Nine of these lines he set, each line attached to one end of a short length of bamboo floating on the surface. When a fish was hooked, the end of the bamboo was drawn under the water. Naturally, the other end rose up in the air, bobbing and waving frantically for us to make haste. And make haste we did, with whoops and yells and driving paddles, from one signalling bamboo to another, hauling up from the depths great glistening beauties from two to three feet in length.
Steadily, to the eastward, an ominous squall had been rising and blotting out the bright trade-wind sky. And we were three miles to leeward of home. We started as the first wind-gusts whitened the water. Then came the rain, such rain as only the tropics afford, where every tap and main in the sky is open wide, and when, to top it all, the very reservoir itself spills over in blinding deluge. Well, Charmian was in a swimming suit, I was in pyjamas, and Tehei wore only a loin-cloth. Bihaura was on the beach waiting for us, and she led Charmian into the house in much the same fashion that the mother leads in the naughty little girl who has been playing in mud-puddles.
It was a change of clothes and a dry and quiet smoke while kai-kai was preparing. Kai-kai, by the way, is the Polynesian for “food” or “to eat,” or, rather, it is one form of the original root, whatever it may have been, that has been distributed far and wide over the vast area of the Pacific. It is kai in the Marquesas, Raratonga, Manahiki, Niuë, Fakaafo, Tonga, New Zealand, and Vaté. In Tahiti “to eat” changes to amu, in Hawaii and Samoa to ai, in Ban to kana, in Nina to kana, in Nongone to kaka, and in New Caledonia to ki. But by whatsoever sound or symbol, it was welcome to our ears after that long paddle in the rain. Once more we sat in the high seat of abundance until we regretted that we had been made unlike the image of the giraffe and the camel.
Again, when we were preparing to return to the Snark, the sky to windward turned black and another squall swooped down. But this time it was little rain and all wind. It blew hour after hour, moaning and screeching through the palms, tearing and wrenching and shaking the frail bamboo dwelling, while the outer reef set up a mighty thundering as it broke the force of the swinging seas. Inside the reef, the lagoon, sheltered though it was, was white with fury, and not even Tehei’s seamanship could have enabled his slender canoe to live in such a welter.
By sunset, the back of the squall had broken though it was still too rough for the canoe. So I had Tehei find a native who was willing to venture his cutter across to Raiatea for the outrageous sum of two dollars, Chili, which is equivalent in our money to ninety cents. Half the village was told off to carry presents, with which Tehei and Bihaura speeded their parting guests—captive chickens, fishes dressed and swathed in wrappings of green leaves, great golden bunches of bananas, leafy baskets spilling over with oranges and limes, alligator pears (the butter-fruit, also called the avoca), huge baskets of yams, bunches of taro and cocoanuts, and last of all, large branches and trunks of trees—firewood for the Snark.
While on the way to the cutter we met the only white man on Tahaa, and of all men, George Lufkin, a native of New England! Eighty-six years of age he was, sixty-odd of which, he said, he had spent in the Society Islands, with occasional absences, such as the gold rush to Eldorado in ’forty-nine and a short period of ranching in California near Tulare. Given no more than three months by the doctors to live, he had returned to his South Seas and lived to eighty-six and to chuckle over the doctors aforesaid, who were all in their graves. Fee-fee he had, which is the native for elephantiasis and which is pronounced fay-fay. A quarter of a century before, the disease had fastened upon him, and it would remain with him until he died. We asked him about kith and kin. Beside him sat a sprightly damsel of sixty, his daughter. “She is all I have,” he murmured plaintively, “and she has no children living.”
The cutter was a small, sloop-rigged affair, but large it seemed alongside Tehei’s canoe. On the other hand, when we got out on the lagoon and were struck by another heavy wind-squall, the cutter became liliputian, while the Snark, in our imagination, seemed to promise all the stability and permanence of a continent. They were good boatmen. Tehei and Bihaura had come along to see us home, and the latter proved a good boatwoman herself. The cutter was well ballasted, and we met the squall under full sail. It was getting dark, the lagoon was full of coral patches, and we were carrying on. In the height of the squall we had to go about, in order to make a short leg to windward to pass around a patch of coral no more than a foot under the surface. As the cutter filled on the other tack, and while she was in that “dead” condition that precedes gathering way, she was knocked flat. Jib-sheet and main-sheet were let go, and she righted into the wind. Three times she was knocked down, and three times the sheets were flung loose, before she could get away on that tack.
By the time we went about again, darkness had fallen. We were now to windward of the Snark, and the squall was howling. In came the jib, and down came the mainsail, all but a patch of it the size of a pillow-slip. By an accident we missed the Snark, which was riding it out to two anchors, and drove aground upon the inshore coral. Running the longest line on the Snark by means of the launch, and after an hour’s hard work, we heaved the cutter off and had her lying safely astern.
The day we sailed for Bora Bora the wind was light, and we crossed the lagoon under power to the point where Tehei and Bihaura were to meet us. As we made in to the land between the coral banks, we vainly scanned the shore for our friends. There was no sign of them.
“We can’t wait,” I said. “This breeze won’t fetch us to Bora Bora by dark, and I don’t want to use any more gasolene than I have to.”
You see, gasolene in the South Seas is a problem. One never knows when he will be able to replenish his supply.
But just then Tehei appeared through the trees as he came down to the water. He had peeled off his shirt and was wildly waving it. Bihaura apparently was not ready. Once aboard, Tehei informed us by signs that we must proceed along the land till we got opposite to his house. He took the wheel and conned the Snark through the coral, around point after point till we cleared the last point of all. Cries of welcome went up from the beach, and Bihaura, assisted by several of the villagers, brought off two canoe-loads of abundance. There were yams, taro, feis, breadfruit, cocoanuts, oranges, limes, pineapples, watermelons, alligator pears, pomegranates, fish, chickens galore crowing and cackling and laying eggs on our decks, and a live pig that squealed infernally and all the time in apprehension of imminent slaughter.
Under the rising moon we came in through the perilous passage of the reef of Bora Bora and dropped anchor off Vaitapé village. Bihaura, with housewifely anxiety, could not get ashore too quickly to her house to prepare more abundance for us. While the launch was taking her and Tehei to the little jetty, the sound of music and of singing drifted across the quiet lagoon. Throughout the Society Islands we had been continually informed that we would find the Bora Borans very jolly. Charmian and I went ashore to see, and on the village green, by forgotten graves on the beach, found the youths and maidens dancing, flower-garlanded and flower-bedecked, with strange phosphorescent flowers in their hair that pulsed and dimmed and glowed in the moonlight. Farther along the beach we came upon a huge grass house, oval-shaped seventy feet in length, where the elders of the village were singing himines. They, too, were flower-garlanded and jolly, and they welcomed us into the fold as little lost sheep straying along from outer darkness.
Early next morning Tehei was on board, with a string of fresh-caught fish and an invitation to dinner for that evening. On the way to dinner, we dropped in at the himine house. The same elders were singing, with here or there a youth or maiden that we had not seen the previous night. From all the signs, a feast was in preparation. Towering up from the floor was a mountain of fruits and vegetables, flanked on either side by numerous chickens tethered by cocoanut strips. After several himines had been sung, one of the men arose and made oration. The oration was made to us, and though it was Greek to us, we knew that in some way it connected us with that mountain of provender.
“Can it be that they are presenting us with all that?” Charmian whispered.
“Impossible,” I muttered back. “Why should they be giving it to us? Besides, there is no room on the Snark for it. We could not eat a tithe of it. The rest would spoil. Maybe they are inviting us to the feast. At any rate, that they should give all that to us is impossible.”
Nevertheless we found ourselves once more in the high seat of abundance. The orator, by gestures unmistakable, in detail presented every item in the mountain to us, and next he presented it to us in toto. It was an embarrassing moment. What would you do if you lived in a hall bedroom and a friend gave you a white elephant? Our Snark was no more than a hall bedroom, and already she was loaded down with the abundance of Tahaa. This new supply was too much. We blushed, and stammered, and mauruuru’d. We mauruuru’d with repeated nui’s which conveyed the largeness and overwhelmingness of our thanks. At the same time, by signs, we committed the awful breach of etiquette of not accepting the present. The himine singers’ disappointment was plainly betrayed, and that evening, aided by Tehei, we compromised by accepting one chicken, one bunch of bananas, one bunch of taro, and so on down the list.
But there was no escaping the abundance. I bought a dozen chickens from a native out in the country, and the following day he delivered thirteen chickens along with a canoe-load of fruit. The French storekeeper presented us with pomegranates and lent us his finest horse. The gendarme did likewise, lending us a horse that was the very apple of his eye. And everybody sent us flowers. The Snark was a fruit-stand and a greengrocer’s shop masquerading under the guise of a conservatory. We went around flower-garlanded all the time. When the himine singers came on board to sing, the maidens kissed us welcome, and the crew, from captain to cabin-boy, lost its heart to the maidens of Bora Bora. Tehei got up a big fishing expedition in our honour, to which we went in a double canoe, paddled by a dozen strapping Amazons. We were relieved that no fish were caught, else the Snark would have sunk at her moorings.
The days passed, but the abundance did not diminish. On the day of departure, canoe after canoe put off to us. Tehei brought cucumbers and a young papaia tree burdened with splendid fruit. Also, for me he brought a tiny, double canoe with fishing apparatus complete. Further, he brought fruits and vegetables with the same lavishness as at Tahaa. Bihaura brought various special presents for Charmian, such as silk-cotton pillows, fans, and fancy mats. The whole population brought fruits, flowers, and chickens. And Bihaura added a live sucking pig. Natives whom I did not remember ever having seen before strayed over the rail and presented me with such things as fish-poles, fish-lines, and fish-hooks carved from pearl-shell.
As the Snark sailed out through the reef, she had a cutter in tow. This was the craft that was to take Bihaura back to Tahaa—but not Tehei. I had yielded at last, and he was one of the crew of the Snark. When the cutter cast off and headed east, and the Snark’s bow turned toward the west, Tehei knelt down by the cockpit and breathed a silent prayer, the tears flowing down his cheeks. A week later, when Martin got around to developing and printing, he showed Tehei some of the photographs. And that brown-skinned son of Polynesia, gazing on the pictured lineaments of his beloved Bihaura broke down in tears.
But the abundance! There was so much of it. We could not work the Snark for the fruit that was in the way. She was festooned with fruit. The life-boat and launch were packed with it. The awning-guys groaned under their burdens. But once we struck the full trade-wind sea, the disburdening began. At every roll the Snark shook overboard a bunch or so of bananas and cocoanuts, or a basket of limes. A golden flood of limes washed about in the lee-scuppers. The big baskets of yams burst, and pineapples and pomegranates rolled back and forth. The chickens had got loose and were everywhere, roosting on the awnings, fluttering and squawking out on the jib-boom, and essaying the perilous feat of balancing on the spinnaker-boom. They were wild chickens, accustomed to flight. When attempts were made to catch them, they flew out over the ocean, circled about, and came back. Sometimes they did not come back. And in the confusion, unobserved, the little sucking pig got loose and slipped overboard.
“On the arrival of strangers, every man endeavoured to obtain one as a friend and carry him off to his own habitation, where he is treated with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants of the district: they place him on a high seat and feed him with abundance of the finest foods.”
At five in the morning the conches began to blow. From all along the beach the eerie sounds arose, like the ancient voice of War, calling to the fishermen to arise and prepare to go forth. We on the Snark likewise arose, for there could be no sleep in that mad din of conches. Also, we were going stone-fishing, though our preparations were few.
Tautai-taora is the name for stone-fishing, tautai meaning a “fishing instrument.” And taora meaning “thrown.” But tautai-taora, in combination, means “stone-fishing,” for a stone is the instrument that is thrown. Stone-fishing is in reality a fish-drive, similar in principle to a rabbit-drive or a cattle-drive, though in the latter affairs drivers and driven operate in the same medium, while in the fish-drive the men must be in the air to breathe and the fish are driven through the water. It does not matter if the water is a hundred feet deep, the men, working on the surface, drive the fish just the same.
This is the way it is done. The canoes form in line, one hundred to two hundred feet apart. In the bow of each canoe a man wields a stone, several pounds in weight, which is attached to a short rope. He merely smites the water with the stone, pulls up the stone, and smites again. He goes on smiting. In the stern of each canoe another man paddles, driving the canoe ahead and at the same time keeping it in the formation. The line of canoes advances to meet a second line a mile or two away, the ends of the lines hurrying together to form a circle, the far edge of which is the shore. The circle begins to contract upon the shore, where the women, standing in a long row out into the sea, form a fence of legs, which serves to break any rushes of the frantic fish. At the right moment when the circle is sufficiently small, a canoe dashes out from shore, dropping overboard a long screen of cocoanut leaves and encircling the circle, thus reinforcing the palisade of legs. Of course, the fishing is always done inside the reef in the lagoon.
“Très jolie,” the gendarme said, after explaining by signs and gestures that thousands of fish would be caught of all sizes from minnows to sharks, and that the captured fish would boil up and upon the very sand of the beach.
It is a most successful method of fishing, while its nature is more that of an outing festival, rather than of a prosaic, food-getting task. Such fishing parties take place about once a month at Bora Bora, and it is a custom that has descended from old time. The man who originated it is not remembered. They always did this thing. But one cannot help wondering about that forgotten savage of the long ago, into whose mind first flashed this scheme of easy fishing, of catching huge quantities of fish without hook, or net, or spear. One thing about him we can know: he was a radical. And we can be sure that he was considered feather-brained and anarchistic by his conservative tribesmen. His difficulty was much greater than that of the modern inventor, who has to convince in advance only one or two capitalists. That early inventor had to convince his whole tribe in advance, for without the co-operation of the whole tribe the device could not be tested. One can well imagine the nightly pow-wow-ings in that primitive island world, when he called his comrades antiquated moss-backs, and they called him a fool, a freak, and a crank, and charged him with having come from Kansas. Heaven alone knows at what cost of grey hairs and expletives he must finally have succeeded in winning over a sufficient number to give his idea a trial. At any rate, the experiment succeeded. It stood the test of truth—it worked! And thereafter, we can be confident, there was no man to be found who did not know all along that it was going to work.
Our good friends, Tehei and Bihaura, who were giving the fishing in our honour, had promised to come for us. We were down below when the call came from on deck that they were coming. We dashed up the companionway, to be overwhelmed by the sight of the Polynesian barge in which we were to ride. It was a long double canoe, the canoes lashed together by timbers with an interval of water between, and the whole decorated with flowers and golden grasses. A dozen flower-crowned Amazons were at the paddles, while at the stern of each canoe was a strapping steersman. All were garlanded with gold and crimson and orange flowers, while each wore about the hips a scarlet pareu. There were flowers everywhere, flowers, flowers, flowers, without end. The whole thing was an orgy of colour. On the platform forward resting on the bows of the canoes, Tehei and Bihaura were dancing. All voices were raised in a wild song or greeting.
Three times they circled the Snark before coming alongside to take Charmian and me on board. Then it was away for the fishing-grounds, a five-mile paddle dead to windward. “Everybody is jolly in Bora Bora,” is the saying throughout the Society Islands, and we certainly found everybody jolly. Canoe songs, shark songs, and fishing songs were sung to the dipping of the paddles, all joining in on the swinging choruses. Once in a while the cry Mao! was raised, whereupon all strained like mad at the paddles. Mao is shark, and when the deep-sea tigers appear, the natives paddle for dear life for the shore, knowing full well the danger they run of having their frail canoes overturned and of being devoured. Of course, in our case there were no sharks, but the cry of mao was used to incite them to paddle with as much energy as if a shark were really after them. “Hoé! Hoé!” was another cry that made us foam through the water.
On the platform Tehei and Bihaura danced, accompanied by songs and choruses or by rhythmic hand-clappings. At other times a musical knocking of the paddles against the sides of the canoes marked the accent. A young girl dropped her paddle, leaped to the platform, and danced a hula, in the midst of which, still dancing, she swayed and bent, and imprinted on our cheeks the kiss of welcome. Some of the songs, or himines, were religious, and they were especially beautiful, the deep basses of the men mingling with the altos and thin sopranos of the women and forming a combination of sound that irresistibly reminded one of an organ. In fact, “kanaka organ” is the scoffer’s description of the himine. On the other hand, some of the chants or ballads were very barbaric, having come down from pre-Christian times.
And so, singing, dancing, paddling, these joyous Polynesians took us to the fishing. The gendarme, who is the French ruler of Bora Bora, accompanied us with his family in a double canoe of his own, paddled by his prisoners; for not only is he gendarme and ruler, but he is jailer as well, and in this jolly land when anybody goes fishing, all go fishing. A score of single canoes, with outriggers, paddled along with us. Around a point a big sailing-canoe appeared, running beautifully before the wind as it bore down to greet us. Balancing precariously on the outrigger, three young men saluted us with a wild rolling of drums.
The next point, half a mile farther on, brought us to the place of meeting. Here the launch, which had been brought along by Warren and Martin, attracted much attention. The Bora Borans could not see what made it go. The canoes were drawn upon the sand, and all hands went ashore to drink cocoanuts and sing and dance. Here our numbers were added to by many who arrived on foot from near-by dwellings, and a pretty sight it was to see the flower-crowned maidens, hand in hand and two by two, arriving along the sands.
“They usually make a big catch,” Allicot, a half-caste trader, told us. “At the finish the water is fairly alive with fish. It is lots of fun. Of course you know all the fish will be yours.”
“All?” I groaned, for already the Snark was loaded down with lavish presents, by the canoe-load, of fruits, vegetables, pigs, and chickens.
“Yes, every last fish,” Allicot answered. “You see, when the surround is completed, you, being the guest of honour, must take a harpoon and impale the first one. It is the custom. Then everybody goes in with their hands and throws the catch out on the sand. There will be a mountain of them. Then one of the chiefs will make a speech in which he presents you with the whole kit and boodle. But you don’t have to take them all. You get up and make a speech, selecting what fish you want for yourself and presenting all the rest back again. Then everybody says you are very generous.”
“But what would be the result if I kept the whole present?” I asked.
“It has never happened,” was the answer. “It is the custom to give and give back again.”
The native minister started with a prayer for success in the fishing, and all heads were bared. Next, the chief fishermen told off the canoes and allotted them their places. Then it was into the canoes and away. No women, however, came along, with the exception of Bihaura and Charmian. In the old days even they would have been tabooed. The women remained behind to wade out into the water and form the palisade of legs.
The big double canoe was left on the beach, and we went in the launch. Half the canoes paddled off to leeward, while we, with the other half, headed to windward a mile and a half, until the end of our line was in touch with the reef. The leader of the drive occupied a canoe midway in our line. He stood erect, a fine figure of an old man, holding a flag in his hand. He directed the taking of positions and the forming of the two lines by blowing on a conch. When all was ready, he waved his flag to the right. With a single splash the throwers in every canoe on that side struck the water with their stones. While they were hauling them back—a matter of a moment, for the stones scarcely sank beneath the surface—the flag waved to the left, and with admirable precision every stone on that side struck the water. So it went, back and forth, right and left; with every wave of the flag a long line of concussion smote the lagoon. At the same time the paddles drove the canoes forward and what was being done in our line was being done in the opposing line of canoes a mile and more away.
On the bow of the launch, Tehei, with eyes fixed on the leader, worked his stone in unison with the others. Once, the stone slipped from the rope, and the same instant Tehei went overboard after it. I do not know whether or not that stone reached the bottom, but I do know that the next instant Tehei broke surface alongside with the stone in his hand. I noticed this same accident occur several times among the near-by canoes, but in each instance the thrower followed the stone and brought it back.
The reef ends of our lines accelerated, the shore ends lagged, all under the watchful supervision of the leader, until at the reef the two lines joined, forming the circle. Then the contraction of the circle began, the poor frightened fish harried shoreward by the streaks of concussion that smote the water. In the same fashion elephants are driven through the jungle by motes of men who crouch in the long grasses or behind trees and make strange noises. Already the palisade of legs had been built. We could see the heads of the women, in a long line, dotting the placid surface of the lagoon. The tallest women went farthest out, thus, with the exception of those close inshore, nearly all were up to their necks in the water.
Still the circle narrowed, till canoes were almost touching. There was a pause. A long canoe shot out from shore, following the line of the circle. It went as fast as paddles could drive. In the stern a man threw overboard the long, continuous screen of cocoanut leaves. The canoes were no longer needed, and overboard went the men to reinforce the palisade with their legs. For the screen was only a screen, and not a net, and the fish could dash through it if they tried. Hence the need for legs that ever agitated the screen, and for hands that splashed and throats that yelled. Pandemonium reigned as the trap tightened.
But no fish broke surface or collided against the hidden legs. At last the chief fisherman entered the trap. He waded around everywhere, carefully. But there were no fish boiling up and out upon the sand. There was not a sardine, not a minnow, not a polly-wog. Something must have been wrong with that prayer; or else, and more likely, as one grizzled fellow put it, the wind was not in its usual quarter and the fish were elsewhere in the lagoon. In fact, there had been no fish to drive.
“About once in five these drives are failures,” Allicot consoled us.
Well, it was the stone-fishing that had brought us to Bora Bora, and it was our luck to draw the one chance in five. Had it been a raffle, it would have been the other way about. This is not pessimism. Nor is it an indictment of the plan of the universe. It is merely that feeling which is familiar to most fishermen at the empty end of a hard day.
There are captains and captains, and some mighty fine captains, I know; but the run of the captains on the Snark has been remarkably otherwise. My experience with them has been that it is harder to take care of one captain on a small boat than of two small babies. Of course, this is no more than is to be expected. The good men have positions, and are not likely to forsake their one-thousand-to-fifteen-thousand-ton billets for the Snark with her ten tons net. The Snark has had to cull her navigators from the beach, and the navigator on the beach is usually a congenital inefficient—the sort of man who beats about for a fortnight trying vainly to find an ocean isle and who returns with his schooner to report the island sunk with all on board, the sort of man whose temper or thirst for strong waters works him out of billets faster than he can work into them.
The Snark has had three captains, and by the grace of God she shall have no more. The first captain was so senile as to be unable to give a measurement for a boom-jaw to a carpenter. So utterly agedly helpless was he, that he was unable to order a sailor to throw a few buckets of salt water on the Snark’s deck. For twelve days, at anchor, under an overhead tropic sun, the deck lay dry. It was a new deck. It cost me one hundred and thirty-five dollars to recaulk it. The second captain was angry. He was born angry. “Papa is always angry,” was the description given him by his half-breed son. The third captain was so crooked that he couldn’t hide behind a corkscrew. The truth was not in him, common honesty was not in him, and he was as far away from fair play and square-dealing as he was from his proper course when he nearly wrecked the Snark on the Ring-gold Isles.
It was at Suva, in the Fijis, that I discharged my third and last captain and took up gain the rôle of amateur navigator. I had essayed it once before, under my first captain, who, out of San Francisco, jumped the Snark so amazingly over the chart that I really had to find out what was doing. It was fairly easy to find out, for we had a run of twenty-one hundred miles before us. I knew nothing of navigation; but, after several hours of reading up and half an hour’s practice with the sextant, I was able to find the Snark’s latitude by meridian observation and her longitude by the simple method known as “equal altitudes.” This is not a correct method. It is not even a safe method, but my captain was attempting to navigate by it, and he was the only one on board who should have been able to tell me that it was a method to be eschewed. I brought the Snark to Hawaii, but the conditions favoured me. The sun was in northern declination and nearly overhead. The legitimate “chronometer-sight” method of ascertaining the longitude I had not heard of—yes, I had heard of it. My first captain mentioned it vaguely, but after one or two attempts at practice of it he mentioned it no more.
I had time in the Fijis to compare my chronometer with two other chronometers. Two weeks previous, at Pago Pago, in Samoa, I had asked my captain to compare our chronometer with the chronometers on the American cruiser, the Annapolis. This he told me he had done—of course he had done nothing of the sort; and he told me that the difference he had ascertained was only a small fraction of a second. He told it to me with finely simulated joy and with words of praise for my splendid time-keeper. I repeat it now, with words of praise for his splendid and unblushing unveracity. For behold, fourteen days later, in Suva, I compared the chronometer with the one on the Atua, an Australian steamer, and found that mine was thirty-one seconds fast. Now thirty-one seconds of time, converted into arc, equals seven and one-quarter miles. That is to say, if I were sailing west, in the night-time, and my position, according to my dead reckoning from my afternoon chronometer sight, was shown to be seven miles off the land, why, at that very moment I would be crashing on the reef. Next I compared my chronometer with Captain Wooley’s. Captain Wooley, the harbourmaster, gives the time to Suva, firing a gun signal at twelve, noon, three times a week. According to his chronometer mine was fifty-nine seconds fast, which is to say, that, sailing west, I should be crashing on the reef when I thought I was fifteen miles off from it.
I compromised by subtracting thirty-one seconds from the total of my chronometer’s losing error, and sailed away for Tanna, in the New Hebrides, resolved, when nosing around the land on dark nights, to bear in mind the other seven miles I might be out according to Captain Wooley’s instrument. Tanna lay some six hundred miles west-southwest from the Fijis, and it was my belief that while covering that distance I could quite easily knock into my head sufficient navigation to get me there. Well, I got there, but listen first to my troubles. Navigation is easy, I shall always contend that; but when a man is taking three gasolene engines and a wife around the world and is writing hard every day to keep the engines supplied with gasolene and the wife with pearls and volcanoes, he hasn’t much time left in which to study navigation. Also, it is bound to be easier to study said science ashore, where latitude and longitude are unchanging, in a house whose position never alters, than it is to study navigation on a boat that is rushing along day and night toward land that one is trying to find and which he is liable to find disastrously at a moment when he least expects it.
To begin with, there are the compasses and the setting of the courses. We sailed from Suva on Saturday afternoon, June 6, 1908, and it took us till after dark to run the narrow, reef-ridden passage between the islands of Viti Levu and Mbengha. The open ocean lay before me. There was nothing in the way with the exception of Vatu Leile, a miserable little island that persisted in poking up through the sea some twenty miles to the west-southwest—just where I wanted to go. Of course, it seemed quite simple to avoid it by steering a course that would pass it eight or ten miles to the north. It was a black night, and we were running before the wind. The man at the wheel must be told what direction to steer in order to miss Vatu Leile. But what direction? I turned me to the navigation books. “True Course” I lighted upon. The very thing! What I wanted was the true course. I read eagerly on:
“The True Course is the angle made with the meridian by a straight line on the chart drawn to connect the ship’s position with the place bound to.”
Just what I wanted. The Snark’s position was at the western entrance of the passage between Viti Levu and Mbengha. The immediate place she was bound to was a place on the chart ten miles north of Vatu Leile. I pricked that place off on the chart with my dividers, and with my parallel rulers found that west-by-south was the true course. I had but to give it to the man at the wheel and the Snark would win her way to the safety of the open sea.
But alas and alack and lucky for me, I read on. I discovered that the compass, that trusty, everlasting friend of the mariner, was not given to pointing north. It varied. Sometimes it pointed east of north, sometimes west of north, and on occasion it even turned tail on north and pointed south. The variation at the particular spot on the globe occupied by the Snark was 9° 40′ easterly. Well, that had to be taken into account before I gave the steering course to the man at the wheel. I read:
“The Correct Magnetic Course is derived from the True Course by applying to it the variation.”
Therefore, I reasoned, if the compass points 9° 40′ eastward of north, and I wanted to sail due north, I should have to steer 9° 40′ westward of the north indicated by the compass and which was not north at all. So I added 9° 40′ to the left of my west-by-south course, thus getting my correct Magnetic Course, and was ready once more to run to open sea.
Again alas and alack! The Correct Magnetic Course was not the Compass Course. There was another sly little devil lying in wait to trip me up and land me smashing on the reefs of Vatu Leile. This little devil went by the name of Deviation. I read:
“The Compass Course is the course to steer, and is derived from the Correct Magnetic Course by applying to it the Deviation.”
Now Deviation is the variation in the needle caused by the distribution of iron on board of ship. This purely local variation I derived from the deviation card of my standard compass and then applied to the Correct Magnetic Course. The result was the Compass Course. And yet, not yet. My standard compass was amidships on the companionway. My steering compass was aft, in the cockpit, near the wheel. When the steering compass pointed west-by-south three-quarters-south (the steering course), the standard compass pointed west-one-half-north, which was certainly not the steering course. I kept the Snark up till she was heading west-by-south-three-quarters-south on the standard compass, which gave, on the steering compass, south-west-by-west.
The foregoing operations constitute the simple little matter of setting a course. And the worst of it is that one must perform every step correctly or else he will hear “Breakers ahead!” some pleasant night, a nice sea-bath, and be given the delightful diversion of fighting his way to the shore through a horde of man-eating sharks.
Just as the compass is tricky and strives to fool the mariner by pointing in all directions except north, so does that guide post of the sky, the sun, persist in not being where it ought to be at a given time. This carelessness of the sun is the cause of more trouble—at least it caused trouble for me. To find out where one is on the earth’s surface, he must know, at precisely the same time, where the sun is in the heavens. That is to say, the sun, which is the timekeeper for men, doesn’t run on time. When I discovered this, I fell into deep gloom and all the Cosmos was filled with doubt. Immutable laws, such as gravitation and the conservation of energy, became wobbly, and I was prepared to witness their violation at any moment and to remain unastonished. For see, if the compass lied and the sun did not keep its engagements, why should not objects lose their mutual attraction and why should not a few bushel baskets of force be annihilated? Even perpetual motion became possible, and I was in a frame of mind prone to purchase Keeley-Motor stock from the first enterprising agent that landed on the Snark’s deck. And when I discovered that the earth really rotated on its axis 366 times a year, while there were only 365 sunrises and sunsets, I was ready to doubt my own identity.
This is the way of the sun. It is so irregular that it is impossible for man to devise a clock that will keep the sun’s time. The sun accelerates and retards as no clock could be made to accelerate and retard. The sun is sometimes ahead of its schedule; at other times it is lagging behind; and at still other times it is breaking the speed limit in order to overtake itself, or, rather, to catch up with where it ought to be in the sky. In this last case it does not slow down quick enough, and, as a result, goes dashing ahead of where it ought to be. In fact, only four days in a year do the sun and the place where the sun ought to be happen to coincide. The remaining 361 days the sun is pothering around all over the shop. Man, being more perfect than the sun, makes a clock that keeps regular time. Also, he calculates how far the sun is ahead of its schedule or behind. The difference between the sun’s position and the position where the sun ought to be if it were a decent, self-respecting sun, man calls the Equation of Time. Thus, the navigator endeavouring to find his ship’s position on the sea, looks in his chronometer to see where precisely the sun ought to be according to the Greenwich custodian of the sun. Then to that location he applies the Equation of Time and finds out where the sun ought to be and isn’t. This latter location, along with several other locations, enables him to find out what the man from Kansas demanded to know some years ago.
The Snark sailed from Fiji on Saturday, June 6, and the next day, Sunday, on the wide ocean, out of sight of land, I proceeded to endeavour to find out my position by a chronometer sight for longitude and by a meridian observation for latitude. The chronometer sight was taken in the morning when the sun was some 21° above the horizon. I looked in the Nautical Almanac and found that on that very day, June 7, the sun was behind time 1 minute and 26 seconds, and that it was catching up at a rate of 14.67 seconds per hour. The chronometer said that at the precise moment of taking the sun’s altitude it was twenty-five minutes after eight o’clock at Greenwich. From this date it would seem a schoolboy’s task to correct the Equation of Time. Unfortunately, I was not a schoolboy. Obviously, at the middle of the day, at Greenwich, the sun was 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time. Equally obviously, if it were eleven o’clock in the morning, the sun would be 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time plus 14.67 seconds. If it were ten o’clock in the morning, twice 14.67 seconds would have to be added. And if it were 8: 25 in the morning, then 3½ times 14.67 seconds would have to be added. Quite clearly, then, if, instead of being 8:25 A.M., it were 8:25 P.M., then 8½ times 14.67 seconds would have to be, not added, but subtracted; for, if, at noon, the sun were 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time, and if it were catching up with where it ought to be at the rate of 14.67 seconds per hour, then at 8.25 P.M. it would be much nearer where it ought to be than it had been at noon.
So far, so good. But was that 8:25 of the chronometer A.M., or P.M.? I looked at the Snark’s clock. It marked 8:9, and it was certainly A.M. for I had just finished breakfast. Therefore, if it was eight in the morning on board the Snark, the eight o’clock of the chronometer (which was the time of the day at Greenwich) must be a different eight o’clock from the Snark’s eight o’clock. But what eight o’clock was it? It can’t be the eight o’clock of this morning, I reasoned; therefore, it must be either eight o’clock this evening or eight o’clock last night.
It was at this juncture that I fell into the bottomless pit of intellectual chaos. We are in east longitude, I reasoned, therefore we are ahead of Greenwich. If we are behind Greenwich, then to-day is yesterday; if we are ahead of Greenwich, then yesterday is to-day, but if yesterday is to-day, what under the sun is to-day!—to-morrow? Absurd! Yet it must be correct. When I took the sun this morning at 8:25, the sun’s custodians at Greenwich were just arising from dinner last night.
“Then correct the Equation of Time for yesterday,” says my logical mind.
“But to-day is to-day,” my literal mind insists. “I must correct the sun for to-day and not for yesterday.”
“Yet to-day is yesterday,” urges my logical mind.
“That’s all very well,” my literal mind continues, “If I were in Greenwich I might be in yesterday. Strange things happen in Greenwich. But I know as sure as I am living that I am here, now, in to-day, June 7, and that I took the sun here, now, to-day, June 7. Therefore, I must correct the sun here, now, to-day, June 7.”
“Bosh!” snaps my logical mind. “Lecky says—”
“Never mind what Lecky says,” interrupts my literal mind. “Let me tell you what the Nautical Almanac says. The Nautical Almanac says that to-day, June 7, the sun was 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time and catching up at the rate of 14.67 seconds per hour. It says that yesterday, June 6, the sun was 1 minute and 36 seconds behind time and catching up at the rate of 15.66 seconds per hour. You see, it is preposterous to think of correcting to-day’s sun by yesterday’s time-table.”
“Fool!”
“Idiot!”
Back and forth they wrangle until my head is whirling around and I am ready to believe that I am in the day after the last week before next.
I remembered a parting caution of the Suva harbour-master: “In east longitude take from the Nautical Almanac the elements for the preceding day.”
Then a new thought came to me. I corrected the Equation of Time for Sunday and for Saturday, making two separate operations of it, and lo, when the results were compared, there was a difference only of four-tenths of a second. I was a changed man. I had found my way out of the crypt. The Snark was scarcely big enough to hold me and my experience. Four-tenths of a second would make a difference of only one-tenth of a mile—a cable-length!
All went merrily for ten minutes, when I chanced upon the following rhyme for navigators:
“Greenwich time least
Longitude east;
Greenwich best,
Longitude west.”
Heavens! The Snark’s time was not as good as Greenwich time. When it was 8:25 at Greenwich, on board the Snark it was only 8:9. “Greenwich time best, longitude west.” There I was. In west longitude beyond a doubt.
“Silly!” cries my literal mind. “You are 8:9 A.M. and Greenwich is 8:25 P.M.”
“Very well,” answers my logical mind. “To be correct, 8.25 P.M. is really twenty hours and twenty-five minutes, and that is certainly better than eight hours and nine minutes. No, there is no discussion; you are in west longitude.”
Then my literal mind triumphs.
“We sailed from Suva, in the Fijis, didn’t we?” it demands, and logical mind agrees. “And Suva is in east longitude?” Again logical mind agrees. “And we sailed west (which would take us deeper into east longitude), didn’t we? Therefore, and you can’t escape it, we are in east longitude.”
“Greenwich time best, longitude west,” chants my logical mind; “and you must grant that twenty hours and twenty-five minutes is better than eight hours and nine minutes.”
“All right,” I break in upon the squabble; “we’ll work up the sight and then we’ll see.”
And work it up I did, only to find that my longitude was 184° west.
“I told you so,” snorts my logical mind.
I am dumbfounded. So is my literal mind, for several minutes. Then it enounces:
“But there is no 184° west longitude, nor east longitude, nor any other longitude. The largest meridian is 180° as you ought to know very well.”
Having got this far, literal mind collapses from the brain strain, logical mind is dumb flabbergasted; and as for me, I get a bleak and wintry look in my eyes and go around wondering whether I am sailing toward the China coast or the Gulf of Darien.
Then a thin small voice, which I do not recognize, coming from nowhere in particular in my consciousness, says:
“The total number of degrees is 360. Subtract the 184° west longitude from 360°, and you will get 176° east longitude.”
“That is sheer speculation,” objects literal mind; and logical mind remonstrates. “There is no rule for it.”
“Darn the rules!” I exclaim. “Ain’t I here?”
“The thing is self-evident,” I continue. “184° west longitude means a lapping over in east longitude of four degrees. Besides I have been in east longitude all the time. I sailed from Fiji, and Fiji is in east longitude. Now I shall chart my position and prove it by dead reckoning.”
But other troubles and doubts awaited me. Here is a sample of one. In south latitude, when the sun is in northern declination, chronometer sights may be taken early in the morning. I took mine at eight o’clock. Now, one of the necessary elements in working up such a sight is latitude. But one gets latitude at twelve o’clock, noon, by a meridian observation. It is clear that in order to work up my eight o’clock chronometer sight I must have my eight o’clock latitude. Of course, if the Snark were sailing due west at six knots per hour, for the intervening four hours her latitude would not change. But if she were sailing due south, her latitude would change to the tune of twenty-four miles. In which case a simple addition or subtraction would convert the twelve o’clock latitude into eight o’clock latitude. But suppose the Snark were sailing southwest. Then the traverse tables must be consulted.
This is the illustration. At eight A.M. I took my chronometer sight. At the same moment the distance recorded on the log was noted. At twelve M., when the sight for latitude was taken, I again noted the log, which showed me that since eight o’clock the Snark had run 24 miles. Her true course had been west ¾ south. I entered Table I, in the distance column, on the page for ¾ point courses, and stopped at 24, the number of miles run. Opposite, in the next two columns, I found that the Snark had made 3.5 miles of southing or latitude, and that she had made 23.7 miles of westing. To find my eight o’clock’ latitude was easy. I had but to subtract 3.5 miles from my noon latitude. All the elements being present, I worked up my longitude.
But this was my eight o’clock longitude. Since then, and up till noon, I had made 23.7 miles of westing. What was my noon longitude? I followed the rule, turning to Traverse Table No. II. Entering the table, according to rule, and going through every detail, according to rule, I found the difference of longitude for the four hours to be 25 miles. I was aghast. I entered the table again, according to rule; I entered the table half a dozen times, according to rule, and every time found that my difference of longitude was 25 miles. I leave it to you, gentle reader. Suppose you had sailed 24 miles and that you had covered 3.5 miles of latitude, then how could you have covered 25 miles of longitude? Even if you had sailed due west 24 miles, and not changed your latitude, how could you have changed your longitude 25 miles? In the name of human reason, how could you cover one mile more of longitude than the total number of miles you had sailed?
It was a reputable traverse table, being none other than Bowditch’s. The rule was simple (as navigators’ rules go); I had made no error. I spent an hour over it, and at the end still faced the glaring impossibility of having sailed 24 miles, in the course of which I changed my latitude 3.5 miles and my longitude 25 miles. The worst of it was that there was nobody to help me out. Neither Charmian nor Martin knew as much as I knew about navigation. And all the time the Snark was rushing madly along toward Tanna, in the New Hebrides. Something had to be done.
How it came to me I know not—call it an inspiration if you will; but the thought arose in me: if southing is latitude, why isn’t westing longitude? Why should I have to change westing into longitude? And then the whole beautiful situation dawned upon me. The meridians of longitude are 60 miles (nautical) apart at the equator. At the poles they run together. Thus, if I should travel up the 180° meridian of longitude until I reached the North Pole, and if the astronomer at Greenwich travelled up the 0 meridian of longitude to the North Pole, then, at the North Pole, we could shake hands with each other, though before we started for the North Pole we had been some thousands of miles apart. Again: if a degree of longitude was 60 miles wide at the equator, and if the same degree, at the point of the Pole, had no width, then somewhere between the Pole and the equator that degree would be half a mile wide, and at other places a mile wide, two miles wide, ten miles wide, thirty miles wide, ay, and sixty miles wide.
All was plain again. The Snark was in 19° south latitude. The world wasn’t as big around there as at the equator. Therefore, every mile of westing at 19° south was more than a minute of longitude; for sixty miles were sixty miles, but sixty minutes are sixty miles only at the equator. George Francis Train broke Jules Verne’s record of around the world. But any man that wants can break George Francis Train’s record. Such a man would need only to go, in a fast steamer, to the latitude of Cape Horn, and sail due east all the way around. The world is very small in that latitude, and there is no land in the way to turn him out of his course. If his steamer maintained sixteen knots, he would circumnavigate the globe in just about forty days.
But there are compensations. On Wednesday evening, June 10, I brought up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M. Then I projected the Snark’s course and saw that she would strike Futuna, one of the easternmost of the New Hebrides, a volcanic cone two thousand feet high that rose out of the deep ocean. I altered the course so that the Snark would pass ten miles to the northward. Then I spoke to Wada, the cook, who had the wheel every morning from four to six.
“Wada San, to-morrow morning, your watch, you look sharp on weather-bow you see land.”
And then I went to bed. The die was cast. I had staked my reputation as a navigator. Suppose, just suppose, that at daybreak there was no land. Then, where would my navigation be? And where would we be? And how would we ever find ourselves? or find any land? I caught ghastly visions of the Snark sailing for months through ocean solitudes and seeking vainly for land while we consumed our provisions and sat down with haggard faces to stare cannibalism in the face.
I confess my sleep was not
“ . . . like a summer sky
That held the music of a lark.”
Rather did “I waken to the voiceless dark,” and listen to the creaking of the bulkheads and the rippling of the sea alongside as the Snark logged steadily her six knots an hour. I went over my calculations again and again, striving to find some mistake, until my brain was in such fever that it discovered dozens of mistakes. Suppose, instead of being sixty miles off Futuna, that my navigation was all wrong and that I was only six miles off? In which case my course would be wrong, too, and for all I knew the Snark might be running straight at Futuna. For all I knew the Snark might strike Futuna the next moment. I almost sprang from the bunk at that thought; and, though I restrained myself, I know that I lay for a moment, nervous and tense, waiting for the shock.
My sleep was broken by miserable nightmares. Earthquake seemed the favourite affliction, though there was one man, with a bill, who persisted in dunning me throughout the night. Also, he wanted to fight; and Charmian continually persuaded me to let him alone. Finally, however, the man with the everlasting dun ventured into a dream from which Charmian was absent. It was my opportunity, and we went at it, gloriously, all over the sidewalk and street, until he cried enough. Then I said, “Now how about that bill?” Having conquered, I was willing to pay. But the man looked at me and groaned. “It was all a mistake,” he said; “the bill is for the house next door.”
That settled him, for he worried my dreams no more; and it settled me, too, for I woke up chuckling at the episode. It was three in the morning. I went up on deck. Henry, the Rapa islander, was steering. I looked at the log. It recorded forty-two miles. The Snark had not abated her six-knot gait, and she had not struck Futuna yet. At half-past five I was again on deck. Wada, at the wheel, had seen no land. I sat on the cockpit rail, a prey to morbid doubt for a quarter of an hour. Then I saw land, a small, high piece of land, just where it ought to be, rising from the water on the weather-bow. At six o’clock I could clearly make it out to be the beautiful volcanic cone of Futuna. At eight o’clock, when it was abreast, I took its distance by the sextant and found it to be 9.3 miles away. And I had elected to pass it 10 miles away!
Then, to the south, Aneiteum rose out of the sea, to the north, Aniwa, and, dead ahead, Tanna. There was no mistaking Tanna, for the smoke of its volcano was towering high in the sky. It was forty miles away, and by afternoon, as we drew close, never ceasing to log our six knots, we saw that it was a mountainous, hazy land, with no apparent openings in its coast-line. I was looking for Port Resolution, though I was quite prepared to find that as an anchorage, it had been destroyed. Volcanic earthquakes had lifted its bottom during the last forty years, so that where once the largest ships rode at anchor there was now, by last reports, scarcely space and depth sufficient for the Snark. And why should not another convulsion, since the last report, have closed the harbour completely?
I ran in close to the unbroken coast, fringed with rocks awash upon which the crashing trade-wind sea burst white and high. I searched with my glasses for miles, but could see no entrance. I took a compass bearing of Futuna, another of Aniwa, and laid them off on the chart. Where the two bearings crossed was bound to be the position of the Snark. Then, with my parallel rulers, I laid down a course from the Snark’s position to Port Resolution. Having corrected this course for variation and deviation, I went on deck, and lo, the course directed me towards that unbroken coast-line of bursting seas. To my Rapa islander’s great concern, I held on till the rocks awash were an eighth of a mile away.
“No harbour this place,” he announced, shaking his head ominously.
But I altered the course and ran along parallel with the coast. Charmian was at the wheel. Martin was at the engine, ready to throw on the propeller. A narrow slit of an opening showed up suddenly. Through the glasses I could see the seas breaking clear across. Henry, the Rapa man, looked with troubled eyes; so did Tehei, the Tahaa man.
“No passage, there,” said Henry. “We go there, we finish quick, sure.”
I confess I thought so, too; but I ran on abreast, watching to see if the line of breakers from one side the entrance did not overlap the line from the other side. Sure enough, it did. A narrow place where the sea ran smooth appeared. Charmian put down the wheel and steadied for the entrance. Martin threw on the engine, while all hands and the cook sprang to take in sail.
A trader’s house showed up in the bight of the bay. A geyser, on the shore, a hundred yards away; spouted a column of steam. To port, as we rounded a tiny point, the mission station appeared.
“Three fathoms,” cried Wada at the lead-line. “Three fathoms,” “two fathoms,” came in quick succession.
Charmian put the wheel down, Martin stopped the engine, and the Snark rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms. Before we could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was alongside and aboard—grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair and troubled eyes, wearing safety-pins and clay-pipes in their slitted ears: and as for the rest, wearing nothing behind and less than that before. And I don’t mind telling that that night, when everybody was asleep, I sneaked up on deck, looked out over the quiet scene, and gloated—yes, gloated—over my navigation.
“Why not come along now?” said Captain Jansen to us, at Penduffryn, on the island of Guadalcanar.
Charmian and I looked at each other and debated silently for half a minute. Then we nodded our heads simultaneously. It is a way we have of making up our minds to do things; and a very good way it is when one has no temperamental tears to shed over the last tin-of condensed milk when it has capsized. (We are living on tinned goods these days, and since mind is rumoured to be an emanation of matter, our similes are naturally of the packing-house variety.)
“You’d better bring your revolvers along, and a couple of rifles,” said Captain Jansen. “I’ve got five rifles aboard, though the one Mauser is without ammunition. Have you a few rounds to spare?”
We brought our rifles on board, several handfuls of Mauser cartridges, and Wada and Nakata, the Snark’s cook and cabin-boy respectively. Wada and Nakata were in a bit of a funk. To say the least, they were not enthusiastic, though never did Nakata show the white feather in the face of danger. The Solomon Islands had not dealt kindly with them. In the first place, both had suffered from Solomon sores. So had the rest of us (at the time, I was nursing two fresh ones on a diet of corrosive sublimate); but the two Japanese had had more than their share. And the sores are not nice. They may be described as excessively active ulcers. A mosquito bite, a cut, or the slightest abrasion, serves for lodgment of the poison with which the air seems to be filled. Immediately the ulcer commences to eat. It eats in every direction, consuming skin and muscle with astounding rapidity. The pin-point ulcer of the first day is the size of a dime by the second day, and by the end of the week a silver dollar will not cover it.
Worse than the sores, the two Japanese had been afflicted with Solomon Island fever. Each had been down repeatedly with it, and in their weak, convalescent moments they were wont to huddle together on the portion of the Snark that happened to be nearest to faraway Japan, and to gaze yearningly in that direction.
But worst of all, they were now brought on board the Minota for a recruiting cruise along the savage coast of Malaita. Wada, who had the worse funk, was sure that he would never see Japan again, and with bleak, lack-lustre eyes he watched our rifles and ammunition going on board the Minota. He knew about the Minota and her Malaita cruises. He knew that she had been captured six months before on the Malaita coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with tomahawks, and that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on that sweet isle, she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on Penduffryn Plantation, a Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery, and Wada knew that Penduffryn had been put in the debt of Malaita by one more head. Furthermore, in stowing our luggage away in the skipper’s tiny cabin, he saw the axe gashes on the door where the triumphant bushmen had cut their way in. And, finally, the galley stove was without a pipe—said pipe having been part of the loot.
The Minota was a teak-built, Australian yacht, ketch-rigged, long and lean, with a deep fin-keel, and designed for harbour racing rather than for recruiting blacks. When Charmian and I came on board, we found her crowded. Her double boat’s crew, including substitutes, was fifteen, and she had a score and more of “return” boys, whose time on the plantations was served and who were bound back to their bush villages. To look at, they were certainly true head-hunting cannibals. Their perforated nostrils were thrust through with bone and wooden bodkins the size of lead-pencils. Numbers of them had punctured the extreme meaty point of the nose, from which protruded, straight out, spikes of turtle-shell or of beads strung on stiff wire. A few had further punctured their noses with rows of holes following the curves of the nostrils from lip to point. Each ear of every man had from two to a dozen holes in it—holes large enough to carry wooden plugs three inches in diameter down to tiny holes in which were carried clay-pipes and similar trifles. In fact, so many holes did they possess that they lacked ornaments to fill them; and when, the following day, as we neared Malaita, we tried out our rifles to see that they were in working order, there was a general scramble for the empty cartridges, which were thrust forthwith into the many aching voids in our passengers’ ears.
At the time we tried out our rifles we put up our barbed wire railings. The Minota, crown-decked, without any house, and with a rail six inches high, was too accessible to boarders. So brass stanchions were screwed into the rail and a double row of barbed wire stretched around her from stem to stern and back again. Which was all very well as a protection from savages, but it was mighty uncomfortable to those on board when the Minota took to jumping and plunging in a sea-way. When one dislikes sliding down upon the lee-rail barbed wire, and when he dares not catch hold of the weather-rail barbed wire to save himself from sliding, and when, with these various disinclinations, he finds himself on a smooth flush-deck that is heeled over at an angle of forty-five degrees, some of the delights of Solomon Islands cruising may be comprehended. Also, it must be remembered, the penalty of a fall into the barbed wire is more than the mere scratches, for each scratch is practically certain to become a venomous ulcer. That caution will not save one from the wire was evidenced one fine morning when we were running along the Malaita coast with the breeze on our quarter. The wind was fresh, and a tidy sea was making. A black boy was at the wheel. Captain Jansen, Mr. Jacobsen (the mate), Charmian, and I had just sat down on deck to breakfast. Three unusually large seas caught us. The boy at the wheel lost his head. Three times the Minota was swept. The breakfast was rushed over the lee-rail. The knives and forks went through the scuppers; a boy aft went clean overboard and was dragged back; and our doughty skipper lay half inboard and half out, jammed in the barbed wire. After that, for the rest of the cruise, our joint use of the several remaining eating utensils was a splendid example of primitive communism. On the Eugenie, however, it was even worse, for we had but one teaspoon among four of us—but the Eugenie is another story.
Our first port was Su’u on the west coast of Malaita. The Solomon Islands are on the fringe of things. It is difficult enough sailing on dark nights through reef-spiked channels and across erratic currents where there are no lights to guide (from northwest to southeast the Solomons extend across a thousand miles of sea, and on all the thousands of miles of coasts there is not one lighthouse); but the difficulty is seriously enhanced by the fact that the land itself is not correctly charted. Su’u is an example. On the Admiralty chart of Malaita the coast at this point runs a straight, unbroken line. Yet across this straight, unbroken line the Minota sailed in twenty fathoms of water. Where the land was alleged to be, was a deep indentation. Into this we sailed, the mangroves closing about us, till we dropped anchor in a mirrored pond. Captain Jansen did not like the anchorage. It was the first time he had been there, and Su’u had a bad reputation. There was no wind with which to get away in case of attack, while the crew could be bushwhacked to a man if they attempted to tow out in the whale-boat. It was a pretty trap, if trouble blew up.
“Suppose the Minota went ashore—what would you do?” I asked.
“She’s not going ashore,” was Captain Jansen’s answer.
“But just in case she did?” I insisted. He considered for a moment and shifted his glance from the mate buckling on a revolver to the boat’s crew climbing into the whale-boat each man with a rifle.
“We’d get into the whale-boat, and get out of here as fast as God’d let us,” came the skipper’s delayed reply.
He explained at length that no white man was sure of his Malaita crew in a tight place; that the bushmen looked upon all wrecks as their personal property; that the bushmen possessed plenty of Snider rifles; and that he had on board a dozen “return” boys for Su’u who were certain to join in with their friends and relatives ashore when it came to looting the Minota.
The first work of the whale-boat was to take the “return” boys and their trade-boxes ashore. Thus one danger was removed. While this was being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages. And when I say naked, I mean naked. Not one vestige of clothing did they have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell armlets be accounted clothing. The head man in the canoe was an old chief, one-eyed, reputed to be friendly, and so dirty that a boat-scraper would have lost its edge on him. His mission was to warn the skipper against allowing any of his people to go ashore. The old fellow repeated the warning again that night.
In vain did the whale-boat ply about the shores of the bay in quest of recruits. The bush was full of armed natives; all willing enough to talk with the recruiter, but not one would engage to sign on for three years’ plantation labour at six pounds per year. Yet they were anxious enough to get our people ashore. On the second day they raised a smoke on the beach at the head of the bay. This being the customary signal of men desiring to recruit, the boat was sent. But nothing resulted. No one recruited, nor were any of our men lured ashore. A little later we caught glimpses of a number of armed natives moving about on the beach.
Outside of these rare glimpses, there was no telling how many might be lurking in the bush. There was no penetrating that primeval jungle with the eye. In the afternoon, Captain Jansen, Charmian, and I went dynamiting fish. Each one of the boat’s crew carried a Lee-Enfield. “Johnny,” the native recruiter, had a Winchester beside him at the steering sweep. We rowed in close to a portion of the shore that looked deserted. Here the boat was turned around and backed in; in case of attack, the boat would be ready to dash away. In all the time I was on Malaita I never saw a boat land bow on. In fact, the recruiting vessels use two boats—one to go in on the beach, armed, of course, and the other to lie off several hundred feet and “cover” the first boat. The Minota, however, being a small vessel, did not carry a covering boat.
We were close in to the shore and working in closer, stern-first, when a school of fish was sighted. The fuse was ignited and the stick of dynamite thrown. With the explosion, the surface of the water was broken by the flash of leaping fish. At the same instant the woods broke into life. A score of naked savages, armed with bows and arrows, spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the shore. At the same moment our boat’s crew lifted their rifles. And thus the opposing parties faced each other, while our extra boys dived over after the stunned fish.
Three fruitless days were spent at Su’u. The Minota got no recruits from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the Minota. In fact, the only one who got anything was Wada, and his was a nice dose of fever. We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the coast to Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built with prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank—literally built up, an artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen. Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place where the Minota was captured half a year previously and her captain killed by the bushmen. As we sailed in through the narrow entrance, a canoe came alongside with the news that the man-of-war had just left that morning after having burned three villages, killed some thirty pigs, and drowned a baby. This was the Cambrian, Captain Lewes commanding. He and I had first met in Korea during the Japanese-Russian War, and we had been crossing each other’s trail ever since without ever a meeting. The day the Snark sailed into Suva, in the Fijis, we made out the Cambrian going out. At Vila, in the New Hebrides, we missed each other by one day. We passed each other in the night-time off the island of Santo. And the day the Cambrian arrived at Tulagi, we sailed from Penduffryn, a dozen miles away. And here at Langa Langa we had missed by several hours.
The Cambrian had come to punish the murderers of the Minota’s captain, but what she had succeeded in doing we did not learn until later in the day, when a Mr. Abbot, a missionary, came alongside in his whale-boat. The villages had been burned and the pigs killed. But the natives had escaped personal harm. The murderers had not been captured, though the Minota’s flag and other of her gear had been recovered. The drowning of the baby had come about through a misunderstanding. Chief Johnny, of Binu, had declined to guide the landing party into the bush, nor could any of his men be induced to perform that office. Whereupon Captain Lewes, righteously indignant, had told Chief Johnny that he deserved to have his village burned. Johnny’s bêche de mer English did not include the word “deserve.” So his understanding of it was that his village was to be burned anyway. The immediate stampede of the inhabitants was so hurried that the baby was dropped into the water. In the meantime Chief Johnny hastened to Mr. Abbot. Into his hand he put fourteen sovereigns and requested him to go on board the Cambrian and buy Captain Lewes off. Johnny’s village was not burned. Nor did Captain Lewes get the fourteen sovereigns, for I saw them later in Johnny’s possession when he boarded the Minota. The excuse Johnny gave me for not guiding the landing party was a big boil which he proudly revealed. His real reason, however, and a perfectly valid one, though he did not state it, was fear of revenge on the part of the bushmen. Had he, or any of his men, guided the marines, he could have looked for bloody reprisals as soon as the Cambrian weighed anchor.
As an illustration of conditions in the Solomons, Johnny’s business on board was to turn over, for a tobacco consideration, the sprit, mainsail, and jib of a whale-boat. Later in the day, a Chief Billy came on board and turned over, for a tobacco consideration, the mast and boom. This gear belonged to a whale-boat which Captain Jansen had recovered the previous trip of the Minota. The whale-boat belonged to Meringe Plantation on the island of Ysabel. Eleven contract labourers, Malaita men and bushmen at that, had decided to run away. Being bushmen, they knew nothing of salt water nor of the way of a boat in the sea. So they persuaded two natives of San Cristoval, salt-water men, to run away with them. It served the San Cristoval men right. They should have known better. When they had safely navigated the stolen boat to Malaita, they had their heads hacked off for their pains. It was this boat and gear that Captain Jansen had recovered.
Not for nothing have I journeyed all the way to the Solomons. At last I have seen Charmian’s proud spirit humbled and her imperious queendom of femininity dragged in the dust. It happened at Langa Langa, ashore, on the manufactured island which one cannot see for the houses. Here, surrounded by hundreds of unblushing naked men, women, and children, we wandered about and saw the sights. We had our revolvers strapped on, and the boat’s crew, fully armed, lay at the oars, stern in; but the lesson of the man-of-war was too recent for us to apprehend trouble. We walked about everywhere and saw everything until at last we approached a large tree trunk that served as a bridge across a shallow estuary. The blacks formed a wall in front of us and refused to let us pass. We wanted to know why we were stopped. The blacks said we could go on. We misunderstood, and started. Explanations became more definite. Captain Jansen and I, being men, could go on. But no Mary was allowed to wade around that bridge, much less cross it. “Mary” is bêche de mer for woman. Charmian was a Mary. To her the bridge was tambo, which is the native for taboo. Ah, how my chest expanded! At last my manhood was vindicated. In truth I belonged to the lordly sex. Charmian could trapse along at our heels, but we were MEN, and we could go right over that bridge while she would have to go around by whale-boat.
Now I should not care to be misunderstood by what follows; but it is a matter of common knowledge in the Solomons that attacks of fever are often brought on by shock. Inside half an hour after Charmian had been refused the right of way, she was being rushed aboard the Minota, packed in blankets, and dosed with quinine. I don’t know what kind of shock had happened to Wada and Nakata, but at any rate they were down with fever as well. The Solomons might be healthfuller.
Also, during the attack of fever, Charmian developed a Solomon sore. It was the last straw. Every one on the Snark had been afflicted except her. I had thought that I was going to lose my foot at the ankle by one exceptionally malignant boring ulcer. Henry and Tehei, the Tahitian sailors, had had numbers of them. Wada had been able to count his by the score. Nakata had had single ones three inches in length. Martin had been quite certain that necrosis of his shinbone had set in from the roots of the amazing colony he elected to cultivate in that locality. But Charmian had escaped. Out of her long immunity had been bred contempt for the rest of us. Her ego was flattered to such an extent that one day she shyly informed me that it was all a matter of pureness of blood. Since all the rest of us cultivated the sores, and since she did not—well, anyway, hers was the size of a silver dollar, and the pureness of her blood enabled her to cure it after several weeks of strenuous nursing. She pins her faith to corrosive sublimate. Martin swears by iodoform. Henry uses lime-juice undiluted. And I believe that when corrosive sublimate is slow in taking hold, alternate dressings of peroxide of hydrogen are just the thing. There are white men in the Solomons who stake all upon boracic acid, and others who are prejudiced in favour of lysol. I also have the weakness of a panacea. It is California. I defy any man to get a Solomon Island sore in California.
We ran down the lagoon from Langa Langa, between mangrove swamps, through passages scarcely wider than the Minota, and past the reef villages of Kaloka and Auki. Like the founders of Venice, these salt-water men were originally refugees from the mainland. Too weak to hold their own in the bush, survivors of village massacres, they fled to the sand-banks of the lagoon. These sand-banks they built up into islands. They were compelled to seek their provender from the sea, and in time they became salt-water men. They learned the ways of the fish and the shellfish, and they invented hooks and lines, nets and fish-traps. They developed canoe-bodies. Unable to walk about, spending all their time in the canoes, they became thick-armed and broad-shouldered, with narrow waists and frail spindly legs. Controlling the sea-coast, they became wealthy, trade with the interior passing largely through their hands. But perpetual enmity exists between them and the bushmen. Practically their only truces are on market-days, which occur at stated intervals, usually twice a week. The bushwomen and the salt-water women do the bartering. Back in the bush, a hundred yards away, fully armed, lurk the bushmen, while to seaward, in the canoes, are the salt-water men. There are very rare instances of the market-day truces being broken. The bushmen like their fish too well, while the salt-water men have an organic craving for the vegetables they cannot grow on their crowded islets.
Thirty miles from Langa Langa brought us to the passage between Bassakanna Island and the mainland. Here, at nightfall, the wind left us, and all night, with the whale-boat towing ahead and the crew on board sweating at the sweeps, we strove to win through. But the tide was against us. At midnight, midway in the passage, we came up with the Eugenie, a big recruiting schooner, towing with two whale-boats. Her skipper, Captain Keller, a sturdy young German of twenty-two, came on board for a “gam,” and the latest news of Malaita was swapped back and forth. He had been in luck, having gathered in twenty recruits at the village of Fiu. While lying there, one of the customary courageous killings had taken place. The murdered boy was what is called a salt-water bushman—that is, a salt-water man who is half bushman and who lives by the sea but does not live on an islet. Three bushmen came down to this man where he was working in his garden. They behaved in friendly fashion, and after a time suggested kai-kai. Kai-kai means food. He built a fire and started to boil some taro. While bending over the pot, one of the bushmen shot him through the head. He fell into the flames, whereupon they thrust a spear through his stomach, turned it around, and broke it off.
“My word,” said Captain Keller, “I don’t want ever to be shot with a Snider. Spread! You could drive a horse and carriage through that hole in his head.”
Another recent courageous killing I heard of on Malaita was that of an old man. A bush chief had died a natural death. Now the bushmen don’t believe in natural deaths. No one was ever known to die a natural death. The only way to die is by bullet, tomahawk, or spear thrust. When a man dies in any other way, it is a clear case of having been charmed to death. When the bush chief died naturally, his tribe placed the guilt on a certain family. Since it did not matter which one of the family was killed, they selected this old man who lived by himself. This would make it easy. Furthermore, he possessed no Snider. Also, he was blind. The old fellow got an inkling of what was coming and laid in a large supply of arrows. Three brave warriors, each with a Snider, came down upon him in the night time. All night they fought valiantly with him. Whenever they moved in the bush and made a noise or a rustle, he discharged an arrow in that direction. In the morning, when his last arrow was gone, the three heroes crept up to him and blew his brains out.
Morning found us still vainly toiling through the passage. At last, in despair, we turned tail, ran out to sea, and sailed clear round Bassakanna to our objective, Malu. The anchorage at Malu was very good, but it lay between the shore and an ugly reef, and while easy to enter, it was difficult to leave. The direction of the southeast trade necessitated a beat to windward; the point of the reef was widespread and shallow; while a current bore down at all times upon the point.
Mr. Caulfeild, the missionary at Malu, arrived in his whale-boat from a trip down the coast. A slender, delicate man he was, enthusiastic in his work, level-headed and practical, a true twentieth-century soldier of the Lord. When he came down to this station on Malaita, as he said, he agreed to come for six months. He further agreed that if he were alive at the end of that time, he would continue on. Six years had passed and he was still continuing on. Nevertheless he was justified in his doubt as to living longer than six months. Three missionaries had preceded him on Malaita, and in less than that time two had died of fever and the third had gone home a wreck.
“What murder are you talking about?” he asked suddenly, in the midst of a confused conversation with Captain Jansen.
Captain Jansen explained.
“Oh, that’s not the one I have reference to,” quoth Mr. Caulfeild. “That’s old already. It happened two weeks ago.”
It was here at Malu that I atoned for all the exulting and gloating I had been guilty of over the Solomon sore Charmian had collected at Langa Langa. Mr. Caulfeild was indirectly responsible for my atonement. He presented us with a chicken, which I pursued into the bush with a rifle. My intention was to clip off its head. I succeeded, but in doing so fell over a log and barked my shin. Result: three Solomon sores. This made five all together that were adorning my person. Also, Captain Jansen and Nakata had caught gari-gari. Literally translated, gari-gari is scratch-scratch. But translation was not necessary for the rest of us. The skipper’s and Nakata’s gymnastics served as a translation without words.
(No, the Solomon Islands are not as healthy as they might be. I am writing this article on the island of Ysabel, where we have taken the Snark to careen and clean her cooper. I got over my last attack of fever this morning, and I have had only one free day between attacks. Charmian’s are two weeks apart. Wada is a wreck from fever. Last night he showed all the symptoms of coming down with pneumonia. Henry, a strapping giant of a Tahitian, just up from his last dose of fever, is dragging around the deck like a last year’s crab-apple. Both he and Tehei have accumulated a praiseworthy display of Solomon sores. Also, they have caught a new form of gari-gari, a sort of vegetable poisoning like poison oak or poison ivy. But they are not unique in this. A number of days ago Charmian, Martin, and I went pigeon-shooting on a small island, and we have had a foretaste of eternal torment ever since. Also, on that small island, Martin cut the soles of his feet to ribbons on the coral whilst chasing a shark—at least, so he says, but from the glimpse I caught of him I thought it was the other way about. The coral-cuts have all become Solomon sores. Before my last fever I knocked the skin off my knuckles while heaving on a line, and I now have three fresh sores. And poor Nakata! For three weeks he has been unable to sit down. He sat down yesterday for the first time, and managed to stay down for fifteen minutes. He says cheerfully that he expects to be cured of his gari-gari in another month. Furthermore, his gari-gari, from too enthusiastic scratch-scratching, has furnished footholds for countless Solomon sores. Still furthermore, he has just come down with his seventh attack of fever. If I were king, the worst punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons. On second thought, king or no king, I don’t think I’d have the heart to do it.)
Recruiting plantation labourers on a small, narrow yacht, built for harbour sailing, is not any too nice. The decks swarm with recruits and their families. The main cabin is packed with them. At night they sleep there. The only entrance to our tiny cabin is through the main cabin, and we jam our way through them or walk over them. Nor is this nice. One and all, they are afflicted with every form of malignant skin disease. Some have ringworm, others have bukua. This latter is caused by a vegetable parasite that invades the skin and eats it away. The itching is intolerable. The afflicted ones scratch until the air is filled with fine dry flakes. Then there are yaws and many other skin ulcerations. Men come aboard with Solomon sores in their feet so large that they can walk only on their toes, or with holes in their legs so terrible that a fist could be thrust in to the bone. Blood-poisoning is very frequent, and Captain Jansen, with sheath-knife and sail needle, operates lavishly on one and all. No matter how desperate the situation, after opening and cleansing, he claps on a poultice of sea-biscuit soaked in water. Whenever we see a particularly horrible case, we retire to a corner and deluge our own sores with corrosive sublimate. And so we live and eat and sleep on the Minota, taking our chance and “pretending it is good.”
At Suava, another artificial island, I had a second crow over Charmian. A big fella marster belong Suava (which means the high chief of Suava) came on board. But first he sent an emissary to Captain Jansen for a fathom of calico with which to cover his royal nakedness. Meanwhile he lingered in the canoe alongside. The regal dirt on his chest I swear was half an inch thick, while it was a good wager that the underneath layers were anywhere from ten to twenty years of age. He sent his emissary on board again, who explained that the big fella marster belong Suava was condescendingly willing enough to shake hands with Captain Jansen and me and cadge a stick or so of trade tobacco, but that nevertheless his high-born soul was still at so lofty an altitude that it could not sink itself to such a depth of degradation as to shake hands with a mere female woman. Poor Charmian! Since her Malaita experiences she has become a changed woman. Her meekness and humbleness are appallingly becoming, and I should not be surprised, when we return to civilization and stroll along a sidewalk, to see her take her station, with bowed head, a yard in the rear.
Nothing much happened at Suava. Bichu, the native cook, deserted. The Minota dragged anchor. It blew heavy squalls of wind and rain. The mate, Mr. Jacobsen, and Wada were prostrated with fever. Our Solomon sores increased and multiplied. And the cockroaches on board held a combined Fourth of July and Coronation Parade. They selected midnight for the time, and our tiny cabin for the place. They were from two to three inches long; there were hundreds of them, and they walked all over us. When we attempted to pursue them, they left solid footing, rose up in the air, and fluttered about like humming-birds. They were much larger than ours on the Snark. But ours are young yet, and haven’t had a chance to grow. Also, the Snark has centipedes, big ones, six inches long. We kill them occasionally, usually in Charmian’s bunk. I’ve been bitten twice by them, both times foully, while I was asleep. But poor Martin had worse luck. After being sick in bed for three weeks, the first day he sat up he sat down on one. Sometimes I think they are the wisest who never go to Carcassonne.
Later on we returned to Malu, picked up seven recruits, hove up anchor, and started to beat out the treacherous entrance. The wind was chopping about, the current upon the ugly point of reef setting strong. Just as we were on the verge of clearing it and gaining open sea, the wind broke off four points. The Minota attempted to go about, but missed stays. Two of her anchors had been lost at Tulagi. Her one remaining anchor was let go. Chain was let out to give it a hold on the coral. Her fin keel struck bottom, and her main topmast lurched and shivered as if about to come down upon our heads. She fetched up on the slack of the anchors at the moment a big comber smashed her shoreward. The chain parted. It was our only anchor. The Minota swung around on her heel and drove headlong into the breakers.
Bedlam reigned. All the recruits below, bushmen and afraid of the sea, dashed panic-stricken on deck and got in everybody’s way. At the same time the boat’s crew made a rush for the rifles. They knew what going ashore on Malaita meant—one hand for the ship and the other hand to fight off the natives. What they held on with I don’t know, and they needed to hold on as the Minota lifted, rolled, and pounded on the coral. The bushmen clung in the rigging, too witless to watch out for the topmast. The whale-boat was run out with a tow-line endeavouring in a puny way to prevent the Minota from being flung farther in toward the reef, while Captain Jansen and the mate, the latter pallid and weak with fever, were resurrecting a scrap-anchor from out the ballast and rigging up a stock for it. Mr. Caulfeild, with his mission boys, arrived in his whale-boat to help.
When the Minota first struck, there was not a canoe in sight; but like vultures circling down out of the blue, canoes began to arrive from every quarter. The boat’s crew, with rifles at the ready, kept them lined up a hundred feet away with a promise of death if they ventured nearer. And there they clung, a hundred feet away, black and ominous, crowded with men, holding their canoes with their paddles on the perilous edge of the breaking surf. In the meantime the bushmen were flocking down from the hills armed with spears, Sniders, arrows, and clubs, until the beach was massed with them. To complicate matters, at least ten of our recruits had been enlisted from the very bushmen ashore who were waiting hungrily for the loot of the tobacco and trade goods and all that we had on board.
The Minota was honestly built, which is the first essential for any boat that is pounding on a reef. Some idea of what she endured may be gained from the fact that in the first twenty-four hours she parted two anchor-chains and eight hawsers. Our boat’s crew was kept busy diving for the anchors and bending new lines. There were times when she parted the chains reinforced with hawsers. And yet she held together. Tree trunks were brought from ashore and worked under her to save her keel and bilges, but the trunks were gnawed and splintered and the ropes that held them frayed to fragments, and still she pounded and held together. But we were luckier than the Ivanhoe, a big recruiting schooner, which had gone ashore on Malaita several months previously and been promptly rushed by the natives. The captain and crew succeeded in getting away in the whale-boats, and the bushmen and salt-water men looted her clean of everything portable.
Squall after squall, driving wind and blinding rain, smote the Minota, while a heavier sea was making. The Eugenie lay at anchor five miles to windward, but she was behind a point of land and could not know of our mishap. At Captain Jansen’s suggestion, I wrote a note to Captain Keller, asking him to bring extra anchors and gear to our aid. But not a canoe could be persuaded to carry the letter. I offered half a case of tobacco, but the blacks grinned and held their canoes bow-on to the breaking seas. A half a case of tobacco was worth three pounds. In two hours, even against the strong wind and sea, a man could have carried the letter and received in payment what he would have laboured half a year for on a plantation. I managed to get into a canoe and paddle out to where Mr. Caulfeild was running an anchor with his whale-boat. My idea was that he would have more influence over the natives. He called the canoes up to him, and a score of them clustered around and heard the offer of half a case of tobacco. No one spoke.
“I know what you think,” the missionary called out to them. “You think plenty tobacco on the schooner and you’re going to get it. I tell you plenty rifles on schooner. You no get tobacco, you get bullets.”
At last, one man, alone in a small canoe, took the letter and started. Waiting for relief, work went on steadily on the Minota. Her water-tanks were emptied, and spars, sails, and ballast started shoreward. There were lively times on board when the Minota rolled one bilge down and then the other, a score of men leaping for life and legs as the trade-boxes, booms, and eighty-pound pigs of iron ballast rushed across from rail to rail and back again. The poor pretty harbour yacht! Her decks and running rigging were a raffle. Down below everything was disrupted. The cabin floor had been torn up to get at the ballast, and rusty bilge-water swashed and splashed. A bushel of limes, in a mess of flour and water, charged about like so many sticky dumplings escaped from a half-cooked stew. In the inner cabin, Nakata kept guard over our rifles and ammunition.
Three hours from the time our messenger started, a whale-boat, pressing along under a huge spread of canvas, broke through the thick of a shrieking squall to windward. It was Captain Keller, wet with rain and spray, a revolver in belt, his boat’s crew fully armed, anchors and hawsers heaped high amidships, coming as fast as wind could drive—the white man, the inevitable white man, coming to a white man’s rescue.
The vulture line of canoes that had waited so long broke and disappeared as quickly as it had formed. The corpse was not dead after all. We now had three whale-boats, two plying steadily between the vessel and shore, the other kept busy running out anchors, rebending parted hawsers, and recovering the lost anchors. Later in the afternoon, after a consultation, in which we took into consideration that a number of our boat’s crew, as well as ten of the recruits, belonged to this place, we disarmed the boat’s crew. This, incidently, gave them both hands free to work for the vessel. The rifles were put in the charge of five of Mr. Caulfeild’s mission boys. And down below in the wreck of the cabin the missionary and his converts prayed to God to save the Minota. It was an impressive scene! the unarmed man of God praying with cloudless faith, his savage followers leaning on their rifles and mumbling amens. The cabin walls reeled about them. The vessel lifted and smashed upon the coral with every sea. From on deck came the shouts of men heaving and toiling, praying, in another fashion, with purposeful will and strength of arm.
That night Mr. Caulfeild brought off a warning. One of our recruits had a price on his head of fifty fathoms of shell-money and forty pigs. Baffled in their desire to capture the vessel, the bushmen decided to get the head of the man. When killing begins, there is no telling where it will end, so Captain Jansen armed a whale-boat and rowed in to the edge of the beach. Ugi, one of his boat’s crew, stood up and orated for him. Ugi was excited. Captain Jansen’s warning that any canoe sighted that night would be pumped full of lead, Ugi turned into a bellicose declaration of war, which wound up with a peroration somewhat to the following effect: “You kill my captain, I drink his blood and die with him!”
The bushmen contented themselves with burning an unoccupied mission house, and sneaked back to the bush. The next day the Eugenie sailed in and dropped anchor. Three days and two nights the Minota pounded on the reef; but she held together, and the shell of her was pulled off at last and anchored in smooth water. There we said good-bye to her and all on board, and sailed away on the Eugenie, bound for Florida Island. [268]
Given a number of white traders, a wide area of land, and scores of savage languages and dialects, the result will be that the traders will manufacture a totally new, unscientific, but perfectly adequate, language. This the traders did when they invented the Chinook lingo for use over British Columbia, Alaska, and the Northwest Territory. So with the lingo of the Kroo-boys of Africa, the pigeon English of the Far East, and the bêche de mer of the westerly portion of the South Seas. This latter is often called pigeon English, but pigeon English it certainly is not. To show how totally different it is, mention need be made only of the fact that the classic piecee of China has no place in it.
There was once a sea captain who needed a dusky potentate down in his cabin. The potentate was on deck. The captain’s command to the Chinese steward was “Hey, boy, you go top-side catchee one piecee king.” Had the steward been a New Hebridean or a Solomon islander, the command would have been: “Hey, you fella boy, go look ’m eye belong you along deck, bring ’m me fella one big fella marster belong black man.”
It was the first white men who ventured through Melanesia after the early explorers, who developed bêche de mer English—men such as the bêche de mer fishermen, the sandalwood traders, the pearl hunters, and the labour recruiters. In the Solomons, for instance, scores of languages and dialects are spoken. Unhappy the trader who tried to learn them all; for in the next group to which he might wander he would find scores of additional tongues. A common language was necessary—a language so simple that a child could learn it, with a vocabulary as limited as the intelligence of the savages upon whom it was to be used. The traders did not reason this out. Bêche de mer English was the product of conditions and circumstances. Function precedes organ; and the need for a universal Melanesian lingo preceded bêche de mer English. Bêche de mer was purely fortuitous, but it was fortuitous in the deterministic way. Also, from the fact that out of the need the lingo arose, bêche de mer English is a splendid argument for the Esperanto enthusiasts.
A limited vocabulary means that each word shall be overworked. Thus, fella, in bêche de mer, means all that piecee does and quite a bit more, and is used continually in every possible connection. Another overworked word is belong. Nothing stands alone. Everything is related. The thing desired is indicated by its relationship with other things. A primitive vocabulary means primitive expression, thus, the continuance of rain is expressed as rain he stop. Sun he come up cannot possibly be misunderstood, while the phrase-structure itself can be used without mental exertion in ten thousand different ways, as, for instance, a native who desires to tell you that there are fish in the water and who says fish he stop. It was while trading on Ysabel island that I learned the excellence of this usage. I wanted two or three pairs of the large clam-shells (measuring three feet across), but I did not want the meat inside. Also, I wanted the meat of some of the smaller clams to make a chowder. My instruction to the natives finally ripened into the following “You fella bring me fella big fella clam—kai-kai he no stop, he walk about. You fella bring me fella small fella clam—kai-kai he stop.”
Kai-kai is the Polynesian for food, meat, eating, and to eat: but it would be hard to say whether it was introduced into Melanesia by the sandalwood traders or by the Polynesian westward drift. Walk about is a quaint phrase. Thus, if one orders a Solomon sailor to put a tackle on a boom, he will suggest, “That fella boom he walk about too much.” And if the said sailor asks for shore liberty, he will state that it is his desire to walk about. Or if said sailor be seasick, he will explain his condition by stating, “Belly belong me walk about too much.”
Too much, by the way, does not indicate anything excessive. It is merely the simple superlative. Thus, if a native is asked the distance to a certain village, his answer will be one of these four: “Close-up”; “long way little bit”; “long way big bit”; or “long way too much.” Long way too much does not mean that one cannot walk to the village; it means that he will have to walk farther than if the village were a long way big bit.
Gammon is to lie, to exaggerate, to joke. Mary is a woman. Any woman is a Mary. All women are Marys. Doubtlessly the first dim white adventurer whimsically called a native woman Mary, and of similar birth must have been many other words in bêche de mer. The white men were all seamen, and so capsize and sing out were introduced into the lingo. One would not tell a Melanesian cook to empty the dish-water, but he would tell him to capsize it. To sing out is to cry loudly, to call out, or merely to speak. Sing-sing is a song. The native Christian does not think of God calling for Adam in the Garden of Eden; in the native’s mind, God sings out for Adam.
Savvee or catchee are practically the only words which have been introduced straight from pigeon English. Of course, pickaninny has happened along, but some of its uses are delicious. Having bought a fowl from a native in a canoe, the native asked me if I wanted “Pickaninny stop along him fella.” It was not until he showed me a handful of hen’s eggs that I understood his meaning. My word, as an exclamation with a thousand significances, could have arrived from nowhere else than Old England. A paddle, a sweep, or an oar, is called washee, and washee is also the verb.
Here is a letter, dictated by one Peter, a native trader at Santa Anna, and addressed to his employer. Harry, the schooner captain, started to write the letter, but was stopped by Peter at the end of the second sentence. Thereafter the letter runs in Peter’s own words, for Peter was afraid that Harry gammoned too much, and he wanted the straight story of his needs to go to headquarters.
“Santa Anna
“Trader Peter has worked 12 months for your firm and has not received any pay yet. He hereby wants £12.” (At this point Peter began dictation). “Harry he gammon along him all the time too much. I like him 6 tin biscuit, 4 bag rice, 24 tin bullamacow. Me like him 2 rifle, me savvee look out along boat, some place me go man he no good, he kai-kai along me.
“Peter.”
Bullamacow means tinned beef. This word was corrupted from the English language by the Samoans, and from them learned by the traders, who carried it along with them into Melanesia. Captain Cook and the other early navigators made a practice of introducing seeds, plants, and domestic animals amongst the natives. It was at Samoa that one such navigator landed a bull and a cow. “This is a bull and cow,” said he to the Samoans. They thought he was giving the name of the breed, and from that day to this, beef on the hoof and beef in the tin is called bullamacow.
A Solomon islander cannot say fence, so, in bêche de mer, it becomes fennis; store is sittore, and box is bokkis. Just now the fashion in chests, which are known as boxes, is to have a bell-arrangement on the lock so that the box cannot be opened without sounding an alarm. A box so equipped is not spoken of as a mere box, but as the bokkis belong bell.
Fright is the bêche de mer for fear. If a native appears timid and one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: “Me fright along you too much.” Or the native may be fright along storm, or wild bush, or haunted places. Cross covers every form of anger. A man may be cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may be cross when he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew out of you. A recruit, after having toiled three years on a plantation, was returned to his own village on Malaita. He was clad in all kinds of gay and sportive garments. On his head was a top-hat. He possessed a trade-box full of calico, beads, porpoise-teeth, and tobacco. Hardly was the anchor down, when the villagers were on board. The recruit looked anxiously for his own relatives, but none was to be seen. One of the natives took the pipe out of his mouth. Another confiscated the strings of beads from around his neck. A third relieved him of his gaudy loin-cloth, and a fourth tried on the top-hat and omitted to return it. Finally, one of them took his trade-box, which represented three years’ toil, and dropped it into a canoe alongside. “That fella belong you?” the captain asked the recruit, referring to the thief. “No belong me,” was the answer. “Then why in Jericho do you let him take the box?” the captain demanded indignantly. Quoth the recruit, “Me speak along him, say bokkis he stop, that fella he cross along me”—which was the recruit’s way of saying that the other man would murder him. God’s wrath, when He sent the Flood, was merely a case of being cross along mankind.
What name? is the great interrogation of bêche de mer. It all depends on how it is uttered. It may mean: What is your business? What do you mean by this outrageous conduct? What do you want? What is the thing you are after? You had best watch out; I demand an explanation; and a few hundred other things. Call a native out of his house in the middle of the night, and he is likely to demand, “What name you sing out along me?”
Imagine the predicament of the Germans on the plantations of Bougainville Island, who are compelled to learn bêche de mer English in order to handle the native labourers. It is to them an unscientific polyglot, and there are no text-books by which to study it. It is a source of unholy delight to the other white planters and traders to hear the German wrestling stolidly with the circumlocutions and short-cuts of a language that has no grammar and no dictionary.
Some years ago large numbers of Solomon islanders were recruited to labour on the sugar plantations of Queensland. A missionary urged one of the labourers, who was a convert, to get up and preach a sermon to a shipload of Solomon islanders who had just arrived. He chose for his subject the Fall of Man, and the address he gave became a classic in all Australasia. It proceeded somewhat in the following manner:
“Altogether you boy belong Solomons you no savvee white man. Me fella me savvee him. Me fella me savvee talk along white man.
“Before long time altogether no place he stop. God big fella marster belong white man, him fella He make ’m altogether. God big fella marster belong white man, He make ’m big fella garden. He good fella too much. Along garden plenty yam he stop, plenty cocoanut, plenty taro, plenty kumara (sweet potatoes), altogether good fella kai-kai too much.
“Bimeby God big fella marster belong white man He make ’m one fella man and put ’m along garden belong Him. He call ’m this fella man Adam. He name belong him. He put him this fella man Adam along garden, and He speak, ‘This fella garden he belong you.’ And He look ’m this fella Adam he walk about too much. Him fella Adam all the same sick; he no savvee kai-kai; he walk about all the time. And God He no savvee. God big fella marster belong white man, He scratch ’m head belong Him. God say: ‘What name? Me no savvee what name this fella Adam he want.’
“Bimeby God He scratch ’m head belong Him too much, and speak: ‘Me fella me savvee, him fella Adam him want ’m Mary.’ So He make Adam he go asleep, He take one fella bone belong him, and He make ’m one fella Mary along bone. He call him this fella Mary, Eve. He give ’m this fella Eve along Adam, and He speak along him fella Adam: ‘Close up altogether along this fella garden belong you two fella. One fella tree he tambo (taboo) along you altogether. This fella tree belong apple.’
“So Adam Eve two fella stop along garden, and they two fella have ’m good time too much. Bimeby, one day, Eve she come along Adam, and she speak, ‘More good you me two fella we eat ’m this fella apple.’ Adam he speak, ‘No,’ and Eve she speak, ‘What name you no like ’m me?’ And Adam he speak, ‘Me like ’m you too much, but me fright along God.’ And Eve she speak, ‘Gammon! What name? God He no savvee look along us two fella all ’m time. God big fella marster, He gammon along you.’ But Adam he speak, ‘No.’ But Eve she talk, talk, talk, allee time—allee same Mary she talk along boy along Queensland and make ’m trouble along boy. And bimeby Adam he tired too much, and he speak, ‘All right.’ So these two fella they go eat ’m. When they finish eat ’m, my word, they fright like hell, and they go hide along scrub.
“And God He come walk about along garden, and He sing out, ‘Adam!’ Adam he no speak. He too much fright. My word! And God He sing out, ‘Adam!’ And Adam he speak, ‘You call ’m me?’ God He speak, ‘Me call ’m you too much.’ Adam he speak, ‘Me sleep strong fella too much.’ And God He speak, ‘You been eat ’m this fella apple.’ Adam he speak, ‘No, me no been eat ’m.’ God He speak. ‘What name you gammon along me? You been eat ’m.’ And Adam he speak, ‘Yes, me been eat ’m.’
“And God big fella marster He cross along Adam Eve two fella too much, and He speak, ‘You two fella finish along me altogether. You go catch ’m bokkis (box) belong you, and get to hell along scrub.’
“So Adam Eve these two fella go along scrub. And God He make ’m one big fennis (fence) all around garden and He put ’m one fella marster belong God along fennis. And He give this fella marster belong God one big fella musket, and He speak, ‘S’pose you look ’m these two fella Adam Eve, you shoot ’m plenty too much.’”
When we sailed from San Francisco on the Snark I knew as much about sickness as the Admiral of the Swiss Navy knows about salt water. And here, at the start, let me advise any one who meditates going to out-of-the-way tropic places. Go to a first-class druggist—the sort that have specialists on their salary list who know everything. Talk the matter over with such an one. Note carefully all that he says. Have a list made of all that he recommends. Write out a cheque for the total cost, and tear it up.
I wish I had done the same. I should have been far wiser, I know now, if I had bought one of those ready-made, self-acting, fool-proof medicine chests such as are favoured by fourth-rate ship-masters. In such a chest each bottle has a number. On the inside of the lid is placed a simple table of directions: No. 1, toothache; No. 2, smallpox; No. 3, stomachache; No. 4, cholera; No. 5, rheumatism; and so on, through the list of human ills. And I might have used it as did a certain venerable skipper, who, when No. 3 was empty, mixed a dose from No. 1 and No. 2, or, when No. 7 was all gone, dosed his crew with 4 and 3 till 3 gave out, when he used 5 and 2.
So far, with the exception of corrosive sublimate (which was recommended as an antiseptic in surgical operations, and which I have not yet used for that purpose), my medicine-chest has been useless. It has been worse than useless, for it has occupied much space which I could have used to advantage.
With my surgical instruments it is different. While I have not yet had serious use for them, I do not regret the space they occupy. The thought of them makes me feel good. They are so much life insurance, only, fairer than that last grim game, one is not supposed to die in order to win. Of course, I don’t know how to use them, and what I don’t know about surgery would set up a dozen quacks in prosperous practice. But needs must when the devil drives, and we of the Snark have no warning when the devil may take it into his head to drive, ay, even a thousand miles from land and twenty days from the nearest port.
I did not know anything about dentistry, but a friend fitted me out with forceps and similar weapons, and in Honolulu I picked up a book upon teeth. Also, in that sub-tropical city I managed to get hold of a skull, from which I extracted the teeth swiftly and painlessly. Thus equipped, I was ready, though not exactly eager, to tackle any tooth that get in my way. It was in Nuku-hiva, in the Marquesas, that my first case presented itself in the shape of a little, old Chinese. The first thing I did was to got the buck fever, and I leave it to any fair-minded person if buck fever, with its attendant heart-palpitations and arm-tremblings, is the right condition for a man to be in who is endeavouring to pose as an old hand at the business. I did not fool the aged Chinaman. He was as frightened as I and a bit more shaky. I almost forgot to be frightened in the fear that he would bolt. I swear, if he had tried to, that I would have tripped him up and sat on him until calmness and reason returned.
I wanted that tooth. Also, Martin wanted a snap-shot of me getting it. Likewise Charmian got her camera. Then the procession started. We were stopping at what had been the club-house when Stevenson was in the Marquesas on the Casco. On the veranda, where he had passed so many pleasant hours, the light was not good—for snapshots, I mean. I led on into the garden, a chair in one hand, the other hand filled with forceps of various sorts, my knees knocking together disgracefully. The poor old Chinaman came second, and he was shaking, too. Charmian and Martin brought up the rear, armed with kodaks. We dived under the avocado trees, threaded our way through the cocoanut palms, and came on a spot that satisfied Martin’s photographic eye.
I looked at the tooth, and then discovered that I could not remember anything about the teeth I had pulled from the skull five months previously. Did it have one prong? two prongs? or three prongs? What was left of the part that showed appeared very crumbly, and I knew that I should have taken hold of the tooth deep down in the gum. It was very necessary that I should know how many prongs that tooth had. Back to the house I went for the book on teeth. The poor old victim looked like photographs I had seen of fellow-countrymen of his, criminals, on their knees, waiting the stroke of the beheading sword.
“Don’t let him get away,” I cautioned to Martin. “I want that tooth.”
“I sure won’t,” he replied with enthusiasm, from behind his camera. “I want that photograph.”
For the first time I felt sorry for the Chinaman. Though the book did not tell me anything about pulling teeth, it was all right, for on one page I found drawings of all the teeth, including their prongs and how they were set in the jaw. Then came the pursuit of the forceps. I had seven pairs, but was in doubt as to which pair I should use. I did not want any mistake. As I turned the hardware over with rattle and clang, the poor victim began to lose his grip and to turn a greenish yellow around the gills. He complained about the sun, but that was necessary for the photograph, and he had to stand it. I fitted the forceps around the tooth, and the patient shivered and began to wilt.
“Ready?” I called to Martin.
“All ready,” he answered.
I gave a pull. Ye gods! The tooth was loose! Out it came on the instant. I was jubilant as I held it aloft in the forceps.
“Put it back, please, oh, put it back,” Martin pleaded. “You were too quick for me.”
And the poor old Chinaman sat there while I put the tooth back and pulled over. Martin snapped the camera. The deed was done. Elation? Pride? No hunter was ever prouder of his first pronged buck than I was of that three-pronged tooth. I did it! I did it! With my own hands and a pair of forceps I did it, to say nothing of the forgotten memories of the dead man’s skull.
My next case was a Tahitian sailor. He was a small man, in a state of collapse from long days and nights of jumping toothache. I lanced the gums first. I didn’t know how to lance them, but I lanced them just the same. It was a long pull and a strong pull. The man was a hero. He groaned and moaned, and I thought he was going to faint. But he kept his mouth open and let me pull. And then it came.
After that I was ready to meet all comers—just the proper state of mind for a Waterloo. And it came. Its name was Tomi. He was a strapping giant of a heathen with a bad reputation. He was addicted to deeds of violence. Among other things he had beaten two of his wives to death with his fists. His father and mother had been naked cannibals. When he sat down and I put the forceps into his mouth, he was nearly as tall as I was standing up. Big men, prone to violence, very often have a streak of fat in their make-up, so I was doubtful of him. Charmian grabbed one arm and Warren grabbed the other. Then the tug of war began. The instant the forceps closed down on the tooth, his jaws closed down on the forceps. Also, both his hands flew up and gripped my pulling hand. I held on, and he held on. Charmian and Warren held on. We wrestled all about the shop.
It was three against one, and my hold on an aching tooth was certainly a foul one; but in spite of the handicap he got away with us. The forceps slipped off, banging and grinding along against his upper teeth with a nerve-scraping sound. Out of his month flew the forceps, and he rose up in the air with a blood-curdling yell. The three of us fell back. We expected to be massacred. But that howling savage of sanguinary reputation sank back in the chair. He held his head in both his hands, and groaned and groaned and groaned. Nor would he listen to reason. I was a quack. My painless tooth-extraction was a delusion and a snare and a low advertising dodge. I was so anxious to get that tooth that I was almost ready to bribe him. But that went against my professional pride and I let him depart with the tooth still intact, the only case on record up to date of failure on my part when once I had got a grip. Since then I have never let a tooth go by me. Only the other day I volunteered to beat up three days to windward to pull a woman missionary’s tooth. I expect, before the voyage of the Snark is finished, to be doing bridge work and putting on gold crowns.
I don’t know whether they are yaws or not—a physician in Fiji told me they were, and a missionary in the Solomons told me they were not; but at any rate I can vouch for the fact that they are most uncomfortable. It was my luck to ship in Tahiti a French-sailor, who, when we got to sea, proved to be afflicted with a vile skin disease. The Snark was too small and too much of a family party to permit retaining him on board; but perforce, until we could reach land and discharge him, it was up to me to doctor him. I read up the books and proceeded to treat him, taking care afterwards always to use a thorough antiseptic wash. When we reached Tutuila, far from getting rid of him, the port doctor declared a quarantine against him and refused to allow him ashore. But at Apia, Samoa, I managed to ship him off on a steamer to New Zealand. Here at Apia my ankles were badly bitten by mosquitoes, and I confess to having scratched the bites—as I had a thousand times before. By the time I reached the island of Savaii, a small sore had developed on the hollow of my instep. I thought it was due to chafe and to acid fumes from the hot lava over which I tramped. An application of salve would cure it—so I thought. The salve did heal it over, whereupon an astonishing inflammation set in, the new skin came off, and a larger sore was exposed. This was repeated many times. Each time new skin formed, an inflammation followed, and the circumference of the sore increased. I was puzzled and frightened. All my life my skin had been famous for its healing powers, yet here was something that would not heal. Instead, it was daily eating up more skin, while it had eaten down clear through the skin and was eating up the muscle itself.
By this time the Snark was at sea on her way to Fiji. I remembered the French sailor, and for the first time became seriously alarmed. Four other similar sores had appeared—or ulcers, rather, and the pain of them kept me awake at night. All my plans were made to lay up the Snark in Fiji and get away on the first steamer to Australia and professional M.D.’s. In the meantime, in my amateur M.D. way, I did my best. I read through all the medical works on board. Not a line nor a word could I find descriptive of my affliction. I brought common horse-sense to bear on the problem. Here were malignant and excessively active ulcers that were eating me up. There was an organic and corroding poison at work. Two things I concluded must be done. First, some agent must be found to destroy the poison. Secondly, the ulcers could not possibly heal from the outside in; they must heal from the inside out. I decided to fight the poison with corrosive sublimate. The very name of it struck me as vicious. Talk of fighting fire with fire! I was being consumed by a corrosive poison, and it appealed to my fancy to fight it with another corrosive poison. After several days I alternated dressings of corrosive sublimate with dressings of peroxide of hydrogen. And behold, by the time we reached Fiji four of the five ulcers were healed, while the remaining one was no bigger than a pea.
I now felt fully qualified to treat yaws. Likewise I had a wholesome respect for them. Not so the rest of the crew of the Snark. In their case, seeing was not believing. One and all, they had seen my dreadful predicament; and all of them, I am convinced, had a subconscious certitude that their own superb constitutions and glorious personalities would never allow lodgment of so vile a poison in their carcasses as my anæmic constitution and mediocre personality had allowed to lodge in mine. At Port Resolution, in the New Hebrides, Martin elected to walk barefooted in the bush and returned on board with many cuts and abrasions, especially on his shins.
“You’d better be careful,” I warned him. “I’ll mix up some corrosive sublimate for you to wash those cuts with. An ounce of prevention, you know.”
But Martin smiled a superior smile. Though he did not say so, I nevertheless was given to understand that he was not as other men (I was the only man he could possibly have had reference to), and that in a couple of days his cuts would be healed. He also read me a dissertation upon the peculiar purity of his blood and his remarkable healing powers. I felt quite humble when he was done with me. Evidently I was different from other men in so far as purity of blood was concerned.
Nakata, the cabin-boy, while ironing one day, mistook the calf of his leg for the ironing-block and accumulated a burn three inches in length and half an inch wide. He, too, smiled the superior smile when I offered him corrosive sublimate and reminded him of my own cruel experience. I was given to understand, with all due suavity and courtesy, that no matter what was the matter with my blood, his number-one, Japanese, Port-Arthur blood was all right and scornful of the festive microbe.
Wada, the cook, took part in a disastrous landing of the launch, when he had to leap overboard and fend the launch off the beach in a smashing surf. By means of shells and coral he cut his legs and feet up beautifully. I offered him the corrosive sublimate bottle. Once again I suffered the superior smile and was given to understand that his blood was the same blood that had licked Russia and was going to lick the United States some day, and that if his blood wasn’t able to cure a few trifling cuts, he’d commit hari-kari in sheer disgrace.
From all of which I concluded that an amateur M.D. is without honour on his own vessel, even if he has cured himself. The rest of the crew had begun to look upon me as a sort of mild mono-maniac on the question of sores and sublimate. Just because my blood was impure was no reason that I should think everybody else’s was. I made no more overtures. Time and microbes were with me, and all I had to do was wait.
“I think there’s some dirt in these cuts,” Martin said tentatively, after several days. “I’ll wash them out and then they’ll be all right,” he added, after I had refused to rise to the bait.
Two more days passed, but the cuts did not pass, and I caught Martin soaking his feet and legs in a pail of hot water.
“Nothing like hot water,” he proclaimed enthusiastically. “It beats all the dope the doctors ever put up. These sores will be all right in the morning.”
But in the morning he wore a troubled look, and I knew that the hour of my triumph approached.
“I think I will try some of that medicine,” he announced later on in the day. “Not that I think it’ll do much good,” he qualified, “but I’ll just give it a try anyway.”
Next came the proud blood of Japan to beg medicine for its illustrious sores, while I heaped coals of fire on all their houses by explaining in minute and sympathetic detail the treatment that should be given. Nakata followed instructions implicitly, and day by day his sores grew smaller. Wada was apathetic, and cured less readily. But Martin still doubted, and because he did not cure immediately, he developed the theory that while doctor’s dope was all right, it did not follow that the same kind of dope was efficacious with everybody. As for himself, corrosive sublimate had no effect. Besides, how did I know that it was the right stuff? I had had no experience. Just because I happened to get well while using it was not proof that it had played any part in the cure. There were such things as coincidences. Without doubt there was a dope that would cure the sores, and when he ran across a real doctor he would find what that dope was and get some of it.
About this time we arrived in the Solomon Islands. No physician would ever recommend the group for invalids or sanitoriums. I spent but little time there ere I really and for the first time in my life comprehended how frail and unstable is human tissue. Our first anchorage was Port Mary, on the island of Santa Anna. The one lone white man, a trader, came alongside. Tom Butler was his name, and he was a beautiful example of what the Solomons can do to a strong man. He lay in his whale-boat with the helplessness of a dying man. No smile and little intelligence illumined his face. He was a sombre death’s-head, too far gone to grin. He, too, had yaws, big ones. We were compelled to drag him over the rail of the Snark. He said that his health was good, that he had not had the fever for some time, and that with the exception of his arm he was all right and trim. His arm appeared to be paralysed. Paralysis he rejected with scorn. He had had it before, and recovered. It was a common native disease on Santa Anna, he said, as he was helped down the companion ladder, his dead arm dropping, bump-bump, from step to step. He was certainly the ghastliest guest we ever entertained, and we’ve had not a few lepers and elephantiasis victims on board.
Martin inquired about yaws, for here was a man who ought to know. He certainly did know, if we could judge by his scarred arms and legs and by the live ulcers that corroded in the midst of the scars. Oh, one got used to yaws, quoth Tom Butler. They were never really serious until they had eaten deep into the flesh. Then they attacked the walls of the arteries, the arteries burst, and there was a funeral. Several of the natives had recently died that way ashore. But what did it matter? If it wasn’t yaws, it was something else in the Solomons.
I noticed that from this moment Martin displayed a swiftly increasing interest in his own yaws. Dosings with corrosive sublimate were more frequent, while, in conversation, he began to revert with growing enthusiasm to the clean climate of Kansas and all other things Kansan. Charmian and I thought that California was a little bit of all right. Henry swore by Rapa, and Tehei staked all on Bora Bora for his own blood’s sake; while Wada and Nakata sang the sanitary pæan of Japan.
One evening, as the Snark worked around the southern end of the island of Ugi, looking for a reputed anchorage, a Church of England missionary, a Mr. Drew, bound in his whaleboat for the coast of San Cristoval, came alongside and stopped for dinner. Martin, his legs swathed in Red Cross bandages till they looked like a mummy’s, turned the conversation upon yaws. Yes, said Mr. Drew, they were quite common in the Solomons. All white men caught them.
“And have you had them?” Martin demanded, in the soul of him quite shocked that a Church of England missionary could possess so vulgar an affliction.
Mr. Drew nodded his head and added that not only had he had them, but at that moment he was doctoring several.
“What do you use on them?” Martin asked like a flash.
My heart almost stood still waiting the answer. By that answer my professional medical prestige stood or fell. Martin, I could see, was quite sure it was going to fall. And then the answer—O blessed answer!
“Corrosive sublimate,” said Mr. Drew.
Martin gave in handsomely, I’ll admit, and I am confident that at that moment, if I had asked permission to pull one of his teeth, he would not have denied me.
All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every cut or abrasion practically means another yaw. Every man I met had had them, and nine out of ten had active ones. There was but one exception, a young fellow who had been in the islands five months, who had come down with fever ten days after he arrived, and who had since then been down so often with fever that he had had neither time nor opportunity for yaws.
Every one on the Snark except Charmian came down with yaws. Hers was the same egotism that Japan and Kansas had displayed. She ascribed her immunity to the pureness of her blood, and as the days went by she ascribed it more often and more loudly to the pureness of her blood. Privately I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman, she escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which we hard-working men were subject in the course of working the Snark around the world. I did not tell her so. You see, I did not wish to bruise her ego with brutal facts. Being an M.D., if only an amateur one, I knew more about the disease than she, and I knew that time was my ally. But alas, I abused my ally when it dealt a charming little yaw on the shin. So quickly did I apply antiseptic treatment, that the yaw was cured before she was convinced that she had one. Again, as an M.D., I was without honour on my own vessel; and, worse than that, I was charged with having tried to mislead her into the belief that she had had a yaw. The pureness of her blood was more rampant than ever, and I poked my nose into my navigation books and kept quiet. And then came the day. We were cruising along the coast of Malaita at the time.
“What’s that abaft your ankle-bone?” said I.
“Nothing,” said she.
“All right,” said I; “but put some corrosive sublimate on it just the same. And some two or three weeks from now, when it is well and you have a scar that you will carry to your grave, just forget about the purity of your blood and your ancestral history and tell me what you think about yaws anyway.”
It was as large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took all of three weeks to heal. There were times when Charmian could not walk because of the hurt of it; and there were times upon times when she explained that abaft the ankle-bone was the most painful place to have a yaw. I explained, in turn, that, never having experienced a yaw in that locality, I was driven to conclude the hollow of the instep was the most painful place for yaw-culture. We left it to Martin, who disagreed with both of us and proclaimed passionately that the only truly painful place was the shin. No wonder horse-racing is so popular.
But yaws lose their novelty after a time. At the present moment of writing I have five yaws on my hands and three more on my shin. Charmian has one on each side of her right instep. Tehei is frantic with his. Martin’s latest shin-cultures have eclipsed his earlier ones. And Nakata has several score casually eating away at his tissue. But the history of the Snark in the Solomons has been the history of every ship since the early discoverers. From the “Sailing Directions” I quote the following:
“The crews of vessels remaining any considerable time in the Solomons find wounds and sores liable to change into malignant ulcers.”
Nor on the question of fever were the “Sailing Directions” any more encouraging, for in them I read:
“New arrivals are almost certain sooner or later to suffer from fever. The natives are also subject to it. The number of deaths among the whites in the year 1897 amounted to 9 among a population of 50.”
Some of these deaths, however, were accidental.
Nakata was the first to come down with fever. This occurred at Penduffryn. Wada and Henry followed him. Charmian surrendered next. I managed to escape for a couple of months; but when I was bowled over, Martin sympathetically joined me several days later. Out of the seven of us all told Tehei is the only one who has escaped; but his sufferings from nostalgia are worse than fever. Nakata, as usual, followed instructions faithfully, so that by the end of his third attack he could take a two hours’ sweat, consume thirty or forty grains of quinine, and be weak but all right at the end of twenty-four hours.
Wada and Henry, however, were tougher patients with which to deal. In the first place, Wada got in a bad funk. He was of the firm conviction that his star had set and that the Solomons would receive his bones. He saw that life about him was cheap. At Penduffryn he saw the ravages of dysentery, and, unfortunately for him, he saw one victim carried out on a strip of galvanized sheet-iron and dumped without coffin or funeral into a hole in the ground. Everybody had fever, everybody had dysentery, everybody had everything. Death was common. Here to-day and gone to-morrow—and Wada forgot all about to-day and made up his mind that to-morrow had come.
He was careless of his ulcers, neglected to sublimate them, and by uncontrolled scratching spread them all over his body. Nor would he follow instructions with fever, and, as a result, would be down five days at a time, when a day would have been sufficient. Henry, who is a strapping giant of a man, was just as bad. He refused point blank to take quinine, on the ground that years before he had had fever and that the pills the doctor gave him were of different size and colour from the quinine tablets I offered him. So Henry joined Wada.
But I fooled the pair of them, and dosed them with their own medicine, which was faith-cure. They had faith in their funk that they were going to die. I slammed a lot of quinine down their throats and took their temperature. It was the first time I had used my medicine-chest thermometer, and I quickly discovered that it was worthless, that it had been produced for profit and not for service. If I had let on to my two patients that the thermometer did not work, there would have been two funerals in short order. Their temperature I swear was 105°. I solemnly made one and then the other smoke the thermometer, allowed an expression of satisfaction to irradiate my countenance, and joyfully told them that their temperature was 94°. Then I slammed more quinine down their throats, told them that any sickness or weakness they might experience would be due to the quinine, and left them to get well. And they did get well, Wada in spite of himself. If a man can die through a misapprehension, is there any immorality in making him live through a misapprehension?
Commend me the white race when it comes to grit and surviving. One of our two Japanese and both our Tahitians funked and had to be slapped on the back and cheered up and dragged along by main strength toward life. Charmian and Martin took their afflictions cheerfully, made the least of them, and moved with calm certitude along the way of life. When Wada and Henry were convinced that they were going to die, the funeral atmosphere was too much for Tehei, who prayed dolorously and cried for hours at a time. Martin, on the other hand, cursed and got well, and Charmian groaned and made plans for what she was going to do when she got well again.
Charmian had been raised a vegetarian and a sanitarian. Her Aunt Netta, who brought her up and who lived in a healthful climate, did not believe in drugs. Neither did Charmian. Besides, drugs disagreed with her. Their effects were worse than the ills they were supposed to alleviate. But she listened to the argument in favour of quinine, accepted it as the lesser evil, and in consequence had shorter, less painful, and less frequent attacks of fever. We encountered a Mr. Caulfeild, a missionary, whose two predecessors had died after less than six months’ residence in the Solomons. Like them he had been a firm believer in homeopathy, until after his first fever, whereupon, unlike them, he made a grand slide back to allopathy and quinine, catching fever and carrying on his Gospel work.
But poor Wada! The straw that broke the cook’s back was when Charmian and I took him along on a cruise to the cannibal island of Malaita, in a small yacht, on the deck of which the captain had been murdered half a year before. Kai-kai means to eat, and Wada was sure he was going to be kai-kai’d. We went about heavily armed, our vigilance was unremitting, and when we went for a bath in the mouth of a fresh-water stream, black boys, armed with rifles, did sentry duty about us. We encountered English war vessels burning and shelling villages in punishment for murders. Natives with prices on their heads sought shelter on board of us. Murder stalked abroad in the land. In out-of-the-way places we received warnings from friendly savages of impending attacks. Our vessel owed two heads to Malaita, which were liable to be collected any time. Then to cap it all, we were wrecked on a reef, and with rifles in one hand warned the canoes of wreckers off while with the other hand we toiled to save the ship. All of which was too much for Wada, who went daffy, and who finally quitted the Snark on the island of Ysabel, going ashore for good in a driving rain-storm, between two attacks of fever, while threatened with pneumonia. If he escapes being kai-kai’d, and if he can survive sores and fever which are riotous ashore, he can expect, if he is reasonably lucky, to get away from that place to the adjacent island in anywhere from six to eight weeks. He never did think much of my medicine, despite the fact that I successfully and at the first trial pulled two aching teeth for him.
The Snark has been a hospital for months, and I confess that we are getting used to it. At Meringe Lagoon, where we careened and cleaned the Snark’s copper, there were times when only one man of us was able to go into the water, while the three white men on the plantation ashore were all down with fever. At the moment of writing this we are lost at sea somewhere northeast of Ysabel and trying vainly to find Lord Howe Island, which is an atoll that cannot be sighted unless one is on top of it. The chronometer has gone wrong. The sun does not shine anyway, nor can I get a star observation at night, and we have had nothing but squalls and rain for days and days. The cook is gone. Nakata, who has been trying to be both cook and cabin boy, is down on his back with fever. Martin is just up from fever, and going down again. Charmian, whose fever has become periodical, is looking up in her date book to find when the next attack will be. Henry has begun to eat quinine in an expectant mood. And, since my attacks hit me with the suddenness of bludgeon-blows I do not know from moment to moment when I shall be brought down. By a mistake we gave our last flour away to some white men who did not have any flour. We don’t know when we’ll make land. Our Solomon sores are worse than ever, and more numerous. The corrosive sublimate was accidentally left ashore at Penduffryn; the peroxide of hydrogen is exhausted; and I am experimenting with boracic acid, lysol, and antiphlogystine. At any rate, if I fail in becoming a reputable M.D., it won’t be from lack of practice.
P.S. It is now two weeks since the foregoing was written, and Tehei, the only immune on board has been down ten days with far severer fever than any of us and is still down. His temperature has been repeatedly as high as 104, and his pulse 115.
P.S. At sea, between Tasman atoll and Manning Straits. Tehei’s attack developed into black water fever—the severest form of malarial fever, which, the doctor-book assures me, is due to some outside infection as well. Having pulled him through his fever, I am now at my wit’s end, for he has lost his wits altogether. I am rather recent in practice to take up the cure of insanity. This makes the second lunacy case on this short voyage.
P.S. Some day I shall write a book (for the profession), and entitle it, “Around the World on the Hospital Ship Snark.” Even our pets have not escaped. We sailed from Meringe Lagoon with two, an Irish terrier and a white cockatoo. The terrier fell down the cabin companionway and lamed its nigh hind leg, then repeated the manœuvre and lamed its off fore leg. At the present moment it has but two legs to walk on. Fortunately, they are on opposite sides and ends, so that she can still dot and carry two. The cockatoo was crushed under the cabin skylight and had to be killed. This was our first funeral—though for that matter, the several chickens we had, and which would have made welcome broth for the convalescents, flew overboard and were drowned. Only the cockroaches flourish. Neither illness nor accident ever befalls them, and they grow larger and more carnivorous day by day, gnawing our finger-nails and toe-nails while we sleep.
P.S. Charmian is having another bout with fever. Martin, in despair, has taken to horse-doctoring his yaws with bluestone and to blessing the Solomons. As for me, in addition to navigating, doctoring, and writing short stories, I am far from well. With the exception of the insanity cases, I’m the worst off on board. I shall catch the next steamer to Australia and go on the operating table. Among my minor afflictions, I may mention a new and mysterious one. For the past week my hands have been swelling as with dropsy. It is only by a painful effort that I can close them. A pull on a rope is excruciating. The sensations are like those that accompany severe chilblains. Also, the skin is peeling off both hands at an alarming rate, besides which the new skin underneath is growing hard and thick. The doctor-book fails to mention this disease. Nobody knows what it is.
P.S. Well, anyway, I’ve cured the chronometer. After knocking about the sea for eight squally, rainy days, most of the time hove to, I succeeded in catching a partial observation of the sun at midday. From this I worked up my latitude, then headed by log to the latitude of Lord Howe, and ran both that latitude and the island down together. Here I tested the chronometer by longitude sights and found it something like three minutes out. Since each minute is equivalent to fifteen miles, the total error can be appreciated. By repeated observations at Lord Howe I rated the chronometer, finding it to have a daily losing error of seven-tenths of a second. Now it happens that a year ago, when we sailed from Hawaii, that selfsame chronometer had that selfsame losing error of seven-tenths of a second. Since that error was faithfully added every day, and since that error, as proved by my observations at Lord Howe, has not changed, then what under the sun made that chronometer all of a sudden accelerate and catch up with itself three minutes? Can such things be? Expert watchmakers say no; but I say that they have never done any expert watch-making and watch-rating in the Solomons. That it is the climate is my only diagnosis. At any rate, I have successfully doctored the chronometer, even if I have failed with the lunacy cases and with Martin’s yaws.
P.S. Martin has just tried burnt alum, and is blessing the Solomons more fervently than ever.
P.S. Between Manning Straits and Pavuvu Islands.
Henry has developed rheumatism in his back, ten skins have peeled off my hands and the eleventh is now peeling, while Tehei is more lunatic than ever and day and night prays God not to kill him. Also, Nakata and I are slashing away at fever again. And finally up to date, Nakata last evening had an attack of ptomaine poisoning, and we spent half the night pulling him through.
The Snark was forty-three feet on the water-line and fifty-five over all, with fifteen feet beam (tumble-home sides) and seven feet eight inches draught. She was ketch-rigged, carrying flying-jib, jib, fore-staysail, main-sail, mizzen, and spinnaker. There were six feet of head-room below, and she was crown-decked and flush-decked. There were four alleged water-tight compartments. A seventy-horse power auxiliary gas-engine sporadically furnished locomotion at an approximate cost of twenty dollars per mile. A five-horse power engine ran the pumps when it was in order, and on two occasions proved capable of furnishing juice for the search-light. The storage batteries worked four or five times in the course of two years. The fourteen-foot launch was rumoured to work at times, but it invariably broke down whenever I stepped on board.
But the Snark sailed. It was the only way she could get anywhere. She sailed for two years, and never touched rock, reef, nor shoal. She had no inside ballast, her iron keel weighed five tons, but her deep draught and high freeboard made her very stiff. Caught under full sail in tropic squalls, she buried her rail and deck many times, but stubbornly refused to turn turtle. She steered easily, and she could run day and night, without steering, close-by, full-and-by, and with the wind abeam. With the wind on her quarter and the sails properly trimmed, she steered herself within two points, and with the wind almost astern she required scarcely three points for self-steering.
The Snark was partly built in San Francisco. The morning her iron keel was to be cast was the morning of the great earthquake. Then came anarchy. Six months overdue in the building, I sailed the shell of her to Hawaii to be finished, the engine lashed to the bottom, building materials lashed on deck. Had I remained in San Francisco for completion, I’d still be there. As it was, partly built, she cost four times what she ought to have cost.
The Snark was born unfortunately. She was libelled in San Francisco, had her cheques protested as fraudulent in Hawaii, and was fined for breach of quarantine in the Solomons. To save themselves, the newspapers could not tell the truth about her. When I discharged an incompetent captain, they said I had beaten him to a pulp. When one young man returned home to continue at college, it was reported that I was a regular Wolf Larsen, and that my whole crew had deserted because I had beaten it to a pulp. In fact the only blow struck on the Snark was when the cook was manhandled by a captain who had shipped with me under false pretences, and whom I discharged in Fiji. Also, Charmian and I boxed for exercise; but neither of us was seriously maimed.
The voyage was our idea of a good time. I built the Snark and paid for it, and for all expenses. I contracted to write thirty-five thousand words descriptive of the trip for a magazine which was to pay me the same rate I received for stories written at home. Promptly the magazine advertised that it was sending me especially around the world for itself. It was a wealthy magazine. And every man who had business dealings with the Snark charged three prices because forsooth the magazine could afford it. Down in the uttermost South Sea isle this myth obtained, and I paid accordingly. To this day everybody believes that the magazine paid for everything and that I made a fortune out of the voyage. It is hard, after such advertising, to hammer it into the human understanding that the whole voyage was done for the fun of it.
I went to Australia to go into hospital, where I spent five weeks. I spent five months miserably sick in hotels. The mysterious malady that afflicted my hands was too much for the Australian specialists. It was unknown in the literature of medicine. No case like it had ever been reported. It extended from my hands to my feet so that at times I was as helpless as a child. On occasion my hands were twice their natural size, with seven dead and dying skins peeling off at the same time. There were times when my toe-nails, in twenty-four hours, grew as thick as they were long. After filing them off, inside another twenty-four hours they were as thick as before.
The Australian specialists agreed that the malady was non-parasitic, and that, therefore, it must be nervous. It did not mend, and it was impossible for me to continue the voyage. The only way I could have continued it would have been by being lashed in my bunk, for in my helpless condition, unable to clutch with my hands, I could not have moved about on a small rolling boat. Also, I said to myself that while there were many boats and many voyages, I had but one pair of hands and one set of toe-nails. Still further, I reasoned that in my own climate of California I had always maintained a stable nervous equilibrium. So back I came.
Since my return I have completely recovered. And I have found out what was the matter with me. I encountered a book by Lieutenant-Colonel Charles E. Woodruff of the United States Army entitled “Effects of Tropical Light on White Men.” Then I knew. Later, I met Colonel Woodruff, and learned that he had been similarly afflicted. Himself an Army surgeon, seventeen Army surgeons sat on his case in the Philippines, and, like the Australian specialists, confessed themselves beaten. In brief, I had a strong predisposition toward the tissue-destructiveness of tropical light. I was being torn to pieces by the ultra-violet rays just as many experimenters with the X-ray have been torn to pieces.
In passing, I may mention that among the other afflictions that jointly compelled the abandonment of the voyage, was one that is variously called the healthy man’s disease, European Leprosy, and Biblical Leprosy. Unlike True Leprosy, nothing is known of this mysterious malady. No doctor has ever claimed a cure for a case of it, though spontaneous cures are recorded. It comes, they know not how. It is, they know not what. It goes, they know not why. Without the use of drugs, merely by living in the wholesome California climate, my silvery skin vanished. The only hope the doctors had held out to me was a spontaneous cure, and such a cure was mine.
A last word: the test of the voyage. It is easy enough for me or any man to say that it was enjoyable. But there is a better witness, the one woman who made it from beginning to end. In hospital when I broke the news to Charmian that I must go back to California, the tears welled into her eyes. For two days she was wrecked and broken by the knowledge that the happy, happy voyage was abandoned.
Glen Ellen, California,
April 7, 1911.
[268] To point out that we of the Snark are not a crowd of weaklings, which might be concluded from our divers afflictions, I quote the following, which I gleaned verbatim from the Eugenie’s log and which may be considered as a sample of Solomon Islands cruising:
Ulava, Thursday, March 12, 1908.
Boat went ashore in the morning. Got two loads ivory nut, 4000 copra. Skipper down with fever.
Ulava, Friday, March 13, 1908.
Buying nuts from bushmen, 1½ ton. Mate and skipper down with fever.
Ulava, Saturday, March 14, 1908.
At noon hove up and proceeded with a very light E.N.E. wind for Ngora-Ngora. Anchored in 5 fathoms—shell and coral. Mate down with fever.
Ngora-Ngora, Sunday, March 15, 1908.
At daybreak found that the boy Bagua had died during the night, on dysentery. He was about 14 days sick. At sunset, big N.W. squall. (Second anchor ready) Lasting one hour and 30 minutes.
At sea, Monday, March 16, 1908.
Set course for Sikiana at 4 P.M. Wind broke off. Heavy squalls during the night. Skipper down on dysentery, also one man.
At sea, Tuesday, March 17, 1908.
Skipper and 2 crew down on dysentery. Mate fever.
At sea, Wednesday, March 18, 1908.
Big sea. Lee-rail under water all the time. Ship under reefed mainsail, staysail, and inner jib. Skipper and 3 men dysentery. Mate fever.
At sea, Thursday, March 19, 1908.
Too thick to see anything. Blowing a gale all the time. Pump plugged up and bailing with buckets. Skipper and five boys down on dysentery.
At sea, Friday, March 20, 1908.
During night squalls with hurricane force. Skipper and six men down on dysentery.
At sea, Saturday, March 21, 1908.
Turned back from Sikiana. Squalls all day with heavy rain and sea. Skipper and best part of crew on dysentery. Mate fever.
And so, day by day, with the majority of all on board prostrated, the Eugenie’s log goes on. The only variety occurred on March 31, when the mate came down with dysentery and the skipper was floored by fever.
27339 ---- BOOKS BY HAROLD MACGRATH ADVENTURES OF KATHLYN ARMS AND THE WOMAN BEST MAN CARPET FROM BAGDAD DEUCES WILD ENCHANTED HAT GOOSE GIRL HALF A ROGUE HEARTS AND MASKS LUCK OF THE IRISH: A ROMANCE LURE OF THE MASK MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY PARROT & CO. PIDGIN ISLAND PLACE OF HONEYMOONS PRINCESS ELOPES PUPPET CROWN SPLENDID HAZARD THE DRUMS OF JEOPARDY THE GIRL IN HIS HOUSE THE GREY CLOAK THE MAN ON THE BOX THE MAN WITH THREE NAMES THE PAGAN MADONNA THE PRIVATE WIRE TO WASHINGTON THE YELLOW TYPHOON VOICE OF THE FOG [Illustration: "'Thank you for coming up,' said Cunningham. 'It makes me feel that you trust me.'"] THE PAGAN MADONNA BY HAROLD MacGRATH FRONTISPIECE BY W. H. D. KOERNER GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1921 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY THE PAGAN MADONNA CHAPTER I Humdrum isn't where you live; it's what you are. Perhaps you are one of those whose lives are bound by neighbourly interests. Imaginatively, you never seek what lies under a gorgeous sunset; you are never stirred by any longing to investigate the ends of rainbows. You are more concerned by what your neighbour does every day than by what he might do if he were suddenly spun, whirled, jolted out of his poky orbit. The blank door of an empty house never intrigues you; you enter blind alleys without thrilling in the least; you hear a cry in the night and impute it to some marauding tom. Lord, what a life! And yet every move you make is governed by Chance--the Blind Madonna of the Pagan, as that great adventurer, Stevenson, called it. You never stop to consider that it is only by chance that you leave home and arrive at the office alive--millions and millions of you--poor old stick-in-the-muds! Because this or that hasn't happened to you, you can't be made to believe that it might have happened to someone else. What's a wood fire to you but a shin warmer? And how you hate to walk alone! So sheer off--this is not for you. But to you, fenced in by circumstance, walls of breathless brick and stone, suffocating with longing, you whose thought springs ever toward the gorgeous sunset and the ends of rainbows; who fly in dreams across the golden south seas to the far countries, you whose imagination transforms every ratty old square-rigger that pokes down the bay into a Spanish galleon--come with me. For to admire an' for to see, For to be'old this world so wide. First off, Ling Foo, of Woosung Road, perhaps the most bewildered Chinaman in all Shanghai last April. The Blind Madonna flung him into a great game and immediately cast him out of it, giving him never an inkling of what the game was about and leaving him buffeted by the four winds of wonder. A drama--he was sure of that--had rolled up, touched him icily if slightly, and receded, like a wave on the beach, without his knowing in the least what had energized it in his direction. During lulls, for years to come, Ling Foo's consciousness would strive to press behind the wall for a key to the riddle; for years to come he would be searching the International Bund, Nanking Road, Broadway and Bubbling Well roads for the young woman with the wonderful ruddy hair and the man who walked with the sluing lurch. Ah, but that man--the face of him, beautiful as that of a foreign boy's, now young, now old, as though a cobweb shifted to and fro across it! The fire in those dark eyes and the silk on that tongue! Always that face would haunt him, because it should not have been a man's but a woman's. Ling Foo could not go to his gods for comparisons, for a million variations of Buddha offered no such countenance; so his recollection would always be tinged with a restless sense of dissatisfaction. There were other faces in the picture, but with the exception of the woman's and the man's he could not reassemble the features of any. A wild and bitter night. The nor'easter, packed with a cold, penetrating rain, beat down from the Yellow Sea, its insensate fury clearing the highways of all save belated labourers and 'ricksha boys. Along the Chinese Bund the sampans huddled even more closely together, and rocked and creaked and complained. The inscrutable countenance of the average Chinaman is the result of five thousand years of misery. It was a night for hand warmers--little jigsawed brass receptacles filled with smoldering punk or charcoal, which you carried in your sleeves and hugged if you happened to be a Chinaman, as Ling Foo was. He was a merchant. He sold furs, curios, table linen, embroideries. His shop was out on the Woosung Road. He did not sit on his stool or in his alcove and wait for customers. He made packs of his merchandise and canvassed the hotels in the morning, from floor to floor, from room to room. His curios, however, he left in the shop. That was his lure to bring his hotel customers round in the afternoon, when there were generally additional profits and no commissions. This, of course, had been the _modus operandi_ in the happy days before 1914, when white men began the slaughter of white men. Nowadays Ling Foo was off to the Astor House the moment he had news of a ship dropping anchor off the bar twelve miles down the Whangpoo River. The hour no longer mattered; the point was to beat his competitors to the market--and often there was no market. He did not call the white people foreign devils; he called them customers. That they worshipped a bearded Buddha was no concern of his. Born in the modern town, having spent twelve years in San Francisco, he was not heavily barnacled with tradition. He was shrewd, a suave bargainer, and as honest as the day is long. His English was fluent. To-night he was angry with the fates. The ship was hours late. Moreover, it was a British transport, dropping down from Vladivostok. He would be wasting his time to wait for such passengers as came ashore. They would be tired and hungry and uncomfortable. So at seven o'clock he lit a piece of punk, dropped it into his hand warmer, threw his pack over his shoulders, and left the cheery lobby of the hotel where he had been waiting since five in the afternoon. He would be cold and wet and hungry when he reached his shop. Outside he called to a disconsolate 'ricksha boy, and a moment later rattled across the bridge that spans the Soochow Creek. Even the Sikh policeman had taken to cover. When he finally arrived home he was drenched from his cap button to the wooden soles of his shoes. He unlocked the shop door, entered, flung the pack on the floor, and turned on the electric light. Twenty minutes later he was in dry clothes; hot rice, bean curd, and tea were warming him; and he sat cross-legged in a little alcove behind his till, smoking his metal pipe. Two or three puffs, then he would empty the ash in a brass bowl. He repeated this action half a dozen times. He was emptying the ash for the last time when the door opened violently and a man lurched in, hatless and apparently drunk--a white man. But instantly Ling Foo saw that the man was not drunk. Blood was streaming down his face, which was gray with terror and agony. The man made a desperate effort to save himself from falling, and dragged a pile of embroidered jackets to the floor as he went down. Ling Foo did not stir. It was not possible for him to move. The suddenness of the spectacle had disconnected thought from action. He saw all this, memorized it, even speculated upon it; but he could not move. The door was still open. The rain slanted across the black oblong space. He saw it strike the windows, pause, then trickle down. He could not see what had become of the man; the counter intervened. A tingle ran through Ling Foo's body, and he knew that his brain had gained control of his body again. But before this brain could telegraph to his legs three men rushed into the shop. A bubble of sound came into Ling Foo's throat--one of those calls for help that fear smothers. The three men disappeared instantly below the counter rim. Silence, except for the voices of the rain and the wind. Ling Foo, tensely, even painfully alive now, waited. He was afraid, and it was perfectly logical fear. Perhaps they had not noticed him in the alcove. So he waited for this fantastic drama to end. The three men rose in unison. Ling Foo saw that they were carrying the fourth between them. The man who carried the head and shoulders of the victim--for Ling Foo was now certain that murder was abroad--limped oddly, with a heave and a sluing twist. Ling Foo slid off his cushion and stepped round the counter in time to see the night absorb the back of the man who limped. He tried to recall the face of the man, but could not. His initial terror had drawn for him three white patches where faces should have been. For several minutes Ling Foo stared at the oblong blackness; then with a hysterical gurgle he ran to the door, slammed and bolted it, and leaned against the jamb, sick and faint, yet oddly relieved. He would not now have to account to the police for the body of an unknown white man. A queer business. Nothing exciting ever happened along this part of Woosung Road. What he had witnessed--it still wasn't quite believable--belonged to the water front. Things happened there, for these white sailors were a wild lot. When the vertigo went out of his legs, Ling Foo cat-stepped over to the scattered embroidered jackets and began mechanically to replace them on the counter--all but two, for these were speckled with blood. He contemplated them for a space, and at last picked them up daintily and tossed them into a far corner. When the blood dried he would wash them out himself. But there was that darkening stain on the floor. That would have to be washed out at once or it would be crying up to him eternally and recasting the tragic picture. So he entered the rear of the shop and summoned his wife. Meekly she obeyed his order and scrubbed the stain. Her beady little black eyes were so tightly lodged in her head that it was not possible for her to elevate her brows in surprise. But she knew that this stain was blood. Ling Foo solemnly waved her aside when the task was done, and she slip-slapped into the household dungeon out of which she had emerged. Her lord and master returned to his alcove. Ah, but the pipe was good! He rocked slightly as he smoked. Three pipefuls were reduced to ashes; then he wriggled off the cushion, picked up his cash counter and began slithering the buttons back and forth; not because there were any profits or losses that day, but because it gave a welcome turn to his thoughts. The storm raged outside. Occasionally he felt the floor shudder. The windows ran thickly with rain. The door rattled. It was as if all objects inanimate were demanding freedom from bolts and nails. With the tip of his long, slender finger Ling Foo moved the buttons. He counted what his profits would be in Manchurian sables; in the two Ming vases that had come in mysteriously from Kiao-chau--German loot from Peking; counted his former profits in snuff bottles, and so on. The door rattled furiously. Ling Foo could consider himself as tolerably wealthy. Some day, when this great turmoil among the whites subsided, he would move to South China and grow little red oranges and melons, and there would be a nook in the gardens where he could sit with the perfume of jasmine swimming over and about his head and the goodly Book of Confucius on his knees. A thudding sound--that wasn't the wind. Ling Foo looked over his buttons. He saw a human face outside the door; a beautiful boy's face--white. That was the first impression. But as he stared he saw a man's fury destroy the boyish stamp--gestures that demanded admission. But Ling Foo shook his head with equal emphasis. He would not go near that door again this night. The man outside shook his fists threateningly, wheeled, and strode off. Three strides took him out of sight; but Ling Foo, with a damp little chill on his spine, remarked that the visitor limped. So! This would be the man who had carried the bloody head and shoulders of the unknown. Oriental curiosity blazed up and over Ling Foo's distaste. What was it all about? Why had the limping man returned and demanded entrance? What had they done with the body? Pearls! The thought struck him as a blow. He began to understand something of the episode. Pearls! The beaten man had heard that sometimes Ling Foo of Woosung Road dealt in pearls without being overcurious. A falling out among thieves, and one had tried to betray his confederates, paying grimly for it. Pearls! He trotted down to the door and peered into the night, but he could see nothing. He wished now that he had purchased those window curtains such as the white merchants used over on the Bund. Every move he made could be seen from across the way, and the man who limped might be lurking there, watching. The man had come to him with pearls, but he had not been quick enough. What had he done with them? The man with the slue-foot would not have returned had he found the pearls on his moribund partner. That was sound reasoning. Ling Foo's heart contracted, then expanded and began to beat like a bird's wing. In here somewhere--on the floor! He turned away from the door without haste. His Oriental mind worked quickly and smoothly. He would tramp back and forth the length of the shop as if musing, but neither nook nor crevice should escape his eye. He was heir to these pearls. Slue-Foot--for so Ling Foo named his visitor--would not dare molest him, since he, Ling Foo, could go to the authorities and state that murder had been done. Those tiger eyes in a boy's face! His spine grew cold. Nevertheless, he set about his game. With his hands in his sleeves, his chin down, he paced the passage between the two counters. As he turned for the fifth journey a red-and-blue flash struck his eye. The flash came from the far corner of the shop, from the foot of the gunpowder-blue temple vase. Diamonds--not pearls but diamonds! Russian loot! Ling Foo pressed down his excitement and slowly approached the vase. A necklace! He gave the object a slight kick, which sent it rattling toward the door to the rear. He resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the necklace he gave it another kick. At length the necklace was at the threshold. Ling Foo approached the light and shut it off. Next he opened the door and kicked the necklace across the threshold. Diamonds--thirty or forty of them on a string. The room in the rear was divided into workshop and storeroom. The living rooms were above. His wife was squatted on the floor in an unlittered corner mending a ceremonial robe of his. She was always in this room at night when Ling Foo was in the shop. He ignored her and carried his prize to a lapidary's bench. He perched himself on a stool and reached for his magnifying glass. A queer little hiss broke through his lips. Cut-glass beads, patently Occidental, and here in Shanghai practically worthless! In his passion of disappointment he executed a gesture as if to hurl the beads to the floor, but let his arm sink slowly. He had made a mistake. These beads had not brought tragedy in and out of his shop. Somehow he had missed the object; some nook or corner had escaped him. In the morning he would examine every inch of the floor. White men did not kill each other for a string of glass beads. He stirred the beads about on his palm, and presently swung them under the droplight. Beautifully cut, small and large beads alternating, and on the smaller a graven letter he could not decipher. He observed some dark specks, and scrutinized them under the magnifying glass. Blood! His Oriental mind groped hopelessly. Blood! He could make nothing of it. A murderous quarrel over such as these! For a long time Ling Foo sat on his stool, the image of Buddha contemplating the way. Outside the storm carried on vigorously, sending rattles into casements and shudders into doors. The wifely needle, a thread of silver fire, shuttled back and forth in the heavy brocade silk. Glass beads! Trumpery! Ling Foo slid off the stool and shuffled back into the shop for his metal pipe. Having pushed Ling Foo into this blind alley, out of which he was shortly to emerge, none the wiser, the Pagan Madonna swooped down upon the young woman with the ruddy hair and touched her with the impelling finger. CHAPTER II It was chance that brought Jane Norman into Shanghai. The British transport, bound from Vladivostok to Hong-Kong, was destined to swing on her mudhook forty-eight hours. So Jane, a Red Cross nurse, relieved and on the first leg of the journey home to the United States, decided to spend those forty-eight hours in Shanghai, see the sights and do a little shopping. Besides, she had seen nothing of China. On the way over, fourteen months since, she had come direct from San Francisco to the Russian port. Jane was one of those suffocating adventurers whom circumstance had fenced in. In fancy she beat her hands against the bars of this cage that had no door, but through which she could see the caravans of dreams. Sea room and sky room were the want of her, and no matter which way she turned--bars. Her soul craved colour, distances, mountain peaks; and about all she had ever seen were the white walls of hospital wards. It is not adventure to tend the sick, to bind up wounds, to cheer the convalescing; it is a dull if angelic business. In her heart of hearts Jane knew that she had accepted the hardships of the Siberian campaign with the secret hope that some adventure might befall her--only to learn that her inexorable cage had travelled along with her. Understand, this longing was not the outcome of romantical reading; it was in the marrow of her--inherent. She was not in search of Prince Charming. She rarely thought of love as other young women think of it. She had not written in her mind any particular event she wanted to happen; but she knew that there must be colour, distance, mountain peaks. A few days of tremendous excitement; and then she acknowledged that she would be quite ready to return to the old monotonous orbit. The Great War to Jane had not been romance and adventure; her imagination, lively enough in other directions, had not falsely coloured the stupendous crime. She had accepted it instantly for what it was--pain, horror, death, hunger, and pestilence. She saw it as the genius of Vasili Vereshchagin and �mile Zola had seen it. The pioneer--after all, what was it he was truly seeking? Freedom! And as soon as ever civilization caught up with him he moved on. Without understanding it, that was really all Jane wanted--freedom. Freedom from genteel poverty, freedom from the white walls of hospitals, freedom from exactly measured hours. Twenty four hours a day, all her own; that was what she wanted; twenty-four hours a day to do with as she pleased--to sleep in, play, laugh, sing, love in. Pioneers, explorers, adventurers--what else do they seek? Twenty-four hours a day, all their own! At half after eight--about the time Ling Foo slid off his stool--the tender from the transport sloshed up to the customs jetty and landed Jane, a lone woman among a score of officers of various nationalities. But it really wasn't the customs jetty her foot touched; it was the outer rim of the whirligig. Some officer had found an extra slicker for her and an umbrella. Possibly the officer in olive drab who assisted her to the nearest covered 'ricksha and directed the placement of her luggage. "China!" "Yes, ma'am. Mandarin coats and oranges, jade and jasmine, Pekingese and red chow dogs." "Oh, I don't mean that kind!" she interrupted. "I should think these poor 'ricksha boys would die of exposure." "Manchus are the toughest human beings on earth. I'll see you in the morning?" "That depends," she answered, "upon the sun. If it rains I shall lie abed all day. A real bed! Honour bright, I've often wondered if I should ever see one again. Fourteen months in that awful world up there! Siberia!" "You're a plucky woman." "Somebody had to go. Armenia or Siberia, it was all the same to me if I could help." She held out her hand. "Good-night, captain. Thank you for all your kindness to me. Ten o'clock, if it is sunshiny. You're to show me the shops. Oh, if I were only rich!" "And what would you do if you had riches?" "I'd buy all the silk at Kai Fook's--isn't that the name?--and roll myself up in it like a cocoon." The man laughed. He understood. A touch of luxury, after all these indescribable months of dirt and disease, rain and snow and ice, among a people who lived like animals, who had the intelligence of animals. When he spoke the officer's voice was singularly grave: "These few days have been very happy ones for me. At ten--if the sun shines. Good-night." The 'rickshas in a wavering line began to roll along the Bund, which was practically deserted. The lights shone through slanting lattices of rain. Twice automobiles shot past, and Jane resented them. China, the flowery kingdom! She was touched with a little thrill of exultation. But oh, to get home, home! Never again would she long for palaces and servants and all that. The little wooden-frame house and the garden would be paradise enough. The crimson ramblers, the hollyhocks, the bachelor's-buttons, and the peonies, the twisted apple tree that never bore more than enough for one pie! Her throat tightened. She hadn't heard from the mother in two months, but there would be mail at Hong-Kong. Letters and papers from home! Soon she would be in the sitting room recounting her experiences; and the little mother would listen politely, even doubtfully, but very glad to have her back. How odd it was! In the mother the spirit of adventure never reached beyond the garden gate, while in the daughter it had always been keen for the far places. And in her first adventure beyond the gate, how outrageously she had been cheated! She had stepped out of drab and dreary routine only to enter a drabber and drearier one. What a dear boy this American officer was! He seemed to have been everywhere, up and down the world. He had hunted the white orchid of Borneo; he had gone pearl hunting in the South Seas; and he knew Monte Carlo, London, Paris, Naples, Cairo. But he never spoke of home. She had cleverly led up to it many times in the past month, but always he had unembarrassedly switched the conversation into another channel. This puzzled her deeply. From the other Americans she never heard of anything but home, and they were all mad to get there. Yet Captain Dennison maintained absolute silence on that topic. Clean shaven, bronzed, tall, and solidly built, clear-eyed, not exactly handsome but engaging--what lay back of the man's peculiar reticence? Being a daughter of Eve, the mystery intrigued her profoundly. Had he been a professional sailor prior to the war? It seemed to her if that had been the case he would have enlisted in the Navy. He talked like a man who had spent many years on the water; but in labour or in pleasure, he made it most difficult for her to tell. Of his people, of his past, not Bluebeard's closet was more firmly shut. Still with a little smile she recalled that eventually a woman had opened that closet door, and hadn't had her head cut off, either. He was poor like herself. That much was established. For he had said frankly that when he received his discharge from the Army he would have to dig up a job to get a meal ticket. Dear, dear! Would she ever see a continuous stretch of sunshine again? How this rain tore into things! Shanghai! Wouldn't it be fun to have a thousand dollars to fling away on the shops? She wanted jade beads, silks--not the quality the Chinese made for export, but that heavy, shiver stuff that was as strong and shielding as wool--ivory carvings, little bronze Buddhas with prayer scrolls inside of them, embroidered jackets. But why go on? She had less than a hundred, and she would have to carry home gimcracks instead of curios. They were bobbing over a bridge now, and a little way beyond she saw the lighted windows of the great caravansary, the Astor House. It smacked of old New York, where in a few weeks she would be stepping back into the dull routine of hospital work. She paid the ricksha boy and ran into the lobby, stamping her feet and shaking the umbrella. The slicker was an overhead affair, and she had to take off her hat to get free. This act tumbled her hair about considerably, and Jane Norman's hair was her glory. It was the tint of the copper beech, thick, finespun, with intermittent twists that gave it a wavy effect. Jane was not beautiful; that is, her face was not--it was comely. It was her hair that turned male heads. It was then men took note of her body. She was magnificently healthy, and true health is a magnet as powerful as that of the true pole. It drew toward her men and women and children. Her eyes were gray and serious; her teeth were white and sound. She was twenty-four. There was, besides her hair, another thing that was beautiful--her voice. It answered like the G string of an old Strad to every emotion. One could tell instantly when she was merry or sad or serious or angry. She could not hide her emotions any more than she could hide her hair. As a war nurse she had been adored by the wounded men and fought over by the hospital commandants. But few men had dared make love to her. She had that peculiar gift of drawing and repelling without consciousness. As the Chinese boy got her things together Jane espied the bookstall. American newspapers and American magazines! She packed four or five of each under her arm, nodded to the boy, and followed the manager to the lift! She hoped the lights would hang so that she could lie in bed and read. Her brain was thirsty for a bit of romance. Humming, she unpacked. She had brought one evening gown, hoping she might have a chance to wear it before it fell apart from disuse. She shook out the wrinkles and hung the gown in the closet. Lavender! She raised a fold of the gown and breathed in rapturously that homy perfume. She sighed. Perhaps she would have to lay away all her dreams in lavender. A little later she sat before the dressing mirror, combing her hair. How it happened she never could tell, but she heard a crash upon the wood floor, and discovered her hand mirror shattered into a thousand splinters. Seven years' bad luck! She laughed. Fate had blundered. The mirror had fallen seven years too late. CHAPTER III Outside the bar where the Whangpoo empties into the Yang-tse lay the thousand-ton yacht _Wanderer II_, out of New York. She was a sea whippet, and prior to the war her bowsprit had nosed into all the famed harbours of the seven seas. For nearly three years she had been in the auxiliary fleet of the United States Navy. She was still in war paint, owner's choice, but all naval markings had been obliterated. Her deck was flush. The house, pierced by the main companionway, was divided into three sections--a small lounging room, a wireless room, and the captain's cabin, over which stood the bridge and chart house. The single funnel rose between the captain's cabin and the wireless room, and had the rakish tilt of the racer. _Wanderer II_ could upon occasion hit it up round twenty-one knots, for all her fifteen years. There was plenty of deck room fore and aft. The crew's quarters were up in the forepeak. A passage-way divided the cook's galley and the dry stores, then came the dining salon. The main salon, with a fine library, came next. The port side of this salon was cut off into the owner's cabin. The main companionway dropped into the salon, a passage each side giving into the guest cabins. But rarely these days were there any guests on _Wanderer II_. The rain slashed her deck, drummed on the boat canvas, and blurred the ports. The deck house shed webby sheets of water, now to port, now to starboard. The ladder was down, and a reflector over the platform advertised the fact that either the owner had gone into Shanghai or was expecting a visitor. All about were rocking lights, yellow and green and red, from warships, tramps, passenger ships, freighters, barges, junks. The water was streaked with shaking lances of colour. In the salon, under a reading lamp, sat a man whose iron-gray hair was patched with cowlicks. Combs and brushes produced no results, so the owner had had it clipped to a short pompadour. It was the skull of a fighting man, for all that frontally it was marked by a high intellectuality. This sort of head generally gives the possessor yachts like _Wanderer II_, tremendous bank accounts; the type that will always possess these things, despite the howl of the proletariat. The face was sunburned. There was some loose flesh under the jaws. The nose was thick and pudgy, wide in the nostrils, like a lion's. The predatory are not invariably hawk-nosed. The eyes were blue--in repose, a warm blue--and there were feathery wrinkles at the corners which suggested that the toll-taker could laugh occasionally. The lips were straight and thin, the chin square--stubborn rather than relentless. A lonely man who was rarely lonesome. His body was big. One has to be keen physically as well as mentally to make a real success of anything. His score might have tallied sixty. He was at the peak of life, but hanging there, you might say. To-morrow Anthony Cleigh might begin the quick downward journey. He had made his money in mines, rails, ships; and now he was spending it prodigally. Prodigally, yes, but with caution and foresight. There was always a ready market for what he bought. If he paid a hundred thousand for a Rembrandt, rest assured he knew where he could dispose of it for the same amount. Cleigh was a collector by instinct. With him it was no fad; it was a passion, sometimes absurd. This artistic love of rare and beautiful creations was innate, not acquired. Dealers had long since learned their lesson, and no more sought to impose upon him. He was not always scrupulous. In the dollar war he had been sternly honest, harshly just. In pursuit of objects of art he argued with his conscience that he was not injuring the future of widows and orphans when he bought some purloined masterpiece. Without being in the least aware of it, he was now the victim, not the master, of the passion. He would have purchased Raphael's Adoration of the Magi had some rogue been able to steal it from the Vatican. Hanging from the ceiling and almost touching the floor, forward between the entrance to the dining salon and the owner's cabin, was a rug eight and a half by six. It was the first object that struck your eye as you came down the companionway. It was an animal rug, a museum piece; rubies and sapphires and emeralds and topaz melted into wool. It was under glass to fend off the sea damp. Fit to hang beside the Ardebil Carpet. You never saw the rug except in this salon. Cleigh dared not hang it in his gallery at home in New York for the particular reason that the British Government, urged by the Viceroy of India, had been hunting high and low for the rug since 1911, when it had been the rightful property of a certain influential maharaja whose _Ai, ai!_ had reverberated from Hind to Albion over the loss. Thus it will not be difficult to understand why Cleigh was lonely rather than lonesome. Queer lot. To be a true collector is to be as the opium eater: you keep getting in deeper and deeper, careless that the way back closes. After a while you cannot feel any kick in the stuff you find in the open marts, so you step outside the pale, where they sell the unadulterated. That's the true, dyed-in-the-wool collector. He no longer acquires a Vandyke merely to show to his friends; that he possesses it for his own delectation is enough. He becomes brother to Gaspard, miser; and like Gaspard he cannot be fooled by spurious gold. Over the top of the rug was a curtain of waxed sailcloth that could be dropped by the pull of a cord, and it was generally dropped whenever Cleigh made port. It was vaguely known that Cleigh possessed the maharaja's treasure. Millionaire collectors, agents, and famous salesroom auctioneers had heard indirectly; but they kept the information to themselves--not from any kindly spirit, however. Never a one of them but hoped some day he might lay hands upon the rug and dispose of it to some other madman. A rug valued at seventy thousand dollars was worth a high adventure. Cleigh, however, with cynical humour courted the danger. There is a race of hardy dare-devils--super-thieves--of which the world hears little and knows little. These adventurers have actually robbed the Louvre, the Vatican, the Pitti Gallery, the palaces of kings and sultans. It was not so long ago that La Gioconda--Mona Lisa--was stolen from the Louvre. Cleigh had come from New York, thousands of miles, for the express purpose of meeting one of these amazing rogues--a rogue who, had he found a rich wallet on the pavements, would have moved heaven and earth to find the owner, but who would have stolen the Pope's throne had it been left about carelessly. It is rather difficult to analyze the moral status of such a man, or that of the man ready to deal with him. Cleigh lowered his book and assumed a listening attitude. Above the patter of the rain he heard the putt-putt of a motor launch. He laid the book on the table and reached for a black cigar, which he lit and began to puff quickly. Louder grew the panting of the motor. It stopped abruptly. Cleigh heard a call or two, then the creaking of the ladder. Two minutes later a man limped into the salon. He tossed his sou'wester to the floor and followed it with the smelly oilskin. "Hello, Cleigh! Devil of a night!" "Have a peg?" asked Cleigh. "Never touch the stuff." "That's so; I had forgotten." Cleigh never looked upon this man's face without recalling del Sarto's John the Baptist--supposing John had reached forty by the way of reckless passions. The extraordinary beauty was still there, but as though behind a blurred pane of glass. "Well?" said Cleigh, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice. "There's the devil to pay--all in a half hour." "You haven't got it?" Cleigh blazed out. "Morrissy--one of the squarest chaps in the world--ran amuck the last minute. Tried to double-cross me, and in the rough-and-tumble that followed he was more or less banged up. We hurried him to a hospital, where he lies unconscious." "But the beads!" "Either he dropped them in the gutter, or they repose on the floor of a Chinese shop in Woosung Road. I'll be there bright and early--never you fear. Don't know what got into Morrissy. Of course I'll look him up in the morning." "Thousands of miles--to hear a yarn like this!" "Cleigh, we've done business for nearly twenty years. You can't point out an instance where I ever broke my word." "I know," grumbled Cleigh. "But I've gone to all this trouble, getting a crew and all that. And now you tell me you've let the beads slip through your fingers!" "Pshaw! You'd have put the yacht into commission if you'd never heard from me. You were crazy to get to sea again. Any trouble picking up the crew?" "No. But only four of the old crew--Captain Newton, of course, and Chief Engineer Svenson, Donaldson, and Morley. Still, it's the best crew I ever had: young fellows off warships and transports, looking for comfortable berths and a little adventure that won't entail hunting periscopes." "Plenty of coal?" "Trust me for that. Four hundred tons in Manila, and I shan't need more than a bucketful." "Who drew the plans for this yacht?" asked Cunningham, with a roving glance. "I did." "Humph! Why didn't you leave the job to someone who knew how? It's a series of labyrinths on this deck." "I wanted a big main salon, even if I had to sacrifice some of the rest of the space. Besides, it keeps the crew out of sight." "And I should say out of touch, too." "I'm quite satisfied," replied Cleigh, grumpily. "Cleigh, I'm through." Cunningham spread his hands. "What are you through with?" "Through with this game. I'm going in for a little sport. This string of beads was the wind-up. But don't worry. They'll be on board here to-morrow. You brought the gold?" "Yes." The visitor paused in front of the rug. He sighed audibly. "Scheherazade's twinkling little feet! Lord, but that rug is a wonder! Cleigh, I've been offered eighty thousand for it." "What's that?" Cleigh barked, half out of his chair. "Eighty thousand by Eisenfeldt. I don't know what crazy fool he's dealing for, but he offers me eighty thousand." Cleigh got up and pressed a wall button. Presently a man stepped into the salon from the starboard passage. He was lank, with a lean, wind-bitten face and a hard blue eye. "Dodge," announced Cleigh, smiling, "this is Mr. Cunningham. I want you to remember him." Dodge agreed with a curt nod. "If ever you see him in this cabin when I'm absent, you know what to do." "Yes, sir," replied Dodge, with a wintry smile. Cunningham laughed. "So you carry a Texas gunman round with you now? After all, why not? You never can tell. But don't worry, Cleigh. If ever I make up my mind to accept Eisenfeldt's offer, I'll lift the yacht first." Cleigh laughed amusedly. "How would you go about to steal a yacht like this?" "That's telling. Now I've got to get back to town. My advice for you is to come in to-morrow and put up at the Astor, where I can get in touch with you easily." "Agreed. That's all, Dodge." The Texan departed, and Cunningham burst into laughter again. "You're an interesting man, Cleigh. On my word, you do need a guardian--gallivanting round the world with all these treasures. Queer what things we do when we try to forget. Is there any desperate plunge we wouldn't take if we thought we could leave the Old Man of the Sea behind? You think you're forgetting when you fly across half the world for a string of glass beads. I think I'm forgetting when I risk my neck getting hold of some half-forgotten Rembrandt. But there it is, always at our shoulder when we turn. One of the richest men in the world! Doesn't that tingle you when you hear people whisper it as you pass? Just as I tingle when some woman gasps, 'What a beautiful face!' We both have our withered leg--only yours is invisible." The mockery on the face and the irony on the tongue of the man disturbed Cleigh. Supposing the rogue had his eye on that rug? To what lengths might he not go to possess it? And he had the infernal ingenuity of his master, Beelzebub. Or was he just trying Anthony Cleigh's nerves to see whether they were sound or raw? "But the beads!" he said. "I'm sorry. Simply Morrissy ran amuck." "I am willing to pay half as much again." "You leave that to me--at the original price. No hold-up. Prices fixed, as the French say. Those beads will be on board here to-morrow. But why the devil do you carry that rug abroad?" "To look at." "Mad as a hatter!" Cunningham picked up his oilskin and sou'wester. "Hang it, Cleigh, I've a notion to have a try at that rug just for the sport of it!" "If you want to bump into Dodge," replied the millionaire, dryly, "try it." "Oh, it will be the whole thing--the yacht--when I start action! Devil take the weather!" "How the deuce did the beads happen to turn up here in Shanghai?" "Morrissy brought them east from Naples. That's why his work to-night puzzles me. All those weeks to play the crook in, and then to make a play for it when he knew he could not put it over! Brain storm--and when he comes to he'll probably be sorry. Well, keep your eye on the yacht." Cunningham shouldered into his oilskin. "To-morrow at the Astor, between three and five. By George, what a ripping idea--to steal the yacht! I'm mad as a hatter, too. Good-night, Cleigh." And laughing, Cunningham went twisting up the companionway, into the rain and the dark. Cleigh stood perfectly still until the laughter became an echo and the echo a memory. CHAPTER IV Morning and winnowed skies; China awake. The great black-and-gold banners were again fluttering in Nanking Road. Mongolian ponies clattered about, automobiles rumbled, 'rickshas jogged. Venders were everywhere, many with hot rice and bean curd. Street cleaners in bright-red cotton jackets were busy with the mud puddles. The river swarmed with sampans and barges and launches. There was only one lifeless thing in all Shanghai that morning--the German Club. In the city hospital the man Morrissy, his head in bandages, smiled feebly into Cunningham's face. "Were you mad to try a game like that? What the devil possessed you? Three to one, and never a ghost of a chance. You never blew up like this before. What's the answer?" "Just struck me, Dick--one of those impulses you can't help. I'm sorry. Ought to have known I'd have no chance, and you'd have been justified in croaking me. Just as I was in the act of handing them over to you the idea came to bolt. All that dough would keep me comfortably the rest of my life." "What happened to them?" "Don't know. After that biff on the coco I only wanted some place to crawl into. I had them in my hand when I started to run. Sorry." "Have they quizzed you?" "Yes, but I made out I couldn't talk. What's the dope?" "You were in a rough-and-tumble down the Chinese Bund, and we got you away. Play up to that." "All right. But, gee! I won't be able to go with you." "If we have any luck, I'll see you get a share." "That's white. You were always a white man, Dick. I feel like a skunk. I knew I couldn't put it over, with the three of you at my elbow. What the devil got into me?" "Any funds?" "Enough to get me down to Singapore. Where do you want me to hang out?" "Suit yourself. You're out of this play--and it's my last." "You're quitting the big game?" "Yes. What's left of my schedule I'm going to run out on my own. So we probably won't meet again for a long time, Morrissy. Here's a couple of hundred to add to your store. If we find the beads I'll send your share wherever you say." "Might as well be Naples. They're off me in the States." "All right. Cook's or the American Express?" "Address me the Milan direct." Cunningham nodded. "Well, good-bye." "Good-bye, Dick. I'm sorry I gummed it up." "I thought you'd be. Good-bye." But as Cunningham passed from sight, the man on the cot smiled ironically at the sun-splashed ceiling. A narrow squeak, but he had come through. Cunningham, grateful for the sunshine, limped off toward Woosung Road, grotesquely but incredibly fast for a man with only one sound leg. He never used a cane, having the odd fancy that a stick would only emphasize his affliction. He might have taken a 'ricksha this morning, but he never thought of it until he had crossed Soochow Creek. But Ling Foo was not in his shop and the door was locked. Cunningham explored the muddy gutters all the way from Ling Foo's to Moy's tea house, where the meeting had taken place. He found nothing, and went into Moy's to wait. Ling Foo would have to pass the restaurant. A boy who knew the merchant stood outside to watch. * * * * * Jane woke at nine. The brightness of the window shade told her that the sun was clear. She sprang out of bed, a trill of happiness in her throat. The shops! Oh, the beautiful, beautiful shops! "China, China, China!" she sang. She threw up the shade and squinted for a moment. The sun in the heavens and the reflection on the Whangpoo were blinding. The sampans made her think of ants, darting, scuttling, wheeling. "Oh, the beautiful shops!" Of all the things in the world--this side of the world--worth having, nothing else seemed comparable to jade--a jade necklace. Not the stone that looked like dull marble with a greenish pallor--no. She wanted the deep apple-green jade, the royal, translucent stone. And she knew that she had as much chance of possessing the real article as she had of taking her pick of the scattered Romanoff jewels. Jane held to the belief that when you wished for something you couldn't have it was niggardly not to wish magnificently. She dressed hurriedly, hastened through her breakfast of tea and toast and jam, and was about to sally forth upon the delectable adventure, when there came a gentle knock on the door. She opened it, rather expecting a boy to announce that Captain Dennison was below. Outside stood a Chinaman in a black skirt and a jacket of blue brocade. He was smiling and kotowing. "Would the lady like to see some things?" "Come in," said Jane, readily. Ling Foo deposited his pack on the floor and opened it. He had heard that a single woman had come in the night before and, shrewd merchant that he was, he had wasted no time. "Furs!" cried Jane, reaching down for the Manchurian sable. She blew aside the top fur and discovered the smoky down beneath. She rubbed her cheek against it ecstatically. She wondered what devil's lure there was about furs and precious stones that made women give up all the world for them. Was that madness hidden away in her somewhere? "How much?" She knew beforehand that the answer would render the question utterly futile. "A hundred Mex," said Ling Foo. "Very cheap." "A hundred Mex?" That would be nearly fifty dollars in American money. With a sigh she dropped the fur. "Too much for me. How much is that Chinese jacket?" "Twenty Mex." Jane carried it over to the window. "I will give you fifteen for it." "All right." Ling Foo was willing to forego his usual hundred per cent. profit in order to start the day with a sale. Then he spread out the grass linen. Jane went into raptures over some of the designs, but in the end she shook her head. She wanted something from Shanghai, something from Hong-Kong, something from Yokohama. If she followed her inclination she would go broke here and now. "Have you any jade? Understand, I'm not buying. Just want to see some." "No, lady; but I can bring you some this afternoon." "I warn you, I'm not buying." "I shall be glad to show the lady. What time shall I call?" "Oh, about tea time." Ling Foo reached inside his jacket and produced a string of cut-glass beads. "How pretty! What are they?" "Glass." Jane hooked the string round her neck and viewed the result in the mirror. The sunshine, striking the facets, set fire to the beads. They were really lovely. She took a sudden fancy to them. "How much?" "Four Mex." It was magnanimous of Ling Foo. "I'll take them." They were real, anyhow. "Bring your jade at tea time and call for Miss Norman. I can't give you any more time." "Yes, lady." Ling Foo bundled up his assorted merchandise and trotted away infinitely relieved. The whole affair was off his hands. In no wise could the police bother him now. He knew nothing; he would know nothing until he met his honourable ancestors. From ten until three Jane, under the guidance of Captain Dennison, stormed the shops on the Bunds and Nanking Road; but in returning to the Astor House she realized with dismay that she had expended the major portion of her ammunition in this offensive. She doubted if she would have enough to buy a kimono in Japan. It was dreadful to be poor and to have a taste for luxury and an eye for beauty. "Captain," she said as they sat down to tea, "I'm going to ask one more favour." "What is it?" "A Chinaman is coming with some jade. If I'm alone with him I'm afraid I'll buy something, and I really can't spend another penny in Shanghai." "I see. Want me to shoo him off in case his persistence is too much for you." "Exactly. It's very nice of you." "Greatest pleasure in the world. I wish the job was permanent--shooing 'em away from you." She sent him a quick sidelong glance, but he was smiling. Still, there was something in the tone that quickened her pulse. All nonsense, of course; both of them stony, as the Britishers put it; both of them returning to the States for bread and butter. "Why didn't you put up here?" she asked. "There is plenty of room." "Well, I thought perhaps it would be better if I stayed at the Palace." "Nonsense! Who cares?" "I do." And this time he did not smile. "I suppose my Chinaman will be waiting in the lobby." "Let's toddle along, then." Dennison followed her out of the tea room, his gaze focused on the back of her neck, and it was just possible to resist the mad inclination to bend and kiss the smooth, ivory-tinted skin. He was not ready to analyze the impulse for fear he might find how deep down the propellant was. A woman, young in the heart, young in the body, and old in the mind, disillusioned but not embittered, unafraid, resourceful, sometimes beautiful and sometimes plain, but always splendidly alive. Perhaps the wisest move on his part was to avoid her companionship, invent some excuse to return by the way of Manila, pretend he had transfer orders. To spend twenty-one days on the same ship with her and to keep his head seemed a bit too strong. Had there been something substantial reaching down from the future--a dependable job--he would have gone with her joyously. But he had not a dollar beyond his accumulated pay; that would melt quickly enough when he reached the States. He was thirty; he would have to hustle to get anywhere by the time he was forty. His only hope was that back in the States they were calling for men who knew how to manage men, and he had just been discharged--or recalled for that purpose--from the best school for that. But they were calling for specialists, too, and he was a jack of all trades and master of none. He knew something about art, something about music, something about languages; but he could not write. He was a fair navigator, but not fair enough for a paying job. He could take an automobile engine apart and reassemble it with skill, but any chauffeur could do that. "Hadn't we better go into the parlour?" he heard Jane asking as they passed out. "We'll be alone there. It will be easier for you to resist temptation, I suppose, if there isn't any audience. Audiences are nuisances. Men have killed each other because they feared the crowd might mistake common sense for the yellow streak." Instantly the thought leaped into the girl's mind: Supposing such an event lay back of this strange silence about his home and his people? She recalled the ruthless ferocity with which he had broken up a street fight between American and Japanese soldiers one afternoon in Vladivostok. Supposing he had killed someone? But she had to repudiate this theory. No officer in the United States Army could cover up anything like that. "Come to the parlour," she said to Ling Foo, who was smiling and kotowing. Ling Foo picked up his blackwood box. Inwardly he was not at all pleased at the prospect of having an outsider witness the little business transaction he had in mind. Obliquely he studied the bronze mask. There was no eagerness, no curiosity, no indifference. It struck Ling Foo that there was something Oriental in this officer's repose. But five hundred gold! Five hundred dollars in American gold--for a string of glass beads! He set the blackwood box on a stand, opened it, and spread out jade earrings, rings, fobs, bracelets, strings. The girl's eagerness caused Ling Foo to sigh with relief. It would be easy. "I warned you that I should not buy anything," said Jane, ruefully. "But even if I had the money I would not buy this kind of a jade necklace. I should want apple-green." "Ah!" said Ling Foo, shocked with delight. "Perhaps we can make a bargain. You have those glass beads I sold you this morning?" "Yes, I am wearing them." Jane took off her mink-fur collaret, which was sadly worn. Ling Foo's hand went into his box again. From a piece of cotton cloth he drew forth a necklace of apple-green jade, almost perfect. "Oh, the lovely thing!" Jane seized the necklace. "To possess something like this! Isn't it glorious, captain?" "Let me see it." Dennison inspected the necklace carefully. "It is genuine. Where did you get this?" Ling Foo shrugged. "Long ago, during the Boxer troubles, I bought it from a sailor." "Ah, probably loot from the Peking palace. How much is it worth?" Murder blazed up in Ling Foo's heart, but his face remained smilingly bland. "What I can get for it. But if the lady wishes I will give it to her in exchange for the glass beads. I had no right to sell the beads," Ling Foo went on with a deprecating gesture. "I thought the man who owned them would never claim them. But he came this noon. Something belonging to his ancestor--and he demands it." "Trade them? Good heavens, yes! Of all things! Here!" Jane unclasped the beads and thrust them toward Ling Foo's eager claw. But Dennison reached out an intervening hand. "Just a moment, Miss Norman. What's the game?" he asked of Ling Foo. Ling Foo silently cursed all this meddler's ancestors from Noah down, but his face expressed only mild bewilderment. "Game?" "Yes. Why didn't you offer some other bits of jade? This string is worth two or three hundred gold; and this is patently a string of glass beads, handsomely cut, but nevertheless plain glass. What's the idea?" "But I have explained!" protested Ling Foo. "The string is not mine. I have in honour to return it." "Yes, yes! That's all very well. You could have told this lady that and offered to return her money. But a jade necklace like this one! No, Miss Norman; my advice is to keep the beads until we learn what's going on." "But to let that jade go!" she wailed comically. "The lady may keep the jade until to-morrow. She may have the night to decide. This is no hurry." Ling Foo saw that he had been witless indeed. The thought of raising the bid of five hundred gold to a thousand or more had bemused him, blunted his ordinary cunning. Inwardly he cursed his stupidity. But the appearance of a witness to the transaction had set him off his balance. The officer had spoken shrewdly. The young woman would have returned the beads in exchange for the sum she had paid for them, and she would never have suspected--nor the officer, either--that the beads possessed unknown value. Still, the innocent covetousness, plainly visible in her eyes, told him that the game was not entirely played out; there was yet a dim chance. Alone, without the officer to sway her, she might be made to yield. "The lady may wear the beads to-night if she wishes. I will return for them in the morning." "But this does not explain the glass beads," said the captain. "I will bring the real owner with me in the morning," volunteered Ling Foo. "He sets a high value on them through sentiment. Perhaps I was hasty." Dennison studied the glass beads. Perhaps his suspicions were not on any too solid ground. Yet a string of jade beads like that in exchange! Something was in the air. "Well," said he, smiling at the appeal in the girl's eyes, "I don't suppose there will be any harm in keeping them overnight. We'll have a chance to talk it over." Ling Foo's plan of attack matured suddenly. He would call near midnight. He would somehow manage to get to her door. She would probably hand him the glass beads without a word of argument. Then he would play his game with the man who limped. He smiled inwardly as he put his wares back into the carved box. A thousand gold! At any rate, he would press the man into a corner. There was something about this affair that convinced Ling Foo that his noon visitor would pay high for two reasons: one, to recover the glass beads; the other, to keep out of the reach of the police. Ling Foo considered that he was playing his advantage honestly. He hadn't robbed or murdered anybody. A business deal had slipped into his hands and it was only logical to make the most of it. He kotowed several times on the way out of the parlour, conscious, however, of the searching eyes of the man who had balked him. "Well!" exclaimed Jane. "What in the world do you suppose is going on?" "Lord knows, but something is going on. You couldn't buy a jade necklace like that under five hundred in New York. This apple-green seldom runs deep; the colour runs in veins and patches. The bulk of the quarried stone has the colour and greasy look of raw pork. No; I shouldn't put it on just now, not until you have washed it. You never can tell. I'll get you a germicide at the English apothecary's. Glass beads! Humph! Hanged if I can make it out. Glass; Occidental, too; maybe worth five dollars in the States. Put it on again. It's a great world over here. You're always stumbling into something unique. I'm coming over to dine with you to-night." "Splendid!" Jane put the jade into her hand-bag, clasped the glass beads round her neck again, and together she and Dennison walked toward the parlour door. As they reached it a tall, vigorous, elderly man with a gray pompadour started to enter. He paused, with an upward tilt of the chin, but the tilt was the result of pure astonishment. Instinctively Jane turned to her escort. His chin was tilted, too, and his expression was a match for the stranger's. Later, recalling the tableau, which lasted but a moment, it occurred to Jane that two men, suddenly confronted by a bottomless pit, might have expressed their dumfounderment in exactly this fashion. In the lobby she said rather breathlessly: "You knew each other and didn't speak! Who is he?" The answer threw her into a hypnotic state. "My father," said Dennison, quietly. CHAPTER V Father and son! For a while Jane had the sensation of walking upon unsubstantial floors, of seeing unsubstantial objects. The encounter did not seem real, human. Father and son, and they had not rushed into each other's arms! No matter what had happened in the past, there should have been some human sign other than astonishment. At the very least two or three years had separated them. Just stared for a moment, and passed on! Hypnotism is a fact; a word or a situation will create this peculiar state of mind. Father and son! The phrase actually hypnotized Jane, and she remained in the clutch of it until hours later, which may account for the amazing events into which she permitted herself to be drawn. Father and son! Her actions were normal; her mental state was not observable; but inwardly she retained no clear recollection of the hours that intervened between this and the astonishing climax. As from a distance, she heard the voice of the son: "Looks rum to you, no doubt. But I can't tell you the story--at least not now. It's the story of a tomfool. I had no idea he was on this side. I haven't laid eyes on him in seven years. Dinner at seven. I'll have that germicide sent up to your room." The captain nodded abruptly and made off toward the entrance. Jane understood. He wanted to be alone--to catch his breath, as it were. At any rate, that was a human sign that something besides astonishment was stirring within. So she walked mechanically over to the bookstall and hazily glanced at the backs of the new novels, riffled the pages of a magazine; and to this day she cannot recall whether the clerk was a man or a woman, white or brown or yellow, for a hand touched her sleeve lightly, compelling her attention. Dennison's father stood beside her. "Pardon me, but may I ask you a question?" Jane dropped the fur collaret in her confusion. They both stooped for it, and collided gently; but in rising the man glimpsed the string of glass beads. "Thank you," said Jane, as she received the collaret. "What is it you wish to ask of me?" "The name of the man you were with." "Dennison; his own and yours--probably," she said with spirit, for she took sides in that moment, and was positive that the blame for the estrangement lay with the father. The level, unagitated voice irritated her; she resented it. He wasn't human! "My name is Cleigh--Anthony Cleigh. Thank you." Cleigh bowed politely and moved away. Behind that calm, impenetrable mask, however, was turmoil, kaleidoscopic, whirling too quickly for the brain to grasp or hold definite shapes. The boy here! And the girl with those beads round her throat! For the subsidence of this turmoil it was needful to have space; so Cleigh strode out of the lobby into the fading day, made his way across the bridge, and sought the Bund. He forgot all about his appointment with Cunningham. He lit a cigar and walked on and on, oblivious of the cries of the 'ricksha boys, importunate beggars, the human currents that broke and flowed each side of him. The boy here in Shanghai! And that girl with those beads round her throat! It was as though his head had become a tom-tom in the hands of fate. The drumming made it impossible to think clearly. It was the springing up of the electric lights that brought him back to actualities. He looked at his watch. He had been tramping up and down the Bund for two solid hours. And now came, clearly defined, the idea for which he had been searching. He indulged in a series of rumbling chuckles. You will have heard such a sound in the forest when a stream suddenly takes on a merry mood--broken water. To return to Jane, whom Cleigh had left in a state of growing hypnosis. She was able to act and think intelligently, but the spell lay like a fog upon her will, enervating it. She grasped the situation clearly enough; it was tremendous. She had heard of Anthony Cleigh. Who in America had not? Father and son, and they had passed each other without a nod! Had she not been a witness to the episode, she would not have believed such a performance possible. Through the fog burst a clear point of light. This was not the first time she had encountered Anthony Cleigh. Where had she seen him before, and under what circumstance? Later, when she was alone, she would dig into her storehouse of recollection. Certainly she must bring back that episode. One thing, she had not known him as Anthony Cleigh. Father and son, and they had not spoken! It was this that beat persistently upon her mind. What dramatic event had created such a condition? After seven years! These two, strong mentally and physically, in a private war! She understood now how it was that Dennison had been able to tell her about Monte Carlo, the South Sea Islands, Africa, Asia; he had been his father's companion on the yacht. Mechanically she approached the lift. In her room all her actions were more or less mechanical. From the back of her mind somewhere came the order to her hands. She took down the evening gown. This time the subtle odour of lavender left her untouched. To be beautiful, to wish that she were beautiful! Why? Her hair was lovely; her neck and arms were lovely; but her nose wasn't right, her mouth was too large, and her eyes missed being either blue or hazel. Why did she wish to be beautiful? Always to be poor, to be hanging on the edge of things, never enough of this or that--genteel poverty. She had inherited the condition, as had her mother before her--gentlefolk who had to count the pennies. Her two sisters--really handsome girls--had married fairly well; but one lived in St. Louis and the other in Seattle, so she never saw them any more. Tired. That was it. Tired of the war for existence; tired of the following odours of antiseptics; tired of the white walls of hospitals, the sight of pain. On top of all, the level dullness of the past, the leaden horror of these months in Siberia. She laughed brokenly. Gardens scattered all over the world, and she couldn't find one--the gardens of imagination! Romance everywhere, and she never could touch any of it! Marriage. Outside of books, what was it save a legal contract to cook and bear children in exchange for food and clothes? The humdrum! She flung out her arms with a gesture of rage. She had been cheated, as always. She had come to this side of the world expecting colour, movement, adventure. The Orient of the novels she had read--where was it? Drab skies, drab people, drab work! And now to return to America, to exchange one drab job for another! Nadir, always nadir, never any zenith! Her bitter cogitations were interrupted by a knock on the door. She threw on her kimono and answered. A yellow hand thrust a bottle toward her. It would be the wash for the jade. She emptied the soap dish, cleaned it, poured in the germicide, and dropped the jade necklace into the liquid. She left it there while she dressed. Dennison Cleigh, returning to the States to look for a job! Nothing she had ever read seemed quite so fantastic. She paused in her dressing to stare at some inner thought which she projected upon the starred curtain of the night beyond her window. Supposing they had wanted to fling themselves into each other's arms and hadn't known how? She had had a glimpse or two of Dennison's fierce pride. Naturally he had inherited it from his father. Supposing they were just stupid rather than vengeful? Poor, foolish human beings! She proceeded with her toilet. Finishing that, she cleansed the jade necklace with soap and water, then realized that she would not be able to wear it, because the string would be damp. So she put on the glass beads instead--another move by the Madonna of the Pagan. Jane Norman was to have her fling. Dennison was in the lobby waiting for her. He gave a little gasp of delight as he beheld her. Of whom and of what did she remind him? Somebody he had seen, somebody he had read about? For the present it escaped him. Was she handsome? He could not say; but there was that in her face that was always pulling his glance and troubling him for the want of knowing why. The way she carried herself among men had always impressed him. Fearless and friendly, and with deep understanding, she created respect wherever she went. Men, toughened and coarsened by danger and hardship, somehow understood that Jane Norman was not the sort to make love to because one happened to be bored. On the other hand, there was something in her that called to every man, as a candle calls to the moth; only there were no burnt wings; there seemed to be some invisible barrier that kept the circling moths beyond the zone of incineration. Was there fire in her? He wondered. That copper tint in her hair suggested it. Magnificent! And what the deuce was the colour of her eyes? Sometimes there was a glint of topaz, or cornflower sapphire, gray agate; they were the most tantalizing eyes he had ever gazed into. "Hungry?" he greeted her. "For fourteen months!" "Do you know what?" "What?" "I'd give a year of my life for a club steak and all the regular fixings." "That isn't fair! You've gone and spoiled my dinner." "Wishy-washy chicken! How I hate tin cans! Pancakes and maple syrup! What?" "Sliced tomatoes with sugar and vinegar!" "You don't mean that!" "I do! I don't care how plebeian it is. Bread and butter and sliced tomatoes with sugar and vinegar--better than all the ice cream that ever was! Childhood ambrosia! For mercy's sake, let's get in before all the wings are gone!" They entered the huge dining room with its pattering Chinese boys--entered it laughing--while all the time there was at bottom a single identical thought--the father. Would they see him again? Would he be here at one of the tables? Would a break come, or would the affair go on eternally? "I know what it is!" he cried, breaking through the spell. "What?" "Ever read 'Phra the Phoenician'?" "Why, yes. But what is what?" "For days I've been trying to place you. You're the British heroine!" She thought for a moment to recall the physical attributes of this heroine. "But I'm not red-headed!" she denied, indignantly. "But it is! It is the most beautiful head of hair I ever laid eyes on." "And that is the beginning and the end of me," she returned with a little catch in her voice. The knowledge bore down upon her that her soul was thirsty for this kind of talk. She did not care whether he was in earnest or not. "The beginning, but not the end of you. Your eyes are fine, too. They keep me wondering all the time what colour they really are." "That's very nice of you." "And the way you carry yourself!" "Good gracious!" "You look as if you had come down from Olympus and had lost the way back." "Captain, you're a dear! I've just been wild to have a man say foolish things to me." She knew that she might play with this man; that he would never venture across the line. "Men have said foolish things to me, but always when I was too busy to bother. To-night I haven't anything in this wide world to do but listen. Go on." He laughed, perhaps a little ruefully. "Is there any fire in you, I wonder?" "Well?"--tantalizing. "Honestly, I should like to see you in a rage. I've been watching you for weeks, and have found myself irritated by that perpetual calm of yours. That day of the riot you stood on the curb as unconcerned as though you had been witnessing a movie." "It is possible that it is the result of seeing so much pain and misery. I have been a machine too long. I want to be thrust into the middle of some fairy story before I die. I have never been in love, in a violent rage. I haven't known anything but work and an abiding discontent. Red hair----" "But it really isn't red. It's like the copper beech in the sunshine, full of glowing embers." "Are you a poet?" "On my word, I don't know what I am." "There is fire enough in you. The way you tossed about our boys and the Japs!" "In the blood. My father and I used to dress for dinner, but we always carried the stone axe under our coats. We were both to blame, but only a miracle will ever bring us together. I'm sorry I ran into him. It brings the old days crowding back." "I'm sorry." "Oh, I'll survive! Somewhere there's a niche for me, and sooner or later I'll find it." "He stopped me in the lobby after you left. Wanted to know what name you were using. I told him rather bluntly--and he went on. Something in his voice--made me want to strike him!" Dennison balanced a fork on a finger. "Funny old world, isn't it?" "Very. But I've seen him somewhere before. Perhaps in a little while it will come back.... What an extraordinarily handsome man!" "Where?"--with a touch of brusqueness. "Sitting at the table on your left." The captain turned. The man at the other table caught his eye, smiled, and rose. As he approached Jane noticed with a touch of pity that the man limped oddly. His left leg seemed to slue about queerly just before it touched the floor. "Well, well! Captain Cleigh!" Dennison accepted the proffered hand, but coldly. "On the way back to the States?" "Yes." "The _Wanderer_ is down the river. I suppose you'll be going home on her?" "My orders prevent that." "Run into the old boy?" "Naturally," with a wry smile at Jane. "Miss Norman, Mr. Cunningham. Where the shark is, there will be the pilot fish." The stranger turned his eyes toward Jane's. The beauty of those dark eyes startled her. Fire opals! They seemed to dig down into her very soul, as if searching for something. He bowed gravely and limped back to his table. "I begin to understand," was Dennison's comment. "Understand what?" "All this racket about those beads. My father and this man Cunningham in the same town generally has significance. It is eight years since I saw Cunningham. Of course I could not forget his face, but it's rather remarkable that he remembered mine. He is--if you tear away the romance--nothing more or less than a thief." "A thief?"--astonishedly. "Not the ordinary kind; something of a prince of thieves. He makes it possible--he and his ilk--for men like my father to establish private museums. And now I'm going to ask you to do me a favour. It's just a hunch. Hide those beads the moment you reach your room. They are yours as much as any one's, and they may bring you a fancy penny--if my hunch is worth anything. Hang that pigtail, for getting you mixed up in this! I don't like it." Jane's hand went slowly to her throat; and even as her fingers touched the beads, now warm from contact, she became aware of something electrical which drew her eyes compellingly toward the man with the face of Ganymede and the limp of Vulcan. Four times she fought in vain, during dinner, that drawing, burning glance--and it troubled her. Never before had a man's eye forced hers in this indescribable fashion. It was almost as if the man had said, "Look at me! Look at me!" After coffee she decided to retire, and bade Dennison good-night. Once in her room she laid the beads on the dresser and sat down by the window to recast the remarkable ending of this day. From the stars to the room, from the room to the stars, her glance roved uneasily. Had she fallen upon an adventure? Was Dennison's theory correct regarding the beads? She rose and went to the dresser, inspecting the beads carefully. Positively glass! That Anthony Cleigh should be seeking a string of glass beads seemed arrant nonsense. She hung the beads on her throat and viewed the result in the mirror. It was then that her eye met a golden glint. She turned to see what had caused it, and was astonished to discover on the floor near the molding that poor Chinaman's brass hand warmer. She picked it up and turned back the jigsawed lid. The receptacle was filled with the ash of punk and charcoal. There came a knock on the door. CHAPTER VI Now, then, the further adventures of Ling Foo of Woosung Road. He was an honest Chinaman. He would beat you down if he were buying, or he would overcharge you if he were selling. There was nothing dishonest in this; it was legitimate business. He was only shrewd, not crooked. But on this day he came into contact with a situation that tried his soul, and tricked him into overplaying his hand. That morning he had returned to his shop in a contented frame of mind. He stood clear of the tragedy of the night before. That had never happened; he had dreamed it. Of course he would be wondering whether or not the man had died. When Ling Foo went forth with his business in his pack he always closed the shop. Here in upper Woosung Road it would not have paid him to hire a clerk. His wife, obedient creature though she was, spoke almost no pidgin--business--English; and besides that, she was a poor bargainer. It was hard by noon when he let himself into the shop. The first object he sought was his metal pipe. Two puffs, and the craving was satisfied. He took up his counting rack and slithered the buttons back and forth. He had made three sales at the Astor and two at the Palace, which was fair business, considering the times. A shadow fell across the till top. Ling Foo raised his slanted eyes. His face was like a graven Buddha's, but there was a crackling in his ears as of many fire-crackers. There he stood--the man with the sluing walk! Ling Foo still wore a queue, so his hair could not very well stand on end. "You speak English." It was not a question; it was a statement. Ling Foo shrugged. "Can do." "Cut out the pidgin. Your neighbour says you speak English fluently. At Moy's tea-house restaurant they say that you lived in California for several years." "Twelve," said Ling Foo with a certain dry humour. "Why didn't you admit me last night?" "Shop closed." "Where is it?" "Where is what?" asked the merchant. "The string of glass beads you found on the floor last night." A sense of disaster rolled over the Oriental. Had he been overhasty in ridding himself of the beads? Patience! Wait a bit! Let the stranger open the door to the mystery. "Glass beads?" he repeated, ruminatively. "I will give you ten gold for them." Ha! Now they were getting somewhere. Ten gold! Then those devil beads had some worth outside a jeweller's computations? Ling Foo smiled and spread his yellow hands. "I haven't them." "Where are they?" The Oriental loaded his pipe and fired it. "Where is the man who stumbled in here last night?" he countered. "His body is probably in the Yang-tse by now," returned Cunningham, grimly. He knew his Oriental. He would have to frighten this Chinaman badly, or engage his cupidity to a point where resistance would be futile. There was a devil brooding over his head. Ling Foo felt it strangely. His charms were in the far room. He would have to fend off the devil without material aid, and that was generally a hopeless job. With that twist of Oriental thought which will never be understood by the Occidental, Ling Foo laid down his campaign. "I found it, true. But I sold it this morning." "For how much?" "Four Mex." Cunningham laughed. It was actually honest laughter, provoked by a lively sense of humour. "To whom did you sell it, and where can I find the buyer?" Ling Foo picked up the laughter, as it were, and gave his individual quirk to it. "I see," said Cunningham, gravely. "So?" "Get that necklace back for me and I will give you a hundred gold." "Five hundred." "You saw what happened last night." "Oh, you will not beat in my head," Ling Foo declared, easily. "What is there about this string of beads that makes it worth a hundred gold--and life worth nothing?" "Very well," said Cunningham, resignedly. "I am a secret agent of the British Government. That string of glass beads is the key to a code relating to the uprisings in India. The loss of it will cost a great deal of money and time. Bring it back here this afternoon, and I will pay down five hundred gold." "I agree," replied Ling Foo, tossing his pipe into the alcove. "But no one must follow me. I do not trust you. There is nothing to prevent you from robbing me in the street and refusing to pay me. And where will you get five hundred gold? Gold has vanished. Even the leaf has all but disappeared." Cunningham dipped his hand into a pocket, and magically a dozen double eagles rolled and vibrated upon the counter, sending into Ling Foo's ears that music so peculiar to gold. Many days had gone by since he had set his gaze upon the yellow metal. His hand reached down--only to feel--but not so quickly as the white hand, which scooped up the coin trickily, with the skill of a prestidigitator. "Five hundred gold, then. But are you sure you can get the beads back?" Ling Foo smiled. "I have a way. I will meet you in the lobby of the Astor House at five"; and he bowed with Oriental courtesy. "Agreed. All aboveboard, remember, or you will feel the iron hand of the British Government." Ling Foo doubted that, but he kept this doubt to himself. "I warn you, I shall go armed. You will bring the gold to the Astor House. If I see you after I depart----" "Lord love you, once that code key is in my hands you can go to heaven or the devil, as you please! We live in rough times, Ling Foo." "So we do. There is a stain on the floor, about where you stand. It is the blood of a white man." "What would you, when a comrade attempts to deceive you?" "At five in the lobby of the Astor House. Good day," concluded Ling Foo, fingering the buttons on his counting rack. Cunningham limped out into the cold sunshine. Ling Foo shook his head. So like a boy's, that face! He shuddered slightly. He knew that a savage devil lay ready behind that handsome mask--he had seen it last night. But five hundred gold--for a string of glass beads! Ling Foo was an honest man. He would pay you cash for cash in a bargain. If he overcharged you that was your fault, but he never sold you imitations on the basis that you would not know the difference. If he sold you a Ming jar--for twice what it was worth in the great marts--experts would tell you that it was Ming. He had some jade of superior quality--the translucent deep apple-green. He never carried it about; he never even spoke of it unless he was sure that the prospective customer was wealthy. His safe was in a corner of his workshop. An American yegg would have laughed at it, opened it as easily as a ripe peach; but in this district it was absolute security. Ling Foo was obliged to keep a safe, for often he had valuable pearls to take care of, sometimes to put new vigour in dying lustre, sometimes to peel a pearl on the chance that under the dull skin lay the gem. He trotted to the front door and locked it; then he trotted into his workshop, planning. If the glass beads were worth five hundred, wasn't it likely they would be worth a thousand? If this man who limped had stuck to the hundred Ling Foo knew that he would have surrendered eventually. But the ease with which the stranger made the jump from one to five convinced Ling Foo that there could be no harm in boosting five to ten. If there was a taint of crookedness anywhere, that would be on the other side. Ling Foo knew where the beads were, and he would transfer them for one thousand gold. Smart business, nothing more than that. He had the whip hand. Out of his safe he took a blackwood box, beautifully carved, Cantonese. Headbands, earrings, rings, charms, necklaces, tomb ornaments, some of them royal, all of them nearly as ancient as the hills of Kwanlun, from which most of them had been quarried--jade. He trickled them from palm to palm and one by one returned the objects to the box. In the end he retained two strings of beads so alike that it was difficult to discern any difference. One was Kwanlun jade, royal loot; the other was a copy in Nanshan stone. The first was priceless, worth what any fool collector was ready to pay; the copy was worth perhaps a hundred gold. Held to the light, there was a subtle difference; but only an expert could have told you what this difference was. The royal jade did not catch the light so strongly as the copy; the touch of human warmth had slightly dulled the stone. Ling Foo transferred the copy to a purse he wore attached to his belt under the blue jacket. The young woman would never be able to resist the jade. She would return the glass instantly. A thousand gold, less the cost of the jade! Good business! But for once his Oriental astuteness overreached, as has been seen. And to add to his discomfiture, he never again saw the copy of the Kwanlun, representing the virtue of the favourite wife. * * * * * "I am an honest man," he said. "The tombs of my ancestors are not neglected. When I say I could not get it I speak the truth. But I believe I can get it later." "How?" asked Cunningham. They were in the office, or bureau, of the Astor House, which the manager had turned over to them for the moment. "Remember, the arm of the British Government is long." Ling Foo shrugged. "Being an honest man, I do not fear. She would have given it to me but for that officer. He knew something about jade." Cunningham nodded. "Conceivably he would." He jingled the gold in his pocket. "How do you purpose to get the beads?" "Go to the lady's room late. I left the jade with her. Alone, she will not resist. I saw it in her eyes. But it will be difficult." "I see. For you to get into the hotel late. I'll arrange that with the manager. You will be coming to my room. What floor is her room on?" "The third." "The same as mine. That falls nicely. Return then at half after ten. You will come to my room for the gold." Ling Foo saw his thousand shrink to the original five hundred, but there was no help for it. At half after ten he knocked on the panel of Jane's door and waited. He knocked again; still the summons was not answered. The third assault was emphatic. Ling Foo heard footsteps, but behind him. He turned. The meddling young officer was striding toward him. "What are you doing here?" Dennison demanded. His own appearance in the corridor at this hour might have been subjectable to inquiry. He had left Jane at nine. He had seen her to the lift. Perhaps he had walked the Bund for an hour or two, but worriedly. The thought of the arrival in Shanghai of his father and the rogue Cunningham convinced him that some queer game was afoot, and that it hinged somehow upon those beads. There was no sighing in regard to his father, for the past that was. An astonishing but purely accidental meeting; to-morrow each would go his separate way again. All that was a closed page. He had long ago readjusted his outlook on the basis that reconciliation was hopeless. A sudden impulse spun him on his heel, and he hurried back to the Astor. The hour did not matter, or the possibility that Jane might be abed. He would ask permission to become the temporary custodian of the beads. What were they, to have brought his father across the Pacific--if indeed they had? Anyhow, he would end his own anxiety in regard to Jane by assuming the risks, if any, himself. No one questioned him; his uniform was a passport that required no visé. Ling Foo eyed him blandly. "I am leaving for the province in the morning, so I had to come for my jade to-night. But the young lady is not in her room." "She must be!" cried Dennison, alarmed. "Miss Norman?" he called, beating on the door. No sound answered from within. Dennison pondered for a moment. Ling Foo also pondered--apprehensively. He suspected that some misfortune had befallen the young woman, for her kind did not go prowling alone round Shanghai at night. Slue-Foot! Should he utter his suspicion to this American officer? But if it should become a police affair! Bitterly he arraigned himself for disclosing his hand to Slue-Foot. That demon had forestalled him. No doubt by now he had the beads. Ten thousand devils pursue him! Dennison struck his hands together, and by and by a sleepy Chinese boy came scuffling along the corridor. "Talkee manager come topside," said Dennison. When the manager arrived, perturbed, Dennison explained the situation. "Will you open the door?" The manager agreed to do that. The bedroom was empty. The bed had not been touched. But there was no evidence that the occupant did not intend to return. "We shall leave everything just as it is," said Dennison, authoritatively. "I am her friend. If she does not return by one o'clock I shall notify the police and have the young lady's belongings transferred to the American consulate. She is under the full protection of the United States Government. You will find out if any saw her leave the hotel, and what the time was. Stay here in the doorway while I look about." He saw the jade necklace reposing in the soap dish, and in an ironical mood he decided not to announce the discovery to the Chinaman. Let him pay for his cupidity. In some mysterious manner he had got his yellow claws on those infernal beads, and the rogue Cunningham had gone to him with a substantial bribe. So let the pigtail wail for his jade. On the dresser he saw a sheet of paper partly opened. Beside it lay a torn envelope. Dennison's heart lost a beat. The handwriting was his father's! CHAPTER VII Jane had gone to meet his father. How to secrete this note without being observed by either the manager or the Chinaman? An accident came to his aid. Someone in the corridor banged a door violently, and as the manager's head and Ling Foo's jerked about, Dennison stuffed the note into a pocket. A trap! Dennison wasn't alarmed--he was only furious. Jane had walked into a trap. She had worn those accursed beads when his father had approached her by the bookstall that afternoon. The note had attacked her curiosity from a perfectly normal angle. Dennison had absorbed enough of the note's contents to understand how readily Jane had walked into the trap. Very well. He would wait in the lobby until one; then if Jane had not returned he would lay the plans of a counter-attack, and it would be a rough one. Of course no bodily harm would befall Jane, but she would probably be harried and bullied out of those beads. But would she? It was not unlikely that she would become a pretty handful, once she learned she had been tricked. If she balked him, how would the father act? The old boy was ruthless when he particularly wanted something. If anything should happen to her--an event unlooked for, accidental, over which his father would have no control--this note would bring the old boy into a peck of trouble; and Dennison was loyal enough not to wish this to happen. And yet it would be only just to make the father pay once for his high-handedness. That would be droll--to see his father in the dock, himself as a witness against him! Here was the germ of a tiptop drama. But all this worry was doubtless being wasted upon mere supposition. Jane might turn over the beads without bargaining, provided the father had any legal right to them, which Dennison strongly doubted. He approached Ling Foo and seized him roughly by the arm. "What do you know about these glass beads?" Ling Foo elevated a shoulder and let it fall. "Nothing, except that the man who owns them demands that I recover them." "And who is this man?" "I don't know his name." "That won't pass. You tell me who he is or I'll turn you over to the police." "I am an honest man," replied Ling Foo with dignity. He appealed to the manager. "I have known Ling Foo a long time, sir. He is perfectly honest." Ling Foo nodded. He knew that this recommendation, honest as it was, would have weight with the American. "But you have some appointment with this man. Where is that to be? I demand to know that." Ling Foo saw his jade vanish along with his rainbow gold. His early suppositions had been correct. Those were devil beads, and evil befell any who touched them. Silently he cursed the soldier's ancestors half a thousand years back. If the white fool hadn't meddled in the parlour that afternoon! "Come with me," he said, finally. The game was played out; the counters had gone back to the basket. He had no desire to come into contact with police officials. Only it was as bitter as the gall of chicken, and he purposed to lessen his own discomfort by making the lame man share it. Oriental humour. Dennison and the hotel manager followed him curiously. At the end of the corridor Ling Foo stopped and knocked on a door. It was opened immediately. "Ah! Oh!" The inflections touched Dennison's sense of humour, and he smiled. A greeting with a snap-back of dismay. "I'm not surprised," he said. "I had a suspicion I'd find you in this somewhere." "Find me in what?" asked Cunningham, his poise recovered. He, too, began to smile. "Won't you come in?" "What about these glass beads?" "Glass beads? Oh, yes. But why?" "I fancy you'd better come out into the clear, Cunningham," said Dennison, grimly. "You wish to know about those beads? Very well, I'll explain, because something has happened--I know not what. You all look so infernally serious. Those beads are a key to a code. The British Government is keenly anxious to recover this key. In the hands of certain Hindus those beads would constitute bad medicine." Ling Foo spread his hands relievedly. "That is the story. I was to receive five hundred gold for their recovery." "A code key," said Dennison, musing. He knew Cunningham was lying. Anthony Cleigh wasn't the man to run across half the world for a British code key. On the other hand, perhaps it would be wise to let the hotel manager and the Chinaman continue in the belief that the affair concerned a British code. "If I did not know you tolerably well----" "My dear captain, you don't know me at all," interrupted Cunningham. "Have you got the beads?" "I have not. I doubt if you will ever lay eyes on them again." Something flashed across the handsome face. Ling Foo alone recognized it. He had glimpsed it, this expression, outside his window the night before. He recalled the dark stain on the floor of his shop, and he also recollected a saying of Confucius relative to greed. He wished he was back in his shop, well out of this muddle. The jade could go, valuable as it was. With his hands tucked in his sleeves he waited. Dennison turned upon the manager. He wanted to be alone with Cunningham. "Go down and make inquiries, and take this Chinaman with you. I'll be with you shortly." As soon as the two were out of the way Dennison said: "Cunningham, the lady who wore those beads at dinner to-night has gone out alone, wearing them. If I find that you are anywhere back of this venture--if she does not return shortly--I will break you as I would a churchwarden pipe." Cunningham appeared genuinely taken aback. "She went out alone?" "Yes." "Have you notified the police?" "Not yet. I'm giving her until one; then I shall start something." "Something tells me," said Cunningham, easily, "that Miss Norman is in no danger. But she would never have gone out if I had been in the lobby. If she has not returned by one call me. Any assistance I can give will be given gladly. Women ought never to be mixed up in affairs such as this one, on this side of the world. Tell your father that he ought to know by this time that he is no match for me." "What do you mean by that?" "Innocent! You know very well what I mean. If you hadn't a suspicion of what has happened you would be roaring up and down the corridors with the police. You run true to the breed. It's a good one, I'll admit. But your father will regret this night's work." "Perhaps. Here, read this." Dennison extended the note. Cunningham, his brows bent, ran through the missive. MISS NORMAN: Will you do me the honour to meet me at the bridgehead at half-past nine--practically at once? My son and I are not on friendly terms. Still, I am his father, and I'd like to hear what he has been doing over here. I will have a limousine, and we can ride out on the Bubbling Well Road while we talk. ANTHONY CLEIGH. "Didn't know," said Cunningham, returning the note, "that you two were at odds. But this is a devil of a mix-up, if it's what I think." "What do you think?" "That he's abducted her--carried her off to the yacht." "He's no fool," was the son's defense. "He isn't, eh? Lord love you, sonny, your father and I are the two biggest fools on all God's earth!" The door closed sharply in Dennison's face and the key rasped in the lock. For a space Dennison did not stir. Why should he wish to protect his father? Between his father and this handsome rogue there was small choice. The old boy made such rogues possible. But supposing Cleigh had wished really to quiz Jane? To find out something about these seven years, lean and hard, with stretches of idleness and stretches of furious labour, loneliness? Well, the father would learn that in all these seven years the son had never faltered from the high level he had set for his conduct. That was a stout staff to lean on--he had the right to look all men squarely in the eye. He had been educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller's clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the thought of which never failed to buck him up--he had never traded on his father's name. Then had come the war. He had returned to America, trained, and they had assigned him to Russia. But that had not been without its reward--he had met Jane. In a New York bank, to his credit, was the sum of twenty thousand dollars, at compound interest for seven years, ready to answer to the scratch of a pen, but he had sworn he would never touch a dollar of it. Never before had the thought of it risen so strongly to tempt him. His for the mere scratch of a pen! In the lobby he found the manager pacing nervously, while Ling Foo sat patiently and inscrutably. "Why do you wait?" inquired Dennison, irritably. "The lady has some jade of mine," returned Ling Foo, placidly. "It was a grave mistake." "What was?" "That you interfered this afternoon. The lady would be in her room at this hour. The devil beads would not be casting a spell on us." "Devil beads, eh?" Ling Foo shrugged and ran his hands into his sleeves. Somewhere along the banks of the Whangpoo or the Yang-tse would be the body of an unknown, but Ling Foo's lips were locked quite as securely as the dead man's. Devil beads they were. "When did the man upstairs leave the beads with you?" "Last night." "For what reason?" "He will tell you. It is none of my affair now." And that was all Dennison could dig out of Ling Foo. Jane Norman did not return at one o'clock; in fact, she never returned to the Astor House. Dennison waited until three; then he went back to the Palace, and Ling Foo to his shop and oblivion. Dennison decided that he did not want the police in the affair. In that event there would be a lot of publicity, followed by the kind of talk that stuck. He was confident that he could handle the affair alone. So he invented a white lie, and nobody questioned it because of his uniform. Miss Norman had found friends, and shortly she would send for her effects; but until that time she desired the consulate to take charge. Under the eyes of the relieved hotel manager and an indifferent clerk from the consulate the following morning Dennison packed Jane's belongings and conveyed them to the consulate, which was hard by. Next he proceeded to the water front and engaged a motor boat. At eleven o'clock he drew up alongside the _Wanderer II_. "Hey, there!" shouted a seaman. "Sheer off! Orders to receive no visitors!" Dennison began to mount, ignoring the order. It was a confusing situation for the sailor. If he threw this officer into the yellow water--as certainly he would have thrown a civilian--Uncle Sam might jump on his back and ride him to clink. Against this was the old man, the very devil for obedience to his orders. If he pushed this lad over, the clink; if he let him by, the old man's foot. And while the worried seaman was reaching for water with one hand and wind with the other, as the saying goes, Dennison thrust him roughly aside, crossed the deck to the main companionway, and thundered down into the salon. CHAPTER VIII Cleigh sat before a card table; he was playing Chinese Canfield. He looked up, but he neither rose nor dropped the half-spent deck of cards he held in his hand. The bronzed face, the hard agate blue of the eyes that met his own, the utter absence of visible agitation, took the wind out of Dennison's sails and left him all a-shiver, like a sloop coming about on a fresh tack. He had made his entrance stormily enough, but now the hot words stuffed his throat to choking. Cleigh was thirty years older than his son; he was a finished master of sentimental emotions; he could keep all his thoughts out of his countenance when he so willed. But powerful as his will was, in this instance it failed to reach down into his heart; and that thumped against his ribs rather painfully. The boy! Dennison, aware that he stood close to the ridiculous, broke the spell and advanced. "I have come for Miss Norman," he said. Cleigh scrutinized the cards and shifted one. "I found your note to her. I've a launch. I don't know what the game is, but I'm going to take Miss Norman back with me if I have to break in every door on board!" Cleigh stood up. As he did so Dodge, the Texan appeared in the doorway to the dining salon. Dennison saw the blue barrel of a revolver. "A gunman, eh? All right. Let's see if he'll shoot," said the son, walking deliberately toward Dodge. "No, Dodge!" Cleigh called out as the Texan, raised the revolver. "You may go." Dodge, a good deal astonished, backed out. Once more father and son stared at each other. "Better call it off," advised the son. "You can't hold Miss Norman--and I can make a serious charge. Bring her at once, or I'll go for her. And the Lord help the woodwork if I start!" But even as he uttered the threat Dennison heard a sound behind. He turned, but not soon enough. In a second he was on the floor, three husky seamen mauling him. They had their hands full for a while, but in the end they conquered. "What next, sir?" asked one of the sailors, breathing hard. "Tie him up and lock him in Cabin Two." The first order was executed. After Dennison's arms and ankles were bound the men stood him up. "Are you really my father?" Cleigh returned to his cards and shuffled them for a new deal. "Don't untie him. He might walk through the partition. He will have the freedom of the deck when we are out of the delta." Dennison was thereupon carried to Cabin Two, and deposited upon the stationary bed. He began to laugh. There was a sardonic note in this laughter, like that which greets you when you recount some incredible tale. His old cabin! The men shook their heads, as if confronted by something so unusual that it wasn't worth while to speculate upon it. The old man's son! They went out, locking the door. By this time Dennison's laughter had reached the level of shouting, but only he knew how near it was to tears--wrathful, murderous, miserable tears! He fought his bonds terrifically for a moment, then relaxed. For seven years he had been hugging the hope that when he and his father met blood would tell, and that their differences would vanish in a strong handclasp; and here he lay, trussed hand and foot, in his old cabin, not a crack in that granite lump his father called a heart! A childish thought! Some day to take that twenty thousand with accrued interest, ride up to the door, step inside, dump the silver on that old red Samarkand, and depart--forever. Where was she? This side of the passage or the other? "Miss Norman?" he called. "Yes?" came almost instantly from the cabin aft. "This is Captain Dennison. I'm tied up and lying on the bed. Can you hear me distinctly?" "Yes. Your father has made a prisoner of you? Of all the inhuman acts! You came in search of me?" "Naturally. Have you those infernal beads?" "No." Dennison twisted about until he had his shoulders against the brass rail of the bed head. "What happened?" "It was a trick. It was not to talk about you--he wanted the beads, and that made me furious." "Were you hurt in the struggle?" "There wasn't any. I really don't know what possessed me. Perhaps I was a bit hypnotized. Perhaps I was curious. Perhaps I wanted--some excitement. On my word, I don't know just what happened. Anyhow, here I am--in a dinner gown, bound for Hong-Kong, so he says. He offered me ten thousand for the beads, and my freedom, if I would promise not to report his high-handedness; and I haven't uttered a sound." "Heaven on earth, why didn't you accept his offer?" A moment of silence. "In the first place, I haven't the beads. In the second place, I want to make him all the trouble I possibly can. Now that he has me, he doesn't know what to do with me. Hoist by his own petard. Do you want the truth? Well, I'm not worried in the least. I feel as if I'd been invited to some splendiferous picnic." "That's foolish," he remonstrated. "Of course it is. But it's the sort of foolishness I've been aching for all my life. I knew something was going to happen. I broke my hand mirror night before last. Two times seven years' bad luck. Now he has me, I'll wager he's half frightened out of his wits. But what made you think of the yacht?" "We forced the door of your room, and I found the note. Has he told you what makes those infernal beads so precious?" "No. I can't figure that out." "No more can I. Did he threaten you?" "Yes. Would I enter the launch peacefully, or would he have to carry me? I didn't want my gown spoiled--it's the only decent one I have. I'm not afraid. It isn't as though he were a stranger. Being your father, he would never stoop to any indignity. But he'll find he has caught a tartar. I had an idea you'd find me." "Well, I have. But you won't get to Hong-Kong. The minute he liberates me I'll sneak into the wireless room and bring the destroyers. I didn't notify the police from a bit of foolish sentiment. I didn't quite want you mixed up in the story. I had your things conveyed to the consulate." "My story--which few men would believe. I've thought of that. Are you smoking?" "Smoking, with my hands tied behind my back? Not so you'd notice it." "I smell tobacco smoke--a good cigar, too." "Then someone is in the passage listening." Silence. Anthony Cleigh eyed his perfecto rather ruefully and tiptoed back to the salon. Hoist by his own petard. He was beginning to wonder. Cleigh was a man who rarely regretted an act, but in the clear light of day he was beginning to have his doubts regarding this one. A mere feather on the wrong side of the scale, and the British destroyers would be atop of him like a flock of kites. Abduction! Cut down to bedrock, he had laid himself open to that. He ran his fingers through his cowlicks. But drat the woman! why had she accepted the situation so docilely? Since midnight not a sound out of her, not a wail, not a sob. Now he had her, he couldn't let her go. She was right there. There was one man in the crew Cleigh had begun to dislike intensely, and he had been manoeuvring ever since Honolulu to find a legitimate excuse to give the man his papers. Something about the fellow suggested covert insolence; he had the air of a beachcomber who had unexpectedly fallen into a soft berth, and it had gone to his head. He had been standing watch at the ladder head, and against positive orders he had permitted a visitor to pass him. To Cleigh this was the handle he had been hunting for. He summoned the man. "Get your duffle," said Cleigh. "What's that, sir?" "Get your stuff. You're through. You had positive orders, and you let a man by." "But his uniform fussed me, sir. I didn't know just how to act." "Get your stuff! Mr. Cleve will give you your pay. My orders are absolute. Off with you!" The sailor sullenly obeyed. He found the first officer alone in the chart house. "The boss has sent me for my pay, Mr. Cleve. I'm fired." Flint grinned amiably. "Fired? Well, well," said Cleve, "that's certainly tough luck--all this way from home. I'll have to pay you in Federal Reserve bills. The old man has the gold." "Federal Reserve it is. Forty-six dollars in Uncle Samuels." The first officer solemnly counted out the sum and laid it on the palm of the discharged man. "Tough world." "Oh, I'm not worrying! I'll bet you this forty-six against ten that I've another job before midnight." Mr. Cleve grinned. "Always looking for sure-thing bets! Better hail that bumboat with the vegetables to row you into town. The old man'll dump you over by hand if he finds you here between now and sundown." "I'll try the launch there. Tell the lad his fare ain't goin' back to Shanghai. Of course it makes it a bit inconvenient, packing and unpacking; but I guess I can live through it. But what about the woman?" Cleve plucked at his chin. "Messes up the show a bit. Pippin, though. I like 'em when they walk straight and look straight like this one. Notice her hair? You never tame that sort beyond parlour manners. But I don't like her on board here, or the young fellow, either. Don't know him, but he's likely to bust the yacht wide open if he gets loose." "Well, so long, Mary! Know what my first move'll be?" "A bottle somewhere. But mind your step! Don't monkey with the stuff beyond normal. You know what I mean." "Sure! Only a peg or two, after all this psalm-singing!" "I know, Flint. But this game is no joke. You know what happened in town? Morrissy was near croaked." Flint's face lost some of its gayety. "Oh, I know how to handle the stuff! See you later." * * * * * Cleigh decided to see what the girl's temper was, so he entered the passage on the full soles of his shoes. He knocked on her door. "Miss Norman?" "Well?" That was a good sign; she was ready to talk. "I have come to repeat that offer." "Mr. Cleigh, I have nothing to say so long as the key is on the wrong side of the door." Cleigh heard a chuckle from Cabin Two. "Very well," he said. "Remember, I offered you liberty conditionally. If you suffer inconveniences after to-night you will have only yourself to thank." "Have you calculated that some day you will have to let me go?" "Yes, I have calculated on that." "And that I shall go to the nearest authorities and report this action?" "If you will think a moment," said Cleigh, his tone monotonously level, "you will dismiss that plan for two reasons: First, that no one will believe you; second, that no one will want to believe you. That's as near as I care to put it. Your imagination will grasp it." "Instantly!" cried the girl, hotly. "I knew you to be cold and hard, but I did not believe you were a scoundrel--having known your son!" "I have no son." "Oh, yes, you have!" "I disowned him. He is absolutely nothing to me." "I do not believe that," came back through the cabin door. "Nevertheless, it is the truth. The queer part is, I've tried to resurrect the father instinct, and can't. I've tried to go round the wall--over it. I might just as well try to climb the Upper Himalayas." In Cabin Two the son stared at the white ceiling. It seemed to him that all his vitals had been wrenched out of him, leaving him hollow, empty. He knew his father's voice; it rang with truth. "I offer you ten thousand." "The key is still on the outside." "I'm afraid to trust you." "We understand each other perfectly," said Jane, ironically. The son smiled. The sense of emptiness vanished, and there came into his blood a warmth as sweet as it was strong. Jane Norman, angel of mercy. He heard his father speaking again: "Since you will have it so, you will go to Hong-Kong?" "To Patagonia if you wish! You cannot scare me by threatening me with travel on a private yacht. I had the beads, it is true; but at this moment I haven't the slightest idea where they are; and if I had I should not tell you. I refuse to buy my liberty; you will have to give it to me without conditions." "I'm sorry I haven't anything on board in shape of women's clothes, but I'll send for your stuff if you wish." "That is the single consideration you have shown me. My belongings are at the American consulate, and I should be glad to have them." "You will find paper and ink in the escritoire. Write me an order and I promise to attend to the matter personally." "And search through everything at your leisure!" Cleigh blushed, and he heard his son chuckle again. He had certainly caught a tartar--possibly two. With a twisted smile he recalled the old yarn of the hunter who caught the bear by the tail. Willing to let go, and daring not! "Still I agree," continued the girl. "I want my own familiar things--if I must take this forced voyage. But mark me, Mr. Cleigh, you will pay some day! I'm not the clinging kind, and I shall fight you tooth and nail from the first hour of my freedom. I'm not without friends." "Never in this world!" came resonantly from Cabin Two. Cleigh longed to get away. There was a rumbling and a threatening inside of him that needed space--Gargantuan laughter. Not the clinging kind, this girl! And the boy, walking straight at Dodge's villainous revolver! Why, he would need the whole crew behind him when he liberated these two! But he knew that the laughter striving for articulation was not the kind heard in Elysian fields! CHAPTER IX "If you will write the order I will execute it at once. The consulate closes early." "I'll write it, but how will I get it to you? The door closes below the sill." "When you are ready, call, and I will open the door a little." "It would be better if you opened it full wide. This is China--I understand that. But we are both Americans, and there's a good sound law covering an act like this." "But it does not reach as far as China. Besides, I have an asset back in the States. It is my word. I have never broken it to any man or woman, and I expect I never shall. You have, or have had, what I consider my property. You have hedged the question; you haven't been frank." The son listened intently. "I bought that string of glass beads in good faith of a Chinaman--Ling Foo. I consider them mine--that is, if they are still in my possession. Between the hour I met you last night and the moment of Captain Dennison's entrance to my room considerable time had elapsed." "Sufficient for a rogue like Cunningham to make good use of," supplemented the prisoner in Cabin Two. "There's a way of finding out the facts." "Indeed?" "Yes. You used to carry a planchette that once belonged to the actress Rachel. Why not give it a whirl? Everybody's doing it." Cleigh eyed Cabin Four, then Cabin Two, and shook his head slightly, dubiously. He was not getting on well. To come into contact with a strong will was always acceptable; and a strong will in a woman was a novelty. All at once it struck him forcibly that he stood on the edge of boredom; that the lure which had brought him fully sixteen thousand miles was losing its bite. Was he growing old, drying up? "Will you tell me what it is about these beads that makes you offer ten thousand for them? Glass--anybody could see that. What makes them as valuable as pearls?" "They are love beads," answered Cleigh, mockingly. "They are far more potent than powdered pearls. You have worn them about your throat, Miss Norman, and the sequence is inevitable." "Nonsense!" cried Jane. Dennison added his mite to the confusion: "I thought that scoundrel Cunningham was lying. He said the string was a code key belonging to the British Intelligence Office." "Rot!" Cleigh exploded. "So I thought." "But hurry, Miss Norman. The sooner I have that written order on the consulate the sooner you'll have your belongings." "Very well." Five minutes later she announced that the order was completed, and Cleigh opened the door slightly. "The key will be given you the moment we weigh anchor." "I say," called the son, "you might drop into the Palace and get my truck, too. I'm particular about my toothbrushes." A pause. "I'd like a drink, too--if you've got the time." Cleigh did not answer, but he presently entered Cabin Two, filled a glass with water, raised his son's head to a proper angle, and gave him drink. "Thanks. This business strikes me as the funniest thing I ever heard of! You would have done that for a dog." Cleigh replaced the water carafe in the rack above the wash bowl and went out, locking the door. In the salon he called for Dodge: "I am going into town. I'll be back round five. Don't stir from this cabin." "Yes, sir." "You remember that fellow who was here night before last?" "The good-looking chap that limped?" "Yes." "And I'm to crease him if he pokes his noodle down the stairs?" "Exactly! No talk, no palaver! If he starts talking he'll talk you out of your boots. Shoot!" "In the leg? All right." His employer having gone, Dodge sat in a corner from which he could see the companionway and all the passages. He lit a long black cigar, laid his formidable revolver on a knee, and began his vigil. A queer job for an old cow-punch, for a fact. To guard an old carpet that didn't have "welcome" on it anywhere--he couldn't get that, none whatever. But there was a hundred a week, the best grub pile in the world, and the old man's Havanas as often as he pleased. Pretty soft! And he had learned a new trick--shooting target in a rolling sea. He had wasted a hundred rounds before getting the hang of it. Maybe these sailors hadn't gone pop-eyed when they saw him pumping lead into the bull's-eye six times running? Tin cans and raw potatoes in the water, too. Something to brag about if he ever got back home. He broke the gun and inspected the cylinder. There wasn't as much grease on the cartridges as he would have liked. * * * * * "Miss Norman?" called Dennison. "What is it?" "Are you comfortable?" "Oh, I'm all right. I'm only furious with rage, that's all. You are still tied?" "Yes, ma'am." "I really don't understand your father." "I have never understood him. Yet he was very kind to me when I was little. I don't suppose there is anything in heaven or on earth that he's afraid of." "He is afraid of me." "Do you believe that?" "I know it. He would give anything to be rid of me. But go on." "With what?" "Your past." "Well, I'm something like him physically. We are both so strong that we generally burst through rather than take the trouble to go round. I'm honestly sorry for him. Not a human being to love or be loved by. He never had a dog. I don't recollect my mother; she died when I was three; and that death had something to do with the iron in his soul. Our old butler used to tell me that Father cursed horribly, I mean blasphemously, when they took the mother out of the house. There are some men like that, who love terribly, away and beyond the average human ability. After the mother died he plunged into the money game. He was always making it, piling it up ruthlessly but honestly. Then that craving petered out, and he took a hand in the collecting game. What will come next I don't know. As a boy I was always afraid of him. He was kind to me, but in the abstract. I was like an extra on the grocer's bill. He put me into the hands of a tutor--a lovable old dreamer--and paid no more attention to me. He never put his arms round me and told me fairy stories." "Poor little boy! No fairy stories!" "Nary a one until I began to have playmates." "Do the ropes hurt?" "They might if I were alone." "What do you make of the beads?" "Only that they have some strange value, or father wouldn't be after them. Love beads! Doesn't sound half so plausible as Cunningham's version." "That handsome man who limped?" "Yes." "A real adventurer--the sort one reads about!" "And the queer thing about him, he keeps his word, too, for all his business is a shady one. I don't suppose there is a painting or a jewel or a book of the priceless sort that he doesn't know about, where it is and if it can be got at. Some of his deals are aboveboard, but many of them aren't. I'll wager these beads have a story of loot." "What he steals doesn't hurt the poor." "So long as the tigers fight among themselves and leave the goats alone, it doesn't stir you. Is that it?" "Possibly." "And besides, he's a handsome beggar, if there ever was one." "He has the face of an angel!" "And the soul of a vandal!"--with a touch of irritability. "Now you aren't fair. A vandal destroys things; this man only transfers----" "For a handsome monetary consideration----" "Only transfers a picture from one gallery to another." "Well, we've seen the last of him for a while, anyhow." "I wonder." "Will you answer me a question?" "Perhaps." "Do you know where those beads are?" "A little while gone I smelt tobacco smoke," she answered, dryly. "I see. We'll talk of something else then. Have you ever been in love?" "Have you?" "Violently--so I believed." "But you got over it?" "Absolutely! And you?" "Oh, I haven't had the time. I've been too busy earning bread and butter. What was she like?" "A beautiful mirage--the lie in the desert, you might say. Has it ever occurred to you that the mirage is the one lie Nature utters?" "I hadn't thought. She deceived you?" "Yes." A short duration of silence. "Doesn't hurt to talk about her?" "Lord, no! Because I wasn't given fairy stories when I was little, I took them seriously when I was twenty-three." "Puppy love." "It went a little deeper than that." "But you don't hate women?" "No. I never hated the woman who deceived me. I was terribly sorry for her." "For having lost so nice a husband?"--with a bit of malice. He greeted this with laughter. "It is written," she observed, "that we must play the fool sometime or other." "Have you ever played it?" "Not yet, but you never can tell." "Jane, you're a brick!" "Jane!" she repeated. "Well, I don't suppose there's any harm in your calling me that, with partitions in between." "They used to call me Denny." "And you want me to call you that?" "Will you?" "I'll think it over--Denny!" They laughed. Both recognized the basic fact in this running patter. Each was trying to buck up the other. Jane was honestly worried. She could not say what it was that worried her, but there was a strong leaven in her of old-wives' prescience. It wasn't due to this high-handed adventure of Cleigh, senior; it was something leaning down darkly from the future that worried her. That hand mirror! "Better not talk any more," she advised. "You'll be getting thirsty." "I'm already that." "You're a brave man, captain," she said, her tone altering from gayety to seriousness. "Don't worry about me. I've always been able to take care of myself, though I've never been confronted with this kind of a situation before. Frankly, I don't like it. But I suspect that your father will have more respect for us if we laugh at him. Has he a sense of humour?" "My word for it, he has! What could be more humorous than tying me up in this fashion and putting me in the cabin that used to be mine? Ten thousand for a string of glass beads! I say, Jane!" "What?" "When he comes back tell him you might consider twenty thousand, just to get an idea what the thing is worth." "I'll promise that." "All right. Then I'll try to snooze a bit. Getting stuffy lying on my back." "The brute! If I could only help you!" "You have--you are--you will!" He turned on his side, his face toward the door. His arms and legs began to sting with the sensation known as sleep. He was glad his father had overheard the initial conversation. A wave of terror ran over him at the thought of being set ashore while Jane went on. Still he could have sent a British water terrier in hot pursuit. Jane sat down and took inventory. She knew but little about antiques--rugs and furniture--but she was full of inherent love of the beautiful. The little secretary upon which she had written the order on the consulate was an exquisite lowboy of old mahogany of dull finish. On the floor were camel saddle-bays, Persian in pattern. On the panel over the lowboy was a small painting, a foot broad and a foot and a half long. It was old--she could tell that much. It was a portrait, tender and quaint. She would have gasped had she known that it was worth a cover of solid gold. It was a Holbein, The Younger, for which Cleigh some years gone had paid Cunningham sixteen thousand dollars. Where and how Cunningham had acquired it was not open history. An hour passed. By and by she rose and tiptoed to the partition. She held her ear against the panel, and as she heard nothing she concluded that Denny--why not?--was asleep. Next she gazed out of the port. It was growing dark outside, overcast. It would rain again probably. A drab sky, a drab shore. She saw a boat filled with those luscious vegetables which wrote typhus for any white person who ate them. A barge went by piled high with paddy bags--rice in the husk--with Chinamen at the forward and stern sweeps. She wondered if these poor yellow people had ever known what it was to play? Suddenly she fell back, shocked beyond measure. From the direction of the salon--a pistol shot! This was followed by the tramp of hurrying feet. Voices, now sharp, now rumbling--this grew nearer. A struggle of some dimensions was going on in the passage. The racket reached her door, but did not pause there. She sank into the chair, a-tremble. Dennison struggled to a sitting posture. "Jane?" "Yes!" "Are you all right?" "Yes, what has happened?" "A bit of mutiny, I take it; but it seems to be over." "But the shot!" "I heard no cry of pain, only a lot of scuffling and some high words. Don't worry." "I won't. Can't you break a piece of glass and saw your way out?" "Lord love you, that's movie stuff! If I had a razor, I couldn't manage it without hacking off my hands. You are worried!" "I'm a woman, Denny. I'm not afraid of your father; but if there is mutiny, with all these treasures on board--and over here----" "All right. I'll make a real effort." She could hear him stumbling about. She heard the crash of the water carafe on the floor. Several minutes dragged by. "Can't be done!" said Dennison. "Can't make the broken glass stay put. Can't reach my ankles, either, or I could get my feet free. There's a double latch on your door. See to it! Lord!" "What is it?" "Nothing. Just hunting round for some cuss words. Put the chair up against the door knob and sit tight for a while." The hours dragged by in stifling silence. Meanwhile, Cleigh, having attended to errands, lunched, had gone to the American consulate and presented the order. His name and reputation cleared away the official red tape. He explained that all the fuss of the night before had been without cause. Miss Norman had come aboard the yacht, and now decided to go to Hong-Kong with the family. This suggested the presence of other women on board. In the end, Jane's worldly goods were consigned to Cleigh, who signed the receipt and made off for the launch. It was growing dark. On the way down the river Cleigh made no attempt to search for the beads. The salon lights snapped up as the launch drew alongside. Once below, Cleigh dumped Jane's possessions into the nearest chair and turned to give Dodge an order--only to find the accustomed corner vacant! "Dodge!" he shouted. He ran to the passage. "Dodge, where the devil are you?" "Did you call, sir?" Cleigh spun about. In the doorway to the dining salon stood Cunningham, on his amazingly handsome face an expression of anxious solicitude! CHAPTER X Cleigh was not only a big and powerful man--he was also courageous, but the absence of Dodge and the presence of Cunningham offered such sinister omen that temporarily he was bereft of his natural wit and initiative. "Where's Dodge?" he asked, stupidly. "Dodge is resting quietly," answered Cunningham, gravely. "He'll be on his feet in a day or two." That seemed to wake up Cleigh a bit. He drew his automatic. "Face to the wall, or I'll send a bullet into you!" Cunningham shook his head. "Did you examine the clip this morning? When you carry weapons like that for protection never put it in your pocket without a look-see. Dodge wouldn't have made your mistake. Shoot! Try it on the floor, or up through the lights--or at me if you'd like that better. The clip is empty." Mechanically Cleigh took aim and bore against the trigger. There was no explosion. A depressing sense of unreality rolled over the _Wanderer's_ owner. "So you went into town for her luggage? Did you find the beads?" Cleigh made a negative sign. It was less an answer to Cunningham than an acknowledgment that he could not understand why the bullet clip should be empty. "It was an easy risk," explained Cunningham. "You carried the gun, but I doubt you ever looked it over. Having loaded it once upon a time, you believed that was sufficient, eh? Know what I think? The girl has hidden the beads in her hair. Did you search her?" Again Cleigh shook his head, as much over the situation as over the question. "What, you ran all this risk and hadn't the nerve to search her? Well, that's rich! Unless you've read her from my book. She would probably have scratched out your eyes. There's an Amazon locked up in that graceful body. I'd like to see her head against a bit of clear blue sky--a touch of Henner blues and reds. What a whale of a joke! Abduct a young woman, risk prison, and then afraid to lay hands on her! You poor old piker!" Cunningham laughed. "Cunningham----" "All right, I'll be merciful. To make a long story short, it means that for the present I am in command of this yacht. I warned you. Will you be sensible, or shall I have to lock you up like your two-gun man from Texas?" "Piracy!" cried Cleigh, coming out of his maze. "Maritime law calls it that, but it isn't really. No pannikins of rum, no fifteen men on a dead man's chest. Parlour stuff, you might call it. The whole affair--the parlour side of it--depends upon whether you purpose to act philosophically under stress or kick up a hullabaloo. In the latter event you may reasonably expect some rough stuff. Truth is, I'm only borrowing the yacht as far as latitude ten degrees and longitude one hundred and ten degrees, off Catwick Island. You carry a boson's whistle at the end of your watch chain. Blow it!" was the challenge. "You bid me blow it?" "Only to convince you how absolutely helpless you are," said Cunningham, amiably. "Yesterday this day's madness did prepare, as our old friend Omar used to say. Vedder did great work on that, didn't he? Toot the whistle, for shortly we shall weigh anchor." Like a man in a dream, Cleigh got out his whistle. The first blast was feeble and windy. Cunningham grinned. "Blow it, man, blow it!" Cleigh set the whistle between his lips and blew a blast that must have been heard half a mile away. "That's something like! Now we'll have results!" Above, on deck, came the scuffle of hurrying feet, and immediately--as if they had been prepared against this moment--three fourths of the crew came tumbling down the companionway. "Seize this man!" shouted Cleigh, thunderously, as he indicated Cunningham. The men, however, fell into line and came to attention. Most of them were grinning. "Do you hear me? Brown, Jessup, McCarthy--seize this man!" No one stirred. Cleigh then lost his head. With a growl he sprang toward Cunningham. Half the crew jumped instantly into the gap between, and they were no longer grinning. Cunningham pushed aside the human wall and faced the _Wanderer's_ owner. "Do you begin to understand?" "No! But whatever your game is, it will prove bad business for you in the end. And you men, too. The world has grown mighty small, and you'll find it hard to hide--unless you kill me and have done with it!" "Tut, tut! Wouldn't harm a hair of your head. The world is small, as you say, but just at this moment infernally busy mopping up. What, bother about a little dinkum dinkus like this, with Russia mad, Germany ugly, France grumbling at England, Italy shaking her fist at Greece, and labour making a monkey of itself? Nay! I'll shift the puzzle so you can read it. When the yacht was released from auxiliary duties she was without a crew. The old crew, that of peace times, was gone utterly, with the exception of four. You had the yacht keelhauled, gave her another daub of war paint and set about to find a crew. And I had one especially picked for you! Ordinarily, you've a tolerably keen eye. Didn't it strike you odd to land a crew who talked more or less grammatically, who were clean bodily, who weren't boozers?" Cleigh, fully alive now, coldly ran his inspecting glance over the men. He had never before given their faces any particular attention. Besides, this was the first time he had seen so many of them at once. During boat drill they had been divided into four squads. Young faces, lean and hard some of them, but reckless rather than bad. All of them at this moment appeared to be enjoying some huge joke. "I can only repeat," said Cleigh, "that you are all playing with dynamite." "Perhaps. Most of these boys fought in the war; they played the game; but when they returned nobody had any use for them. I caught them on the rebound, when they were a bit desperate. We formed a company--but of that more anon. Will you be my guest, or will you be my prisoner?" The velvet fell away from Cunningham's voice. "Have I any choice? I'll accept the condition because I must. But I've warned you. I suppose I'd better ask at once what the ransom is." "Ransom? Not a copper cent! You can make Singapore in two days from the Catwick." "And for helping me into Singapore I'm to agree not to hand such men as you leave me over to the British authorities?" "All wrong! The men who will help you into Singapore or take you to Manila will be as innocent as newborn babes. Wouldn't believe it, would you, but I'm one of those efficiency sharks. Nothing left to chance; all cut and dried; pluperfect. Cleigh, I never break my word. I honestly intended turning over those beads to you, but Morrissy muddled the play." "Next door to murder." "Near enough, but he'll pull out." "Are you going to take Miss Norman along?" "What, set her ashore to sic the British Navy on us? I'm sorry. I don't want her on board; but that was your play, not mine. You tried to double-cross me. But you need have no alarm. I will kill the man who touches her. You understand that, boys?" The crew signified that the order was understood, though one of them--the returned Flint--smiled cynically. If Cunningham noted the smile he made no verbal comment upon it. "Weigh anchor, then! Look alive! The sooner we nose down to the delta the sooner we'll have the proper sea room." The crew scurried off, and almost at once came familiar sounds--the rattle of the anchor chain on the windlass, the creaking of pulley blocks as the launch came aboard, the thud of feet hither and yon as portables were stowed or lashed to the deck-house rail. For several minutes Cleigh and Cunningham remained speechless and motionless. "You get all the angles?" asked Cunningham, finally. "Some of them," admitted Cleigh. "At any rate, enough to make you accept a bad situation with good grace?" "You're a foolhardy man, Cunningham. Do you expect me to lie down when this play is over? I solemnly swear to you that I'll spend the rest of my days hunting you down." "And I solemnly swear that you shan't catch me. I'm through with the old game of playing the genie in the bottle for predatory millionaires. Henceforth I'm on my own. I'm romantic--yes, sir--I'm romantic from heel to cowlick; and now I'm going to give rein to this stifled longing." "You will come to a halter round your neck. I have always paid your price on the nail, Cunningham." "You had to. Hang it, passions are the very devil, aren't they? Sooner or later one jumps upon your back and rides you like the Old Man of the Sea." Cleigh heard the rumble of steam. "Objects of art!" went on Cunningham. "It eats into your vitals to hear that some rival has picked up a Correggio or an ancient Kirman or a bit of Persian plaque. You talk of halters. Lord lumme, how obliquely you look at facts! Take that royal Persian there--the second-best animal rug on earth--is there no murder behind the woof and warp of it? What? Talk sense, Cleigh, talk sense! You cable me: Get such and such. I get it. What the devil do you care how it was got, so long as it eventually becomes yours? It's a case of the devil biting his own tail--pot calling kettle black." "How much do you want?" "No, Cleigh, it's the romantic idea." "I will give you fifty thousand for the rug." "I'm sorry. No use now of telling you the plot; you wouldn't believe me, as the song goes. Dinner at seven. Will you dine in the salon with me, or will you dine in the solemn grandeur of your own cabin, in company with Da Vinci, Teniers, and that Carlo Dolci the Italian Government has been hunting high and low for?" "I will risk the salon." "To keep an eye on me as long as possible. That's fair enough. You heard what I said to those boys. Well, every mother's son of 'em will toe the mark. There will be no change at all in the routine. Simply we lay a new course that will carry us outside and round Formosa, down to the South Sea and across to the Catwick. I'll give you one clear idea. A million and immunity would not stir me, Cleigh." "What's the game--if it's beyond ransom?" Cunningham laughed boyishly. "It's big, and you'll laugh, too, when I tell you." "On which side of the mouth?" "That's up to you." "Is it the rug?" "Oh, that, of course! I warned you that I'd come for the rug. It took two years out of my young life to get that for you, and it has always haunted me. I just told you about passions, didn't I? Once on your back, they ride you like the devil--down-hill." "A crook." "There you go again--pot calling kettle black! If you want to moralize, where's the line between the thief and the receiver? Fie on you! Dare you hang that Da Vinci, that Dolci, that Holbein in your gallery home? No! Stolen goods. What a passion! You sail across the seas alone, alone because you can't satisfy your passion and have knowing companions on board. When the yacht goes out of commission you store the loot, and tremble when you hear a fire alarm. All right. Dinner at seven. I'll go and liberate your son and the lady." "Cunningham, I will kill you out of hand the very first chance." "Old dear, I'll add a fact for your comfort. There will be guns on board, but half an hour gone all the ammunition was dumped into the Whangpoo. So you won't have anything but your boson's whistle. You're a bigger man than I am physically, and I've a slue-foot, a withered leg; but I've all the barroom tricks you ever heard of. So don't make any mistakes in that direction. You are free to come and go as you please; but the moment you start any rough house, into your cabin you go, and you'll stay there until we raise the Catwick. You haven't a leg to stand on." Cunningham lurched out of the salon and into the passage. He opened the door to Cabin Two and turned on the light. Dennison blinked stupidly. Cunningham liberated him and stood back. "Dinner at seven." "What the devil are you doing on board?" asked Dennison, thickly. "Well, here's gratitude for you! But in order that there will be no misunderstanding, I've turned to piracy for a change. Great sport! I've chartered the yacht for a short cruise." His banter turned into cold, precise tones. Cunningham went on: "No nonsense, captain! I put this crew on board away back in New York. Those beads, though having a merit of their own, were the lure to bring your father to these parts. Your presence and Miss Norman's are accidents for which I am genuinely sorry. But frankly, I dare not turn you loose. That's the milk in the cocoanut. I grant you the same privileges as I grant your father, which he has philosophically agreed to accept. Your word of honour to take it sensibly, and the freedom of the yacht is yours. Otherwise, I'll lock you up in a place not half so comfortable as this." "Piracy!" "Yes, sir. These are strangely troubled days. We've slumped morally. Humanity has been on the big kill, with the result that the tablets of Moses have been busted up something fierce. And here we are again, all kotowing to the Golden Calf! All I need is your word--the word of a Cleigh." "I give it." Dennison gave his word so that he might be free to protect the girl in the adjoining cabin. "But conditionally." "Well?" "That the young lady shall at all times be treated with the utmost respect. You will have to kill me otherwise." "These Cleighs! All right. That happens to be my own order to the crew. Any man who breaks it will pay heavily." "What's the game?" asked Dennison, rubbing his wrists tenderly while he balanced unsteadily upon his aching legs. "Later! I'll let Miss Norman out. That's so--her things are in the salon. I'll get them, but I'll unlock her door first." "What in heaven's name has happened?" asked Jane as she and Dennison stood alone in the passage. "The Lord knows!" gloomily. "But that scoundrel Cunningham has planted a crew of his own on board, and we are all prisoners." "Cunningham?" "The chap with the limp." "With the handsome face? But this is piracy!" "About the size of it." "Oh, I knew something was going to happen! But a pirate! Surely it must be a joke?" So it was--probably the most colossal joke that ever flowered in the mind of a man. The devil must have shouted and the gods must have held their sides, for it took either a devil or a god to understand the joke. CHAPTER XI That first dinner would always remain vivid and clear-cut in Jane Norman's mind. It was fantastic. To begin with, there was that picturesque stone image at the head of the table--Cleigh--who appeared utterly oblivious of his surroundings, who ate with apparent relish, and who ignored both men, his son and his captor. Once or twice Jane caught his glance--a blue eye, sharp-pupiled, agate-hard. But what was it she saw--a twinkle or a sparkle? The breadth of his shoulders! He must be very powerful, like the son. Why, the two of them could have pulverized this pretty fellow opposite! Father and son! For seven years they had not met. Their indifference seemed so inhuman! Still, she fancied that the son dared not make any approach, however much he may have longed to. A woman! They had quarrelled over a woman! Something reached down from the invisible and pinched her heart. All this while Cunningham had been talking--banter. The blade would flash toward the father or whirl upon the son, or it would come toward her by the handle. She could not get away from the initial idea--that his eyes were like fire opals. "Miss Norman, you have very beautiful hair." "You think so?" "It looks like Judith's. You remember, Cleigh, the one that hangs in the Pitti Galleria in Florence--Allori's?" Cleigh reached for a piece of bread, which he broke and buttered. Cunningham turned to Jane again. "Will you do me the favour of taking out the hairpins and loosing it?" "No!" said Dennison. "Why not?" said Jane, smiling bravely enough, though there ran over her spine a chill. It wasn't Cunningham's request--it was Dennison's refusal. That syllable, though spoken moderately, was the essence of battle, murder, and sudden death. If they should clash it would mean that Denny--how easy it was to call him that!--Denny would be locked up and she would be all alone. For the father seemed as aloof and remote as the pole. "You shall not do it!" declared Dennison. "Cunningham, if you force her I will break every bone in your body here and now!" Cleigh selected an olive and began munching it. "Nonsense!" cried Jane. "It's all awry anyhow." And she began to extract the hairpins. Presently she shook her head, and the ruddy mass of hair fell and rippled across and down her shoulders. "Well?" she said, looking whimsically into Cunningham's eyes. "It wasn't there, was it?" This tickled Cunningham. "You're a woman in a million! You read my thought perfectly. I like ready wit in a woman. I had to find out. You see, I had promised those beads to Cleigh, and when I humanly can I keep my promises. Sit down, captain!" For Dennison had risen to his feet. "Sit down! Don't start anything you can't finish." To Jane there was in the tone a quality which made her compare it with the elder Cleigh's eyes--agate-hard. "You are younger and stronger, and no doubt you could break me. But the moment my hand is withdrawn from this business--the moment I am off the board--I could not vouch for the crew. They are more or less decent chaps, or they were before this damned war stood humanity on its head. We wear the same clothes, use the same phrases; but we've been thrust back a thousand years. And Miss Norman is a woman. You understand?" Dennison sat down. "You'd better kill me somewhere along this voyage." "I may have to. Who knows? There's no real demarcation between comedy and tragedy; it's the angle of vision. It's rough medicine, this; but your father has agreed to take it sensibly, because he knows me tolerably well. Still, it will not do him any good to plan bribery. Buy the crew, Cleigh, if you believe you can. You'll waste your time. I do not pretend to hold them by loyalty. I hold them by fear. Act sensibly, all of you, and this will be a happy family. For after all, it's a joke, a whale of a joke. And some day you'll smile over it--even you, Cleigh." Cleigh pressed the steward's button. "The jam and the cheese, Togo," he said to the Jap. "Yess, sair!" A hysterical laugh welled into Jane's throat, but she did not permit it to escape her lips. She began to build up her hair clumsily, because her hands trembled. Adventure! She thrilled! She had read somewhere that after seven thousand years of tortuous windings human beings had formed about themselves a thin shell which they called civilization. And always someone was breaking through and retracing those seven thousand years. Here was an example in Cunningham. Only a single step was necessary. It took seven thousand years to build your shell, and only a minute to destroy it. There was something fascinating in the thought. A reckless spirit pervaded Jane, a longing to burst through this shell of hers and ride the thunderbolt. Monotony--that had been her portion, and only her dreams had kept her from withering. From the house to the hospital and back home again, days, weeks, years. She had begun to hate white; her soul thirsted for colour, movement, thrill. The call that had been walled in, suppressed, broke through. Piracy on high seas, and Jane Norman in the cast! She was not in the least afraid of the whimsical rogue opposite. He was more like an uninvited dinner guest. Perhaps this lack of fear had its origin in the oily smoothness by which the yacht had changed hands. Beyond the subjugation of Dodge, there had not been a ripple of commotion. It was too early to touch the undercurrents. All this lulled and deceived her. Piracy? Where were the cutlasses, the fierce moustaches, the red bandannas, the rattle of dice, and the drunken songs?--the piracy of tradition? If she had any fear at all it was for the man at her left--Denny--who might run amuck on her account and spoil everything. All her life she would hear the father's voice--"The jam and the cheese, Togo." What men, all three of them! Cunningham laid his napkin on the table and stood up. "Absolute personal liberty, if you will accept the situation sensibly." Dennison glowered at him, but Jane reached out and touched the soldier's sleeve. "Please!" "For your sake, then. But it's tough medicine for me to swallow." "To be sure it is," agreed the rogue. "Look upon me as a supercargo for the next ten days. You'll see me only at lunch and dinner. I've a lot of work to do in the chart house. By the way, the wireless man is mine, Cleigh, so don't waste any time on him. Hope you're a good sailor, Miss Norman, for we are heading into rough weather, and we haven't much beam." "I love the sea!" "Hang it, you and I shan't have any trouble! Good-night." Cunningham limped to the door, where he turned and eyed the elder Cleigh, who was stirring his coffee thoughtfully. Suddenly the rogue burst into a gale of laughter, and they could hear recurrent bursts as he wended his way to the companion. When this sound died away Cleigh turned his glance levelly upon Jane. The stone-like mask dissolved into something that was pathetically human. "Miss Norman," he said, "I don't know what we are heading into, but if we ever get clear I will make any reparation you may demand." "Any kind of a reparation?"--an eager note in her voice. Dennison stared at her, puzzled, but almost instantly he was conscious of the warmth of shame in his cheeks. This girl wasn't that sort--to ask for money as a balm for the indignity offered her. What was she after? "Any kind of reparation," repeated Cleigh. "I'll remember that--if we get through. And somehow I believe we shall." "You trust that scoundrel?" asked Cleigh, astonishedly. "Inexplicably--yes." "Because he happens to be handsome?"--with frank irony. "No." But she looked at the son as she spoke. "He said he never broke his word. No man can be a very great villain who can say that. Did he ever break his word to you?" "Except in this instance." "The beads?" "I am quite confident he knows where they are." "Are they so precious? What makes them precious?" "I have told you--they are love beads." "That's rank nonsense! I'm no child!" "Isn't love rank nonsense?" Cleigh countered. He was something of a banterer himself. "Have you never loved anybody?" she shot back at him. A shadow passed over the man's face, clearing the ironic expression. "Perhaps I loved not wisely but too well." "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean----" "You are young; all about you is sunshine; I myself have gone down among the shadows. Cunningham may keep his word; but there is always the possibility of his not being able to keep it. He has become an outlaw; he is in maritime law a pirate. The crew are aware of it; prison stares them in the face, and that may make them reckless. If you weren't on board I shouldn't care. But you are young, vital, attractive, of the type that appeals to strong men. In the dry stores there are many cases of liquor and wine. The men may break into the stuff before we reach the Catwick. That will take ten or twelve days if Cunningham lays a course outside Formosa. What's his game? I don't know. Probably he will maroon us on the Catwick, an island I know nothing about, except that it is nearer to Saigon than to Singapore. So then in the daytime stay where I am or where Captain Dennison is. Good-night." Dennison balanced his spoon on the rim of the coffee cup--not a particularly easy job. "Whatever shall I do with the jade?" Jane asked, irrelevantly. "What?" "The jade necklace. That poor Chinaman!" "Ling Foo? I wish I had broken his infernal yellow neck! But for him neither of us would be here. But he is right," Dennison added, with a jerk of his head toward the door. "You must always be with one or the other of us--preferably me." He smiled. "Will you promise me one thing?" "Denny." "Will you promise me one thing, Denny?" "And that is not to attempt to mix it with the scoundrel?" "Yes." "I promise--so long as he keeps his. But if he touches you--well, God help him!" "And me! Oh, I don't mean him. It is you that I am afraid of. You're so terribly strong--and--and so heady. I can never forget how you went into that mob of quarrelling troopers. But you were an officer there; your uniform doesn't count here. If only you and your father stood together!" "We do so far as you are concerned. Never doubt that. Otherwise, though, it's hopeless. What are you going to demand of him--supposing we come through safely?" "That's my secret. Let's go on deck." "It's raining hard, and there'll be a good deal of pitching shortly. Better turn in. You've been through enough to send the average woman into hysterics." "It won't be possible to sleep." "I grant that, but I'd rather you would go at once to your cabin." "I wonder if you will understand. I'm not really afraid. I know I ought to be, but I'm not. All my life has been a series of humdrum--and here is adventure, stupendous adventure!" She rose abruptly, holding out her arms dramatically toward space. "All my life I have lived in a shell, and chance has cracked it. If only you knew how wonderfully free I feel at this moment! I want to go on deck, to feel the wind and the rain in my face!" "Go to bed," he said, prosaically. Though never had she appeared so poignantly desirable. He wanted to seize her in his arms, smother her with kisses, bury his face in her hair. And swiftly upon this desire came the thought that if she appealed to him so strongly, might she not appeal quite as strongly to the rogue? He laid the spoon on the rim of the cup again and teetered it. "Go to bed," he repeated. "An order?" "An order. I'll go along with you to the cabin. Come!" He got up. "Can you tell me you're not excited?" "I am honestly terrified. I'd give ten years of my life if you were safely out of this. For seven long years I have been knocking about this world, and among other things I have learned that plans like Cunningham's never get through per order. I don't know what the game is, but it's bound to fail. So I'm going to ask you, in God's name, not to let any romantical ideas get into your head. This is bad business for all of us." There was something in his voice, aside from the genuine seriousness, that subdued her. "I'll go to bed. Shall we have breakfast together?" "Better that way." To reach the port passage they had to come out into the main salon. Cleigh was in his corner reading. "Good-night," she called. All her bitterness toward him was gone. "And don't worry about me." "Good-night," replied Cleigh over the top of the book. "Be sure of your door. If you hear any untoward sounds in the night call to the captain whose cabin adjoins yours." When she and Dennison arrived at the door of her cabin she turned impulsively and gave him both her hands. He held them lightly, because his emotions were at full tide, and he did not care to have her sense it in any pressure. Her confidence in him now was absolute, and he must guard himself constantly. Poor fool! Why hadn't he told her that last night on the British transport? What had held him back? The uncertain future--he had let that rise up between. And now he could not tell her. If she did not care, if her regard did not go beyond comradeship, the knowledge would only distress her. The yacht was beginning to roll now, for they were making the East China Sea. The yacht rolled suddenly to starboard, and Jane fell against him. He caught her, instantly turned her right about and gently but firmly forced her into the cabin. "Good-night. Remember! Rap on the partition if you hear anything you don't like." "I promise." After she had locked and latched the door she set about the business of emptying her kit bags. She hung the evening gown she had worn all day in the locker, laid her toilet articles on the dresser, and set the brass hand warmer on the lowboy. Then she let down her hair and began to brush it. She swung a thick strand of it over her shoulder and ran her hand down under it. The woman in "Phra the Phoenician," Allori's Judith--and she had always hated the colour of it! She once more applied the brush, balancing herself nicely to meet the ever-increasing roll. Nevertheless, she did feel free, freer than she had felt in all her life before. A stupendous adventure! After the braids were completed she flung them down her back, turned off the light, and peered out of the rain-blurred port. She could see nothing except an occasional flash of angry foam as it raced past. She slipped into bed, but her eyes remained open for a long time. Dennison wondered if there would be a slicker in his old locker. He opened the door. He found an oilskin and a yellow sou'wester on the hooks. He took them down and put them on and stole out carefully, a hand extended each side to minimize the roll. He navigated the passage and came out into the salon. Cleigh was still immersed in his book. He looked up quickly, but recognizing the intruder, dropped his gaze instantly. Dennison crossed the salon to the companionway and staggered up the steps. Had his father ever really been afraid of anything? He could not remember ever having seen the old boy in the grip of fear. What a devil of a world it was! Dennison was an able seaman. He had been brought up on the sea--seven years on the first _Wanderer_ and five on the second. He had, in company with his father, ridden the seven seas. But he had no trade; he hadn't the money instinct; he would have to stumble upon fortune; he knew no way of making it. And this knowledge stirred his rancor anew--the father hadn't played fair with the son. He gripped the deck-house rail to steady himself, for the wind and rain caught him head-on. Then he worked his way slowly along to the bridge. Twice a comber broke on the quarter and dropped a ton of water, which sloshed about the deck, drenching his feet. He climbed the ladder, rather amused at the recurrence of an old thought--that climbing ship ladders in dirty weather was a good deal like climbing in nightmares: one weighed thousands of pounds and had feet of lead. Presently he peered into the chart room, which was dark except for the small hooded bulbs over the navigating instruments. He could see the chin and jaws of the wheelman and the beard of old Captain Newton. From time to time a wheel spoke came into the light. On the chart table lay a pocket lamp, facing sternward, the light pouring upon what looked to be a map; and over it were bent three faces, one of which was Cunningham's. A forefinger was tracing this map. Dennison opened the door and stepped inside. CHAPTER XII "How are you making out, Newton?" he asked, calmly. "Denny? Why, God bless me, boy, I'm glad to see you! How's your dad?" "Reading." "That would be like him. I don't suppose if hell opened under his feet he'd do anything except look interested. And it 'pears to me's though hell had opened up right now!" A chuckle came from the chart table. "What's your idea of hell, Newton?" asked Cunningham. "Anything you might have a hand in," was the return bolt. "Why, you used to like me!" "Yes, yes! But I didn't know you then. The barometer's dropping. If it was August I'd say we were nosing into a typhoon. I always hated this yellow muck they call a sea over here. Did you pick up that light?" "Yes, sir," answered the wheelman. "I take it she's making south--Hong-Kong way. There's plenty of sea room. She'll be well down before we cross her wake." Silence except for the rumble of the weather canvas standing up against the furious blasts of the wind. Dennison stepped over to the chart table. "Cunningham, I would like to have a word with you." "Go ahead. You can have as many as you like." "At dinner you spoke of your word." "So I did. What about it?" "Do you keep it?" "Whenever I humanly can. Well?" "What's this Catwick Island?" "Hanged if I know!" "Are you going to maroon us there?" "No. At that point the yacht will be turned back to your father, and he can cruise until the crack o' doom without further interference from yours truly." "That's your word?" "It is--and I will keep it. Anything else?" "Yes. I will play the game as it lies, provided that Miss Norman is in nowise interfered with or annoyed." "How is she taking it?" "My reply first." "Neither I nor the crew will bother her. She shall come and go free as the gull in the air. If at any time the men do not observe the utmost politeness toward her you will do me a favour to report to me. That's my word, and I promise to keep it, even if I have to kill a man or two. I wish to come through clean in the hands so far as your father, Miss Norman, and yourself are concerned. I'm risking my neck and my liberty, for this is piracy on the high seas. But every man is entitled to one good joke during his lifetime, and when we raise the Catwick I'll explain this joke in full. If you don't chuckle, then you haven't so much as a grain of humour in your make-up." "Well, there's nothing for me to do but take your word as you give it." "That's the way to talk. Now, Flint, this bay or lagoon----" The voice dropped into a low, indistinguishable murmur. Dennison realized that the moment had come to depart; the edge of the encounter was in Cunningham's favour and to remain would only serve to sharpen this edge. So he went outside, slamming the door behind him. The word of a rogue! There was now nothing to do but turn in. He believed he had a glimmer. Somewhere off the Catwick Cunningham and his crew were to be picked up. He would not be going to the Catwick himself, not knowing whether it was jungle or bald rock. But if a ship was to pick him up, why hadn't she made Shanghai and picked him up there? Why commit piracy--unless he was a colossal liar, which Dennison was ready enough to believe. The word of a rogue! Some private war? Was Cunningham paying off an old grudge? But was any grudge worth this risk? The old boy wasn't to be scared; Cunningham ought to have known that. If Cleigh came through with a whole skin he'd hunt the beggar down if it carried him to the North Pole. Cunningham ought to have known that, too. A planted crew, piracy--and he, Dennison Cleigh, was eventually to chuckle over it! He had his doubts. And where did the glass beads come in? Or had Cunningham spoken the truth--a lure? A big game somewhere in the offing. And the rogue was right! The world, dizzily stewing in a caldron of monumental mistakes, would give scant attention to an off-side play such as this promised to be. Not a handhold anywhere to the puzzle. The old boy might have the key, but Dennison Cleigh could not go to him for the solution. His own father! Just as he had become used to the idea that the separation was final, absolute, to be thrown together in this fantastic manner! The father's arm under his neck and the cup at his lips had shaken him profoundly. But Cleigh would not have denied a dog drink had the dog exhibited signs of thirst. So nothing could be drawn from that. * * * * * Morning. Jane opened her eyes, only to shut them quickly. The white brilliancy of the cabin hurt. Across the ceiling ran a constant flicker of silver--reflected sunshine on the water. Southward--they were heading southward. She jumped out of bed and stepped over to the port. Flashing yellow water, a blue sky, and far off the oddly ribbed sails of a Chinese junk labouring heavily in the big sea that was still running. Glorious! She dressed hurriedly and warmly, bundling her hair under a velours hat and ramming a pin through both. "Denny?" she called. There was no answer. He was on deck, probably. An odd scene awaited her in the main salon. Cleigh, senior, stood before the phonograph listening to Caruso. The roll of the yacht in nowise disturbed the mechanism of the instrument. There was no sudden sluing of the needle, due to an amateurish device which Cleigh himself had constructed. The son, stooping, was searching the titles of a row of new novels. The width of the salon stretched between the two. "Good morning, everybody!" There was a joyousness in her voice she made not the least attempt to conceal. She was joyous, alive, and she did not care who knew it. Dennison acknowledged her greeting with a smile, a smile which was a mixture of wonder and admiration. How in the world was she to be made to understand that they were riding a deep-sea volcano? "Nothing disturbed you through the night?" asked Cleigh, lifting the pin from the record. "Nothing. I lay awake for an hour or two, but after that I slept like a log. Have I kept you waiting?" "No. Breakfast isn't quite ready," answered Cleigh. "What makes the sea so yellow?" "All the big Chinese rivers are mud-banked and mud-bottomed. They pour millions of tons of yellow mud into these waters. By this afternoon, however, I imagine we'll be nosing into the blue. Ah!" "Breakfast iss served," announced Togo the Jap. The trio entered the dining salon in single file, and once more Jane found herself seated between the two men. One moment she was carrying on a conversation with the father, the next moment with the son. The two ignored each other perfectly. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been strange enough; but in this hour, when no one knew where or how this voyage would end! A real tragedy or some absurd trifle? Probably a trifle; trifles dug more pits than tragedies. Perhaps tragedy was mis-named. What humans called tragedy was epic, and trifles were real tragedies. And then there were certain natures to whom the trifle was epical; to whom the inconsequent was invariably magnified nine diameters; and having made a mistake, would die rather than admit it. To bring these two together, to lure them from behind their ramparts of stubbornness, to see them eventually shake hands and grin as men will who recognize that they have been playing the fool! She became fired with the idea. Only she must not move prematurely; there must arrive some psychological moment. During the meal, toward the end of it, one of the crew entered. He was young--in the early twenties. The manner in which he saluted convinced Dennison that the fellow had recently been in the United States Navy. "Mr. Cunningham's compliments, sir. Canvas has been rigged on the port promenade and chairs and rugs set out." Another salute and he was off. "Well, that's decent enough," was Dennison's comment. "That chap has been in the Navy. It's all miles over my head, I'll confess. Cunningham spoke of a joke when I accosted him in the chart house last night." "You went up there?" cried Jane. "Yes. And among other things he said that every man is entitled to at least one good joke. What the devil can he mean by that?" Had he been looking at his father Dennison would have caught a fleeting, grim, shadowy smile on the strong mouth. "You will find a dozen new novels on the shelves, Miss Norman," said Cleigh as he rose. "I'll be on deck. I generally walk two or three miles in the morning. Let us hang together this day to test the scalawag's promise." "Mr. Cleigh, when you spoke of reparation last night, you weren't thinking in monetary terms, were you?" Cleigh's brows lowered a trifle, but it was the effect of puzzlement. "Because," she proceeded, gravely, "all the money you possess would not compensate me for the position you have placed me in." "Well, perhaps I did have money in mind. However, I hold to my word. Anything you may ask." "Some day I will ask you for something." "And if humanly possible I promise to give it," and with this Cleigh took leave. Jane turned to Dennison. "It is so strange and incomprehensible! You two sitting here and ignoring each other! Surely you don't hate your father?" "I have the greatest respect and admiration for him. To you no doubt it seems fantastic; but we understand each other thoroughly, my father and I. I'd take his hand instantly, God knows, if he offered it! But if I offered mine it would be glass against diamond--I'd only get badly scratched. Suppose we go on deck? The air and the sunshine----" "But this catastrophe has brought you together after all these years. Isn't there something providential in that?" "Who can say?" On deck they fell in behind Cleigh, and followed him round for fully an hour; then Jane signified that she was tired, and Dennison put her in the centre chair and wrapped the rug about her. He selected the chair at her right. Jane shut her eyes, and Dennison opened a novel. It was good reading, and he became partially absorbed. The sudden creak of a chair brought his glance round. His father had seated himself in the vacant chair. The phase that dug in and hurt was that his father made no endeavour to avoid him--simply ignored his existence. Seven years and not a crack in the granite! He laid the book on his knees and stared at the rocking horizon. One of the crew passed. Cleigh hailed him. "Send Mr. Cleve to me." "Yes, sir." The air and the tone of the man were perfectly respectful. When Cleve, the first officer, appeared his manner was solicitous. "Are you comfortable, sir?" "Would ten thousand dollars interest you?" said Cleigh, directly. "If you mean to come over to your side, no. My life wouldn't be worth a snap of the thumb. You know something about Dick Cunningham. I know him well. The truth is, Mr. Cleigh, we're off on a big gamble, and if we win out ten thousand wouldn't interest me. Life on board will be exactly as it was before you put into Shanghai. More I am not at liberty to tell you." "How far is the Catwick?" "Somewhere round two thousand--eight or nine days, perhaps ten. We're not piling on--short of coal. It's mighty difficult to get it for a private yacht. You may not find a bucketful in Singapore. In America you can always commandeer it, having ships and coal mines of your own. The drop down to Singapore from the Catwick is about forty hours. You have coal in Manila. You can cable for it." "You are honestly leaving us at that island?" "Yes, sir. You can, if you wish, take the run up to Saigon; but your chance for coal there is nil." "Cleve," said Cleigh, solemnly, "you appreciate the risks you are running?" "Mr. Cleigh, there are no risks. It's a dead certainty. Cunningham is one of your efficiency experts. Everything has been thought of." "Except fate," supplemented Cleigh. "Fate? Why, she's our chief engineer!" Cleve turned away, chuckling; a dozen feet off this chuckle became boisterous laughter. "What can they be after? Sunken treasure?" cried Jane, excitedly. "Hangman's hemp--if I live long enough," was the grim declaration, and Cleigh drew the rug over his knees. "But it can't be anything dreadful if they can laugh over it!" "Did you ever hear Mephisto laugh in Faust? Cunningham is a queer duck. I don't suppose there's a corner on the globe he hasn't had a peek at. He has a vast knowledge of the arts. His real name nobody seems to know. He can make himself very likable to men and attractive to women. The sort of women he seeks do not mind his physical deformity. His face and his intellect draw them, and he is as cruel as a wolf. It never occurred to me until last night that men like me create his kind. But I don't understand him in this instance. A play like this, with all the future risks! After I get the wires moving he won't be able to stir a hundred miles in any direction." "But so long as he doesn't intend to harm us--and I'm convinced he doesn't--perhaps we'd better play the game as he asks us to." "Miss Norman," said Cleigh in a tired voice, "will you do me the favour to ask Captain Dennison why he has never touched the twenty thousand I deposited to his account?" Astonished, Jane turned to Dennison to repeat the question, but was forestalled. "Tell Mr. Cleigh that to touch a dollar of that money would be a tacit admission that Mr. Cleigh had the right to strike Captain Dennison across the mouth." Dennison swung out of the chair and strode off toward the bridge, his shoulders flat and his neck stiff. "You struck him?" demanded Jane, impulsively. But Cleigh did not answer. His eyes were closed, his head rested against the back of the chair so Jane did not press the question. It was enough that she had seen behind a corner of this peculiar veil. And, oddly, she felt quite as much pity for the father as for the son. A wall of pride, Alpine high, and neither would force a passage! They did not see the arch rogue during the day, but he came in to dinner. He was gay--in a story-telling mood. There was little or no banter, for he spoke only to Jane, and gave her flashes of some of his amazing activities in search of art treasures. He had once been chased up and down Japan by the Mikado's agents for having in his possession some royal-silk tapestry which it is forbidden to take out of the country. Another time he had gone into Tibet for a lama's ghost mask studded with raw emeralds and turquoise, and had suffered untold miseries in getting down into India. Again he had entered a Rajput haremlik as a woman, and eventually escaped with the fabulous rug which hung in the salon. Adventure, adventure, and death always at his elbow! There was nothing of the braggart in the man; he recounted his tales after the manner of a boy relating some college escapades, deprecatingly. Often Jane stole a glance at one or the other of the Cleighs. She was constantly swung between--but never touched--the desire to laugh and the desire to weep over this tragedy, which seemed so futile. "Why don't you write a book about these adventures?" she asked. "A book? No time," said Cunningham. "Besides, the moment one of these trips is over it ends; I can recount it only sketchily." "But even sketchily it would be tremendously interesting. It is as if you were playing a game with death for the mere sport of it." "Maybe that hits it, though I've never stopped to analyze. I never think of death; it is a waste of gray matter. I should be no nearer death in Tibet than I should be asleep in a cradle. Why bother about the absolute, the inevitable? Humanity wears itself out building bridges for imaginary torrents. I am an exception; that is why I shall be young and handsome up to the moment the grim stalker puts his claw on my shoulder." He smiled whimsically. "But you, have you never caught some of the passion for possessing rare paintings, rugs, manuscripts?" "You miss the point. What does the sense of possession amount to beside the sense of seeking and finding? Cleigh here thinks he is having a thrill when he signs a check. It is to laugh!" "Have you ever killed a man?" It was one of those questions that leap forth irresistibly. Jane was a bit frightened at her temerity. Cunningham drank his coffee deliberately. "Yes." "Oh!" Jane shrank back a little. "But never willfully," Cunningham added--"always in self-defence, and never a white man." There was a peculiar phase about the man's singular beauty. Animated, it was youthful; in grim repose, it was sad and old. "Death!" said Jane in a kind of awed whisper. "I have watched many die, and I cannot get over the terror of it. Here is a man with all the faculties, physical and mental; a human being, loving, hating, working, sleeping; and in an instant he is nothing!" "A Chinaman once said that the thought of death is as futile as water in the hand. By the way, Cleigh--and you too, captain--give the wireless a wide berth. There's death there." Jane saw the fire opals leap into the dark eyes. CHAPTER XIII The third day out they were well below Formosa, which had been turned on a wide arc. The sea was blue now, quiescent, waveless; there was only the eternal roll. Still Jane could not help comparing the sea with the situation--the devil was slumbering. What if he waked? Time after time she tried to force her thoughts into the reality of this remarkable cruise, but it was impossible. Romance was always smothering her, edging her off, when she approached the sinister. Perhaps if she had heard ribald songs, seen evidence of drunkenness; if the crew had loitered about and been lacking in respect, she would have been able to grasp the actuality; but so far the idea persisted that this could not be anything more than a pleasure cruise. Piracy? Where was it? So she measured her actions accordingly, read, played the phonograph, went here and there over the yacht, often taking her stand in the bow and peering down the cutwater to watch the antics of some humorous porpoise or to follow the smother of spray where the flying fish broke. In fact, she conducted herself exactly as she would have done on board a passenger ship. There were moments when she was honestly bored. Piracy! This was an established fact. Cunningham and his men had stepped outside the pale of law in running off with the _Wanderer_. But piracy without drunken disorder, piracy that wiped its feet on the doormat and hung its hat on the rack! There was a touch of the true farce in it. Hadn't Cunningham himself confessed that the whole affair was a joke? Round two o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Jane, for the moment alone in her chair, heard the phonograph--the sextet from Lucia. She left her chair, looked down through the open transom and discovered Dennison cranking the machine. He must have seen her shadow, for he glanced up quickly. He crooked a finger which said, "Come on down!" She made a negative sign and withdrew her head. Here she was again on the verge of wild laughter. Donizetti! Pirates! Glass beads for which Cleigh had voyaged sixteen thousand miles! A father and son who ignored each other! She choked down this desire to laugh, because she was afraid it might end suddenly in hysteria and tears. She returned to her chair, and there was the father arranging himself comfortably. He had a book. "Would you like me to read a while to you?" she offered. "Will you? You see," he confessed, "I'm troubled with insomnia. If I read by myself I only become interested in the book, but if someone reads aloud it makes me drowsy." "As a nurse I've done that hundreds of times. But frankly, I can't read poetry; I begin to sing-song it at once; it becomes rime without reason. What is the book?" Cleigh extended it to her. The moment her hands touched the volume she saw that she was holding something immeasurably precious. The form was unlike the familiar shapes of modern books. The covers consisted of exquisitely hand-tooled calf bound by thongs; there was a subtle perfume as she opened them. Illuminated vellum. She uttered a pleasurable little gasp. "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," she read. "Fifteenth century--the vellum. The Florentine covers were probably added in the seventeenth. I have four more downstairs. They are museum pieces, as we say." "That is to say, priceless?" "After a fashion." "'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned!'" "Why did you select that?" "I didn't select it; I remembered it--because it is true." "You have a very pleasant voice. Go on--read." Thus for an hour she read to him, and by the time she grew tired Cleigh was sound asleep. The look of granite was gone from his face, and she saw that he, too, had been handsome in his youth. Why had he struck Denny on the mouth? What had the son done so to enrage the father? Some woman! And where had she met the man? Oh, she was certain that she had encountered him before! But for the present the gate to recollection refused to swing outward. Gently she laid the beautiful book on his knees and stole over to the rail. For a while she watched the flying fish. Then came one of those impulses which keep human beings from becoming half gods--a wrong impulse, surrendered to immediately, unweighed, unanalyzed, unchallenged. The father asleep, the son amusing himself with the phonograph, she was now unobserved by her guardians; and so she put into execution the thought that had been urging and intriguing her since the strange voyage began--a visit to the chart house. She wanted to ask Cunningham some questions. He would know something about the Cleighs. The port door to the chart house was open, latched back against the side. She hesitated for a moment outside the high-beamed threshold--hesitated because Captain Newton was not visible. The wheelman was alone. Obliquely she saw Cunningham, Cleve, and a third man seated round a table which was littered. This third man sat facing the port door, and sensing her presence he looked up. Rather attractive until one noted the thin, hard lips, the brilliant blue eyes. At the sight of Jane something flitted over his face, and Jane knew that he was bad. "What's the matter, Flint?" asked Cunningham, observing the other's abstraction. "We have a visitor," answered Flint. Cunningham spun his chair round and jumped to his feet. "Miss Norman? Come in, come in! Anything you need?" he asked with lively interest. "I should like to ask you some questions, Mr. Cunningham." "Oh! Well, if I can answer them, I will." He looked significantly at his companions, who rose and left the house by the starboard door. "They can't keep away from him, can they?" said Flint, cynically. "Slue-Foot has the come-hither, sure enough. I had an idea she'd be hiking this way the first chance she got." "You haven't the right dope this trip," replied Cleve. "The contract reads: Hands off women and booze." "Psalm-singing pirates! We'll be having prayers Sunday. But that woman is my style." "Better begin digging up a prayer if you've got that bug in your head. If you make any fool play in that direction Cunningham will break you. I saw you last night staring through the transom. Watch your step, Flint. I'm telling you." "But if she should happen to take a fancy to me, who shall say no?" "Hate yourself, eh? There was liquor on your breath last night. Did you bring some aboard?" "What's that to you?" "It's a whole lot to me, my bucko--to me and to the rest of the boys. Cleigh will not prosecute us for piracy if we play a decent game until we raise the Catwick. On old Van Dorn's tub we can drink and sing if we want to. If Cunningham gets a whiff of your breath, when you've had it, you'll get yours. Most of the boys have never done anything worse than apple stealing. It was the adventure. All keyed up for war and no place to go, and this was a kind of safety valve. Already half of them are beginning to knock in the knees. Game, understand, but now worried about the future." "A peg or two before turning in won't hurt anybody. I'm not touching it in the daytime." "Keep away from him when you do--that's all. We're depending on you and Cunningham to pull through. If you two get to scrapping the whole business will go blooey. If we play the game according to contract there's a big chance of getting back to the States without having the sheriff on the dock to meet us. But if you mess it up because an unexpected stroke put a woman on board, you'll end up as shark bait." "Maybe I will and maybe I won't," was the truculent rejoinder. "Lord!" said Cleve, a vast discouragement in his tone. "You lay a course as true and fine as a hair, and run afoul a rotting derelict in the night!" Flint laughed. "Oh, I shan't make any trouble. I'll say my prayers regular until we make shore finally. The agreement was to lay off the Cleigh booze. I brought on board only a couple of quarts, and they'll be gone before we raise the Catwick. But if I feel like talking to the woman I'll do it." "It's your funeral, not mine," was the ominous comment. "You've been on the beach once too often, Flint, to play a game like this straight. But Cunningham had to have you, because you know the Malay lingo. Remember, he isn't afraid of anything that walks on two feet or four." "Neither am I--when I want anything. But glass beads!" "That was only a lure for Cleigh, who'd go round the world for any curio he was interested in." "That's what I mean. If it were diamonds or pearls or rubies, all well and good. But a string of glass beads! The old duffer is a nut!" "Maybe he is. But if you had ten or twelve millions, what would you do?" "Jump for Prome and foot it to the silk bazaar, where there are three or four of the prettiest Burmese girls you ever laid your eyes on. Then I'd buy the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo and close it to the public." "And in five years--the old beach again!" Flint scowled at the oily, heaving rolls, brassy and dazzling. He was bored. For twelve weeks he had circled the dull round of ship routine, with never shore leave that was long enough for an ordinary drinking bout. He was bored stiff. Suddenly his thin lips broke into a smile. Cleve, noting the smile, divined something of the impellent thought behind that smile, and he grew uneasy. He recalled his own expression of a few moments gone--the unreckoned derelict. * * * * * "Thank you for coming up," said Cunningham. "It makes me feel that you trust me." "I want to," admitted Jane. A disturbing phenomenon. Always there was a quickening of her heart-beats at the beginning of each encounter with this unusual gentleman rover. It was no longer fear. What was it? Was it the face of him, too strong and vital for a woman's, too handsome for a man's? Was it his dark, fiery eye which was always reversing what his glib tongue said? Some hidden magnetism? Alone, the thought of him was recurrent, no matter how resolutely she cast it forth. Even now she could not honestly say whether she was here to ask questions of Cunningham or of herself. Perhaps it was because he was the unknown, whereas Denny was for the most part as readable as an open book. The one like the forest stream, sometimes turbulent but always clear; the other like the sea through which they plowed, smooth, secret, ominous. "Do your guardians know where you are?"--raillery in his voice. "No. I came to ask some questions." "Curiosity. Sit down. What is it you wish to know?" "All this--and what will be the end?" "Well, doubtless there will be an end, but I'm not seer enough to foretell it." "Then you have some doubts?" "Only those that beset all of us." "But somehow--well, you don't seem to belong to this sort of game." "Why not?" Unexpectedly he had set a wall between. She had no answer, and her embarrassment was visible on her cheeks. "Here and there across the world rough men call me Slue-Foot. Perhaps my deformity has reacted upon my soul and twisted that. Perhaps if my countenance had been homely and rugged I would have walked the beaten paths of respectability. But the two together!" "I'm sorry!" "A woman such as you are would be. You are a true daughter of the great mother--Pity. But I have never asked pity of any. I have asked only that a man shall keep his word to me as I will keep mine to him." "But you are risking your liberty, perhaps your life!" "I've been risking that for more than twenty years. The habit has become normal. All my life I've wanted a real adventure." She gazed at him in utter astonishment. "An adventure? Why, you yourself told me that you had risked your life a hundred times!" "That?"--with a smile and a shrug. "That was business, the day's work. I mean an adventure in which I am accountable to no man." "Only to God?" "Well, of course, if you want it that way. For myself, I'm something of a pagan. I have dreamed of this day. When you were a little girl didn't you dream of a wonderful doll that could walk and make almost human noises? Well, I'm realizing my doll. I am going pearl hunting in the South Seas--the thing I dreamed of when I was a boy." "But why commit piracy? Why didn't you hire a steamer?" "Oh, I must have my joke, too. But I hadn't counted on you. In every campaign there is the hollow road of Ohain. Napoleon lost Waterloo because of it. Your presence here has forced me to use a hand without velvet. These men expected a little fun--cards and drink; and some of them are grumbling with discontent. But don't worry. In five days we'll be off on our own." "What is the joke?" "That will have to wait. For a few minutes I heard you reading to-day. Your voice is like a bell at sea in the evening. 'Many waters cannot quench love,'" he quoted, the flash of opals in his eyes, though his lips were smiling gently. "The Bible is a wonderful book. Its authors were poets who were not spoiled by the curse of rime. Does it amuse you to hear me talk of the Bible?--an unregenerate scalawag? Well, it is like this: I am something of an authority on illuminated manuscripts. I've had to wade through hundreds of them. That is the method by which I became acquainted with the Scriptures. The Song of Songs! Lord love you, if that isn't pure pagan, what is? I prefer the Proverbs. Ask Cleigh if he has that manuscript with him. It's in a remarkable state of preservation. Remember? 'There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.' Ask Cleigh to show you that." Cleigh! The name swung her back to the original purpose of this visit. "Do you know the Cleighs well?" "I know the father. He has the gift of strong men--unforgetting and unforgiving. I know little or nothing about the son, except that he is a chip of the old block. Queer twist in events, eh?" "Have you any idea what estranged them?" "Didn't know they were at outs until the night before we sailed. They don't speak?" "No. And it seems so utterly foolish!" "_Cherchez la femme!_" "You believe that was it?" "It is always so, always and eternally the woman. I don't mean that she is always to blame; I mean that she is always there--in the background. But you! I say, now, here's the job for you! Bring them together. That's your style. For weeks now you three will be together. Within that time you'll be able to twist both of them round your finger. I wonder if you realize it? You're not beautiful, but you are something better--splendid. Strong men will always be gravitating toward you, wanting comfort, peace. You're not the kind that sets men's hearts on fire, that makes absconders, fills the divorce courts, and all that. You're like a cool hand on a hot forehead. And you have a voice as sweet as a bell." Instinct--the female fear of the trap--warned Jane to be off, but curiosity held her to the chair. She was human; and this flattery, free of any suggestion of love-making, gave her a warming, pleasurable thrill. Still there was a fly in the amber. Every woman wishes to be credited with hidden fires, to possess equally the power to damn men as well as to save them. "Has there never been----" "A woman? Have I not just said there is always a woman?" He was sardonic now. "Mine, seeing me walk, laughed." "She wasn't worth it!" "No, she wasn't. But when we are twenty the heart is blind. So Cleigh and the boy don't speak?" "Cleigh hasn't injured you in any way, has he?" "Injured me? Of course not! I am only forced by circumstance--and an oblique sense of the comic--to make a convenience of him. And by the Lord Harry, it's up to you to help me out!" "I?"--bewildered. CHAPTER XIV Jane gazed through the doorway at the sea. There was apparently no horizon, no telling where the sea ended and the faded blue of the sky began. There was something about this sea she did not like. She was North-born. It seemed to her that there was really less to fear from the Atlantic fury than from these oily, ingratiating, rolling mounds. They were the Uriah Heep of waters. She knew how terrible they could be, far more terrible than the fiercest nor'easter down the Atlantic. Typhoon! How could a yacht live through a hurricane? She turned again toward Cunningham. "You are like that," she said, irrelevantly. "Like what?" "Like the sea." Cunningham rose and peered under the half-drawn blind. "That may be complimentary, but hanged if I know! Smooth?--is that what you mean?" "Kind of terrible." He sat down again. "That rather cuts. I might be terrible. I don't know--never met the occasion; but I do know that I'm not treacherous. You certainly are not afraid of me." "I don't exactly know. It's--it's too peaceful." "To last? I see. But it isn't as though I were forcing you to go through with the real voyage. Only a few days more, and you'll have seen the last of me." "I hope so." He chuckled. "What I meant was," she corrected, "that nothing might happen, nobody get hurt. Human beings can plan only so far." "That's true enough. Every programme is subject to immediate change. But, Lord, what a lot of programmes go through per schedule! Still, you are right. It all depends upon chance. We say a thing is cut and dried, but we can't prove it. But so far as I can see into the future, nothing is going to happen, nobody is going to walk the plank. Piracy on a basis of 2.75 per cent.--the kick gone out of it! But if you can bring about the reconciliation of the Cleighs the old boy will not be so keen for chasing me all over the map when this job is done." "Will you tell me what those beads are?" "To be sure I will--all in due time. What does Cleigh call them?" "Love beads!" scornfully. "On my solemn word, that's exactly what they are." "Very well. But remember, you promise to tell me when the time comes." "That and other surprising things." "I'll be going." "Come up as often as you like." Cunningham accompanied her to the bridge ladder and remained until she was speeding along the deck; then he returned to his chart. But the chart was no longer able to hold his attention. So he levelled his gaze upon the swinging horizon and kept it there for a time. Odd fancy, picturing the girl on the bridge in a hurricane, her hair streaming out behind her, her fine body leaning on the wind. A shadow in the doorway broke in upon this musing. Cleigh. "Come in and sit down," invited Cunningham. But Cleigh ignored the invitation and stepped over to the steersman. "Has Miss Norman been in here?" "Yes, sir." "How long was she here?" "I don't know, sir; perhaps half an hour." Cleigh stalked to the door, but there he turned, and for the first time since Cunningham had taken the yacht Cleigh looked directly, with grim intentness, into his enemy's eyes. "Battle, murder, and sudden death!" Cunningham laughed. "You don't have to tell me, Cleigh! I can see it in your eyes. If Miss Norman wants to come here and ask questions, I'm the last man to prevent her." Cleigh thumped down the ladder. Cunningham was right--there was murder in his heart. He hurried into the main salon, and there he found Jane and Dennison conversing. "Miss Norman, despite my warning you went up to the chart house." "I had some questions to ask." "I forbid you emphatically. I am responsible for you." "I am no longer your prisoner, Mr. Cleigh; I am Mr. Cunningham's." "You went up there alone?" demanded Dennison. "Why not? I'm not afraid. He will not break his word to me." "Damn him!" roared Dennison. "Where are you going?" she cried, seizing him by the sleeve. "To have it out with him! I can't stand this any longer!" "And what will become of me--if anything happens to you, or anything happens to him? What about the crew if he isn't on hand to hold them?" The muscular tenseness of the arm she held relaxed. But the look he gave his father was on a par with that which Cleigh had so recently spent upon Cunningham. Cleigh could not support it, and turned his head aside. "All right. But mind you keep in sight! If you will insist upon talking with the scoundrel, at least permit me to be within call. What do you want to talk to him for, anyhow?" "Neither of you will stoop to ask him questions, so I had to. And I have learned one thing. He is going pearl hunting." "What? Off the Catwick? There's no pearl oyster in that region," Dennison declared. "Either he is lying or the Catwick is a blind. The only chance he'd have would be somewhere in the Sulu Archipelago; and this time of year the pearl fleets will be as thick as flies in molasses. Of course if he is aware of some deserted atoll, why, there might be something in it." "Have you ever hunted pearls?" "In a second-hand sort of way. But if pearls are his game, why commit piracy when he could have chartered a tramp to carry his crew? There's more than one old bucket hereabouts ready to his hand for coal and stores. He'll need a shoe spoon to get inside or by the Sulu fleets, since the oyster has been pretty well neglected these five years, and every official pearler will be hiking down there. But it requires a certain amount of capital and a stack of officially stamped paper, and I don't fancy Cunningham has either." Cleigh smiled dryly, but offered no comment. He knew all about Cunningham's capital. "Did he say anything about being picked up by another boat?" asked Dennison. "No," answered Jane. "But I don't believe it will be hard for me to make him tell me that. I believe that he will keep his word, too." "Jane, he has broken the law of the sea. I don't know what the penalty is these days, but it used to be hanging to the yard-arm. He won't be particular about his word if by breaking it he can save his skin. He's been blarneying you. You've let his plausible tongue and handsome face befog you." "That is not true!" she flared. Afterward she wondered what caused the flash of perversity. "And I resent your inference!" she added with uplifted chin. Dennison whirled her about savagely, stared into her eyes, then walked to the companion, up which he disappeared. This rudeness astonished her profoundly. She appealed silently to the father. "We are riding a volcano," said Cleigh. "I'm not sure but he's setting some trap for you. He may need you as a witness for the defense. Of course I can't control your actions, but it would relieve me immensely if you'd give him a wide berth." "He was not the one who brought me aboard." "No. And the more I look at it, the more I am convinced that you came on board of your own volition. You had two or three good opportunities to call for assistance." "You believe that?" "I've as much right to believe that as you have that Cunningham will keep his word." "Oh!" she cried, but it was an outburst of anger. And it had a peculiar twist, too. She was furious because both father and son were partly correct; and yet there was no diminution of that trust she was putting in Cunningham. "Next you'll be hinting that I'm in collusion with him!" "No. Only he is an extraordinarily fascinating rogue, and you are wearing the tinted goggles of romance." Fearing that she might utter something regrettable, she flew down the port passage and entered her cabin, where she remained until dinner. She spent the intervening hours endeavouring to analyze the cause of her temper, but the cause was as elusive as quicksilver. Why should she trust Cunningham? What was the basis of this trust? He had, as Denny said, broken the law of the sea. Was there a bit of black sheep in her, and was the man calling to it? And this perversity of hers might create an estrangement between her and Denny; she must not let that happen. The singular beauty of the man's face, his amazing career, and his pathetic deformity--was that it? * * * * * "Where's the captain?" asked Cunningham, curiously, as he noted the vacant chair at the table that night. "On deck, I suppose." "Isn't he dining to-night?"--an accent of suspicion creeping into his voice. "He isn't contemplating making a fool of himself, is he? He'll get hurt if he approaches the wireless." "Togo," broke in Cleigh, "bring the avocats and the pineapple." Cunningham turned upon him with a laugh. "Cleigh, when I spin this yarn some day I'll carry you through it as the man who never batted an eye. I can see now how you must have bluffed Wall Street out of its boots." When Cunningham saw that Jane was distrait he made no attempt to pull her out of it. He ate his dinner, commenting only occasionally. Still, he bade her a cheery good-night as he returned to the chart house, where he stayed continually, never quite certain what old Captain Newton might do to the wheel and the compass if left alone too long. Dennison came in immediately after Cunningham's departure and contritely apologized to Jane for his rudeness. "I suppose I'm on the rack; nerves all raw; tearing me to pieces to sit down and twiddle my thumbs. Will you forgive me?" "Of course I will! I understand. You are all anxious about me. Theoretically, this yacht is a volcano, and you're trying to keep me from kicking off the lid. But I've an idea that the lid will stay on tightly if we make believe we are Mr. Cunningham's guests. But it is almost impossible to suspect that anything is wrong. Whenever a member of the crew comes in sight he is properly polite, just as he would be on a liner. If I do go to the bridge again I'll give you warning. Good-night, Mr. Cleigh, I'll read to you in the morning. Good-night--Denny." Cleigh, sighing contentedly, dipped his fingers into the finger bowl and brushed his lips. The son drank a cup of coffee hastily, lit his pipe, and went on deck. He proceeded directly to the chart house. "Cunningham, I'll swallow my pride and ask a favour of you." "Ah!"--in a neutral tone. "The cook tells me that all the wine and liquor are in the dry-stores compartment. Will you open it and let me chuck the stuff overboard?" "No," said Cunningham, promptly. "When I turn this yacht back to your father not a single guy rope will be out of order. It would be a fine piece of work to throw all those rare vintages over the rail simply to appease an unsubstantial fear on your part! No!" "But if the men should break in? And it would be easy, because it is nearer them than us." "Thank your father for building the deck like a city flat. But if the boys should break in, there's the answer," said Cunningham, laying his regulation revolver on the chart table. "And every mother's son of them knows it." "You refuse?" "Yes." "All right. But if anything happens I'll be on top of you, and all the bullets in that clip won't stop me." "Captain, you bore me. Your father and the girl are good sports. You ought to be one. I've given you the freedom of the yacht for the girl's sake when caution bids me dump you into the brig. I begin to suspect that your misfortunes are due to a violent temper. Run along with your thunder; I don't want you hurt." "If I come through this alive----" "You'll join your dad peeling off my hide--if you can catch me!" It was with the greatest effort that Dennison crushed down the desire to leap upon his tormentor. He stood tense for a moment, then stepped out upon the bridge. His fury was suffocating him, and he realized that he was utterly helpless. Ten minutes later the crew in their quarters were astonished to see the old man's son enter. None of them stirred. "I say, any you chaps got an extra suit of twill? This uniform is getting too thick for this latitude. I'm fair melting down to the bone." "Sure!" bellowed a young giant, swinging out of his bunk. He rummaged round for a space and brought forth a light-weight khaki shirt and a pair of ducks. "Guess these'll fit you, sir." "Thanks. Navy stores?" "Yes, sir. You're welcome." Dennison's glance travelled from face to face, and he had to admit that there was none of the criminal type here. They might carry through decently. Nevertheless, hereafter he would sleep on the lounge in the main salon. If any tried to force the dry-stores door he would be likely to hear it. At eleven o'clock the following morning there occurred an episode which considerably dampened Jane's romantical point of view regarding this remarkable voyage. Cleigh had gone below for some illuminated manuscripts and Dennison was out of sight for the moment. She leaned over the rail and watched the flying fish. Suddenly out of nowhere came the odour of whisky. "You ought to take a trip up to the cutwater at night and see the flying fish in the phosphorescence." She did not stir. Instinctively she knew who the owner of this voice would be--the man Cunningham called Flint. A minute--an unbearable minute--passed. "Oh! Too haughty to be a good fellow, huh?" Footsteps, a rush of wind, a scuffling, and an oath brought her head about. She saw Flint go balancing and stumbling backward, finally to sprawl on his hands and knees, and following him, in an unmistakable attitude, was Dennison. Jane was beginning to understand these Cleighs; their rage was terrible because it was always cold. "Denny!" she called. But Dennison continued on toward Flint. CHAPTER XV Flint was a powerful man, or had been. The surprise of the attack over, he jumped to his feet, and blazing with murderous fury rushed Dennison. Jane saw a tangle of arms, and out of this tangle came a picture that would always remain vivid--Flint practically dangling at the end of Dennison's right arm. The rogue tore and heaved and kicked and struck, but futilely, because his reach was shorter. Dennison let go unexpectedly. "Listen to me, you filthy beachcomber! If you ever dare speak to Miss Norman again or come within ten feet of her I'll kill you with bare hands! There are no guns on board this yacht--bare hands. Now go back to your master and say that I'd like to do the same to him." Flint, his hands touching his throat with inquiring solicitude--Flint eyed Dennison with that mixture of pain and astonishment that marks the face of a man who has been grossly deceived. Slowly he revolved on his shaking legs and staggered forward, shortly to disappear round the deck house. "Oh, Denny, you've done a foolish thing! You've shamed that man before me and put murder in his heart. It isn't as if we were running the yacht. We are prisoners of that man and his fellows. It would have been enough for you to have stepped in between." "I haven't any parlour varnish left, Jane. His shoulder was almost touching yours. It was an intentional insult, and that was enough for me. The dog! Still looking at the business romantically?" His tone was bitter. Her reproach, no doubt justified, cut deeply. "No, I'm beginning to become a little afraid--afraid that the men may get out of hand. I don't care what you and your father think, but I believe Cunningham honestly wishes us to reach the Catwick without any conflict." "Ah, Cunningham!" "There you go again--angry and bitter! Why can't you take it sensibly, like your father?" "My father doesn't happen to be----" He stopped with mystifying abruptness. "Doesn't happen to be what?" "The sort of fool I am!" "You're not so good a comrade as you were." "Can't you understand? I've been stood upon my head. The worry about you on one side and the contact with my father on the other would be sufficient. But Cunningham and this pirate crew as a tail to the kite! But, thank God, I had the wit to come in search of you!" "I thank God every minute, Denny! You are very strong," she added, shyly. "Glad of that, too. But I repeat, I've lost the parlour varnish and the art of parlour talk. For seven years I've been wandering in strange places, most of them hard; so I say what I think and act on the spur. That dog had liquor on his breath. Is Cunningham secretly letting them into the dry-stores?" "The man may have brought it aboard at Shanghai. What a horrible thing a great war is! In a week it knocks aside all the bars of restraint it took years to erect. Could a venture like this have happened in 1913? I doubt it. There comes your father. But who is the man with him? He's been hurt." "Father's watchdog. They had to beat him up to get his gun away from him. That was the racket we heard. Evidently Father expects you to read to him, so I'll take a constitutional." "Why, where's your uniform?" she cried. "Laid it aside. From now on it will be stuffy. Those military boots were killing me. I borrowed the rig from one of the pirates, but I'll have to go barefoot." "Will you come to your chair soon? I shall worry otherwise. You might run into that man again." "I shan't go below," he promised, starting off. Twenty thousand at compound interest for seven years, he thought, as he made the first turn. A tidy sum to start life with. Could he swallow his pride? And yet what hope was there of making a real living? He had never specialized in anything, and the world was calling for specialists and discarding the others. Another point to consider: Foot-loose for seven years, could he stand the shackles of office work, routine, the sameness day in and day out? He was returning to the States without the least idea what he wanted to do; that was the disturbing phase of it. If only he were keen for something! A typical son of the rich man. The only point in his favour was that he had not spent his allowances up and down Broadway. No, he would never touch a dollar of that money. That was final. What lay back of this sudden desire to make good in the world? Love! There wasn't the slightest use in lying to himself. He wanted Jane Norman with all the blood in his body, with all the marrow in his bones; and he had nothing to offer her but empty hands. He shot a glance toward the bridge. And because he had no right to speak--obligated to silence by two reasons--that easy-speaking scoundrel might trap her fancy. It could not be denied that he was handsome, but he was nevertheless a rogue. The two reasons why he must not speak were potent. In the first place, he had nothing to offer; in the second place, the terror she was no doubt hiding bravely would serve only to confuse her--that is, she might confuse a natural desire for protection with something deeper and tenderer, and then discover her mistake when it was too late. What was she going to ask of his father when the time came for reparation? That puzzled him. He made the rounds steadily for an hour, and during this time Jane frequently looked over the top of the manuscript she was reading aloud. At length she laid the manuscript upon her knees. "Mr. Cleigh, what is it that makes art treasures so priceless?" "Generally the depth of the buyer's purse. That is what they say of me in the great auction rooms." "But you don't buy them just because you are rich enough to outbid somebody else?" "No, I am actually fond of all the treasures I possess. Aside from this, it is the most fascinating game there is. The original! A painting that Holbein laid his own brushes on, mixed his own paint for! I have then something of the man, tangible, visible; something of his beautiful dreams, his poverty, his success. There before me is the authentic labour of his hand, which was guided by the genius of his brain--before machinery spoiled mankind. Oh, yes, machinery has made me rich! It has given the proletariat the privilege of wearing yellow diamonds and riding about in flivvers. That must be admitted. But to have lived in those days when ambition thought only in beauty! To have been the boon companions of men like Da Vinci, Cellini, Michelangelo! Then there are the adventures of this concrete dream of the artist. I can trace it back to the bare studio in which it was conceived, follow its journeys, its abiding places, down to the hour it comes to me." Jane stared at him astonishedly. All that had been crampedly hidden in his soul flowed into his face, warming and mellowing it, even beautifying it. Cleigh went on: "Where will it go when I have done my little span? What new adventures lie in store for it? Across the Ponte Vecchio in Florence runs a gallery of portraits: at the south end of this gallery there is or was a corner given over to a copyist. He strikes you dumb with the cleverness of his work, but he has only an eye and a hand--he hasn't a soul. A copy is to the original what a dummy is to a live man, no matter how amazingly well done the copy is. The original, the dream; nothing else satisfies the true collector." "I didn't know," said Jane, "that you had so much romance in you." "Romance?" It was almost a bark. "Why, certainly. No human being could love beauty the way you do and not be romantic." "Romantic!" Cleigh leaned back in his chair. "That's a new point of view for Tungsten Cleigh. That's what my enemies call me--the hardest metal on earth. Romantic!" He chuckled. "To hear a woman call me romantic!" "It does not follow that to be romantic one must be sentimental. Romance is something heroic, imaginative, big; it isn't a young man and a girl spooning on a park bench. I myself am romantic, but nobody could possibly call me sentimental." "No?" "Why, if I knew that we'd come through this without anybody getting hurt I'd be gloriously happy. All my life I've been cooped up. For a little while to be free! But I don't like that." She indicated Dodge, who sat in Dennison's chair, his head bandaged, his arm in a sling, thousands of miles from his native plains, at odds with his environment. His lean brown jaws were set and the pupils of his blue eyes were mere pin points. During the discussion of art, during the reading, he had not stirred. "You mean," said Cleigh, gravely, "that Dodge may be only the beginning?" "Yes. Your--Captain Dennison had an encounter with the man Flint before you came up. He is very strong and--and a bit intolerant." "Ah!" Cleigh rubbed his jaw and smiled ruminatively. "He was always rather handy with his fists. Did he kill the ruffian?" "No, held him at arm's length and threatened to kill him. I'm afraid Flint will not accept the situation with good grace." "Flint? I never liked that rogue's face." "He has found liquor somewhere, and I saw murder in his eyes. Denny isn't afraid, and that's why I am--afraid he'll run amuck uselessly. His very strength will react against him." "I was like that thirty years ago." So she called him Denny? Cleigh laid his hand over hers. "Keep your chin up. There's a revolver handy should we need it. I dare not carry it for fear Cunningham might discover and confiscate it. Six bullets." "And if worse comes to worse, will--will you save one for me? Please don't let Denny do it! You are old, and if you lived after it wouldn't be in your thoughts so long as it would be in his--if he killed me. Will you promise?" "Yes--if worse comes to worse. Will you forgive me?" "I do. But still I'm going to hold you to your word." "I'll pay the score, whatever it is. Now suppose you come below with me and take a look at the paintings? You haven't seen my cabin yet." What was this unusual young woman going to ask of him? He wondered. The more he thought over it the more convinced he was that she had assisted in the abduction. CHAPTER XVI After they had gone below Dennison dropped into Jane's chair. Immediately Dodge began to talk: "So you nearly throttled that ornery coyote, huh? Whata you know about this round-up? The three o' 'em came in, and I never smelt nothin' until they were on top o' me. How should I smell anythin'? Hobnobbing together for days, how was I to know they were a bunch of pirates? Is your old man sore?" "Naturally." "I mean appertainin' to me?" "I don't see how he could be. Who took care of you--bound you up?" "That nice-lookin' greaser with the slue foot. Soft speakin' like a woman and an eye like a timber wolf. Some _hombre_! Where we bound for?" "God knows!"--dejectedly. "Bad as that, huh? Your girl?" "No." "No place for a girl. If they hadn't busted my arm I wouldn't care so much! If it comes to a show-down I won't be no good to anybody. Gimme my guns and we'd be headin' home in five minutes. These _hombres_ know somethin' o' my gun play. Gee, it's lonesome here!" Dodge mused for a moment. "Say, what's your old man's idea hog-tyin' you that-a-way?" "He'll tell you perhaps." "Uh-huh. Say, what did the Lord make all that stuff for?" with a gesture toward the brazen sea. "What's it good for, anyhow?" "But for the sea we wouldn't have any oysters or codfish," said Dennison, soberly. Dodge chuckled. "Oysters and codfish! Say, you're all right! Never knew the old man had a son until you blew in. Back in New York nobody ever said nothin' about you. Where you been?" "Lots of places." "Any ridin'?" "Some." "Can you shoot?" "A little." "Kill any o' them Bolsheviks?" "That would be guesswork. Did you ever kill a man?" "Nope. Didn't have to. I'm pretty good on the draw, and where I come from they knew it and didn't bother me." "I see." "Shootin' these days is all in the movies. I was ridin' for a film company when your old man lassoed me for this job. Never know when you're well off--huh? I thought there wouldn't be nothin' to do but grub pile three times a day and the old man's cheroots in between. And here I be now, ridin' along with a bunch of pirates! Whata you know about that? And some of them nice boys, too. If they were riff-raff, barroom bums, I could get a line on it. But I'll have to pass the buck." "You haven't got an extra gun anywhere, have you?" "We'd be headin' east if I had"--grimly. "I'd have pared down the odds this mornin'. That _hombre_ with the hop-a-long didn't leave me a quill toothpick. Was you thinkin' of startin' somethin'?"--hopefully. "No, but I'd feel more comfortable if Miss Norman could carry a gun." "Uh-huh. Say, she's all right. No hysterics. Ain't many of 'em that wouldn't 'a' been snivellin' all day and night in her bunk. Been listenin' to her readin'. Gee, you'd think we were floatin' round this codfish lake just for the fun of it! She won't run to cover if a bust-up comes. None whatever! And I bet she can cook, too. Them kind can always cook." Conversation lapsed. Below, Jane was passing through an unusual experience. Said Cleigh at the start: "I'm going to show you the paintings--there are fourteen in all. I will tell you the history of each. And above all, please bear in mind the price of each picture." "I'll remember." But she thought the request an odd one, coming from the man as she knew him. Most of the treasures were in his own spacious cabin. There was a Napoleonic corner--a Meissonier on one side and a Detaille on the other. In a stationary cabinet there were a pair of stirrups, a riding crop, a book on artillery tactics, a pair of slippers beaded with seed pearls, and a buckle studded with sapphires. "What are those?" she asked, attracted. "They belonged to the Emperor and his first Empress." "Napoleon?" "The Corsican. Next to the masters, I've a passion for things genuinely Napoleonic. The hussar is by Meissonier and the skirmish by Detaille." "How much is this corner worth?" "I can't say, except that I would not part with those objects for a hundred thousand; and there are friends of mine who would pay half that sum for them--behind my back. This is a Da Vinci." Half an hour passed. Jane honestly tried to be thrilled by the splendour of the names she heard, but her eye was always travelling back toward the slippers and the buckle. The Empress Josephine! Romance and gallantry in the old, old days! "The painting in your cabin is by Holbein. It cost me sixteen thousand. Now let us go out and look at the rug. That is the apple of my eye. It is the second finest example of the animal rug in the world. A sheet of pure gold, half an inch thick, covering the rug from end to end, would not equal its worth." Jane admired the rug, but she would have preferred the gold. Her sense of the beautiful was alive, but there was always in her mind the genteel poverty of the past. She was beginning to understand. To go in quest of the beautiful required an unlimited purse and an endless leisure; and she would have never the one nor the other. "How much gold would that be?" she inquired, naïvely. "Nearly eighty thousand. Have you kept in mind the sums I have given you?" "Yes. Let me see--good heavens, a quarter of a million! But why do you carry them about like this?" "Because I'm something of a rogue myself. I could not enjoy the rug and the paintings except on board. The French, the Italian, and the Spanish governments could confiscate every solitary painting except the Meissonier and the Detaille, for the simple reason that they were stolen. Oh, I did not steal them myself; I merely purchased them with one eye shut. If I hadn't bought them they would have gone to some other collector. Do you get a glimmer of the truth now?" "The truth?"--perplexedly. "Yes--where Cunningham will get his pearls?"--bitterly. "Oh!" "And I could not touch him. A quarter of a million! And with his knowledge of the secret marts he could easily dispose of them. Worth a bold stroke, eh?" "But how will he get them off the yacht--transship them?" Her faith in Cunningham began to waver. A quarter of a million! The thought was as bells in her ears. "Of the outside issues I have no inkling. But I have shown you his pearls." "But the crew! Certainly they will not return to any port with us. And why should he lie to me? There is no reason in the world why he shouldn't have told me, if he had committed piracy to obtain your paintings. And he was poring over maps." "Some tramp is probably going to pick him up. He's ordered us away from the wireless. Cunningham must have his joke, so he is beguiling you with twaddle about hunting pearls. He is robbing me of my treasures, and I can't strike back on that count. But I can land him in prison on the count of piracy; and by the Lord Harry, I'll do it if it takes my last dollar! He'll rue this adventure, or they call me Tungsten for nothing!" "I wanted so to believe in him!" "Not difficult to understand why. He has a silver tongue and a face like John the Baptist--del Sarto's--and you are romantic. The picture of him has enlisted your sympathies. You are filled with pity that he should be so richly endowed, facially and mentally, and to be a cripple such as children laugh over." "Have you never considered what mental anguish must be the portion of a man whose body is twisted as his is? I know. So I pity him profoundly, even if he is a rogue. That's all I was born for--to pity and to bind up. And I pity you, Mr. Cleigh, you who have walled your heart in granite." "You're plain-spoken, young lady." "Yes, certain sick minds need plain speaking." "Then my mind is sick?" "Yes." "And only a little while gone it was romantic!" "Two hundred million hands begging for bread, and you crossing the world for a string of glass beads whose value is only sentimental!" "I can't let that pass, Miss Norman. I have trusted lieutenants who attend to my charities. I'm not a miser." "You are, with the greatest thing in the world--human love." "Shall a man give it where it is not wanted? But enough of this talk. I have shown you Cunningham's pearls." "Perhaps." * * * * * Night and wheeling stars. It was stuffy in the crew's quarters. Half naked, the men lolled about, some in their bunks, some on the floor. The orders were that none should sleep on deck during the voyage to the Catwick. "All because the old man brings a skirt on board, we have to sweat blood in the forepeak!" growled Flint. "We've got a right to a little sport." "Sure we have!" The speaker was sitting on the edge of his bunk. He was a fine specimen of young manhood, with a pleasant, rollicking Irish countenance. He looked as if he had been brought up clean and had carried his cleanliness into the world. The blue anchor and love birds on his formidable forearms proclaimed him a deep-sea man. It was he who had given Dennison the shirt and the ducks. "Sure, we have a right to a little sport! But why call in the undertaker to help us out? You poor fish, all the way from San Francisco you've been grousing because shore leaves weren't long enough for you to get prime soused in. What's two months in our young lives?" "I've always been free to do as I liked." "You look it! I'll say so! The chief laid down the rules of this game, and we all took oath to follow those rules. The trouble with you is, you've been reading dime novels. Where do you think you are--raiding the Spanish Main? There's every chance of our coming out top hole, as those lime-juicers say, with oodles of dough and a whole skin." "Say, don't I know this Sulu game? I tell you, if he does find his atoll there won't be any shell. Not a chance in a hundred! Somebody's been giving him a song and dance. As I get the dope, some pearl-hunting friend of his croaks and leaves him this chart. Old stuff! I bet a million boobs have croaked trying to locate the red cross on a chart." "Why the devil did you sign on, then?" "I wanted a little fun, and I'm going to have it. There's champagne and Napoleon brandy in the dry-stores. Wouldn't hurt us to have a little of it. If we've got to go to jail we might as well go lit up." "Flint, you talk too much," said a voice from the doorway. It was Cunningham's. He leaned carelessly against the jamb. The crew fell silent and motionless. "Boys, you've heard Hennessy. Play it my way and you'll wear diamonds; mess it up and you'll all wear hemp. The world will forgive us when it finds out we've only made it laugh." Cunningham strolled over to Flint, who rose to his feet. "Flint, I want that crimp-house whisky you've been swigging on the sly. No back talk! Hand it over!" "And if I don't?" said Flint, his jaw jutting. CHAPTER XVII Cunningham did not answer immediately. From Flint his glance went roving from man to man, as if trying to read what they expected of him. "Flint, you were recommended to me for your knowledge of the Sulu lingo. We'll need a crew of divers, and we'll have to pick them up secretly. That's your job. It's your only job outside doing your watch with the shovel below. Somehow you've got the wrong idea. You think this is a junket of the oil-lamp period. All wrong! You don't know me, and that's a pity; because if you did know something about me you'd walk carefully. When we're off this yacht, I don't say. If you want what old-timers used to call their pannikin of rum, you'll be welcome to it. But on board the _Wanderer_, nothing doing. Get your duffel out. I'll have a look at it." "Get it yourself," said Flint. Cunningham appeared small and boyish beside the ex-beachcomber. "I'm speaking to you decently, Flint, when I ought to bash in your head." The tone was gentle and level. "Why don't you try it?" The expectant men thereupon witnessed a feat that was not only deadly in its precision but oddly grotesque. Cunningham's right hand flew out with the sinister quickness of a cobra's strike, and he had Flint's brawny wrist in grip. He danced about, twisted and lurched until he came to an abrupt stop behind Flint's back. Flint's mouth began to bend at the corners--a grimace. "You'll break it yourself, Flint, if you move another inch," said Cunningham, nonchalantly. "This is the gentlest trick I have in the bag. Cut out the booze until we're off this yacht. Be a good sport and play the game according to contract. I don't like these side shows. But you wanted me to show you. Want to call it off?" Sweat began to bead Flint's forehead. He was straining every muscle in his body to minimize that inexorable turning of his elbow and shoulder. "The stuff is in Number Two bunker," he said, with a ghastly grin. "I'll chuck it over." "There, now!" Cunningham stepped back. "I might have made it your neck. But I'm patient, because I want this part of the game to go through according to schedule. When I turn back this yacht I want nothing missing but the meals I've had." Flint rubbed his arm, scowling, and walked over to his bunk. "Boys," said Cunningham, "so far you've been bricks. Shortly we'll be heading southeast on our own. Wherever I am known, men will tell you that I never break my word. I promised you that we'd come through with clean heels. Something has happened which we could not forestall. There is a woman on board. It is not necessary to say that she is under my protection." He clumped out into the passage. "Well, say!" burst out the young sailor named Hennessy. "I'm a tough guy, but I couldn't have turned that trick. Hey, you! If you've got any hooch in the coal bunkers, heave it over. I'm telling you! These soft-spoken guys are the kind I lay off, believe you me! I've seen all kinds, and I know." "Did they kick you out of the Navy?" snarled Flint. "Say, are you asking me to do it?" flared the Irishman. "You poor boob, you'd be in the sick bay if there hadn't been a lady on board." "A lady?" "I said a lady! Stand up, you scut!" But Flint rolled into his bunk and turned his face to the partition. Cunningham leaned against the port rail. These bursts of fury always left him depressed. He was not a fighting man at all and fate was always flinging him into physical contests. He might have killed the fool: he had been in a killing mood. He was tired. Somehow the punch was gone from the affair, the thrill. Why should that be? For years he had been planning something like this, and then to have it taste like stale wine! Vaguely he knew that he had made a discovery. The girl! If he were poring over his chart, his glance would drift away; if he were reading, the printed page had a peculiar way of vanishing. Of course it was all nonsense. But that night in Shanghai something had drawn him irresistibly to young Cleigh's table. It might have been the colour of her hair. At any rate, he hadn't noticed the beads until he had spoken to young Cleigh. Glass beads! Queer twist. A little trinket, worthless except for sentimental reasons, throwing these lives together. Of course an oil would have lured the elder Cleigh across the Pacific quite as successfully. The old chap had been particularly keen for a sea voyage after having been cooped up for four years. But in the event of baiting the trap with a painting neither the girl nor the son would have been on board. And Flint could have had his noggin without anybody disturbing him, even if the contract read otherwise. Law-abiding pirates! How the world would chuckle if the yarn ever reached the newspapers! He had Cleigh in the hollow of his hand. In fancy he saw Cleigh placing his grievance with the British Admiralty. He could imagine the conversation, too. "They returned the yacht in perfect condition?" "Yes." "Did they steal anything?" Cunningham could positively see Cleigh's jowls redden as he shook his head to the query. "Sorry. You can't expect us to waste coal hunting for a scoundrel who only borrowed your yacht." But what was the row between Cleigh and his son? That was a puzzler. Not a word! They ignored each other absolutely. These dinners were queer games, to be sure. All three men spoke to the girl, but neither of the Cleighs spoke to him or to each other. A string of glass beads! What about himself? What had caused his exuberance to die away, his enthusiasm to grow dim? Why, a month gone he would burst into such gales of laughter that his eyes would fill with tears at the thought of this hour! And the wine tasted flat. The greatest sea joke of the age, and he couldn't boil up over it any more! Love? He had burnt himself out long ago. But had it been love? Rather had it not been a series of false dawns? To a weepy-waily woman he would have offered the same courtesies, but she would not have drawn his thoughts in any manner. And this one kept entering his thoughts at all times. That would be a joke, wouldn't it? At this day to feel the scorch of genuine passion! To dig a pit for Cleigh and to stumble into another himself! In setting this petard he hadn't got out of range quickly enough. His sense of humour was so keen that he laughed aloud, with a gesture which invited the gods to join him. Jane, who had been watching the solitary figure from the corner of the deck house and wondering who it was, recognized the voice. The cabin had been stuffy, her own mental confusion had driven sleep away, so she had stolen on deck for the purpose of viewing the splendours of the Oriental night. The stars that seemed so near, so soft; the sea that tossed their reflections hither and yon, or spun a star magically into a silver thread and immediately rolled it up again; the brilliant electric blue of the phosphorescence and the flash of flying fish or a porpoise that ought to have been home and in bed. She hesitated. She was puzzled. She was not afraid of him--the puzzle lay somewhere else. She was a little afraid of herself. She was afraid of anything that could not immediately be translated into ordinary terms of expression. The man frankly wakened her pity. He seemed as lonely as the sea itself. Slue-Foot! And somewhere a woman had laughed at him. Perhaps that had changed everything, made him what he was. She wondered if she would ever be able to return to the shell out of which the ironic humour of chance had thrust her. Wondered if she could pick up again philosophically the threads of dull routine. Jane Norman, gliding over this mysterious southern sea, a lone woman among strong and reckless men! Piracy! Pearls! Rugs and paintings worth a quarter of a million! Romance! Did she want it to last? Did she want romance all the rest of her days? What was this thing within her that was striving for expression? For what was she hunting? What worried her and put fear into her heart was the knowledge that she did not know what she wanted. From all directions came questions she could not answer. Was she in love? If so, where was the fire that should attend? Was it Denny--or yonder riddle? She felt contented with Denny, but Cunningham's presence seemed to tear into unexplored corners of her heart and brain. If she were in love with Denny, why didn't she thrill when he approached? There was only a sense of security, contentment. The idea of racing round the world romantically with Denny struck her as absurd. Equally contrary to reason was the picture of herself and Cunningham sitting before a wood fire. What was the matter with Jane Norman? There was one bar of light piercing the fog. She knew now why she had permitted Cleigh to abduct her. To bring about a reconciliation between father and son. And apparently there was as much chance as of east meeting west. She walked over to the rail and joined Cunningham. "You?" he said. "The cabin was stuffy. I couldn't sleep." "I wonder." "About what?" "If there isn't a wild streak in you that corresponds with mine. You fall into the picture naturally--curious and unafraid." "Why should I be afraid, and why shouldn't I be curious?" "The greatest honour a woman ever paid me. I mean that you shouldn't be afraid of me when everything should warn you to give me plenty of sea room." "I know more about men than I do about women." "And I know too much about both." "There have been other women--besides the one who laughed?" "Yes. Perhaps I was cruel enough to make them pay for that. "'Funny an' yellow an' faithful-- Doll in a teacup she were, But we lived on the square, like a true-married pair, An' I learned about women from 'er!' "But I wonder what would have happened if it had been a woman like you instead of the one who laughed." "I shouldn't have laughed." "This damned face of mine!" "You mustn't say that! Why not try to make over your soul to match it?" "How is that done?" The irony was so gentle that she fell silent for a space. "Are you going to take Mr. Cleigh's paintings when you leave us?" "My dear young lady, all I have left to be proud of is my word. I give it to you that I am going after pearls. It may sound crazy, but I can't help that. I am realizing a dream. I'm something of a fatalist--I've had to be. I've always reasoned that if I could make the dream come true--this dream of pearls--I'd have a chance to turn over a new leaf. I've had to commit acts at times that were against my nature, my instincts. I've had to be cruel and terrible, because men would not believe a pretty man could be a strong one. Do you understand? I have been forced to cruel deeds because men would not credit a man's heart behind a woman's face. I possess tremendous nervous energy. That's the principal curse. I can't sit still; I can't remain long anywhere; I must go, go, go! Like the Wandering Jew, Ishmael." "Do you know what Ishmael means?" "No. What?" "'God heareth.' Have you ever asked Him for anything?" "No. Why should I, since He gave me this withered leg? Please don't preach to me." "I won't, then. But I'm terribly sorry." "Of course you are. But--don't become too sorry. I might want to carry you off to my atoll." "If you took me away with you by force, I'd hate you and you'd hate yourself. But you won't do anything like that." "What makes you believe so?" "I don't know why, but I do believe it." "To be trusted by a woman, a good woman! I'll tell that to the stars. Tell me about yourself--what you did and how you lived before you came this side." It was not a long story, and he nodded from time to time understandingly. Genteel poverty, a life of scrimp and pare--the cage. Romance--a flash of it--and she would return to the old life quite satisfied. Peace, a stormy interlude; then peace again indefinitely. It came to him that he wanted the respect of this young woman for always. But the malice that was ever bubbling up to his tongue and finding speech awoke. "Suppose I find my pearls--and then come back for you? Romance and adventure! These warm stars always above us at night; the brilliant days; the voyages from isle to isle; palms and gay parrakeets, cocoanuts and mangosteens--and let the world go hang!" She did not reply, but she moved a little away. He waited for a minute, then laughed softly. "My dear young lady, this is the interlude you've always been longing for. Fate has popped you out of the normal for a few days, and presently she'll pop you back into it. Some day you'll marry and have children; you'll sink into the rut of monotony again and not be conscious of it. On winter nights, before the fire, when the children have been put to bed, your man buried behind his evening paper, you will recall Slue-Foot and the interlude and be happy over it. You'll hug and cuddle it to your heart secretly. A poignant craving in your life had been satisfied. Kidnapped by pirates, under Oriental stars! Fifteen men on a dead man's chest--yo-ho, and a bottle of rum! A glorious adventure, with three meals the day and grand opera on the phonograph. Shades of Gilbert and Sullivan! And you will always be wondering whether the pirate made love to you in jest or in earnest--and he'll always be wondering, too!" Cunningham turned away abruptly and clumped toward the bridge ladder, which he mounted. For some inexplicable reason her heart became filled with wild resentment against him. Mocking her, when she had only offered him kindness! She clung to the idea of mockery because it was the only tangible thing she could pluck from her confusion. Thus when she began the descent of the companionway and ran into Dennison coming up her mood was not receptive to reproaches. "Where have you been?" he demanded. "Watching the stars and the phosphorescence. I could not sleep." "Alone?" "No. Mr. Cunningham was with me." "I warned you to keep away from that scoundrel!" "How dare you use that tone to me? Have you any right to tell me what I shall and shall not do?" she stormed at him. "I've got to talk to someone. You go about in one perpetual gloom. I purpose to see and talk to Cunningham as often as I please. At least he amuses me." With this she rushed past him and on to her cabin, the door of which she closed with such emphasis that it was heard all over the yacht--so sharp was the report that both Cleigh and Dodge awoke and sat up, half convinced that they had heard a pistol shot! Jane sat down on her bed, still furious. After a while she was able to understand something of this fury. The world was upside down, wrong end to. Dennison, not Cunningham, should have acted the debonair, the nonchalant. Before this adventure began he had been witty, amusing, companionable; now he was as interesting as a bump on a log. At table he was only a poor counterfeit of his father, whose silence was maintained admirably, at all times impressively dignified. Whereas at each encounter Dennison played directly into Cunningham's hands, and the latter was too much the banterer not to make the most of these episodes. What if he was worried? Hadn't she more cause to worry than any one else? For all that, she did not purpose to hide behind the barricaded door of her cabin. If there was a tragedy in the offing it would not fall less heavily because one approached it with melancholy countenance. Heaven knew that she was no infant as regarded men! In the six years of hospital work she had come into contact with all sorts and conditions of men. Cunningham might be the greatest scoundrel unhung, but so far as she was concerned she need have no fear. This knowledge was instinctive. But when her cheek touched the pillow she began to cry softly. She was so terribly lonely! CHAPTER XVIII The space through which Jane had passed held Dennison's gaze for two or three minutes. Then he sat down on the companionway step, his arms across his knees and his forehead upon his arms. What to say? What to do? She expected him to be amusing!--when he knew that the calm on board was of the same deceptive quality as that of the sea--below, the terror! It did not matter that the crew was of high average. They would not be playing such a game unless they were a reckless lot. At any moment they might take it into their heads to swarm over Cunningham and obliterate him. Then what? If the episode of the morning had not convinced Jane, what would? The man Flint had dropped his mask; the others were content to wear theirs yet awhile. Torture for her sake, the fear of what might actually be in store for her, and she expected him to talk and act like a chap out of a novel! Ordinarily so full of common sense, what had happened to her that her vision should become so obscured as not to recognize the danger of the man? Had he been ugly, Jane would probably have ignored him. But that face of his, as handsome as a Greek god's, and that tongue with its roots in oil! And there was his deformity--that had drawn her pity. Playing with her, and she deliberately walked into the trap because he was amusing! Why shouldn't he be, knowing that he held their lives in the hollow of his hand? What imp of Satan wouldn't have been amiable? Because the rogues did not run up the skull and crossbones; because they did not swagger up and down the deck, knives and pistols in their sashes, she couldn't be made to believe them criminals! Amusing! She could not see that if he spoke roughly it was only an expression of the smothered pain of his mental crucifixion. He could not tell her he loved her for fear she might misinterpret her own sentiments. Besides, her present mood was not inductive to any declaration on his part; a confession might serve only to widen the breach. Who could say that it wasn't Cunningham's game to take Jane along with him in the end? There was nothing to prevent that. His father holding aloof, the loyal members of the crew in a most certain negligible minority, what was there to prevent Cunningham from carrying off Jane? Blood surged into Dennison's throat; a murderous fury boiled up in him; but he remembered in time what these volcanic outbursts had cost him in the past. So he did not rush to the chart house. Cunningham would lash him with ridicule or be forced to shoot him. But his rage carried him as far as the wireless room. He could hear the smack of the spark, but that was all. He tried the door--locked. He tried the shutters--latched. Cunningham's man was either calling or answering somebody. Ten minutes inside that room and there would be another tale to tell. In the end Dennison spent his fury by travelling round the deck until the sea and sky became like pearly smoke. Then he dropped into a chair and fell asleep. Cunningham had also watched through the night. The silent steersman heard him frequently rustling papers on the chart table or clumping to the bridge or lolling on the port sills--a restlessness that had about it something of the captive tiger. Retrospection--he could not break the crowding spell of it, twist mentally as he would; and the counter-thought was dimly suicidal. The sea there; a few strides would carry him to the end of the bridge, and then--oblivion. And the girl would not permit him to enact this thought. He laughed. God had mocked him at his birth, and the devil had played with him ever since. He had often faced death hotly and hopefully, but to consider suicide coldly! A woman who had crossed his path reluctantly, without will of her own; the sort he had always ignored because they had been born for the peace of chimney corners! She--the thought of her--could bring the past crowding upon him and create in his mind a suicidal bent! Pearls! A great distaste of life fell upon him; the adventure grew flat. The zest that had been his ten days gone, where was it? Imagination! He had been cursed with too much of it. In his youth he had skulked through alleys and back streets--the fear of laughter and ridicule dogging his mixed heels. Never before to have paused to philosophize over what had caused his wasted life! Too much imagination! Mental strabismus! He had let his over-sensitive imagination wreck and ruin him. A woman's laughter had given him the viewpoint of a careless world; and he had fled, and he had gone on fleeing all these years from pillar to post. From a shadow! He was something of a monster. He saw now where the fault lay. He had never stayed long enough in any one place for people to get accustomed to him. His damnable imagination! And there was conceit of a sort. Probably nobody paid any attention to him after the initial shock and curiosity had died away. There was Scarron in his wheel chair--merry and cheerful and brave, jesting with misfortune; and men and women had loved him. A moral coward, and until this hour he had never sensed the truth! That was it! He had been a moral coward; he had tried to run away from fate; and here he was at last, in the blind alley the coward always found at the end of the run. He had never thought of anything but what he was--never of what he might have been. For having thrust him unfinished upon a thoughtless rather than a heartless world he had been trying to punish fate, and had punished only himself. A wastrel, a roisterer by night, a spendthrift, and a thief! What had she said?--reknead his soul so that it would fit his face? Too late! One staff to lean on, one only--he never broke his word. Why had he laid down for himself this law? What had inspired him to hold always to that? Was there a bit of gold somewhere in his grotesque make-up? A straw on the water, and he clutched it! Why? Cunningham laughed again, and the steersman turned his head slightly. "Williams, do you believe in God?" asked Cunningham. "Well, sir, when I'm holding down the wheel--perhaps. The screw is always edging a ship off, and the lighter the ballast the wider the yaw. So you have to keep hitching her over a point to starboard. You trust to me to keep that point, and I trust to God that the north stays where it is." "And yet legally you're a pirate." "Oh, that? Well, a fellow ain't much of a pirate that plays the game we play. And yet----" "Ah! And yet?" "Well, sir, some of the boys are getting restless. And I'll be mighty glad when we raise that old Dutch bucket of yours. They ain't bad, understand; just young and heady and wanting a little fun. They growl a lot because they can't sleep on deck. They growl because there's nothing to drink. Of course it might hurt Cleigh's feelings, but I'd like to see all his grog go by the board. You see, sir, it ain't as if we'd just dropped down from Shanghai. It's been tarnation dull ever since we left San Francisco." "Once on the other boat, they can make a night of it if they want to. But I've given my word on the _Wanderer_." "Yes, sir." "And it's final." Cunningham returned to his chart. All these cogitations because a woman had entered his life uninvited! Ten days ago he had not been aware of her existence; and from now on she would be always recurring in his thoughts. She was not conscious of it, but she was as a wild thing that had been born in captivity, and she was tasting the freedom of space again without knowing what the matter was. But it is the law that all wild things born in captivity lose everything but the echo; a little freedom, a flash of what might have been, and they are ready to return to the cage. So it would be with her. Supposing--no, he would let her return to her cage. He wondered--had he made his word a law simply to meet and conquer a situation such as this? Or was his hesitance due to the fear of her hate? That would be immediate and unabating. She was not the sort that would bend--she would break. No, he wasn't monster enough to play that sort of game. She should take back her little adventure to her cage, and in her old age it would become a pleasant souvenir. He rose and leaned on his arms against a port sill and stared at the stars until they began to fade, until the sea and the sky became like the pearls he would soon be seeking. A string of glass beads, bringing about all these events! At dawn he went down to the deck for a bit of exercise before he turned in. When he beheld Dennison sound asleep in the chair, his mouth slightly open, his bare feet standing out conspicuously on the foot rest, a bantering, mocking smile twisted the corners of Cunningham's lips. Noiselessly he settled himself in the adjacent chair, and cynically hoping that Dennison would be first to wake he fell asleep. The _Wanderer's_ deck toilet was begun and consummated between six and six-thirty, except in rainy weather. Hose, mops, and holystone, until the teak looked as if it had just left the Rangoon sawmills; then the brass, every knob and piping, every latch and hinge and port loop. The care given the yacht since leaving the Yang-tse might be well called ingratiating. Never was a crew more eager to enact each duty to the utmost--with mighty good reason. But when they came upon Dennison and Cunningham, asleep side by side, they drew round the spot, dumfounded. But their befuddlement was only a tithe of that which struck Cleigh an hour later. It was his habit to take a short constitutional before breakfast; and when he beheld the two, asleep in adjoining chairs, the fact suggesting that they had come to some friendly understanding, he stopped in his tracks, as they say, never more astonished in all his days. For as long as five minutes he remained motionless, the fine, rugged face of his son on one side and the amazing beauty of Cunningham's on the other. But in the morning light, in repose, Cunningham's face was tinged with age and sadness. There was, however, no grain of pity in Cleigh's heart. Cunningham had made his bed of horsehair; let him twist and writhe upon it. But the two of them together, sleeping as peacefully as babes! Dennison had one arm flung behind his head. It gave Cleigh a shock, for he recognized the posture. As a lad Dennison had slept that way. Cunningham's withered leg was folded under his sound one. What had happened? Cleigh shook his head; he could not make it out. Moreover, he could not wake either and demand the solution to the puzzle. He could not put his hand on his son's shoulder, and he would not put it on Cunningham's. Pride on one side and distaste on the other. But the two of them together! He got round the impasse by kicking out the foot rest of the third chair. Immediately Cunningham opened his eyes. First he turned to see if Dennison was still in his chair. Finding this to be the case, he grinned amiably at the father. Exactly the situation he would have prayed for had he believed in the efficacy of prayer. "Surprises you, eh? Looks as if he had signed on with the Great Adventure Company." His voice woke Dennison, who blinked in the sunshine for a moment, then looked about. He comprehended at once. With easy dignity he swung his bare feet to the deck and made for the companion; never a second glance at either his father or Cunningham. "Chip of the old block!" observed Cunningham. "You two! On my word, I never saw two bigger fools in all my time! What's it about? What the devil did he do--murder someone, rob the office safe, or marry Tottie Lightfoot? And Lord, how you both love me! And how much more you'll love me when I become the dear departed!" Cleigh, understanding that the situation was a creation of pure malice on Cunningham's part--Cleigh wheeled and resumed his tramp round the deck. Cunningham plowed his fingers through his hair, gripped and pulled it in a kind of ecstasy. Cleigh's phiz. The memory of it would keep him in good humour all day. After all, there was a lot of good sport in the world. The days were all right. It was only in the quiet vigils of the night that the uninvited thought intruded. On board the old Dutch tramp he would sleep o'nights, and the past would present only a dull edge. If the atoll had cocoanut palms, hang it, he would build a shack and make it his winter home! _Dolce far niente!_ Maybe he might take up the brush again and do a little amateur painting. Yes, in the daytime the old top wasn't so bad. He hoped he would have no more nonsense from Flint. A surly beggar, but a necessary pawn in the game. Pearls! Some to sell and some to play with. Lovely, tenderly beautiful pearls--a rope of them round Jane Norman's throat. He slid off the chair. As a fool, he hung in the same gallery as the Cleighs. Cleigh ate his breakfast alone. Upon inquiry he learned that Jane was indisposed and that Dennison had gone into the pantry and picked up his breakfast there. Cleigh found the day unspeakably dull. He read, played the phonograph, and tried all the solitaires he knew; but a hundred times he sensed the want of the pleasant voice of the girl in his ears. What would she be demanding of him as a reparation? He was always sifting this query about, now on this side, now on that, without getting anywhere. Not money. What then? That night both Jane and Dennison came in to dinner. Cleigh saw instantly that something was amiss. The boy's face was gloomy and his lips locked, and the girl's mouth was set and cheerless. Cleigh was fired by curiosity to ascertain the trouble, but here again was an impasse. "I'm sorry I spoke so roughly last night," said Dennison, unexpectedly. "And I am sorry that I answered you so sharply. But all this worry and fuss over me is getting on my nerves. You've written down Cunningham as a despicable rogue, when he is only an interesting one. If only you would give banter for banter, you might take some of the wind out of his sails. But instead you go about as if the next hour was to be our last!" "Who knows?" "There you go! In a minute we'll be digging up the hatchet again." But she softened the reproach by smiling. At this moment Cunningham came in briskly and cheerfully. He sat down, threw the napkin across his knees, and sent an ingratiating smile round the table. "Cleigh"--he was always talking to Cleigh, and apparently not minding in the least that he was totally ignored--"Cleigh, they are doing a good job in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, so I am told. Milan, of course. They are restoring Da Vinci's Cenacolo. What called it to mind is the fact that this is also the last supper. To-morrow at this hour you will be in possession and I'll be off for my pearls." The recipients of this remarkable news appeared petrified for a space. Cunningham enjoyed the astonishment. "Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn't it? Still, it's a fact." "That's tiptop news, Cunningham," said Dennison. "I hope when you go down the ladder you break your infernal neck. But the luck is on your side." "Let us hope that it stays there," replied Cunningham, unruffled. He turned to Cleigh again: "I say, we've always been bewailing that job of Da Vinci's. But the old boy was a seer. He knew that some day there would be American millionaires and that I'd become a force in art. So he put his subject on a plaster wall so I couldn't lug it off. A canvas the same size, I don't say; but the side of a church!" "A ship is going to pick you up to-morrow?" asked Jane. "Yes. The crew of the _Wanderer_ goes to the _Haarlem_ and the _Haarlem_ crew transships to the _Wanderer_. You see, Cleigh, I'm one of those efficiency sharks. In this game I have left nothing to chance. Nothing except an act of God--as they say on the back of your steamer ticket--can derange my plans. Not the least bit of inconvenience to you beyond going out of your course for a few days. The new crew was signed on in Singapore--able seamen wanting to return to the States. Hired them in your name. Clever idea of me, eh?" "Very," said Cleigh, speaking directly to Cunningham for the first time since the act of piracy. "And this will give you enough coal to turn and make Manila, where you can rob the bunkers of one of your freighters. Now, then, early last winter in New York a company was formed, the most original company in all this rocky old world--the Great Adventure Company, of which I am president and general adviser. Pearls! Each member of the crew is a shareholder, undersigned at fifteen hundred shares, par value one dollar. These shares are redeemable October first in New York City if the company fails, or are convertible into pearls of equal value if we succeed. No widows and orphans need apply. Fair enough." "Fair enough, indeed," admitted Cleigh. Dennison stared at his father. He did not quite understand this willingness to hold converse with the rogue after all this rigorously maintained silence. "Of course the Great Adventure Company had to be financed," went on Cunningham with a deprecating gesture. "Naturally," assented Cleigh. "And that, I suppose, will be my job?" "Indirectly. You see, Eisenfeldt told me he had a client ready to pay eighty thousand for the rug, and that put the whole idea into my noodle." "Ah! Well, you will find the crates and frames and casings in the forward hold," said Cleigh in a tone which conveyed nothing of his thoughts. "It would be a pity to spoil the rug and the oils for the want of a little careful packing." Cunningham rose and bowed. "Cleigh, you are a thoroughbred!" Cleigh shook his head. "I'll have your hide, Cunningham, if it takes all I have and all I am!" CHAPTER XIX Cunningham sat down. "The spirit is willing, Cleigh, but the flesh is weak. You'll never get my hide. How will you go about it? Stop a moment and mull it over. How are you going to prove that I've borrowed the rug and the paintings? These are your choicest possessions. You have many at home worth more, but these things you love. Out of spite, will you inform the British, the French, the Italian governments that you had these objects and that I relieved you of them? In that event you'll have my hide, but you'll never set eyes upon the oils again except upon their lawful walls--the rug, never! On the other hand, there is every chance in the world of my returning them to you." "Your word?" interrupted Jane, ironically. So Cleigh was right? A quarter of a million in art treasures! "My word! I never before realized," continued Cunningham, "what a fine thing it is to possess something to stand on firmly--a moral plank." Dennison's laughter was sardonic. "Moral plank is good," was his comment. "Miss Norman," said Cunningham, maliciously, "I slept beside the captain this morning, and he snores outrageously." The rogue tilted his chin and the opal fire leaped into his eyes. "Do you want me to tell you all about the Great Adventure Company, or do you want me to shut up and merely proceed with the company's business without further ado? Why the devil should I care what you think of me? Still, I do care. I want you to get my point of view--a rollicking adventure, in which nobody loses anything and I have a great desire fulfilled. Hang it, it's a colossal joke, and in the end the laugh will be on nobody! Even Eisenfeldt will laugh," he added, enigmatically. "Do you intend to take the oils and the rug and later return them?" demanded Jane. "Absolutely! That's the whole story. Only Cleigh here will not believe it until the rug and oils are dumped on the door-step of his New York home. I needed money. Nobody would offer to finance a chart with a red cross on it. So I had to work it out in my own fashion. The moment Eisenfeldt sees these oils and the rug he becomes my financier, but he'll never put his claw on them except for one thing--that act of God they mention on the back of your ticket. Some raider may have poked into this lagoon of mine. In that case Eisenfeldt wins." Cleigh smiled. "A pretty case, Cunningham, but it won't hold water. It is inevitable that Eisenfeldt gets the rug and the paintings, and you are made comfortable for the rest of your days. A shabby business, and you shall rue it." "My word?" "I don't believe in it any longer," returned Cleigh. Cunningham appealed to Jane. "Give me the whole story, then I'll tell you what I believe," she said. "You may be telling the truth." What a queer idea--wanting his word believed! Why should it matter to him whether they believed in the honour of his word or not, when he held the whip hand and could act as he pleased? The poor thing! And as that phrase was uttered in thought, the glamour of him was dissipated; she saw Cunningham as he was, a poor benighted thing, half boy, half demon, a thing desperately running away from his hurt and lashing out at friends and enemies alike on the way. "Tell your story--all of it." Cunningham began: "About a year ago the best friend I had--perhaps the only friend I had--died. He left me his chart and papers. The atoll is known, but uncharted, because it is far outside the routes. I have no actual proofs that there will be shell in the lagoon; I have only my friend's word--the word of a man as honest as sunshine. Where this shell lies there is never any law. Some pearl thiever may have fallen upon the shell since my friend discovered it." "In that case," said Cleigh, "I lose?" "Frankly, yes! All financial ventures are attended by certain risks." "Money? Why didn't you come to me for that?" "What! To you?" Cunningham's astonishment was perfect. "Yes. There was a time when I would have staked a good deal on your word." Cunningham rested his elbows on the table and clutched his hair--a despairing gesture. "No use! I can't get it to you! I can't make you people understand! It isn't the pearls, it's the game; it's all the things that go toward the pearls. I want to put over a game no man ever played before." Jane began to find herself again drawn toward him, but no longer with the feeling of unsettled mystery. She knew now why he drew her. He was the male of the species to which she belonged--the out-trailer, the hater of humdrum, of dull orbits and of routine. The thrilling years he had spent--business! This was the adventure of which he had always dreamed, and since it would never arrive as a sequence, he had proceeded to dramatize it! He was Tom Sawyer grown up; and for a raft on the Mississippi substitute a seagoing yacht. There was then in this matter-of-fact world such a man, and he sat across the table from her! "Supposing I had come to you and you had advanced the money?" said Cunningham, earnestly. "All cut and dried, not a thrill, not a laugh, nothing but the pearls! I have never had a boyhood dream realized but, hang it, I'm going to realize this one!" He struck the table violently. "Set the British after me, and you'll never see this stuff again. You'll learn whether my word is worth anything or not. Lay off for eight months, and if your treasures are not yours again within that time you won't have to chase me. I'll come to you and have the tooth pulled without gas." Dennison's eyes softened a little. Neither had he realized any of his boyhood dreams. For all that, the fellow was as mad as a hatter. "Of course I'm a colossal ass, and half the fun is knowing that I am." The banter returned to Cunningham's tongue. "But this thing will go through--I feel it. I will have had my fun, and you will have loaned your treasures to me for eight months, and Eisenfeldt will have his principal back without interest. The treasures go directly to a bank vault. There will be two receipts, one dated September--mine; and one dated November--Eisenfeldt's. I hate Eisenfeldt. He's tricky; his word isn't worth a puff of smoke; he's ready at all times to play both ends from the middle. I want to pay him out for crossing my path in several affairs. He's betting that I will find no pearls. So to-morrow I will exhibit the rug and the Da Vinci to convince him, and he will advance the cash. Can't you see the sport of it?" "That would make very good reading," said Cleigh, scraping the shell of his avocado pear. "I can get you on piracy." "Prove it! You can say I stole the yacht, but you can't prove it. The crew is yours; you hired it. The yacht returns to you to-morrow without a scratch on her paint. And the new crew will know absolutely nothing, being as innocent as newborn babes. Cleigh, you're no fool. What earthly chance have you got? You love that rug. You're not going to risk losing it positively, merely to satisfy a thirst for vengeance. You're human. You'll rave and storm about for a few days, then you'll accept the game as it lies. Think of all the excitement you'll have when a telegram arrives or the phone rings! I told you it was a whale of a joke; and in late October you'll chuckle. I know you, Cleigh. Down under all that tungsten there is the place of laughter. It will be better to laugh by yourself than to have the world laugh at you. Hoist by his own petard! There isn't a newspaper syndicate on earth that wouldn't give me a fortune for just the yarn. Now, I don't want the world to laugh at you, Cleigh." "Considerate of you." "Because I know what that sort of laughter is. Could you pick up the old life, the clubs? Could a strong man like you exist in an atmosphere of suppressed chuckles? Mull it over. If these treasures were honourably yours I'd never have thought of touching them. But you haven't any more right to them than I have, or Eisenfeldt." Dennison leaned back in his chair. He began to laugh. "Cunningham, my apologies," he said. "I thought you were a scoundrel, and you are only a fool--the same brand as I! I've been aching to wring your neck, but that would have been a pity. For eight months life will be full of interest for me--like waiting for the end of a story in the magazines." "But there is one thing missing out of the tale," Jane interposed. "And what is that?" asked Cunningham. "Those beads." "Oh, those beads! They belonged to an empress of France, and the French Government is offering sixty thousand for their return. Napoleonic. And now will you answer a question of mine? Where have you hidden them?" Jane did not answer, but rose and left the dining salon. Silence fell upon the men until she returned. In her hand she held Ling Foo's brass hand warmer. She set it on the table and pried back the jigsawed lid. From the heap of punk and charcoal ashes she rescued the beads and laid them on the cloth. "Very clever. They are yours," said Cunningham. "Mine?" "Why not? Findings is keepings. They are as much yours as mine." Jane pushed the string toward Cleigh. "For me?" he said. "Yes--for nothing." "There is sixty thousand dollars in gold in my safe. When we land in San Francisco I will turn over the money to you. You have every right in the world to it." Cleigh blew the ash from the glass beads and circled them in his palm. "I repeat," she said, "they are yours." Cunningham stood up. "Well, what's it to be?" "I have decided to reserve my decision," answered Cleigh, dryly. "To hang you 'twixt wind and water will add to the thrill, for evidently that's what you're after." "If it's on your own you'll only be wasting coal." Cleigh toyed with the beads. "The _Haarlem_. Maybe I can save you a lot of trouble," said Cunningham. "The name is only on her freeboard and stern, not on her master's ticket. The moment we are hull down the old name goes back." Cunningham turned to Jane. "Do you believe I've put my cards on the table?" "Yes." "And that if I humanly can I'll keep my word?" "Yes." "That's worth many pearls of price!" "Supposing," said Cleigh, trickling the beads from palm to palm--"supposing I offered you the equivalent in cash?" "No, Eisenfeldt has my word." "You refuse?" Plainly Cleigh was jarred out of his calm. "You refuse?" "I've already explained," said Cunningham, wearily. "I've told you that I like sharp knives to play with. If you handle them carelessly you're cut. How about you?" Cunningham addressed the question to Dennison. "Oh, I'm neutral and interested. I've always had a sneaking admiration for a tomfool. They were Shakespeare's best characters. Consider me neutral." Cleigh rose abruptly and stalked from the salon. Cunningham lurched and twisted to the forward passage and disappeared. When next Jane saw him in the light he was bloody and terrible. CHAPTER XX Jane and Dennison were alone. "I wonder," he said, "are we two awake, or are we having the same nightmare?" "The way he hugs his word! Imagine a man stepping boldly and mockingly outside the pale, and carrying along his word unsullied with him! He's mad, Denny, absolutely mad! The poor thing!" That phrase seemed to liberate something in his mind. The brooding oppression lifted its siege. His heart was no longer a torture chamber. "I ought to be his partner, Jane. I'm as big a fool as he is. Who but a fool would plan and execute a game such as this? But he's sound on one point. It's a colossal joke." "But your father?" "Cunningham will have to dig a pretty deep hole somewhere if he expects to hide successfully. It's a hundred-to-one shot that father will never see his rug again. He probably realizes that, and he will be relentless. He'll coal at Manila and turn back. He'll double or triple the new crew's wages. Money will mean nothing if he starts after Cunningham. Of course I'll be out of the picture at Manila." "Do you know why your father kidnaped me so easily? I thought maybe I could find a chink in his armour and bring you two together." "And you've found the job hopeless!" Dennison shrugged. "Won't you tell me what the cause was?" "Ask him. He'll tell it better than I can. So you hid the beads in that hand-warmer! Not half bad. But why don't you take the sixty thousand?" "I've an old-fashioned conscience." "I don't mean Father's gold, but the French Government's. Comfort as long as you lived." "No, I could not touch even that money. The beads were stolen." "Lord, Lord! Then there are three of us--Cunningham, myself, and you!" "Are you calling me a tomfool?" "Not exactly. What's the feminine?" She laughed and rose. "You are almost human to-night." "Where are you going?" "I'm going to have a little talk with your father." "Good luck. I'm going to have a fresh pot of coffee. I shall want to keep awake to-night." "Why?" "Oh, just an idea. You'd better turn in when the interview is over. Good luck." Jane stood framed in the doorway for a moment. Under the reading lamp in the main salon she saw Cleigh. He was running the beads from hand to hand and staring into space. Behind her she heard Dennison's spoon clatter in the cup as he stirred the coffee. Wild horses! She felt as though she were being pulled two ways by wild horses! For she was about to demand of Anthony Cleigh the promised reparation. And which of two things should she demand? All this time, since Cleigh had uttered the promise, she had had but one thought--to bring father and son together, to do away with this foolish estrangement. For there did not seem to be on earth any crime that merited such a condition. If he humanly could--he had modified the promise with that. What was more human than to forgive--a father to forgive a son? And now Cunningham had to wedge in compellingly! She could hesitate between Denny and Cunningham! The rank disloyalty of it shocked her. To give Cunningham his eight months! Pity, urgent pity for the broken body and tortured soul of the man--mothering pity! Denny was whole and sound, mentally and physically; he would never know any real mental torture, anything that compared with Cunningham's, which was enduring, now waxing, now waning, but always sensible. To secure for him his eight months, without let or hindrance from the full enmity of Cleigh; to give him his boyhood dream, whether he found his pearls or not. Her throat became stuffed with the presage of tears. The poor thing! But Denny, parting from his father at Manila, the cleavage wider than ever, beyond hope! Oh, she could not tolerate the thought of that! These two, so full of strong and bitter pride--they would never meet again if they separated now. Perhaps fate had assigned the rôle of peacemaker to her, and she had this weapon in her hand to enforce it or bring it about--the father's solemn promise to grant whatever she might ask. And she could dodder between Denny and Cunningham! To demand both conditions would probably appeal to Cleigh as not humanly possible. One or the other, but not the two together. An interval of several minutes of which she had no clear recollection, and then she was conscious that she was reclining in her chair on deck, staring at the stars which appeared jerkily and queerly shaped--through tears. She hadn't had the courage to make a decision. As if it became any easier to solve by putting it over until to-morrow! Chance--the Blind Madonna of the Pagan--was preparing to solve the riddle for her--with a thunderbolt! The mental struggle had exhausted Jane somewhat, and she fell into a doze. When she woke she was startled to see by her wrist watch that it was after eleven. The yacht was plowing along through the velvet blackness of the night. The inclination to sleep gone, Jane decided to walk the deck until she was as bodily tired as she was mentally. All the hidden terror was gone. To-morrow these absurd pirates would be on their way. Study the situation as she might, she could discover no flaw in this whimsical madman's plans. He held the crew in his palm, even as he held Cleigh--by covetousness. Cleigh would never dare send the British after Cunningham; and the crew would obey him to the letter because that meant safety and recompense. The Great Adventure Company! Only by an act of God! And what could possibly happen between now and the arrival of the _Haarlem_? Cleigh had evidently turned in, for through the transoms she saw that the salon lights were out. She circled the deck house six times, then went up to the bow and stared down the cutwater at the phosphorescence. Blue fire! The eternal marvel of the sea! A hand fell upon her shoulder. She thought it would be Denny's. It was Flint's! "Be a good sport, an' give us a kiss!" She drew back, but he caught her arm. His breath was foul with tobacco and whisky. "All right, I'll take it!" With her free hand she struck him in the face. It was a sound blow, for Jane was no weakling. That should have warned Flint that a struggle would not be worth while. But where's the drunken man with caution? The blow stung Flint equally in flesh and spirit. He would kiss this woman if it was the last thing he ever did! Jane fought him savagely, never thinking to call to the bridge. Twice she escaped, but each time the fool managed to grasp either her waist or her skirt. Then out of nowhere came the voice of Cunningham: "Flint!" Dishevelled and breathless, Jane found herself free. She stumbled to the rail and rested there for a moment. Dimly she could see the two men enacting a weird shadow dance. Then it came to her that Cunningham would not be strong enough to vanquish Flint, so she ran aft to rouse Denny. As she went down the companionway, her knees threatening to give way, she heard voices, blows, crashings against the partitions. Instinct told her to seek her cabin and barricade the door; curiosity drove her through the two darkened salons to the forward passage. Only a single lamp was on, but that was enough. Anthony Cleigh's iron-gray head towering above a whirlwind of fists and forearms! What had happened? This couldn't be real! She was still in her chair on deck, and what she saw was nightmare! Out of the calm, all in a moment, this! Where was Denny, if this picture wasn't nightmare? Cunningham above, struggling with the whisky-maddened Flint--Cleigh fighting in the passage! Dear God, what had happened? Where was Denny? The question let loose in her heart and mind all that was emotional, at the same time enchaining her to the spot where she stood. Denny! Why, she loved Denny! And she had not known it consciously until this moment. Because some presciential instinct warned her that Denny was either dead or badly hurt! The narrowness of the passage gave Cleigh one advantage--none of the men could get behind him. Sometimes he surged forward a little, sometimes he stepped back, but never back of the line he had set for himself. By and by Jane forced her gaze to the deck to see what it was that held him like a rock. What she saw was only the actual of what she had already envisaged--Denny, either dead or badly hurt! What had happened was this: Six of the crew, those spirits who had succumbed to the secret domination of the man Flint--the drinkers--had decided to celebrate the last night on the _Wanderer_. Their argument was that old man Cleigh wouldn't miss a few bottles, and that it would be a long time between drinks when they returned to the States; and never might they again have so easy a chance to taste the juice of the champagne grape. Where was the harm? Hadn't they behaved like little Fauntleroys for weeks? They did not want any trouble--just half a dozen bottles, and back to the forepeak to empty them. That wouldn't kill the old man. They wouldn't even have to force the door of the dry-stores; they had already learned that they could tickle the lock out of commission by the use of a bent wire. Young, restless, and mischievous--none of them bad. A bit of laughter and a few bars of song--that was all they wanted. No doubt the affair would have blown itself out harmlessly but for the fact that Chance had other ideas. She has a way with her, this Pagan Madonna, of taking off the cheerful motley of a jest and substituting the Phrygian cap of terror, subitaneously. Dennison had lain down on the lounge in the main salon. Restless, unhappy, bitter toward his father, he had lain there counting the throbs of the engine to that point where they mysteriously cease to register and one has to wait a minute or two to pick up the throb again. For years he had lived more or less in the open, which attunes the human ear to sounds that generally pass unnoticed. All at once he was sure that he had heard the tinkle of glass, but he waited. The tinkle was repeated. Instinct led him at once to the forward passage, and one glance down this was sufficient. From the thought of a drunken orgy--the thing he had been fearing since the beginning of this mad voyage--his thought leaped to Jane. Thus his subsequent acts were indirectly in her defense. "What the devil are you up to there?" he called. The unexpectedness of the challenge disconcerted the men. They had enough loot. A quick retreat, and Dennison would have had nothing to do but close the dry-stores door. But middle twenties are belligerent rather than discreet. "What you got to say about it?" jeered one of the men, shifting his brace of bottles to the arms of another and squaring off. Dennison rushed them, and the mêlée began. It was a strenuous affair while it lasted. When a strong man is full of anger and bitter disappointment, when six young fellows are bored to distraction, nothing is quite so satisfying as an exchange of fisticuffs. Dennison had the advantage of being able to hit right and left, at random, while his opponents were not always sure that a blow landed where it was directed. Naturally the racket drew Cleigh to the scene, and he arrived in time to see a champagne bottle descend upon the head of his son. Dennison went down. Cleigh, boiling with impotent fury, had gone to bed, not to sleep but to plan; some way round the rogue, to trip him and regain the treasures that meant so much to him. Like father, like son. When he saw what was going on in the passage he saw also that here was something that linked up with his mood. Of course it was to defend the son; but without the bitter rage and the need of physical expression he would have gone for the hidden revolver and settled the affair with that. Instead he flew at the men with the savageness of a gray wolf. He was a tower of a man, for all his sixty years; and he had mauled three of the crew severely before Cunningham arrived. Why had the mutinous six offered battle? Why hadn't they retreated with good sense at the start? Originally all they had wanted was the wine. Why stop to fight when the wine was theirs? In the morning none of them could answer these questions. Was there ever a rough-and-tumble that anybody could explain lucidly the morning after? Perhaps it was the false pride of youth; the bitter distaste at the thought of six turning tail for one. Cunningham fired a shot at the ceiling, and a dozen of the crew came piling in from the forward end of the passage. The fighting stopped magically. "You fools!" cried Cunningham in a high, cracked voice. "To put our heads into hemp at the last moment. If anything happens to young Cleigh, back to Manila you go with the yacht! Clear out! At the last moment!" It was like a sob. Jane, still entranced, saw Cleigh stoop and put his arms under the body of his son, heave, and stand up under the dead weight. He staggered past her toward the main salon. She heard him mutter. "God help me if I'm too late--if I've waited too long! Denny?" That galvanized her into action, and she flew to the light buttons, flooding both the dining and the main salons. She helped Cleigh to place Dennison on the lounge. After that it was her affair. Dennison was alive, but how much alive could be told only by the hours. She bathed and bandaged his head. Beyond that she could do nothing but watch and wait. "I wouldn't mind--a little of that--water," said Cunningham, weakly. Cleigh, with menacing fists, wheeled upon him; but he did not strike the man who was basically the cause of Denny's injuries. At the same time Jane, looking up across Dennison's body, uttered a gasp of horror. The entire left side of Cunningham was drenched in blood, and the arm dangled. "Flint had a knife--and--was quite handy with it." "For me!" she cried. "For defending me! Mr. Cleigh, Flint caught me on deck--and Mr. Cunningham--oh, this is horrible!" "You were right, Cleigh. The best-laid plans of mice and men! What an ass I am! I honestly thought I could play a game like this without hurt to anybody. It was to be a whale of a joke. Flint----" Cunningham reached blindly for the nearest chair and collapsed in it. * * * * * An hour later. The four of them were still in the main salon. Jane sat at the head of the lounge, and from time to time she took Dennison's pulse and temperature. She had finally deduced that there had been no serious concussion. Cleigh sat at the foot of the lounge, his head on his hands. Cunningham occupied the chair into which he had collapsed. Three ugly flesh wounds, but nothing a little time would not heal. True, he had had a narrow squeak. He sat with his eyes closed. "Why?" asked Jane suddenly, breaking the silence. "What?" said Cleigh, looking up. "Why these seven years--if you cared? I heard you say something about being too late. Why?" "I'm a queer old fool. An idea, when it enters my head, sticks. I can't shift my plans easily; I have to go through. What you have witnessed these several days gives you the impression that I have no heart. That isn't true. But we Cleighs are pigheaded. Until he was sent to Russia he was never from under the shadow of my hand. My agents kept me informed of all his moves, his adventures. The mistake was originally mine. I put him in charge of an old scholar who taught him art, music, languages, but little or nothing about human beings. I gave him a liberal allowance; but he was a queer lad, and Broadway never heard of him. Now I hold that youth must have its fling in some manner or other; after thirty there is no cure for folly. So when he ran away I let him go; but he never got so far away that I did not know what he was doing. I liked the way he rejected the cash I gave him; the way he scorned to trade upon the name. He went clean. Why? I don't know. Oh, yes, he got hilariously drunk once in a while, but he had his fling in clean places. I had agents watching him." "Why did he run away?" asked Jane. "No man can tell another man; a man has to find it out for himself--the difference between a good woman and a bad one." "I play that statement to win," interposed Cunningham without opening his eyes. "There was a woman?" said Jane. "A bad one. Pretty and clever as sin. My fault. I should have sent him to college where he'd have got at least a glimmer of life. But I kept him under the tutor until the thing happened. He thought he was in love, when it was only his first woman. She wanted his money--or, more properly speaking, mine. I had her investigated and found that she was bad all through. When I told him boldly what she was he called me a liar. I struck him across the mouth, and he promptly knocked me down." "Pretty good punch for a youngster," was Cunningham's comment. "It was," replied Cleigh, grimly. "He went directly to his room, packed, and cleared out. In that he acted wisely, for at that moment I would have cast him out had he come with an apology. But the following day I could not find him; nor did I get track of him until weeks later. He had married the woman and then found her out. That's all cleared off the slate, though. She's been married and divorced three times since then." "Did you expect to see him over here?" "In Shanghai? No. The sight of him rather knocked me about. You understand? It was his place to make the first sign. He was in the wrong, and he has known it all these seven years." "No," said Jane, "it was your place to make the first advance. If you had been a comrade to him in his boyhood he would never have been in the wrong." "But I gave him everything!" "Everything but love. Did you ever tell him a fairy story?" "A fairy story!" Cleigh's face was the essence of bewilderment. "You put him in the care of a lovable old dreamer, and then expected him to accept life as you knew it." Cleigh rumpled his cowlicks. A fairy story? But that was nonsense! Fairy stories had long since gone out of fashion. "When I saw you two together an idea popped into my head. But do you care for the boy?" "I care everything for him--or I shouldn't be here!" Cunningham relaxed a little more in his chair, his eyes still closed. "What do you mean by that?" demanded Cleigh. "I let you abduct me. I thought, maybe, if I were near you for a little I might bring you two together." "Well, now!" said Cleigh, falling into the old New England vernacular which was his birthright. "I brought you on board merely to lure him after you. I wanted you both on board so I could observe you. I intended to carry you both off on a cruise. I watched you from the door that night while you two were dining. I saw by his face and his gestures that he would follow you anywhere." "But I--I am only a professional nurse. I'm nobody! I haven't anything!" "Good Lord, will you listen to that?" cried the pirate, with a touch of his old banter. "Nobody and nothing?" Neither Jane nor Cleigh apparently heard this interpolation. "Why did you maltreat him?" "Otherwise he would have thought I was offering my hand, that I had weakened." "And you expected him to fall on your shoulder and ask your pardon after that? Mr. Cleigh, for a man of your intellectual attainments, your stand is the biggest piece of stupidity I ever heard of! How in the world was he to know what your thoughts were?" "I was giving him his chance," declared Cleigh, stubbornly. "A yacht? It's a madhouse," gibed Cunningham. "And this is a convention of fools!" "How do you want me to act?" asked Cleigh, surrendering absolutely. "When he comes to, take his hand. You don't have to say anything else." "All right." From Dennison's lips came a deep, long sigh. Jane leaned over. "Denny?" she whispered. The lids of Dennison's eyes rolled back heavily. "Jane--all right?" he asked, quickly. "Yes. How do you feel?" He reached out a hand whence her voice came. She met the hand with hers, and that seemed to be all he wanted just then. "You'd better get your bathrobe, Mr. Cleigh," she suggested. Cleigh became conscious for the first time of the condition of his pyjama jacket. It hung upon his torso in mere ribbons. He became conscious also of the fact that his body ached variously and substantially. "Thirty-odd years since I was in a racket like this. I'm getting along." "And on the way," put in Cunningham, "you might call Cleve. I'd feel better--stretched out." "Oh, I had forgotten!" cried Jane, reproaching herself. Weakened as he was, and sitting in a chair! "And don't forget, Cleigh, that I'm master of the _Wanderer_ until I leave it. I sympathize deeply," Cunningham went on, ironically, "but I have some active troubles of my own." "And God send they abide with you always!" was Cleigh's retort. "They will--if that will give you any comfort. Do you know what? You will always have me to thank for this. That will be my comforting thought. The god in the car!" Later, when Cleve helped Cunningham into his bunk, the latter asked about the crew. "Scared stiff. They realize that it was a close shave. I've put the fools in irons. They're best there until we leave. But we can't do anything but forget the racket when we board the Dutchman. Where's that man Flint? We can't find him anywhere. He's at the bottom of it. I knew that sooner or later there'd be the devil to pay with a woman on board. Probably the fool's hiding in the bunkers. I'll give every rat hole a look-see. Pretty nearly got you." "Flint was out of luck--and so was I! I thought in pistols, and forgot that there might be a knife or two. I'll be on my feet in the morning. Little weak, that's all. Nobody and nothing!" said Cunningham, addressing the remark to the crossbeam above his head. "What's that?" asked Cleve. "I was thinking out loud. Get back to the chart house. Old Newton may play us some trick if he isn't watched. And don't bother to search for Flint. I know where he is." Something in Cunningham's tone coldly touched Cleve's spine. He went out, closing the door quietly; and there was reason for the sudden sweat in his palms. Chance! A wry smile stirred one corner of Cunningham's mouth. He had boasted that he had left nothing to chance, with this result! Burning up! Inward and outward fires! Love beads! Well, what were they if not that? But that she would trust him when everything about him should have repelled her! Was there a nugget of forgotten gold in his cosmos, and had she discovered it? She still trusted him, for he had sensed it in the quick but tender touch of her hands upon his throbbing wounds. To learn, after all these years, that he had been a coward! To have run away from misfortune instead of facing it and beating it down! Pearls! All he had left! And when he found them, what then? Turn them into money he no longer cared to spend? Or was this an interlude--a mocking interlude, and would to-morrow see his conscience relegated to the dustbin out of which it had so oddly emerged? * * * * * When Dennison opened his eyes again Jane was still holding his hand. Upon beholding his father Dennison held out his free hand. "Will you take it, Father? I'm sorry." "Of course I'll take it, Denny. I was an old fool." "And I was a young one." "Would you like a cup of coffee?" Cleigh asked, eagerly. "If it won't be too much trouble." "No trouble at all." A hand pressure, a few inconsequent phrases, that is always enough for two strong characters in the hour of reconciliation. Cleigh out of the way, Jane tried to disengage her hand, but Dennison only tightened his grip. "No"--a pause--"it's different now. The old boy will find some kind of a job for me. Will you marry me, Jane? I did not speak before, because I hadn't anything to offer." "No?" "I couldn't offer marriage until I had a job." "But supposing your father doesn't give you one?" "Why----" "You poor boy! I'm only fishing." "For what?" "Well, why do you want to marry me?" "Hang it, because I love you!" "Why didn't you tell me that in the first place? How was I to know unless you told me? But oh, Denny, I want to go home!" She laid her cheek against his hand. "I want a garden with a picket fence round it and all the simple flowers. I never want another adventure in all my days!" "Same here!" A stretch of silence. "What happened to me?" "Someone hit you with a wine bottle." "A vintage--and I never got a swallow!" "And then your father went to your defense." "The old boy? Honestly?" "He stood astride your body until Mr. Cunningham came in and stopped the mêlée." "Cunningham! They quit?" "Yes--Flint. I didn't dream it wouldn't be safe to go on deck, and Flint caught me. He was drunk. But for Cunningham, I don't know what would have happened. I ran and left them fighting, and Flint wounded Cunningham with a knife. It was for me, Denny. I feel so sorry for him! So alone, hating himself and hating the world, tortured with misunderstanding--good in him that he keeps smothering and trampling down. His unbroken word--to hang to that!" "All right. So far as I'm concerned, that cleans the slate." "I loved you, Denny, but I didn't know how much until I saw you on the floor. Do you know what I was going to demand of your father as a reparation for bringing me on board? His hand in yours. That was all I wanted." "Always thinking of someone else!" "That's all the happiness I've ever had, Denny--until now!" CHAPTER XXI A good deal of orderly commotion took place the following morning. Cunningham's crew, under the temporary leadership of Cleve, proceeded to make everything shipshape. There was no exuberance; they went at the business quietly and grimly. They sensed a shadow overhead. The revolt of the six discovered to the others what a rickety bridge they were crossing, how easily and swiftly a jest may become a tragedy. They had accepted the game as a kind of huge joke. Everything had been prepared against failure; it was all cut and dried; all they had to do was to believe themselves. For days they had gone about their various duties thinking only of the gay time that would fall to their lot when they left the _Wanderer_. The possibility that Cleigh would not proceed in the manner advanced by Cunningham's psychology never bothered them until now. Supposing the old man's desire for vengeance was stronger than his love for his art objects? He was a fighter; he had proved it last night. Supposing he put up a fight and called in the British to help him? Not one of them but knew what the penalty would be if pursued and caught. But Cunningham had persuaded them up to this hour that they would not even be pursued; that it would not be humanly possible for Cleigh to surrender the hope of eventually recovering his unlawful possessions. And now they began to wonder, to fret secretly, to reconsider the ancient saying that the way of the transgressor is hard. On land they could have separated and hidden successfully. Here at sea the wireless was an inescapable net. Their only hope was to carry on. Cunningham might pull them through. For, having his own hide to consider, he would bring to bear upon the adventure all his formidable ingenuity. At eleven the commotion subsided magically and the men vanished below, but at four-thirty they swarmed the port bow, silently if interestedly. If they talked at all it was in a whispering undertone. The mutinous revellers formed a group of their own. They appeared to have been roughly handled by the Cleighs. The attitude was humble, the expression worriedly sorrowful. Why hadn't they beat a retreat? The psychology of their madness escaped them utterly. There was one grain of luck--they hadn't killed young Cleigh. What fool had swung that bottle? Not one of them could recall. The engines of the _Wanderer_ stopped, and she rolled lazily in the billowing brass, waiting. Out of the blinding topaz of the sou'west nosed a black object, illusory. It appeared to ride neither wind nor water. From the bridge Cleigh eyed this object dourly, and with a swollen heart he glanced from time to time at the crates and casings stacked below. He knew that he would never set eyes upon any of these treasures again. When they were lowered over the side that would be the end of them. Cunningham might be telling the truth as to his intentions; but he was promising something that was not conceivably possible, any more than it was possible to play at piracy and not get hurt. At Cleigh's side stood the son, his head swathed in bandages. All day long he had been subjected to splitting headaches, and his face looked tired and drawn. He had stayed in bed until he had heard "Ship ahoy!" "Are you going to start something?" he asked. Cleigh did not answer, but peered through the glass again. "I don't see how you're going to land him without the British. On the other hand, you can't tell. Cunningham might bring the stuff back." Cleigh laughed, but still held the glass to his eye. "When and where are you going to get married?" "Manila. Jane wants to go home, and I want a job." Cleigh touched his split lips and his bruised cheekbone, for he had had to pay for his gallantry; and there was a spot in his small ribs that racked him whenever he breathed deeply. "What the devil do you want of a job?" "You're not thinking that I'm going back on an allowance? I've had independence for seven years, and I'm going to keep it, Father." "I've money enough"--brusquely. "That isn't it. I want to begin somewhere and build something for myself. You know as well as I do that if I went home on an allowance you'd begin right off to dominate me as you used to, and no man is going to do that again." "What can you do?" "That's the point--I don't know. I've got to find out." Cleigh lowered the glass. "Let's see; didn't you work on a sugar plantation somewhere?" "Yes. How'd you find that out?" "Never mind about that. I can give you a job, and it won't be soft, either. I've a sugar plantation in Hawaii that isn't paying the dividends it ought to. I'll turn the management over to you. You make good the second year, or back you come to me, domination and all." "I agree to that--if the plantation can be developed." "The stuff is there; all it needs is some pep." "All right, I'll take the job." "You and your wife shall spend the fall and winter with me. In February you can start to work." "Are you out for Cunningham's hide?" "What would you do in my place?" "Sit tight and wait." Cleigh laughed sardonically. "Because," went on Dennison, "he's played the game too shrewdly not to have other cards up his sleeve. He may find his pearls and return the loot." "Do you believe that? Don't talk like a fool! I tell you, his pearls are in those casings there! But, son, I'm glad to have you back. And you've found a proper mate." "Isn't she glorious?" "Better than that. She's the kind that'll always be fussing over you, and that's the kind a man needs. But mind your eye! Don't take it for granted! Make her want to fuss over you." When the oncoming tramp reached a point four hundred yards to the southwest of the yacht she slued round broadside. For a moment or two the reversed propeller--to keep the old tub from drifting--threw up a fountain; and before the sudsy eddies had subsided the longboat began a jerky descent. No time was going to be wasted evidently. The _Haarlem_--or whatever name was written on her ticket--was a picture. Even her shadows tried to desert her as she lifted and wallowed in the long, burnished rollers. There was something astonishingly impudent about her. She reminded Dennison of an old gin-sodden female derelict of the streets. There were red patches all over her, from stem to stern, where the last coat of waterproof black had blistered off. The brass of her ports were green. Her name should have been Neglect. She was probably full of smells; and Dennison was ready to wager that in a moderate sea her rivets and bedplates whined, and that the pump never rested. But it occurred to him that there must be some basis of fact in Cunningham's pearl atoll, and yonder owner was game enough to take a sporting chance; that, or he had been handsomely paid for his charter. An atoll in the Sulu Archipelago that had been overlooked--that was really the incredible part of it. Dennison had first-hand knowledge that there wasn't a rock in the whole archipelago that had not been looked over and under by the pearl hunters. He saw the tramp's longboat come staggering across the intervening water. Rag-tag and bob-tail of the Singapore docks, crimp fodder--that was what Dennison believed he had the right to expect. And behold! Except that they were older, the newcomers lined up about average with the departing--able seamen. The transshipping of the crews occupied about an hour. As the longboat's boat hook caught the _Wanderer's_ ladder for the third time the crates and casings were carried down and carefully deposited in the stern sheets. About this time Cunningham appeared. He paused by the rail for a minute and looked up at the Cleighs, father and son. He was pale, and his attitude suggested pain and weakness, but he was not too weak to send up his bantering smile. Cleigh, senior, gazed stonily forward, but Dennison answered the smile by soberly shaking his head. Dennison could not hear Cunningham's laugh, but he saw the expression of it. Cunningham put his hand on the rail in preparation for the first step, when Jane appeared with bandages, castile soap, the last of her stearate of zinc, absorbent cotton and a basin of water. "What's this--a clinic?" he asked. "You can't go aboard that awful-looking ship without letting me give you a fresh dressing," she declared. "Lord love you, angel of mercy, I'm all right!" "It was for me. Even now you are in pain. Please!" "Pain?" he repeated. For one more touch of her tender hands! To carry the thought of that through the long, hot night! Perhaps it was his ever-bubbling sense of malice that decided him--to let her minister to him, with the Cleighs on the bridge to watch and boil with indignation. He nodded, and she followed him to the hatch, where he sat down. Dennison saw his father's hands strain on the bridge rail, the presage of a gathering storm. He intervened by a rough seizure of Cleigh's arm. "Listen to me, Father! Not a word of reproach out of you when she comes up--God bless her! Anything in pain! It's her way, and I'll not have her reproached. God alone knows what the beggar saved her from last night! If you utter a word I'll cash that twenty thousand--it's mine now--and you'll never see either of us after Manila!" Cleigh gently disengaged his arm. "Sonny, you've got a man's voice under your shirt these days. All right. Run down and give the new crew the once-over, and see if they have a wireless man among them." * * * * * Sunset--a scarlet horizon and an old-rose sea. For a little while longer the trio on the bridge could discern a diminishing black speck off to the southeast. The _Wanderer_ was boring along a point north of east, Manila way. The speck soon lost its blackness and became violet, and then magically the streaked horizon rose up behind the speck and obliterated it. "The poor benighted thing!" said Jane. "God didn't mean that he should be this kind of a man." "Does any of us know what God wants of us?" asked Cleigh, bitterly. "He wants men like you who pretend to the world that they're granite-hearted when they're not. Ever since we started, Denny, I've been trying to recall where I'd seen your father before; and it came a little while ago. I saw him only once--a broken child he'd brought to the hospital to be mended. I happened to be passing through the children's ward for some reason. He called himself Jones or Brown or Smith--I forget. But they told me afterward that he brought on an average of four children a month, and paid all expenses until they were ready to go forth, if not cured at least greatly bettered. He told the chief that if anybody ever followed him he would never come back. Your father's a hypocrite, Denny." "So that's where I saw you?" said Cleigh, ruminatively. He expanded a little. He wanted the respect and admiration of this young woman--his son's wife-to-be. "Don't weave any golden halo for me," he added, dryly. "After Denny packed up and hiked it came back rather hard that I hadn't paid much attention to his childhood. It was a kind of penance." "But you liked it!" "Maybe I only got used to it. Say, Denny, was there a wireless man in the crew?" "No. I knew there wouldn't be. But I can handle the key." "Fine! Come along then." "What are you going to do?" "Do? Why, I'm going to have the Asiatic fleets on his heels inside of twenty-four hours! That's what I'm going to do! He's an unprincipled rogue!" "No," interposed Jane, "only a poor broken thing." "That's no fault of mine. But no man can play this sort of game with me, and show a clean pair of heels. The rug and the paintings are gone for good. I swore to him that I would have his hide, and have it I will! I never break my word." "Denny," said Jane, "for my sake you will not touch the wireless." "I'm giving the orders!" roared Cleigh. "Wait a moment!" said Jane. "You spoke of your word. That first night you promised me any reparation I should demand." "I made that promise. Well?" "Give him his eight months." She gestured toward the sea, toward the spot where they had last seen the _Haarlem_. "You demand that?" "No, I only ask it. I understand the workings of that twisted soul, and you don't. Let him have his queer dream--his boyhood adventure. Are you any better than he? Were those treasures honourably yours? Fie! No, I won't demand that you let him go; I'll only ask it. Because you will not deny to me what you gave to those little children--generosity." Cleigh did not speak. "I want to love you," she continued, "but I couldn't if there was no mercy in your sense of justice. Be merciful to that unhappy outcast, who probably never had any childhood, or if he had, a miserable one. Children are heartless; they don't know any better. They pointed the finger of ridicule and contempt at him--his playmates. Imagine starting life like that! And he told me that the first woman he loved--laughed in his face! I feel--I don't know why--that he was always without care, from his childhood up. He looked so forlorn! Eight months! We need never tell him. I'd rather he shouldn't know that I tried to intercede for him. But for him we three would not be here together, with understanding. I only ask it." Cleigh turned and went down the ladder. Twenty times he circled the deck; then he paused under the bridge and sent up a hail. "Dinner is ready!" The moment Jane reached the deck Cleigh put an arm round her. "No other human being could have done it. It is a cup of gall and wormwood, but I'll take it. Why? Because I am old and lonely and want a little love. I have no faith in Cunningham's word, but he shall go free." "How long since you kissed any one?" she asked. "Many years." And he stooped to her cheek. To press back the old brooding thought he said with cheerful brusqueness: "Suppose we celebrate? I'll have Togo ice a bottle of that vintage those infernal ruffians broke over your head last night." Dennison laughed. * * * * * October. The Cleigh library was long and wide. There was a fine old blue Ispahan on the floor. The chairs were neither historical nor uncomfortable. One came in here to read. The library was on the second floor. When you reached this room you left the affairs of state and world behind. A wood fire crackled and shifted in the fireplace, the marble hood of which had been taken from a famous Italian palace. The irons stood ready as of yore for the cups of mulled wine. Before this fire sat a little old woman knitting. Her feet were on a hassock. From time to time her bird-like glance swept the thinker in the adjacent chair. She wondered what he could see in the fire there to hold his gaze so steadily. The little old lady had something of the attitude of a bird that had been given its liberty suddenly, and having always lived in a cage knew not what to make of all these vast spaces. She was Jane's mother, and sitting in the chair beside her was Anthony Cleigh. "There are said to be only five portable authentic paintings by Leonardo da Vinci," said Cleigh, "and I had one of them, Mother. Illegally, perhaps, but still I had it. It is a copy that hangs in the European gallery. There's a point. Gallery officials announce a theft only when some expert had discovered the substitution. There are a number of so-called Da Vincis, but those are the works of Boltraffio, Da Vinci's pupil. I'll always be wondering, even in my grave, where that crook, Eisenfeldt, had disposed of it." Mrs. Norman went on with her knitting. What she heard was as instructive and illuminating to her as Chinese would have been. From the far end of the room came piano music; gentle, dreamy, broken occasionally by some fine, thrilling chord. Dennison played well, but he had the habit of all amateurs of idling, of starting something, and running away into improvisations. Seated beside him on the bench was Jane, her head inclined against his shoulder. Perhaps that was a good reason why he began a composition and did not carry it through to its conclusion. "That was a trick of his mother's," said Cleigh, still addressing the fire. "All the fine things in him he got from her. I gave him his shoulders, but I guess that's about all." Mrs. Norman did not turn her head. She had already learned that she wasn't expected to reply unless Cleigh looked at her directly. "There's a high wind outside. More rain, probably. But that's October in these parts. You'll like it in Hawaii. Never any of this brand of weather. I may be able to put the yacht into commission." "The sea!" she said in a little frightened whisper. * * * * * "Doorbells!" said Dennison with gentle mockery. "Jane, you're always starting up when you hear one. Still hanging on? It isn't Cunningham's willingness to fulfill his promise; it's his ability I doubt. A thousand and one things may upset his plans." "I know. But, win or lose, he was to let me know." "The poor devil! I never dared say so to Father, but when I learned that Cunningham meant no harm to you I began to boost for him. I like to see a man win against huge odds, and that's what he has been up against." "Denny, I've never asked before; I've been a little afraid to, but did you see Flint when the crew left?" "I honestly didn't notice; I was so interested in the disreputable old hooker that was to take them off." She sighed. Fragments of that night were always recurring in her dreams. The door opened and the ancient butler entered. His glance roved until it caught the little tuft of iron-gray hair that protruded above the rim of the chair by the fire. Noiselessly he crossed the room. "Beg pardon, sir," he said, "but a van arrived a few minutes ago with a number of packing cases. The men said they were for you, sir. The cases are in the lower hall. Any orders, sir?" Cleigh rose. "Cases? Benson, did you say--cases?" "Yes, sir. I fancy some paintings you've ordered, sir." Cleigh stood perfectly still. The butler eyed him with mild perturbation. Rarely he saw bewilderment on his master's countenance. "Cases?" "Yes, sir. Fourteen or fifteen of them, sir." Cleigh felt oddly numb. For days now he had denied to himself the reason for his agitation whenever the telephone or doorbell rang. Hope! It had not served to crush it down, to buffet it aside by ironical commentaries on the weakness of human nature; the thing was uncrushable, insistent. Packing cases! "Denny! Jane!" he cried, and bolted for the door. The call needed no interpretation. The two understood, and followed him downstairs precipitately, with the startled Benson the tail to the kite. "No, no!" shouted Cleigh. "The big one first!" as Dennison laid one of the smaller cases on the floor. "Benson, where the devil is the claw hammer?" The butler foraged in the coat closet and presently emerged with a prier. Cleigh literally snatched it from the astonished butler's grasp, pried and tore off a board. He dug away at the excelsior until he felt the cool glass under his fingers. He peered through this glass. "Denny, it's the rug!" Cleigh's voice cracked and broke into a queer treble note. Jane shook her head. Here was an incurable passion, based upon the specious argument that galleries and museums had neither consciences nor stomachs. You could not hurt a wall by robbing it of a painting--a passion that would abide with him until death. Not one of these treasures in the casings was honourably his, but they were more to him than all his legitimate possessions. To ask him to return the objects to the galleries and museums to which they belonged would be asking Cleigh to tear out his heart. Though the passion was incomprehensible, Jane readily observed its effects. She had sensed the misery, the anxiety, the stinging curiosity of all these months. Not to know exactly what had become of the rug and the paintings! Not to know if he would ever see them again! There was only one comparison she could bring to bear as an illustration: Cleigh was like a man whose mistress had forsaken him without explanations. She was at once happy and sad: happy that her faith in Cunningham had not been built upon sand, sad that she could not rouse Cleigh's conscience. Secretly a charitable man, honest in his financial dealings, he could keep--in hiding, mind you!--that which did not belong to him. It was beyond her understanding. An idea, which had been nebulous until this moment, sprang into being. "Father," she said, "you will do me a favour?" "What do you want--a million? Run and get my check book!" he cried, gayly. "The other day you spoke of making a new will." Cleigh stared at her. "Will you leave these objects to the legal owners?" Cleigh got up, brushing his knees. "After I am dead? I never thought of that. After I'm dead," he repeated. "Child, a conscience like yours is top-heavy. Still, I'll mull it over. I can't take 'em to the grave with me, that's a fact. But my ghost is bound to get leg-weary doing the rounds to view them again. What do you say, Denny?" "If you don't, I will!" Cleigh chuckled. "That makes it unanimous. I'll put it in the codicil. But while I live! Benson, what did these men look like? One of them limp?" "No, sir. Ordinary trucking men, I should say, sir." "The infernal scoundrel! No message?" "No, sir. The man who rang the bell said he had some cases for you, and asked where he should put them. I thought the hall the best place, sir, temporarily." "The infernal scoundrel!" "What the dickens is the matter with you, Father!" demanded Dennison. "You've got back the loot." "But how? The story, Denny! The rogue leaves me 'twixt wind and water as to how he got out of this hole." "Maybe he was afraid you still wanted his hide," suggested Jane, now immeasurably happy. "He did it!" said Cleigh, his sense of amazement awakening. "One chance in a thousand, and he caught that chance! But never to know how he did it!" "Aren't you glad now," said Jane, "that you let him go?" Cleigh chuckled. "There!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands. "Just as he said! He prophesied that some day you would chuckle over it. He found his pearls. He knew he would find them! The bell!" she broke off, startled. Never had Benson, the butler, witnessed such an exhibition of undignified haste. Cleigh, Jane, and Dennison, all three of them started for the door at once, jostling. What they found was only a bedraggled messenger boy, for it was now raining. "Mr. Cleigh," said the boy, grumpily, as he presented a letter and a small box. "No answer." "Where is the man who sent you?" asked Jane, tremendously excited. "De office pushed me on dis job, miss. Dey said maybe I'd git a good tip if I hustled." Dennison thrust a bill into the boy's hand and shunted him forth into the night again. The letter was marked Number One and addressed to Cleigh; the box was marked Number Two and addressed to Jane. Mad, thought Benson, as he began to gather up the loose excelsior; quite mad, the three of them. With Jane at one shoulder and Dennison at the other, Cleigh opened his letter. The first extraction was a chart. An atoll; here were groups of cocoanut palm, there of plantain; a rudely drawn hut. In the lagoon at a point east of north was a red star, and written alongside was a single word. But to the three it was an Odyssey--"Shell." In the lower left-hand corner of the chart were the exact degrees and minutes of longitude and latitude. With this chart a landlubber could have gone straight to the atoll. Next came the letter, which Cleigh did not read aloud--it was not necessary. With what variant emotions the three pairs of eyes leaped from word to word! Friend Buccaneer: Of course I found the shell. That was the one issue which offered no odds. The shell lay in its bed peculiarly under a running ledge. The ordinary pearler would have discovered it only by the greatest good luck. Atherton--my friend--discovered it, because he was a sea naturalist, and was hunting for something altogether different. Atherton was wealthy, and a coral reef was more to him than a pearl. But he knew me and what such a game would mean. He was in ill health and had to leave the South Pacific and fare north. This atoll was his. It is now mine, pearls and all, legally mine. For a trifling sum I could have chartered a schooner and sought the atoll. But all my life I've hunted odds--big, tremendous odds--to crush down and swarm over. The only interest I had in life. And so I planted the crew and stole the _Wanderer_ because it presented whopping odds. I selected a young and dare-devil crew to keep me on edge. From one day to another I was always wondering when they would break over. I refused to throw overboard the wines and liquors to make a good measure. And there was you. Would you sit tight under such an outrage, or would your want of revenge ride you? Would you send the British piling on top of me, or would you make it a private war? Suspense! Dick Cunningham would not be hard to trace. Old Slue Foot. The biggest odds I'd ever encountered. Nominally, I had about one chance in a thousand of pulling through. The presence of Mrs. Cleigh--of course she's Mrs. Cleigh by this time!--added to the zest. To bring her through with nothing more than a scare! Odds, odds! Cleigh, on my word, the pearls would have been of no value without the game I built to go with them. Over the danger route! Mad? Of course I'm mad! Four-year-old shell, the pearls of the finest orient! The shell alone--in buttons--would have recouped Eisenfeldt. He was ugly when he saw that I had escaped him. Threatened to expose you. But knowing Eisenfeldt for what he is, I had a little sword of Damocles suspended over his thick neck. The thought of having lost eight months' interest will follow him to Hades. The crew gave me no more trouble. They've been paid their dividends in the Great Adventure Company, and have gone seeking others. But I'll warrant they'll take only regular berths in the future. And now those beads. I'm sorry, but I'm also innocent. I have learned that Morrissy really double-crossed us all. He had had a copy made in Venice. The beads you have are forgeries. So the sixty thousand offered by the French Government remains uncalled for. Who has the originals I can't say. I'm sorry. Morrissy's game was risky. His idea was to make a sudden breakaway with the beads--lose them in the gutter--and trust to luck that we would just miss killing him, which was the case. Leaving to-night. Bought a sloop down there, and I'm going back there to live. Tired of human beings. Tired of myself. Still, there's the chart. Mull it over. Maybe it's an invitation. The lagoon is like turquoise and the land like emerald and the sky a benediction. * * * * * A spell of silence and immobility. Not a word about his battle with Flint, thought Jane. A little shiver ran over her. But what a queer, whimsical madman! To have planned it all so that he could experience a thrill! The tragic beauty of his face and the pitiable, sluing, lurching stride! She sighed audibly, so did the two men. "Denny, I don't know," said Cleigh. "I do!" said Dennison, anticipating his father's thought. "He's a man, and some day I'd like to clasp his hand." "Maybe we all shall," said Cleigh. "But open the box, Jane, and let's see." Between the layers of cotton wool she found a single pearl as large as a hazelnut, pink as the Oriental dawn. One side was slightly depressed, as though some mischievous, inquisitive mermaid had touched it in passing. "Oh, the lovely thing!" she gasped. "The lovely thing! But, Denny, I can't accept it!" "And how are you going to refuse it? Keep it. It is an emblem of what you are, honey. The poor devil!" And he put his arm round her. He understood. Why not? There are certain attractions which are irresistible, and Jane was unconscious of her possessions. Jane raised the bottom layer of cotton wool. What impulse led her to do this she could not say, but she found a slip of paper across which was written: "An' I learned about women from 'er." All this while, across the street, in the shadow of an areaway, stood a man in a mackintosh and a felt hat drawn well down. He had watched the van disgorge and roll away, the arrival and the departure of the messenger boy. He began to intone softly: "'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.'" With a sluing lurch to his stride he started off down the street, into the lashing rain. A great joke; and now there was nothing at all to disturb his dreams--but the dim white face of Jabez Flint spinning in the dark of the sea. THE END [Illustration] THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 37909 ---- produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) [Illustration: THE BOBBSEYS AND OTHERS WERE ROWED TO THE SHORE.] THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA BY LAURA LEE HOPE AUTHOR OF "THE BOBBSEY TWINS," "THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES," "THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES," ETC. ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Made in the United States of America Copyright, 1918, by Grosset & Dunlap CONTENTS: CHAPTER I--ON THE RAFT CHAPTER II--TO THE RESCUE CHAPTER III--STRANGE NEWS CHAPTER IV--GETTING READY CHAPTER V--OFF FOR FLORIDA CHAPTER VI--IN A PIPE CHAPTER VII--THE SHARK CHAPTER VIII--THE FIGHT IN THE BOAT CHAPTER IX--IN ST. AUGUSTINE CHAPTER X--COUSIN JASPER'S STORY CHAPTER XI--THE MOTOR BOAT CHAPTER XII--THE DEEP BLUE SEA CHAPTER XIII--FLOSSIE'S DOLL CHAPTER XIV--FREDDIE'S FISH CHAPTER XV--"LAND HO!" CHAPTER XVI--UNDER THE PALMS CHAPTER XVII--A QUEER NEST CHAPTER XVIII--THE "SWALLOW" IS GONE CHAPTER XIX--AWAY AGAIN CHAPTER XX--ORANGE ISLAND CHAPTER XXI--LOOKING FOR JACK CHAPTER XXII--FOUND AT LAST CHAPTER I ON THE RAFT "Flossie! Flossie! Look at me! I'm having a steamboat ride! Oh, look!" "I am looking, Freddie Bobbsey!" "No, you're not! You're playing with your doll! Look at me splash, Flossie!" A little boy with blue eyes and light, curling hair was standing on a raft in the middle of a shallow pond of water left in a green meadow after a heavy rain. In his hand he held a long pole with which he was beating the water, making a shower of drops that sparkled in the sun. On the shore of the pond, not far away, and sitting under an apple tree, was a little girl with the same sort of light hair and blue eyes as those which made the little boy such a pretty picture. Both children were fat and chubby, and you would have needed but one look to tell that they were twins. "Now I'm going to sail away across the ocean!" cried Freddie Bobbsey, the little boy on the raft, which he and his sister Flossie had made that morning by piling a lot of old boards and fence rails together. "Don't you want to sail across the ocean, Flossie?" "I'm afraid I'll fall off!" answered Flossie, who was holding her doll off at arm's length to see how pretty her new blue dress looked. "I might fall in the water and get my feet wet." "Take off your shoes and stockings like I did, Flossie," said the little boy. "Is it very deep?" Flossie wanted to know, as she laid aside her doll. After all she could play with her doll any day, but it was not always that she could have a ride on a raft with Freddie. "No," answered the little blue-eyed boy. "It isn't deep at all. That is, I don't guess it is, but I didn't fall in yet." "I don't want to fall in," said Flossie. "Well, I won't let you," promised her brother, though how he was going to manage that he did not say. "I'll come back and get you on the steamboat," he went on, "and then I'll give you a ride all across the ocean," and he began pushing the raft, which he pretended was a steamboat, back toward the shore where his sister sat. Flossie was now taking off her shoes and stockings, which Freddie had done before he got on the raft; and it was a good thing, too, for the water splashed up over it as far as his ankles, and his shoes would surely have been wet had he kept them on. "Whoa, there! Stop!" cried Flossie, as she came down to the edge of the pond, after having placed her doll, in its new blue dress, safely in the shade under a big burdock plant. "Whoa, there, steamboat! Whoa!" "You mustn't say 'whoa' to a boat!" objected Freddie, as he pushed the raft close to the bank, so his sister could get on. "You only say 'whoa' to a horse or a pony." "Can't you say it to a goat?" demanded Flossie. "Yes, maybe you could say it to a goat," Freddie agreed, after thinking about it for a little while. "But you can't say it to a boat." "Well, I wanted you to stop, so you wouldn't bump into the shore," said the little girl. "That's why I said 'whoa.'" "But you mustn't say it to a boat, and this raft is the same as a boat," insisted Freddie. "What must I say, then, when I want it to stop?" Freddie thought about this for a moment or two while he paddled his bare foot in the water. Then he said: "Well, you could say 'Halt!' maybe." "Pooh! 'Halt' is what you say to soldiers," declared Flossie. "We said that when we had a snow fort, and played have a snowball fight in the winter. 'Halt' is only for soldiers." "Oh, well, come on and have a ride," went on Freddie. "I forget what you say when you want a boat to stop." "Oh, I know!" cried Flossie, clapping her hands. "What?" "You just blow a whistle. You don't say anything. You just go 'Toot! Toot!' and the boat stops." "All right," agreed Freddie, glad that this part was settled. "When you want this boat to stop, you just whistle." "I will," said Flossie. Then she stepped on the edge of the raft nearest the shore. The boards and rails tilted to one side. "Oh! Oh!" screamed the little girl. "It's sinking!" "No it isn't," Freddie said. "It always does that when you first get on. Come on out in the middle and it will be all right." "But it feels so--so funny on my toes!" said Flossie, with a little shiver. "It's tickly like." "That's the way it was with me at first," Freddie answered. "But I like it now." Flossie wiggled her little pink toes in the water that washed up over the top of the raft, and then she said: "Well, I--I guess I like it too, now. But it felt sort of--sort of--squiggily at first." "Squiggily" was a word Flossie and Freddie sometimes used when they didn't know else to say. The little girl moved over to the middle of the raft and Freddie began to push it out from shore. The rain-water pond was quite a large one, and was deep in places, but the children did not know this. When they were both in the center of the raft the water came only a little way over their feet. Indeed there were so many boards, planks and rails in the make-believe steamboat that it would easily have held more than the two smaller Bobbsey twins. For there was a double set of twins, as I shall very soon tell you. "Isn't this nice?" asked Freddie, as he pushed the pretend boat farther out toward the middle of the pond. "Awful nice--I like it," said Flossie. "I'm glad I helped you make this raft." "It's a steamboat," said Freddie. "It isn't a raft." "Well, steamboat, then," agreed Flossie. Then she suddenly went: "Toot! Toot!" "Here! what you blowin' the whistle now for?" asked Freddie. "We don't want to stop here, right in the middle of the ocean." "I--I was only just trying my whistle to see if it would toot," explained the little girl. "I don't want to stop now." Flossie walked around the middle of the raft, making the water splash with her bare feet, and Freddie kept on pushing it farther and farther from shore. Yet Flossie was not afraid. Perhaps she felt that Freddie would take care of her. The little Bobbsey twins were having lots of fun, pretending they were on a steamboat, when they heard some one shouting to them from the shore. "Hi there! Come and get us!" someone was calling to them. "Who is it?" asked Freddie. "It's Bert; and Nan is with him," answered Flossie, as she saw a larger boy and girl standing on the bank, near the tree under which she had left her doll. "I guess they want a ride. Is the raft big enough for them too, Freddie?" "Yes, I guess so," he answered. "You stop the steamboat, Flossie--and stop calling it a raft--and I'll go back and get them. We'll pretend they're passengers. Stop the boat!" "How can I stop the boat?" the little girl demanded. "Toot the whistle! Toot the whistle!" answered her brother. "Don't you 'member, Flossie Bobbsey?" "Oh," said Flossie. Then she went on: "Toot! Toot!" "Toot! Toot!" answered Freddie. He began pushing the other way on the pole and the raft started back toward the shore they had left. "What are you doing?" asked Bert Bobbsey, as the mass of boards and rails came closer to him. "What are you two playing?" "Steamboat," Freddie answered. "If you want us to stop for you, why, you've got to toot." "Toot what?" asked Bert. "Toot your whistle," Freddie replied. "This is a regular steamboat. Toot if you want me to stop." He kept on pushing with the pole until Bert, with a laugh, made the tooting sound as Flossie had done. Then Freddie let the raft stop near his older brother and sister. "Oh, Bert!" exclaimed Nan Bobbsey, "are you going to get on?" "Sure I am," he answered, as he began taking off his shoes and stockings. "It's big enough for the four of us. Where'd you get it, Freddie?" "It was partly made--I guess some of the boys from town must have started it. Flossie and I put more boards and rails on it, and we're having a ride." "I should say you were!" laughed Nan. "Come on," said Bert to his older sister, as he tossed his shoes over to where Flossie's and Freddie's were set on a flat stone. "I'll help you push, Freddie." Nan, who, like Bert, had dark hair and brown eyes, began to take off her shoes and stockings, and soon all four of them were on the raft--or steamboat, as Freddie called it. Now you have met the two sets of the Bobbsey twins--two pairs of them as it were. Flossie and Freddie, the light-haired and blue-eyed ones, were the younger set, and Bert and Nan, whose hair was a dark brown, matching their eyes, were the older. "This is a dandy raft--I mean steamboat," said Bert, quickly changing the word as he saw Freddie looking at him. "It holds the four of us easy." Indeed the mass of boards, planks and rails from the fence did not sink very deep in the water even with all the Bobbsey twins on it. Of course, if they had worn shoes and stockings they would have been wet, for now the water came up over the ankles of all of them. But it was a warm summer day, and going barefoot especially while wading in the pond, was fun. Bert and Freddie pushed the raft about with long poles, and Flossie and Nan stood together in the middle watching the boys and making believe they were passengers taking a voyage across the ocean. Back and forth across the pond went the raft-steamboat when, all of a sudden, it stopped with a jerk in the middle of the stretch of water. "Oh!" cried Flossie, catching hold of Nan to keep herself from falling. "Oh, what's the matter?" "Are we sinking?" asked Nan. "No, we're only stuck in the mud," Bert answered. "You just stay there, Flossie and Nan, and you, too, Freddie, and I'll jump off and push the boat out of the mud. It's just stuck, that's all." "Oh, don't jump in--it's deep!" cried Nan. But she was too late. Bert, quickly rolling his trousers up as far as they would go, had leaped off the raft, making a big splash of water. CHAPTER II TO THE RESCUE "Bert! Bert! You'll be drowned!" cried Flossie, as she clung to Nan in the middle of the raft. "Come back, you'll be drowned!" "Oh, I'm all right," Bert answered, for he felt himself quite a big boy beside Freddie. "Are you sure, Bert, it isn't too deep?" asked Nan. "Look! It doesn't come up to my knees, hardly," Bert said, as he waded around to the side of the raft, having jumped off one end to give it a push to get it loose from the bank of mud on which it had run aground. And, really, the water was not very deep where Bert had leaped in. Some water had splashed on his short trousers, but he did not mind that, as they were the old ones his mother made him put on in which to play. "Maybe we can get loose without your pushing us," said Freddie, as he moved about on the raft, tilting it a little, first this way and then the other. Once before that day, when on the "boat" alone, it had become stuck on a hidden bank of mud, and the little twin had managed to get it loose himself. "No, I guess it's stuck fast," Bert said, as he pushed on the mass of boards without being able to send them adrift. "I'll have to shove good and hard, and maybe you'll have to get in here and help me, Freddie." "Oh, yes, I can do that!" the little fellow said. "I'll come and help you now, Bert." "No, you mustn't," ordered Nan, who felt that she had to be a little mother to the smaller twins. "Don't go!" "Why not?" Freddie wanted to know. "Because it's too deep for you," answered Nan. "The water is only up to Bert's knees, but it will be over yours, and you'll get your clothes all wet. You stay here!" "But I want to help Bert push the steamboat loose!" "I guess I can do it alone," Bert said. "Wait until I get around to the front end. I'll push it off backward." He waded around the raft, which it really was, though the Bobbsey twins pretended it was a steamboat, and then, reaching the front, or what would be the bow if the raft had really been a boat, Bert got ready to push. "Push, Bert!" yelled Freddie. But a strange thing happened. Suddenly a queer look came over Bert's face. He made a quick grab for the side of the raft and then he sank down so that the water came over his knees, wetting his trousers. "Oh, Bert! what's the matter?" cried Nan. "I--I'm sinking in the mud!" gasped Bert. "Oh, I can't get my feet loose! I'm stuck! Maybe I'm in a quicksand and I'll never get loose! Holler for somebody! Holler loud!" And the other three Bobbsey twins "hollered," as loudly as they could. "Mother! Mother!" cried Nan. "Come and get Bert!" added Freddie. "Oh, Dinah! Dinah!" screamed Flossie, for the fat, good-natured colored cook had so often rescued Flossie that the little girl thought she would be the very best person, now, to come to Bert's aid. "Oh, I'm sinking away down deep!" cried the brown-eyed boy, as he tried to lift first one foot and then the other. But they were both stuck in the mud under the water, and Bert, afraid of sinking so deep that he would never get out, clung to the side of the raft with all his might. "Oh, you're making us sink. You're making us sink!" screamed Nan. Indeed, the raft was tipping to one side and the other children had all they could do to keep from sliding into the pond. "Oh, somebody come and help me!" called Bert. And then a welcome voice answered: "I'm coming! I'm coming!" So, while some one is coming to the rescue, I will take just a few moments to tell my new readers something about the children who are to have adventures in this story. Those of you who have read the other books of the series will remember that in the first volume, called "The Bobbsey Twins," I told you of Flossie and Freddie, and Bert and Nan Bobbsey, who lived with their father and mother in the eastern city of Lakeport, near Lake Metoka. Mr. Richard Bobbsey owned a large lumberyard, where the children were wont often to play. As I have mentioned, Flossie and Freddie, with their light hair and blue eyes, were one set of twins--the younger--while Nan and Bert, who were just the opposite, being dark, were the older twins. The children had many good times, about some of which I have told you in the first book. Dinah Johnson, the fat, jolly cook, always saw to it that the twins had plenty to eat, and her husband, Sam, who worked about the place, made many a toy for the children, or mended those they broke. Almost as a part of the family, as it were, I might mention Snap, the trick dog, and Snoop, the cat. The children were very fond of these pets. After having had much fun, as related in my first book, the Bobbsey twins went to the country, where Uncle Daniel Bobbsey had a big farm at Meadow Brook. Later, as you will find in the third volume, they went to visit Uncle William Minturn at the seashore. Of course, along with their good times, the children had to go to school, and you will find one of the books telling what they did there, and the fun they had. From school the Bobbsey twins went to Snow Lodge, and then they spent some time on a houseboat and later again went to Meadow Brook for a jolly stay in the woods and fields near the farm. "And now suppose we stay at home for a while," Mr. Bobbsey had said, after coming back from Meadow Brook. At first the twins thought they wouldn't like this very much, but they did, and they had as much fun and almost as many adventures as before. After that they spent some time in a great city and then they got ready for some wonderful adventures on Blueberry Island. Those adventures you will find told about in the book just before this one you are now reading. The twins spent the summer on the island, and many things happened to them, to their goat and dog, and to a queer boy. Freddie lost some of his "go-around" bugs, and there is something in the book about a cave,--but I know you would rather read it for yourself than have me tell you here. Now to get back to the children on the raft, or rather, to Flossie, Freddie and Nan, who are on that, while Bert is in the water, and stuck in the mud. "Oh, come quick! Come quick!" he cried. "I can't get loose!" "I'm coming!" answered the voice, and it was that of Mrs. Bobbsey. She had been in the kitchen, telling Dinah what to get for dinner, when she heard the children shouting from down in the meadow, where the big pond of rain water was. "I hope none of them has fallen in!" said Mrs. Bobbsey as she ran out of the door, after hearing Bert's shout. "Good land ob massy! I hopes so mahse'f!" gasped fat Dinah, and she, too, started for the pond. But, as she was very fat, she could not run as fast as could Mrs. Bobbsey. "I 'clar' to goodness I hopes none ob 'em has falled in de watah!" murmured Dinah. "Dat's whut I hopes!" Mrs. Bobbsey reached the edge of the pond. She saw three of the twins on the raft. For the moment she could not see Bert. "Where is Bert?" she cried. "Here I am, Mother!" he answered. Then Mrs. Bobbsey saw him standing in the water, which was now well over his knees. He was holding to the edge of the raft. "Oh, Bert Bobbsey!" his mother called. "What are you doing there? Come right out this instant! Why, you are all wet! Oh, my dear!" "I can't come out, Mother," said Bert, who was not so frightened, now that he saw help at hand. "You can't come out? Why not?" "'Cause I'm stuck in the mud--or maybe it's quicksand. I'm sinking in the quicksand. Or I would sink if I didn't keep hold of the raft. I dassn't let go!" "Oh, my!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "What shall I do?" "Can't you pull him out?" asked Nan. "We tried, but we can't." They had done this--she and Flossie and Freddie. But Bert's feet were too tightly held in the sticky mud, or whatever it was underneath the water. "Wait! I'll come and get you," said Mrs. Bobbsey. She was just about to wade out to get Bert, shoes, skirts and all, when along came puffing, fat Dinah, and, just ahead of her, her husband, Sam. "What's the mattah, Mrs. Bobbsey?" asked the colored man, who did odd jobs around the Bobbsey home. "It's Bert! He's fast in the mud!" answered Mrs. Bobbsey. "Oh, Sam, please hurry and get him out!" "Yas'am, I'll do dat!" cried Sam. He did not seem to be frightened. Perhaps he knew that the pond was not very deep where Bert was, and that the boy could not sink down much farther. Sam had been washing the automobile with the hose, and when he did this he always wore his rubber boots. He had them on now, and so he could easily wade out into the pond without getting wet. So out Sam waded, half running in fact, and splashing the water all about. But he did not mind that. As did Dinah, he loved the Bobbsey twins--all four of them--and he did not want anything to happen to them. "Jest you stand right fast, Bert!" said the colored man. "I'll have yo' out ob dere in 'bout two jerks ob a lamb's tail! Dat's what I will!" Bert did not know just how long it took to jerk a lamb's tail twice, even if a lamb had been there. But it did not take Sam very long to reach the small boy. "Now den, heah we go!" cried Sam. Standing beside the raft, the colored man put his arms around Bert and lifted him. Or rather, he tried to lift him, for the truth of the matter was that Bert was stuck deeper in the mud than any one knew. "Now, heah we go, _suah!_" cried Sam, as he took a tighter hold and lifted harder. And then with a jerk, Bert came loose and up out of the water he was lifted, his feet and legs dripping with black mud, some of which splashed on Sam and on the other twins. "Oh, what a sight you are!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "Oh, but good land of massy! Ain't yo' all thankful he ain't all _drown?_" asked Dinah. "Indeed I am," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Come on away from there, all of you. Get off the raft! I'm afraid it's too dangerous to play that game. And, Bert, you must get washed! Oh, how dirty you are!" Sam carried Bert to shore, and Nan helped Freddie push the raft to the edge of the pond. And then along came Mr. Bobbsey from his lumberyard. "Well, well!" exclaimed the father of the Bobbsey twins. "What has happened?" "We had a raft," explained Freddie. "And I had to toot the whistle when I wanted it to stop," added Flossie. "We were having a nice ride," said Nan. "Yes, but what happened to Bert?" asked his father, looking at his muddy son, who truly was a "sight." "Well, the raft got stuck," Bert answered, "and I got off to push it loose. Then I got stuck. It was awful sticky mud. I didn't know there was any so sticky in the whole world! First I thought it was quicksand. But I held on and then Sam came and got me out. I--I guess I got my pants a little muddy," he said. "I guess you did," agreed his father, and his eyes twinkled as they always did when he wanted to laugh but did not feel that it would be just the right thing to do. "You are wet and muddy. But get up to the house and put on dry things. Then I have something to tell you." "Something to tell us?" echoed Nan. "Oh, Daddy! are we going away again?" "Well, I'm not sure about that part--yet," replied Mr. Bobbsey. "But I have strange news for you." CHAPTER III STRANGE NEWS Bert and Nan Bobbsey looked at one another. They were a little older than Flossie and Freddie, and they saw that something must have happened to make their father come home from the lumber office so early, for on most days he did not come until dinner time. And here it was scarcely eleven o'clock yet, and Dinah was only getting ready to cook the dinner. "Is it bad news?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey of her husband. "Well, part of it is bad," he said. "But no one is hurt, or killed or anything like that." "Tell us now!" begged Bert. "Tell us the strange news, Daddy!" "Oh, I couldn't think of it while you look the way you do," said Mr. Bobbsey. "First get washed nice and clean, and put on dry clothes. Then you'll be ready for the news." "I'll hurry," promised Bert, as he ran toward the house, followed by Snap, the trick dog that had once been in a circus. Snap had come out of the barn, where he stayed a good part of the time. He wanted to see what all the noise was about when Bert had called as he found himself stuck in the mud. "Are you sure no one is hurt?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey of her husband. "Are Uncle Daniel and Aunt Sarah all right?" "Oh, yes, of course." "And Uncle William and Aunt Emily?" "Yes, they're all right, too. My news is about my cousin, Jasper Dent. You don't know him very well; but I did, when I was a boy," went on Mr Bobbsey. "There is a little bad news about him. He has been hurt and is now ill in a hospital, but he is getting well." "And is the strange news about him?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, as she walked on, with Flossie, Freddie and Nan following. "Yes, about Cousin Jasper," replied Mr. Bobbsey. "But don't get worried, even if we should have to go on a voyage." "On a voyage?" cried Mrs. Bobbsey in surprise. "Yes," and Mr. Bobbsey smiled. "Do you mean in a real ship, like we played our raft was?" asked Freddie. "Yes, my little fireman!" laughed Mr. Bobbsey, catching the little bare-footed boy up in his arms. Often Freddie was called little "fireman," for he had a toy fire engine, and he was very fond of squirting water through the hose fastened to it--a real hose that sprinkled real water. Freddie was very fond of playing he was a fireman. "And will the ship go on the ocean?" asked Flossie. "Yes, my little fat fairy!" her father replied, as he caught her up and kissed her in turn. "If your mother thinks we ought to, after I tell the strange news about Cousin Jasper, we may all take a trip on the deep blue sea." "Oh, what fun!" cried Freddie. "I hope we can go soon," murmured Nan. "But Bert mustn't get off the ship to push it; must he, Daddy?" asked Flossie. "No, indeed!" laughed her father, as he set her down in the grass. "If he does the water will come up more than above his knees. But now please don't ask me any more questions until I can sit down after dinner and tell you the whole story." The children thought the dinner never would be finished, and Bert, who had put on dry clothes, tried to hurry through with his food. "Bert, my dear, you must not eat so fast," remonstrated his mother, as she saw him hurrying. "Bert is eating like a regular steam engine," came from Flossie. At this Nan burst out laughing. "Flossie, did you ever see an engine eat?" she asked. "Well, I don't care! You know what I mean," returned the little girl. "Course engines eat!" cried Freddie. "Don't they eat piles of coal?" he went on triumphantly. "Well, not an auto engine," said Nan. "Yes, that eats up gasolene," said Bert. But they were all in a hurry to listen to what their father might have to say, and so wasted no further time in argument. And when the rice pudding was brought in Nan said: "Dinner is over now, Daddy, for this is the dessert, and when you're in a hurry to go back to the office you don't wait for that. So can't we hear the strange news now?" "Yes, I guess so," answered her father, and he drew from his pocket a letter. "This came this morning," he said, "and I thought it best to come right home and tell you about it," he said to his wife. "The letter is from my Cousin Jasper. When we were boys we lived in the same town. Jasper was always fond of the ocean, and often said, when he grew up, he would make a long voyage." "Freddie and I were having a voyage on a raft to-day," said Flossie. "And we had fun until Bert fell in." "I didn't fall in--I jumped in and I got stuck in the mud," put in Bert. "Don't interrupt, dears, if you want to hear Daddy's news," said Mrs. Bobbsey, and her husband, after looking at the letter, as if to make sure about what he was talking, went on. "Cousin Jasper Dent did become a sailor, when he grew up. But he sailed more on steamboats than on ships with sails that have to be blown by the wind. Many things happened to him, so he has told me in letters that he has written, for I have not seen him very often, of late years. And now the strangest of all has happened, so he tells me here." "What is it?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Well, he has been shipwrecked, for one thing." "And was he cast away on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe?" asked Bert, who was old enough to read that wonderful book. "Well, that's what I don't know," went on Mr. Bobbsey. "Cousin Jasper does not write all that happened to him. He says he has been shipwrecked and has had many adventures, and he wants me to come to him so that he may tell me more." "Where is he?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "In a hospital in St. Augustine, Florida," was the answer. "Oh, Florida!" exclaimed Flossie. "That's where the cocoanuts grow; isn't it, Daddy?" "Well, maybe a few grow there, but I guess you are thinking of oranges," her father answered with a smile. "Lots of oranges grow in Florida." "And are we going there?" asked Bert. "That's what I want to talk to your mother about," went on Mr. Bobbsey. "Cousin Jasper doesn't say just what happened to him, nor why he is so anxious to see me. But he wants me to come down to Florida to see him." "It would be a nice trip if we could go, and take the children," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Though, I suppose, this is hardly the time of year to go to such a place." "Oh, it is always nice in Florida," her husband said, "though of course when it is winter here it seems nicer there because it is so warm, and the flowers are in blossom." "And do the oranges grow then?" asked Freddie. "I guess so," his father said. "At any rate it is now early spring here, and even in Florida, where it is warmer than it is up North where we live, I think it will not be too hot for us. Besides, I don't believe Cousin Jasper intends to stay in Florida, or have us stay there." "Why not?" Mrs. Bobbsey asked. "Well, in his letter he says, after he has told me the strange news, he hopes I will go on a voyage with him to search for some one who is lost." "Some one lost!" replied Nan. "What does he mean, Daddy?" "That's what I don't know. I guess Cousin Jasper was too ill to write all he wanted to, and he would rather see me and tell me. So I came to ask if you would like to go to Florida," and Mr. Bobbsey looked at his wife and smiled. "Oh, yes! Let's go!" begged Bert. "And pick oranges!" added Flossie. "Please say you'll go, Mother!" cried Nan. "Please do!" "I want to go in big steamboat!" fairly shouted Freddie. "And I'll take my fire engine with me and put out the fire!" "Oh, children dear, do be quiet one little minute and let me think," begged Mrs. Bobbsey. "Let me see the letter, dear," she said to her husband. Mr. Bobbsey handed his wife the sheets of paper, and she read them carefully. "Well, they don't tell very much," she said as she folded them and handed them back. "Still your cousin does say something strange happened when he was shipwrecked, wherever that was. I think you had better go and see him, if you can leave the lumberyard, Dick." "Oh, yes, the lumber business will be all right," said Mr. Bobbsey, whom his wife called Dick. "And would you like to go with me?" he asked his wife. "And take the children?" "Yes, we could take them. A sail on the ocean would do them good, I think. They have been shut up pretty much all winter." "Will we go on a sailboat?" asked Bert. "No, I hardly think so. They are too slow. If we go we will, very likely, go on a steamer," Mr. Bobbsey said. "Oh, goody!" cried Freddie, while Mrs. Bobbsey smiled her consent. "Well, then, I'll call it settled," went on the twins' father, "and I'll write Cousin Jasper that we're coming to hear his strange news, though why he couldn't put it in his letter I can't see. But maybe he had a good reason. Now I'll go back to the office and see about getting ready for a trip on the deep, blue sea. And I wonder----" Just then, out in the yard, a loud noise sounded. Snap, the big dog, could be heard barking, and a child's voice cried: "No, you can't have it! You can't have it! Oh, Nan! Bert! Make your dog go 'way!" Mr. Bobbsey, pushing back his chair so hard that it fell over, rushed from the room. CHAPTER IV GETTING READY "Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey, "I wonder what has happened now!" "Maybe Snap is barking at a tramp," suggested Bert. "I'll go and see." "It can't be a tramp!" Nan spoke with scorn. "That sounded like a little girl crying." "It surely did," Mrs. Bobbsey said. "Wait a minute, Bert. Don't go out just yet." "But I want to see what it is, Mother!" and Bert paused, half way to the door, out of which Mr. Bobbsey had hurried a few seconds before. "Your father will do whatever needs to be done," said Bert's mother. "Perhaps it may be a strange dog, fighting with Snap, and you might get bitten." "Snap wouldn't bite me." "Nor me!" put in Nan. "No, but the strange dog might. Wait a minute." Flossie and Freddie had also started to leave the room to go out into the yard and see what was going on, but when they heard their mother speak about a strange dog they went back to their chairs by the table. Then, from the yard, came cries of: "Make him give her back to me, Mr. Bobbsey! Please make Snap give her back to me!" "Oh, that's Helen Porter!" cried Nan, as she heard the voice of a child. "It's Helen, and Snap must have taken something she had." "I see!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, looking out the door. "It's Helen's doll. Snap has it in his mouth and he's running with it down to the end of the yard." "Has Snap really got Helen's doll?" asked Flossie. "Yes," answered her mother. "Though why he took it I don't know." "Well, if it's only Snap, and no other dog is there, can't I go out and see?" asked Bert. "Snap won't hurt me." "No, I don't believe he will," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Yes, you may all go out. I hope Snap hasn't hurt Helen." Helen Porter was a little girl who lived next door to the Bobbsey twins, and those of you who have the book about camping on Blueberry Island will remember her as the child who, at first, was thought to have been taken away by the Gypsies. "Oh, Helen! What is the matter, my dear?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, as she hurried out into the yard, followed by Bert, Nan, Flossie and Freddie. "Did Snap bite you?" asked Nan, looking toward her father, who was running after the dog that was carrying the little girl's doll in his mouth. "No, Snap didn't bite me! But he bit my doll!" Helen answered. "It doesn't hurt dolls to bite 'em," said Bert, with a laugh. "It does so!" cried Helen, turning her tear-filled eyes on him. "It makes all their sawdust come out!" "So it does, my dear," said Mrs. Bobbsey kindly. "But we'll hope that Snap won't bite your doll as hard as that. If he does I'll sew up the holes to keep the sawdust in. But how did he come to do it?" "I--I guess maybe he liked the cookie my doll had," explained Helen, who was about as old as Flossie. "Did your doll have a cookie?" asked Nan. "Yes. I was playing she was a rich lady doll," went on the little girl from next door, "and she was taking a basket of cookies to a poor doll lady. Course I didn't have a whole basket of cookies," explained Helen. "I had only one, but I made believe it was a whole basket full." "How did you give it to your doll to carry?" asked Nan, for she had often played games this way herself, making believe different things. "How did your doll carry the cookie, Helen?" "She didn't carry it," was the answer. "I tied it to her with a piece of string so she wouldn't lose it. The cookie was tied fast around her waist." "Oh, then I see what happened," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Snap came up to you, and he smelled the cookie on your doll; didn't he?" "Yes'm," answered Helen. "And he must have thought you meant the cookie for him," went on Nan's mother. "And he tried to take it in his mouth; didn't he?" "Yes'm," Helen answered again. "And when he couldn't get the cookie loose, because you had it tied fast to your doll, he took the cookie, doll and all. That's how it was," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Never mind, Helen. Don't cry. Here comes Mr. Bobbsey now, with your doll." "But I guess Snap has the cookie," said Bert with a laugh. "I'll get you another one from Dinah," promised Nan to Helen. In the meantime Mr. Bobbsey had run down to the lower end of the yard after Snap, the big dog. "Come here, Snap, you rascal!" he cried. "Come here this minute!" But for once Snap did not mind. He was rather hungry, and perhaps that accounted for his disobedience. Instead of coming up he ran out of sight behind the little toolhouse. Mr. Bobbsey went after him, but by the time he reached the spot Snap was nowhere to be seen. "Snap! Snap!" he called out loudly. "Come here, I tell you! Where are you hiding?" Of course, the dog could not answer the question that had been put to him, and neither did he show himself. That is, not at first. But presently, as Mr. Bobbsey looked first in one corner of the toolhouse and then in another, he saw the tip end of Snap's tail waving slightly from behind a big barrel. "Ah, so there you are!" he called out, and then pushed the barrel to one side. There was Snap, and in front of him lay the doll with a short string attached to it. Whatever had been tied to the other end of the string was now missing. "Snap, you're getting to be a bad dog!" said Mr. Bobbsey sternly. "Give me that doll this instant!" The dog made no movement to keep the doll, but simply licked his mouth with his long, red tongue, as if he was still enjoying what he had eaten. "If you don't behave yourself after this I'll have to tie you up, Snap," warned Mr. Bobbsey. And then, acting as if he knew he had done wrong, the big dog slunk out of sight. "Here you are, Helen!" called Flossie's father, as he came back. "Here's your doll, all right, and she isn't hurt a bit. But the cookie is inside of Snap." "Did he like it?" Helen wanted to know. "He seemed to--very much," answered Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh. "He made about two bites of it, after he got it loose from the string by which you had tied it to the doll." Helen dried her tears on the backs of her hands, and took the doll which had been carried away by the dog. There were a few cookie crumbs sticking to her dress, and that was all that was left of the treat she had been taking to a make-believe poor lady. "Snap, what made you act so to Helen?" asked Bert, shaking his finger at his pet, when the dog came up from the end of the yard, wagging his tail. "Don't you know you were bad?" Snap did not seem to know anything of the kind. He kept on wagging his tail, and sniffed around Helen and her doll. "He's smelling to see if I've any more cookies," said the little girl. "I guess he is," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Well, come into the house, Helen, and I'll give you another cookie if you want it. But you had better not tie it to your doll, and go anywhere near Snap." "I will eat it myself," said the little girl. "One cookie a day is enough for Snap, anyhow," said Bert. The dog himself did not seem to think so, for he followed the children and Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey back to the house, as though hoping he would get another cake. "Heah's a bone fo' yo'," said Dinah to Snap, for she liked the big dog, and he liked her, I think, for he was in the kitchen as often as Dinah would allow him. Or perhaps it was the good things that the fat cook gave him which Snap liked. "When we heard you crying, out in the yard," said Mr. Bobbsey to Helen, as they were sitting in the dining-room, "we didn't know what had happened." "We were afraid it was another dog fighting with Snap," went on Nan. "Snap didn't fight me," Helen said. "But he scared me just like I was scared when the gypsy man took Mollie, my talking doll." I have told you about this in the Blueberry Island book, you remember. "Well, I must get back to the office," said Mr. Bobbsey, after a while. "From there I'll write and tell Cousin Jasper that I'll come to see him, and hear his strange story." "And we'll come too," added Bert with a laugh. "Don't forget us, Daddy." "I'll not," promised Mr. Bobbsey. The letter was sent to Mr. Dent, who was still in the hospital, and in a few days a letter came back, asking Mr. Bobbsey to come as soon as he could. "Bring the children, too," wrote Cousin Jasper. "They'll like it here, and if you will take a trip on the ocean with me they may like to come, also." "Does Cousin Jasper live on the ocean?" asked Flossie, for she called Mr. Dent "cousin" as she heard her father and mother do, though, really, he was her second, or first cousin once removed. "Well, he doesn't exactly live on the ocean," said Mr. Bobbsey. "But he lives near it, and he often takes trips in boats, I think. He once told me he had a large motor boat." "What's a motor boat?" Freddie wanted to know. "It is one that has a motor in it, like a motor in an automobile, instead of a steam engine," said Mr. Bobbsey. "Big boats and ships, except those that sail, are moved by steam engines. But a motor boat has a gasolene motor, or engine, in it." "And are we going to ride in one?" asked Flossie. "Well, we'll see what Cousin Jasper wants us to do, and hear what his strange news is," answered her father. "Are we going from here to Florida in a motor boat?" Freddie demanded. "Well, not exactly, little fireman," his father replied with a laugh. "We'll go from here to New York in a train, and from New York to Florida in a steamboat. "After that we'll see what Cousin Jasper wants us to do. Maybe he will have another boat ready to take us on a nice voyage." "That'll be fun!" cried Freddie. "I hope we see a whale." "Well, I hope it doesn't bump into us," said Flossie. "Whales are awful big, aren't they, Daddy?" "Yes, they are quite large. But I hardly think we shall see any between here and Florida, though once in a while whales are sighted along the coast." "Are there any sharks?" Bert asked. "Oh, yes, there are plenty of sharks, some large and some small," his father answered. "But they can't hurt us, and the ship will steam right on past them in the ocean," he added, seeing that Flossie and Freddie looked a bit frightened when Bert spoke of the sharks. "I wonder what Cousin Jasper really wants of you," said Mrs. Bobbsey to her husband, when the children had gone out to play. "I don't know," he answered, "but we shall hear in a few days. We'll start for Florida next week." And then the Bobbsey twins and their parents got ready for the trip. They were to have many strange adventures before they saw their home again. CHAPTER V OFF FOR FLORIDA There were many matters to be attended to at the Bobbsey home before the start could be made for Florida. Mr. Bobbsey had to leave some one in charge of his lumber business, and Mrs. Bobbsey had to plan for shutting up the house while the family were away. Sam and Dinah would go on a vacation while the others were in Florida, they said, and the pet animals, Snap and Snoop, would be taken care of by kind neighbors. "What are you doing, Freddie?" his mother asked him one day, when she heard him and Flossie hurrying about in the playroom, while Mrs. Bobbsey was sorting over clothes to take on the trip. "Oh, we're getting out some things we want to take," the little boy answered. "Our playthings, you know." "Can I take two of my dolls?" Flossie asked. "I think one will be enough," her mother said. "We can't carry much baggage, and if we go out on the deep blue sea in a motor boat we shall have very little room for any toys. Take only one doll, Flossie, and let that be a small one." "All right," Flossie answered. Mrs. Bobbsey paid little attention to the small twins for a while as she and Nan were busy packing. Bert had gone down to the lumberyard office on an errand for his father. Pretty soon there arose a cry in the playroom. "Mother, make Freddie stop!" exclaimed Flossie. "What are you doing, Freddie?" his mother called. "I'm not doing anything," he answered, as he often did when Flossie and he were having some little trouble. "He is too doing something!" Flossie went on. "He splashed a whole lot of water on my doll." "Well, it's a rubber doll and water won't hurt," Freddie answered. "Anyhow I didn't mean to." "There! He's doing it again!" cried Flossie. "Make him stop, Mother!" "Freddie, what _are_ you doing?" demanded Mrs. Bobbsey. "Nan," she went on in a lower voice, "you go and peep in. Perhaps Flossie is just too fussy." Before Nan could reach the playroom, which was down the hall from the room where Mrs. Bobbsey was sorting over the clothes in a large closet, Flossie cried again: "There! Now you got me all over wet!" "Oh, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, laying aside a pile of garments. "I suppose I'll have to go and see what they are doing!" Before she could reach the playroom, however, Nan came back along the hall. She was laughing, but trying to keep quiet about it, so Flossie and Freddie would not hear her. "What is it?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "What are they doing?" "Freddie is playing with his toy fire engine," Nan said. "And he must have squirted some water on Flossie, for she is wet." "Much?" "No, only a little." "Well, he mustn't do it," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "I guess they are so excited about going to Florida that they really don't know what they are doing." Mrs. Bobbsey peered into the room where the two smaller twins had gone to play. Flossie was trying different dresses on a small rubber doll she had picked out to take with her. On the other side of the room was Freddie with his toy fire engine. It was one that could be wound up, and it had a small pump and a little hose that spurted out real water when a tank on the engine was filled. Freddie was very fond of playing fireman. "There, he's doing it again!" cried Flossie, just as her mother came in. "He's getting me all wet! Mother, make him stop!" Mrs. Bobbsey was just in time to see Freddie start his toy fire engine, and a little spray of water did shower over his twin sister. "Freddie, stop it!" cried his mother. "You know you mustn't do that!" "I can't help it," Freddie said. "Nonsense! You can't help it? Of course you can help squirting water on your sister!" "He can so!" pouted Flossie. "No, Mother! I can't, honest," said Freddie. "The hose of my fire engine leaks, and that makes the water squirt out on Flossie. I didn't mean to do it. I'm playing there's a big fire and I have to put it out. And the hose busts--just like it does at real fires--and everybody gets all wet. I didn't do it on purpose!" "Oh, I thought you did," said Flossie. "Well, if it's just make believe I don't mind. You can splash me some more, Freddie." "Oh, no he mustn't!" said Mrs. Bobbsey, trying not to laugh, though she wanted to very much. "It's all right to make believe you are putting out a fire, Freddie boy, but, after all, the water is really wet and Flossie is damp enough now. If you want to play you must fix your leaky hose." "All right, Mother, I will," promised the little boy. One corner of the room was his own special place to play with the toy fire engine. A piece of oil cloth had been spread down so water would not harm anything, and here Freddie had many good times. There really was a hole in the little rubber hose of his engine, and the water did come out where it was not supposed to. That was what made Flossie get wet, but it was not much. "And, anyhow, it didn't hurt her rubber doll," said Freddie. "No, she likes it," Flossie said. "And I like it too, Freddie, if it's only make believe fun." "Well, don't do it any more," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "You'll soon have water enough all around you, when you sail on the blue sea, and that ought to satisfy you. Mend the hole in your fire engine hose, Freddie dear." "All right, Mother," he answered. "Anyhow, I guess I'll play something else now. Toot! Toot! The fire's out!" he called, and Mrs. Bobbsey was glad of it. Freddie put away his engine, which he and Flossie had to do with all their toys when they were done playing with them, and then ran out to find Snap, the dog with which he wanted to have a race up and down the yard, throwing sticks for his pet to bring back to him. Flossie took her rubber doll and went over to Helen Porter's house, while Nan and Mrs. Bobbsey went back to the big closet to sort over the clothes, some of which would be taken on the Florida trip with them. "I'm going to take my fire engine with me," Freddie said, when he had come in after having had fun with Snap. "Do you mean on the ship?" asked Nan. "Yes; I'm going to take my little engine on the ship with me. But first I'm going to have the hose mended." "You won't need a fire engine on a ship," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Oh, I might," answered Freddie. "Sometimes ships get on fire, and you've got to put the fire out. I'll take it all right." "Well, we'll hope our ship doesn't catch fire," remarked his mother. When Mr. Bobbsey came home to supper that evening, and heard what had happened, he said there would be no room for Freddie's toy engine on the ship. [Illustration: THEY WENT ON BOARD THE SHIP.] "The trip we are going to take isn't like going to Meadow Brook, or to Uncle William's seashore home," said the father of the Bobbsey twins. "We can't take all the trunks and bags we would like to, for we shall have to stay in two small cabins, or staterooms, on the ship. And perhaps we shall have even less room when we get on the boat with Cousin Jasper--if we go on a boat. So we can't take fire engines and things like that." "But s'posin' the ship gets on fire?" asked Freddie. "We hope it won't," said Mr. Bobbsey. "But, if it does, there are pumps and engines already on board. They won't need yours, Freddie boy, though it is very nice of you to think of taking it." "Can't I take any toys?" "I think you won't really need them," his father said. "Once we get out on the ocean there will be so much to see that you will have enough to do without playing with the toys you use here at home. Leave everything here, I say. If you want toys we can get them in Florida, and perhaps such different ones that you will like them even better than your old ones." "Could I take my little rubber doll?" asked Flossie. "Yes, I think you might do that," her father said, with a smile at the little girl. "You can squeeze your rubber doll up smaller, if she takes up too much room." So it was arranged that way. At first Freddie felt sad about leaving his toy fire engine at home, but his father told him perhaps he might catch a fish at sea, and then Freddie began saving all the string he could find out of which to make a fish line. Finally the last trunk and valise had been packed. The railroad and steamship tickets had been bought, Sam and Dinah got ready to go and stay with friends, Snap and Snoop were sent away--not without a rather tearful parting on the part of Flossie and Freddie--and then the Bobbsey family was ready to start for Florida. They were to go to New York by train, and as nothing much happened during that part of the journey I will skip over it. I might say, though, that Freddie took from his pocket a ball of string, which he was going to use for his fishing, and the string fell into the aisle of the car. Then the conductor came along and his feet got tangled in the cord, dragging the ball boundingly after him halfway down the coach. "Hello! What's this?" the conductor cried, in surprise. "Oh, that's my fish line!" answered Freddie. "Well, you've caught something before you reached the sea," said the ticket-taker as he untangled the string from his feet, and all the other passengers laughed. After a pleasant ride the Bobbsey twins reached New York, and, after spending a night in a hotel, and going to a moving picture show, they went on board the ship the next morning. The ship was to take them down the coast to Florida, where Cousin Jasper was ill in a hospital, though Mr. Bobbsey had had a letter, just before leaving home, in which Mr. Dent said he was feeling much better. "All aboard! All aboard!" called an officer on the ship, when the Bobbseys had left their baggage in the stateroom where they were to stay during the trip. "All ashore that's going ashore!" "That means every one must get off who isn't going to Florida," said Bert, who had been on a ship once before with his father. Bells jingled, whistles blew, people hurried up and down the gangplank, or bridge from the dock to the boat, and at last the ship began to move. Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were waving good-bye to friends on the pier, and Nan and Bert were looking at the big buildings of New York, when Mrs. Bobbsey turned, putting away the handkerchief she had been waving, and asked: "Where are Flossie and Freddie?" "Aren't they here?" asked Mr. Bobbsey quickly. "No," answered his wife. "Oh, where are they?" The two little Bobbsey twins were not in sight. CHAPTER VI IN A PIPE There was so much going on with the sailing of the ship--so many passengers hurrying to and fro, calling and waving good-bye, so much noise made by the jingling bells and the tooting whistles--that Mrs. Bobbsey could hardly hear her own voice as she called: "Flossie! Freddie! Where are you?" But the little twins did not answer, nor could they be seen on deck near Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey where they stood with Bert and Nan. "They were here a minute ago," said Bert. "I saw Flossie holding up her rubber doll to show her the Woolworth Building." This, as you know, is the highest building in New York, if not in the world. "But where is Flossie now?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, and there was a worried look on her face. "Maybe she went downstairs," said Mr. Bobbsey. "And where is Freddie?" asked his mother. "I saw him getting his ball of string ready to go fishing," laughed Bert. "I told him to put it away until we got out on the ocean. Then I saw a fat man lose his hat and run after it and I didn't watch Freddie any more." "Oh, don't laugh, Bert! Where can those children be?" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "I told them not to go away, but to stay on deck near us, and now they've disappeared!" "Did they go ashore?" asked Nan. "Oh, Mother! if they did we'll have to stop the ship and go back after them!" "They didn't go ashore," said Bert. "They couldn't get there, because the gangplank was pulled in while Freddie was standing here by me, getting out his ball of string." "Then they're all right," Mr. Bobbsey said. "They are on board, and we'll soon find them. I'll ask some of the officers or the crew. The twins can't be lost." "Oh, but if they have fallen overboard!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "Don't worry," said her husband. "We'd have heard of it before this if anything like that had happened. They're all right." And so it proved. A little later Flossie and Freddie came walking along the deck hand in hand. Flossie was carrying her rubber doll, and Freddie had his ball of string, all ready to begin fishing as soon as the ship should get out of New York Harbor. "Where have you been?" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "You children have given us such a fright! Where were you?" "We went to look at a poodle dog," explained Flossie. "A lady had him in a basket," added Freddie. "What do you mean--a poodle dog in a basket?" asked Bert. Then Freddie explained, while Mr. Bobbsey went to tell the steward, or one of the officers of the ship, that the lost children had come safely back. The smaller twins had seen one of the passengers with a pet dog in a blue silk-lined basket, and they had followed her around the deck to the other side of the ship, away from their parents, to get a better look at the poodle. It was a pretty and friendly little animal, and the children had been allowed to pat it. So they forgot what their mother had said to them about not going away. "Well, don't do it again," warned Mr. Bobbsey, and Flossie and Freddie said they would not. By this time the big ship was well on her way down New York Bay toward the Statue of Liberty, which the children looked at with wondering eyes. They took their last view of the tall buildings which cluster in the lower end of the island of Manhattan, and then they felt that they were really well started on their voyage. "Oh, I hope we have lots of fun in Florida!" said Nan. "I've always wanted to go there, _always_!" "So have I," Bert said. "But maybe we won't stay in Florida long." "Why not?" his sister asked. "Because didn't father say Cousin Jasper wanted us to take a trip with him?" "So he did," replied Nan. "I wonder where he is going." "That's part of the strange news he's going to tell," said Bert. "Anyhow we'll have a good time." "And maybe we'll get shipwrecked!" exclaimed Freddie, who, with his little sister Flossie, was listening to what the older Bobbsey twins were saying. "Shipwrecked!" cried Bert. "You wouldn't want that, would you?" "Maybe. If we could live on an island like Robinson Crusoe," Freddie answered, "that would be lots of fun." "Yes, but if we had to live on an island without anything to eat and no water to drink, that wouldn't be so much fun," said Nan. "If it was an island there'd be a lot of water all around it--that's what an island is," Flossie said. "I learned it in geogogafy at school. An island has water all around it, my geogogafy says." "Yes, but at sea the water is salty and you can't drink it," Bert said. "I don't want to be shipwrecked." "Well, maybe I don't want to, either," said Freddie, after thinking about it a little. "Anyhow we'll have some fun!" "Yes," agreed Bert, "I guess I will." "Now I'm going to fish," remarked Freddie. "You won't catch anything," Bert said. "Why not?" Freddie wanted to know, as he again took the ball of string from his pocket. "'Cause we're not out at sea yet," Bert replied. "This is only the bay, and fish don't come up here on account of too many ships that scare 'em away. You'll have to wait until we get out where the water is colored blue." "Do fish like blue water?" asked Flossie. "I guess so," answered Bert. "Anyhow, I don't s'pose you can catch any fish here, Freddie." However, the little Bobbsey twin boy had his own idea about that. He had been planning to catch some fish ever since he had heard about the trip to Florida. Freddie had been to the seashore several times, on visits to Ocean Cliff, where Uncle William Minturn lived. But this was the first time the small chap had been on a big ship. He knew that fish were caught in the sea, for he had seen the men come in with boatloads of them at Ocean Cliff. And he had caught fish himself at Blueberry Island. But that, he remembered, was not in the sea. "Come on, Flossie," said Freddie, when Bert and Nan had walked away down the deck. "Come on, I'm going to do it." "Do what, Freddie?" "I'm going to catch some fish. I've got my string all untangled now." "You haven't any fishhook," observed the little girl; "and you can't catch any fish lessen you have a hook." "I can make one out of a pin, and I've got a pin," answered Freddie. "I dassen't ever have a real hook, anyhow, all alone by myself, till I get bigger. But I can catch a fish on a pin-hook." He did have a pin fastened to his coat, and this pin he now bent into the shape of a hook and stuck it through a knot in the end of the long, dangling string. "Where are you going to fish?" asked Flossie. She and her brother were on the deck not far from the two staterooms of the Bobbsey family. Mrs. Bobbsey was sitting in a steamer chair near the door of her room, where she could watch the children. "I'm going to fish right here," Freddie said, pointing to the rail at the side of the ship. "I'm going to throw my line over here, with the hook on it, just like I fish off the bridge at home." "And I'll watch you," said Flossie. Over the railing Freddie tossed his bent-pin hook and line. He thought it would reach down to the water, but he did not know how large the boat was on which he was sailing to Florida. His little ball of string unwound as the end of it dropped over the rail, but the hook did not reach the water. Even if it had, Freddie could have caught nothing. In the first place a bent pin is not the right kind of hook, and, in the second place, Freddie had no bait on the hook. Bait is something that covers a hook and makes the fish want to bite on it. Then they are caught. But Freddie did not think of this just now, and his hook had nothing on it. Neither did it reach down to the water, and Freddie didn't know that. But, as his string was dangling over the side of the ship there came a sudden tug on it, and the little boy pulled up as hard as he could. "Oh, I've caught a fish! I've caught a fish!" he cried. "Flossie, look, I've caught a fish!" Of course Flossie could not see what was on the end of her brother's line, but it was something! She could easily tell that by the way Freddie was hauling in on the string. "Oh, what have you got?" cried the little girl. "I've got a big fish!" said Freddie. "I said I'd catch a fish, and I did!" From somewhere down below came shouts and cries. "What's that?" asked Flossie. "Them's the people hollering 'cause I caught such a big fish," answered Freddie. "Look, there it is!" Something large and black appeared above the edge of the rail. "Oh! Oh!" cried Flossie. Mrs. Bobbsey, from where she was sitting in her chair, heard the cries and came running over to the children. "What are you doing, Freddie?" she asked. "Catching a fish!" he answered. "I got one and----" The black thing on the end of his line was pulled over the rail and flapped to the deck. Flossie and Freddie stared at it with wide-open eyes. Then Flossie said: "Oh, what a funny fish!" And so it was, for it wasn't a fish at all, but a woman's big black hat, with feathers on it. Freddie's bent-pin hook had caught in the hat which was being worn by a woman standing near the rail on the deck below where the Bobbsey family had their rooms. And Freddie had pulled the hat right off the woman's head. "No wonder the lady yelled!" laughed Bert when he came to see what was happening to his smaller brother and sister. "You're a great fisherman, Freddie." "Well, next time I'll catch a real fish," declared the little boy. Bert carried the woman's hat down to her, and said Freddie was sorry for having caught it in mistake for a fish. The woman laughed heartily and said no harm had been done. "But I couldn't imagine what was pulling my hat off my head," she told her friends. "First I thought it was one of the seagulls." Freddie wound up his string, and said he would not fish any more until he could see where his hook went to, and his father told him he had better wait until they got to St. Augustine, where he could fish from the shore and see what he was catching. From the time they came on board until it was the hour to eat, the Bobbsey twins looked about the ship, seeing something new and wonderful on every side. They hardly wanted to go to bed when night came, but their mother said they must, as they would be about two days on the water, and they would have plenty of time to see everything. Bert, Freddie and their father had one stateroom and Mrs. Bobbsey and the two girls slept in the other, "next door," as you might say. The night passed quietly, the ship steaming along over the ocean, and down the coast to Florida. The next day the four children were up early to see everything there was to see. They found the ship now well out to sea, and out of sight of land. They were really on the deep ocean at last, and they liked it very much. Bert and Nan found some older children with whom to play, and Flossie and Freddie wandered off by themselves, promising not to go too far from Mrs. Bobbsey, who was on deck in her easy chair, reading. After a while Flossie came running back to her mother in great excitement. "Oh, Mother! Oh, Mother!" gasped the little girl. "He's gone!" "Who's gone?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, dropping her book as she quickly stood up. "Freddie's gone! We were playing hide-and-go-seek, and he went down a big pipe, and now I can't see him! He's gone!" CHAPTER VII THE SHARK Mrs. Bobbsey hardly knew what to do for a moment. She just stood and looked at Flossie as if she had not understood what the little girl had said. Then Freddie's mother spoke. "You say he went down a big pipe?" she asked. "Yes, Mother," answered Flossie. "We were playing hide-and-go-seek, and it was my turn to blind. I hollered 'ready or not I'm coming!' and when I opened my eyes to go to find Freddie, I saw him going down a big, round pipe." "What sort of pipe?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, thinking her little boy might have crawled in some place on deck to hide, and that to Flossie it looked like a pipe. "It was a pipe sticking up like a smokestack," Flossie went on, "and it was painted red inside." "Oh, you mean a ventilator pipe!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "If Freddie crawled down in one of those he'll have a dreadful fall! Flossie, call your father!" Flossie did not exactly know what a ventilator pipe was, but I'll tell you that it is a big iron thing, like a funnel, that lets fresh air from above down into the boiler room where the firemen have to stay to make steam to push the ship along. But, though Flossie did not quite know what a ventilator pipe was, she knew her mother was much frightened, or she would not have wanted Mr. Bobbsey to come. Flossie saw her father about halfway down the deck, talking to some other men, and, running up to him, she cried: "Freddie's down in a want-you-later pipe!" "A want-you-later pipe?" repeated Mr. Bobbsey. "What in the world do you mean, Flossie?" "Well, that's what mother said," went on the little girl. "Me and Freddie were playing hide-and-go-seek, and he hid down in a pipe painted red, and mother said it was a want-you-later. And she wants you now!" "A want-you-later pipe!" exclaimed one of the men. "Oh, she must mean a ventilator. It does sound like that to a little girl." "Yes, that's it," said Flossie. "And please come quick to mother, will you, Daddy?" Mr. Bobbsey set off on a run toward his wife, and some of the other men followed, one of them taking hold of Flossie's hand. "Oh, Dick!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey as her husband reached her, "something dreadful has happened! Freddie is down a ventilator pipe, and I don't know what to do!" Neither did Mr. Bobbsey for a moment or two, and as the men came crowding around him, one of them bringing up Flossie, a cry was heard, coming from one of the red-painted pipes not far away. It was not a loud cry, sounding in fact, as if the person calling were down in a cellar. "Come and get me out! Come and get me out!" the voice begged, and when Flossie heard it she said: "That's him! That's Freddie now. Oh, he's down in the pipe yet!" "Which pipe?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. Flossie pointed to a ventilator not far away. Mr. Bobbsey and the men ran toward it, and, as they reached it, they could hear, coming out of the big opening that was shaped somewhat like a funnel, a voice of a little boy, saying: "Come and get me out! I'm stuck!" Mr. Bobbsey put his head down inside the pipe and looked around. There he saw Freddie, doubled up into a little ball, trying to get himself loose. Flossie's brother was, indeed, stuck in the pipe, which was smaller below than it was at the opening--too small, in fact, to let the little boy slip through. So he was in no danger of falling. "Oh, Freddie! what made you get in there?" asked his father, as he reached in, and, after pulling and tugging a bit, managed to get him out. "What made you do it?" "I was hiding away from Flossie," answered the little fellow. "I crawled in the pipe, and then I waited for her to come and find me. She didn't know where I was." "Yes, I did so know where you went," declared Flossie. "I saw you crawl into the pipe, and I didn't peek, either. I just opened my eyes and I saw you go into the pipe, and I was scared and I ran and told mother." "Well, if you didn't peek it's all right," Freddie said. "It was a good place to hide. I waited and waited for you to come and find me and then I thought you were going to let me come on in home free, and I tried to get out. But I couldn't--I was stuck." "I should say you were!" laughed Mr. Bobbsey. He could laugh now, and so could Mrs. Bobbsey, though, at first, they were very much frightened, thinking Freddie might have been hurt. "Don't crawl in there again, little fireman," said one of the men with whom Mr. Bobbsey had been talking, and who knew the pet name of Flossie's brother. "This pipe wasn't big enough to let you fall through, but some of the ventilator pipes might be, and then you'd fall all the way through to the boiler room. Don't hide in any more pipes on the steamer." "I won't," Freddie promised, for he had been frightened when he found that he was stuck in the pipe and couldn't get out. "Come on, Flossie; it's your turn to hide now," he said. "I don't want to play hide-and-go-seek any more," the little girl said. "I'd rather play with my doll." "If I had my fire engine I'd play fireman," Freddie said, for he did not care much about a doll. "How would you like to go down to the engine room with me, and see where you might have fallen if the ventilator pipe hadn't been too small to let you through?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. "I'd like it," Freddie said. "I like engines." So his father took him away down into the hold, or lower part of the boat, and showed him where the firemen put coal on the fire. There Freddie saw ventilator pipes, like the one he had hid in, reaching from the boiler room up to the deck, so the firemen could breathe cool, fresh air. And there were also pipes like it in the engine room. Freddie watched the shining wheels go spinning round and he heard the hiss of steam as it turned the big propeller at the back of the ship, and pushed the vessel through the waters of the deep blue sea. "Now we'll go up on deck," said Mr. Bobbsey, when Freddie had seen all he cared to in the engine room. "It's cooler there." Freddie and his father found several women talking to Mrs. Bobbsey, who was telling them what had happened to her little boy, and Bert and Nan were also listening. "I wonder what Freddie will do next?" said Bert to his older sister. "First he catches a lady's hat for a fish, and then he nearly gets lost down a big pipe." "I hope he doesn't fall overboard," returned Nan. "So do I," agreed Bert. "And when we get on a smaller ship, if we go on a voyage with Cousin Jasper, we'll have to look after Flossie and Freddie, or they will surely fall into the water." "Are we really, truly going on a voyage with Cousin Jasper, do you think?" Nan asked. "Well, I heard father and mother talking about it, and they seemed to think maybe we'd take a trip on the ocean," went on Bert. "I hope we do!" exclaimed Nan. "I just love the water!" "So do I!" her brother said. "When I get big I'm going to have a ship of my own." "Will you take me for a sail?" asked Nan. "Course I will!" Bert quickly promised. The excitement caused by Freddie's hiding in the ventilator pipe soon passed, and then the Bobbsey family and the other passengers on the ship enjoyed the fine sail. The weather was clear and the sea was not rough, so nearly every one was out on deck. "I wonder if we'll see any shipwrecks," remarked Bert a little later, as the four Bobbsey twins were sitting in a shady place not far from Mrs. Bobbsey, who was reading her book. She had told the children to keep within her sight. "A shipwreck would be nice to see if nobody got drowned," observed Nan. "And maybe we could rescue some of the people!" "When there's a shipwreck," said Freddie, who seemed to have been thinking about it, "they have to get in the little boats, like this one," and he pointed to a lifeboat not far away. "That's an awful little boat to go on the big ocean in," said Flossie. "It's safe, though," Bert said. "It's got things in it to make it float, even if it's half full of water. It can't sink any more than our raft could sink." "Our raft nearly did sink," said Flossie. "No, it only got stuck on a mud bank," answered Bert. "I was the one that sank down in my bare feet," and he laughed as he remembered that time. "Well, anyhow, we had fun," said Freddie. "Oh, look!" suddenly cried Nan. "There's a small boat now--out there on the ocean. Maybe there's been a shipwreck, Bert!" Bert and the other Bobbsey twins looked at the object to which Nan pointed. Not far from the steamer was a small boat with three or four men in it, and they seemed to be in some sort of trouble. They were beating the water with oars and poles, and something near the boat was lashing about, making the waves turn into foam. "That isn't a shipwreck!" cried Bert. "That's a fisherman's boat!" "And something is after it!" said Nan. "Oh, Bert! maybe a whale is trying to sink the fisherman's boat!" By this time Mrs. Bobbsey and a number of other passengers were crowding to the rail, looking at the small boat. The men in it did, indeed, seem to be fighting off something in the water that was trying to damage their boat. "It's a big shark!" cried one of the steamship sailors. "The fishermen have caught a big shark and they're trying to kill it before it sinks their boat. Say, it's a great, big shark! Look at it lash the water into foam! Those men may be hurt!" "A shark! A shark!" cried the passengers, and from all over the ship they came running to where they could see what was happening to the small boat. CHAPTER VIII THE FIGHT IN THE BOAT When the Bobbsey twins first saw the small boat, and the fishermen in it trying to beat off the shark that was trying to get at them, the steamer was quite a little distance off. The big vessel, though, was headed toward the fishing boat and soon came close enough for the passengers to see plainly what was going on. That is, they could not see the shark very plainly, for it was mostly under water, but they could see a long, black shape, with big fins and a large tail, and the tail was lashing up and down, making foam on the waves. "Hi!" cried Freddie in great excitement. "That's better'n a shipwreck, isn't it?" "Almost as _bad_, I should say," remarked Mr. Bobbsey, who, with his wife and other passengers, stood near the rail with the children watching the ocean fight. "The captain ought to stop the ship and go to the rescue of those fishermen," said the man who had told Freddie not to get in the ventilator pipe again. "I guess the shark is bigger than those men thought when they tried to kill it." "Is that what they are trying to do?" asked Bert. "It looks so," replied his father. "Sometimes the fishermen catch a shark in their nets, and they kill it then, as sharks tear the nets, or eat up the fish in them. But I guess this is a larger shark than usual." "And is it going to sink the boat?" Nan wanted to know. "That I can't say," Mr. Bobbsey replied. "Perhaps the fishermen caught the shark on a big hook and line, and want to get it into the boat to bring it to shore. Or maybe the shark is tangled in their net and is trying to get loose. Perhaps it thinks the boat is a big whale, or other fish, and it wants to fight." "Whatever it is, those fishermen are having a hard time," said another passenger; and this seemed to be so, for, just as soon as the steamer came close enough to the small boat, some of the men in it waved their hands and shouted. All they said could not be heard, because of the noise made by the steamer, but a man near Mrs. Bobbsey said he heard the fisherman cry: "Come and help us!" "The captain ought to go to their help," said Flossie's mother. "It must be terrible to have to fight a big shark in a small boat." "I guess we are going to rescue them," observed Bert. "Hark! There goes the whistle! And that bell means stop the engines!" The blowing of a whistle and the ringing of a bell sounded even as he spoke, and the steamer began to move slowly. Then a mate, or one of the captain's helpers, came running along the deck with some sailors. They began to lower one of the lifeboats, and the Bobbsey twins and the other passengers watched them eagerly. Out on the sea, which, luckily, was not rough, the men in the small boat were still fighting the shark. "Are you going to help them?" asked Mr. Bobbsey of the mate who got into the boat with the sailors. "Yes, I guess they are in trouble with a big shark, or maybe there are two of them. We'll help them kill the big fish." When the mate and the sailors were in the boat it was let down over the side of the ship to the water by long ropes. Then the sailors rowed toward the fishermen. Anxiously the Bobbsey twins and the others watched to see what would happen. Over the waves went the rescuing boat, and when it got near enough the men in it, with long, sharp poles, with axes and with guns, began to help fight the shark. The waters foamed and bubbled, and the men in the boats shouted: "There goes one!" came a call after a while, and, for a moment, something long and black seemed to stick up into the air. "It's a shark!" cried Bert. "I can tell by his pointed nose. Lots of sharks have long, pointed noses, and that's one!" "Yes, I guess it is," his father said. "Then there must be two sharks," said Mrs. Bobbsey, "for the men are still fighting something in the water." "Yes, they certainly are," her husband replied. "The fishermen must have caught one shark, and its mate came to help in the fight. Look, the fishing boat nearly went over that time!" That really came near happening. One of the big fish, after it found that its mate had been killed, seemed to get desperate. It rushed at the fishermen's boat and struck it with its head, sending it far over on one side. Then the men from the steamer's boat fired some bullets from a gun into the second shark and killed it so that it sank. The waters grew quiet and the boats were no longer in danger. The mate and the sailors from the steamer stayed near the fishing boat a little while longer, the men talking among themselves, and then the sailors rowed back, and were hoisted upon deck in their craft. "Tell us what happened!" cried Mr. Bobbsey. "It was sharks," answered the mate. "The fishermen came out here to lift their lobster pots, which had drifted a long way from shore. While they were doing this one of them baited a big hook with a piece of pork and threw it overboard, for he had seen some sharks about. A shark bit on the hook and then rammed the boat. "Then another shark came along and both of them fought the fishermen, who might have been drowned if we had not helped them kill the sharks. But they are all right now--the fishermen, I mean--for the sharks are dead and on the bottom of the ocean by this time." "Were they big sharks?" asked Bert. "Quite large," the mate answered. "One was almost as long as the fishing boat, and they were both very ugly. It isn't often that such big sharks come up this far north, but I suppose they were hungry and that made them bold." "I'm glad I wasn't in that boat," said Nan. "Indeed we all may well be glad," Mrs. Bobbsey said. "Will those fishermen have to row all the way to shore?" asked Freddie, looking across the waters. No land was in sight. "No, they don't have to row," said the mate of the steamer. "They have a little gasolene engine in their boat, and the land is not so far away as it seems, only five or six miles. They can get in all right if no more sharks come after them, and I don't believe any will." The fishermen waved their hands to the passengers on the steamer, and the Bobbsey twins and the others waved back. "Good-bye!" shouted the children, as loudly as they could. Whether the others heard them or not was not certain, but they continued to wave their hands. It took some time to hoist the lifeboat up in its place on the steamer, and in this Freddie and the others were quite interested. "I'd like to own a boat like that myself," said the little boy. "What would you do with it?" questioned Flossie. "Oh, I'd have a whole lot of fun," was the ready answer. "Would you give me a ride?" "Of course I would!" At last the lifeboat was put in its proper place, and then the steamer started off again. The Bobbsey twins had plenty to talk about now, and so did the other passengers. It was not often they witnessed a rescue of that kind at sea, and Bert, who, like Freddie, had been hoping he might sight a shipwreck--that is, he wished it if no one would be drowned--was quite satisfied with the excitement of the sharks. "Only I wish they could have brought one over closer, so we could have seen how big it was," he said. "I don't," remarked Nan. "I don't like sharks." "Not even when they're dead and can't hurt you?" asked Bert. "Not even any time," Nan said. "I don't like sharks." "Neither do I," said Flossie. "Well, I'd like to see one if daddy would take hold of my hand," put in Freddie. "Then I wouldn't be afraid." "Maybe there'll be sharks when we get to Cousin Jasper's house," said Flossie. "His house isn't in the ocean, and sharks is only in the ocean," declared Freddie. "Well, maybe his house is _near_ the ocean," went on the little "fat fairy." "Cousin Jasper is in the hospital," Nan remarked; "and I guess they don't have any sharks there." "Maybe they have alligators," added Bert with a smile. "Really?" asked Nan. "Well, you know Florida is where they have lots of alligators," went on her older brother. "And we're going to Florida." "I don't like alligators any more than I like sharks," Nan said, with a little shivery sort of shake. "I just like dogs and cats and chickens." "And goats," said Flossie. "You like goats, don't you, Nan?" "Yes, I like the kind of a goat we had when we went to Blueberry Island," agreed Nan. "But look! What are the sailors doing?" She pointed to some of the men from the ship, who were going about the decks, picking up chairs and lashing fast, with ropes, things that might roll or slide about. "Maybe we're almost there, and we're getting ready to land," said Freddie. "No, we've got another night to stay on the ship," Bert said. "I'm going to ask one of the men." And he did, inquiring what the reason was for picking up the chairs and tying fast so many things. "The captain thinks we're going to run into a storm," answered the sailor, "and we're getting ready for it." "Will it be very bad?" asked Nan, who did not like storms. "Well, it's likely to be a hard one, little Miss," the sailor said. "We will soon be off Cape Hatteras, and the storms there are fierce sometimes. So we're making everything snug to get ready for the blow. But don't be afraid. This is a strong ship." However, as the Bobbsey twins saw the sailors making fast everything, and lashing loose awnings and ropes, and as they saw the sky beginning to get dark, though it was not yet night, they were all a little frightened. CHAPTER IX IN ST. AUGUSTINE The storm came up more quickly than even the captain or his sailors thought it would. The deep, blue sea, which had been such a pretty color when the sun shone on it, now turned to a dark green shade. The blue sky was covered by black and angry-looking clouds, and the wind seemed to moan as it hummed about the ship. But the steamer did not stop. On it rushed over the water, with foam in front, at the prow, or bow, and foam at the stern where the big propeller churned away. "Come, children!" called Mrs. Bobbsey to the twins, as they stood at the rail, looking first up at the gathering clouds and then down at the water, which was now quite rough. "Come! I think we had better go to our cabins." "Oh, let us stay up just a little longer," begged Bert. "I've never seen a storm at sea, and I want to." "Well, you and Nan may stay up on deck a little longer," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "But you must not go far away from daddy. I don't want any of you to fall overboard, especially when such big sharks may be in the ocean." "Oh, I'm not going to fall overboard!" exclaimed Bert. "Never!" "Nor I," added his sister. "I'll keep tight hold of the rail, and when it gets too rough we'll come down." Mr. Bobbsey and some of the men passengers were still on deck, watching the approach of the storm, and Bert and Nan moved over nearer their father, while Mrs. Bobbsey went below with Flossie and Freddie. The two smaller twins, when they found their older brother and sister were going to stay on deck, also wanted to do this, but their mother said to them: "No, it is safer for you to be down below with me. It may come on to blow hard at any moment, and then it won't be so easy to go down the stairs when the ship is standing on its head, or its ear, or whatever way ships stand in a storm." "But I want to see the storm!" complained Freddie. "You'll see all you want of it, and feel it, too, down in our stateroom, as well as up on deck, and you'll be much safer," his mother told him. The storm came up more and more quickly, and, though it was not yet four o'clock, it was as dark as it usually is at seven, for so many clouds covered the sky. The waves, too, began to get larger and larger and, pretty soon, the steamer, which had been going along smoothly, or with not more than a gentle roll from side to side, began pitching and tossing. "Oh, my! isn't it getting dark?" cried Flossie. "Say, it isn't time to go to bed yet, is it?" questioned Freddie anxiously. "Of course not!" answered his twin. "It's only about the middle of the afternoon, isn't it, Mother?" "Just about," answered Mrs. Bobbsey. In the meanwhile the others, who were still on deck, were having a decidedly lively time of it. "Come on, Nan and Bert!" called Mr. Bobbsey, to the older twins. "Better get below while you have the chance. It's getting too rough for children up here." "Are you coming too, Daddy?" asked Nan. "Yes, I'll go down with you. In fact, I think every one is going below except the sailors." This was so, for the mate was going about telling the passengers still on deck that it would be best for them to get to the shelter of the cabins and staterooms. Nan and Bert started to walk across the deck, and when they were almost at the stairs, or the "companionway" as it is called, that led to their rooms, the ship gave a lurch and roll, and Bert lost his balance. "Oh! Oh!" he cried, as he found himself sliding across the deck, which was tilted up almost like an old-fashioned cellar door, and Bert was rolling down it. "Oh, catch me, Dad!" Luckily he rolled in, and not out, or he would have rolled to the edge of the ship. Not that he could have gone overboard, for there was a railing and netting to stop that, but he would have been badly frightened if he had rolled near the edge, I think. "Look out!" cried Mr. Bobbsey, as he saw Bert sliding and slipping. "Look out, or you'll fall downstairs!" And that is just what happened. Bert rolled to the top of the companionway stairs, and right down them. Luckily he was a stout, chubby boy, and, as it happened, just then a sailor was coming up the stairs, and Bert rolled into him. The sailor was nearly knocked off his feet by the collision with Bert, but he managed to get hold of a rail and hold on. "My! My! What's this?" cried the sailor, when he got his breath, which Bert had partly knocked from him. "Is this a new way to come downstairs?" "I--I didn't mean to," Bert answered, as he managed to stand up and hold on to the man. "The ship turned upside down, I guess, and I rolled down here." "Well, as long as you're not hurt it's all right," said the sailor with a laugh. "It is certainly a rough storm. Better get below and stay there until it blows out." "Yes, sir, I'm getting," grinned Bert. "I think that is good advice," said Mr. Bobbsey to the sailor, with a smile, as he hurried after Bert, but not coming in the same fashion as his son. Nan had grabbed tightly hold of a rope and clung to it when the ship gave a lurch. She was not hurt, but her arms ached from holding on so tightly. After that one big roll and toss the steamer became steady for a little while, and Mr. Bobbsey and the two children made their way to the stateroom where Mrs. Bobbsey was sitting with Flossie and Freddie. "What happened?" asked Bert's mother, as she saw that he was rather "mussed up," from what had occurred. "Oh, I tried to come down the stairs head first," Bert answered with a laugh. "I don't like that way. I'm not going to do it again," and he told what had taken place. And then the storm burst with a shower of rain and a heavy wind that tossed and pitched the boat, and made many of the passengers wish they were safe on shore. The Bobbsey twins had often been on the water, when on visits to Uncle William at the seashore, as I have told you in that book, and they were not made ill by the pitching and tossing of the steamer. Still it was not much fun to stay below decks, which they and the others had to do all that night and most of the next day. It was too rough for any one to be out on deck, and even the sailors, used as they were to it, had trouble. One of them was nearly washed overboard, but his mates saved him. And one of the lifeboats--the same one in which the men had gone to save the fishermen from the sharks--was broken and torn away when a big wave hit it. "Is it always rough like this when you go past Cape Hatteras?" asked Bert of his father. "Very frequently, yes. You see Cape Hatteras is a point of land of North Carolina, sticking out into the ocean. In the ocean are currents of water, and when one rushes one way and one the other, and they come together, it makes a rough sea, especially when there is a strong wind, as there is now. We are in this rough part of the ocean, and in the midst of a storm, too. But we will soon be out of it." However, the steamer could not go so fast in the rough water as she could have traveled had it been smooth, and the wind, blowing against her, also held her back. So it was not until late on the second day that the storm passed away, or rather, until the ship got beyond it. Then the rain stopped, the sun came out from behind the clouds just before it was time to set, and the hard time was over. The sea was rough, and would be for another day, the sailors said. "And can we go on deck in the morning?" asked Bert, who did not like being shut up in the stateroom. "I guess so," his father answered. The next morning all was calm and peaceful, though the waves were larger than when the Bobbsey twins had left New York. Every one was glad that the storm had passed, and that nothing had happened to the steamer, except the loss of the one small boat. "Were those fishermen who fought the sharks out in all that blow in their small motor boat, Dad?" asked Bert. "Oh, no," his father told him. "They only go out from shore, take up their nets or lobster pots, and go quickly back again. Their boats are not made for staying out in all night. Though perhaps sometimes, in a fog, when they can't see to get back, they may be out a long time. But I don't believe they were out in this storm." It was peaceful traveling now, on the deep blue sea, which was a pretty color again, and the Bobbsey twins, leaning over the rail and looking at it, thought they had never come on such a fine voyage. "It's getting warmer," said Bert when they had eaten dinner and were once more on deck. "Yes, we are getting farther south, nearer to the equator, and it is always warm there," said Mr. Bobbsey. "Are we near Florida?" asked Nan. "Yes, we will be there this evening," her father told her. It was late in the afternoon when the steamer reached Jacksonville. As the arrival of the steamship had been delayed by the storm, the Bobbsey's were left no time to look about Jacksonville, but hurried at once to the railroad station, and there took the train that carried them to St. Augustine. It was about an hour before sunset when they got out of the train at this quaint, pretty old town. "Oh, what funny little streets!" cried Bert, as they started for their hotel where they were to stay until they could go to the hospital and see Cousin Jasper. "What little streets!" "Aren't they darling?" exclaimed Nan. "Yes, this is a very old city," said Mr. Bobbsey, "and some of the streets are no wider than they were made when they were laid out here over three hundred years ago." "Oh, is this city as old as that--three hundred years?" asked Nan, while Flossie and Freddie peered about at the strange sights. "Yes, and older," said Mr. Bobbsey. "St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States. It was settled in 1565 by the Spaniards, and I suppose they built it like some of the Spanish cities they knew. That is why the streets are so narrow." And indeed the streets were very narrow. The one called St. George is only seventeen feet wide, and it is the principal street in St. Augustine. Just think of a street not much wider than a very big room. And Treasury street is even narrower, being so small that two people can stand and shake hands across it. Really, one might call it only an alley, and not a street. The Bobbseys saw many negroes about the streets, some driving little donkey carts, and others carrying fruit and other things in baskets on their heads. "Don't they ever fall off?" asked Freddie, as he watched one big, fat colored woman on whose head, covered with a bright, red handkerchief, or "bandanna," there was a large basket of fruit. "Don't they ever fall off?" "What do you mean fall off--their heads?" asked Bert with a smile. "No, I mean the things they carry," said Freddie. "Well, I guess they start in carrying things that way from the time they are children," said Mrs. Bobbsey, "and they learn to balance things on their heads as well as you children learn to balance yourselves on roller skates. I dare say the colored people here would find it as hard to roller skate as you would to carry a heavy load on your head." "Well, here we are at our hotel," said Mr. Bobbsey, as the automobile in which they had ridden up from the station came to a stop in front of a fine building. "Now we will get out and see what they have for supper." "And then will we go to Cousin Jasper and find out what his strange story is?" "I guess so," her father answered. "Say, this is a fine hotel!" exclaimed Bert as he and the others saw the beautiful palm and flower gardens, with fountains between them, in the courtyard of the place where they were to stop. "Oh, yes, St. Augustine has wonderful hotels," said his father. "This is a place where many rich people come to spend the winter that would be too cold for them in New York. Now come inside." [Illustration: THE SHIP GAVE A LURCH AND BURT LOST HIS BALANCE.] Into the beautiful hotel they went, and when Mr. Bobbsey was asking about their rooms, and seeing that the baggage was brought in, Mrs. Bobbsey glanced around to make sure the four twins were with her, for sometimes Flossie or Freddie strayed off. And that is what had happened this time. Freddie was not in sight. "Oh, where is that boy?" cried his mother. "I hope he hasn't crawled down another ventilator pipe!" "No'm," answered one of the hotel men. "He hasn't done that. I saw your little boy run back out of the front door a moment ago. But he'll be all right. Nothing can happen to him in St. Augustine." "Oh, but I must find him!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "Dick, Freddie is gone again!" she said to her husband. "We must find him at once!" and she hurried from the hotel. CHAPTER X COUSIN JASPER'S STORY Mr. Bobbsey, who had been talking to the clerk of the hotel at the desk, looked toward Mrs. Bobbsey, who was hurrying out the front door. "Wait a minute!" he called after her. "I'll come with you!" "No, you stay with the other children," she answered. "I'll find Freddie." "But you don't know your way about St. Augustine," said Mr. Bobbsey. "You've never been here before." "Neither have you," returned his wife with a laugh, for she was not very much alarmed about Freddie--he had slipped away too often before. "I can find my way about as well as you can, Dick," went on Mrs. Bobbsey. "You stay here and I'll get our little fat fireman." "Maybe he has gone to see a fire engine," suggested Nan. "I don't believe so," answered her father. "I didn't hear any alarm, but perhaps they don't sound one here as we do back in Lakeport." "I guess he's just gone out to look at the things in the streets here," said Bert. "They're a lot different from at home." "Indeed they are!" exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. "Well, I'll stay here," he said to his wife, "and you go and look for Freddie. But if you don't soon find him come back and I'll go out." "I'll find him," she said, and one of the porters from the hotel offered to go with her to show Mrs. Bobbsey her way about the strange streets of St. Augustine--the little, narrow streets that had not been changed much in three hundred years. "Oh, what a lovely place this is," said Nan to Bert, while their father was talking with the hotel clerk. "It's like a palace." "It looks like some of the places you see in a moving picture," said Bert. And indeed the beautiful hotel, with the palms and flowers set all about, did look like some moving picture play. Only it was real, and the Bobbsey twins were to stay there until they had seen Cousin Jasper, and found out what his strange story was about. Soon after Mr. Bobbsey had finished signing his name and those of the members of his family in the hotel register book, Mrs. Bobbsey came back, leading Freddie by the hand. The little boy seemed to be all right, and he was smiling, while in one hand he held a ripe banana. "Where've you been, Freddie?" asked Flossie. "I was afraid you had gone back home." "Nope," Freddie answered, as he started to peel the banana. "I was seeing how they did it." "How who did what?" asked his father. "Carried the big baskets on their heads," Freddie answered, and by this time he had part of the skin off the yellow fruit, and was breaking off a piece for Flossie. Freddie always shared his good things with his little sister, and with Bert and Nan if there was enough. "What does he mean?" asked Bert of his mother. "Was he trying to carry something on his head?" "No," answered Mrs. Bobbsey with a laugh, "but he was following a big colored woman who had a basket of fruit on her head. I caught him halfway down the street in front of another hotel. He was walking after this woman, and he didn't hear me coming. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was waiting to see it fall off." "What fall off?" asked Nan, coming up just then. "I thought maybe the basket would fall off her head," Freddie answered for himself. "It was an awful big basket, and it wibbled and wobbled like anything. I thought maybe it would fall, but it didn't," he added with a sigh, as though he had been cheated out of a lot of fun. "If it did had fallen," he went on, "I was going to pick up her bananas and oranges for her. That's why I kept walking after her." "Did she drop that banana?" asked Mr. Bobbsey, while several smiling persons gathered about the Bobbsey twins in the hotel lobby. "No, I bought this with a penny," Freddie answered. "The colored lady didn't drop any. But if her basket did had fallen from off her head I could have picked up the things, and then maybe she'd have given me a banana or an orange." "And when that didn't happen you had to go buy one yourself; did you?" asked Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh. "Well, that's too bad. But, after this, Freddie, don't go away by yourself. It's all right, at home, to run off and play in the fields or woods, for you know your way about. But here you are in a strange city, so you must stay with us." "Yes, sir," answered Freddie, like a good little boy. "I will, too," promised Flossie. The Bobbsey family was together once again, and when Flossie and Freddie had eaten the banana, and porters had taken charge of their baggage, they all went up to the rooms where they were to stay. "We don't know just how long we'll be here," said Mr. Bobbsey, as they were getting ready to go down to supper, as the children called it, or "dinner," as the more fashionable name has it. "Are we going out on the ocean again?" asked Nan. "Did you like it?" her father wanted to know. "Oh, lots!" she answered. "It was great!" declared Bert. "I want to see 'em catch some more sharks," Freddie said. "I like to see the blue water," added Flossie, who had got out a clean dress for her rubber doll. "Yes, the blue water is very pretty," remarked Mr. Bobbsey. "Well, we shall, very likely, sail on it again. I don't know just what Cousin Jasper wants to tell me, or what he wants me to do. But I think he is planning an ocean trip himself. I'll go to see him this evening, after we have eaten, and then I can tell you all about it." "May I come with you?" asked Bert. "Well, I think not this first trip," answered Mr. Bobbsey slowly. "I am going to the hospital where Cousin Jasper is ill, and he may not be able to see both of us. I'll take you later." "We can stay and watch the colored people carry things on their heads," put in Freddie. "That's lots of fun, and maybe some of 'em will drop off, and we can help pick 'em up, and they might give us an orange." "I guess I'd rather buy my oranges, and then I'll be sure to have what I want," said Bert with a laugh. "There are plenty of things you can look at while I'm at the hospital," said Mr. Bobbsey, and after the meal he inquired the way to the place where Cousin Jasper was getting well, while Mrs. Bobbsey took the children down to the docks, where they could see many motor boats, and fishing and oyster craft, tied up for the night. It was a beautiful evening, and the soft, balmy air of St. Augustine was warm, so that only the lightest clothing needed to be worn. "It's just like being at the seashore in the summer," said Nan. "Well, this is summer, and we are at the seashore, though it is not like Ocean Cliff," said Mrs. Bobbsey with a smile. She was glad the children liked it, and she hoped they would have more good times if they were again to go sailing on the deep, blue sea. When they got back to the hotel Mr. Bobbsey had not yet returned from the hospital, but he came before Flossie and Freddie were ready for bed, for they had been allowed to stay up a little later than usual. "Well, how is Cousin Jasper?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Much better, I am glad to say," answered her husband. "He will be able to leave the hospital in a few days, and then he wants us to start on a trip with him." "Start on a trip so soon!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "Where does he want to go, and will he be well enough to travel?" "He says he will. And as to where he wants to go, that is a strange story." "Oh, tell us about it!" begged Bert. "We're going to hear Cousin Jasper's secret at last!" cried Nan. "Is it a real story, with 'once upon a time' in it?" Freddie questioned. "And has it got a fire engine in it?" he added. "Well, no, not exactly a fire engine, though it has a boat engine in the story. And I can make it start with 'once upon a time,' if you want me to." "Please do," begged Flossie. "And has it got any fairies in it?" "No, not exactly any fairies," her father said; "though we may find some when we get to the island." "Oh, are we going on an island?" exclaimed Bert. "There!" cried his father, "I've started at the wrong end. I had better begin at the beginning. And that will be to tell you how I found Cousin Jasper. "He has been quite ill, and is better now. Part of the time he was out of his head with fever, even after he wrote to me, and for a time the doctor feared he would not get well. But now he is all right, except for being weak, and he told me a queer story. "Once upon a time," went on Mr. Bobbsey, telling the tale as his littler children liked to hear it, "Cousin Jasper and a young friend of his, a boy about fifteen years old, set out to take a long trip in a motor boat. That is it had an engine in it that ran by gasolene as does an automobile. Cousin Jasper is very fond of sailing the deep, blue sea, and he took this boy along with him to help. They were to sail about for a week, visiting the different islands off the coast of Florida. "Well, everything went all right the first few days. In their big motor boat Cousin Jasper and this boy, who was named Jack Nelson, sailed about, living on their boat, cooking their meals, and now and then landing at the little islands, or keys, as they are called. "They were having a good time when one day a big storm came up. They could not manage their boat and they were blown a long way out to sea and then cast up on the shore of a small island. "Cousin Jasper was hurt and so was the boy, but they managed to get out of the water and up on land. They found a sort of cave in which they could get out of the storm, and they stayed on the island for some time." "For years?" asked Bert, who, with the other Bobbsey twins, was much interested in Cousin Jasper's strange story. "That was just like Robinson Crusoe!" Bert went on. "Why didn't they stay there always?" "They did not have enough to eat," said Mr. Bobbsey, "and it was too lonesome for them there. They were the only people on the island, as far as they knew. So they made a smudge of smoke, and on a pole they put up some pieces of canvas that had washed ashore from their motor boat. They hoped these signals would be seen by some ship or small boat that might come to take them off." "Did they get rescued?" asked Bert. Mr. Bobbsey was about to answer when the telephone, which was in the room, gave a loud ring. "Some one for us!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. CHAPTER XI THE MOTOR BOAT Mr. Bobbsey arose to answer the telephone, which big hotels put in the rooms of their guests nowadays instead of sending a bellboy to knock and say that the traveler is wanted. "I wonder who wants us?" murmured Mr. Bobbsey. The children looked disappointed that the telling of the story had to be stopped. "Hello!" said their father into the telephone. Then he listened, and seemed quite surprised at what he heard. "Yes, I'll be down in a little while," he went on. "Tell him to wait." "What is it?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Was that Cousin Jasper?" "Oh, no indeed!" her husband answered. "Though he is much better he is not quite well enough to leave the hospital yet and come to see us. This was an old sea captain talking from the main office of the hotel downstairs." "Is he going to take us for a trip on the ocean?" asked Bert eagerly. "Well, that's what he wants to do, or, rather, he wants me to see about a big motor boat in which to take a trip. Cousin Jasper sent him to me. But let me finish what I was saying about the island, and then I'll tell you about the sea captain." Mr. Bobbsey hung up the telephone receiver and took his seat between Flossie and Freddie where he had been resting in an easy chair, telling the story. "Cousin Jasper," went on Mr. Bobbsey, "was quite ill on the island, and so was Jack Nelson. Just how long they stayed there, waiting for a boat to come and take them off, they do not know--at least, Cousin Jasper does not know." "Doesn't that boy--Jack Nelson--know?" asked Bert. "No, for he wasn't taken off the island," said Mr. Bobbsey. "And that is the strange part of Cousin Jasper's story. He, himself, after a hard time on the island, must have fallen asleep, in a fever probably. When he awakened he was on board a small steamer, being brought back to St. Augustine. He hardly knew what happened to him, until he found himself in the hospital. "There he slowly got better until he was well enough to write and ask me to come to see him. He wanted me to do something that no one else would do." "And what is that?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "He wants me to get a big motor boat, and go with him to this island and get that boy, Jack Nelson." "Is that boy still on the island?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Why how long ago was this?" "About three weeks," her husband answered. "Cousin Jasper does not know whether or not the boy is still there, but he is afraid he is. You see when the boat came to rescue Mr. Dent, as my cousin is called at the hospital, they did not take off with him his boy friend. The sailors of the rescue ship said they saw Cousin Jasper's canvas flag fluttering from a pole stuck up in the beach, and that brought them to the island. They found Cousin Jasper, unconscious, in a little cave-like shelter near shore, and took him away with them." "Didn't they see the boy?" asked Nan. "No, he was not in sight, the sailors afterward told Mr. Dent. They did not look for any one else, not knowing that two had been shipwrecked on the island. They thought there was only one, and so Cousin Jasper alone was saved. "When he grew better, and the fever left him, he tried to get some one to start out in a boat to go to the island and save that boy. But no one would go." "Why not?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Because they thought Cousin Jasper was still out of his mind from fever. They said the sailors from the rescue ship had seen no one else, and if there had been a boy on the island such a person would have been near Mr. Dent. But no one was seen on the island, and so they thought it was all a dream of Cousin Jasper's." "And maybe that poor boy is there yet!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "That's what my cousin is afraid of," her husband said. "And that is why he sent for me, his nearest relative. He knew I would believe him, and not imagine he was dreaming. So he wants me to hire for him, as he is rich, a motor boat and go to this island to rescue the boy if he is still there. Cousin Jasper thinks he is. He thinks the boy must have wandered away and so was not in sight when the rescue ship came, or perhaps he was asleep or ill further from the shore. "At any rate that's Cousin Jasper's strange story. And now he wants us to help him see if it's true--see if the boy is still on the island waiting to be rescued." "How can you find the island?" asked Nan. "Cousin Jasper says he will go with us and show us the way. The sea captain who called me up just now from down in the office of the hotel is a man who hires out motor boats. Cousin Jasper knows him, and sent him to see me, as I am to have charge of everything, Mr. Dent not yet being strong enough to do so." "And are you going to do it?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Oh, yes," her husband said. "I came here to help Cousin Jasper, and if he wants me to set off on a sea voyage to rescue a poor lonely boy from an island, why I'll have to do it." "May we go?" eagerly asked Bert. "Yes, I think so. Cousin Jasper says he wants me to get for him a big motor boat--one large enough for all of us. We will have quite a long trip on the deep, blue sea, and if we find that the boy has been taken off the island by some other ship, then we can have a good time sailing about. But first we must go to the rescue." "It's just like a story in a book!" cried Nan, clapping her hands. "Is they--are there oranges and bananas there?" asked Freddie. "Where?" his father asked. "On the island where the boy is?" "Well, I don't know," answered Mr. Bobbsey. "Perhaps bananas may grow there, though I doubt it. It is hardly warm enough for them." "Well, let's go anyhow," said Freddie. "We can have some fun!" "Yes," said Flossie, who always wanted to do whatever her small brother did, "we can have some fun!" "But we are not going for fun--first of all," said Mr. Bobbsey. "We are going to try to rescue this poor boy, who may be sick and alone on the island. After we get him off, or find that he has been taken care of by some one else, then we will think about good times. "And now, my dear," said Mr. Bobbsey to his wife, "the question is, would you like to go?" "Will it be dangerous?" she asked. "No, I think not. No more so than coming down on the big ship. It is now summer, and there are not many storms here then. And we shall be in a big motor boat with a good captain and crew. Cousin Jasper told me to tell you that. We shall sail for a good part of the time--or, rather, motor--around among islands, so each day we shall not be very far from some land. Would you like to go?" "Please say yes, Mother!" begged Bert. "We'd like to go!" added Nan. "Well," answered Mrs. Bobbsey slowly, "it sounds as if it would be a nice trip. That is it will be nice if we can rescue this poor boy from the lonely island. Yes," she said to her husband, "I think we ought to go. But it is strange that Cousin Jasper could not get any one from here to start out before this." "They did not believe the tale he told of the boy having been left on the island," said Mr. Bobbsey. "They thought Cousin Jasper was still out of his head, and had, perhaps, dreamed this. He was very anxious to get some one started in a boat for the island, but no one would go. So he had to send for me." "And you'll go!" exclaimed Bert. "Yes, we'll all go. Now that I have told you Cousin Jasper's strange story I'll go down and talk to the sea captain. I want to find out what sort of motor boat he has, and when we can get it." "When are we going to start for the island?" asked Bert. "And what's the name of it?" Nan questioned. "Is it where Robinson Crusoe lived?" queried Freddie. "I'll have to take turns answering your questions," said Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh. "In the first place, Bert, we'll start as soon as we can--that is as soon as Cousin Jasper is able to leave the hospital. That will be within a few days, I think, as the doctor said a sea voyage would do him good. And, too, the sooner we start the more quickly we shall know about this poor boy. "As for the name of the island, I don't know that it has any. Cousin Jasper didn't tell me, if it has. We can name it after we get there if we find it has not already been called something. And I don't believe it is the island where Robinson Crusoe used to live, Freddie. So now that I have answered all your questions, I think I'll go down and talk to the captain." Flossie and Freddie were in bed when their father came back upstairs, and Nan and Bert were getting ready for Slumberland, for it was their first day ashore after the voyage, and they were tired. "Did you get the motor boat?" asked Bert. "Not yet," his father answered with a laugh. "I am to go to look at it in the morning." "May I come?" "Yes, but go to bed now. It is getting late." Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey stayed up a little longer, talking about many things, and sending a few postcards to friends at home, telling of the safe arrival in St. Augustine. Freddie was up early the next morning, standing with his nose flattened against the front window of the hotel rooms where the Bobbseys were stopping. "I see one!" he cried. "I see one!" "What?" asked Flossie. "A motor boat?" "No, but another colored lady, and she's got an awful big basket on her head. Come and look, Flossie! Maybe it'll fall off!" But nothing like that happened, and after breakfast Mr. Bobbsey suggested that the whole family set out to see some of the sights of St. Augustine--the oldest city of the United States--and also to go to the wharf and view the motor boat. "Can't we send some postcards before we start, Mother?" questioned Nan eagerly. "Certainly," returned Mrs. Bobbsey. "I think I'll send a few to my friends," said Bert, and he and Nan spent some time picking out the postcards. Even Flossie insisted upon it that she be allowed to send several to her best friends at home. I wish I had room to tell you all the things the children saw--the queer old streets and houses, the forts and rivers, for there are two rivers near the old city. But the Bobbsey twins were as anxious as I know you must be to see the motor boat, and hear more about the trip to the island to save the lonely boy, so I will go on to that part of our story. CHAPTER XII THE DEEP BLUE SEA "Glad to see you! Glad to see you! Come right on board!" cried a hearty voice, as the Bobbsey twins and their father and mother walked down the long dock which ran out into the harbor of St. Augustine. "That's Captain Crane, with whom I was talking last night," said Mr. Bobbsey to his wife in a low voice. "And is that the boat we are to take the trip in?" she asked, for the seaman was standing on the deck of a fine motor craft, dark red in color, and with shiny brass rails. A cabin, with white curtains at the portholes, or windows, seemed to offer a good resting place. "Yes, that's the _Swallow_, as Captain Crane calls his boat," Mr. Bobbsey said. "She's a beaut!" exclaimed Bert. "Come on board! Come on board! Glad to see you!" called the old captain again, as he waved his hand to the Bobbseys. "Oh, I like him, don't you?" whispered Nan to Bert. "Yes," he replied. "He's fine; and that's a dandy boat!" Indeed the _Swallow_ was a beautiful craft. She was about eighty feet long, and wide enough to give plenty of room on board, and also to be safe in a storm. There was a big cabin "forward," as the seamen say, or in the front part of the boat, and another "aft," or at the stern, or back part. This was for the men who looked after the gasolene motor and ran the boat, while the captain and the passengers would live in the front cabin, out of which opened several little staterooms, or places where bunks were built for sleeping. The _Swallow_ was close to the dock, so one could step right on board without any trouble, and the children were soon standing on the deck, looking about them. "Oh, I like this!" cried Freddie. "It's a nicer boat than the _Sea Queen_!" This was the name of the big steamer on which they had come from New York. "Have you got a fire engine here, Captain?" asked the little Bobbsey twin. "Oh, yes, we've a pump to use in case of fire, but I hope we won't have any," the seaman said. "I don't s'pose you'd call it a fire engine, though, but we couldn't have that on a motor boat." "No, I guess not," Freddie agreed, after thinking it over a bit. "I've a little fire engine at home," he went on, "and it squirts real water." "And he squirted some on me," put in Flossie. "On me and my doll." "But I didn't mean to--an' it was only play," Freddie explained. "Yes, it was only in fun, and I didn't mind very much," went on the little girl. "My rubber doll--she likes water," she added, holding out the doll in question for Captain Crane to see. "That's good!" he said with a smile. "When we get out on the ocean you can tie a string around her waist, and let her have a swim in the waves." "Won't a shark get her?" Flossie demanded. "No, I guess sharks don't like to chew on rubber dolls," laughed Captain Crane. "Anyhow we'll try to keep out of their way. But make yourselves at home, folks. I hope you'll be with me for quite a while, and you may as well get used to the boat. Mr. Dent has sailed in her many times, and he likes the _Swallow_ first rate." "Can she go fast?" asked Bert. "Yes, she can fairly skim over the waves, and that's why I call her the _Swallow_," replied the seaman. "As soon as Mr. Dent heard I was on shore, waiting for some one to hire my boat, he told me not to sail again until you folks came, as you and he were going on a voyage together. I hope you are going?" and he looked at Mr. Bobbsey. "Yes, we have made up our minds to go," said the children's father. "We are going to look for a boy who may be all alone on one of the islands off the Florida coast. We hope we can rescue him." "I hope so, too," said Captain Crane. "I was shipwrecked on one of those islands myself, once, as your Cousin Jasper was. And it was dreadful there, and I got terribly lonesome before I was taken off." "Did you have a goat?" asked Flossie. "No, my little girl, I didn't have a goat," answered Mr. Crane. "Why do you ask that?" "Because Robinson Crusoe was on an island like that and he had a goat," Flossie went on. "When you were shipwrecked did you have to eat your shoes?" Freddie queried. "Oh, ho! No, I guess not!" laughed Captain Crane. "I see what you mean. You must have had read to you stories of sailors that got so hungry, after being shipwrecked, that they had to boil their leather shoes to make soup. Well, I wasn't quite so bad off as that. I found some oysters on my island, and I had a little food with me. And that, with a spring of water I found, kept me alive until a ship came and took me off." "Well, I hope the poor boy on the island where Cousin Jasper was is still alive, or else that he has been rescued," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "I hope so, too," said the captain. "Now come and I'll show you about my boat." He was very proud of his craft, which was a beautiful one, and also strong enough to stand quite a hard storm. There was plenty of room on board for the whole Bobbsey family, as well as for Mr. Dent, besides a crew of three men and the captain. There were cute little bedrooms for the children, a larger room for Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, one for the captain and there was even a bathroom. There was also a kitchen, called a cook's galley, and another room that could be used in turn for a parlor, a sitting-room or a dining-room. This was the main cabin, and as you know there is not room enough on a motor boat to have a lot of rooms, one has to be used for different things. "What do you call this room?" questioned Flossie, as she looked around at the tiny compartment. "Well, you can call this most anything," laughed the captain. "When you use it for company, it's a parlor; and when you use it for just sitting around in, it's a sitting-room; and when you use it to eat in, why, then what would you call it?" "Why, then you'd call it a dining-room," answered the little girl promptly. "And if I got my hair cut in it, then it would be a barber shop, wouldn't it?" cried Freddie. "Why, Freddie Bobbsey!" gasped his twin. "I'm sure I wouldn't want my dining-room to be a barber shop," she added disdainfully. "Well, some places have got to be barber shops," defended the little boy staunchly. "I don't think they have barber shops on motor boats, do they, Daddy?" "They might have if the boat was big enough," answered Mr. Bobbsey. "However, I don't believe we'll have a barber shop on this craft." "When are we going to start?" asked Bert, when they had gone all over the _Swallow_, even to the place where the crew slept and where the motors were. "We will start as soon as Cousin Jasper is ready," said Mr. Bobbsey. "It may be a week yet, I hope no longer." "So do I, for the sake of that poor boy on the island," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Tell me, has nothing been heard of him since he was shipwrecked there with Mr. Dent?" she asked Captain Crane. "Has no other vessel stopped there but the one that took off Cousin Jasper?" "I guess not," answered Captain Crane. "According to Mr. Dent's tell, this island isn't much known, being one of the smallest. It was only because the men on the ship that took him off saw his flag that they stood in and got him." "And then they didn't find the boy," said Mr. Bobbsey. "Perhaps he wasn't there," Captain Crane said. "He might have found an old boat, or made one of part of the wrecked motor boat, and have gone away by himself." "And he may be there yet, half starved and all alone," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Yes, he may be," admitted the old seaman. "But we'll soon find out. Mr. Jasper Dent is very anxious to start and look for this boy, who had worked for him about two years on his boat. So we won't lose any time in starting, I guess." "But how do you like my boat? That's what your cousin will be sure to ask you. When he heard that you were coming to see him, and heard that I was free to take a trip, he wanted you folks to see me and look over the _Swallow_. Now you've done it, how do you like it?" "Very much indeed," said Mr. Bobbsey. "We like the boat exceedingly!" "And the captain, too," added Mrs. Bobbsey, with a smile. "Thank you kindly, lady!" said the seaman, with a smile and a bow. "I hope we'll get along well together." "And I like the water pump!" exclaimed Freddie. "Please may I squirt the hose some day?" "I guess so, when it's nice and warm, and when we wash down the decks," said Captain Crane. "We use the pump for that quite a lot," he added. "We haven't had to use it for fire yet, and I hope we never have to." "That's what we all say," put in Mr. Bobbsey. But no one could tell what might happen. The Bobbsey twins went about the _Swallow_ as they pleased, having a good time picking out the rooms they wanted to sleep in. Bert said he was going to learn how to run the big gasolene motors, and Freddie said he was going to learn how to steer, as well as squirt water through the deck hose. "I want to cook in the cute little kitchen," said Nan. "And I'll help set table," offered Flossie. "We'll have a good time when we get to sea in this boat," declared Bert. "And I hope we find that boy on the island," added Nan. "Oh, yes, I hope that, too," agreed Bert. None of the crew of the _Swallow_ was on board yet, Captain Crane not having any need for the men when the boat was tied up at the dock. "But I can get 'em as soon as you say the word," he told Mrs. Bobbsey when she asked him. "And what about things to eat?" "Oh, we'll stow the victuals on board before we sail," said the seaman. "We'll take plenty to eat, even though lots of it has to be canned. Just say the word when you're ready to start, and I'll have everything ready." "And now we'll go see Cousin Jasper," suggested Mr. Bobbsey, when at last he had managed to get the children off the boat. "He will be wondering what has become of us." They went to the hospital, and found Mr. Dent much better. The coming of the Bobbseys had acted as a tonic, the doctor said. "Do you like the _Swallow_ and Captain Crane?" asked the sick man, who was now getting well. "Very much," answered Mr. Bobbsey. "And will you go with him and me to look for Jack Nelson?" "As soon as you are ready," was the answer. "Then we'll start in a few days," decided Cousin Jasper. "The sea-trip will make me entirely well, sooner than anything else." The hospital doctor thought this also, and toward the end of the week Mr. Dent was allowed to go to his own home. He lived alone, except for a housekeeper and Jack Nelson, but Jack, of course, was not with him now, being, they hoped, either on the island or safely rescued. "Though if he had been taken off," said Mr. Dent, "he would have sent me word that he was all right. So I feel he must still be on the island." "Perhaps the ship that took him off--if one did," said Mr. Bobbsey, "started to sail around the world, and it will be a long while before you hear from your friend." "Oh, he could send some word," said Cousin Jasper. "No, I feel quite sure he is still on the island." Just as soon as Mr. Bobbsey's cousin was strong enough to take the trip in the _Swallow_, the work of getting the motor boat ready for the sea went quickly on. Captain Crane got the crew on board, and they cleaned and polished until, as Mrs. Bobbsey said, you could almost see your face in the deck. Plenty of food and water was stored on board, for at sea the water is salt and cannot be used for drinking. The Bobbseys, after having seen all they wanted to in St. Augustine, moved most of their baggage to the boat, and Cousin Jasper went on board also. "Well, I guess we're all ready to start," said Captain Crane one morning. "Everything has been done that can be done, and we have enough to eat for a month or more." "Even if we are shipwrecked?" Freddie questioned. "Yes, little fat fireman," laughed the captain. "Even if we are shipwrecked. Now, all aboard!" They were all present, the crew and the Bobbseys, Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper. "All aboard!" cried the captain again. A bell jingled, a whistle tooted and the _Swallow_ began to move away from the dock. She dropped down the river and, a little later, was out on the ocean. "Once more the deep, blue sea, children!" said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Shall you like the voyage?" "Oh, very much!" cried Nan, and the others nodded their heads to agree with her. And then, as they were puffing along, one of the crew called to Captain Crane: "There's a man in that motor boat who wants to speak to you! Better wait and see what he wants!" CHAPTER XIII FLOSSIE'S DOLL Captain Crane jingled a bell that told the engineer of the motor boat to slow down. Then he steered the _Swallow_ over toward the other motor boat in which was a man waving his hand, as though he wanted the Bobbseys to stop, or at least to come closer, so that he might speak to them. The Bobbsey twins were wildly excited. "Hello, Captain Harrison!" called Captain Crane, as soon as the two boats were close enough to talk from one to the other. "Did you want to see me?" "Well, yes, I did," answered Captain Harrison, who was on the other motor boat, which was named _Sea Foam_. "I think I have some news for you." "I hope it's good news," Captain Crane made reply. "Yes, I believe it is. Are you going out to rescue a boy from an island quite a way to the south of us?" "Yes, these friends of mine are going," answered Captain Crane, pointing to the Bobbseys and to Cousin Jasper, who were sitting on the deck under the shade of an awning. "But how did you know?" "I just passed Captain Peters in his boat, and he told me about your starting off on a voyage," went on Captain Harrison. "As soon as I heard what you were going to do, I made up my mind to tell you what I saw. I passed that island, where you are going to look for a lost man----" "It's a lost boy, and not a lost man," interrupted Captain Crane. "Well, lost boy, then," went on Captain Harrison. "Anyhow, I passed that island the other day, and I'm sure I saw some one running up and down on the shore, waving a rag or something." "You did!" cried Cousin Jasper, who, with the Bobbseys, was listening to this talk. "Then why in the world didn't you go on shore and get Jack? Why didn't you do that, Captain?" "Because I couldn't," answered Captain Harrison. "A big storm was coming up, and I couldn't get near the place on account of the rocks. But I looked through my telescope, and I'm sure I saw a man--or, as you say, maybe it was a boy--running up and down on the shore of the island, waving something. "When I found I couldn't get near the place, on account of the rocks and the big waves, I made up my mind to go back as soon as I could. But the storm kept up, and part of my motor engine broke, so I had to come back here to get it fixed. "I just got in, after a lot of trouble, and the first bit of news I heard was that you were going to start off for this island to look for some one there. So I thought I'd tell you there is some one on the shore--at least there was a week ago, when I saw the place." The Bobbsey twins listened "with all their ears" to this talk, and they wondered what would happen next. "Well, if Captain Harrison saw Jack there he must be alive," said Bert to Nan. "Unless something happened to him afterward in the storm," remarked Nan. "I wish we could hurry up and get him," said Freddie. "Be quiet, children," whispered Mrs. Bobbsey. "Captain Crane wants to hear all that the other captain says." "S-sh," hissed Flossie importantly. "How long ago was this?" asked Captain Crane. "About a week," answered Captain Harrison. "I had trouble getting back, so it was a week ago. I tried to see some other boat to send to the island to take off this lost boy, but I didn't meet any until I got here. Somebody on shore told me about you. Then I thought, as long as you are going there, I'd tell you what I saw." "I'm glad you did," observed Cousin Jasper. "And I'm glad to know that Jack is well enough to be up and around--or that he was when you saw him. We must go there as fast as we can now, and rescue him." "Maybe some other boat stopped and took him off the island," said Captain Harrison. "Well, maybe one did," agreed Cousin Jasper. "If so, that's all the better. But if Jack is still there we'll get him. Thank you, Captain Harrison." Then the two motor boats started up again, one to go on to her dock at St. Augustine and the other--the one with the Bobbsey twins on board--heading for the deep blue sea which lay beyond. "Do you think you can find Jack?" asked Freddie, as he stood beside Captain Crane, who was steering the _Swallow_. "Well, yes, little fat fireman. I hope so," was the answer. "If Captain Harrison saw him running around the island, waving something for a flag, that shows he was alive, anyhow, and not sick, as he was when the folks took Mr. Dent off. So that's a good sign." "But it was more than a week ago," said Mr. Bobbsey. "Of course we all hope he can be found, but we must hurry as fast as we can." "That's right," said Cousin Jasper. "Make the boat go as fast as you can, Captain Crane." "I will," answered the seaman. "You'll see how quickly my _Swallow_ can skim over the waves." Now that they were started on their voyage over the sea the Bobbsey twins had a good chance to get better acquainted with Cousin Jasper. There had been so much to do in getting ready for the trip and in leaving the hotel that they had hardly spoken to him, or he to them. But now that they were all on board the motor boat, and there was nowhere else to go, and nothing to do, except to sit around on deck, or eat when the meal times came, there was a chance to see Cousin Jasper better and to talk with him more. "I like him," said Freddie, as the four twins sat together under an awning out of the sun, and listened to the conversation of the older folk, who were talking about the news given them by Captain Harrison. "I like Cousin Jasper!" "So do I. And he likes my rubber doll," said Flossie. "What makes you think he likes your doll?" asked Nan, with a laugh at her little sister. "'Cause when I dropped her on the floor in the cabin he picked her up for me and asked if she was hurt." "You can't hurt a rubber doll!" exclaimed Freddie. "I know you can't," said Flossie, "'ceptin' maybe when you pretend, and I wasn't doing that then. But Cousin Jasper brushed the dust off my doll, and he liked her." "That was nice of him," said Bert. "I like Captain Crane, too. He's going to let me steer the boat, maybe, when we get out where there aren't any other ships for me to knock into." "And he's going to let me run the engine--maybe," added Freddie. "Well, you'd better be careful how you run it," laughed Bert. "It's a good deal bigger than your fire engine." So the Bobbsey twins talked about Cousin Jasper and Captain Crane, and they were sure they would like both men. As for Cousin Jasper, he really loved the little folk, and had a warm place in his heart for them, though he had not seen any of them since they were small babies. On and on puffed the _Swallow_, over the deep blue sea, drawing nearer to the island where they hoped to find Jack Nelson. "But it will take us some little time to get there, even if nothing happens," said Cousin Jasper, as they all sat down to dinner in the cabin a little later. The meal was a good one, and Nan and her mother were quite surprised that so much could be cooked in the little kitchen, or "galley," as Captain Crane called it, for on a ship that is the name of the kitchen. One of the members of the crew was the cook, and he also helped about the boat, polishing the shiny brass rails, and doing other things, for there is as much work about a boat as there is about a house, as Nan's mother said to her. "Yes, Mother, I can see that there is a lot of work to do around a boat like this, especially if they wish to keep it in really nice style," said Nan. "The sailors have to work just about as hard as the servants do around a house." "Yes, my dear, and they have to work in all sorts of weather, too." "Well, we have to work in the house even in bad weather." "That's true. But the sailors on a boat often have to work outside on the deck when the weather is very rough." "And that must be awfully dangerous," put in Bert. "It does become dangerous at times, especially when there is a great storm on." "Do you think we'll run into a storm on this trip?" Nan questioned. "I'm sure I hope not!" answered the mother quickly. "To run into a big storm with such a small boat as this would be dangerous." "Maybe we'd be wrecked and become regular Robinson Crusoes," said Bert. "Oh, please, Bert! don't speak of such dreadful things!" said his mother. "But that would be fun, Mother." "Fun!" "All right. We won't be wrecked then." And Bert and his mother both laughed. After dinner the Bobbsey twins sat out on the deck, and watched the blue waves. For some little time they could look back and see the shores of Florida, and then, as the _Swallow_ flew farther and farther away, the shores were only like a misty cloud, and then, a little longer, and they could not be seen at all. "Now we are just as much at sea as when we were on the big ship coming from New York, aren't we?" Bert asked his father. "Yes, just about," answered Mr. Bobbsey. It was a little while after this that Mrs. Bobbsey, who had gone down to the staterooms, to get a book she had left there, heard Flossie crying. "What's the matter, little fairy?" asked her mother, as she came up on deck. "Oh, Mother, my nice rubber doll is gone, and Freddie took her and now he's gone," said Flossie. "Freddie gone!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "What do you mean, Flossie? Where could Freddie go?" "I don't know where he went. I guess he didn't go to look at any colored ladies with baskets on their heads, 'cause there aren't any here. But he went downstairs, where the engine is, and he took my doll with him. I saw him, and I hollered at him, but he wouldn't bring her back to me. Oh, I want my doll--my nice rubber doll!" and Flossie cried real tears. "I must find Freddie," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "I wonder where that boy could have gone this time?" CHAPTER XIV FREDDIE'S FISH Although she was a little worried about Freddie, Mrs. Bobbsey felt quite sure nothing very serious could happen to him. He would not go near enough the railing of the deck to fall over, for he and Flossie, as well as Bert and Nan, had promised not to do this while they were on the _Swallow_. And if the little boy had gone "downstairs," as Flossie said, he could be in no danger there. "Even if he went to the motor room," thought Mrs. Bobbsey, "he could come to no harm, for there is a man there all the while looking after the engine. But I must find him." Flossie was still sobbing a little, and looking about the deck as if, by some chance, her doll might still be there. "Tell me how it happened, Flossie," said Mrs. Bobbsey. Her husband was down in the cabin, talking to Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper. The cook was getting things ready for supper, one of the men was steering, and another was looking after the engine. Nan and Bert were up in the bow of the boat, watching the waves and an occasional seagull flying about, and Flossie was with her mother. The only one of her family Mrs. Bobbsey did not know about was Freddie. "It happened this way," said Flossie. "I was playing up here with my rubber doll, making believe she was a princess, and I was putting a gold and diamond dress on her, when Freddie came up with a lot of string. I asked him what he was going to do, and he said he was going to fish, and he asked me if I had a piece of cookie." "What did he want of a piece of cookie?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "He wanted it to fasten on his line for bait for the fishes, he said," went on Flossie. "But I didn't have any cookie. I did have some before that, and so did Freddie. The cook gave them to us, but I did eat all my piece up and so did Freddie. So I didn't have any for his fishline." "Then what happened?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, as she started down the companionway to look for Freddie. "Well, Freddie asked me to go and get some more cookie from the cook, and I did, 'cause I was hungry and I wanted to eat more. But I couldn't find the cook, and when I came back upstairs again, and outdoors--here on deck, I mean--I saw Freddie grab up my doll, and run down the other stairs." "Oh, well, maybe he only took it in fun," said Mrs. Bobbsey, and she was not at all worried now, feeling sure Freddie was safe, though he might be in some sort of mischief. "Anyhow he took my doll," Flossie went on. "And he wouldn't bring her back to me when I told him to. Then I--I cried." "Yes, I heard you," said her mother. "But you mustn't be such a baby, Flossie. Of course it wasn't right for Freddie to take your doll, but you shouldn't have cried about a little thing like that. I'll tell him he mustn't plague you." "But, Mother! he was going to throw my doll into the ocean, I'm sure he was." "Oh, no, Flossie! Freddie wouldn't do a thing like that!" "But I saw him tying a string to her, and I'm sure he was going to throw her into the ocean." "Well, then he could pull her out again." "Yes, but I don't want my doll in the ocean. The ocean is salty, and if salty water gets in her eyes it might spoil them." Mrs. Bobbsey wanted to laugh, but she did not dare, for that would have made Flossie feel worse than ever. "What makes you think Freddie was going to toss your doll into the ocean?" asked Flossie's mother. "'Cause, before that he wanted me to do it to give her a bath. He had a long string and he said, 'let's tie it to the rubber doll and let her swim in the ocean.'" "No, he mustn't do that, of course," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "And I'll tell him so when I find him. But perhaps he didn't do it, Flossie." "Oh, yes he did!" said the little girl. "When he ran downstairs with my doll, and wouldn't come back when I hollered at him, he was tying a string on her then. Oh, dear!" "Never mind! I'll get your doll back," Mrs. Bobbsey said. "But first we must find Freddie." "He went down those stairs," said Flossie, pointing to a flight that led to the motor room, where the engine was chug-chugging away, sending the _Swallow_ over the waves. "He went down there." The engine room of the motor boat was a clean place, not like the engine room on a steamboat, filled with coal dust and a lot of machinery, and Mrs. Bobbsey knew it would be all right for her and Flossie to go down there and see what Freddie was doing. "Now don't cry any more," Flossie's mother told her, giving the little girl a handkerchief on which to dry her tears. "We'll get your doll back, and I'll have to scold Freddie a little, I think." "Maybe you can't find him," said Flossie. "Oh, yes I can," her mother declared. "You can't find him if he is hiding away." "I don't think he will dare hide if he hears me calling him." "Maybe he will if he's got my doll," pouted Flossie. "Now, Flossie, you mustn't talk that way. I don't believe Freddie meant to be naughty. He was only heedless." "Well, I want my doll!" It was no easy matter for little Flossie to get down into the engine room of the motor boat. The little iron stairway was very steep, and the steps seemed to be very far apart. "Let me help you, Flossie," said her mother. "I don't want you to fall and get yourself dirty." "Oh, Mother, it isn't a bit dirty down here!" the little girl returned. "Why, it's just as clean as it can be!" "Still, there may be some oil around." "I'll be very careful. But please let me go down all by myself," answered the little girl. She was getting at that age now when she liked to do a great many things for herself. Often when there was a muddy place to cross in the street, instead of taking hold of somebody's hand Flossie would make a leap across the muddy place by herself. Knowing how much her little girl was disturbed over the loss of her doll, Mrs. Bobbsey, at this time, allowed her to have her own way. And slowly and carefully the stout little girl lowered herself from one step of the iron ladder to the next until she stood on the floor of the engine room. "Now, I got down all right, didn't I?" she remarked triumphantly. "Yes, my dear, you came down very nicely," the mother answered. Down in the engine room a man was oiling the machinery. He looked up as Mrs. Bobbsey and Flossie came down the stairs. "Have you seen my little boy?" asked Freddie's mother. "My little girl says he came down here." "So he did," answered the engineer. "I asked him if he was coming to help me run the boat, and he said he would a little later. He had something else to do now, it seems." "What?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Well, he said he wanted to go fishing. And as I knew you wouldn't want him leaning over the rail I showed him where he could fish out of one of the portholes of the storeroom. A porthole is one of the round windows," the engineer said, so Flossie would know what he was talking about. "I opened one of the ports for him, and said he could drop his line out of that. Then he couldn't come to any harm." "Did he have a line?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Yes, a good, strong one. I guess he must have got it off Captain Crane. He's a fisherman himself, the captain is, and he has lots of hooks and lines on board." "Oh, I hope Freddie didn't have a hook!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "No'm," answered the engineer. "I didn't see any, and I don't think he did have any. He just had a long string, and I thought all he was going to do was to dangle it out of the porthole in the storeroom. He couldn't come to any harm there, I knew, and I could keep my eye on him once in a while." "Did he have my rubber doll?" asked Flossie. "I didn't see any doll," answered the engineer. "But he's in there now," he went on. "You can ask him yourself." Looking out of the engine room, Freddie could be seen farther back in the motor boat, in a place where boxes and barrels of food, and things for the boat, were kept. One of the side ports was open, and Freddie's head was stuck out of this, so he could not see his mother and Flossie and the engineer looking at him. "Well, I'm glad he's all right," said Mrs. Bobbsey with a sigh of relief. "Thank you for looking after him." "Oh, I like children," said the man with a smile. "I have some little ones of my own at home." Mrs. Bobbsey and Flossie went into the storeroom. Freddie did not hear them, for his head was still out of the round window. There was no danger of his falling out, for he could not have got his shoulders through, so Mrs. Bobbsey was not frightened, even though the little boy was leaning right over deep water, through which the _Swallow_ was gliding. "Oh, where is my doll?" asked Flossie, looking about and not seeing it. "I want my rubber doll!" "I'll ask Freddie," said Mrs. Bobbsey, and then, in a louder voice, she called: "Freddie! Freddie! Where is Flossie's doll? You mustn't take it away from her. I shall have to punish you for this!" For a moment it seemed as if the little boy had not heard what his mother had said. Then, when she called him again, he pulled his head in from the porthole and whispered: "Please don't make a noise, Mother! I'm fishing, and a noise always scares the fish away!" "But, Freddie, fishing or not, you mustn't take Flossie's playthings," his mother went on. Freddie did not answer for a moment. He had wound around his hand part of a heavy cord, which Mrs. Bobbsey knew was a line used to catch big fish. Freddie was really trying to catch something, it seemed. "Is there a hook on that line?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, fearing, after all, that her little boy might have found one. "Oh, no, Mother, there's no hook," Freddie answered. "I just tied on----" And then a queer look came over his face. His hand, with the line wound around it, was jerked toward the open porthole and the little boy cried: "Oh, I got a fish! I got a fish! I got a big fish!" CHAPTER XV "LAND HO!" Mrs. Bobbsey at first did not know whether Freddie was playing some of his make-believe games, or whether he really had caught a fish. Certainly something seemed to be pulling on the line he held out of the porthole, but then, his mother thought, it might have caught on something, as fishlines often do get caught. "I've caught a fish! I've caught a fish!" Freddie cried again. "Oh, please somebody come and help me pull it in!" Flossie was so excited--almost as much as was her brother--that she forgot all about her lost doll. "Have you really caught a fish?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "I really have! I guess maybe it's a shark or a whale, it's so big, and it pulls so hard!" cried Freddie. And, really, the line that was wound around his hand was pulled so tight, and stretched so hard, where it went out of the hole and down into the ocean, that Freddie could not lower his fist. "Oh, Freddie!" cried his mother. "If you have caught a fish it may cut your fingers by jerking on that line." "Well, I--I caught something!" Freddie said. "Please somebody get it off my line. And hurry, please!" By this time Nan and Bert had run down into the storeroom. They saw what was going on. "Are you sure you haven't caught another hat?" asked Bert, as he remembered what had once happened to his little brother. "It doesn't pull like a hat," Freddie answered. "It's a real fish." "I believe he has caught something," said Mr. Chase, the engineer, as he ran in from the motor room. "Yes, it's either a fish or a turtle," he added as he caught hold of the line and took some of the pull off Freddie's hand. "Unwind that cord from your fingers," he told the little boy. "I'll take care of your fish--if you really have one." "Could it be a turtle?" asked Nan. "Yes, there are lots of 'em in these waters," the engineer said. "But I never knew one of 'em to bite on just a piece of string before, without even a hook or a bit of bait on it." "Oh, I got something on my line for bait," Freddie answered. But no one paid any attention to him just then, for the engineer, gently thrusting the little boy aside, looked from the porthole himself, and what he saw made him cry: "The little lad has caught something all right. Would you mind running up on deck and telling Captain Crane your brother has caught something," said Mr. Chase to Bert. "And tell him, if he wants to get it aboard he'd better tell one of the men to stand by with a long-handled net. I think it's a turtle or a big fish, and it'll be good to eat whatever it is--unless it's a shark, and some folks eat them nowadays." "Oh, I don't want to catch a shark!" exclaimed Freddie. "It's already caught, whatever it is," said Mr. Chase, "It seems to be well hooked, too, whatever you used on the end of your line." "I tied on a----" began Freddie, but, once again, no one paid attention to what he said, for the fish, or whatever it was on the end of the line, began to squirm in the water, "squiggle" Freddie called it afterward--and the engineer had to hold tightly to the line. "Please hurry and tell the captain to reach the net overboard and pull this fish in," begged Mr. Chase of Bert. "I'd pull it in through the porthole, but I'm afraid it will get off if I try." All this while the _Swallow_ was moving slowly along through the blue waters of the deep sea, for when the engineer had run in to see what Freddie had caught he had shut down the motor so that it moved at a quarter speed. Up on deck ran Bert, to find his father and Captain Crane there talking with Cousin Jasper. "What is it, Bert?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. "Oh, will you please get out a net, Captain!" cried Nan's brother. "Freddie has caught a big fish through the porthole and the engineer--Mr. Chase--is holding it now, and he can't pull it in, and will you do it with a net?" "My! that's a funny thing to have happen!" said Mr. Bobbsey. "I'll get the net!" cried Captain Crane. "If your brother has really caught a fish or a turtle we can have it for dinner. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a turtle," said the captain to Bert's father. "There are plenty around where we are sailing now, and they'll sometimes bite on a bare hook, though they like something to eat better. What bait did Freddie use?" he asked. "I don't know," Bert answered. By this time Captain Crane had found a large net, which had a long handle fast to it, and also a rope, so that if the fish were so large that the handle should break in lifting it from the water, the rope would hold. With the net ready to dip down into the water, Captain Crane ran along the deck until he stood above the porthole, out of which ran the line. The fish, or whatever it was, was still fast to the other end of the strong cord. "Haul it up as close as you can to the side of the boat!" called the captain to the engineer, who thrust his head partly out of the round hole. "Then I'll scoop it up in the net. Watch out he doesn't get off the hook." "That's the trouble," said the engineer. "I don't believe Freddie used a hook. But we'll soon see." Up on the deck of the _Swallow_, as well as down in the storeroom, where Freddie, his mother and the others were watching, there was an anxious moment. They all wanted to see what it was the little boy had caught. "Here we go, now!" cried Captain Crane, as he lowered the long-handled net into the water near the cord. The captain held to the wooden handle, and Mr. Bobbsey had hold of the rope. Through the porthole Mr. Chase pulled on the cord until he had brought the flapping, struggling captive close to the side of the motor boat. Then, with a sudden scoop, Captain Crane slipped the net under it. "Now pull!" he cried, and both he and Mr. Bobbsey did this. Up out of the blue sea rose something in the net. And as the sun shone on the glistening sides Freddie, peering from the porthole beside the engineer, cried: "Oh, it's a fish! It's a big fish!" And indeed it was, a flapping fish, of large size, the silver scales of which shone brightly in the sun. "Pull!" cried the captain to Mr. Bobbsey, and a few seconds later the fish lay flapping on deck. Up from below came Freddie, greatly excited, followed by his mother, Nan, Flossie and Mr. Chase, Flossie chanting loudly: "Freddie caught a fish! Freddie caught a fish!" "Didn't I tell you I caught a fish?" cried the little boy, his blue eyes shining with excitement. "You certainly did," his father answered. "But how did you do it, little fat fireman?" "Well, Captain Crane gave me the fishline," Freddie answered. "Yes, I did," the captain said. "He begged me for one and I let him take it. I didn't think he could do any harm, as I didn't let him take any sharp hooks--or any hooks, in fact." "If he didn't have his line baited, or a hook on it, I don't see how he caught anything," said the engineer. "I did have something on my line," Freddie exclaimed. "I had--I had----" But just then Flossie, who had been forgotten in the excitement, burst out with: "Where's my doll, Freddie Bobbsey? Where's my nice rubber doll that you took? I want her! Where is she?" "I--I guess the fish swallowed her," Freddie answered. "The fish!" cried all the others. "Yes. You see I tied the rubber doll on the end of the line 'stid of a hook," the little boy added. "I knew I had to have something for to bait the fish, so they'd bite, so I tied Flossie's doll on. The fish couldn't hurt it much," he went on. "'Cause once Snap had your rubber doll in his mouth, Flossie, and she wasn't hurt a bit." "And is my doll in the fish now?" the little girl demanded, not quite sure whether or not she ought to cry. "I guess it swallowed the doll," returned Freddie. "Anyhow the doll was on the end of the string, and now the string is in the fish's mouth. But maybe you can get your doll back, Flossie, when the fish is cooked." Captain Crane bent over the fish, which was flopping about on deck. "It has swallowed the end of the line, and, I suppose, whatever was fast on the cord," he said. "If it was Flossie's doll, that is now inside the fish." "And can you get it out?" asked Bert. "Oh, yes, when we cut the fish open to clean it ready to cook, we can get the doll." "Is that fish good to eat?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Very good indeed. It's one of our best kind," the captain said. "Freddie is a better fisherman than he knew." And the little Bobbsey twin had really caught a fish. Just why it was the fish had bit on the line baited with Flossie's rubber doll, no one knew. But Captain Crane said that sometimes the fish get so hungry they will almost bite on a bare hook, and are caught that way. This fish of Freddie's was so large that it had swallowed the doll, which was tied fast on the end of the line, and once the doll was in its stomach the fish could not get loose from the heavy cord. "But you mustn't take Flossie's doll for fish-bait again," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "No'm, I won't!" Freddie promised. "But now maybe I can have a real hook and bait." "Well, we'll see about that," said Mr. Bobbsey with a smile. The line was cut, close to the mouth of the big fish, which weighed about fifteen pounds, and then Freddie's prize was taken by the cook down to the galley, or kitchen. A little later the cook brought back Flossie's rubber doll, cleanly washed, and with the piece of string still tied around its waist. "Is she hurt?" asked Flossie, for her doll was very real to the little girl, since she often pretended she was alive. "No, she's all right--not even a pinhole in her," said Mr. Bobbsey. "There are a few marks of the teeth of the fish, where it grabbed your rubber doll, but she was swallowed whole, like Jonah and the whale, so no harm was done." "I'm glad," said the little girl, as she cuddled her plaything, so strangely given back to her. "And don't you dare take her for fish-bait again, Freddie Bobbsey." "No, Flossie, I won't," he said. "I'll use real bait after this." "But you mustn't do any more fishing without telling me or your mother," cautioned Mr. Bobbsey. "You might have been pulled overboard by this one." "Oh, no, I couldn't," Freddie declared. "Only my head could go through the porthole." "Well, don't do it again," his father warned him, and the little boy promised that he would not. The fish was cooked for supper, and very good it was, too. Flossie and Freddie ate some and Flossie pretended to feed her doll a little, though of course the doll didn't really chew. "The fish tried to eat you, and now you can eat some of the fish," Flossie said, with a laugh. The Bobbsey twins wanted to stay up late that night, and watch the moonlight on the water, but their mother, after letting them sit on deck a little while, said it would be best for them to "turn in," as the sailors call going to bed. They had been up early, and the first day of their new voyage at sea had been a long one. So down to their berths they went and were soon ready for bed. "My, we had a lot of things happen to-day!" remarked Flossie. "Well, I'm sorry I took the doll, but I'm awful glad I caught that great big fish," answered Freddy. "But you're never going to take her for fish bait again, Freddie Bobbsey!" repeated his twin. "I didn't say I was. I guess the next time I want to go fishing I'll get a regular piece of meat from the cook." "Children, children! It's time to go to sleep now," broke in their mother. "Remember, you'll want to be up bright and early to-morrow." "If I don't wake up, you call me, please," cried Freddie; and then he turned over and in a few minutes was sound asleep, and soon the others followed. The next day passed. The children had fun on board the motor boat, and the older folks read and talked, among other things, of how glad they would be to rescue Jack from the lonely island. The following day it rained hard, and the four twins had to stay in the cabin most of the time. But they found plenty to amuse them. The third morning, as they came up on deck, the sun was shining, and one of the men was looking at something through a telescope. "Does he see another fish, or maybe a whale or a shark?" asked Freddie. The sailor answered for himself, though he was really speaking to Captain Crane, who was at the steering wheel. "Land ho!" cried the sailor. "Where away?" asked the captain. "Dead ahead!" went on the sailor. That is the way they talk on board a ship and it means: "I see some land." "Where is it?" "Straight ahead." The Bobbsey twins looked, but all they could see was a faint speck, far out in the deep, blue sea. "Is that land?" asked Nan. "Yes, it's an island," answered Captain Crane. "Oh, maybe it's the island where Jack is!" Bert cried. "Perhaps," said Captain Crane. "We'll soon know, for it is not many miles away, though it looks far off on account of the fog and mist. We'll soon be there." He was just going to ring the bell, giving a signal to the engineer to make the boat go faster when, all at once, Mr. Chase, who had helped Freddie catch the fish, came hurrying up out of the motor room. "Captain!" he cried. "We'll have to slow down! One of the motors is broken! We'll have to stop!" This was bad news to the Bobbsey twins. CHAPTER XVI UNDER THE PALMS Cousin Jasper, who had been talking to Mr. Bobbsey, walked along the deck with the children's father until he stood near Captain Crane, who was now looking through the telescope, across the deep, blue sea, at the speck which, it was said, was an island. "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Dent. "Why are we stopping, Captain Crane?" "Because one of our motors is broken, Mr. Dent. But don't let that worry you. We have two, or, rather, a double motor, and if we can't go with one we can with the other. It's like a little boy or girl, when they break one of their roller skates," he went on, looking at Flossie and Freddie. "If they can't skate on two skates they can push themselves around on one skate," said the captain. "And that's what we'll have to do. But, Mr. Chase, you think you can mend the broken engine easily enough, don't you?" he asked the man who had helped Freddie hold on to the big fish. "Oh, yes," answered the engineer. "We can easily fix the broken motor. But it will take a day or so, and we ought to be in some quiet place where the waves won't rock us so hard if a storm comes up. So why not go to this island that we see over there?" and he pointed to the speck in the ocean. "Maybe there is a little bay there where the _Swallow_ can rest while my men and I fix the engine." "That's a good idea," said Captain Crane. "Can you run to the island?" "Oh, yes, if we go slowly." "What's that?" cried Cousin Jasper. "Is there an island around here?" "The sailor who was looking through his telescope just saw one," returned Captain Crane. "I was going to tell you about it when Mr. Chase spoke to me about the broken engine. There is the island; you can see it quite plainly with the glass," and he handed the spy-glass to Cousin Jasper. "Maybe it's the island where that boy is," said Flossie to her father. "Maybe," agreed Mr. Bobbsey. "I hardly think it is," said Mr. Dent, as he put the telescope to his eye. "The island where we were wrecked is farther away than this, and this one is smaller and has more trees on it than the one where poor Jack and I landed. I do not think this is the place we want, but we can go there to fix the engine, and then travel on farther." "Can we really land on the island?" asked Freddie. "Yes, you may go ashore there," the captain said. "We shall probably have to stay there two or three days." "Oh, what fun we can have, playing on the island!" cried Flossie. "We'll pretend we're Robinson Crusoe," said her little brother. "Come on, Flossie, let's go and tell Nan and Bert!" And while the two younger Bobbsey twins ran to tell their older brother and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, Cousin Jasper and Captain Crane took turns looking through the glass at the island, which was about five miles away. "It is not the island where I was," said Cousin Jasper again. "But it looks like a good place to stay while the engines of the _Swallow_ are being mended. So we'll go there, Captain!" "All right," Captain Crane answered. "We'll have to go a little slow, but we'll be there in plenty of time." Once more the motor boat started off, not going as fast as at first, but the Bobbsey twins did not mind this a bit, as they were thinking what fun they would have on the island so far out at sea, and they stood at the rail watching it as it appeared to grow larger the nearer the boat came to it. "We're coming up pretty fast, aren't we?" remarked Freddie. "Not as fast as we might come," answered Bert. "However, we've got lots of time, just as Captain Crane said." "Is it a really and truly Robinson Crusoe place?" questioned Flossie. "I guess we'll find out about that a little later," answered her sister. "I can see the trees now!" exclaimed Freddie presently. "So can I," answered his twin. At last the anchor was dropped in a little bay, which would be sheltered from storms, and then the small boat was lowered so that those who wished might go ashore. "Oh, what lovely palm trees!" exclaimed Nan, as she saw the beautiful branches near the edge of the island, waving in the gentle breeze. "They are wonderful," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "The whole island is covered with them." "Do palm leaf fans grow on these trees, Mother?" asked Freddie as they were being rowed ashore by one of the sailors. "Well, yes, I suppose they could make palm leaf fans from some of the branches of these palm trees," Mrs. Bobbsey said. "And shall we call this Palm Island? That is, unless it has some other name?" she asked Captain Crane. "No, I hardly think it has," he answered. "I was never here before, though I have been on many of the little islands in this part of the sea. So we can call this Palm Island, if you like." "It will be a lovely place to stay," stated Nan. "I just love to sit under a tree, and look at the waves and the white sand." "I'm going in swimming!" declared Bert. "It's awful hot, and a good swim will cool me off." "Don't go in until we take a look and see if there are any sharks or big fish around," his father warned him. "Remember we are down South, where the water of the ocean is warm, and sharks like warm water. This is not like it was at Uncle William's at Ocean Cliff. So, remember, children, don't go in the water unless your mother, or some of the grown people, are with you." The children promised they would not, and a little later the rowboat grated on the sandy shore and they all got out on the beach of Palm Island. "Then this isn't the place where you were wrecked with Jack?" asked Mr. Bobbsey of Cousin Jasper. "No; it isn't the same place at all. It is a beautiful island, though; much nicer than the one where I was." "I wonder if any one lives on it," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "I think not," answered Captain Crane. "Most of these islands are too small for people to live on for any length of time, though fishermen might camp out on them for a week or so. However, this will be a good place for us to stay while the engines are being fixed." "Can we sleep here at night?" asked Bert, who wanted very much to do as he had read of Robinson Crusoe doing. "Well, no, I hardly think you could sleep here at night," said Captain Crane. "We may not be here more than two days, and it wouldn't be wise to get out the camping things for such a little while. Then, too, a storm might come up, and we would have to move the boat. You can spend the days on Palm Island and sleep on the _Swallow_." "Well, that will be fun!" said Nan. "Lots of fun," agreed Bert. "And please, Daddy, can't we go in swimming?" It was a hot day, and as Captain Crane said there would be no danger from sharks if the children kept near shore, their bathing garments were brought from the boat, and soon Bert and Nan, and Flossie and Freddie, were splashing about in the warm sun-lit waters on the beach of Palm Island. Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were sitting in the shade watching them, while the men on the boat were working at the broken engine, when suddenly Flossie, who had come out of the water to sit on the sand, set up a cry. "Oh, it's got hold of me!" she shouted. "Come quick, Daddy! Mother! It's got hold of my dress and it's pulling!" Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey jumped up and ran down the beach toward the little girl. [Illustration: FLOSSIE WAS TRYING TO PULL AWAY.] CHAPTER XVII A QUEER NEST Nan and Bert, who, with Freddie, were splashing out in the water a little way from where Flossie sat on the beach, heard the cries of the little girl and hurried to her. But Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were the first to reach Flossie. "What is it?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. "What's the matter?" asked Flossie's mother. "Oh, he's pulling me! He's pulling me!" answered the little girl. And, surely enough, something behind her, which Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey could not see, did appear to have hold of the little short skirt of the bathing suit Flossie wore. "Can it be a little dog playing with her?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. "We'd hear him bark if it was," his wife answered. "And I don't believe there are any dogs on this island." Flossie was trying to pull away from whatever had hold of her, and the little girl was having a hard time of it. Her bare feet dug in the white sand, and she leaned forward, just as she would have done if a dog had had hold of her short skirt from behind. Mr. Bobbsey, running fast, caught Flossie in his arms, and when he saw what was behind her he gave a loud shout. "It's a turtle!" he cried. "A great, big turtle, and it took a bite out of your dress, Flossie girl!" "Will it bite me?" asked the little "fairy." "Not now!" the twins' father answered with a laugh. "There, I'll get you loose from him!" Mr. Bobbsey gave a hard pull on Flossie's bathing suit skirt. There was a sound of tearing cloth and then Mr. Bobbsey could lift his little girl high in his arms. As he did so Mrs. Bobbsey, who hurried up just then, saw on the beach behind Flossie a great, big turtle, and in its mouth, which looked something like that of a parrot, was a piece of the bathing skirt. Mr. Bobbsey had torn it loose. "Oh, if he had bitten you instead of your dress!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "Flossie, are you hurt?" "No, she isn't hurt a bit," her father said. "But of course it is a good thing that the turtle did not bite her. How did it happen, Flossie?" "Well, I was resting here, after I tried to swim," answered the little girl, for she was learning to swim; "and, all of a sudden, I wanted to get up, for Freddie called me to come and see how he could float. But I couldn't get up. This mud turkle had hold of me." "It isn't a mud turtle," said Mr. Bobbsey. "But it certainly had hold of you." Just then Cousin Jasper came along and saw the turtle crawling back toward the water. "Ha! I'll stop that and we'll have some turtle soup for dinner to-morrow!" he cried. "Not so fast, Mr. Turtle!" With that Cousin Jasper turned the turtle over on its back, and there the big creature lay, moving its flippers, which it had instead of legs. They were broad and flat. "Won't it bite you?" asked Freddie, who, with Nan and Bert, had waded ashore. "Not if I don't put my hand too near its mouth," Cousin Jasper answered. "If I did that it would take hold of me, as it took hold of Flossie's dress. But I'm not going to let it. Did the turtle scare you, little fat fairy?" "I--I guess it did," she answered. "Anyhow I hollered." "You certainly did," her father said with a laugh. "At least, you hallooed." "What are you going to do with it?" asked Bert, as he watched the big turtle, which still had hold of the piece torn from Flossie's bathing skirt. "We'll eat him--that is part of him, made into soup," answered Cousin Jasper. "Can't he get away?" Nan inquired. "Not when he's on his back," said Mr. Dent. "That's how the people down here catch turtles. They go out on the beach, and when any of the crawling creatures are seen, they are turned over as soon as possible. There they stay until they can be picked up and put into a boat to be taken to the mainland and sold." "Can they bite hard?" asked Bert. "Pretty hard, yes. See what a hold it has of Flossie's dress. I had to tear it to get it loose," returned Mr. Bobbsey. And the turtle still held in his mouth, which was like the beak of a parrot, a piece of the cloth. "He looks funny," put in Nan. "But I feel sorry for him." Bert and Freddie laughed at Nan for this. "The turtle must have been crawling along the beach, to go back into the ocean for a swim," said Cousin Jasper, "and it ran right into Flossie as she sat on the sand. Then, not knowing just what sort of danger was near, the turtle bit on the first thing it saw, which was Flossie's dress." "And it held on awful tight," said the little girl. "It was just like, sometimes, when our dog Snap takes hold of a stick and pulls it away from you. At first I thought it was Snap." "Snap couldn't swim away down here from Lakeport!" said Freddie, with some scorn. "I know he couldn't!" said his little sister. "But only at first I thought it was Snap. Are there any more turkles here, Cousin Jasper?" "Well, yes, a great many, I suppose. They come up out of the sea now and then to lie on the sand in the sun. But I don't believe any more of them will take hold of you. Just look around before you sit down, and you'll be all right." "My, he's a big one!" cried Bert, as he looked at the wiggling creature turned on its back. "Oh, that isn't half the size of some," said Cousin Jasper. "They often get to weigh many hundreds of pounds. But this one is large enough to make plenty of soup for us. I'll tell Captain Crane to send the men over to get it." A little later the turtle was taken on board the _Swallow_ in the boat, and the cook got it ready for soup. "And I think he'll make very good soup, indeed," said the cook. "He certainly ought to make good soup," answered Captain Crane. "It will be nice and fresh, if nothing else." While Mr. Chase and his men were mending the broken engine, and the cook was making turtle soup, the Bobbsey twins, with their father and mother and Cousin Jasper, stayed on Palm Island. They walked along the shore, under the shady trees, and watched the blue waves break up on the white sand. Overhead, birds wheeled and flew about, sometimes dashing down into the water with a splash to catch a fish or get something else to eat. "It's getting near dinner time," said Mr. Bobbsey, after a while. "I guess you children had better get ready to go back to the boat for a meal. You must be hungry." "I am," answered Nan. "It always makes me hungry to go in swimming." "I'm hungry anyhow, even if I don't go in swimming," Bert said. "Perhaps we could have a little lunch here, on Palm Island, without going back to the _Swallow_," Mrs. Bobbsey suggested. "Oh, that would be fun!" cried Nan. "Daddy and I'll go to the ship in the boat and get the things to eat," proposed Bert. "Then we'll bring 'em here and have a picnic." "Yes, we might do that," Mr. Bobbsey agreed. "It will save work for the cook, who must be busy with that turtle. We'll go and get the things for an island picnic." "This is almost like the time we were on Blueberry Island," said Nan, when her father and brother had rowed back to the _Swallow_. "Only there isn't any cave," Freddie said. "Maybe there is," returned Nan. "We haven't looked around yet. Maybe we might find a cave here; mightn't we, Mother?" "Oh, yes, you might. But don't go looking for one. I don't want you to get lost here. We must all stay together." In a little while Bert and Mr. Bobbsey came back with baskets filled with good things to eat. They were spread out on a cloth on the clean sand, not far from where the waves broke on the beach, and then, under the waving palms, the picnic was held, Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper having a share in it. On the _Swallow_ the men still worked to mend the broken engine. "How long shall we be here?" Mr. Bobbsey asked. "About two days more," answered Captain Crane. "It will take longer than we at first thought to fix the break." "Oh, I'm sorry about that!" exclaimed Cousin Jasper. "I wanted to get to the other island as soon as we could, and save Jack. It must be very lonesome for him there, and perhaps he is hurt, or has become ill. I wish we could get to him." "We'll go there as soon as we can," promised Captain Crane. "I am as anxious to get that poor boy as you are, Mr. Dent. At the same time I hope he has, before this, been taken off the island by some other boat that may have seen him waving to them." "I hope so, too," said Mr. Dent. "Still I would feel better if we were at the other island and had Jack safe with us." They all felt sorry for the poor boy, and wondered what he was doing just then. "I hope he has something as good to eat as we have." Nan spoke with a sigh of satisfaction. "Indeed, this is a very nice meal, for a picnic," said her mother. "We ought to be very thankful to Cousin Jasper for taking us on such a nice voyage." "I am glad you like it," returned Mr. Dent. "All the while I was in the hospital, as soon as I was able to think, my thoughts were with this poor boy. "I tried to get the hospital people to send a boat to rescue Jack; but they said he could not be on the island, or the sailors who brought me off would have seen him. Then they thought I was out of my head with illness, and paid little attention to me. "Then I thought of you, Dick, and I wrote to you. I knew you liked traveling about, and especially when it was to help some one." "Indeed I do," said the father of the Bobbsey twins. "And if all goes well we'll soon rescue Jack!" After the picnic lunch the Bobbseys and their friends sat in the shade of the palms and talked over what had so far happened on the voyage. Flossie and Freddie wandered down the beach, and the little girl was showing her brother where she sat when the turtle grabbed her dress. "Let's dig a hole in the sand," Freddie said, a little later. "We haven't any shovels," Flossie answered. "We can take shells," said Freddie. Soon the two little twins were having fun in the sand of the beach. They had not been digging very long when Freddie gave a shout. "Oh, I hope nothing more has happened!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, starting up. "What is it, Freddie?" called Mr. Bobbsey. "Look at the funny nest we found!" answered the little boy. "It's a funny nest in the sand, and it's got a lot of chicken's eggs in it! Come and look!" CHAPTER XVIII THE "SWALLOW" IS GONE "What is the child saying?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey of her husband, for she did not hear all that Freddie said. "He's calling about having found a hen's nest," Mr. Bobbsey answered, "but he must be mistaken. There can't be any chickens on this island." "Maybe there are," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Perhaps, after all, some one lives here, on the other side where we haven't been. And they may keep chickens." "Oh, no," answered her husband. "I hardly think so," said Cousin Jasper. "But we'll go to look at what Freddie has found." Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, with Cousin Jasper, followed by Bert and Nan, hurried down the beach to Flossie and Freddie, standing beside a hole they had dug in the sand. The children were looking down into it. "I busted one egg with my clam-shell shovel," Freddie was saying, "but there's a lot left." "They were all covered with sand," added Flossie. "And we dug 'em up! Didn't we, Freddie? We dug up the chickie's nest!" "But we didn't see any chickens," said the little boy. "And for a very good reason," stated Cousin Jasper with a laugh, as he looked down into the little sand pit. "Those are the eggs of a turtle. Perhaps the very turtle that had hold of your dress, Flossie." "Do turtles lay eggs?" asked Freddie in surprise. "Indeed they do," said Cousin Jasper. "O-o-oh!" gasped Flossie. "And the turtle's eggs are good to eat, too. They are not quite as nice as the eggs of a hen, but lots of people, especially those who live on some of these islands, like them very much," went on Mr. Dent. "Does a turkle lay its eggs in a nest like a hen?" Flossie questioned. "What made them all be covered up?" "Well," answered Cousin Jasper, as they all looked at the eggs in the sand, "a turtle lays eggs like a hen, but she cannot hover over them, and hatch them, as a hen can, because a turtle has no warm feathers. You know it takes warmth and heat to make an egg hatch. And, as a turtle isn't warm enough to do that, she lays her eggs in the warm sand, and covers them up. The heat of the sun, and the warm sand soon hatch the little turtles out of the eggs." "Would turtles come out of these eggs?" asked Nan. "Really, truly?" added Flossie. "Just as surely as little chickens come out of hen's eggs," answered Cousin Jasper. "But they must be kept warm." "Then we'd better cover 'em up again!" exclaimed Freddie. "We found the turtle's eggs when we were digging in the sand--Flossie and me. And I didn't know they were there and I busted one of the eggs. First I thought they were white stones, but when I busted one, and the white and yellow came out, I found they were eggs." "And the shells aren't hard," said Mrs. Bobbsey, as she leaned over the hole and touched the queer eggs in the sand-nest. "The shells are like the shell of a soft egg a hen sometimes lays." "Except that the shells, or rather, skins, of these eggs are thicker than those of a chicken," explained Cousin Jasper. "These egg-skins are like a piece of leather. If they were hard, like the eggs of a hen, perhaps the little turtles could not break their way out, as a turtle, though it can give a hard bite, has no pointed beak to pick a hole in the shell." "Well, you have made quite a discovery," said Mr. Bobbsey to the little twins. "Better cover the eggs up now, so the little turtles in them will not get cold and die." "Are there turtles in them now?" asked Freddie. "No, these eggs must be newly laid," Cousin Jasper said. "But if they are kept warm long enough the little turtles will come to life in them and break their way out. Would you like some to eat?" he asked Mr. Bobbsey. The father of the twins shook his head. "I don't believe I care for any," he answered. "I'm not very fond of eggs, anyhow, and I'll wait until we can find some that feathered chickens lay." "Well, I'll take a few for myself, and I know Captain Crane likes them," said Cousin Jasper. "The rest we will leave to be hatched by the warm sun." Mr. Dent took some of the eggs out in his hat, and then Flossie and Freddie covered the rest with sand again. "We'll dig in another place, so we won't burst any more turtle's eggs," said the little boy, as he walked down the beach with Flossie, each one carrying a clam shell. It was so nice on Palm Island that Mrs. Bobbsey said they would have supper there, before going back on board the _Swallow_ to spend the night. So more things to eat were brought off in the small boat, and, as the sun was sinking down in the west, turning the blue waves of the sea to a golden color, the travelers sat on the beach and ate. "Maybe we could build a little campfire here and stay for a while after dark," suggested Bert, who felt that he was getting to be quite a large boy now. "Oh, no indeed! We won't stay here after dark!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "Snakes and turtles and all sorts of things might crawl up out of the ocean and walk all around us on the beach. As soon as it gets dark we'll go back to the ship." "Yes, I think that would be best," said Mr. Bobbsey. "When we get to the other island, where we hope to find Jack, it will be time enough to camp out." "Shall we stay there long?" Bert wanted to know. "It all depends on how we find that poor boy," answered Cousin Jasper. "If he is all right, and doesn't mind staying a little longer, we can make a camp on the island. There are some tents on board and we can live in them while on shore." "Oh, that'll be almost as much fun as Blueberry Island!" cried Nan. "It'll be nicer!" Bert said. "Blueberry Island was right near shore, but this island is away out in the middle of the ocean, isn't it, Cousin Jasper?" "Well, not exactly in the middle of the ocean," was the answer. "But I think, perhaps, there is more water around it than was around your Blueberry Island." After supper, which, like their lunch, was eaten on the beach under the palm trees, the Bobbsey twins and the others went back to the _Swallow_. The men working for the engineer, Mr. Chase, had not yet gotten the engine fixed, and it would take perhaps two more days, they said, as the break was worse than they had at first thought. "Well, we'll have to stay here, that's all," said Cousin Jasper. "I did hope we would hurry to the rescue of Jack, but it seems we can't. Anyhow it would not do to go on with a broken engine. We might run into a storm at sea and then we would be wrecked. So we will wait until everything is all right before we go sailing over the sea again." "It seems like being back home," said Mrs. Bobbsey, as she sat down later in a deck chair. "Didn't you like it on the island?" asked Bert. "Yes. But after it got dark some big turtle might have come up out of the sea and pulled on you, as one did on Flossie," and Bert's mother smiled. "Well, no mud turkles can get on our ship, can they?" asked the little "fat fairy." "No turtles can get on board here, unless they climb up the anchor cable," said Captain Crane with a laugh. "Now we'll get all snug for the night, so if it comes on to blow, or storm, we shall be all right." It was a little too early to go to bed, so the Bobbsey twins and the grown folks sat on deck in the moonlight. The men of the crew, and the cook, sat on the other end of the deck, and also talked. It was very warm, for the travelers were now in southern waters, nearer the equator than they had ever been before. Even with very thin clothes on the air felt hot, though, of course, just as at Lakeport or Meadow Brook, it was cooler in the evening than during the day. "It's almost too hot to go down into the staterooms," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "I wonder if we couldn't sleep out on deck?" "Yes, we could have the mattresses brought up," said Cousin Jasper. "I have often slept on the deck of my own boat." "Some of the crew are going to, they tell me," Captain Crane said. "Then we will," Mr. Bobbsey decided. "It will be more like camping out. And it certainly is very hot, even with the sun down." "We may have a thunderstorm in the night," the captain said, "but we can sleep out until then." So the mattresses and bed covers were brought up from the stateroom. "This is a new kind of camping out, isn't it?" remarked Flossie, as she viewed the bringing up of the bed things with great interest. "It's a good deal like moving, I think," answered Freddie. "Only, of course, we haven't got any moving van to load the things on to." "What would you do with a moving van out here on a boat?" demanded Bert. "I could put it on another boat--one of those flat ones, like they have down at New York, where the horses and wagons walk right on," insisted Freddie, thinking of a ferryboat. "Well, we haven't any such boats around here, so we'd better not have any moving vans either," remarked Mr. Bobbsey, with a laugh. "I don't want to move anywhere, anyway," said Flossie. "I'm too tired to do it. I'm going to stay right where I am." "Oh, so'm I going to stay!" cried Freddie quickly. "Come on--let us make our beds right over here," and he caught up one of the smaller mattresses. He struggled to cross the deck with it, but got his feet tangled up in one end, and pitched headlong. "Look out there, Freddie Bobbsey, or you'll go overboard!" cried his brother, as he rushed to the little boy's assistance. "If I went overboard, could I float on the mattress?" questioned Freddie, as he scrambled to his feet. "I don't think so," answered his father. "And, anyway, I wouldn't try it." Presently the mattresses and bedcovers were distributed to everyone's satisfaction, and then all lay down to rest. For a time, Flossie and Freddie, as well as Nan and Bert, tossed about, but at last they fell asleep. It was very quiet on the sea, the only noise being the lapping of the waves against the sides of the _Swallow_. Mrs. Bobbsey was just falling into a doze when there was a sudden splash in the water, and a loud cry. "Man overboard! Man overboard!" some one yelled. "Oh, if it should be one of the children!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. For, no matter whether it is a boy, girl or woman that falls off a ship at sea, a sailor will always call: "'Man' overboard!" I suppose that is easier and quicker to say. "Who is it? What's the matter?" cried Mr. Bobbsey, awakened suddenly from his sleep. There was more splashing in the water alongside the boat, and then Captain Crane turned on a lamp that made the deck and the water about very light. "Jim Black fell overboard," answered Mr. Chase, the engineer. "He got up to draw a bucket of water to soak his head in so he could cool off, and he reached over too far." "Is he all right?" asked Captain Crane. "Yes, I'm all right," was the answer of the sailor himself. "I feel cooler now." At this the older people laughed. He had fallen in with the clothes on, in which he had been sleeping, but as soon as he struck the water he swam up, made his way to the side of the ship, grabbed a rope that was hanging over the side, and pulled himself to the deck. "My! what a fright I had!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "I thought one of the children had rolled into the ocean!" "That couldn't happen," said Captain Crane. "There is a strong railing all about the deck." "Well, it's cooler now," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "I think I'll take the twins and go to our regular beds." She did this and was glad of it, for a little later a thunderstorm broke, and it began to rain, driving every one below. The rest of the night the storm kept up, and though the thunder was loud and the lightning very bright, the rain did one good service--it made the next day cooler. "Well, shall we go ashore again?" asked Mr. Bobbsey, when breakfast had been eaten aboard the _Swallow_. "Oh, yes!" cried the twins. "We want to go swimming again!" "And I'm going to watch out for 'mud turkles,'" said Flossie, as she called them. Once more they went to the beach of Palm Island, and they had dinner on the shady shore. In the afternoon, leaving the engineer and his helpers on board to work away at the motor, the whole party of travelers, Captain Crane, Cousin Jasper and all, started on a walk to the other side of the island. This took them out of sight of the boat. They found many pretty things at which to look--flowers, a spring of sweet water where they got a drink, little caves and dells, and a place where hundreds of birds made their nests on a rocky cliff. The birds wheeled and soared about, making loud noises as they saw the Bobbsey twins and the others near their nests. It was along in the afternoon when they went back to the beach where they had eaten, and where they were to have supper. Bert, who had run on ahead around a curve in the woodland path, came to a stop on the beach. "Why--why!" he cried. "She's gone! The _Swallow_ is gone!" and he pointed to the little bay. The motor boat was no longer at anchor there! CHAPTER XIX AWAY AGAIN "What's that you say?" asked Captain Crane. "The _Swallow_ gone?" "She isn't there," Bert answered. "But maybe that isn't the bay where she was anchored. Maybe we're in the wrong place." "No, this is the place all right," said Cousin Jasper. "But our boat _is_ gone!" There was no doubt of it. The little bay that had held the fine, big motor boat was indeed empty. The small boat was drawn up on the sand, but that was all. "Where can it have gone?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. "Did you know the men we left on it were going away, Captain Crane?" "No, indeed, I did not! I can't believe that Mr. Chase and the others have gone, and yet the boat isn't here." Captain Crane was worried. So were Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey and Cousin Jasper. Even Flossie and Freddie, young as they were, could tell that. "Maybe a big mud turkle came and pulled the ship away," said Flossie. "Or a whale," added Freddie. Any big fish or swimming animal, the little twins thought, might do such a thing as that. "No, nothing like that happened," said Captain Crane. "And yet the _Swallow_ is gone. The men could not have thought a storm was coming up, and gone out to sea to be safe. There is no sign of a storm, and they never would have gone away, unless something happened, without blowing a whistle to tell us." "Maybe," said Bert, "they got word from Jack, on the other island, to come and get him right away, and they couldn't wait for us." Captain Crane shook his head. "That couldn't happen," he said, "unless another boat brought word from poor Jack. And if there had been another boat we'd have seen her." "Unless both boats went away together," suggested Mr. Bobbsey. "No, I think nothing like that happened," said the captain. "But what can we do?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Shall we have to stay on this island until the _Swallow_ comes back?" "She may not be gone very long," Mr. Bobbsey said. "We can camp out here until she does come back," observed Nan. "We have lots left to eat." "There won't be much after supper," Bert said. "But we can catch some turtles, or find some more eggs, and get fish, and live that way." "I'll catch a fish," promised Freddie. "I don't understand this," said Captain Crane, with another shake of his head. "I must go out and have a look around." "How are you going?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "In the small boat. I'll row out into the bay for a little way," said the seaman. "It may be that the _Swallow_ is around some point of the island, just out of sight. I'll have a look before we get ready to camp here all night." "I'll come with you," offered Cousin Jasper. "All right, and we'll leave Mr. Bobbsey here with his family," the captain said. "Don't be afraid," he added to the children and Mrs. Bobbsey. "Even if the worst has happened, and the _Swallow_, by some mistake, has gone away without us, we can stay here for a while. And many ships pass this island, so we shall be taken off pretty soon." "We can be like Robinson Crusoe, really," Bert said. "That isn't as much fun as it seems when you're reading the book," put in his mother. "But we will make the best of it." "I think it'd be fun," murmured Freddie. Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper got in the small boat and rowed out into the bay. Anxiously the others watched them, hoping they would soon come back with word that the _Swallow_ had been blown just around "the corner," as Nan said, meaning around a sort of rocky point of the island, beyond which they could not look. "I do hope we shall not have to camp out here all night," said Mrs. Bobbsey, with a little shiver, as she looked around. "Are you afraid of the mud turkles?" asked Flossie. "No, dear. But I don't want to sleep on the beach without a bed or any covers for you children." "Perhaps we shall not have to," said Mr. Bobbsey. They waited a while longer, watching the small boat in which were Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper, until it was rowed out of sight. Bert did not seem to mind much the prospect of having to stay all night on Palm Island. Nan, however, like her mother and her father, was a bit worried. But Flossie and Freddie were having a good time digging in the sand with clam shells for shovels. The little twins did not worry about much of anything at any time, unless it was getting something to eat or having a good time. "I know what I'm going to build!" cried Freddie. "What?" demanded his twin quickly. "I'm going to build a great big sand castle." "You can't do it, Freddie Bobbsey. The sand won't stick together into a castle." "I'm going to use wet sand," asserted Freddie. "That will stick together." "You look out, Freddie Bobbsey, or you'll fall in!" cried his sister, when Freddie had gone further down near the water where the sand was wet. "Freddie! Freddie! keep away from that water!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "I don't want you to get all wet and dirty." "But I want to build a sand castle." "Well, you come up here where the sand is dry and build it," continued Mrs. Bobbsey. "All right. In a minute," answered Freddie. Mr. Bobbsey was straining his eyes, looking out toward the point of rock, around which the rowboat had gone, and his wife was standing beside him, gazing in the same direction, when Bert, who looked the other way, cried: "There she comes now! There's the _Swallow_!" And, surely enough, there she came back, as if nothing had happened. Mr. Bobbsey waved his hat and some one on the motor boat blew a whistle. And then, as if knowing that something was wrong, the boat was steered closer to shore than it had come before, and Mr. Chase cried: "What's the matter? Did anything happen?" "We thought something had happened to you!" shouted Mr. Bobbsey. "Captain Crane and Mr. Dent have gone off in the small boat to look for you." "That's too bad," said Mr. Chase. "While you were away, on the other side of the island, we finished work on the engine. We wanted to try it, so we pulled up anchor and started off. We thought we would go around to the side of the island where you were, but something went wrong, after we were out a little while, and we had to anchor in another bay, out of sight. But as soon as we could we came back, and when I saw you waving your hat I feared something might have happened." "No, nothing happened. And we are all right," said Mr. Bobbsey, "except that we were afraid we'd have to stay on the island all night. And Captain Crane has gone to look for you." "I'm sorry about that," returned the engineer. "It would have been all right, except that the motor didn't work as I wanted it to. But everything is fine now, and we can start for the other island as soon as we like. I'll blow the whistle and Captain Crane will know that we are back at our old place." Several loud toots of the air whistle were given, and, a little later, from around the point came the small boat with the captain and Cousin Jasper in it. They had rowed for some distance, but had not seen the _Swallow_, and they were beginning to get more worried, wondering what had become of her. "However, everything is all right now," said Captain Crane, when they were all once more on board the motor boat, it having been decided to have supper there instead of on Palm Island. "Aren't we coming back here any more?" asked Freddie. "Not right away," his father told him. "We stopped here only because we had to. Now we are going on again and try to find Jack Nelson." "We have been longer getting there than I hoped we'd be," said Cousin Jasper, "but it could not be helped. I guess Jack will be glad to see us when we do arrive." The things they had taken to Palm Island, when they had their meals under the trees, had been brought back on the _Swallow_. The motor boat was now ready to set forth again, and soon it was chug-chugging out of the quiet bay. "And we won't stop again until we get to where Jack is," said Mr. Dent. "Not unless we have to," said Captain Crane. The _Swallow_ appeared to go a little faster, now that the engine was fixed. The boat slipped through the blue sea, and, as the sun sank down, a golden ball of fire it seemed, the cook got the supper ready. The Bobbseys had thought they might get to eat on the beach, but they were just as glad to be moving along again. "And I hope nothing more happens," said Mr. Bobbsey. "Freddie, don't try to catch any more fish, or anything like that. There is no telling what might come of it." "I won't," promised the little fellow. "But if I had my fire engine here Flossie and I could have some fun." On and on sailed the _Swallow_. Every one was safely in bed, except one man who was steering and another who looked after the motor, when Mrs. Bobbsey, who was not a heavy sleeper, awakened her husband. It was about midnight. "Dick!" she exclaimed in a loud whisper, "I smell smoke! Do you?" Mr. Bobbsey sniffed the air. Then he jumped out of his berth. "Yes, I smell smoke!" he cried. "And I see a blaze! Wake up, everybody!" he cried, "The boat is on fire!" CHAPTER XX ORANGE ISLAND Perhaps Freddie Bobbsey had been dreaming about a fire. At any rate he must have been thinking about it, for, no sooner did Mr. Bobbsey call, after his wife spoke to him, than Freddie, hardly awake, cried: "Where's my fire engine? Where's my fire engine? I can put out the fire!" Mr. Bobbsey hurried to the berths where the children were sleeping. That is, they had been sleeping, but the call of their father, and the shouting of Freddie, awakened them. Flossie, Nan and Bert sat up, rubbing their eyes, though hardly understanding what it was all about. "What's the matter?" cried Bert. "The boat is on fire!" his mother answered. "Slip on a few clothes, take your life preserver, end get out on deck." When the Bobbseys first came aboard the _Swallow_ they were shown how to put on a life preserver, which is a jacket of canvas filled with cork. Cork is light, much lighter than wood, and it will not only float well in water, but, if a piece is large enough, as in life preservers, it will keep a person who wears it, or who clings to it, up out of the sea so they will not drown. "Get your life preservers!" cried Mr. Bobbsey; then, when he saw that his wife had one, and that the children were reaching under their berths for theirs, he took his. The smoke was getting thicker in the staterooms, and the yells and shouts of Captain Crane, Cousin Jasper and the crew could be heard. Up on deck rushed the Bobbseys. There they found the electric lights glowing, and they saw more smoke. Cousin Jasper and Captain Crane had a hose and were pointing it toward what seemed to be a hole in the back part of the boat. "Oh, see!" shouted Flossie. "Is the fire engine working?" Freddie demanded, as he saw them. "Can I help put the fire out?" "No, little fireman!" said Captain Crane with a laugh, and when Mrs. Bobbsey heard this she felt better, for she thought that there was not much danger, or the captain would not have been so jolly. "We have the fire almost out now," the captain went on. "Don't be worried, and don't any of you jump overboard," he said as he saw Mrs. Bobbsey, with the twins, standing rather close to the rail. "No, we won't do that," she said. "But I was getting ready to jump into a boat." "I guess you won't have to do that," said Cousin Jasper. "Is the _Swallow_ on fire?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. "It was," his cousin answered. "But we have put it out now. There is a good pump on board, and we pumped water on the blaze as soon as we saw it." From the hold, which was a place where canned food and other things could be stored, smoke was still pouring, and now and then little tongues of fire shot up. It was this fire which Mr. Bobbsey had seen through the open door of his stateroom. "Oh, maybe it's going to be an awful big fire!" said Freddie. "Maybe it'll burn the whole boat up!" "Freddie, Freddie! Don't say such dreadful things!" broke in his mother. "We don't want this boat to burn up." "I see where it is," said Flossie. "It's down in that great big cellar-like place where they keep all those things to eat--those boxes of corn and beans and salmon and sardines and tomatoes, and all the things like that." "Yes. And the 'densed milk!" put in Freddie. "And 'spargus. And the jam! And all those nice sweet things, too!" he added mournfully. "What shall we do if all our food is burnt up?" went on Flossie. "We can't live on the boat if we haven't anything to eat," asserted Freddie. "We'll have to go on shore and get something." "You might catch another big fish," suggested his twin. "Would you let me have your doll?" "No, I wouldn't!" was the prompt response. "You can get lots of other things for bait, and you know it, Freddie Bobbsey!" "How did the fire happen?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey of the captain, when she got the chance. "One of the electric light wires broke and set fire to some oily rags," answered Captain Crane. "Then some empty wooden boxes began to blaze. There was nothing in them--all the food having been taken out--but the wood made quite a fire and a lot of smoke. "Mr. Chase, who was on deck steering, smelled the smoke and saw the little blaze down in a storeroom. He called me and I called Mr. Dent. We hoped we could get the fire out before you folks knew about it. But I guess we didn't," said the captain. "I smelled smoke, and it woke me up," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Then I called my husband and we all came on deck." "That was the right thing to do," Captain Crane said. "And it was also good to put on the life preservers," for even Flossie and Freddie had done this. "Always get ready for the worst," the captain went on, "and then if you don't have to take to the small boats so much the better. But the fire will soon be out." "Can I see the fire engine?" asked Freddie. "I haven't seen a fire engine for a long while." At his home he was always interested in this, but, luckily, Lakeport had few fires. "It isn't exactly a fire engine," said Cousin Jasper to the little fellow. "It's just a big pump that forms part of one of the motors. I guess you can see how it works, for the fire is so nearly out now that we won't need much more water on it." So the Bobbseys took off their life preservers, which are not very comfortable things to wear, and stayed on deck, watching the flames die out and the smoke drift away. The _Swallow_ had been slowed down while the captain and the others were fighting the fire. "Everything is all right now," said Cousin Jasper, and he took Freddie to the motor room to show him the pump, while Captain Crane still played the hose on the last dying embers. The fire only burned up the oil-soaked rags and some empty boxes, not doing any damage to the motor boat, except a little scorching. The smoke made part of the _Swallow_ black, but this could be painted over. "And very lucky for us it was no worse," said Mr. Bobbsey, when they were ready to go back to their staterooms. Freddie stayed and watched the pump as long as they would let him. It could be fastened to one of the motors and it pumped water from the ocean itself on the blaze. "It's better than having a regular fire engine on land," said Freddie, telling Flossie about it afterward, "'cause in the ocean you can take all the water you like and nobody minds it. When I grow up I'm going to be a fireman on the ocean, and have lots of water." "You'll have to have a boat so you can go on the ocean," said the little girl. "Well, I like a boat, too," went on Freddie. "You can run the boat, Flossie, and I'll run the pump fire engine." "All right," agreed little Flossie. "That's what we'll do." After making sure that the last spark was out, Captain Crane shut off the water. The Bobbseys went back to bed, but neither the father nor the mother of the twins slept well the rest of the night. They were too busy thinking what might have happened if the fire had not been seen in time and plenty of water sprayed on it to put it out. "Though there would not have been much danger," Captain Crane said at the breakfast table, where they all gathered the next morning. "We could all have gotten off in the two boats, and we could have rowed to some island. The sea was smooth." "Where would we get anything to eat?" asked Nan. "Oh, we'd put that in the boats before we left the ship," said the captain. "And we'd take water, too. But still I'm glad we didn't have to do that." And the Bobbseys were glad, too. Part of the day was spent in getting out of the storeroom the burned pieces of boxes. These were thrown overboard. Then one of the crew painted over the scorched places, and, by night, except for the smell of smoke and paint, one would hardly have known where the fire had been. The weather was bright and sunny after leaving Palm Island, and the twins sat about the deck and looked across the deep, blue sea for a sight of the other island, where, it was hoped, the boy Jack would be found. "I wonder what he's doing now," remarked Bert, as he and Nan were talking about the lost one, while Flossie and Freddie were listening to a story their mother was telling. "Maybe he's walking up and down the beach looking for us to come," suggested Nan. "How could he look for us when he doesn't know we're coming?" asked Bert. "Well, maybe he _hopes_ some boat will come for him," went on Nan. "And he must know that Cousin Jasper wouldn't go away and leave him all alone." "Yes, I guess that's so," agreed Bert. "It must be pretty lonesome, all by himself on an island." "But maybe somebody else is with him, or maybe he's been taken away," went on Nan. "Anyhow we'll soon know." "How shall we?" asked Bert. "'Cause Captain Crane said we'd be at the island to-morrow if we didn't have a storm, or if nothing happened." On and on went the _Swallow_. When dinner time came there was served some of the turtle soup from the big crawler that had pulled on Flossie's dress. There was also fish, but Freddie did not catch any more. Cousin Jasper and Mr. Bobbsey fished off the side of the motor boat and caught some large ones, which the cook cleaned and got ready for the table. "Going to sea is very nice," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "You don't have to send to the store for anything to eat, and when you are hungry all you have to do is to drop your hook overboard and catch a fish." It was about noon of the next day when Bert, who was standing in the bow, or front part of the vessel, said to his father: "I see something like a black speck out there," and he pointed. "Maybe it's another boat." Mr. Bobbsey looked and said: "I think more likely that is an island. Perhaps it is the very one we are sailing for--the one where Cousin Jasper left Jack." He called to Captain Crane, who brought a powerful telescope, and through that the men looked at the speck Bert had first seen. "It's land all right," said Captain Crane. In about an hour they were so near the island that its shape could easily be made out, even without a glass. Then Cousin Jasper said: "That's it all right. Now to go ashore and find that poor boy!" On raced the _Swallow_, and soon she dropped anchor in a little bay like the one at Palm Island. In a small boat the Bobbseys and others were rowed to the shore. "Oh, look at the orange trees!" cried Nan, as she saw some in a grove near the beach. "Are they real oranges, Captain?" asked the younger girl twin. "Yes. And it looks as though some one had an orange grove here at one time, not so very long ago, though it hasn't been kept up." "Is this Orange Island?" asked Bert. "Well, we can call it that," said Cousin Jasper. "In fact it never had a name, as far as I know. We'll call it Orange Island now." "That's a good name for it, I think," remarked Nan. "And now to see if we can find Jack!" went on Nan's twin. "Let's all holler!" suddenly said Freddie. "Let's all holler as loud as we can!" "What for?" asked Cousin Jasper, smiling at the little boy. "Why do you want to halloo, Freddie?" "So maybe Jack can hear us, and he'll know we're here. Whenever me or Flossie gets lost we always holler; don't we?" he asked his little sister. "Yes," she answered. "And when Bert or Nan, or our father or mother is looking for us, even if we don't know we're lost, they always holler; don't you, Bert?" "Yes, and sometimes I have to 'holler' a lot before you answer," said Nan's brother. "Well, perhaps it would be a good thing to call now," agreed Mr. Bobbsey. "Shall we, Cousin Jasper?" "Yes," he answered. So the men, with the children to help them, began to shout. "Jack! Jack! Where are you, Jack?" The woods and the orange trees echoed the sound, but that was all. Was the missing boy still on the island? CHAPTER XXI LOOKING FOR JACK Again and again the Bobbseys and the others called the name of Jack, but the children's voices sounding loud, clear and shrill above the others. But, as at first, only the echoes answered. "That's the way we always holler when we're lost," said Freddie. "But I guess Jack doesn't hear us," added Flossie. "No, I guess not," said Cousin Jasper, in rather a sad voice. "Are you sure this is the right island?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, looking about the place where they had landed from the _Swallow_. "Oh, yes, this is the island where I was shipwrecked," said Mr. Dent, "though Jack and I did not land just here. It was on the other side, and when we go there I can show you the wreck of my motor boat--that is, if the storms have not washed it all away." "Well, then maybe Jack is on the other side of the island," said Bert. "And he couldn't hear us." "Yes, that might be so," agreed Cousin Jasper. "We'll go around there. But as it will take us some little time, and as we want to get some things ashore from the ship, we had better wait until later in the day, or, perhaps, until to-morrow, to look. Though I want to find Jack as soon as I can." "Maybe he'll find us before we find him," suggested Mr. Bobbsey. "I should think he would be on the lookout, every day, for a ship to which he could signal to be taken off." "Perhaps he is," said Cousin Jasper. "Well, I hope he comes walking along and finds us. He'll be very glad to be taken away from this place, I guess." "And yet it is lovely here," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "I never thought we would find oranges growing in such a place." "I forgot to speak about them," said Cousin Jasper. "In fact I was so ill and so miserable after the wreck, that I did not take much notice of what was on the island. But there are many orange trees. It must have, at some time, been quite a grove." "I was thinking maybe we'd find cocoanuts," said Freddie. "But oranges are just as nice," put in his little sister. "Nicer," Freddie declared. "I like oranges. May we eat some, Mother?" "Why, yes, I guess so," answered Mrs. Bobbsey slowly. "Will it be all right, Cousin Jasper?" "Oh, yes, the oranges are for whomsoever wants them. Help yourselves, children, while we get the things on shore that we need from the motor boat." "Oh, goody!" shouted Flossie. "Are we going to sleep here at night?" asked Bert. "Well, I did think we might camp out here for a week or so, after we got here and found that Jack was all right," answered Cousin Jasper. "But if he is ill, and needs a doctor, we shall have to go right back to Florida. However, until we are sure of that, we will get ready to camp out." "Oh, what fun!" cried Nan. "It'll be as nice as on Blueberry Island!" Flossie exclaimed, clapping her fat little hands. "But there weren't any oranges on Blueberry Island," added Freddie. "Still the blueberries made nice pies." "Mother made the pies," said Flossie. "Well, the blueberries helped her," Freddie said, with a laugh. The Bobbsey twins gathered oranges from the trees and ate them. The men folks then began to bring things from the _Swallow_, which was anchored in a little bay, not far from shore. Two tents were to be set up, and though the crew would stay on the boat with Captain Crane, to take care of the vessel if a sudden storm came up, the Bobbseys and Cousin Jasper would camp out on Orange Island. In a little while one tent was put up, an oil-stove brought from the boat so that cooking could be done without the uncertain waiting for a campfire, and boxes and baskets of food were set out. "I want to put up the other tent," said Freddie. "I know just how it ought to be done." "All right, Freddie, you can help," was the answer from Bert. "Only, you had better not try to pound any of the pegs in the ground with the hatchet, or you may pound your fingers." "Ho! I guess I'm just as good a carpenter as you are, Bert Bobbsey!" said the little boy stoutly. He took hold of one of the poles and raised it up, but then it slipped from his grasp and one end hit Nan on the shoulder. "Oh, Freddie! do be careful!" she cried. "I didn't mean to hit you, Nan," he said contritely. "It didn't hurt, did it?" "Not very much. But I don't want to get hit again." "Freddie, you had better let the older folks set up that tent," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Here, you and Flossie can help put these boxes and baskets away. There is plenty of other work for you to do." A little later the second tent was in position, and everything about the camp was put in good shape. Then Cousin Jasper, Mr. Bobbsey and the captain, taking Bert with them, started around for the other side of the island to look and call for the missing Jack. "I want to come, too," said Freddie. "Not now," his mother told him. "It is too far for a little boy. Perhaps you and Flossie may go to-morrow. You stay and help me make the camp ready for night." This pleased Freddie and Flossie, and soon they were helping their mother, one of the sailors doing the heavy lifting. Meanwhile Bert, his father and the others walked on through the woods, around to the other side of the island. They found the place where Cousin Jasper's boat had struck the rocks and been wrecked, and Mr. Dent also showed them the place where he and Jack stayed while they were waiting for a boat to come for them. "And here is where we set up our signal," cried Mr. Bobbsey's cousin, as he found a pole which had fallen over, having been broken off close to the ground. On top was still a piece of canvas that had fluttered as a flag. "But why didn't Jack leave it flying, to call a boat to come and get him when he found you gone?" asked Mr. Bobbsey. "I don't know," said Cousin Jasper. "This is very strange. I thought surely we would find Jack as soon as we reached the island. It may be that he has been taken off by some fishermen, but I think I would have heard of it. And he was here about a week ago, for Captain Harrison saw him, you remember he told us. Well, we must look further." "And yell and yell some more," added Bert. "Maybe he can hear us now." So they shouted and called, but no one answered them, and Cousin Jasper shook his head. "I wonder what can have happened to the poor boy!" he said. They walked along the beach, and up among the palm and orange trees, looking for the missing boy. But they saw no signs of him. CHAPTER XXII FOUND AT LAST When Bert, with his father, Cousin Jasper and Captain Crane, got back to the place where Mrs. Bobbsey had been left with Nan and the two smaller twins, the camp on Orange Island was nearly finished. The tents had been put up, and the oil-stove was ready for cooking. "Didn't you find that poor boy?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "No, we saw no trace of him," her husband answered. "Oh, isn't that too bad?" "Yes, I am very sorry," sighed Cousin Jasper. "But I have not yet given up. I'll stay here until either I find him, or make sure what has happened to him. Poor Jack has no relatives, and I am his nearest friend. I feel almost as though he were my son. We will find him if he is on this island." Bert and the others who had walked around to the other side of the island, hoping that Jack might be found, were tired from their trip, and when they got back were glad to sit on the beach in the shade. A meal was soon ready, and when they had eaten they all felt better. "It is too late to do much more searching to-day," said Cousin Jasper, "but we will start early in the morning." And this they did, after a quiet night spent on the island. As soon, almost, as the sun had risen, the Bobbsey twins were up, and Bert and Nan gathered oranges for breakfast. "I wish we could live here always," said Freddie. "I'd never have to go to the store for any fruit." "But if we stayed here we couldn't have Snap or Snoop or Dinah or Sam, or anybody like that from Lakeport," put in Flossie. "Couldn't we, Mother?" asked the little boy. "Course we couldn't!" insisted Flossie. "Well, I guess it would be hard to bring from Lakeport all the friends and all the things you like there," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Well, then we'll go back home after we find Jack," decided Freddie. Breakfast over, the search for the missing boy was begun once more, Mrs. Bobbsey and the smaller twins going along. In some places, however, the way was rough and steep, and once on top of a little hill, Freddie suddenly cried: "Look out! I'm coming!" And come he did, but in a queer way. For he slipped and fell, and rolled to the bottom, bringing up with a bump against a stump. "Oh, my dear little fat fireman! Did you hurt yourself?" asked his father. Freddie did not answer at first. He slowly got to his feet, looked up the hill down which he had rolled, and then at the stump, which was covered with moss. "I--I guess I'm all right," he said. "He's so fat he didn't get hurt," said Cousin Jasper. "Fat boys and girls are just the kind to bring to a place like this. They can't get hurt easily." Freddie laughed, and so did the others, and then they went on again. They looked in different places for the missing boy, and called his name many times. But all the sounds they heard in answer were those of the waves dashing on the beach or the cries of the sea-birds. "It is very strange," said Captain Crane. "If that boy was here about a week ago, you'd think we could find some trace of him--some place where he had built a fire, or set up a signal so it would be seen by passing ships. I believe, Mr. Dent, that he must have been taken away, and when we get back to St. Augustine he'll be there waiting for us." "Well, perhaps you are right," said Cousin Jasper, "but we will make sure. We'll stay here a week, anyhow, and search every part of Orange Island." They had brought their lunch with them, so they would not have to go back to the camp when noon came, and, finding a pleasant place on the beach, near a little spring of water, they sat down to rest. Flossie and Freddie, as often happened, finished long before the others did, and soon they strolled off, hand in hand, down the sands. "Where are you going, children?" called Mrs. Bobbsey to them. "Oh, just for a walk," Freddie answered. "An' maybe we'll see Jack," added Flossie. "I only wish they would, but it is too much to hope for," said Cousin Jasper, and he looked worried. Bert, Nan and the others stayed for some little time after lunch, sitting in the shade on the beach, and talking. They were just about to get up and once more start the search; when Flossie and Freddie came running back. One look at their faces told their mother that something had happened. "What is it, children?" she asked. "We--we found a big, black cave!" answered Freddie, somewhat out of breath. "An'--an' they's a--a _giant_ in it!" added Flossie, who was also breathing hard. "A cave!" cried Mr. Bobbsey. "What do you mean by a giant in it?" asked Cousin Jasper. "Well, when you see a big black hole in the side of a hill, isn't that a cave?" asked Freddie. "It surely is," said his father. "An' when you hear somebody making a big noise like 'Boo-oo-oo-oo! Boo!' maybe that's a giant, like it is in the story," said Flossie. "Oh, I guess perhaps you heard the wind moaning in a cave," said Captain Crane. "No, there wasn't any wind blowing," Freddie said. And, surely enough, there was not. The day was clear and calm. "We heard the booing noise," Freddie said. "Are you sure it wasn't a mooing noise, such as the cows make?" asked Nan. "There aren't any cows on Orange Island; are there, Cousin Jasper?" asked Bert. "I think not. Tell me, children, just what you heard, and where it was," he said to Flossie and Freddie. Then the little twins told of walking along the hill that led up from the beach and of seeing a big hole--a regular cave. They went in a little way and then they heard the strange, moaning sound. Cousin Jasper seemed greatly excited. "I believe there may be something there," he said. "We must go and look. If they heard a noise in the cave, it may be that it was caused by some animal, or it may be that it was----" "Jack!" exclaimed Bert. "Maybe it's Jack!" "Maybe," said Cousin Jasper. "We'll go to look!" Cousin Jasper and Mr. Bobbsey walked on ahead, with Flossie and Freddie to show where they had seen the big, black hole. It was not far away, but so hidden by bushes that it could have been seen only by accident, unless some one knew where it was. Outside the entrance they all stopped. "Listen!" said Flossie. It was quiet for a moment, and then came a sound that surely was a groan, as if some one was in pain. "Who's in there?" cried Cousin Jasper. "I am," was the faint answer. "Oh, will you please come in and help me. I fell and hurt my leg and I can't walk, and----" "Are you Jack Nelson?" cried Cousin Jasper. "Yes, that's my name. A friend and I were wrecked on this island, but I can't find him and----" "But he's found you!" cried Mr. Dent. "Oh, Jack! I've found you! I've found you! I've come back to get you! Now you'll be all right!" Into the cave rushed Cousin Jasper, followed by the others. Mr. Bobbsey and Captain Crane had pocket electric flashlights, and by these they could see some one lying on a pile of moss in one corner of the cavern. It was a boy, and one look at him showed that he was ill. His face was flushed, as if from fever, and a piece of sail-cloth was tied around one leg. Near him, on the ground where he was lying, were some oranges, and a few pieces of very dry crackers, called "pilot biscuits" by the sailors. "Oh, Jack, what has happened to you? Are you hurt, and have you been in this cave all the while?" asked Mr. Dent. "No, not all the while, though I've been in here now for nearly a week, I guess, ever since I hurt my leg. I can crawl about a little but I can't climb up and down the hill, so I got in here to stay out of the storms, and I thought no one would ever come to me." "You poor boy!" softly said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Don't talk any more now. Wait until you feel better and then you can tell us all about it. Poor boy!" "Are you hungry?" asked Freddie; for that, to him, seemed about the worst thing that could happen. "No, not so very," answered Jack. "When I found I couldn't get around any more, or not so well, on my sore leg, I crawled to the trees and got some oranges. I had a box of the biscuit and some other things that washed ashore from the wreck after you went away," he said to Cousin Jasper. "Well, tell us about it later," said Mr. Bobbsey. "Now we are going to take care of you." They made a sort of little bed on poles, with pieces of the sail-cloth, and the men carried Jack to the camp. There Captain Crane, who knew something about doctoring, bound up his leg, and when the lost boy had been given some hot soup, and put in a comfortable bed, he felt much better. A little later he told what had happened to him. "After you became so sick," said Jack to Cousin Jasper, the others listening to the story, "I walked to the other end of the island to see if I could not see, from there, some ship I could signal to come and get us. I was so tired I must have fallen asleep when I sat down to rest, and when I woke up, and went back to where you had been, Mr. Dent, you weren't there. I didn't know what had happened to you and I couldn't find you." "Men came in a boat and took me away," said Cousin Jasper, "though I didn't know it at the time. When I found myself in the hospital I wondered where you were, but they all thought I was out of my head when I wanted them to come to the island and rescue you. So I had to send for Mr. Bobbsey to come." "And we found the cave, didn't we?" cried Freddie. "Yes, only for you and Flossie, just stumbling on it, as it were," said his father, "we might still be hunting for Jack." "I'm glad we found you," said Flossie. "So'm I," added Freddie. "I'm glad myself," Jack said, with a smile at the Bobbsey twins. "I was getting tired of staying on the island all alone." "What did you do all the while?" asked Bert. "Did you feel like Robinson Crusoe?" "Well a little," Jack answered. "But I didn't have as much as Robinson had from the wreck of his ship. But I managed to get enough to eat, and I had the cave to stay in. I found that other one, and went into that, as it was better than where we first were," he said to Mr. Dent. "I made smudges of smoke, and set up signals of cloth," the boy went on, "but a storm blew one of my poles down, and I guess no one saw my signals." "Yes, Captain Harrison did, but it was so stormy he couldn't get close enough to take you from the island," said Captain Crane. "And then we came on as soon as we could," added Cousin Jasper. "Oh, Jack, I'm so glad we have found you, and that you are all right! You had a hard time!" "Yes, it was sort of hard," the boy admitted. "But it's a good thing oranges grow here. I got some clams, too, and I found a nest of turtle's eggs, and roasted some of them. I didn't like them much, but they stopped me from being hungry." "Well, now we'll feed you on the best in camp," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "And I caught a turkle, once!" added Flossie. "I guess you mean the turtle caught you," said Nan with a laugh. But now Jack's troubles were over. As he was weak from not having had good food, and from being ill, it was decided to keep him at the camp for a short while. In that time the Bobbsey twins had a good time on Orange Island, and when he was able to walk about, even though he had to limp on a stick for a crutch, Jack went about with the children, showing them the different parts of the cave where he had stayed. He could not have lived there much longer alone, for his food was almost gone when Flossie and Freddie heard him groaning in the cavern. "And we thought you were a giant!" said Flossie with a laugh. They had found, by accident, what the others had been looking for so carefully but could not find. And Jack had no idea his friends were on the island until they walked into the cave with the flashing lights. "Oh, I'm glad we traveled on the deep, blue sea," said Nan, about a week after Jack had been found. "This is the nicest adventure we ever had!" These were happy days on Orange Island. Jack rapidly grew better, and would soon be able to make the trip back to St. Augustine in the motor boat. But it was so lovely on that island in the deep, blue sea that the Bobbseys stayed there nearly a month, and by that time they were all as brown as berries, including Jack, who had been pale because of his illness. So the lost and lonely boy was found, and he and Cousin Jasper were better friends than ever. And as for the Bobbsey twins, though they had had many adventures on this voyage, still others were in store for them. But now we will say "Good-bye!" for a time. THE END BOOKS BY LAURA LEE HOPE THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES THE BOBBSEY TWINS THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN A GREAT CITY THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON BLUEBERRY ISLAND THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON GRANDPA'S FARM BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE PLAYING CIRCUS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT AUNT LU'S CITY HOME BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CAMP REST-A-WHILE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE BIG WOODS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AND THEIR SHETLAND PONY THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT OCEAN VIEW THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON PINE ISLAND THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN ARMY SERVICE GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 37253 ---- In the Land of the Great Snow Bear A Tale of Love and Heroism By Gordon Stables Illustrations by Gordon Browne Published by Sunday School Union, 56 Old Bailey, London. In the Land of the Great Snow Bear, by Gordon Stables. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ IN THE LAND OF THE GREAT SNOW BEAR, BY GORDON STABLES. CHAPTER ONE. DUNALLAN TOWERS. Even in the days of his boyhood--I had almost said infancy--there seems to have been much in the character and habits of Claude Alwyn that is unusual in children so young. Some people tell us that the qualities of mind, developed by the individual, depend entirely on the nature of his associates and associations in early youth. I am not prepared to deny that there is a great deal of truth in this statement. But the facts therein do not account for everything, for individuality is stamped on a child from his very birth, and the power for good or for evil of the accidental association of after life may mould in a great measure, but cannot alter this. "Many men many minds." A true though trite old saying is that, and there were, no doubt, a great many different opinions concerning young Claude among those who dwelt in, or were in the habit of visiting at, Dunallan Towers. From an old journal or diary, which has been handed to me by its writer, with full permission to make whatever use I choose of it, I have gleaned much information bearing on the boy's character and peculiarities. Dunallan Towers, now so gloomy and desolate, was once the happiest and the homeliest, and at the same time the gayest and brightest of all the many beautiful mansions that grace the banks of the winding Nith. This was shortly after the marriage of Lord Alwyn to the only daughter of an English baronet. There were those, however, about the country-side who did not hesitate to say that Alwyn might have been content to take for himself a bride from among the many fair and high-born dames of the shire in which he lived. "The goshawk should never mate wi' the ringdove," said one stern old Scottish lady, "nor the owl perch low in the nightingale's bower. Our cauld Highland hills will hardly suit the dainty limbs of Alwyn's bonnie English bride. Our wild forests are no' like scented southern groves, and the roaring Nith is no' the placid Thames. A'thing will be strange to her, everything foreign, wild, and queer. She'll no' stay lang. You'll see! you'll see! you'll see." But if this proud and ancient dame really meant to give herself out as a prophetess, she proved to be a false one; only, to her credit be it said, she was the very first to call on the Lady of the Towers, as people named the bride of Lord Alwyn--the first to call, and the first to become one of her best and firmest friends. As a bachelor hall, the Towers had been somewhat of a failure; all that was altered after Alwyn brought home his young wife--she looked so young, and in years, indeed, was little more than a girl. But her easy, pleasant manner captivated every one; and, whether it were winter, with the snow on lawns and park, and ice on the river's edge, or summer, with the roses all in bloom, and the wind sighing softly through the birch-clad glens, bright and happy faces never failed to encircle the dinner-table of our winsome Lady of the Towers. There was great rejoicing throughout all the parish on the birth of Lord Alwyn's heir. Village bells were rung, and a huge bonfire was lighted on the very top of the highest hill: a bonfire that could be seen from house and hut for leagues and leagues around. The bonfire was kept burning all night long. Meanwhile the village lads and lasses had assembled in a barn gaily bedecked with evergreens and flowers of every hue, and had made quite a ball-room of it. So the fire burned all the livelong night, and as long as the fire burned, the lads and lasses danced, till at last the grey dawn of a summer morning made fire and dancing both seem out of place. But Alwyn's heir did not cease to be a wonder and a subject for talk for the traditional nine days at least, during which time there was not a living soul in or about Dunallan Towers who had not been honoured with a peep at his little full moon of a face. His nurse was so proud of her charge that she had even brought him as far as the top of the great hall-stair for Peter, the cow-boy, to have just one glimpse at. Peter--the diary informs me--had left his boots on the mat; and when he reached the stair-top, and the snowy-white wraps were down-folded from the child's face, the good-hearted cow-boy, thinking he was in duty bound to say something very complimentary in return for the high honour bestowed upon him, lifted both hands and eyes ceiling-wards, and ejaculated-- "My goodness! What a bonnie, bonnie bairn! I never saw the like o' that before in a' my born days!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I pause for a moment here, reader, and raise my head from the table at which I have been writing with the diary mentioned lying open before me. I look up because some one has just glided silently into the room. It is Janet--Janet who wrote the diary; Janet who had been Claude's nurse. She is very old now, her hair is as white as wreaths of drifted snow, but her face is still pleasant, and her eyes are bright, nor has the weight of years succeeded in bending her form. She stands by my side, erect. She places one hand--how thin it is!--on the pages of the journal. "You will not find everything there," she says, "about my dear boy Claude." "Sit down, Janet," I say to her kindly. "I like to have you near me. Take the book on your lap. Read to me, or talk to me, or do both; I shall listen and presently I shall write." The apartment in which I am seated is what is called the red parlour of Dunallan Towers. It is in one of the many gables of the old mansion that abuts upon a green lawn, or brae, sloping somewhat steeply down to the river's bank. It is a lovely evening in early autumn. Behind the purple hills in the west yonder, the sun has just set in a golden haze, and high up in the sky's blue there are a few feather-like clouds of brightest crimson. By-and-by these will change to grey, then shadows of night will creep up from glen and dell, the rooks will cease to caw, and we shall hear only the murmur of the river over its pebbly bed, and the wind moaning through the topmost branches and the crisp leaves of those tall swaying trees. Janet's voice falls upon my ear in sad but pleasant monotone. It is like the voice of one chanting some old-world ballad. I do not think her eyes are turned on me as she speaks--mine are looking outwards into the twilight; and she is gazing back, as it were, to the far-distant past. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Why, it is dark! Janet must have been talking for hours and hours, and has glided away as silently as she came. I awake from the reverie into which I had fallen and step out through the casement. How fresh the air is! How pleasant the wind's soft whisper and the river's song! The stars are out, and the round yellow moon is struggling up through a bank of clouds on the horizon. Now and then a bat flits past; now and then an owl hoots mournfully from some turret or chimney, round which the darkling ivy creeps. Not a light in any window. Silence broods over Dunallan Towers. "The harp that once thro' Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. "So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er, And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more." The night air is keen. I re-enter the red parlour, close the casement, and light my reading-lamp. And now I write once more. No need for the journal's assistance any longer, though. Every word that old Janet said has sunk deep into my mind and rooted itself in my memory, and will never be effaced while I and time have any connection. CHAPTER TWO. CLAUDE ALWYN'S BOYHOOD. On the very day after the birth of Alwyn's heir something strange occurred: a large flight of curious seagulls alighted in the park around Dunallan Towers. No one had ever remembered seeing such weird-looking birds there before, and Janet had averred that their arrival betokened no good. She was not wrong, for that same night it came on to blow from the north, oh, such a fearful gale! Many of the tallest and sturdiest trees were torn up by the roots, and even tossed about, and the Towers shook and trembled as if the very earth were quaking. It was eerisome to hear, at the dark midnight hour, the shriek of frightened wild birds around the house, high above the fitful roaring of the wind. The Nith, too, came down "in spate;" they could see its white flashing waters, nearly close up to the window of the red parlour in which I now am sitting at work. It brought along with it from the mountains, fallen trees, bushes, heather-clad turf, and boulders of solid rock, tons and tons in weight. All that night the storm raged, and though the wind went down about sunrise, the terrible rain still fell, and the river continued in raging spate. Great was the damage done to the lower-lying lands seawards; huts and even houses were laid low, sheep and cattle were drowned and borne away, so great is the fury and strength of a Highland river like the Nith when it "comes down," as the people phrase it. But the sun shone forth at length, and the clouds went driving southwards, leaving lovely rifts of blue between them, and the rain ceased, and the poor people of the glens came forth to view the work of devastation and to mourn their losses. One of these, while walking in the park and not far from the mansion house, found, crouching under the gnarled root of an old tree, and gazing up at him with its bright crimson eye, or rather first with one eye then with the other, a snow-white gull of most graceful form. [Note 1.] He caught it--one wing was injured--and brought it round to the kitchen, where it was much admired and tenderly cared for. In little over a week it seemed as well and strong as it must have been before the storm. Yet it was in no hurry to leave. It stayed on and on and on, and became as tame as a dove, and most affectionate to all it knew. But to Janet in particular it attached itself. One day it followed her into the room where Alwyn's heir lay in his little crib. Janet showed him the bird. He smiled and stretched out his arms with a fond cry, and next moment the snow-bird was nestling quietly on his breast. There was no keeping the gull out of Claude's room after this, so it came to be called "baby's bird." When Claude Alwyn was about three years of age, an event happened down the glen that cast that gloom on Dunallan Towers that never yet has left it: Lord Alwyn was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot. Her ladyship left the glen after this, and went south, and Claude, childlike, would insist on taking his pet along with him. Years flew by, summers passed and winters passed, but smoke was hardly ever seen to hover over the Towers. Then one day the old steward came down to the village all a-quiver with excitement. He wanted tradesmen of all kinds to come forthwith to the mansion house. Lady Alwyn and young Claude--now grown a great lad, the steward felt sure of this--were to return in less than a month. Smoke enough now began to curl high over turret and tree; even the rooks seemed to feel the importance of the coming occasion, and positively crowed themselves hoarse. At the appointed time the family carriage, a very stately and gigantic kind of a concern, rattled up the long avenue through the park, and soon after the widow of Lord Alwyn was once more Lady of the Towers. She was greatly altered. Though still young and youthful in appearance, sorrow had stamped itself on her brow and saddened her eye. It was said that she seldom smiled. But she was even kinder to the poor of the district than she had been in the days of yore, and, wet day or dry day, she was never missed from the pew in church of a Sunday. And beside her always sat a sturdy bright-faced boy of about thirteen, with blue eyes, and short irrepressible locks of soft fair hair, that nothing on earth except scissors could have kept from tumbling over his brow. He was always dressed in the Highland garb as Highland lads ought to be, but his jacket was of black velvet and his kilt of the sombrest coloured tartan. He was the favourite of every one on the estate, and so was his bird. Wherever young Claude--he was seldom called Lord Claude, because he did not like to be--wherever he went his snow-bird went as well. And Claude was quite as fond of his pet as his pet was of him, and that was the secret of his success in taming this wild and strangely beautiful creature. Only those who have seen the snow-bird in its own country, sailing around great icebergs or glittering glaciers, its plumage rivalling the snow in the purity of its whiteness, its shape more graceful than that of a swallow, can have any idea of the extreme loveliness of the creature. No wonder that the humble people of the glens, deeply imbued as they were with that superstition peculiar to the Highland peasantry, often looked upon young Claude and his matchless bird with something akin to awe. "It is his good angel and nothing else," one old crone used to remark, "his good angel, Heaven bless the bonnie boy." Yes, and a bonnie boy he looked at all times. Had you seen him standing, alpenstock in hand, dressed in Highland garb, on the brow of a hill, well defined against the sky, up to which his face was turned, and in which the snow-bird kept sailing and sailing, following every motion of Claude's upstretched, waving arm, you could not have helped admiring him. Claude spent much of his time fishing or shooting, but more particularly the former. Little he recked if the fish did not bite. He would then throw himself on his back among the ferns and flowers on the banks of the stream and pull out his "Burns" or his "Scott." Meanwhile the snow-bird would perch upon a mossy boulder, or water-washed stone, and watch for the tiny troutlets, which sought for shelter and sunshine in the shallower water. Young lord though he was, Claude was a "people's boy." It would be an exaggeration of speech to say that any of the villagers would have died for him; but it is true that Claude brightened every doorstep he crossed. And this too, all and only, by means of his own handsome face, sunny smile, and kindly words. Not that he did not bring the poor folks gifts, for he was often sent on errands of mercy by his mother, and he brought them also of his own accord many a goodly string of trout. In a wild country like that in which our young hero dwelt and wandered, there are many dangers to life and limb, and Claude did not always escape quite scot-free. But when, on rushing down a lofty hillside once, he missed his foothold and fell over a crag full fifty feet high, he did not lose his presence of mind, but simply jumped up from the soft turf on which he had alighted, as if on a feather bed, and looked around for his bonnet, which he never saw again. The old shepherd who witnessed the involuntary exploit, told of it all over the parish, and the wise women alleged it was the bird that had saved him. When Claude's gun burst in his hand and he escaped without a scratch, that too was in some way owing to the bird's protecting care. When a branch on which he was leaning snapped beneath his weight and precipitated Claude into the roaring, foaming torrent beneath, where any one save a Webb would have been drowned, and when bleeding and cut he safely scrambled out, who but the bird, averred the wise old women, helped him out? Claude rather encouraged than otherwise the belief in the supernatural powers of this wonderful snow-bird of his. Rather mischievous of him, it must be confessed, but then he was only a boy. "My bird tells me I must do this or that," he would often say; or, "I must consult my bird on that subject." Then he would pretend to hold communication with it, and the creature looked as though it understood every word he said. During the winter, Claude used to be at a distant school. Then his bird stayed at the Towers; but, although it suffered itself to be fed and petted by Lady Alwyn and by Janet, it did little else but mope until spring returned, and with it Claude. The library at Dunallan Towers was a very large one, and Claude had the choosing of his own summer reading after forenoon lessons were over, and the books he took with him afield were always those of adventure, or some of the poets. It was often remarked that he never invited any of his tutors to accompany him in his rambles--only the bird. "Mother," said Claude one evening, "I'm going to be a sailor." "Dear boy," replied his mother, "what has put such a notion in your head?" "My bird, perhaps, mother," said the boy, smiling. "No, Claude, but those books you pore over. Dear boy, hardly half of what you read bears any resemblance to the truth." "Oh, mother," cried the boy, "if only one _half_ is true I must go and see that half I'm a good sailor already; you know how I enjoyed that voyage down the Mediterranean. I dream of all I saw even till this day. Mother, I must go to sea. "Mother," he said again, after a long pause, during which Lady Alwyn was musing, and very sad and gloomy were her thoughts--"mother, do you know where my bird came from?" "It came from the wild mysterious region around the Pole." "Yes, I have been reading about that too, reading about it until I seem to have spent years and years of my life in the country. I have but to shut my eyes, any time I wish, and such pictures rise up before me as few but sailors ever see the reality of." Young Claude placed one hand across his eyes as he spoke. "Here it is again, mother, a vast and lonely trackless waste of snow; great glaciers, against whose sides mountain waves for ever dash and foam; icebergs whose pinnacled heads taper upwards into a sky of cloudless blue. Fields of ice on which white bears roam; dark, inky seas where the walrus plays and tumbles, and through which the solitude-loving narwhal pursues his finny prey; and crystalline caves where sea-bears roar. But the scene is changed: it is night--the long, long, Polar night. Oh, how bright and beautiful the Aurora, with its ever-changing tints of crimson, green, and blue; and the stars, how near they seem; and the silence, how deep, how awful! But see, a storm is coming across the pack, and clouds are banking up and hiding the glorious Aurora; now it is on us, and higher than the stars rise the clouds of whirling, drifting snow. Hark! how the wind howls! There is danger on its wings; there is--" "Stop, boy, stop?" cried Lady Alwyn, laying her hand on his arm. "Speak not thus; you frighten me." There were tears in her eyes. Claude made haste to soothe her. "Dear mother, forgive me!" he cried. "I am so thoughtless; but I will not transgress so again. Forgive and forget it." "You are all I have on earth to care for," she said, drawing him gently towards her; "but, Claude, your happiness has always been, and ever will be, my first, my chief care. Yes, I will forgive your heedless words. You did not mean to hurt me; but, Claude,"--here she smiled, but it was a very sad smile--"I will not quite forget them. You love the sea." Lady Alwyn retired early to her room that evening, but it was long past midnight ere she slept. Her last thoughts ere slumber sealed her eyelids were these-- "And so my boy, even my boy, will be taken away from me. He will be a sailor; it is his bent, and why should I do aught that would mar his happiness? Heaven give me strength to bear my every trial here below, nor forget that on earth I have `no continuing city.'" Lady Alwyn was rich, though not surpassingly so. She could afford her boy a yacht, in which he made many a cruise as owner--not as master-- round the British islands and as far north as the Shetlands; indeed more than once they ventured over to Norway. And so Claude grew up a sailor, so to speak. The smaller yacht gave place to a larger, and still a larger; and in a few years, when young Lord Alwyn had reached his twentieth year, he commanded, as well as owned, his ship himself. About this time an event occurred that in a great measure altered the old tenor of Claude's life, and that of his mother too, and on this event our story hinges. In none of his cruises did his snow-bird accompany its master. Lady Alwyn was glad of this. "So long," she thought, "as the bird stays with me, my boy will return safely from sea." It will be seen that even Lady Alwyn was slightly superstitious. And Claude's cruises were ever northwards. He had been several times to Iceland itself, and one day he meant to make a far longer and much more adventurous voyage. In the words of the old Norse song, it appeared as though-- "Nought around howe'er so bright Could win his stay or stop his flight From where he saw the Pole-star's light Shine o'er the north." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. Probably the arctic tern or snow-bird, which is hardly ever seen below the latitude of Iceland. CHAPTER THREE. AMONG ICELAND WILDS. It was early morning. So early, indeed, that although it was sweet summer-time--and summer can he as sweet in Iceland as in any other part of the world--the birds had hardly yet uttered a note. Only the robin shook the dew from his wings [the American, not the English robin], and uttered a peevish twitter; and far away up among those wild hills, with their strange jagged peaks, you might have heard an occasional plaintive whistle or scream, the cry of the golden plover. Yet, early though it was, though the stars had not yet all fled from the west, sea-fowl were gracefully circling round--the gull, the tern, and the thievish skua. There was no wind, not a breath, but the dew lay heavy on the moss, on the green heather and stunted shrubs, and draggled the snow-white plumes of the lovely cotton grass. The wild flowers had not yet opened their beautiful petals when poor Claude Alwyn opened his eyes. Languidly, yet painfully, he raised himself on his elbow, and gazed dreamily around him. Where was he? How had he come here? These were questions that he asked himself. What is that on a stone yonder? A snow-bird gazing at him with one beautiful eye, and seeming to pity him. A snow-bird? His snow-bird? "Alba! Alba!" he calls it; but the bird flies away. He was not at home, then, in bonnie Scotland, by the green banks of the Nith, as he had almost thought he was. No, no; for look, yonder is his horse at the foot of the cliff--dead. Dead? Surely not dead. He tries to crawl towards it. The movement gives him intense agony. He himself is wounded. And now he remembers all. How he left his yacht at Reykjavik a week ago; how he had been travelling ever since in search of incident and adventure, making sketches, gathering wild flowers, and enjoying the scenery of this strange, weird island; and how he was belated the evening before, and fell headlong over a cliff. That was all, but a dreadful all. He closes his eyes again and tries to think. Must he lie here and die? He shudders with cold and dread, starts up, and, despite the pain, staggers to his feet. He slowly passes the poor horse. Yes, there is death in that glazed eye, death in the drooping neck and stiffened limbs. It takes Claude nearly an hour to drag himself to a neighbouring knoll, for one limb is smashed, and he has lost blood. He throws himself down now, or rather he falls, and when next he becomes conscious the sun is shining down warm on him from a bright blue sky; birds are singing near, and the wild flowers are open and nodding to a gentle breeze. And yonder--oh, joy!--down there in the hollow, there is smoke curling up from an Icelandic farm. He shouts till hoarse, but no one appears. Wearily he leans back, and once again his eyes are closed, and he is back once more in his own room at Dunallan Towers. No pain now, for his sad-eyed but beautiful mother is bending over him, and soothing him. Is it so? Not quite. "Jarl! jarl! Wake, jarl, wake?" The jarl wakes. The jarl looks up. Over him is bending a huge male figure, dressed in a long-sleeved waistcoat and lofty nightcap. Pained though he is, Claude cannot help thinking he is the ugliest man he ever saw. He is a giant in stature. He kneels beside young Alwyn, and there is a kindness visible in his little grey eyes, as he strokes Claude's face, just as if he had been a colt. Byarnie, for such is this giant's name, soon finds out how matters stand, and gently he lifts Claude in his arms and places him on his shoulder, and then marches off. Preposterous and humorous thoughts will often pass through the mind, even when the body is in agony; and now, Claude could not help recalling the story of Jack the Giant-killer, and fancied himself Jack being carried away on the shoulders of Blunderbore. But not to a castle with a lawn littered with skulls and bones was Claude borne. He had probably fainted with pain, and when he again became sensible he was no longer on Byarnie's back, but in a comfortable warm bed in an antique but well-furnished room, and being attended to by a couple of old dames, both dressed alike, in gowns of dark rustling silk, and elevated steeple-like skull-caps of white net. And both, too, were alike wrinkled and ugly. They had almost finished dressing his leg. "Thou must not speak, dear; thou must lie still and sleep." Good enough English, but spoken in a strange monotone--no rising or falling of the voice. In a few minutes the work was done, and poor Claude found infinite relief. Then they brought him coffee and milk, and made him drink, and a little dram of schnapps which he also had to swallow. They evidently thought him a child, and stroked his face as Byarnie had done. One left the room, and the other took her seat beside the bed, and, still gently passing her hand downwards over Claude's face, began to "croon" over that beautiful English lullaby-- "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed; Countless blessings without number, Gently falling on thy head." The voice was quavering, but the music was sweet. How soft the pillows felt--they were eider-down. How light the quilt--that also was of the same. Under such circumstances it is little wonder that Claude soon forgot everything and fell into a deep and childlike slumber. The scenes, it seemed to Claude, were continually shifting. He did not _feel_ that he had slept, only that he had just closed his eyes and opened them again, when lo! the crones were gone, the sunlight was no longer shimmering in through the crimson and yellow flowers in the little window as he had last seen it. The room was lighted by a lofty lamp that stood on an ancient high-backed oaken piano, throwing a flood of light over all the apartment. A great grey cat was singing herself to sleep on the piano stool, a fire was burning on the low hearth--a fire of peat and wood, that looked very cheerful--and above the window, in a tiny wicker cage, hung a tiny and miserable-looking snow-flea. Claude took all this in at a glance. But none of these things interested him. His eyes were riveted on the only figure now in the room. A beautiful young girl, almost spirit-like she looked. So thought Claude. She stood leaning against the piano reading a tiny gilt-edged book. She was dressed in a long flowing robe of crimson adorned with snow-white fur. Her fair hair floated free over her shoulders, and her sweet face seemed very sad as she read, all unconscious of Claude's wondering gaze. But presently she became aware of it. A slight tint of crimson suffused her face, but next moment she advanced boldly towards the bed, and laid her hand--such a tiny hand--on his brow. Claude would have spoken, but she lifted a finger and beckoned him to lie silent. Lie silent? Yes. Claude would not have disobeyed the behests of so sweet a nurse whatever they might have been. There was food to be partaken of; he took it. Nauseous brown medicine also; he quaffed it. Presently, however, there was a change of nurses. One of the droll old ladies came back, and remained an hour. Claude thought it ten, and felt in the third heaven when his young nurse again returned. She seated herself at a little table facing Claude, and without even knocking at the door, Byarnie the giant stepped in, and placed a zither in front of her. It was a strange household, but, altogether, Iceland is a strange place. She was going to play to soothe her patient. And sweetly she played too. Old-world airs, but how delicate the touch, how tasteful the fingering. And now she sings. "_Who_," thought Claude, "can have taught her that wild sad song? Can a girl so young as she have loved and lost?" "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing; But coldly she turns to his grave and weeps, For her heart with her hero is lying." But Claude's sorrow was to come. Inflammation was succeeded by high fever, and for days he lay in a state of delirium--dreamful, racking, burning delirium. Then came peace and calmness. CHAPTER FOUR. IDYLLIC LIFE IN ICELAND. Iceland! land of flowers and sunshine? Ah no; but Iceland! land of storms; land of the thunder-cloud; land of lordly hills, whose strange, jagged peaks pierce the clouds by day, and at night seem to nod to stars or moon; land of rugged shores, around which for ever toss and roll the arctic billows; land of glorious sunsets; land of the Aurora; land of romance too, a romance of the olden time, for do not ancient Vikings slumber on its shores in their wave-rocked graves? Iceland! land of peace and innocence? Yes. Iceland! land of love? Yes, land of love-- of love as pure and true, if not so passionate, as ever budded and bloomed beneath the sunny skies of fair Italia. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was the evening of the eighth day since poor Claude's accident. The fever had all gone and left him. He lay there pale and weak and thin, as quiet and as obedient as a child. It was very still in that ancient room; the purring of the great grey cat seemed very loud, so did the gentle twitter of the snow-flea in his wee wicker cage, and when an old raven, perched on a stool near the fire, rustled his feathers, the noise sounded harsh and startling. It was near sunset, for the window was in the west, and the sun shimmered in through the red and green and yellow of the flowers. "Dear nursie, what is your name?" The words appeared to fall unconsciously from the lips of our stricken hero. In his fever dreams, he just dimly remembered hearing it, but he was not quite certain. Anyhow, he wished to hear it from the girl herself. "Dear nursie, what is your name?" "My name is Meta?"--this from the maiden, with a blush and a smile. There was a pause. He would have liked her to have asked, "And what is yours?" But she did not. She only sat silently there, with the book on her lap, as she had been sitting for the last half-hour. "Mine is Claude," he said at last. "May I call you Meta?" "Ye-es," with modest hesitation. "Do call me Claude?" "Claude," said the girl, advancing towards him with a very serious countenance, and laying a tiny hand on his pulse, "I think you are going to die. Oh! I trust not. But there is a strange glitter in your eyes to-night--a look I like not, and your pulse flickers feebly. I will call aunt." She was hurrying away. "Meta!" She came back. "Meta, I will not die if--" He paused hesitatingly. "If what?" "If you--if you will stay and nurse me." "I will; but now sleep. You are very weak, and, see, twilight is creeping up from the fiord. Close your eyes, and I will play to you." "Meta," said Claude next day. "Yes, Claude." Claude felt happy to be called Claude. Remember, he was very weak and ill, and in this condition even men grow childish. "Tell me something about yourself. You were not always in this island. You even talk sweetly beautiful English." "I am Norwegian. My father was a sailor, the captain of a barque. He always took mother and me everywhere. We were all he had. Thus I learned English. We often traded to Reykjavik. My two aunts used to live there." "Yes, Meta; and your parents?" "Alas! we were wrecked on this wild coast; both were drowned. My dear mother lies buried in the little graveyard yonder. My poor father was-- never--found." Her face was hurriedly buried in her hands, and tears welled through her fingers. Tears filled Claude's eyes too, but he spoke not. He knew well how sacred grief and tears like hers are. But soon she lifted her tearful face. "They are both in heaven, Claude," she said. Claude hastened, with good tact, to change the subject. When he told her of his father's sad death and of his mother's perpetual sorrow, then even Meta felt that something had suddenly grown up in their hearts to draw them together in friendship. We will be brother and sister, she thought; but, alas! he will go, and I shall see him never more again. After this, though Meta still played, sung, and read to her patient as before, patient and nurse talked more together. Meta told Claude of her early life, and Claude exchanged confidences. "I would dearly like to see your great lady mother," said Meta one day, about two weeks after their first earnest conversation. "You may one day," said Claude, thoughtfully. "What? she may come here?--here in your ship? Is she very, _very_ proud? She might not deign to speak to a sailor's daughter," she added. "Oh yes, dear Meta," exclaimed Claude, with enthusiasm; "she would speak to you. She would thank you--she would bless you for having saved the life of her only son." "My aunts did that; not I," said innocent Meta. "No, Meta, no; but you, and you alone, saved my worthless life-- worthless to all but my mother." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There is a joy in returning health and strength that only those who have been really and dangerously ill can understand. It was still the sweet summer time when Claude was able to go out once more. Very feebly went be at first, but in the keen, fresh, mountain air, vigour came fast. He was soon able to take long rambles, then longer rides. How delightful these rides were; how glorious, but sometimes how terrible and awesome, was the scenery! They rode on ponies, Meta and Claude, while the great, unwieldy Byarnie trotted along by their side, or ran on ahead; for often there were rivers to ford, and gorges to descend, without e'er a path except that found, extempore, by this honest, but ghoul-like groom. Many and many a day after, when imprisoned in the icy North without hope of deliverance, except through the valley of death, did Claude Alwyn look back with joy and pleasure to these excursions. He remembered every feature of the scenery--the frowning cliffs, the towering mountains, the broad, shallow rivers, the deep ravines and glens, the cliffs and rocks, the great boulders that seemed about to topple over and hurry them to destruction, the wild birds, the green, green sward, the beautiful mosses, and the still more lovely wild flowers. But, above all, he remembered the innocent, childlike face of Meta, that used to look into his so trustingly as she called him "brother Claude." Sometimes they would seat themselves together by the banks of a stream where Byarnie would be fishing, and Meta would tell her brother such wondrous tales--mostly Icelandic and Norse fairy stories, about which there is so great a charm. Claude loved to hear her talk; there was such an earnestness about her while she related tales of folk-lore, as if she really believed them all herself. But when she came to speak of the ancient Vikings, and their deeds of valour and prowess, then the maiden's eyes sparkled, and there came a brighter glow in her cheeks, that told of a bold heart that beat within her breast, a heart that could not only love but _dare_. So weeks sped on, so even months passed by, and surely Paul and Virginia led no more idyllic life than did Claude and Meta during this time. They sat near a geyser one lovely day in July. There was no great eruption that day, no startling and awful upthrow of boiling water, only now and then a bubbling, rumbling sound, which made a rude bass to the song of the birds that hovered near. Giant Byarnie had boiled some eggs in a spring. Byarnie always provided luncheon for the party of one kind or another. He had placed the eggs in the sun, and had gone away to a distance to milk a cow. I am really afraid that Byarnie was not particular whose cow it was. Cows are often public property in Iceland. Anyhow he found a cow, two of them for that matter, so he went to pull some of the sweetest grass to lay before one to keep her quiet while he filled his pannikin. Meanwhile Meta and brother Claude sat on a bank near the spring. The sunshine was very soft and warm, and the air was filled with the odour of wild thyme. Meta was silent and sad, for to-morrow Claude was going away--never, never, she thought to return again. She could not speak much. Very little would have made her cry, and she felt determined not to do that. Claude was silent also. And Byarnie, away down in the valley yonder, went on milking his cow--or rather somebody else's cow--and singing in Norse to himself. Presently Claude put out his hand and took that of Meta. It was very cold. "Dear sister Meta," he said. She felt she wanted to cry more than ever now. "I am going away to-morrow--south to my mother, dear; south to my own bonnie land. I am going away--" Oh, how the tears rained now! There was no keeping them back. She threw herself on the grass and sobbed as if her heart would really burst. Claude could say nothing for a moment or two. "Meta! Meta!" he cried at last, "look up--speak to me. Listen, dear; I am going south to tell my mother I will never many any one except you, dear Meta. Do not speak; I know you love me as I love you. I will not be long away. You will long for my return, even as my dear mother is longing now. My mother will be your mother, Meta; my home and country will be yours." Meta was smiling now through her tears. What more was said, if anything, may never be known, but when Byarnie came floundering back with his pannikin of milk, he found his mistress and master, as he called them, both happy and gay, and wondered at this very much, because he had left them both sad and quiet. A little Norse maiden knelt in prayer that night beside her dimity-curtained bed, and thanked the kind Father for the hope and joy of pure love, the hope that as she had a mother in heaven, she yet might have one on earth as well. And Claude's yacht spread her wings to the breeze, and south and south she flew. Past the Westmann Isles, past lonely Stramoe, past the rugged Faroes, past the Shetlands, past the Hebrides themselves. And now Claude slackens sail His men notice that he is no longer so buoyant and happy. He treads the deck with a quicker step, as if to keep time with those thoughts. "Oh?" he was saying to himself, "what will mother say? How will mother take it? How will the proud Lady Alwyn look, when I tell her I am betrothed to a simple Iceland maiden?" CHAPTER FIVE. "WILL HE NEVER COME AGAIN?" Not since the bright old days before the death of Claude's father had Dunallan Towers looked so cheerful as it did the week before the arrival of the wanderer himself in Glasgow waters. "I believe my boy will come to-day," Lady Alwyn would remark to her maid. "Something tells me, too, he won't be long," Janet would reply; "and do you know, my lady, that Alba seems to know it also? He cried, `Claude! Claude! Claude!' last night quite distinctly in his sleep, and the sound thrilled every nerve in my body. Oh! I hope nothing has happened to him, my lady." "Hush! hush!" replied her ladyship; "you are superstitious, Janet; but you mustn't try to make me so." Even as they spoke there came a patter of tiny feet along the passage, like the rattle of hail on a summer-house roof, and the next moment Alba himself appeared. He flew up, and on to the back of a quaint old chair, and gazed first at Janet and then at her mistress with his garnet eyes. Lady Alwyn smoothed the graceful creature, and it bent low on its perch, as if enjoying the gentle caress. "Do you not notice," said the lady, "how white and snowy its plumage has become of late? It is always thus before my boy arrives." "Dear Lady Alwyn, I did not like to tell you before; but all the three days you were at Dumfries Alba was lost, and I never thought to see him again. He was whiter when he came back than the snows on the mountains." "How strange!" said Lady Alwyn, meditatively. "Claude, Claude!" cried Alba. There is nothing strange in hearing a seagull talking, and Alba's vocabulary was not a small one. Lady Alwyn held out her hand; the bird perched on it, and presently was nestling fondly on her breast. This did not altogether please Fingal, Claude's favourite deerhound. He must needs get up from the skin on which he had been reclining, and lean his noble head on the lady's lap. And she could spare a hand to fondle the head. Yes, everything was bright and pleasant. What though the early winter winds were raving through the leafless trees without, where swayed the rooks near their cheerless nests? what though the blasts were biting and cold in the uplands, and the Nith--brown and swollen--roared angrily over its rocky bed? Bright fires burned in every grate, and were reflected in patches of crimson from the massive mahogany furniture. And Lady Alwyn's face was cheerful too. Resigned and calm though she always appeared, to-day there was a sparkle in her eyes, that made her look almost young. Rat-tat! It was a double knock at the front hall door which resounded through all the house. Lady Alwyn started from her seat, and stood eager and expectant. She even went to meet the liveried servant, who presently entered with the telegram. "Yes, yes!" she joyfully exclaimed in answer to Janet's inquiring look. "My boy is coming to-day. I knew he would be. Alba, your master is coming." She embraced the bird again. Fingal, sure that something more than usual was on the _tapis_, began to scamper round the room, jumping over the chairs--a way he had when excited. He jumped all round the room twice, then he playfully snatched the telegram from Lady Alwyn's hand and went jumping round again with that. How much or how little of the truth Fingal guessed I cannot pretend to say. It was but a telegram. Had it been a _letter_ written by his loved master's hand, Fingal would have known it, even had the wanderer been years away. So when Claude stepped briskly out of the train at the little station of P--, there, sure enough, was the great stately old carriage, with its two splendid dark bays, in their silvered harness, waiting to receive him. His mother was not there; but Fingal was, and almost pulled his master down in the exuberance of his joy. It was a long five-mile drive from the station to Dunallan. Charming enough, in all conscience, during the spring and summer months, and even when autumn tints were on the trees, but cold-looking and dreary now. All the more so that night was coming on apace, the little of lurid light which the sun had left in the west getting quickly absorbed in the heavy banks of rising cloud. Claude's spirits fell lower now than they had yet fallen. There was something even in the sombre grandeur of the family carriage that brought dark clouds around his heart. Not one thought except those of love for the fair and innocent maiden far away mingled with these. But his mother? His proud, good, gentle mother? How would the Lady Alwyn, the Lady of the Towers, herself of ancient family, like the idea of her only son marrying a poor Iceland orphan unblessed with a pedigree? And he--a lord--Lord Alwyn! Yes, Lord Alwyn. He could not deny it, though he hated the title, hated it now more than ever for the sake of Meta. There was some relief from his present gloom and doubts and fears in placing his arm round great Fingal--seated so lovingly by his side,--and breathing into his ears the strange story of his love. Fingal could listen and sympathise, even if he did not know one whit what it was all about. Fingal was a wise old dog, so he wisely held his peace, and offered no advice on the matter either way. He gave his master one lick on the cheek, however, as much as to say-- "Whatever you think, dear master, must be right, and whatever you do can't be wrong in my eyes, so there?" Mother and son had much to talk of that night. Lady Alwyn's life since the _Alba_, her son's ship, bore away for the far North, had been uneventful enough; but _he_ had had adventures numerous indeed-- although, mind you, he did not speak of them as such. Hardly ever is a rover off the stage heard making use of the word "adventures." Modesty is one of the leading characteristics of your true hero. There were times on this first evening when Claude would suddenly lapse into silence, almost into moodiness. He might be looking at his mother or not, but his mind was evidently abstracted, preoccupied, and his eyes had a far-away look in them. This did not escape his mother's notice. "Could he have any grief?" she thought. "Could he be ill and not know it?" "You are sure," she said once, "my dear Claude, that you have quite recovered from your terrible accident?" "What, mother? Accident? Oh yes; indeed I had almost forgotten." "And your nurses, your kindly nurses, Claude: you must never forget them, dear." "I'm not likely to," he said, with on emphasis which she thought almost strange. "Never while I live." He gazed into the fire. "Would not this be the right time," he was thinking, "to tell her all: to tell her I had three nurses instead of only two?" But no; he dared not just yet. He would not run the risk of bringing a care to her now happy face. He thought himself thus justified in putting the evil day--if evil day it were to be--further off. Claude was no coward, as I believe the sequel of my story will show, but still he dreaded--oh, how he dreaded!--the effect which the intelligence he was bound soon to give her would have upon her. Claude slept but little that night, and slept but ill. More than once he started from some frightful dream, in which his mother was strangely mixed up, and not his mother only, but his Meta. It was about five o'clock, though it would not be daylight for a long while yet. Claude was lying partially asleep: I say partially, because he seemed listening to the wind roaring through the leafless boughs of the trees, and every now and then causing the twiglets to tap and creak against the panes; but he thought he was at sea, and that the rushing sound was the rushing of waves, the creaking the yielding of the ship's timbers to the force of the seas. Suddenly he sprang half up in bed and listened intently, painfully. He had distinctly heard some one in the room calling him. He could not be mistaken, and the voice seemed Meta's. "Claude! Claude!" cried the voice again, and his heart almost stood still for a moment as he saw a figure, which his imagination magnified a hundredfold, near the bed. "Claude?" Next moment Alba, the snow-bird, alighted on his breast. He slept soundly soon after this, but still when he appeared at breakfast he was so jaded looking and restless as to cause his mother considerable anxiety. He stoutly refused to see a medical man, however. "It is nothing," he laughed. "Nothing, dear mother, only slight fatigue. A sailor like myself thinks little of travelling a thousand miles by sea, yet dreads the rolling, jolting train." There was plenty to do and think about all day, well calculated to banish care. The villagers, the tenants, and neighbours all round were delighted to see the manly face and handsome figure of young Claude Alwyn once more among them, still accompanied by his pet--his spirit-bird, as the older cottagers had come to call it. Then, although grouse were wild, there were hares in plenty, and fish in the river ready to be wooed by the gentle art of so true a fisherman as Claude Alwyn. And the walking exercise, through the heather hills, the fresh air, and the balmy breath of pine trees, never failed to refresh and invigorate him both in mind and body, so that he always returned to dinner buoyant and hopeful. But ever at the breakfast-table there was that weary look of carking care in his face. He would go no further, however, in explaining it than confessing he did not sleep very well at night. "It is the change," he remarked, smiling, "from a hard mattress to one far too soft and luxuriant for a sailor. Besides, mother, I dare say I miss the motion of the ship." His mother only sighed softly. There came to Claude one night a dream as vivid as any reality. He was back again in Iceland. He was gazing on the face and form of her whom he loved, though she did not seem to see him. She was seated on a hill-top, a favourite spot, where beside her he had often sat, when the fields beneath were green, the far-off sea an azure blue, when wild birds sang above and around them, and the perfume of wild flowers filled the summer air. But snow was all over the landscape now, save where dark rocks jutted through the white, and the ocean, foam-flecked, dashed high over the beetling cliffs. Yes, there sat Meta, but oh! the sad, sad look in those beautiful eyes! She opened her lips and spoke at last. "No, no, no!" she murmured; "he will never come again." He thought he sprang towards her, but she faded away like the mist from a geyser, and he was alone on the snow. He slept no more that night. But he formed a resolve. "No," he said to himself, "I am not a man; not a drop of proud Alwyn's blood runs through my veins if I hesitate longer. It is a duty I owe to my mother and to her to speak my mind. Yes, Meta, I will come back again." Were I an artist, I should delight in painting only beauty and peace: the fairest, holiest faces should be transferred to my canvas; the most smiling summer landscapes, the sunniest seas. But, alas! I am but an author, and no pen-and-ink depiction of life would be complete without the shade and shadow of sorrow. I will not needlessly dwell on the interview that took place in the very room in which I am sitting writing now, between the proud Lady Alwyn and her son. Indeed, the interview was brief in itself: I have thus some excuse for being brevity personified in my description. Pass we over, then, Claude's introduction, his passionate declaration of love for Meta, his glowing panegyrics on her person and mind, and even the statement that only his regard for his mother and fear of hurting her feelings caused him to conceal the truth so long from her, and then we come to the _denouement_. "But, dearest mother, I now know and feel that your constant desire to do everything for my happiness will cause you to receive my Meta when I bring her home as my bride." If she had been silent till now, it was because she seemed as if thunder-struck. "My boy," she cried at last, "you are bewitched, or I am dreaming some hideous dream. Tell me it is all but an ill-timed joke. You are but a child--" "I am a man." "You have been deceived, put upon, tempted by a designing--" "Hold, mother, hold! Though the few words you have uttered sound like the death-knell to hopes I have fondly cherished, go no further: forget not yourself so far as to speak one word against my bride-elect, lest I forget I am your son." "My son? _My son_?" exclaimed the proud Lady of the Towers almost tragically. "Oh! would I could forget it, or that your ship had sunk in the blackest depths of ocean, rather than you had lived to bring this disgrace on the noble house of Alwyn." "Enough, mother; I will hear no more. You have thwarted me in the dearest wish of my heart, you whose love for a son ought to have conquered family pride. You have thrust me from the halls of my ancestors. I go forth into the world of adventure. I will seek in ambition, in ceaseless change, the only possible balm for the sorrow I have in parting from you." He turned on his heel as he spoke. He strode down the hall and through the avenue; he looked neither to right nor left, and never once behind him. His mother watched him with clasped hands, with anxious eyes, and with prayers on her pale and quivering lips. "Would he turn? Surely, surely he would turn." But nay; the trees soon hid him from view--hid him, and lastly Fingal, who with tail and head bent low, as if he knew that sorrow had come, followed at young Claude's heels. "Widowed and childless!" These were her words as she sank apparently lifeless on the floor. Janet, her maid, found her thus and lifted her gently on to the couch. But when memory came back, no words her maid could utter could give comfort. "I forgive him, Janet," she said, "as he will forgive me. It is fate. He _may_ write, but he'll _never_ return: too well do I know the pride of the Highland Alwyns. But, but, dear Janet,"--here all the woman's nature gushed out in tears--"Janet," she sobbed, "poor Fingal--too-- has--gone." Sorrow had fallen like a dark cloud on Dunallan Towers, a cloud that was deepened in its darkness when one morning Alba, the snow-bird, was missing. It was last seen flying listlessly around the great elm trees, then straight as lightning bearing northwards. It was Janet who saw it, and it seemed to say-- "I hear a voice you cannot hear, That bids me not to stay; I see a hand you cannot see, That beckons me away." CHAPTER SIX. "GRIEF IS THE PARENT OF FAME." Claude was miles away from home ere he noticed faithful Fingal trotting near him. His first thought was to order him back, but this poor dog, as if reading his mind, crouched low at his feet, looking beseechingly up. "_This_ is my home," he appeared to plead. Claude's next thought was to _take_ him back; his mother might even ere now have relented. But that Highland pride, which has been at once the glory and the curse of Auld Scotland, stepped in and forbade. Young Claude went on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Grief," says one of England's greatest novelists--Lord Lytton--"is the parent of fame." This is so true! Many and many a grief-stricken, sorrow-laden man and woman in this world would faint and fail and die, did they not fall back upon work to support them. This is the tonic that sustains tens of thousands of sorely stricken ones, until Time, the great healer, has assuaged the floods of their sorrow. Young though Claude was--but little more than twenty-one--he had already obtained some fame in the fields of literature. He had been a rover, and to some extent an explorer--more especially among those wild and lonely islands in the Norland Ocean. Nor had he been content to merely cruise around these, watching only the ever-changing hues of the ocean, or the play of sunshine and shade on bold bluff crags and terraced cliffs. No, for he was as much on shore as afloat, mingling among their peoples when peoples there were, mingling among the birds if they were the only inhabitants, studying flora, studying fauna, reading even the great book of the rocks, that told him so much, but never yet had caused him to waver in his belief in a Supreme Being, who made the sea and all that is in it, the land and all it contains. He was a sportsman and naturalist; in fact, "a man of the world," in the only true and dignified sense of the term. His was an original mind, and a deep-thinking one, so that the sketches of his life and travels which he had been in the habit of sending from time to time to the organs of higher-class literature were sure to be welcome both to editors and readers. He was, moreover, a student of Norse lore, and a speculator in the theories--many of them vague enough--concerning the mysterious regions that lie around the Arctic Pole. And it was his writings on these countries that first brought him into real notoriety among a class of very worthy _savants_ who, though seldom too willing to venture into extreme danger themselves, are, to their credit be it said, never averse to spend money in fitting out ships of research. On the very day of his rejoining his vessel at Glasgow, a letter was handed to him by his chief mate, inviting him to London on important business in connection with discovery in the Arctic regions. Two hours afterwards Claude was seated in a flying train, whirling rapidly on towards the borders. In nine hours more he was in town. Another half-hour brought him to a shipping office in Leadenhall Street. "You are Captain Lord Alwyn?" said the grey-haired clerk, looking at him over the rims of a pair of golden spectacles. "The same, at your service," returned Claude. "We did not expect you quite so soon. But if you did come, I was told to hand you this note." It was simply an invitation to dine with Professor Hodson and a few friends next evening at Richmond. When Claude got there, the first person to greet him when announced was the learned professor himself, and a very bustling, dignified little man he was. "Ha! ha!" he laughed, as he shook Claude warmly by the hand. "I couldn't have believed it. Really, it is strange!" "Believe what?" said Claude, bluntly. "Why, that you were so young a man. Should have thought from your writings you must be forty if a day." It was Claude's turn to laugh. "But there, never mind. Authors are always taken to be older men than they are. No, I don't think that youth will be an insuperable objection. Besides, youth has courage, youth has fire and health, to say nothing of a recuperative power of rising again even after being floored by a thousand misfortunes." "Difficulties, I dare say," said Claude, "were made to be overcome." "To be sure. Well, then, having heard and read a good deal about your doings up North, we thought we would send for you, and instead of having a learned day discussion round a green baize-covered table, to invite you to join us at dinner--quite a quiet affair--and just to chat matters over." It must be confessed that poor Claude did not feel altogether at home among those extremely learned men. The conversation was all about previous voyages of scientific discovery. Had those gentlemen been more practical and less theoretical, Claude would have been all with them; but it was evident from the way they spoke that not one of them had ever been on blue water, much less on the stormy seas of the Far North. When, by way of encouraging him to talk more, in the course of the evening they asked Claude's advice concerning the practicability of the plans they had in view, then young Claude spoke out like a man of business and a sailor. Cool and collected to a degree, boldly banishing all theories, he hung on to facts. He did not ignore dangers and difficulties; he did not despise them, but professed himself willing to meet them, without for a moment holding out any promise of ultimate success in the adventurous undertaking. How dared he, he said, expect to do more than abler and better and braver men who had gone on the same track before him? If he did presume to hope to even a little more, it was because he should have all their bygone experiences to help him. If they entrusted the command of an exploring ship to him, there was but one thing he could boldly promise, and that was to do his best. He said much more to the same effect, and even enlarged upon the necessary equipment, victualling, and armament of a ship of the kind they proposed sending out, and when he at length concluded-- "Spoken like a man and a sailor," said the professor, and a murmur of assent passed round the table: The _savants_ retired to another room to consult. When they came back, Professor Hodson advanced and shook hands with Claude. "We are unanimous in thinking, Lord Alwyn," he said, "that you are just the man we want. The vessel you are to command already lies in Southampton waters. There are doubtless a thousand alterations to be made: these you, with your experience, will be able to see to. Do not spare expense. Draw upon us. We want you to feel that it will be no fault of ours if the expedition be not crowned with success; and I have the support of my colleagues in adding that we sincerely believe it will be no fault of yours. Other details," added the bold professor, "can be gone into whenever you please." It was a quiet little hotel that Claude occupied that night, but one which he meant to make his home while in London. And why? Smile if you like, reader, but the reason is this: the landlord did not object to the presence of noble Fingal in his house. Claude sat long in his sitting-room before retiring. The state of his feelings may be more easily imagined than described. His mind was by turns here, there, everywhere--back in his boyhood's home, afloat on the sea, with his mother at Dunallan Towers, then away in the Far North with Meta. His mind reverted to the past, and went forward again to the future. He was sad and hopeful by turns. But he had crossed the Rubicon; he could not now draw back from anything he had done or promised to do. Before he retired, he knelt and asked guidance from Him in whose hands are all our ways, and he slept more soundly that night than he had done for weeks. CHAPTER SEVEN. A PLEASURE SAIL. "Oh, mamma, I do hope the weather will be fine!" said pretty Miss Hodson. "Well, my dear Clara, isn't it fine? Why, a more delightful day could not well be imagined." "Yes, now, mamma; but I mean all along on this adventuresome voyage that we are about to take." "Don't you bother your little head, my mouse," said her father, fondling one of her little hands in his. "I know enough about the weather to give a forecast a week beforehand, and a good deal about the sea, too, though I confess I've never been on it much. Ahem!" The speakers were seated in a cab that was rattling along the quay of Aberdeen on a lovely morning in April. There were monster boxes on top, another cab filled with luggage only came up behind, and still another containing three gentlemen. Very distinguished men these were, indeed, though oddly ill-matched in appearance. Number 1, let me call him, was a true type of a middle-aged John Bull--tall, whiskered, stout, strong, yet calm and thoughtful withal. Number 2 might have been a Boston editor or an Edinburgh genius of the old school. He was medium in height, lanky rather, high in cheek-bone, deep in eye. He wore no beard, but had a bushy moustache and very long grey hair. Number 3 was evidently a fat Frenchman, rotund to a degree, black as to hair, which was cropped as short as a convict's, and moustache, but _so_ fat! You could best describe his outline by letters, thus--take a big O and a little o and two letters l. Now stick the little o on the top of the big O and you have his head and body. Then clap on the two l's to represent his legs, and you have his lines complete. He was so stout that when he stuck out his little white hands, with their palms upwards, as Frenchmen have a habit of doing in argument, the finger-tips did not project an inch beyond him in front. But Number 1 was no less an individual than Sir Thomas Merino; Number 2 was the Baron de Bamber; and Number 3, Count Koskowiskey himself. The little boys in Aberdeen had never before seen such a strange procession of cabs, nor such a strange crew inside, so that they felt constrained to run alongside and wave their ragged bonnets and shout themselves hoarse. The _savants_, for such they were, thought to purchase peace with a shower of coppers. This only increased the crowd, and no beggars in Cairo ever yelled for backsheesh as did those boys for "bawbees." But things do not last for ever, and at length the cabs drew up, one by one, at a gangway that stretched from the shore to the quarter-deck of the good ship _Icebear_. The gangway was covered with scarlet cloth, a neatly dressed sailor stood at each side of the shore end to steady it, and Captain Claude Alwyn stood at the other ready to receive his guests. He looked very handsome did our Claude, in his peaked cap, reefing-jacket of simple blue, and gilt buttons. He doffed his cap as he handed the ladies on board, and was rewarded by a smile from Mrs Hodson, and a blushet--let me coin a word--from Clara, her daughter. Now, it was evident that Professor Hodson was the head of the party; for no sooner had every one of them taken a good look round the gallant ship than he remarked, "Now, gentlemen, what do you say--shall we have an early dinner and then sail, or sail first and have a more comfortable one out at sea! I propose the latter plan." "Professor," said his wife, sternly, "I propose the former; and ladies, I think, should carry the sway." "They generally do," sighed the professor, who looked subdued and henpecked, as distinguished _savants_ are apt to be. "Your proposal is best, madam," put in Claude, smiling. "It is best to have it over. You can sup afterwards; that is," he added mysteriously, "if any of you will care to." "Oh, we shall all sup," said the professor. "The ocean always gives me an appetite." (N.B.--He had been three times from London to Ramsgate by steamer.) "Most sartainlee, capitaine," said the French _savant_. To have seen the way the gentlemen, and--pardon me, my lady readers--the ladies also, enjoyed that excellent dinner, one would have said there would be little need for supper. The saloon was long and comfortable, though there was nothing of the boudoir about it. Claude himself had seen to everything personally. It was a very brilliant and select little party that assembled on deck about an hour afterwards. The _elite_, or rather the literary _elite_, of the city had come to wish the _Icebear_ "God-speed?" "What am I to do with all these flowers, sir?" the steward asked that same afternoon, when he got a word with the captain. "Keep the choicest for the saloon," was the reply, "and distribute the rest impartially for'ard." The _Icebear_ was a lovely vessel, both fore and aft. She had been originally intended for a man-of-war to add to the navy of a far-off foreign potentate; but as the potentate in question did not, or could not, pay at the right moment, after waiting a goodly time the builder very properly put her in the market, and she was knocked down at a reasonable figure to our _savant_ friends. About 1500 tons burden she was, low in bulwarks, flush in deck, with no great breadth of beam, though with more than the coffin-ships they often send poor Jack to sea in--things with no breadth at all to speak of, and that go over and down in a breeze, and in sea-way that a Peterhead herring-boat would laugh at. The _Icebear_ was sturdy and strong all over, had good engines, good shaft and screw--she carried a spare one. Forward, the bows were of triple strength, moderately sharp, and shod with iron, to aid in boring through the ice. She had three respectable masts, not heavy enough to weigh her over on her beam-ends if a squall struck her broadside, nor light enough to snap like pea-sticks if a puff came. When under sail the screw could be hoisted up into a kind of covered well, and the advantage of this will be found when the ship gets farther north. Not a yard of canvas, not a fathom of cordage, that had not been examined and tested by Claude himself. So much for the exterior. "Downstairs," as landsmen would say, she was fitted up with a view to the utmost comfort. The men's sleeping-berths forward and amidships were bunks and hammocks. The crew all told was ninety men, or would be when the vessel lay in at Kirkwall to ship additional hands. Remember, there was no lumber of any kind on the upper deck. No unsightly cabins or rooms, only forward was the winch and then the steerage cabin, the capstan, the midship companion; and aft the saloon and cabin skylights and companions, the wheel-house and binnacle. I hope I am not talking Greek to my readers, who are probably not all nautical; but I wish it to be understood that the _Icebear's_ decks were most roomy, nothing at all unnecessary being built or even lying thereon--a deck on which you could waltz with delight, or fight without discomfort. The captain's quarters, or rather his private room, occupied the after-part of the ship under the wheel-house, and was charmingly furnished, with a splendid stove, warm, soft carpets, a lounge, easy-chairs, a swing-cot, a library of choice books, and two ports that looked out over the sea. There, then I what more would you have in a private room afloat? and, mind you, it was the whole width of the ship. It had a private staircase. But the wardroom, or principal saloon, which lay under the quarter-deck, had cabins off it for the officers of the expedition, whose acquaintance we will make in good time. It may be asked what were two ladies and four learned landsmen doing on board a ship bound for the icy North? It was a proposal of Mrs Hodson, to which her husband knew he dared not say nay, that the party we now see on board should accompany the vessel as far as Kirkwall, for what she called "the pleasure of a sail." Well, the pleasure of the sail really commenced before they were beyond the pier-head of Aberdeen. The long granite breakwater, which they were steaming past, was crowded with people, and, greatly to Mrs Hodson's delight, a lusty shore-porter sprang up to the top of a parapet and, commanding silence by a wave of his arm, proposed "Three cheers for the two gallant ladies, who were sailing away to the North Pole never to return." And the cheers were given too--not three, but three times three; and when Mrs Hodson smilingly bowed her acknowledgments, and pretty Clara waved a handkerchief, which the crowd firmly believed to be wet with tears, then the cheering was redoubled, and kept up till the ship was over the bar. Next, guns were fired from the fort; and when this salute was returned from the _Icebear_, and the flag dipped and hoisted again, the voyage had commenced in earnest. All the way to Peterhead it was most enjoyable, but as night stole over the ocean, and the sun dipped towards the sea, and just as Professor Hodson was proposing to go down to supper, the wind sprang up; then--let me say it in my own queer way--all on board that were sailors, _were_ sailors, and those on board who were not, were very much the reverse. Surely this is better than saying that certain folks were sea-sick. But it was a pity that the cruel wind should blow so high, and that the waves should not have respected the _savants_ a single bit, nor Mrs Hodson either, nor even the pretty Clara. It was not only a pity, but it was excessively annoying; for Professor Hodson, who had once written a treatise on the physical geography of the sea, had meant to give a scientific lecture in the forenoon; while Sir Thomas, the bold Saxon, was to have lectured on astronomy under the stars, the dredging machine was to have been set to work, and the mysteries of the ocean depths revealed to the wondering gaze of poor Jack; while Mrs Hodson had pictured to herself the pleasure she would have in presiding at the head of the table, and lecturing, not only her husband, but everybody else; and Clara--she, too, had had her dreams. There could be no harm, Clara had thought, in looking her best, and dressing her best, and even engaging in the delicatest of flirtations with the handsome Lord Claude. She had had a lovely sailor costume made, but, oh dear!--my heart bleeds to mention it--it was never worn, and the only miserable consolation left to her was to remember, that this nautical rig would do for Henley Regatta. Ugh! But oh! the cruel, cruel ocean, and oh! the merciless waves, not one of all those dreamers left his or her cabin till the _Icebear_ lay safe and sound in Kirkwall. Thus ended the pleasure sail from which so much joy had been expected. CHAPTER EIGHT. "TILL FROZEN SEAS DO MEET." "Mr Lloyd," said Claude to his first mate, the morning after the _Icebear_ sailed away from the Orkneys on the wings of a favouring breeze, "I am not going to call my men together and make a speech. That style of thing is far too stagey. We have picked our crew, and I believe they will be good men and true, every one of them. Well, I will try to be a kind and considerate captain; and I'll tell you now what I should like. I want, then, in a word, all the discipline and cleanliness of a man-o'-war, with a good deal of the cheerfulness and light-heartedness you find on a well-appointed yacht or best class of merchantmen. Let them sing below if they like, or even on deck for'ard during smoking hours: I won't object to a little music. You understand?" "Perfectly, my lord." Claude held up a finger. "My lord is too formal for a ship's quarter-deck," he said. "Beg pardon, sir. I really had forgotten for the moment." The captain and mate were on the quarter-deck, the latter taking his orders for the day. As shrewd and sturdy a sailor as ever faced the billows was Lloyd. And not only a sailor, but a thorough iceman. He had been going "back and fore," as he phrased it, to Greenland ever since he was a boy of ten, and he was now nearly thirty. He had come through every peril that one can think of; he had been cast away as often as he had fingers on his left hand--there were only four, one had been shot off--his ship had been burned at sea, and he had drifted for weeks on an iceberg, with nothing to eat at last except boot leather; he had once even been dragged under water by a shark, and was saved by his sea-boot coming off--one of the best pairs of boots he ever had, he used to tell his mates;--but, for all the dangers he had come through, he dearly loved the regions round the Pole. "Greenland has been like a mother to me," he had been heard to say; "and I hope to die there, and be frozen up in an iceberg, where I'll keep fresh till the crack of doom." [Note 1.] That first day at sea--for these hardy mariners had not considered themselves afloat till now--was a very busy one. It was a very beautiful one too, for the matter of that, when one had time to look around him. When any one did, it was when the breeze slackened a bit, or blew stiffer, or changed its course a point or two, or did any one of the score of things that the wind that wafts a ship along is constantly doing. The captain walked all round the ship about eight bells, and found everything taut and trim and clear, and no complaints. The second and third officers had been with Claude before for many voyages. The surgeon was a man of over forty, and as grey as a badger. It was not years alone that had changed the colour of his hair, however, but a lifetime of abstruse study. His studies had been of a very mixed nature--better call him a scientist at once and be done with it; but he was a musician and poet also. By the way, every naturalist is a poet, whether he writes or not; for true poetry consists, not in writing verses, but in being and in feeling yourself part and parcel of all the life and loveliness around you, of loving all things and all creatures, and thus, unwittingly it may be, worshipping in the truest Way the great Being who made them. But the surgeon's character will come out as we go on in our story; suffice it to say here that although Claude had known him but a very few months, he already liked and respected him very much. Claude felt happy and contented in having so good a crew, and officers he could trust by night or day. For though I may have seemed in my last chapter to be sneering at good Professor Hodson and his brother _savants_, they really were men who had the interests of science at heart, and this ship was going on no insignificant errand to the land of the snow bear. The sea got up towards evening, and sail was taken in; and as the breeze still freshened, still more sail, and she was practically made snug for the night. Before leaving Aberdeen--some days indeed--Claude had written to his mother, filially and affectionately bidding her good-bye. Thus far he had bent his pride; yes, and had she asked him to come home for a day-- well, perhaps he would have thrown all his pride to the winds and obeyed. But the time flew by, and there came no reply of any kind, and Claude was sad About an hour before he sailed, a telegram was put into his hand. It was brief, thus-- "Lady Alwyn wishes her son well." So far the proud Lady of the Towers had melted. Claude put the telegram in his Bible. It was something precious, for he could read between the words. So he was happy. But he would not write again. The ship was steered for the nor'-nor'-west; and as it neared Iceland, Claude grew more and more impatient. How would Meta look when she heard the news?--for in the few letters he had written--there were few mails to Iceland--he had not told her _all_ the truth. When at length the _Icebear_ cast anchor before the quaint, old-fashioned town of Reykjavik, after what had appeared to Claude an interminable time, they found their store-ship in waiting. Claude boarded her; and finding that everything had gone all right, directed his men to pull him on shore. Burning with impatience though he was to get away from the town--the reader will guess whither--it was hours before he could leave old friends, so warmly did they welcome him. Free at last! Free and away, and fleet was the sturdy pony that carried him. Only an Iceland horse could have done so, for even in summer the country is dangerous. Summer had not yet come, and the hills still wore the garb of winter, and the higher paths were often slippery with melting ice. He sees the strange old cottage at last, and faster still he rides, for it is nearly night. He sees Byarnie. Byarnie sees him, and, after one wave of the arm to bid him welcome, rushes indoors. Poor, innocent, beautiful Meta had had no thought of his coming that night, but, strange to say, she was dressed exactly as he had first seen her. But now the love-light was in her eyes, and tear-drops quivered on their long lashes. "I thought," she said, "you would never, never come again." Claude remembered his dream. The quaint old room when it was lit up looked cosier than ever, with the great fire of turf and wood burning on the hearth, the raven nodding on a log, the great cat on a stool, the snow-flea in its cage, the table laid for supper, the aunts--still witch-like and ugly--one sitting spinning like Fate in a picture, the other with book and spectacles in a high-backed chair, and great, awkward Byarnie laying supper. It was all like a vision of happiness to Claude. He thought he should like to stay here all his life. Perhaps Meta could read his thoughts in his eyes. I do not myself believe in thought-reading; but if there be such a faculty, it surely is the gift of true lovers. "Oh! stay with us for ever," she whispered. "Would I could," he answered. "Would that I could." "But you will for months?" "Nay, but for one short week." The bright face fell, and tears again bedimmed the eyes. "Dearest Meta," he murmured-- "`I could not love thee half so much Loved I not honour more.'" Next day, when alone with her, he bravely told her all. She was convulsed with grief. He knew she would be so. He let her weep on for a time. Tears bring such relief. "I love you just the same, and will marry you on my return." She turned to him, her face very pale and wet with tears, but calmness and heroic determination in her eyes. "Lord Alwyn," she said. Then she noticed the pain the words gave him. "Claude, then," she continued, "I will never marry you without the consent of your mother. That consent will not be given. So I will never marry you--_never_." There was a mournful cadence in her voice that rang through his heart. "Then," he said, "you do not, you cannot lo--" "Stay!" she interrupted; "stay, Claude, stay!" She put her little hand on his as she spoke, and looked into his face with that holy truthful gaze of hers. "I love you. I will never love another. I will love you till frozen seas do meet." The earnestness of her voice and manner held poor Claude spellbound for a time--spellbound and speechless. He could only gaze entranced on her lovely face, and never had it seemed to him more lovely than now. "Sit down, dear Meta," he said at last; "we still are lovers." "Yes," in a low, sad voice. "Tell me, Meta, what did you mean by the strange words, `Till frozen seas do meet'?" "There is a legend," she replied, "that long, long ago there dwelt among the rocks of the hills hereby an ancient but good man. He was called the hermit; he never courted the acquaintance of any one, never left the fastnesses where he dwelt; but people often went to seek advice from him, and brought him gifts of roots and milk. He taught them many things, and many believed him supernatural. _I_ do not think he was so, because his teachings were not all from the Good Book. He told them that the world was very old, but would be ages and ages older yet; that there lay at the South Pole an ocean of ice just as at the North; that the world was cooling down by imperceptibly slow degrees; that these frozen seas were creeping nearer, advancing south and north; that they would encroach on Southern Africa and on Europe; that the torrid zone would become temperate; that nearer and nearer the oceans of ice would creep, till at last they would all but meet on the equator; that ships would then cease to float; that men would even degenerate, and finally live for warmth in caves in the earth; and then _the frozen seas would meet_, and this world would be all one shining ball of ice-clad snow. But he said that a day would soon afterwards come when the elements would melt--the lost, the final day. That is the legend of the strange words I used. And,"--here she turned once more towards him, for she had been talking hitherto like one in a dream--"and I will love you, Claude, _till frozen seas do_ meet." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. Bodies have been found frozen, and in perfect condition, after a lapse of nearly half a century. CHAPTER NINE. THE PARTING. Among the Northern nations, especially the Norse, you meet types of men and women as utterly different from those of Southern climes as if they belonged to another sphere. The same blessed religion nevertheless binds us all with its golden chain. Natures like those of Meta and honest Byarnie--who, be it remembered, are not creatures of the imagination, but true examples of a class--I have never met elsewhere. The nearest approach to them in manners and ways of thinking, I have found in my own dear Highlands of Scotland. Very many, both of the Norse, such as those met with in Shetland and Iceland, as well as our Highlanders, are very deeply imbued with the spirit and true sentiment of religion. It is part and parcel of their everyday existence. Religion is the weft in the beautiful web of such lives as these. When women like Meta love it is very pure love, for the very reason I have stated, for Meta was not ashamed to go on her knees with her love. A very peculiar girl, you say? Would to Heaven there were millions like her in this fair land of ours. On the very evening of their reunion, Claude left his bride-elect, and went thundering away through the moonlight along the stony path on his sure-footed pony. He would come again, next day or next, he told her, but duty was duty, and must be obeyed. He was more happy than might be expected--happy because hopeful. He found everything well on board, just as he had expected he would. "I've engaged a few more hands, sir," the mate told him. "The right metal I like a mixture of nationalities, and yet I don't. Bother the foreign scum that they man British ships with nowadays, sir, leaving honest English Jack on shore to starve.--But give me a crew like what we now have, sir--a crew mostly Scotch and English; then I say one or two Norwegians or Danes don't do much harm." "Right, Mr Lloyd. And now I must tell you I am going to engage an extra hand. Can you make room?" "Put him in a bunk, sir." "A bunk, Mr Lloyd? He'd never be able to get in, and if he did he couldn't stick his legs out. He is seven feet high and over, and broad in proportion." "Ha, ha!" laughed the mate. "But I have it, sir; I've got a hammock big enough to hold an elephant." "That'll do. Good night, then." As he took down his Book to read before retiring, out dropped the telegram. He read it again and again with conflicting feelings. Would his mother relent? His own fate, as far as Meta was concerned, he determined should not be altered. She might never marry him, but he himself, in that case, would have but one bride for ever and ay--the sea. Still, as he closed the Bible that night and restored the telegram, he allowed himself to build just one castle in the air. In the cosy drawing-room of this castle his mother was seated, and Meta and he were there, and all were happy. He slept and dreamt about this. Duty kept him at Reykjavik next day and the day after, but Meta, lonely and weary through waiting, heard the well-known click-click of the pony's hoofs on the succeeding evening, and ran to the door to meet Claude. It was raining, but Byarnie took his cloak and the pony, and in he went, looking rosy, fresh, and beaming with joy. "Have you got good news?" was Meta's first question. She answered it herself before he got time to speak. "Yes, you have," she said; "I see it in your eyes. What is it? A letter from your dear mamma?" Claude's face fell just a little. "I wish it were," he replied. "No, Meta, nothing so good as that, but something I received before I left Aberdeen, and, strange to say, forgot to say a word to you about. A telegram." They went and sat down to read it. "I don't like it," she said. "Why didn't she say more? Why does she use such a funny bit of paper? Why so formal? And how funnily she writes!" Claude laughed, and explained all about telegrams, telling Meta that people could not say all they wanted to in a semi-public document, but that generally a good deal was left to be inferred, that the receiver must often read between the lines. Innocent Meta held the telegram up between her and the evening sunshine. Claude laughed again, and caught her hand. "I don't mean in that way, silly child," he said. "There; we will read between the words in the way I mean." Then he told her a good deal of his own history, and how much he knew his mother loved him, and how he believed she really was sorry he had gone away, but that pride forbade her saying so, though she doubtless wanted him to be happy, and not to depart with a sore heart--and a deal more I need not note. "Don't you see, Meta?" "Dark and dim, as through a glass," said Meta, musing. "Telegrams are queer things, Claude, and I have never seen one before, but you must be right, because you look happy." "Well, I am, because I feel she will relent." "I wonder what she is doing now?" And Meta's question leads me to say a word or two about the Lady of the Towers. I lay down my pen and ring for old Janet. I am still writing in the old red parlour at Dunallan Towers. I write by fits and starts, but I have been steady at it all day, because it has been raining in down-pouring torrents. I pity the very rooks on the swaying trees. Surely on a day like this they must envy the owl in his shelter in the turret, though they roar at him and laugh at him on sunshiny days, and call him "Diogenes?" But here comes Janet at last. "Just one question, Janet, and I'll let you go. How did Lady Alwyn feel when Claude went away?" "Oh, sir," says Janet, "she was far too proud to express her feelings to me in that way. You know, sir, when glad she always told me, but her sorrow she invariably kept to herself." "So, as she said nothing, you inferred she was unhappy?" "For that reason I knew she was. Did I put in the diary, sir, that our poor boy, Claude, told me about his dream--consulted me ere he had that terrible interview with her ladyship?" "Yes, yes, Janet, that is here." "Well, sir, it was first Fingal's going away, trotting so sad-like after his master, and _he_ never once looking back, and then the snow-bird going next. That, I think, nearly broke her heart. But oh, she was proud, sir." "She never owned her grief, then?" "No, sir; but I've caught her often in tears, though she tried to hide them. She grew far more active than ever after that. She seemed to hate the very sight of indoors, and, wet day or dry day, she would be always out." "Doing good, doubtless?" "Visiting the sick, sir; ay, and often sitting down sewing in a sick person's room. The neighbours noticed her grief. They all loved her, they all pitied her. But it was at night, I think, she suffered most. Her room was next to mine, and it is often, often I've heard her pacing up and down the floor till nearly morning. On stormy nights, sir, when the wind was roaring round the old turrets, and howling in the trees then she would send for me. "`Janet,' she would say, with her sad, beautiful smile, `I cannot sleep to-night. You must read to me.'" As Janet is now feeling in her pocket for her handkerchief, and tears are choking her utterance, I gently dismiss her, and go on writing. "Yes, Meta," replied Claude, "and I often wonder too; but there is one thing that does give me joy, and that is this: she _knows_ I love her and am not really unfilial." Claude found Meta much more hopeful next day, and more happy. Sometimes she was almost gay. "By-the-by, Claude," she said, "I've something to show you. You must promise to believe all I say." "Implicitly." "And not laugh at me?" "Never a smile." "Well, follow me." Claude did. She led him round to the back of the cottage, and there in a big aviary--evidently the work of Byarnie's hands--were seven great sea-birds. "Now you're going to laugh," cried Meta, with a warning finger. "Well, no wonder. Such queer pets, Meta!" "But they're not pets, Claude, though I love them. They are all going with you." "All going with me! Those funny old things! Ha! ha! ha! Forgive me, darling, I can't help it." "Well, I do forgive you. And when I tell you that this particular seagull makes the best carrier in the world, far before any pigeon, because it can fly ten times as far, and never get lost at sea--" "I reared those from the shell," interrupted honest Byarnie, his big face all smiles. "And I've reared many such." "Byarnie," said Claude, "you'll come with me, and look after these birds, eh?" Byarnie jumped and laughed, clapped his hand upon his leg, and jumped and laughed again, and then went skipping round with all the grace of an infant elephant, till Claude and Meta also laughed to see his uncouth exuberance. "My brother will come here, and my sister too, and look after the house and farm," he cried. "He! he! ho! ho! Byarnie's the happiest man 'tween Reykjavik and Christiansund." Day after day went by, but still Claude was at the little capital of Iceland, or with Meta. He was waiting the arrival of the mail: she had broken a shaft or something, and eager and able though he was to get away to the land of the Northern Lights and the sea of ice, he did not begrudge himself the respite. The mail was sighted and signalled at last, however, and came puffing and blowing in. Claude had letters from his employers and from many a friend, but none from his mother. But Janet's letter must in some measure have made up for this, else he would not have ridden right away out to Meta's dwelling. Ah, well, it was their last day together anyhow! There they were together now whom seas would soon sunder--two warm, loving, hoping hearts. Would they ever meet again? CHAPTER TEN. IN NORLAND SEAS. "I shouldn't wonder if we get it from out yonder," said Dr Barrett, pointing away south and by west, the very direction in which the _Icebear_ was steaming. There was a great billowy heave on the blue sea, blue everywhere, except where the light shadow of some white fleecy cloud made a patch of fleeting grey or grey-green. There was not a breath of wind "to swear by," as Jack Scott unpoetically put it, so the long rolling swell was as smooth as glass. This swell was meeting them too, and the ship rose and fell on it with a gentle dipping motion; only now and then, when a taller wave than usual dipped in under bows and keel, she gave a quick plunge forward. Along the horizon ahead was a bank of rock-and-castle clouds, while far away astern the jagged snowcapped peaks of Iceland were just visible above the rolling seas. Flocks of malleys, shrill-screaming kittywakes, and different kinds of seagulls were tacking and half-tacking round the vessel, afar off, and the dark and ominous-like skua waited his chance to rob the malleys of whatever they might happen to pick up. "Yes," the surgeon said; "I think we'll have it out of yonder." "Seems so to me, too," said Claude. "We are all ready for a blow, Mr Lloyd?" Mr Lloyd gave one glance forward and smiled. "Ay, sir," he replied, "all ready for a buster; and many is the sneezer, sir, I've come through in these latitudes, and higher up North too." These officers were on the bridge. This latter was not the great elevated deck you see on passenger steamers right amidships. No, the _Icebear's_ bridge was but a plank, comparatively speaking. Not more than three feet wide, with a rope railing at one side, and a brass one at the other, with a step-ladder leading up to it from the quarter-deck, for it was between the bulwarks near the mizzen mast. The glass was going down, and the day was far spent. Already the sun's rays were beginning to fall aslant the waves. "Had we started sooner," remarked the doctor, "we would have been farther off the land ere now." "True, my good Dr Barrett, true," replied Claude; "but _could_ we have done so?" "It would certainly have been difficult I admit; but if anything short of a hurricane comes along we can face it, and the night is short." No, it had not been easy getting away from Reykjavik indeed. It so happens that the good people of that town are exceedingly hospitable, and it is a hospitality that comes straight away from the heart. So there had been a kind of farewell _levee_ on board Claude's ship, and as there happened to lie in the roadstead a French merchantman and a Danish man-of-war, and the officers from both attended it and talked much, this made matters worse--or better. But down went the sun, and ugly and angry were his parting gleams. He sank in a coppery haze, which lit up all the sea between. He seemed to squint and to leer at our heroes as much as to say, "You'll catch it before long; something's brewing. Good night; I'm off to bed, for bed is the best place." Down went the sun and up rose the wind. Twilight is very long in these regions, and before it had quite given place to night, the sea from being rippled got rough. The breeze seemed uncertain at first where to come from, and went puffing about from three to four points of the compass. Then it appeared to say to itself, "First thoughts are best; I'll follow the swell; I'll soon blow that down." So it came roaring out of the north-west. Long before it did blow "a stiffener," as the mate called it, looking up ahead through the gloaming air, you could have seen mysterious-looking great grey blankets of clouds, drifting fast and furiously towards the south-east. They might have been a few miles high, but soon the stream of clouds was lowered and thickened and darkened, till the horizon was hardly three cables' length away all round. Then it was night--night with an ever-increasing breeze and a choppy, frothy sea. The wind _did_ blow the swell pretty flat, but substituted in its place genuine waves, as ragged and jagged as the mountain peaks of Iceland. And the good ship by-and-by creaked and groaned in every timber, and thick darkness fell, and Claude had to trust to Providence, to steam, and the compass. There were two men at the wheel at midnight, and at that time probably the gale was at its worst, for on heaving the log it was found she was barely making one knot an hour. The seas--whole water--were coming in over the bows by tons, and sweeping right aft like a miniature Niagara; but the hatches had been battened down early in the evening, and the boats secured, so there was little injury done, though the load of water sadly hampered the vessel's motion: it was not able to get away fast enough. About two bells in the middle watch the _Icebear_ struck. Struck? But what or where? I know not; I cannot tell; it was no island, no rock. It may have been the carcase of some floating monster of the deep; or--who knows?--some wretched derelict or a portion of a wreck. It was a mystery. But she struck with a dull thud that quite stopped her way, and for a time made every heart beat with fear for her safety. She must have struck not only on the bows, but gone over something; all along her keel was the quivering grating felt, as if of a substance underneath. For a while, too, the rudder and screw were hampered and the vessel's way all but stopped. As it was she staggered and began to broach to. It was a moment of the greatest danger, but only a moment. Then it was over, and the _Icebear_ was struggling once more with the stormy head wind and raging sea. By morning light, though the wind still held, it was less furious, and the seas but broke in froth and spray against the descending bows, and went singing aft on each side, their tops twisting and curling in the gale. Down in the darkened wardroom at breakfast that morning the talk was naturally about the storm. Although Claude retained his own quarters abaft, still he preferred taking all his meals with his officers. "What was it we struck, do I think?" said the doctor in answer to a question put by Lloyd. "Some unhappy fishing-boat or walrus-hunter on his way to the east shores of Greenland." "Heaven forbid!" said Claude, with a slight shudder. "Would we not have heard a scream or yell?" "Never a scream or yell in that roaring gale," replied Dr Barrett, coolly. "Bless you, sir, I've run them down before. Steward, another cup of coffee, please." "You've been often to these regions, doctor?" "I've been often everywhere. I'm the veriest old son of a gun of a sea-dog of a doctor." "It's as well no one else said that about you." "I wouldn't mind. My skin is as hard as tortoise-shell. I've been married so often, you know." "Have you really now?" said the second mate, a merry-eyed little dark man. "Are all your wives dead?" "What a question!" said Claude. "Ah! never mind," quoth the surgeon; "I'll answer him, if he'll only cut me another slice of that delicious corn-beef. Mind, it isn't for a lady, so you may cut it as thick as you please." "But about your wives?" "Oh yes, the wives. I don't think many of them are dead." "Doctor!" cried Claude, "you dreadful man!" "Well, you see," said the doctor, tapping the edge of his cup with the spoon as if counting, "I've been married just exactly fifty-nine times. My ships, messmates, are my wives." "Well, you've had many a honeymoon," said Lloyd. "Ay," replied Dr Barrett; "and many more I hope to have." An able seaman popped his head in past the door curtain at this moment, and drew it out again. "Don't duck your head out and in like an old turtle, man," cried the doctor; "come right in. Anybody sick?" "Which I didn't know, sir, the cap'n was 'ere. Nobody sick, but knew ye liked curios, doctor, sir." "Well?" "Well, beggin' yer parding, sir, likus the cap'n's, but there be a bird wot our cook calls a sea-swallow a-perchin' on the main yard. Shall one of us go up and fetch him? He's mighty sea-sick I knows, and couldn't fly to save his life." [Note 1.] "Certainly, bring it down." The officers went on with breakfast, and had forgotten all about Tom Scott and his sea-swallow, when suddenly the man appeared again, bearing under one arm a beautiful snow-bird. It escaped almost at once, and fluttering upwards alighted on the compass that depended from the skylight. All eyes were fixed on it. It did not seem a bit frightened, but looked downwards with one crimson saucy eye at the table. "It looks like a spirit," said Lloyd, half afraid, for, like most sailors, he was superstitious. "It's a spirit that will bring us luck. They always do," said the second mate. "Are you ill, sir?" exclaimed the doctor, addressing the captain. One might have thought so. His face was pale, mouth a little open, brows lowered, and eyes riveted on the bird. "Were such a thing possible," he muttered, "I'd believe that was my snow-bird Alba." To the amazement of every one, no sooner were the words uttered, than with one quick glance of recognition, down flew the bird and nestled, as it was wont to do, on its master's hand, held close up on his breast. Yes, every one was astonished, but poor McDonald, the third mate, was frightened; and when, after receiving a few caresses, Alba jumped on to the table and began pattering around and saying, "Poor Alba wants his breakfast; Alba wants a sop of food," McDonald could stand it no longer: he left the table and hurried on deck. "It's no canny," he said to the steward; "it's no canny, and if I could steal a boat I'd leave the ship and brave the stormy ocean." "Lord Alwyn--I mean _sir_," said the mate, "a hundred years ago you'd have been burned for a witch." "Or a wizard," remarked the doctor, laughing. "But I am not astonished. The captain has already told me the story of his snow-bird. The wonderful power of sight, scent, and probably hearing in gulls is scarcely yet known to naturalists; and the same may be said about nearly all sea-birds. They either have an instinct that we possess not, or the faculties they possess, in common with other animals, are most marvellously developed. [Note 2.] Just look at that lovely bird now, and listen to its marvellous prattle." Pattering round the table went Alba, in a very excited condition, only every now and then flying off to Claude's breast as if he could hardly believe in his own happiness. He jumbled up his sentences, too, as most talking birds do when excited. "Alba wants--Alba wants--Alba wants Fingal's Claude--Fingal's--Fingal-- Claude--Alba wants his breakfast." "That's better, Alba," said Dr Barrett, lifting the cover from a dish of fish. Next moment Alba was in the third heaven. "You've made that bird your friend for life, doctor," said Claude. Fingal, the deerhound, got up from under the table and laid his great head on his master's knee. "Of course I won't forget you, you silly old Fingal, because Alba has come. I have room in my heart for both." Towards sunset that day the weather cleared, the wind having gone round to the nor'-east-and-by-east. The sea too went down with the sun, though it still ran high; a morsel of canvas was got up to steady her, and leaning over to it away she went, cutting merrily through the water as if she had been a veritable living thing. The stars shone that night _so_ brilliantly; it was as though you could have stretched out your hand and touched them, so large, lustrous, and near-like were they. A broad white gleam of auroral light was in the north, above it the sky was of a strange sea-green hue. But a whisper had gone around the ship that a spirit had come on board, and an anxious group was seated round the galley fire to discuss the situation. "If it's a spirit," said Tom Scott at last, "it's a good one. It has brought us good weather. Hurrah, lads! give us a song somebody." The good ship _Icebear_ had no more adventures for nearly a fortnight, by which time she had rounded Cape Farewell and reached the north-eastern ice. "And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold, And ice, mast-high, came floating by As green as emerald." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. Sea-birds are usually unable to fly after they alight. A Cape pigeon, for example, gets giddy and frightened at once when put on deck. Note 2. The author could adduce very many instances in proof of the good surgeon's statement. CHAPTER ELEVEN. SUMMER ON THE GREENLAND OCEAN. There was not an officer nor able seaman on board the good ship _Icebear_, who had not been in the Arctic regions before. Mostly Englishmen they were, with just a sprinkling of Scotch--"the leaven that leavened the lump," that is how Rab McDonald, the third officer, expressed it, and it is needless to say that Rab himself was a Scot. Onward went the _Icebear_, sometimes in a clear sea, though far into Baffin's Bay--for this was what is called an exceptional year--but at other times she had literally to plough her way through the heavy ice. When the weather was fine there was but little danger, unless, indeed, a swell rolled in, playing and toying with the monster pieces as schoolboys would with balls. But when a breeze sprang up, even if only half a gale, then indeed the scene was changed. Then-- "Through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of man nor beasts they ken-- The ice was all between. "The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around; It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound." During calm weather and in the open water Dr Barrett was busy indeed, taking soundings, deep or otherwise, and dredging for living objects at the sea's bottom. Very lovely and interesting indeed was the collection that soon grew up in his cabinet, under his magic spell. What could be in that tangled mass of mud and weed and sand, one would have asked, that was hauled on board, the sea-water dripping and trickling out of the bag? To Dr Barrett--and to the _savants_ at home--treasures more valuable than gold itself. And after he had secured a haul, washed them, put them up, perhaps on cards of jet to show their beauties off, the clever surgeon would have handed you his great glass and bade you look. It was like gazing at creatures from fairyland. All shapes and colours, but all so minute that they could not well be seen with the naked eye. Here is a little fairy fish--no bigger is it than this letter `f.' Take that glass, please. Now look. No wonder an expression of amazement steals over your face! It is a perfect fish, yet, strange to say, transparent and colourless--that is, there is no fixed colour any more than there is in the Arctic aurora, but greens dance and crimsons flit and play around it; and, stranger still, with a stronger glass, you can see its internal anatomy, see its heart beat and its pulses move! Could anything be more wonderful? And here are shells that, lying on this morsel of black cardboard, are no bigger than the letters "a," or "e," or "c." Look at these. No wonder you smile with delight; they, too, are faultless in shape and curious in form; they, too, are transparent as glass; they, too, display all the colours of the finest pearl. Put this one--it is no bigger than a comma to the naked eye--under the microscope in a drop of water. Lo! that drop of water is to it a small ocean, and round and round it crawls, legs all out and its shell high up on its shoulders, and of a bright translucent blue. I could sit here all the livelong night and write, sheet of foolscap after sheet of foolscap should flutter from my desk and fall upon the floor, and yet when the grey dawn of morning crept in through the casement of this red parlour, I should not have told you of one-half the mysterious and beautiful beings that this man of science dredged up from the dark depths of that mysterious sea. I pause here and listen. There was not a sound in the house when I penned the last sentence, only a mouse nibbling the crumbs that I placed for it in the corner, but now there comes from an adjoining room the voice of some one singing. It is only poor old Janet. She does so every night before retiring; and, old though she be, I know she is very happy--happy with a happiness that can never be taken from her. But to-night the words she sings are so _en rapport_ with my own spirit while writing, that I cannot but give a line or two-- "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps on the sea, And rides upon the storm." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As much as it was practicable to do so, the _Icebear_ hugged the western shores of Greenland, but here the ice was heaviest. As the summer advanced, however, the land became bare of snow; it was then that delightful excursions were made inland, up through the long, deep fiords that everywhere indent this coast. I do not like the word "indent," though I use it; for an indentation means fork-like incision, widest at the mouth--a bay, for example,--but these Arctic fiords are, many of them, narrow at the inlet, then spread out as they go inland. There are thousands and thousands of them yet unexplored, and which never will be explored as long as the world lasts. Not altogether for the sake of pleasure were these excursions made, but for the purpose of scientific discovery. I am sitting here to tell a story, and not to describe scenery, the yachting, the fishing, hunting, and all the pleasures that make a holiday in Greenland north, during the short summer-time, so enthrallingly delightful--a something that once enjoyed can never be forgotten, while the life-blood circulates in our veins. Claude himself was a lover of nature. In his soul he had all the poetry of a Wordsworth, though there it remained, for he never wrote verses. He could love and admire every tiny flower, every moss or lichen or tender and beautiful saxifrage that clad the rocky uplands. Neither could he classify them. Dr Barrett both admired and classified. He was ever on the outlook for new species, and I verily believe he dreamed about them by night. So his cabinet, of the rare and lovely specimens found on shore, grew even bigger than did his deep-sea collection. Cold? No, it was not cold--these regions at this season. Cool sometimes, but never cold. The _Icebear_ would be cautiously steered up some of those fiords and the anchor let go, in an inland sea or harbour in which all the navies in the world, both mercantile and man-o'-war, could easily have ridden. While the doctor and his assistants would be prospecting among the hills, leaving the ship in charge of the mate, and, accompanied only by the faithful Fingal and giant Byarnie, Claude would start in a small boat, a kind of elegant dingy, which he had had made on purpose, and go off up the fiords for miles with gun and fishing-rod. The snow-bird, strange to say, always remained on board. What truth there may be in the statement I do not know, but they say that a snow-bird, or tern, that has once been domesticated by mankind dare not return to its kindred birds under pain of death. Claude used to enjoy those excursions on the fiords very much. Here is how he generally spent the day: First, Byarnie would pull him slowly about close to the rocks, where the fish were most numerous. A few dozen were speedily caught and thrown in the bottom of the boat. Fingal used to take them in charge, apparently delighting in doing so, for his wise eyes never left them, and if one flopped Fingal held it down with an air of seriousness on his rough hairy face that was highly amusing. But Claude soon got tired of fishing, and put up the rod. Then he told Byarnie to pull him away out into the centre of the fiord, and let the boat float as she liked in the sweet sunshine. Claude would have a book, perhaps, and very often, when his eyes were riveted on it, it was upside down, which showed where his thoughts were. Just for fun then he would say to Fingal, "Speak, Fingal." Fingal would speak with a vengeance, till every hill and every rock re-echoed his bow-wow-wows. But the sound was sure to bring up a great head or two with goggle eyes out of the water, sea-lions, walruses, or saddle-back or bladder-nose seals, for they are all most inquisitive. Lying very still sometimes, with the oars in, one single seal would pop his head out of the sun-glazed water and have a look at the boat. "Sit still, Byarnie; don't move," Claude would say. The seal would come nearer and have another look; then down he would go, tail first, and in three minutes more the sea all around would be black with great heads and sweet, soft, wondering eyes. "Well," they would seem to say, "we can't make it out. Never mind, let us have a romp; the sunshine is so delightful. Hurrah!" Then a scene of diving, and chasing, and splashing, such as it is impossible to describe, would ensue; it was, in fact, a seals' ball. If Byarnie would suddenly explode with a loud "Ho! ho! ho!" of merriment, or if Fingal barked, then, hey! presto, every head would sink as if by magic, and in a few minutes the sea would be as smooth as usual, with only the gulls, divers, or grebes floating lazily on it. Next, Claude would make Byarnie tell him some wild old Norse story--he was full of them--with Sagas, or Vikings, or fairies in it, and then sing. Oh! Byarnie could sing well, but a strange, monotonous kind of lilt it was--very pleasant, nevertheless, for it _never_ once failed to put Claude to sleep. So sure, indeed, was Claude of falling asleep when Byarnie began to sing, that he used to lie down in the stern-sheets with a cushion beneath his head. Sometimes he awoke with such a happy, happy half-dazed look on his handsome face, and say, "Oh! Byarnie, I've had such a pleasant dream!" Next they would land, and Claude would now read in earnest, while poor Byarnie cooked the dinner in gipsy fashion. Very often after this Claude would keep his companion talking about Iceland, with Meta always the centre figure, for hours, till, when near sundown, they would probably hear the report of a rifle at some distance off. This was Dr Barrett signalling to his men, and not long after the whaler would come sweeping up, and the boats would return together, often enjoying the fun and frolic of a good race, for Byarnie was a splendid oarsman; his skiff was light, and he, if not a feather, had the strength of three ordinary seamen. Thus pleasantly passed the summer days on that lonesome Greenland ocean. CHAPTER TWELVE. AMONG ARCTIC FIORDS--A STRANGE DISCOVERY. If the reader happens to possess a map of the polar regions, or even a good map of the world, and will take a glance or two at the discovered lands and seas beyond the Arctic circle, he will be struck at once by their nomenclature. It would be interesting to know the why and the wherefore of many of these names, which I do not believe have, in any single instance, been given at random. The origin of some of them is evident enough--"Lady Franklin's Sound," for example, or "Hayes' Inlet," or "Peabody Bay." But I do not wish to be told of the exact reasons that determined these names. Knowing what I do about the Polar regions, I would rather let my imagination have a little play. A little to the south of Spitzbergen lies Hope Isle, or Sea Horse Island; I happen to know that many walruses, sometimes called sea-horses, frequent the ice or the icy land there; but why called _Hope_ Island? Some ship, perhaps, had been long imprisoned, north of this place, provisions exhausted, and the chances of ever getting clear small indeed; but, behold! the ice opens as if by magic, and by sawing and blasting they struggle as far south as this lone isle, where, though locked up once more in the icy embrace of King Winter, they live in hope, and are eventually rewarded. Down the east coast of Greenland proper there is a point with an ugly name, "Cape Discord." Was it mutiny or only mutiny threatened? did men struggle on slippery blood-bespattered decks, or was the discord confined to muttered threats, to black and angry looks and round-robins? [Note 1.] "Cape Farewell" again--the southernmost point in Greenland. The ship has been wintered in Baffin's Bay, and the men have undergone cold, misery, and privation; but hurrah! the last land is left behind, the blue open sea is all before them, cheerily sings the wind through the rigging, the sails are full, and the men's hearts are also so full that if they did not sing they would go mad. So "farewell, old Greenland; our dear wives and sweethearts are waiting us at home in merry England. Farewell, farewell." But round that point is Cape Desolation. Look at those bluff, bare crags that overhang the sea, the home of hardly even a wild bird; see afar off the tree-lands covered with snow, leaden clouds athwart the sky, billows dashing in foam against the black rocks, and the cold wind blowing. Ugh! let us leave it. It is pleasant to find a Prince Albert Land and a Victoria Land up in the Arctic ocean, side by side; and a North Lincoln and North Devon, separated only by Jones's Sound. We have been told that when the North Pole is eventually discovered a Scotchman will be found at the top of it. I should not wonder, for the most northerly land, if my memory serves me aright, is called Grant's Land, and everybody knows that Grant is the name of a brave old Scottish clan. Obeying instructions from his employers, Claude worked his ship north and north along the western shores of Greenland, exploring every creek and fiord; the doctor being meanwhile very busy, as we have seen in the last chapter, taking scientific notes and collecting specimens. In their voyage out, the _Icebear_ had only once spoken the _Kittywake_. She was a schooner commanded by the ex-skipper of a Dundee whaler, a man who knew the country well, and though but a small craft she was strong, and eminently suited for the work she had to perform, namely, to follow the _Icebear_ with stores. She had received instructions to hug the western land, and, if a flagstaff was seen at the entrance to any creek, there to lay-to until the _Icebear_ came out. But the _Kittywake's_ powers of sailing were only of a very limited character, and steam she had none. So, after spoken, she was not seen again for a time. Very few of these wonderful fiords, as I have already mentioned, are even known. Now, it had occurred to our learned _savants_ at home that it would pay, not in one way, but in two, to explore the largest of them. Untold wealth lies buried in Greenland. Scientific wealth, and the dross called gold, mayhap even diamonds, mayhap precious stones of a kind not yet known to the world. For why? Was not Greenland--that vast country which a single glance at the map tells you is as large in extent, as long and as wide as Africa itself--was it not at one time, ages ago, they argued, an inhabited continent as free from ice as our fair England is at the present day? They believed that the mountains which now shoot their jagged peaks, covered with perpetual snow, up into the blue-green sky were once purple and crimson with gorgeous heath; that green valleys and lovely glens lay below, with placid lakes and rolling rivers, and cascades of sparkling water; that gigantic forest lands covered the greater part of the country, forests in which the bison and wild deer roamed and fed; that, in a word, Greenland was once upon a time--while the torrid zone was but a fiery belt, uncrossable, uninhabitable--a fertile land of beauty, a land of mountain, forest, and stream. They even went farther. Might not man himself, they said, have dwelt in this beautiful country--primeval man--and might not his remains be found even yet? There is, indeed, no length to which some learned _savants_ will not go, if they once give the reins to their imaginative power. While not for a moment feeling half so sanguine as his employers, Claude, having undertaken a task, meant to do his duty, his best; and who can do more? As long as the summer lasted, and before the mists began to rise, Claude continued his explorations. He came at last to a vast wall of solid rock, darkly frowning over the deep. He would have passed along it, never dreaming there could be any opening in there, had he not seen some bears swimming in the water. They disappeared on being followed by a boat, and the officer in charge, on returning, reported having discovered the inlet to a vast fiord. The _Icebear_ was headed for the rock, and found the opening just soon enough to enter with safety. It was a bright, clear day, with little wind and hardly a cloud in the sky, with every indication that fine weather would continue for a time at least. All hands were on deck as the _Icebear_ was turned shorewards and headed straight for the rocks. The boat that had gone in pursuit of the bears was ahead, guiding. To go steaming stem on to that adamantine wall seemed courting destruction, but lo! after a progress of a few hundred yards, the cliffs opened up as if by magic, showing a long channel of deep blue water. It got wider inland, but the cliffs were higher; gradually, however, they receded from the water's edge, and got lower and lower. The ship was now stopped, and a party sent on shore to climb the highest peak adjoining the sea, and plant thereon the flagstaff that should signal to the _Kittywake_ the whereabouts of her consort. Slowly on and on steamed the _Icebear_, two men taking soundings from the chains, lest the water should suddenly shoal, but the beach at each side still continued rocky, though no longer high. "What do you think of this?" asked Claude of Dr Barrett, who stood near him on the bridge. "I am rejoiced beyond measure at our discovery," was the reply. "Why, this _would_ please Professor Hodson, for no slowly descending glaciers ever made this wonderful cutting--it is volcanic entirely. Behold the rocks, Captain Alwyn." "You are right, doctor, beyond a doubt." "And I should not be surprised now what we came to." "Nor I." "I wish," said Mr Lloyd, "I could see things with the eyes you seem to possess, doctor. How delightful it must be to be quite at-home-like with everything you see around you! You are a learned man, doctor." "Nay, nay," cried the surgeon, laughing. "I am but a student--a baby student. Were I to live for ten thousand years I should still be only reading in the first book of Nature." "You are modest, at all events," Claude said; "and I believe that is a sign of genius." "One cannot help feeling both modest and humble, Captain Alwyn, when standing face to face with the first facts of science, and knowing that the little knowledge he has acquired is to the vast unknown but as the light of a candle to the noonday sun." For days the _Icebear_ followed the course of this estuary. Sometimes it narrowed to a mere deep cutting or canal, anon it would widen out into a broad oblong lake. At length it ended in an inland gulf or sea, some thirty or forty miles square. In latitude this mysterious sheet of water was fully a degree and a half south of the inlet. Dr Barrett spent days in dredging, and in roaming over the hills, studying botany and geology. There were high mountains all around, and it was a strange sight for those on the deck of the _Icebear_, which was anchored at some little distance from the shore, to witness mighty cataracts tumbling sheer over the very summits of these hills, and coming roaring and foaming down their sides. The men looked upon this as magical, but it is easily explained: there were other hills behind these--much higher ones--that were invisible from the ship's deck, and it was from these the waters poured down. As might have been supposed, they found the waters of this inland sea less salt than the ocean itself, though by no means brackish. "I think, sir," said Dr Barrett, when he came off one evening, "that we need hardly proceed farther north. We can hardly expect to find another such lake as this." "Here, then, we shall winter," replied Claude. "Here, I believe, we ought, too. For look what I have dredged up." "Coal!" "It is coal. I found it close in shore, and there is more of it. Depend upon it, we have discovered a country rich in mineral wealth; and, if I am any judge, there is gold in abundance here, too. Look at this. There are specimens for you." He handed him a few pieces of rock as he spoke. "Pretty morsels of stone enough," said Claude, as he bandied and weighed them in his palm. "Would make nice ornaments for a mantelpiece. But do they really represent anything of value?" "Well, I will tell you. You see I have numbered all these morsels of stone. Here is Number 1." (Number 1 was a piece of dark brown stone mingled with patches of the darkest blue, in which little stars sparkled and shone.) "That," said Dr Barrett, "is carbonate of copper ore. Number 2, you perceive, is black with streaks of green; that also is a copper ore of some value. Number 3--take hold of it, Mr McDonald," continued the doctor, addressing the third mate. "What would you call it?" "I should call it a chucky-stone," was the Scotchman's reply. "Yes; well, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but that rough red-brown-black-spangled chucky-stone of yours is an argentiferous carbonate of lead. Number 3 is very heavy, and not unlike a piece of blacklead, only it shines more. That would give seventy ounces of solid silver from the ton of ore. Here is Number 4, a piece of quartz mixed with dark grey, and streaked with sea-green. That also is silver ore." "And this Number 5," said McDonald, "looks to me like a bit of very bad coal. Is it worth a doit?" "It is worth many doits. It will assay three hundred ounces or more of solid silver to the ton. Number 6 looks like a lump of petrified rhubarb root. Number 7 is somewhat similar, but mixed with quartz and a reddish brown material. Both are auriferous; the last will yield 300 pounds from each ton of ore." Claude shook Dr Barrett by the hand. "You have indeed made important discoveries," he said. Dr Barrett smiled pleasantly. "My conscience!" cried McDonald. "We'll be a' millionaires thegither, every mither's son o' us. Wha could hae thocht it, and a' own to a wheen chucky-stones that I wadna hae gi'en a button for!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. A round-robin is a complaint or request, or even threat to the captain, from the men forward; the names to it being signed in a circle, so that no one can be marked as the instigator, though there must be a ringleader. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. THE LONG DEAD ARCTIC NIGHT--THE BATTLE OF THE SNOW-SQUALLS. The scene was changed. Summer had fled from the shores and from the braelands around the inland sea, where our travellers have taken up their abode. "Away hath passed the heather-bell That bloomed so rich on Needpath fell." Thus sweetly sang the Scottish bard. But here no heather-bell bloomed to vanish. But the lovely little stonecrops, white or yellow, the crimson ranunculus, the dark-tufted grasses, the wild dwarf poppies, and even the mosses and the hardy shrubs that blossomed for a time in the sloping rays of the sun--all have gone or lie deeply buried under the snow; they will appear no more till June again melts their covering and awakens them to sunshine and life. Claude and his crew have not been idle. Every preparation is already made to mitigate the rigours of a winter that is even now commenced. Boats had been despatched to the inlet of the creek, to land and bury ship's stores in a sheltered nook not far from the sea. This was done with all despatch. Captain Watson's men of the _Kittywake_ working with a will born of the knowledge that, as soon as their labours were over, they would once more embark and bear up for their own dear home in England. They had the good luck to find a cave large enough to contain all the provisions and ammunition on board the store-ship. There was accordingly no digging to be done, except the quarrying from the hillsides of great stones to build up the entrance to the cave. This done, it but remained for Mr Lloyd, who was in charge of the working party, to take his bearings, in order to easily find the place again, and deliver to Captain Watson his written orders to return south. Lloyd's boats towed the _Kittywake_ out to sea, or, rather, steered her, for the tide was running rapidly out. He remained on board the store-ship until the turn of the tide, then there were farewells said, and ringing cheers were re-echoed from the hills and from tall floating icebergs, and, sail being set, away went the _Kittywake_ southward ho! the crew as merry as schoolboys at play. They were to bear tidings to the _savants_ in London of the successful voyage made by the _Icebear_, the strange discovery of the inland sea, and the prospects Claude and Dr Barrett entertained of the perfect success of the expedition. It may be as well to state here, and state it once for all, that the _Kittywake_ was never more heard of, never more seen by mortal eye. Whether she had sprung a leak in a gale, and foundered; been caught a-back in a squall, and thrown on her beam-ends, never to recover; or been crushed like a nut between some awful bergs, will never be known until-- "The sea gives up its dead." Had our heroes known aught of the disaster to the store-ship, it would have cast a gloom over them that nothing could have dispelled. As it was they had nothing in their hearts but hope--hope that, when the long, dreary winter wore away, having more than accomplished the object of their cruise, the ice would break up, their imprisonment would be over, and, laden with riches and crowned with honour, they would bid farewell to the land of the aurora, and reach England in peace and safety. They could, therefore, mark with complacency the ever-shortening days, and the oncoming mists, and mists succeeded by stormy winds, and curling clouds of drifting snow. The sooner winter came the sooner it would be over. There came a day when these intrepid travellers were to look their last upon the sun for months to come. It was towards the end of October, but not severely frosty. Indeed, the sky was altogether overcast, with the exception of a space on the southern horizon It was here that the sun last showed. Red, large, and angry looking, he but deigned to cast a glance or two across the dreary landscape, then slowly sank to rest, but for two hours after he had gone down, a long stripe of bare, lurid, orange sky remained over the spot. It gradually assumed the appearance of the reflection of some great fire or burning mountain. The clouds above were purple red, mingled with leaden grey, but all this soon faded. There was neither moon nor stars, and the blackness of darkness was over the land. About noon every day for nearly a week there was a kind of twilight. It was even more than this, for when the sky was partially clear there was all the appearance of coming sunrise, the cloudlets grew crimson, and even the tall mountains were tipped with rosy red, and all between the glens were of a strange blue colour. But even this mid-day twilight ceased at last, then all was night. All the way north Meta's gulls had been kept on deck in an aviary built for the purpose, and two had already been despatched with little messages in sealed quills, fastened to their legs. Only one of these reached Iceland. The other probably preferred his freedom. Claude seldom doubted but that the gulls he sent off would eventually find Meta's home. Even before the daylight had entirely gone, and the long dead Arctic night had descended upon the land, the birds and beasts migrated southwards, the malleys, and gulls, and terns, and skuas going first; then the guillemot the eider ducks, grebes, and divers. Next went the bears, the wild oxen, and the foxes; finally even the inland sea itself seemed deserted. The walrus and seal no longer popped their whiskered faces above the water, nor courted the sun's rays on the rocky shore, and the lonesome unicorn was seen no more ploughing through the waves. The blackness of desolation and a silence deep as death was over all the scene. Think not, reader, that the beautiful stars were always shining, or that even when a full moon was in the sky there was somewhat of light and cheerfulness. No, for there were days--ay, and weeks--when neither moon, stars, nor aurora were visible for the dark clouds and whirling drift and snow. At other times, perhaps, after a fall of silent snow, without as much wind as would serve to move one downy fleck, the clouds would disperse, and the stars would glitter like a million diamonds, when suddenly a murmuring roar would be heard among the mountains, and on looking in that direction from the ship's deck, or from the huts on shore, a sight would be presented to the wondering gaze of Claude and his crew that my poor feeble pen would struggle in vain to describe. It seemed as if a wind from every point of the compass had marched forth to meet and do battle with each other among the hills, and that each wind was accompanied by a ghostly storm spirit. High as the stars were those whirling sheeted ghosts; if they crossed the moon's disc they looked unearthly and fearful; but see! they meet in fury, and all is a bewildering chaos. Describe to me the foam of Atlantic billows dashing high in the air after striking a black, bare rock in the sea; describe to me in words the smoky spray of a geyser, and I will try to paint to you the battle of the snow-squalls. But, behold! while we yet look, half awed at the rage of elements among the jagged mountain peaks, the chaotic tempest comes nearer and nearer, other ghosts arise and whirl along on the plains, and a moaning sound as if nature were in pain falls upon the ear. This may be but momentary, and ere you can dive below, the tempest is on the vessel, the war of elements is raging around it. The very masts bend and crack and yield, and high above the roar of the wind is heard wild shrieks and yells and groans, as if demons really danced and fought on every side. These latter sounds are emitted by the ice rubbing against the ship's hull. Then, even while one is expecting every moment that some jagged edge of ice will penetrate through the vessel's timbers--lo! all becomes hushed and silent. You creep on deck as quickly as the drifted snow will permit you, and look around. The stars are all out again, the moon's rays throwing shadows from the mountain peaks, and all is still. And such a stillness! It is the silence of space--the silence of a dead and buried universe. You can almost fancy the stars are near enough to whisper to; that the flickering aurora borealis will presently emit some sound. If you talk aloud your own voice seems harsh, and you find yourself talking in a strangely subdued tone, as if Nature were asleep-- as, indeed, she seems--and you dreaded to wake her. At all times in Greenland, when no wind is blowing, the silence is fearfully impressive; but it is after a snow-squall such as I have endeavoured to depict that it is most so. "Do you think," said Claude to Dr Barrett one day--"do you think, doctor, I might venture to send off another seagull?" "I think," was the reply, "that the bird will be far more likely to fly southward now--to seek the sun--than it would in summer." So a little fond note was attached as usual to a seagull's thigh. "Go!" whispered Claude, pressing his lips to the soft, warm head for a moment. "Go, beautiful and gentle bird, Oh! southwards quickly go; Though moon and stars shine bright above. How sad is all below! "No longer drooping here, confined In this cold prison, dwell; Go, free to sunshine and to wind, Sweet bird, go forth--farewell! "Oh! beautiful and gentle bird, Thy welcome sweet will be. And yonder thou shalt hear the voice Of Love's fond melody." I trust my hero may be forgiven for slightly altering the words of the gentle poet Bowles. The graceful bird went tacking and tacking for a time around the ship as if he could not quite believe he had obtained his freedom, or were loath to leave his quarters; then, as if memories of a sunnier south had suddenly awakened in his breast, away he darted, and was lost in the darkness. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. IN WINTER QUARTERS--FOOTBALL AMONG THE SNOW. One portion of the cargo of the unfortunate _Kittywake_--and a very important one it proved to be--was a pack of Yack or Eskimo sledge dogs. Uncouth-looking rascals they are at the best of times, much given to quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and by no means inclined to be over-friendly to mankind. With them came two native keepers, who professed to, and I dare say did, know something about their uncouth pets, although their rule of the road proved to be a rough one, as far as the dogs were concerned. Fingal was at first inclined to regard these animals with extreme distrust. He asked Claude, in his own way of speaking, whether he mightn't begin the fun by charging the pack. "I am sure, master," said Fingal, "I would soon make short work with one or two of them." "No," said Claude, holding up a warning finger; "you must never attempt to molest them, Fingal; you will come to love them yet." "I don't believe _that_," Fingal seemed to reply. The dogs were taken on shore at once, and though the _Icebear_ was anchored some little distance from the land, giving her plenty of room to swing round, the row these animals made the first night seemed unearthly. The men could not sleep, and roundly rated the new-comers. Had the noise been a continuous one it would not have been so bad, but it was not so. The deep, deep silence of the Arctic regions would be allowed to remain unbroken for, say, the space of fifteen minutes, then all at once such a chorus of barking, howling, and screaming arose as only the pen of a Dante could describe adequately. This would continue for five minutes, mingled with the cracking of the keepers' whips and their wild shouting, then gradually the unearthly Babel of sounds would die away, the men and officers on board would give sighs of relief and go to sleep once more, only to be disturbed again in the same fashion ere slumber had well sealed their eyelids. "Frightful!" said Claude, next morning, at the breakfast-table; "I'll put a stop to it." "You'll be very clever if you do," said the surgeon. "Don't go meddling near them with a whip, captain," Lloyd remarked. "Poor Sanderson of ours got drunk one night, and went on shore with a rope's end to settle, as he thought, a rumpus like what those beggars made last night. He was never seen again." "They killed him?" "Yes, sir, and ate him afterwards, every bone of him. We never found a vestige of him, except the soles of his sea-boots, and we couldn't bury those in a Christian way, you know, so we were saved the trouble of a funeral." "Call the carpenter, steward," cried Claude. "Carpenter Jones," he continued, when that worthy appeared, "build comfortable kennels for those dogs half a mile from the spot where our shore quarters are going to stand." "Ay, ay, sir." "To the lee of a rock, you know." "Yes, sir." And so the pack was soon disposed of, to the great satisfaction of every one. By the time, then, that the sun had set for the last time, and the long, icy, Arctic winter had fairly commenced, the _Icebear_ and her gallant crew were fairly settled in their winter quarters, and everybody felt as happy and jolly as possible under the circumstances. Nor was their lot to be despised, after all. Had they not every creature comfort that heart could wish? Had not clever Dr Barrett found coals enough to keep fires burning constantly--fires big enough to roast a whole bear or a small ox, were they so inclined? Had he not also discovered a gold and silver mine? Not that much had yet been taken out of it, to be sure. But it gave them hope. Well, they had never a care, although it must not be supposed they did not often think of home, for ah! the sailor does. To crown all, was there not a kind Providence above them whose eyes could penetrate the darkness of even this dreary land, and watch over them? One thing, I believe, that contributed greatly to their happiness was this, everybody seemed determined to do the best he could, not for himself only, but for his shipmates as well. They had built a house of general entertainment on shore. Also a store for extra provision and other things, in case the ship might be destroyed. In the storehouse one or other of the Indian keepers always slept as sentry, or rather on guard. Not that there was much fear of an attack on the stores by bears, for most of them had gone south, and the others were curled up asleep in caves and corners among the rocks. But Bruin does _not_--in my poor judgment and experience--sleep all the winter through. When the weather is milder, even to a few degrees, he awakes, yawns, out-stretches himself, and goes for a turn round in the moonlight and on the snow. He is but the ghost of his former self; like the ghost of a bear revisiting scenes of a former existence. He stalks about, shaking his mighty head, and looking as melancholy as a barn owl. "How changed is everything!" he appears to soliloquise. "How dead and drear! How hungry I am too. Shouldn't I like just one pawful out of the back of a fine fat seal now. [Note 1.] Ah! I would eat a whole seal, even the flippers, though there's not much on those, to be sure. But, mercy on me, how cold it is! Bed's the best place, after all." And away he trots. But Mr Lloyd knew right well from experience what a hungry rascal like this could do even in a single night. "It isn't what they eat so much," he explained to Claude, "as what they destroy. A bear will stave in the head of half a dozen casks of flour, perhaps, before he comes to a barrow of beef. And that doesn't satisfy him, for he argues that there may be something better in the other casks, and goes clawing away like an evil spirit." "Talking about spirits," put in the second mate, "he is a strict teetotaller; he won't touch rum." "Tins of _soupe-en-bouilli_, I suppose," said Claude, "would also defy him." "Not if he gets a tooth in one," replied Warren; "and as for sardines-- my conscience! sir, he _is_ fond of them; if once he tastes them he'll swallow the boxes at a single bite." "Boxes and all?" inquired Claude, laughing. "Well, I never saw the empty boxes left about anywhere." "Must be a capital tonic, anyhow!" said Dr Barrett; "but a rather indigestible one." There had been wood enough brought on purpose to build huts on shore-- simply rough planks. The house of amusement was a famous one. Built with stone as to its chimney, and with wood, filled in with dry moss, as to its walls. There was a capital fireplace, too, in it. The general routine of the day was somewhat as follows--that is, when there was any kind of bright star, or moonlight, or aurora gleams; though these last were very intermittent, and, like some of our electric lights, would go out without a moment's warning. There was breakfast at eight; muster to prayers afterwards, on the upper deck, which was almost entirely covered over. Prayers are seldom more impressive than when repeated away out in the middle of the boundless ocean, but there is even more solemnity in them when heard amid the eternal silence of Greenland wilds. I don't think there was one poor soul on board the _Icebear_ who would have missed those morning prayers for anything. Jack-the-Sailor is a rough stick, I must confess, and, as a rule, a very jolly stick. Yet, nevertheless, he has his solemn moments, as well as you, reader, who, maybe, never were afloat on blue water, have. "I feels some sentences o' them prayers, that the captain reads, go kind o' round my heart," said Chips one day down in the half-deck mess. "That bit, for instance, `_O God, at whose command the wind blows, and lifts up the waves of the sea and stills the raging thereof_.'" "You hain't got the words what you might say altogether correct," said Bos'n Bowman; "but, howsomedever, you've got the main thing, and that's the sense." "Well, Pipes," replied Chips, "you're more of a scollard than me." "And," put in Spectioneer Wray, "there's that bit, you know, `_When we gave up all for lost, our ship, our goods, our lives, Thou didst mercifully look upon us, and wonderfully command a deliverance_.'" "I've often found the truth of that," said Pipes. "So 'as most on us," said Chips, solemnly. "But," continued Pipes, "there's these words: `_That we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land_.' Don't they bring old England up before your mind, with her green valleys and flowery fields, and all that kind of thing, eh, maties?" "Ay, and there's those as follows," said Chips, who was a married man and hailed from Rotherhithe, "`_Enjoy the fruits of our labours_,' which means, o' course, take the missus and the children to Margate for a whole month." After prayers, till "pipe for dinner," there were the various duties of the ship to be carried on, and there was not an officer or man, from Claude himself to little saucy Boy Bounce, who emptied the cook's ashes, helped to clean the coppers, and attended to the aviary and the wants of Fingal, who did not find something to do. Dinner and smoking done, if the weather permitted, a pleasure party for the shore would be told off. The doctor and his merry men could do but little exploring now, and his mines lay some distance in the interior among the wild hills, and, from its colour, the ore could not easily be worked by lamplight. Sometimes for whole weeks the darkness would be intense [Note 2], then the _Icebear's_ crew had to seek their pleasures indoors or on board the ship. That house on shore was an incalculable boon to these forlorn adventurers. It was devoted, not to games--these could be played on board--but to music, dancing, acting, and to lectures. The musicians were several, and therefore a by no means bad ship's band was formed. Those, therefore, who could not play could listen; moreover, many of those who could not play, could spin a yarn, dance, or sing. The lectures were given by good Dr Barrett, whose gentleness and thoughtfulness of the men had rendered him a very great favourite. These lectures of his, although often on such abstract subjects as chemistry, botany, geology, or astronomy, were always simple and always interesting, and often amusing. But there were games on the snow-covered ice--frolics we might call them--invented by the men themselves, but none the less exhilarating on that account. The sea about them might be as deep as the hills around were high, but no fear could be entertained of any one falling through-- a band of elephants might have frolicked and floundered on it without the least danger. The snow in some places had been swept off the ice by the wind, leaving it but a few inches deep. These were just the spots for a right roaring game of genuine football. But there was another game, invented by Paddy O'Connell, who was the life and soul of his mess, if not of the whole ship. It was carried on among _deep_ snow, and was very amusing and exciting. Paddy called it "football." Well, it was "Irish football," for the only man in the ship who could kick the thing a yard was gigantic Byarnie. "It was as large as the biggest pumpkin ever you saw, and quite as big as the largest," so said Paddy. You had to throw it to begin with, and when you got it you had to run with it, and you did not run many yards before you fell with half a dozen on top of you. But the cream of the game lay in the fact that, however much light there might be, before you had played many minutes you could not tell who was your opponent and who not, everybody being as white as the dustiest of millers. When you were struggling for the ball, it was just as likely as not that you were trying to trip up a friend Besides, often when you got it, and could have a fair shy, then, as you could not see well, what with the uncertain light, and what with the powdery snow, you perhaps threw it the wrong way. It was a rare game, and oh! did it not make you hungry! No wonder that on returning on board you could eat a hot supper with all the appetite of a Highland drover. "Paddy," said Dr Barrett once, as he patted him on the back, "you're a genius!" "Thrue for you, sorr," says Paddy, "and it's just that same me mother towld me. `Paddy,' says she, `you're a born ganious, and there ain't the likes o' ye 'twixt Killarney and Cork.'" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. The shoulder of the seal is the bear's favourite tit-bit, and I have seldom seen him eat more of Miss Phoca, when sport was good and provisions (seal) plentiful--G.S. Note 2. There are winters _and_ winters in Greenland. Sometimes for two or even three months together the darkness is deep and depressing, the whole country shrouded in a night that seems never-ending. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. PADDY'S ADVENTURE WITH THE BEAR--FUN ON THE ICE--THE LITTLE PURPLE CLOUD. Tobogganing? A strange word, is it not? We are indebted to the Americans for it, as we are for many other handy, but hardly elegant, additions to our vocabulary. Those who are fond of hunting for the origins of words, and who cannot live happily unless they find out how _this_ is _that_, tell us that the sport--and fine fun it is--was first suggested to mankind by the beavers. They say that these busy-brained active animals, by way of keeping their blood-heat up in winter-time, go in a crowd to some snow-clad hill, scurry up to the top of it with their broad flat tails behind them, and go sliding down all in a row, rushing up again as soon as they find themselves at the bottom, and joining the other end of the procession, and that they keep "the pot arboiling" for hours with the highest glee imaginable. Well, perhaps the beavers do, but in one form or other the sport is as old, probably, as the days of Noah. Canada is perhaps the home of tobogganing, for there the frost is severe and lasts long. Now, the scenery all round the "Sea of Dunallan," for thus had the waters in which our heroes lay been named by them, was very wild indeed. The hills close beside the beach were high and rounded; beyond these they were higher still, many of them rising into peaks that seemed to have their homes among the stars. It occurred to Paddy O'Connell, who seemed to be the inventive genius of the crew, and foremost wherever fun was to be had, that a species of tobogganing might be got up from which some "rale diversion" could be had. So one fine moonlight night, with the stars all shining as well as they could, for the tails and ribbons of brilliant aurora that were hanging in the sky, Paddy went prospecting. "Shall I come with you, Paddy?" said Byarnie, who was the best of friends with the "Oirlander." "Not to-night, me bhoy," replied Paddy. "It's after a bit av diversion I'm going, and I think best when I'm all alone by me swate little self." "Well, you might take a gun with you," suggested Byarnie, "for there may be bears about, you know." "Bad cess to them. No. There's never a fear of Paddy." Byarnie watched him disappear round the brow of a high knoll, about a quarter of a mile from the _Icebear_; then went quietly below. The weather had been fine for weeks, and no snow had fallen. It was just the season when the sun might soon be expected. Already, indeed, there was twilight at noon, so all hearts were gay and hopeful. Paddy was in search of a hill, and he was very particular as to both its shape, its height, and its condition. At last his prospecting cruise was crowned with success. "C'dn't have been better," said Paddy, talking to himself, half aloud, as he had a habit of doing; "c'dn't have been better if me own mother had made it." The one drawback was that it was fully a mile and a half from the ship; but, after all, that was a small matter. So Paddy started to go back. It had been tedious work, and hours of it, and, feeling tired, he began to think of his pipe. To think was to act with this son of Green Erin. He stuck his alpenstock in the snow, and forthwith scratched a match and lit up. "That's comforting, anyhow," he said, after a few whiffs. "Now, if I could only find a stone to sit upon. Troth, I might as well look for a stone in the midst av the say, or the big bay of Tralore, as--Hullo! what's yonder, anyhow?" Paddy was on the bare brow of a steep hill; but on rounding a hummock and looking back, he found one side of it was dark and free from snow. He returned, and gave the darkness a poke with his stick, and the stick struck--nothing. It was the entrance to a cave. "I'll just light a match and have a look," says Paddy. The feeble glimmer revealed only a portion of what seemed a great vault. "I'll creep in for a moment, out av the cowld," says Paddy, "and stand in a corner; sure there can't be any crayture worse than meself in the cave." It was an eerisome situation enough, but our gallant Irishman did not mind it a bit. For fully five minutes he smoked, when he thought, or fancied he thought, he heard a sigh. "It's draining I am entoirely; who could be there; at all?" Presently the sigh--a heavy, long-drawn one--was repeated. There could be no mistake about it this time. "Ghost of Saint Patrick!" thinks Paddy; "is it in the cave av an evil spirit I am? But never moind, it's sleeping he is, anyhow. I'll have a look, and chance it." Taking half a dozen hearty puffs to give him courage, Paddy quietly advanced. He had not gone three paces when--behold, curled up at his feet, a gigantic yellow bear! "Is it there you are, me darlint?" Paddy whispers to himself. "But troth, I just remember it's toime I was going, so good night, me dear, and bad drames to ye." Now Bruin has excellent scent, and Paddy's tobacco was good and strong, so no wonder he awoke. He rose to his forepaws, opening a great red mouth that would have sheltered a coal-scuttle, and giving vent as he did so to a yawning roar that appeared to shake the very cave. Paddy threw the almost extinct match into the gulf and fled, with Bruin at his heels. Byarnie was very fond of Paddy O'Connell, and when his friend stayed so long away, naturally grew anxious, and finally started off to look for him. He would not take a rifle, "because," he argued, "if Paddy wasn't afraid, sure I'm not." But he armed himself with that most deadly weapon, a seal club, and away he strode. On and on went the giant over the snowy hills; but Paddy's track, that he tried for a time to follow, was as devious as a rabbit's. When he was just about to give up in despair, who should he see but his friend himself coming round the brow of the hill--it could be nobody else. But when Paddy disappeared suddenly from view as effectually as if he had sunk into the bowels of the earth, then no wonder big Byarnie rubbed his eyes and stared in astonishment. Byarnie was superstitious. "'Twas his ghost," he thought; "poor Paddy is dead, and that was his spirit!" And down there on his knees, under the flickering aurora, knelt big Byarnie to pray. While thus devotionally engaged, he was startled by a roar that made him feel as if the earth was going to open and swallow him, and yonder behold poor Paddy running towards him more quickly than he had ever run before, and followed by something large and yellow. Byarnie spat on his hands, and threw away his cap. Well, I do not wonder, mind you, at Bruin's wrath. How would any one like to be wakened from sweet dreamland, and have the fiery end of a lucifer match pitched down his throat? "Come on, Paddy," roared Byarnie. "Sure ain't I coming as fast as I can?" cried poor innocent Paddy. As the bear went floundering past, Byarnie struck at him with terrible force. The steel point of the club entered his neck, but held there, and both Byarnie and Bruin rolled together on the ground, the former undermost, and the blood flew spattering over the snow. Paddy was back in a moment. He had all his wits about him, and his first act was to free the seal club. His next act was one which only a brave, merry-hearted Irishman would have thought of. He thrust the alpenstock into Bruin's mouth as if it had been a horse's bit, and, mounting the brute's back, pinned him by seizing the staff close to the side of each jaw. "I've got him," he cried. Crack went the alpenstock, and down went Paddy; but Byarnie was up, and in a second he had felled his terrible antagonist. There lay the dead bear on his side, his tongue lolling out, his dead eyes turned to the sky, and there stood Byarnie and Paddy, both puffing. "Did you ever see the loikes?" says Paddy. "No," Byarnie replied; "but, thank Heaven, you are safe. Let us go home." But Paddy carried out his tobogganing scheme all the same. It was a very simple one, but afforded no end of capital exercise and genuine fun. Carpenter Jones, _alias_ "Chips," manufactured the tobogganing sledges. Chips said he was glad of the job--anything to keep his hands in. With the help of his assistants he made a score of them in a single day. Very simple they were, in shape somewhat similar to those used by the Canadians, only these seated four abreast, so there was, so Paddy said, four times the fun. The tobogganing hill was high and round, but not very steep; the top of it was a tableland; at the foot was an enormous bank of drifted snow, and here the fun came in again, as you will presently see. But let us go with the tobogganing party for just once in a way. It is eleven o'clock in the forenoon. There is a shimmer of yellowish white light in the east. There is a moon also. Fancy moonlight at mid-day! What with these two lights, the aurora, which has been dancing so merrily for many hours, looks slightly pale, though the colours displayed are more glorious than any pantomimic transformation scene your mind could imagine. Alongside the _Icebear_ are two huge sledges; one is laden with the tobogganing boards and a few merry sailors, the other with men and officers, and such a row there is and such a din! What with the wild shouts of Jack and Joe, the Eskimos; the cracking of whips; the snarling, barking, and yelping of the dogs, the noise is deafening and indescribable. But they are off at last. The men have breakfasted well, and, although it is very cold--ten degrees below zero--they are happy, nay, even boisterously merry. Paddy starts a song and all join in the chorus. Claude is there; he knows that Paddy is a favourite, and lets him do pretty much as he pleases. The doctor is there also in case of an accident, and he sings and laughs like the rest, for he is quite a boy, although an old and very learned one. Mercy on us! how those dogs do fly over the ground to be sure. They are as fleet as the reindeer. Now and then one falls and is dragged a little way, but always manages to scramble up again. "Hoorup, Hooreeup, Hooree--e?" screams Joe. Crack, crack, crack goes the whip. Higher and wilder rises Paddy's song and chorus. Never before were the echoes of the mountains awakened by such boisterous mirth. Even bears asleep in their dens and caves hear and arouse themselves to listen. "Hoorup, Hooreeup, Hooree--ee--e?" The sledge goes over a rough bank, and Tom Tatters tumbles out. Boy Bounce waves his cap and laughs at him, but on goes the sledge, over the hills and round the hills and across some frozen streams, and at last straight up the side of the tobogganing hill, and two more men fall out here, and all the rest are thrown on their backs with their heels in the air--what sailors call catching crabs. "We--e, wee--e, woh--ip!" The sledge comes to a standstill on the flat top of the mountain, and the dogs stand still also, their tongues lolling out, and panting. The other sledge is coming up fast and furious, and soon is on the ground. Then the fun begins. Four men seat themselves on a tobogganing sledge, and others start them,--with a will too. Down they shoot, the others watching. The sensation is like that of descending from a balloon with a sense of pleasure substituted for that of danger. The moon and stars are hardly seen by those bold tobogganers. Faster and faster, they can hardly believe they have fairly started till they are at the bottom, and-- buried in the wreath of snow. They are completely buried. Those above for some moments cannot see them at all. Paddy O'Connell was in the first lot, and he declared that "the dacint burial at the foot av the hill was the best av it entoirely." The fun has fairly commenced, and sledge follows sledge down the mountain-side, sometimes three abreast. Even Claude himself and the doctor embark at last, both in the same boat, and find the sensation so delightful that they keep it up. The dogs have exercise at this game too, for they have to gallop along the plateau to haul the sledges up again. It is a mad scene and a merry one. But lo! while the fun is at its fastest, "Look! look!" cried Dr Barrett, pointing skywards; and every eye is turned upwards. A little purple cloud! It was twelve o'clock and almost daylight. What a shout rent the air then! The sun would rise to-morrow. Claude and Dr Barrett shook hands, but neither spoke; their hearts were too full. Perhaps both were at that moment breathing a prayer of thankfulness to the kind Father who had hitherto protected them from every danger and from sickness itself. There were great doings that night in the _Icebear_ and in the _Icebear's_ snow-house. A supper on board, a concert on shore! Paddy's Irish jig was pronounced to be "a caution out and out," so the men phrased it. Boy Bounce's "break-down" almost outstripped it. Even Byarnie must take the floor to dance all by himself a wild Norse "hoolichan." If you can imagine a rhinoceros tripping it on the light fantastic toe, then you see honest Byarnie. If you cannot, then I have only to confess that figures of speech fail me. The doctor played a selection of airs on his violin, that the engineer, who, like most good engineers, was a Scotchman, declared made him "laugh and greet (cry) by turns." Why were those mariners--far away in the desolate regions of the Pole-- so happy, so gay? Because they were hopeful. The purple cloud had done it all. The sun was returning. The long Arctic night had received notice to quit, and in two or three months at most summer would be with them; they would accomplish the object of their adventurous voyage, and bear up for home. Home! What a charm it has for a sailor's heart! CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE SUN'S RETURN--HOPES AND FEARS. Both Claude and the doctor were on a high hill-top next day to watch for the coming of the sun. Nor were they disappointed. About noon the sun duly put in an appearance, looking fiery-fierce and angry through a kind of blue-grey haze that lay along the horizon. The doctor was ready prepared to take sights, and did so coolly enough, despite the sun's angry glare--coolly in more ways than one, for as he could only work with bare hands, whenever his fingers came in contact with the brass parts of his instruments they seemed to freeze thereto, and the sensation was that of touching red-hot metal. I do not know how it was, but after the sun had once more sunk, and twilight had commenced to deepen into night, the scenery of the bleak world around them--the rugged mountains, the rocks and cliffs that looked like bergs of ice, the wide expanse of snow-clad sea, with their vessel lying so cold and comfortless-looking--had a very saddening effect both on Claude and the doctor. "It is like going back into the grave," said Claude. "Well," the doctor replied, "we must not forget that the sun will--rise again to-morrow and stay a little longer with us, and so on, longer and longer, until he rises not to set again." "While we are here?" "Yes, while we are here. I pray it may be so, for we ought to be out into blue open water by the beginning of August, and homeward bound." "Happy thought!" said Claude, after a pause; "I'll send off another bird." "I would certainly do so; and say in your message the sun has come, that all is well and happy; give latitude and longitude exactly." "Do you really think these birds ever reach home?" "Now," said Dr Barrett, "that is a question that many would ask. Many doubt the capabilities of flight or home instincts of sea-birds. I am as firmly convinced that a seagull, which has been reared in captivity from an egg procured from the parent nest and hatched under a duck or fowl, can be made the best of carriers of messages over sea and land, as I am that the sun we have just seen will rise again to-morrow." "It is not that I altogether doubt it," said Claude; "but you know the story I have confided to you about my love for Meta and my quarrel with my mother--alas! that I should have to give it so harsh a name. Well, although I do not doubt, I sometimes fear." "I can fully appreciate your feelings, my dear sir," was the reply. "Rough old sea-dog though I be, I, too, have had my little romance in life. Yes, let the poor bird fly; it will reach in safety." But it may be as well to say at once here that the good doctor was rather sanguine, for of all the six sea-birds that had been, or would be, let fly, only two reached Iceland safely. One of these had been thrown up near Desolation Point; it was that bird which reached home. "Ought I to communicate the safety of her son to the proud Lady Alwyn?" had been Meta's thought on receiving the welcome intelligence. She dreaded doing so; she feared to put harder feelings in the lady's heart against poor Claude than she already possessed. "Besides," argued Meta, "the _Kittywake_ will soon return and bring her the news that I do not doubt she is pining to hear, if she only loves him half as much as I do." The other bird that made its haven in Iceland, though I ought not to anticipate, was one of the last sent up. Of it I shall have more to say anon. As soon as the day was an hour long, with about an hour of twilight on each side to back it up, Dr Barrett recommenced his explorations in earnest. The ground all round the inland sea was of adamant; nor pick nor spade could dare on that. But to continue the mine begun the previous summer was far more feasible, for the snow that had filled it had kept out the frost. Here, then, work was begun. It would keep the men at earnest exercise, at all events, the doctor said, and prevent sickness. The mine was soon so far advanced as to be a perfect shelter for the workers, even daring the worst of weather. When little morsels of nuggets of gold and silver came to be found the excitement grew intense. Even the hands who did not strictly belong to the surgeon's party prayed the captain to permit them to "have a dig," as they called it, in their spare moments. And Claude did not refuse. Rab McDonald, the third officer, was the first to make a lucky find. It was a nugget of pure gold as big as his thumb, and that was by no means a small one. "Man! look!" he cried exultingly, showing it round to his fellows. "I'll soon be as rich as Rothschild." His face fell somewhat when the doctor quietly told him that all the precious ore found belonged by rights to the company who had sent them out. A good many more faces fell also, but when Claude explained that he would make such representations as would ensure a goodly percentage of the gold or silver dug out being given to the finders, the enthusiasm was restored, and all hands went to work with a will. For months the gold fever raged among the _Icebear's_ crew, from February till nearly the end of May, and even sports would have been forgotten in the excitement; but about twice a week Claude ordered all hands to play, if the weather was at all propitious. Then football was resumed, and Paddy's wild game of tobogganing also, to say nothing of fishing. Fishing? you may repeat, in some surprise. Yes, dear reader. It was done so: a hole was made in the ice, and baited hooks were lowered through. But Jack and Joe despised such cultivated plans of proceeding to business, and, if the truth must be told, they were quite as successful, if not more so, than the British sailors. The tackle these Indians used and their method of using it were of the most primitive description. Each had his own ice-hole, each had a short gut line with a strong strangely shaped bone hook. This was lowered into the water, and if fish even snapped at it--and many did, for the fish are hungry in Greenland during winter--out they came, and they never got back. The days got longer and longer now, and the weather got sensibly less cold, till lo, and behold! about the middle of April the sun rose one morning and announced his intention of not going to bed again for three months and more to come. At all events, he did _not_ set that night. He only made pretence he would. He went so low on the northern horizon that our heroes fancied he meant disappearing altogether, then he began slowly climbing round again. Do not imagine, however, that it was all sunshine even now. Far from it. There were terrible gales of wind now, and whirling, drifting snow that seemed to rise as high as the highest mountain peaks. Some of these hills were evidently extinct volcanoes, but how long ago it might have been since fire and smoke belched from their lofty summits, even Dr Barrett himself would hardly have dared to guess. But working down in their mine one day, about the end of April, the men were startled at hearing a hollow, rumbling sound apparently far down beneath them; it was like the noise of waggon wheels rattling over a rough road, only muffled. The surgeon and Claude were both in the mine at the time. "Don't be alarmed, men," said the former; "you may safely go on with your work. It is the noise of steam you hear, or rather of water and steam combined. That sound was sent to tell us summer is coming. It is a way the earth has in Greenland." "You have heard something similar before?" asked Claude. "I have, only not in Greenland proper, but in caves among the hills in Spitzbergen." Now, giant cataracts began to tumble down from the cliffs of the mountains, and roaring rivers and torrents appeared where rivers had not been suspected before. Water overflowed the inland sea all around the _Icebear_, making the snow slush, and rendering the passage to and from the shore not only difficult but even dangerous. And this state of things increased, the sky being meanwhile thickly covered over with dark rolling cumulus, drifting onwards on the wings of a southern breeze. But in a day or two the wind fell flat, the clouds were lifted like a veil from east to west; in half an hour's time there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun shone down cold and clear. Strange adjectives to use when speaking of the sun, but none other could express my meaning, for this silver shield of a sun seemed shorn of its rays; you could look at it without pain or inconvenience, just as, raising my eyes, I now gaze upon the flame of the oil lamp by which I am writing. At eight bells next morning, everybody both fore and aft having breakfasted once, and the boy Bounce twice at least, all hands were on deck waiting orders for the day. Presently the captain and surgeon came up, and took a turn or two up and down the quarter-deck, laughing and talking. Then came the order, "Hands, lay aft." Claude himself addressed them, laughingly. He did not often say much face to face thus to his men. "Men," he said, "we're going to have a forenoon on the ice." "Hurrah!" was the shout. Round the ship, dear reader, and for no one knows how far out seaward, the water had been frozen into one smooth sheet of ice. Who could resist it? All the skates in the ship were had up, and, although there were hardly enough, those who went without could slide. While the men waited the next order, there was a scream of terror sounded forward. The mate ran towards the fo'c'sle: there lay poor boy Bounce, bleeding; and standing over him, Datchet, the only black sheep in the ship. "What do you want with skates, hey?" he was saying. He had robbed boy Bounce. When Mr Lloyd ordered Datchet below for the day, the look--nay, scowl-- the man gave the mate was not easily forgotten. But boy Bounce had the skates, his brow was bandaged, and when the order was given, "All hands over the side!" boy Bounce was first to jump, and was the merriest of all the mad and merry crew on that never-to-be-forgotten morning. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. WILD SPORTS OF THE FAR NORTH--AN ARCTIC STORM--BREAKING UP OF THE SEA OF ICE. It was a matter of no small wonderment to the men of the _Icebear_ why Dr Barrett should now, in a great measure, forsake the mine, where it seemed that wealth could be accumulated, slow though it might be in coming. But the worthy surgeon "ken't his ain ken," as the Scotch say; in other words, he knew what he was about. He was not a gold-digger nor a silver-miner: he was sent out for the purpose of scientific discovery; not to load the _Icebear_ with the spoils of this frozen wilderness, but to spy out the richness of the land. Was it not possible, he argued with himself, that at some future day an expedition might be sent out, and a company formed to work mines here. It would give him, Dr Barrett, the greatest pleasure to be in charge of it Meanwhile he was very busy indeed. Dr Barrett's character and habits were such as might well be imitated by the youth of the rising generation, both male and female. Let me give one or two examples of it. ONE. He was never idle unless taking wholesome healthful recreation. TWO. He considered the strict performance of duty as a part and parcel of his religion, and its neglect a grievous and _cowardly_ sin. THREE. He was always ahead of the work he had to perform, and therefore always easy in his mind. FOUR. He had method and exactness in carrying on his work. FIVE. Having done his duty he trusted all else to that kind Providence who guides and rules everything here below. Yes, the doctor was busy and kept his men busy. As long as the snow lay on the ground sledging expeditions were made every day, if it did not blow too high, or if the drifting snow was not blinding. Very pleasant and delightful, sometimes, were those sledging trips, very dangerous at others. The sledges were large and strong; they had been built specially for the purpose, and were furnished, not only with plenty of provisions, but with all that would be necessary in an extended tour of, say, a week, though three days was generally about the limit the doctor gave himself. He was hardy himself, and cared little for fatigue; he was, in fact, an enthusiast, but he hesitated to expose his men too much. Besides, he had sick patients on board, and an accident might happen at any time. There was plenty of capital sport to be got in these rambles. The animals that had returned to this country, however, were not yet very numerous. Bears there were, but they could certainly as yet have but little to eat. They growled about among the rocks, and wandered by the side of ice-water swollen streams. Probably they caught fish, perhaps they lived on love; but there they were, lean, long, and hungry looking, their great shaggy coats alone preventing them from having the appearance of downright starvation. But precisely in the ratio of their hunger was their ferocity. The very sight of a man made them howl with anger. "Come on!" they seemed to cry. "I won't run away; I'm not afraid of such as you. Come on, and be eaten up." There were two "hands" in the ship who took great delight in these pleasure parties; one was Paddy, the other the boy Bounce, and both constituted themselves Dr Barrett's special attendants and body-guard. Paddy, of course, carried a rifle; and, after some preliminary training, boy Bounce was permitted to do so likewise. And right proud was the lad to march at his master's heels with his gun and his shot-belts. His master was terribly absent-minded. Boy Bounce used to relate of an evening, to his special friend--on board--the cook, how many times a day he saved his master's life. "Blowed if he wouldn't walk right into the river sometimes!" said boy Bounce, "if I didn't holler at 'im; or over a cliff, if I didn't pull 'im back by the coat-tails." One fine sunny day the doctor was sitting sketching a pretty snow scene--ice, mountain, glen, and waterfall, and the boy Bounce was lying not far from his feet, facing him. "Ahem!" began the boy. "I say, sir." "Well, well, well?" cried the doctor, impatiently. "It's a dee-licious morning--ain't it, sir?" The surgeon made no reply, but went on sketching. "Think the frost'll hold, sir?" The doctor looked up now--he knew boy Bounce's ways. "What else have you to say, boy, eh? Out with it." "Oh, nothing sir, only there's been a bear a-squatting yonder, and a-lookin' at ye for the last five minutes, and maybe he's going to spring." Dr Barrett sprang first though. The monster was within thirty yards of him. He seized boy Bounce's rifle, and next moment Bruin rolled over the ledge dead at their feet. "Why didn't you hit him, you young goose?" "Cause as 'ow, sir," said boy Bounce, coolly, "you told me never to do nought 'athout first consulting you." "Is it a bear?" said Paddy, rushing to the scene of action. "Well," replied the doctor, smiling as he resumed his work, "it is something very like it, Paddy." "Sure and it's meself ought to have killed him, and not that young spalpeen Bounce." Boy Bounce smiled and took all the credit, and Paddy at once set about taking Bruin out of his jacket, singing to himself some wild Irish lilt as he did so. There was one other individual who attached himself to these sleighing expeditions, who had really no business there, namely, the noble deerhound Fingal. I have no idea what induced him to do so, unless it was to constitute himself captain over the two teams of dogs, and to enjoy good sport among the Arctic foxes, to say nothing of the grand galloping he had. Fingal used to fly along at the head of the foremost team, keeping well beyond reach, however, of the leader's fangs and of the driver's cracking thong. He used to hunt the foxes on his own account all day, and spent his whole night in keeping them off the camp. There is no end to the impudence these little animals possess, especially when snow is on the ground. They are then mostly white. I have an idea that, like Scotch hares, they change their colour with the season of the year; at all events, in summer they are of many different hues, and they then keep farther away from the habitations of men. At night, in snow time, they are singularly annoying. They yelp and yap, and howl and fight, and unless you are very tired indeed, sleep is all but impossible. If you fire at one and wound it, the chances are he will not run off if he could. You march up to club him, and he grins and whines and fawns at you in the most ridiculous manner; in fact, he _argues with you_. Well, what _can_ you do with a wounded animal who argues with you? You cannot brain him. No, you simply retire, feeling mightily ashamed of yourself for having fired at him. Wounded monkeys have this same trick, and several other animals I could name. Camping out by the River Thames in the sweet summer-time, and camping in the shelter of a rock on the snowfields of the far north, are two very different things. The members of Dr Barrett's sledging parties and the doctor himself slept in the sledges; slept with their bodies in warm flannel-lined bags, with rags over this, and rags right over their heads. Even then it was bitterly, oppressively cold. The men of the _Icebear_ used to envy Jack and Joe, the Eskimo Indians, who slept on the snow near their dogs with no other covering except the clothes they had worn during the day. Fingal, poor fellow, never rested by night--if night I dare call it, with the sun ablaze in the sky--he was constantly roaming round the camp doing sentry duty, and keeping off the gangs of foxes. Often a horrid yelling would awaken all hands, and, on looking up, Fingal would be seen shaking a fox as Sarah Jane shakes a mat or a carpet skin. One evening in May, when the sun was declining, or taking his dip towards the lower part of the northern sky, clouds began to bank rapidly up from the south-west. It had been clear and frosty before this. It soon grew quite dusk. The clouds were very dense and very black--in great rolling masses that certainly threatened something most unusual. Dr Barrett gazed with some uneasiness at the gathering storm. In less than half an hour the sky was entirely obscured, and the wind, which had blown at first as if to place the clouds in position, fell dead. So for a time matters remained, the clouds still in shapeless masses rolling around among each other without any apparent cause. Gradually, however, they lost shape, and the whole firmament merged into one unbroken vault of darkest grey. Then pellets of snow, not bigger than millet seeds, began to fall, faster and faster and faster. Dr Barrett gave orders for the camp to be made up at once, and supper to be cooked. The snow-pellets merged into great flakes larger than crown pieces, and it grew darker and darker. Then there was a thunder-clap that appeared to shake the very earth. Darker still. What with the gloom of this abnormal night, and the falling snow, the men could hardly see each other's faces. The thunder was now loud, awful, incessant; the lightning spread all round among the still fast-descending snow. It was lightning of a sort you never see except in Greenland. You are enveloped in the blaze; it is around and above you everywhere--a white, dazzling bath of flame. Poor Byarnie knelt beside the sledge, and buried his head in his hands. The giant was praying, Paddy crossed himself, and boy Bounce began to cry. Meanwhile the doctor sat on a bundle of bags, stolidly smoking, and Fingal crouched close to his feet; and ever, in the intervals of the thunder-claps and their awful reverberation among the mountains, was heard the melancholy howling of the sledge dogs. "D'ye think, sorr," said Paddy O'Connell, touching the doctor gently on the sleeve,--"d'ye think there's any danger at all, at all?" "The danger is this, Paddy," replied the doctor: "the snow is very soft and powdery. We are thirty miles from the ship; and if it comes on to blow, we will never reach her alive." "Then, the Lord help me mother and me poor sister Biddy," said Paddy, piously. But some time after midnight the thunderstorm retired, growling over the distant hills, and with it went every cloud. Then oh! to see the beauty of the newly fallen snow, its purity, its whiteness, its stars of many shapes and ever-changing colours of light and radiance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ After two days of a wind that blew steadily from the south, the silence of that great inland sea was suddenly broken. You might have imagined you were on some great battle-field, there was a constant series of rifle-like reports in all directions, with now and then a louder report, as if a piece of artillery had been discharged. And amid these ominous sounds you could hear, as it were, the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the dying. It was the breaking up of the inland sea of ice, and the noise continued for a whole day, and still the soft wind blew from the south. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. "SUMMER COMES WITH ONE GLAD BOUND"--FIRE! Spring or early summer is to all a season of hope and joy, but no one who has never lived in the drear cold regions around the Pole in winter could understand or appreciate the glad feeling that is born in the heart when the sun once more ascends his throne and rules triumphant in all the land. Some reason or other may be ascribed for all religions and forms of worship, even the most heathenish; and I have never been astonished to see a pious Eskimo Indian with his family kneel or throw himself on his face before the god of day, though I have felt sorry for him and for them. "But yonder comes the powerful king of day, Rejoicing in the east. The lessening cloud, The kindling azure, and the mountains' brow Illumed with fluid gold, his near approach Betoken glad. He looks in boundless majesty abroad And sheds the shining day, that burnished play, On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams High-gleaming from afar." Summer seemed to come to the rocks and hills around the sea of Dunallan with one glad bound. There were some few days of fog or mist, so dense that it was impossible even to see the point of the jibboom. This fog was, as it were, the curtain of Nature's great theatre, dropped for a time while the grand transformation scene was being put on the stage behind it. Then it was withdrawn--lifted, and behold summer on the hills, summer in the glens. Glad streams and cataracts sparkling in the sunshine, the mountain-tops capped in silvery snow, streaks of silver running down their brown, white-flecked sides, but the ground all carpeted with green, which in a few days burst forth into the most charming variety of colours. The sea itself was scarcely rippled by the gentle breeze that blew steadily from the west; the air was so fresh and balmy that it was a pleasure to breathe it. Everything seemed to feel the touch of the newly come summer, and to rejoice. Flocks of birds of innumerable varieties went wheeling and circling round the ship, or floated on the water; there was music even in their wild glad shrieks. Many a black head, too, popped up out of the water, some tusked and bearded, some as awful as a nightmare. And seals basked on the sunny side of the rocks, or on the sandy beach; while bears by the dozen and score prowled round, warily watching their chance to spring upon and make prey of these innocents. The bears seemed now to have no fear of man. Nor did they appear anxious to attack any one; they were no longer an-hungered. The snow awnings were now taken down from the decks, a general spring cleaning was instituted, and, after this, even winter garments were put aside, and the men looked gay and felt happy in consequence. But for all this, the temperature was seldom a degree above 45 degrees; and if ever it reached 50 degrees, the men thought it uncomfortably hot. Alba, the snow-bird, had pined a great deal during the long, dark winter day, and seldom cared to leave the cabin; but now she went screaming and flying all round the ship as if mad with joy, and hardly could Claude tell her from the other birds of the same genus, only she usually came when called. Fingal, when not on the war-path, used to lie on the snow-white deck and gasp, with about a quarter of a yard of crimson tongue lolling indolently out of his mouth. The doctor continued busy as ever, only the sledges were put away, and all expeditions had now to be undertaken on foot. Very much to Claude's surprise, they came one day in their wanderings, while a very long way from the ship, on a herd of tiny horned bisons quietly browsing on the sweet mosses in a wild glen. The strange creatures lifted their heads and sniffed the air as Claude and Paddy O'Connell approached, but it was surprise, not fear, they exhibited. Claude waited till the doctor and his party came up. "What are they, in the name of mystery?" asked Claude. "They are musk oxen, without a doubt," was the reply; "but I never saw such small ones before. They are dwarfs of their species. Truly this is a land of wonders. There is certainly," he continued, "no geological reason why these animals should not be here, only--" "Look here, doctor," cried Claude, "while you are preaching to Paddy there, I'll have a shot." "By all means, let us have a specimen." "And troth," said Paddy, "we'll have a specimen for the cook's coppers, doctor dear, as well as for the good of science." At the very first rifle shot, one of their number bit the dust; but, strange to say, the others fled not. They looked wild and startled, and in dread terror they sniffed at the blood of their dead companion, but they stood still. Another was shot, and another; then at last there was a wild stampede, not from, but down _towards_ our sportsmen. Were they charging to take revenge on the murderers of their companions? Claude thought so. The surgeon knew better. "Stand aside quickly!" he cried. Hardly had they rushed a little way up the bank ere the whole herd rolled past. Paddy had a parting shot, but missed, and looked very foolish. Fingal could scarcely be restrained from going in pursuit. He thought he could easily pull at least one down, seeing they were but little bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Deer there were now among the hills in abundance, hares, and a strange kind of rabbit, that even Dr Barrett had never seen before. On the great lake itself, sport was to be had in abundance. Jack and Joe astonished every one by their marvellous dexterity in harpooning the huge and ferocious bladder-nose seal (_Stemmatopus Crisatus_), the sea bear (_Ursus Marinus_), the little _Atak_, and the walrus himself. Not from the boats of the _Icebear_, however, did these wonderful Indians work. No, for they built themselves kayaks, or light canoes, made principally of hide, and so light you could lift one with a single hand or wear it as a hat. In these frail skiffs they would venture for miles out to sea, and they seldom came back without an animal of some kind. But once Jack came home without Joe. "Where is Joe?" asked Claude. "Joe? You asked for my brooder?" "Yes, your brother," replied Claude. "Oh!" said Jack, indifferently, "he toomble up plenty quick. No can turn hims kayak again. P'r'aps he go drown, ha! ha?" It had never occurred to Jack to go to his brother's assistance. When taxed with his callousness-- "What for I go?" he replied. "No plenty good. P'r'aps Jack he catchee my kayak, and den we bof on us toomble. No, no, not plenty good enough." "Call away the whalers," bawled Claude. "Call both away, Mr Lloyd." There was a trampling of feet, and a rattling of blocks and tackle, and in two minutes both took the water with a plash. "A guinea to the first boat that reaches the kayak," cried Claude. There was a race on then--a very exciting one, though only to save the life of a poor Eskimo Indian. The kayak could be distinctly seen from the masthead, with poor deserted Joe clinging to it. Claude went himself to the crow's-nest, to guide the boats by means of the long fan used for such purpose by Greenland-going ships. The poor fellow was at length rescued, very much exhausted. By the time he had reached the ship, however, what with the warm sunshine and a stimulant the Spectioneer had administered to him, Joe was all right and smiling. But his brother Jack, as soon as Joe came on board, pointed at him a stern finger of reproof. "I 'shamed o' you," he said. "I 'shamed o' you proper. You not can turn your kayak, ha! ha! You no true Indian. Suppose one shark snap your two legs off, dat do you plenty mooch good. Bah!" The summer passed away only too quickly; it passed, but not in vain, for Dr Barrett had done much good for the cause of science; and, reader, science always does or always should bring us nearer to Him who made all things and rules over them by unchangeable laws that He knows are good, whatever we finite beings may dare to imagine. The summer passed; Claude and all his crew had enjoyed splendid sport. I wish I had space to tell of the adventures they had, some of them wild enough in all conscience. But while enjoying themselves there had been no neglect of duty, with one sad, solitary exception presently to be mentioned. "I am very glad to say," remarked Dr Barrett, one evening at dinner, "that I have succeeded in doing about all I believe that our learned friends in England wanted me to do, thanks to your good judgment, Captain Alwyn, in steering us to this wondrous country." "And so am I glad also," replied Claude. He was thinking of home just then. "Let me see," continued the doctor, musingly, "I have collected quite a museum of specimens of Arctic flora and even fauna. To the lichen world I have, I think, added not a few species hitherto unknown. I have taken observations of every conceivable kind; there is a record of them in my notes. I have, or, pardon me for my egotism, we have discovered coal--that is of little use, perhaps; iron--that exists everywhere; tin--that is more to the purpose; silver and gold, and these are better still. We have also," he went on, "found the bones of extinct mammals, and the evidences on all sides that at one time the hills around us, or hills like them, were covered with forest and fern, and inhabited by a race of animals that we human beings too often, I think, call inferior. We have, moreover--" "I beg your pardon, sir," said the steward. "May I speak to you half a minute?" The doctor followed him into the steerage. He soon returned, looking serious and vexed. "Beast!" he muttered. "I hope," said Claude, "there is no one in this ship deserves that title, doctor." "Will you come and see for yourself, sir?" "I will." Claude followed the doctor out to the steerage and into the dispensary. There he pointed to an almost empty bottle of brandy. He said nothing. "Do you mean me to infer," said Claude, "that one of my crew has been guilty of a theft so vile?" The doctor nodded. "And who?" "Who but Datchet?" "Mr Lloyd," shouted Alwyn, "bring Datchet before me to-morrow morning." Datchet was duly punished, Dr Barrett, however, begging mitigation of sentence on the plea that he had left temptation in the man's way. Time went on, and everything was got ready for a start. In a few more days the order would be, "Up anchor, and hey for Merrie England!" All hands were happy. Small wonder at that. It was Friday night. The _Icebear_ would sail on the Monday, the stores having still to be got on board from the house on shore. Friday night is, in many northern ships, held somewhat _en gala_, as the day is a salt-fish day, so to-night there was a huge sea-pie cooked for the half-deck officers, and several such for the men forward. Everything seemed propitious as regards the weather, for though dense fogs had prevailed for a week or two--it was early in August--the sky was now clear and the glass slowly but steadily rising. So the men were right merry. Paddy O'Connell had never appeared to such advantage. The boy Bounce was even allowed to tell a story and sing a London street ballad; while big Byarnie sat in a corner, beaming over with gigantic smiles. But by ten o'clock sounds were hushed, and all hands in bed fore and aft. There was not now a sound to break the stillness, for the solitary sentry had gone below to smoke by the galley fire. An hour passed away; then a solitary figure might have been seen creeping aft on hands and knees. Two hours. The captain is sleeping sound; his hand is over the coverlet. Into this hand a cold wet nose is thrust. "Go away and sleep, Fingal," he mutters. But the dog whines, and finally barks, and then Claude starts up, fully awake now. See, across the cabin yonder is the reflection of a strange light in the glass! He springs to the deck and rushes to the door, which is open. There is fire in the store-closet between his cabin and the wardroom. Fire in the spirit-store! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, went the bell two strokes to the second. Ding, ding, ding, ding, and in a minute the whole ship is alive. CHAPTER NINETEEN. THE BURNING OF THE "ICEBEAR." All hands worked steadily, willingly, and well. There was not a sound to be heard, except the roar of the flames, the tramping of feet, an occasional word of command, and the steady clank, clank of the little pumping engine. No noise, no bustle, no confusion on board the burning ship. The flames had soon gained mastery over the captain's cabin, and over the wardroom as well, for the fire seemed to spread on both sides. Claude was walking slowly up and down the deck, 'twixt main and foremast, quietly superintending everything. That he was here, and here only, showed the perfect confidence he had in his men and officers to carry out the terrible duties now imposed upon them. Smoke and flames were pouring up through the companions aft, and it was evident that that portion of the ship was doomed. Claude was hoping against hope. Were the cabin and wardroom only destroyed and the fire here checked, the hull and the fore-part of the ship would be but little injured, and the voyage home be, after all, made in safety. The greatest danger of all rested in the fact that the magazine, containing a very considerable quantity of gunpowder and gun-cotton, lay close to--almost _in_--the seat of fire, and so quickly had the flames spread that it had been found impossible to remove the stores without the almost certainty of exploding the whole. So among the first orders given was for a volunteer to carry the end of the hose along the lower deck and flood the magazine. Boy Bounce was the first to spring forward. "Can we trust him, Mr Lloyd?" "Certainly, sir." "And I'm so small, you know; I can walk where a big 'un would 'ave to creep, sir." The boy seemed a long time gone, but he crawled back at last, and fell senseless at Lloyd's feet. He was badly burned about the hands and even face, but as soon as he came to himself he went on working with the rest. Hours flew by, one, two, three; still the fire raged; still the men worked steadily on. All seemed going well, when suddenly the wind shifted, and almost at the same time the smoke and flames came roaring forward, and one mast caught fire. The crew were driven from the pumps, and for the first time something like a panic spread fore and aft. It was evident now that the ship could not be saved. All further attempts at pumping were abandoned, and all hands set to work to remove stores. Unfortunately, two of the boats that hung on davits aft were lost, so that only two remained. One of these boats was commanded by McDonald, the other by Dr Barrett, Claude and Lloyd determining to remain on board till the bitter end. How bitter that end was to be no one could have guessed. All the stores that could, with apparent safety, be got out were landed; the boats were returning to the ship. Claude had calculated that hours must elapse before the vessel blew up, or that she might sink without an explosion. Orders had just been issued for the men to stand by to embark in the boats with regularity and quietness, when suddenly the after-part of the ship was blown up with fearful violence; masts, spars, deck, rigging, and bulwarks flew skywards, in a fountain of crimson flame. The sea was covered with the wreckage, and the _Icebear_ began rapidly to sink stern foremost. "Give way, men," shouted Dr Barrett. "Give way with a will to the rescue." Let the curtain drop over the terrible scene. Suffice it to say that everything that man can do, or heroes accomplish, was done and dared by those in the boats to save their friends and messmates from drowning, and from worse--from being devoured by sharks; but out of all that crew of men, who, only a few short hours before, had been peacefully slumbering, and dreaming, perchance, of home and happiness, only thirty answered to their names that morning in the shore-house. Some of these, too, were badly wounded, and nearly all exhausted. Poor Lloyd was among the drowned, so was Warren, the second mate, and both Pipes and Chips had gone to their account. Big Byarnie had been sent ashore with one of the first boats. He was a giant to work, and did about three men's duty in unloading. He had taken the sea-birds with him. Fingal had, dog-like, stayed with his master, and swam all the way to the shore with him after the explosion. Boy Bounce came floating on shore stride-legs on a spar, propelling himself with half an oar, which he had managed to pick up somehow or other. There was so much life and enthusiasm about Paddy O'Connell, that it is almost needless to say he got ashore. "Somehow," said Paddy; but how, he couldn't remember at all. A great fire was made in the shore-house, and the men who had been taken out of the water rendered as comfortable as circumstances would permit. When breakfast had been served and discussed--there was no ceremony now, no distinction between officers and men, those poor mariners in their terrible plight having formed themselves into a little republic--Claude and Dr Barrett went out together. They walked for a time in silence up and down the beach, Claude hardly daring to cast a glance seawards where the wreckage still was floating. The doctor was the first to speak. "This is a sad ending to all our hopes," he said slowly. "I cannot as yet realise it," replied Claude. "My poor men! my poor men!" There were tears in his eyes as he spoke, tears of which he had no reason to be ashamed. Dr Barrett pressed his hand. "I am older than you," he said; "let me beseech you not to repine. It is almost cheering for me to think that the bitterness of death is past for those dear brave hearts who, remember, Captain Alwyn, died doing their duty nobly and manfully." "True, true, Dr Barrett; theirs must be a merciful judgment: but the drunken brute who caused this terrible accident!" "Stay, sir, stay; he too is in God's hand. We cannot, dare not, set bounds or limits to His mercy. Let us turn our thoughts to Him, then," continued the doctor. "We have to submit to whatever is before us. We _must_ pray, `Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.'" "Yes," replied Claude, "but that portion of the beautiful prayer our Saviour taught has always seemed to me more difficult than any other to utter from the heart while in grief or expecting grief." "I know it, Captain Claude Alwyn, I know it. There are few kinds of grief in this world I have not tasted the bitterness of. But come," he went on, "you and I are still the chiefs of this expedition. Let us, even now, bravely face the situation. Let us see how we stand." "We are imprisoned in a living grave." "Not quite so bad as that, my friend." "Well, Dr Barrett, what do you propose?" "Shortly this. We have still stores on shore here, but we must supplement them Despatch one boat at once; if she returns before the snow falls, well and good. Send her back for a further supply; if the snow falls ere she returns, do not wait, but despatch the sledges across country. As we are about one hundred miles south of the inlet, the sledges will take the short cut, and reach the cave stores in shorter time than the boat can." "Good. I will lose no time, and as soon as our poor fellows are buried--" He paused and glanced seawards. "My dear Captain Alwyn," said the doctor, "our poor fellows are already buried; that water swarms with sharks." [Note 1.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Claude himself went in charge of the boat to visit the _Kittywake_ stores. There would be, he reasoned with himself, about three hundred miles of water to row or sail over. The tide, however, that swept up and down the long creek which joined the ocean to the inland sea, had all the force of a mill-stream. He determined, therefore, to take advantage of that, and on his voyage out to anchor alongside the banks during the flow, and rush onward when the tide was ebbing. He returned to the camp far sooner than he had expected. He returned empty. A bridge of ice and snow had been encountered which, no doubt, extended all the way to the sea. "And so, even if my poor vessel had not been doomed to destruction, it would have been impossible to get clear this year." So spoke Claude. "True, true," said Dr Barrett, "and now we must depend upon the sledges to bring us supplies from the stores. But," he added, "it is only right I should tell you what I think, Captain Alwyn--" "And that is?" "That they, too, will return empty." This melancholy surmise of Dr Barrett turned out far too true. They waited till the snow fell. Then, in charge of the spectioneer, who had been among the saved, and Mr McDonald, third mate, the sledges set out. As usual, Fingal trotted off with the rest. Even to those in the sledges, the time seemed long. Their adventures were many, the whole journey a toilsome and perilous one. But the goal was gained at last. There was the signal pole on the cliff top that had been raised to guide the _Kittywake_ towards the creek, but where was the creek itself? _Nowhere to be seen_. It had been frozen over in the winter, and the ravine, at the bottom of which it lay, filled entirely and completely level with snow. To find or even to guess at the whereabouts of the cave where the stores were buried under such circumstances was quite out of the question. A thousand men could hardly have found and rescued them. If the time seemed long for those who went on this expedition, it was doubly tedious for those who waited their return. At last, one evening, about sunset, amid thickly falling snow, Fingal came bounding into camp. Claude knew the sledges could not be far away. All rushed out to meet them. Alas! and alas! for hope seemed to die even in Dr Barrett's heart at the dire news. They brought two bears, and these were cut in pieces and stored. "What is to be done now?" said Claude. "Are we to die like rats in a hole?" "Not, I think," was the reply, "without making one last effort to save ourselves. Were it the summer, we could live at all events as long as ammunition lasted, but we have hardly food enough to serve us to spring-time. So I propose that we get ready at once, that we provision the sledges, and make an attempt to reach the semi-Eskimo, semi-Danish settlement of Sturmstadt." "It will be a terrible journey." "It will, indeed, but both Jack and Joe know the way. I have talked to them. Their people have come on the hunting-path within a hundred miles of this place." "_For_ myself, I care not," said Claude; "but I grieve to think of my poor fellows, perhaps sinking and dying by the way. Would it not be almost better to rough it here through another winter, then, when the snow is gone, to walk the journey? Every day would then be bringing us into a warmer and better climate." "No, captain, it would not, and for this one of many reasons. If we take the journey now we can go in almost a straight line, for the creeks and streams will be frozen over in a few days. In summer we know not what _detours_ we might not have to make, what streams or rivers to ford or even swim." "I will be guided by your experience," said Claude. Early next morning, outside the wooden tent, Paddy O'Connell and boy Bounce were heard talking together loudly and excitedly. "Is it true what you're telling me, and sorra a word av a lie in it?" "Which I walked all the way over, and ran all the way back to see," was the boy's reply. "Och! bladderips!" roared Paddy; "och! the thieving spalpeens! Bad cess to them evermore. Sure if I had them I'd break every bone in their durty bodies. I'd murder every mother's son or the two o' them." He entered the tent as he spoke. "I know what you've come to say, Paddy," said Claude: "the Eskimos have taken the sledges and deserted us." "True for you, sorr," said Paddy. "It's all up wid us now, sorr. Sure I could tear me hair and cry; and it isn't for meself either, sorr, I'd be after crying, but for me poor mother and Biddy." "This is, indeed, terrible news, doctor," said Claude. The doctor whistled a few bars of an operatic air thoughtfully before he made reply. "It may be all for the best, you know. Hope, sir, hope, _hope_, _hope_. "`Hope is a better companion than fear; Providence, ever benignant and kind, Gives with a smile what you take with a tear. All will be right; Let us look to the light. Morning is ever the daughter of night. Cheerily, cheerily, then, cheer up!'" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. The _Scymnus Borealis_. Some of these monsters obtain a length of nearly twenty feet, and at certain seasons of the year the sea in some places swarms with them. They are gregarious, and never fail to appear when men are drowning or seals being killed. They are terribly fierce and voracious. CHAPTER TWENTY. SORROWS NEVER COME SINGLY. However cheerful Dr Barrett might try to appear, he was far from feeling easy at heart. Hopeless he was not. He had seen too much of the world--the wide world, I mean--he had faced too many dangers not to know that there is seldom or never real reason to throw up one's arms in despair. But it behoved him to assume an air of cheerfulness, even under the distressing circumstances in which he and his companions were now plunged. The survivors of the unhappy _Icebear_ were all his patients, all his charge and care, and he well knew the depressing effects of despondency, so he determined to do his duty, and keep up their hearts if possible. "Give the men something to do," he said to Claude on the same morning the news of the desertion of the Eskimos had been brought to camp by busy boy Bounce. "I'll overhaul stores to begin with." "Good?" said the doctor. "And during the time yen are working I'll get on the top of the bench and play the fiddle to them." It may seem a menial kind of duty for a surgeon to fiddle to a ship's crew; nevertheless, duty it was, and the doctor did it. And the men were pleased; the gloomy shadows left their brows; their eyes grew brighter; they even laughed and joked a little as they worked, and I'm quite sure they got through the task in half the time. A good dinner followed. The cook, poor fellow, had been drowned, but he found a worthy successor in busy boy Bounce. Boy Bounce to-day had made some excellent pea-soup. It was a good thing for these unfortunate sailors that this house and camp had been built on shore, and that it contained all the necessaries for cooking, etc, that they were likely to want. After the soup came preserved potatoes and pork, to say nothing of a delightful frizzly relish of young seal's liver. Then all felt happier and more hopeful. There would be at least a whole month of daylight yet, though every day would be much shorter than its predecessor. Then light would leave them, and merge into the long, long Polar night. As long as there was anything like a day, the men were employed fishing and hunting. The bears had not yet left, and sometimes a deer was met with. Why some of these animals should occasionally be left behind the migrating flock is a great puzzle. Are they too delicate for the journey south, or are they left behind for punishment? The bears that meant remaining were already seeking holes and caves. The doctor knew their tricks and their manners, and had every likely hole and corner searched, often by torchlight, and several fine specimens were thus unearthed. The brutes always showed fight, and some fierce hand to hand encounters (if I may so name them) were the consequence. But the days grew shorter, and, despite all that Dr Barrett could do, a gloom settled down on the minds of the men that nothing seemed able to dispel. Even Paddy O'Connell himself lost heart. "Och! sure," he said one day, "it is our graves we are in already, and it's little use there is in trying to prolong our existence." Dr Barrett took him aside. "Paddy," he said, "you must help me to keep up the men's spirits. I depend upon you. I am doing _my_ best. Help me. Will you?" The tears rushed to the good fellow's eyes. "Doctor dear," he exclaimed, "I'd lay down my life to plaze ye, and it's the truth I'm telling you." "Well, my good honest fellow, there needn't be any laying down of lives, only just you keep up _your_ heart, and I'll lay a wager the men will be merry enough, and that is half the battle. I will not conceal from you, Paddy," continued the doctor, "that there is a hard struggle before us, a struggle perhaps for bare existence, but with God's help we'll get through it and conquer." "'Deed, then, and well try, sorr." "Yes, Paddy; and if the worst comes to the worst, we have but once to die, you know." "True for ye, sorr. I never heard of any one dying twice, sorr." "No, Paddy. And now you are my assistant--aren't you?" He extended his hand as he spoke, and Paddy grasped it with the grip of a vice. But Paddy did not speak, because there was a big lump in his throat. Only from that moment the doctor and he understood each other. Another faithful fellow whom the doctor greatly depended on was Giant Byarnie. So now, virtually, the four heads of the expedition were Claude, the doctor, Paddy, and Byarnie. They used to hold little meetings by themselves, apart from the others, and talk together of their prospects. "If everything goes fairly well," said Dr Barrett one day, "what with rigid economy and no waste, we will manage to weather the winter, be it ever so hard." "What say you to bear-steak, Captain Alwyn?" "Delicious, I'm sure, with hunger as sweet sauce." "Well, we can have that in abundance, and we have, or can have, fish all the weary winter. The biscuit is scarce, but we have peas, and--" "And tobacco, sorr," put in Paddy. "Right you are, Paddy. For that we ought to be thankful indeed.--What I lament most," continued the doctor, "is that our casks of cabbage have gone bad, and that we have saved no lime-juice from the burning ship. However," he added more cheerfully, "let us keep our minds easy, and hope for the best. How are the birds, Byarnie?" "In fine wing, sir, the two that are left, for one died, you know, sir. But these are the strongest two, and were Miss Meta's favourites." It was determined to start them both--both to bear the self-same message. Claude would not willingly have brought a tear to Meta's eyes to own a throne, but it was agreed between the doctor and him that the best plan was to tell the whole truth, to hide nothing of the terrible extremities to which they were reduced. And Claude took his advice, and with that message of love which those strong-winged birds bore away south with them, was something like a farewell, a long farewell, and a fear that, on earth, he--Claude--would never meet his love again. "I think I can face death more bravely now," said Claude. "And I too," was the reply. It will be seen that even Dr Barrett lacked the complete hope of being able to fight against the fearful odds before them. The men were set to work at the mines, but they did so with very little heart indeed. What is the good, they said, of slaving here like coal-heavers, for gold that can never benefit either ourselves or our families? Faddy came to Claude as spokesman. Claude himself went personally to the men. He assured them that every nugget of gold they found would be their own; that they were now shipwrecked mariners; that they were to some extent, therefore, free agents, and could, if they chose, throw over allegiance to him, their former captain. "No, sir," the men cried, "we will never do that. We have lived together happily and cheerily enough, let us die together." "Who talks of dying?" cried Paddy O'Connell. "Sure we'll never die at all, at all. Is it because the winter is with us, and darkness all around us, that we'd go and cry like a choild that has been sent to bed widout a light? Troth, men, it's meself that's ashamed av ye entoirely. Won't the sun come back and shine down on us wid de blessing o' Heaven in a few or three months? Then won't we take our guns under our arms and go marching thro' the country as bould as Inniskilling Dragoons? And won't there be such sport and such fun all the way south, as you never had the loikes of before? And sure, won't we reach the say at last, and go off in some ship or another to England and Oirland? And och! won't our wives and sweethearts, if we've got any, be glad to see us just--the darlints that they thought they'd never see in loife again, because the big whales av Greenland had eaten them up? And sure, won't me own dear mother, and Biddy my sister, and the pig, the crayture, go wild wid the joy that'll be on to them when they see their Patrick march in at the door again! Hooch! hurrah! it's myself that's as happy as a king wid the thoughts av it all." Paddy's speech had even greater effect in keeping up the men's spirits than had Claude's. They resumed their work more cheerfully, and Paddy constantly led them with song or with joke. Lectures and concerts were resumed in the wooden tent, now their sole abode. But the singing lacked spirit, and the dancing was _nil_. They say that sorrows seldom come singly. It appeared even now, in December, that the proverb would hold good in the case of those forlorn mariners. For the winter turned out to be one of awful gloom and darkness. The aurora, that shone with such radiance the winter before, now showed only occasionally, and that only as a faint white glimmer among the clouds. No moon or stars were ever seen. Sometimes, for a week at a time, the snow fell and the wind raged with such fearful and bitter force as to preclude the possibility of any one ever putting his head beyond the threshold of the door on pain of instant suffocation. At such times it taxed all the energies of Claude and the doctor, and even of Paddy himself, to keep the men from sinking into utter despondency. Even Fingal, and Alba the snow-bird, seemed to partake of a portion of the general gloom. Fingal lying quietly in his corner, dreaming, perhaps, of the bonnie heather hills of Scotland; and Alba, with drooping wings--her head under one--perched over Claude's couch. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. A TERRIBLE TIME--THE DOCTOR'S DREAM--THE WONDROUS MIRAGE. It was the month of mid-winter. Sickness had come at last; the sickness that is born of privation and absence of vegetable food. The younger and more weakly of the men were first to succumb. They lost heart, felt weary, tired, depressed. They refused to work. Even Dr Barrett could not find it in his heart to force them. They grew pale and thin, even to emaciation, and their dilated pupils glittered on their sunken eyeballs. Their stronger companions tried to cheer them, ay, and many a time went without food themselves to give it to them. One dropped dead, and was carried away and buried in the ice-hole. "Buried by the light of glaring torches," buried at sea you may call it,--a sailor's funeral, but what a sad one! It was Magnus Jansen, a fair-haired Shetland lad, who had been a great favourite with his messmates, owing to his kind and gentle nature and his ever willingness to oblige. "We commit his body to the deep," read Claude, "looking for the resurrection, when the sea shall give up her dead;" and more than one horny hand was raised to brush away a tear, as with deep and sullen plash the body sank into the sea. Two more died in a week--died apparently of utter despondency and weariness. "I shall soon see the light," were the last words of one of these. He just smiled faintly, and passed away. Three more in a fortnight. They nearly all seemed to go in the same way, of utter debility and hopelessness. Byarnie was nurse-in-chief. He was always with them to the last; the great giant kneeling down beside their pallets, and breathing in their dying ears words that it is to be hoped often deprived even death of its victory. More than one died leaning against Byarnie's broad breast. I have already said that Byarnie's big fat face was far from handsome. Ah! but it was _so_ honest; and had you seen him there by the bedsides of those dying sailors, you would have said that his face shone at times with almost a heavenly light. Another, and still another, was borne slowly away to the ice-hole. Then it seemed as if Death was for a time satiated, and had claimed victims enough. For almost the first time this winter, the sky cleared, the stars shone like emeralds through the frosty glow, the moon put in an appearance, casting long shadows across the snowfields, from those who walked out. There was the aurora, too, a brighter display than any one ever remembered witnessing. Away in the north, and overhead, the ever-changing colours shimmered and danced in a way that was magical, marvellous, and it seemed at times that you had but to put up your hand and touch the broad fringes of light that danced and flickered before your eyes. The sight of the sky evidently gave the men some heart, some hope. But after a week the stars and aurora disappeared, and the darkness of a Polar night once more descended on the scene. With so many ill, with so many dead, it would have been but a mockery now to venture on anything approaching to gaiety or merriment. Even Paddy felt that; and though, like boy Bounce, ever earnest, and energetic, and kind, he went about his work quieter and more subdued than probably he had ever been in his life before. Instead of lecturing, Dr Barrett used in the evenings now to read books to his people; often books of a religious character, though not of the gloomy kind, but rather those that spoke of a Father's love, and carried the thoughts away and away to that bright land where there shall be no more sorrow or crying. One morning in March, Dr Barrett appeared more than usually cheerful. There were now so many sick that hardly could those in comparative health attend to their wants. "I've had a dream," the doctor explained. "No," he added, smiling, "I shall not tell you what it is. You will know by-and-by, for my dream may not come true. Byarnie," he said, "I'm going mining after breakfast. The morning is still and fine, and there are a lot of stars out. Bring tools and a few men with you." "Going mining?" said Claude, in some surprise. "Yes, mining, captain; but not for gold this time, but for what is ten times more precious--for health. Get ready, Byarnie, and we'll want torches, as well as a bucket." "You excite my curiosity," said Claude. "May I go along with you?" "You'll do me pleasure." Straight along the south coast of the inland sea went Dr Barrett, Byarnie following up with his men. For more than half a mile he trudged on without looking either to the right or left. Then he stopped just under a cliff, or rather a rounded braeland. "Now, men, clear away the snow from the ice close to the edge." "I think it was here I saw them in my dream," he added, turning to Claude. "I'm all in a fog," said Claude. The snow was not very deep, and the ice was soon cleared. "Now light up your torches, and you other men smash the ice and clear a big hole. No fear of drowning; the tide is well back." This was a more difficult task, but it was accomplished at last, all the more easily because there was no water beneath. "See anything down there?" the doctor asked of a man who had just lifted up a huge piece of ice. "Only a thickish kind of seaweed, sir." "All right," cried the doctor, quite jubilant now. "Fill this bucket with it." This was done, and soon the whole party reached camp again. "I am to be blamed," said Dr Barrett, "for not thinking of this marvellous seaweed before. It contains potash in abundance, and while mosses of all kinds are frozen to death on the hillsides, this, you see, survives. Our poor fellows, now almost dead of the scurvy, may yet revive." Not only those who were sick, but all hands partook of the esculent weed. The sick revived, those in health grew brighter, calmer, and happier. "If our food holds out, I think we may now weather the winter," said Dr Barrett. "I sincerely trust so," said Claude, "and that we may all be well to commence the march." It seemed, however, that fate had still further affliction in store for them, for one day Byarnie came to the doctor, and very sad he looked. No less than two casks of meat were found almost putrid, and the store of bears' flesh had also gone bad. This was indeed terrible news. When the third and last cask was opened it was found like the others, unfit even for the food of starving men! Tinned meat was all they now had to depend upon, and there was very little of that; so they must go on short allowance at once. The men were far less cheerful after this, and the summer, that but yesterday had appeared so near at hand, was now apparently an illimitable distance away. Another expedition was made to the caves among the hills, in the endeavour to find another bear. All in vain. Hope now sunk in every heart. Even the doctor himself, who had struggled so long, began to feel that the time was not far distant when he too must succumb, must lie down and--die. It was April, another month, another long, long four weeks--and early summer and sunshine would come and bring back with them the birds--the grebe, the auk, the wild duck and guillemot. Two more had been added to the list of the dead. The boy Bounce fell ill. "We are not going to let the boy die," said one of the men. "It is food he wants. Let us make a subscription." The subscription was made. Everybody gave a morsel of something for the poor boy, and his allowance came to be double instead of half Big Byarnie even gave up his blanket, and just slept a little closer to the fire and hugged Fingal. Poor boy Bounce lived, and began cooking again, though in this matter, unfortunately, his labour was not now very arduous. Claude was looking very pallid and worn; he did not speak much, he suffered in silence. The men would have fain had their captain to live better than they did, but he would not hear of such a thing. Besides, he gave away a goodly portion of his meagre allowance to poor Fingal. For Fingal was ill. Indeed, Claude knew that Fingal was dying, and the faithful old fellow appeared to know it himself. One day the hound was very much weaker, very much worse, and Claude knew the end was very near. He was sitting by the couch on which the dog lay. Alba, the snow-bird, jealous perhaps of her master's attentions to Fingal, came and perched upon his shoulder. Claude took the bird in his hands and slowly rose to his feet. "For once, Alba," he said, "I must send you off." Then he handed her to one of the men. "Take her to the aviary." This was all he said. But he went back and knelt by Fingal's bed. Why did he put the bird away? Those of my readers who love dogs will understand and appreciate his reasons: there was always a slight rivalry between the bird and the dog, and Claude would have grieved to let Fingal in his last moments feel that aught stood between his master's heart and his. As Claude returned, Fingal recognised him. He attempted to rise, tried even to crawl towards him, and in doing so fell. Claude raised him--how light he was!--and replaced him in the softest part of his couch. Then he sat beside his dying favourite with one arm over his shoulder. Fingal knew he was there. He fell quietly and gently asleep. It was that sleep from which nor dogs nor men ever awaken. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The time rolled drearily on, and at length the sun rose, and the days got rapidly longer and longer; but starvation had done its work. Not that more died, but several were down with sheer debility, all were weak and poor, Claude could no longer stand. Paddy O'Connell held out, so did Byarnie and the doctor, but the latter was quieter far than of yore. "The sooner," said Claude, one day, "the sooner, doctor, it is all over the better." One day from the hill-top, Byarnie saw a sight which suddenly struck him with fear and trembling, and sent him on his knees to pray. Away in the southern sky, some distance above the horizon, was a wondrous vision. It faded away at last, and then Byarnie hurried off to the camp, his clothes wet with the sweat of fear, to report the matter to the doctor. "It is all over with us," he said, "for I have seen a wonderful vision, even as Ezekiel did in the days of the olden time." "Have you been dreaming?" said Dr Barrett. "I have not even been asleep," replied Byarnie. "I was there on the mountain-top alone, when suddenly in the sky there appeared before my sight this vision, as of men and sledges and dogs moving rapidly across the sky, among the very clouds." "Were they all head-down?" "They were all head-down," said Byarnie, "which makes the awful vision still more wondrous strange." "Bless you, Byarnie, for this news," cried the doctor. "Hurrah! Byarnie, we are saved! we are saved! Be they Indians, be they savages, they are coming, and we are saved. What you saw, my faithful fellow, was a mirage." CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. META'S STRANGE ADVENTURES. We are back once again in Meta's cottage in Iceland. There is but little change here since the day Claude bade his betrothed a long farewell. It is evening. Yonder by the fire sits one of Meta's aunts, working away at her "rock and her reel," as she seemed always working, spinning, spinning, spinning. Meta near her, with her zither. She had been playing, but her fingers now lay listlessly on her strings, only now and then some sweet wailing notes and chords were brought out as if the hands were _en rapport_ with her heart. "And you really say you saw him in your dreams, dear auntie?" _Whirr--whirr--whirr_, went the wheel. "I saw him," replied the kindly but ancient dame. "I saw him. I can see him now as I saw him in my dream. He is lying on the ground, and his face hardly less pale than the snow." Whirr--whirr--it--it. "Oh, auntie, don't frighten me, dear!" "But kindly men are kneeling by him. They raise him. He revives. The blood returns to his cheeks. He will live!" "Bless you, auntie, bless you!" Whirr--whirr went the wheel. The snow-flea in his cage twittered fondly. The raven on his log, which he seemed never to leave, stretched himself a leg at a time, then both wings at once. He was very old, that raven, and Poe's looked not more weird, and-- "His mate long dead, his nestlings flown, The moss had o'er his eyrie grown, While all the scenes his youth had known Were changed and old." Meta plays now; she is more happy. Her aunt has given her hope. But somehow she does not play long; she is easily tired now, so she rises and lays aside the instrument, then stands by the window to watch the snowy mountain peaks changing to pink and to purple in the sun's parting rays. Summer has fled from the Norland hills. The songbirds have gone--the martin, and woodlark, and robin; the wild flowers have faded--the blue geraniums, the pink-eyed diapensias, the daisies, and the purple wild thyme; only the green of the creeping saxifrage bedecks the rocks, and hardy sea-pinks and ferns still grow in the glades and by the brook-sides. But autumn winds sigh mournfully through the leafless birch trees and drooping willows, and rustle the withered leaves of the wild myrtle on the braesides. With a sigh Meta turns away from the window. Almost at the same time there is a knock at the door, and Guielmyun, brother to Byarnie, and, like himself, a giant, rushed in. "The bird, the bird?" he cried, "he is--" But Meta heard no more. Next minute she was standing by the cage. Panting, ragged, and wretched-looking and dripping wet was the messenger that had flown so far; but oh, bless it! it bore the little quill that contained the missive of sadness and love. There was no more weariness in Meta's looks now, but stern, firm resolve. "I'll save him if I can," she said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "A young lady in the study wants to see _me_?" said Professor Hodson to his neat-handed waiting-maid. "Bless my heart, what a strange thing!" But stranger still, five minutes after this the good old professor was sitting opposite this young lady, and had given orders that no one should come near the door till he rang the bell. "Dear me, my dear, _de-ar_ me!" he was saying; "and you really tell me that a sea-bird carried this message all the way from the icy north? But there, there, I see, it is his own handwriting. And yours is a strange, not to say a sad story. But it will all come right in the end--perhaps, you know." "Oh, sir!" cried Meta, "you will make some effort to save him? You will not let him die in those terrible regions of gloom and desolation?" "Gloom and desolation, dear? Yes, yes, to be sure, you're quite right; they must be somewhat gloomy and desolate. No morning paper, no morning rolls or hot toast. Well, well, we will see in a day or two what can be done. The _Kittywake_, too, she has been posted long ago a lost ship and the insurance paid. But even she might turn up, you know. I only say she might. Stranger things have happened." Meta took the professor's soft white hand as she bade him good-bye in the doorway, and touched it reverently with her lips. "Good-bye, my dear, good night. You've got nice lodgings? Yes, I think you said you had. Good night, good night. God bless you." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The _savants_ are assembled in the largest room in the professor's house--a room where lectures are often given and wonderful experiments made, but a cosy room for all that, with two great fires burning in it, and a soft crimson light diffused throughout it from the great candelabra. There is a stranger here to-night--a stranger to us, I mean--a man about fifty, a sailor evidently, from his build and bronze. He is very pleasant in manner and voice; his face is handsome, and his smile strikes you as coming directly from the heart. They had been dining; the walnuts and wine were now on the table, and conversation was at its best. "Well, gentlemen, I shall call the young lady, and you shall hear the marvellous tale from her own lips." Somewhat abashed at first to find herself in such august company, and in a room more beautiful than anything she could ever have dreamed about, Meta was soon reassured by the professor's kindly voice. He sat beside her, and held one hand in his. Then she told her story, as she had told it to Professor Hodson in his study. She hid nothing, kept nothing back, told _all_ the truth, even about her love and betrothal to Claude, talking low but earnestly, as innocently as a child repeating its prayer by its mother's knee. There was no more eager listener than Captain Jahnsen, the sailor I have mentioned. As long as she spoke his eyes were riveted on her face, sometimes he even changed colour in his seeming excitement. When she had finished, he stood up. "Gentlemen," he said, "I have been all my life a man of action, not of words; and now what I have to say must be said briefly indeed. For the last many years I have been a sailor and adventurer combined. I have dug gold, ploughed the sea, and searched for diamonds; not unsuccessfully, as you are all aware. For years and years previous to that I was a Greenland sailor, not hailing from any British port; not sailing in beautiful barques or full-rigged ships, but in an open boat from Lapland. What made me so? Fate. I once commanded as splendid a little craft as ever sailed the sea. I had on board my wife and my child-daughter. I was wrecked--a sailor's luck, you say, but mine was a sadder one than falls to the lot of most sailors. My dear wife--ah! gentlemen, the memory of that terrible night almost unmans me even yet-- was killed in my arms by a falling spar; my daughter was swept away. Two sailors and I alone were saved by a Lapland walrus boat. We lay-to for hours. No sign of life was visible; again I dropped insensible; I was ill, mad, raving for weeks. Yet calmness and peace came at last. But never more dared I go near that awful coast. To me the very memory of it and of that night has ever been like a nightmare." "Where were you wrecked?" asks Professor Hodson. "On the Icelandic coast, north of Reykjavik." Meta has turned suddenly pale, and her eyes fill with tears. She timidly advances. "Father," she murmurs. There is no wild excitement; no melodrama. Captain Jahnsen stoops and kisses his daughter's brow. "I'm sure, dear Meta," he said, "we'll love each other very much." Yet, though lacking melodramatic effect, the scene was touching in the extreme. Poor Professor Hodson! he was fain to wipe his eyes. "Dear me, dear me, dear me!" he said, in his quick, sharp way of speaking, "I never thought that I would shed tears again in my life. Dear me, dear me!" "Now, my child," said the professor to Meta next morning, "I'm going to ran down to Dunallan Towers, and see her ladyship. No, as you wish me not to, I shall never breathe your name. Good-bye; keep up your heart. I'll do the best I can." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yes, Lady Alwyn was at home, and would see Professor Hodson. And presently she enters. Very handsome yet, very stately, very sad withal. She beckons the professor to a seat. "You may not guess what I have come about?" "Yes, I can," she says. "You bring no news of my son, but you think of sending a search-party out?" "That was mooted between my colleagues and me." "Professor Hodson, I fear--indeed, I know--I shall never see my son alive or dead again. I live but to mourn for him. I live but to repent the harsh words that drove him from my door--from our door--my boy's and mine. To see his poor pet dog following him with downcast head; to see even the bird fly away; I--Oh, Professor Hodson!" Here, woman-like, the poor lady burst into tears, and the tender-hearted professor feels very much inclined to follow suit. "We may find him yet?" "Oh! is there a hope, a chance?" "There is, and we can but try. We have thought of fitting out a yacht." "There is _his_ yacht--his own yacht. Take it, and welcome. If not strong enough, do everything for her. And, professor, all the expense _must_ be mine. And I, too, will sail in her in search of my boy." "Your ladyship, I--" "Deny me not. I will not be denied." "Your ladyship little knows the danger--" "Talk not of danger. I'll be happy every day to think I am braving the dangers my boy has braved before me. Professor Hodson," she says, after a long pause, during which the _savant_ has been musing on many matters, all of which revolve round Meta--"Professor Hodson, I feel younger, happier since you have come." "Your ladyship, then, must not be gainsaid. Well, I will accept the terms you so generously propose. We will at once fit up the _Alba_. All things promise well. We have in Captain Jahnsen a thorough gentleman, a sailor, and one who knows Greenland well. He has a daughter, too, who has been to sea. Might she not--" "Oh yes, yes, if she would but come. She would be a companion to me and I to her." "Well, well, well. We will consider it all arranged." The professor rubs his hands, and laughs a joyous laugh; and the lady, rising, smilingly leads the way to the room where they lunch together. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The _Alba_ is at sea. It is a lovely day in the first week of April. Well off the last of the Shetland Isles is she, and bearing west with a bit of northerly in it. Not steaming, though she has been fitted with engines, and can boast of a funnel elegant and pretty enough for any one to admire. No, not steaming, for there is a ten-knot beam-wind blowing, and her sails are outfurled to it. White they are, and whiter still they look in the spring sunshine. The decks are white also, and the very ropes, so neatly coiled thereon, are swirls of snowy-white. Everything about this natty yacht is neat and trim. The capstan is of polished mahogany, the binnacle is fit to be a drawing-room ornament. Whatever ought to be black about her is like polished ebony, and the brasswork shines like burnished gold. On the deck sit two ladies. One, the elder, leans languidly back in her cane chair; the other--it is Meta--is sitting on a footstool at her knee, reading aloud. A sailor would say the _Alba_ is a trifle down by the head; only a sailor could notice it. The _Alba_ is heavily fortified with wood and iron around and between the bows. But all water and stores will first be used from the foremost tanks, then she will ride the waves like a sea-bird. How delightful the breeze! how pleasant the sunshine! and the _Alba_ herself appears to feel the importance of the charge she has on board of her, and is proud in consequence. She nods and curtsies to each passing wave, kisses some, turns coyly away from others, and altogether behaves as if she really were the thing of life the sailors on board half imagine she is. "So gaily goes the ship, When the wind blows free." CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. AN ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE--"THEY'RE COMING! THEY'RE COMING!" From the very day on which Lady Alwyn stepped on board the _Alba_, and joined the search for her lost son, and for tidings, however meagre, of the good ship _Kittywake_, a new life seemed to spring up within her. She seemed at once to have lost what she did not hesitate to call her narrow-mindedness. She began to see that all the world were brothers and sisters, and dependent upon each other, not only for comfort, but for happiness itself. She herself in her pride and exclusiveness had never really known what happiness was before, because she had never been free. Accustomed to exact and to receive homage from almost every one around her, she had been living in a kind of fool's paradise, imagining that she was not as other people, that because she had, not riches, but birth and high pedigree, she was made of different material than the "_plebs_," the common herd, could boast of. Now the scales seemed falling from her eyes. She could see arightly; she could even notice and learn that the world in general was independent of her, but that she was dependent on the world. Those hardy seamen, who went merrily about at their work, talking, laughing, often singing, appeared not to know nor care that she, Lady Alwyn, was in existence. If Jack at his duty came on the quarter-deck, and she were in the way, politely but firmly Jack would tell her, "I'll trouble you to shift for a moment, ma'am." Some of the politest of these offered an arm, and the proud Lady Alwyn was surprised at herself for accepting the kindly offered assistance. She was surprised at herself, too, for positively feeling lost, unless she had some one to talk to, and to find herself often conversing with Captain Jahnsen as if he had been a brother, or with Meta as if she were a sister. The latter, indeed, became indispensable to Lady Alwyn even before the ship had reached the longitude of Cape Farewell. Before another fortnight had passed I think she really loved Meta; for Meta had been so unremittingly kind and attentive to her. She had calmed her fears when the winds or seas were raging and the storm roaring through the rigging, and when the poor little yacht was surrounded with floating icebergs so tall and so terrible in their tallness and quiet but awful strength, that the vessel looked beside them like a tiny fly on a crystal epergne. Meta used to read to her, play to her, sing to her, and tell her tales; but she never told her _the_ tale--she never told her the tale of her love. One day the book drooped listlessly in Meta's lap, and there came such a sad far-away look in her eyes, that--they were alone in the cabin--Lady Alwyn took her gently by the hand. "What are you thinking about, dear child?" said the lady. "You have something on your mind--some grief, some sadness." For answer Meta burst into tears. Had she dared she would have told her ladyship everything now; for Meta could not get over the idea that she was playing a double part, and night and day the thought troubled and vexed her. But dare she tell her? No, she feared her pride too much. She consoled herself by remembering her vow, that she would never, never marry Claude without his mother's consent--not unless she joined her hands and blessed them. But then Claude--might he not even now be lying cold in death? No wonder that Meta wept. The _Alba_ sailed on and on, or steamed on and on, encountering all the dangers usual to a passage out in these seas. But every danger was bravely faced by the ladies, every trial was cheerfully met, and but served to bind their hearts closer together in the bonds of friendship. Then one day, towards the latter end of April, the sun went down in a yellow haze, through which he glared red and angrily. There was ice about everywhere, bergs of every conceivable shape and size, some so big that the _Alba_ took long minutes to steam past them, others with pinnacled top so tall that they caught the sun's rays long after he had dipped down behind the western waves. There was a look of such unwonted anxiety on good Captain Jahnsen's face that Meta must go and embrace him, and ask him if there was any danger. "A little, dear," he replied. "You're a sailor's daughter, you know, so comfort poor Lady Alwyn if it comes on to blow much, and keep up her heart." Meta promised she would. The glass got suddenly hollow at top, and began to sink at an aggravatingly rapid rate. The night would not be a very long one, but it would be pitchy dark. A heavy swell, too, was coming in from the south, that showed a storm had been raging far out in the broad Atlantic. Again and again the captain went to the glass, tapping it uneasily. It fell, and fell, and fell. A bit of sail was got ready, only a morsel to steady her, and the fore-hatches were battened down none too soon. The storm came on, accompanied by blinding snow. Lady Alwyn could not sleep, though Meta sang and played to her. Music below, sweet, soft, and plaintive; on deck the roaring, whistling, and howling of the wind through the cordage; orders being almost incessantly given to the man at the wheel, and the ship's course thus altered a few points every minute. This was to avoid the clashing ice. Bump, bump, bump, continually against smaller pieces that could not be avoided. The ship was proceeding very slowly, and the captain was forward transmitting his orders aft through the trumpet, when suddenly there came a terrible crash, and the shouting and screaming after this was so dreadful that Lady Alwyn was fain to put her fingers in her ears. The ship had been struck, her planks splintered and staved in right abaft the starboard bow. It was "two watches to the pumps" now, while the mate and a few hands endeavoured to stem the leak by placing blankets overboard against the hole and over it. In vain; the wind was too high, the waves too merciless. With frozen fingers, the mate and his men had to desist. Short though the night was, it was a terrible one to the ladies below. They had quite prepared to meet death. But oh! death like this is death in a dreadful form. After what seemed an interminable time, the daylight shimmered in through the dead light on the deck of the ladies' cabin, and up and down across the glass in the scuttle the green seas could be seen washing and lap--lap--lapping. By-and-by they heard the captain's voice in the saloon, and immediately after he sent to tell them that the danger was over, and the storm had blown itself out. By noon next day the sea had gone so far down that temporary repairs were effected, and in a day or two more, in a calm blue sea, the ship was heeled over, and these repairs made good and substantial. Then the _Alba_ went on her adventurous voyage--adventurous, I mean, for so small a yacht--and the ladies took heart and came on deck to gaze and wonder at the marvels everywhere visible around them. Into every creek went the _Alba_ searching for tidings of the lost _Kittywake_. In very few of these did they find inhabitants, and when they did, they had no news, or only sadly confusing news to give. One day Captain Jahnsen came off from a little Yack village with a countenance beaming with hope and joy. "I think," he told Lady Alwyn, "I have got news of your son. Bad news partly." "Oh!" she cried, "it cannot be bad if he but lives." "Some months ago he was alive. I have met two Indians, who frankly confess they basely deserted the party after the ship had been burned, and a dearth of provisions followed. They are willing to be bribed to conduct us to the spot." The reader already knows who these Indians were. No time was now lost in getting ready, provisioning, and equipping a sufficient number of strong and ice-worthy sledges. Captain Jahnsen made every endeavour to persuade Lady Alwyn from joining the toilsome and hazardous expedition, but in vain. The snows yet lay thick on hill and vale, though the sun had risen for the day--the long Arctic day. The ice on rivers and creeks was firm and safe, so that the course the sledge party took was a straight one. As they had travelled the road before, Jack and Joe could not now mistake it. Fast and well galloped the dogs, and wonderful was each day's work that they put behind them; yet to Lady Alwyn's mind and to Meta's they could hardly go quickly enough. The camping out at night, or during the hours that should have been night, was terribly trying to poor Lady Alwyn. How much she must have loved her son, how much she must have repented her false pride, ere she could have exposed herself to hardships such as these. But the journey is nearly at an end, they have passed unscathed through every danger hitherto, and there is but a short fifty miles between them and the inland sea, when suddenly the sky began to darken over and a snow-wind to moan across the dreary wilderness. For days and days they sheltered in a cave. How trying to nerves and temper! Would the storm never abate? Would the wind never cease to howl and rave? It did at length, and joyfully the journey was resumed. As soon as they were visible, Byarnie, who had been watching on an icy cliff top, must needs take off his jacket to wave it--a cap would not have met the requirements of the situation; then, still waving his jacket aloft and shouting, he rushed down to the camp like a maniac giant. "They're coming! they're coming! they're coming!" he cried. Boy Bounce ran out waving his ladle aloft; Dr Barrett himself ran to meet and welcome the expedition; the men rushed to the tent door, the hale supporting those who were maimed and sick, even Claude being among the number. But Paddy O'Connell--why, nothing less than dancing a jig could satisfy Paddy O'Connell, or keep his feelings of joy in anything like control. "Bedad!" he told a messmate many months afterwards, "if it hadn't been for that jig I'd have bursted entoirely, and it's the truth I'm telling ye, and never a word av a lie in it aither." CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. "IT IS ALL LIKE A DREAM." The journey back from the inland sea to the Yack village had been full of adventure and toil, but all happy; and there is hardly anything a person will not do or encounter when buoyed up with hope and joy. They had stayed for two weeks at the village, that the invalids might recruit their health and strength; and then, with her sails outspread to a favouring breeze, southward she sped, literally on the wings of the wind. "It is all like a dream," said Claude, as he sat by Meta's side on the quarter-deck of the yacht _Alba_, one beautiful summer's day just two months after the events related in the last chapter. "All like a dream, Meta." The vessel was coasting along the western shores of Scotland, many miles off the point of Ardnamurchan. There was hardly a breath of air; just a little swell on, and a gentle ripple on each round heaving wave, with the sunshine weaving threads of brightest silver all through, and making rainbows in the spray and bubbles that floated away astern in the ship's wake. The _Alba_ and her happy crew were returning to their native land, and if nothing occurred they would cast anchor by next morning, at the tail of the bank. "Yes, dear," replied Meta, "it is all like a dream--a long, long dismal dream." "I'm not sorry it all occurred, though, Meta; it has tried your faith and mine as well; and perhaps, you know, if things had not turned out as they have done, my mother would never have consented to our union." "Oh, I love your mother so, _so_ much!" exclaimed Meta, enthusiastically. "I loved her before we were a week together in the ship; but then--" "Then what, dearest?" "I was not happy, because, you must know, I thought I was deceiving her, that I was playing a double part, that I ought to have told her at once who I was." "Do you know, Meta," said Claude, after a pause, "I do not think I shall ever doubt the goodness of Providence again. Oh! you cannot tell, love," he continued, "how dark my heart felt, how sad and gloomy, and how full of despair when poor Paddy reported the desertion of Jack and Joe, the Eskimo Indians. And yet, Meta, had they not deserted, your father would not have met them in the Yack village, and the probability is you would not have found us, or found us dead." Poor Meta shuddered, and the tears rose to her eyes. Claude hastened to change the subject. "Do you think, dear," he said, "you will like our country?" Meta had not been enough in society to be anything else but candid. "I'm sure I shall not at first," she replied; "only--" She paused. "I will be with you," said Claude, beaming. "Yes. And after a time I dare say I shall get used to--to Scotland; but oh! never to England." "We will keep this yacht, Meta." "That will be delightful." "And when tired of one place, we will go to another. I have a home in the wildest part of the Highlands of Ross; we will live much there. And we will sometimes cruise away north to Norway, and to your dear Icelandic home." Meta was too happy to reply. Claude's thoughts were also very pleasant, so the lovers relapsed into silence. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are, to my way of thinking, few events more sad than the breaking up of a ship's company, on her return after a long voyage. At sea we have been a little community--nay, more, a family almost. We have learned each other's ways. We have learned to love our messmates, or at all events to regard them with friendship. We know their peculiarities, their habits, even their weak points and faults. We have been, indeed, more than a community; we have been a little world afloat, knowing as little for the time being of any other people as the inhabitants of one planet do about those of another. But now with the paying-off of the ship's crew all is over; from the moment the ship sails into the harbour all is changed, and every tie is ruthlessly snapped asunder. Everything is now bustle, stir, and excitement. The very ship herself begins to look unkempt and untidy. She seems to become reckless and regardless of her personal appearance--ropes anyhow, rigging awry, dirty foot-prints on a deck that erst was snowy-white, tarnished brass and soiled mahogany. Strangers, too, crowd on board--landsmen with long hats and umbrellas; lands-women who care less for a ship than they do for a barn. You feel the vessel is no longer your home, and you long to get away out of her. The crew is broken up; and on shore, if you meet some of the seamen you sailed with, you will hardly know them, for Jack himself seems to have degenerated, and your smartest and tidiest sailor on board may, on shore, look a veritable rake or lubber. No; my ship never looks well in dock. Let me have her leagues and leagues away out on the silent sea; be the water rough or smooth--be it blue, green, grey, or foam-flecked, I can love her then and be quietly, serenely happy. So the men of the _Alba_ and the survivors of the unfortunate _Icebear_ were scattered far and near, the yacht being left in charge of McDonald and two hands. Meta and Claude parted for a time--Meta going home to her father's beautiful villa at R--, on the banks of the romantic Clyde. Byarnie went with his mistress. Dr Barrett became the guest of the Lady of the Towers and of Claude. The boy Bounce was here also. He took up his abode in the kitchen, and settled down to serious eating, by way, perhaps, of making up for what he had lost in the Arctic regions. And Paddy O'Connell went home to "ould Oirland" to visit his mother and his sister Biddy--"and the pig, the crayture." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ My little heroine--the bonnie, winsome, lovesome Meta--had seen many changes even in her short lifetime. And now she is home for a time at her father's house. Though a very beautiful and tastefully furnished mansion, Captain Jahnsen's home was by no means a palace, but compared to Meta's cottage in Iceland, surrounded by wild, bleak, and rugged scenery--scenery nearly as silent as the grave or Greenland--her father's domains were almost a paradise. But Meta was one of those girls that, however humble their early surroundings, if transplanted to a higher sphere, grace it Meta, in her Norland home, dressed in hodden grey or simple wincey, was a lady. Meta, arrayed in the costliest and neatest garments a fashionable costumier could devise, and, through her father's fondness, "bedecked in jewels rare," was nothing more. She was artless, straightforward, innocent, and candid. What else can you wish for in a lady, young or old? And by-and-by Meta would be the lady of Dunallan Towers, and Claude's mother the dowager; and none to see her now could doubt she would fit and fill the proud position gracefully and well. After a few weeks at home, during which, however, he had made many a little run to Captain Jahnsen's house, going with all a lover's joyful ardour, returning with all a lover's sad, sweet reluctance, our hero ran his vessel down the Clyde. It mattered but very little to Claude where the beautiful yacht _Alba_ lay while being altered and refitted, so she was moored not far from Captain Jahnsen's house. Refitted? Yes, because there were tons of iron and wood to come off her bows, and changes were to be made in her saloon and interior generally. She would sail no longer to the icy regions of the far north, but by way of change--and such a change!--to sunny lands beyond the torrid zone. There was a deal to be done to the interior of the _Alba_. Fewer hands would be needed now, and therefore a new saloon for the officers, with cabins off it, was built in the fore-part of the ship. It was by no means capacious, this room, but Claude spared no expense in making it both elegant and comfortable. The after-part of the ship was to contain Claude's private apartments, and here taste vied with elegance to make a suite of ship-rooms that nothing that is beautiful on board the finest liner could surpass. What a pleasure it was to Claude, this refitting of what for many months was to be the ocean home of his bonnie bride! When the last clang of hammer was hushed on board, when every artisan had left the ship, then, and not till then, did Claude invite Captain Jahnsen and his daughter to inspect the _Alba_. Is it necessary to say that Meta wondered at and admired everything; asked a great many questions, and felt somewhat like a maiden under the spell of an enchanter? But honest Captain Jahnsen viewed all in silence. It was certainly the silence of admiration for Claude's cleverness--nay, almost genius--in the art of turning a yacht into a lady's boudoir. But, after all, Jahnsen was a very practical sailor, so no doubt he thought, although he said nothing, that he would just as soon sail in a less costly fitted barque. But then Captain Jansen was _not_ going in the _Alba_. His sailing days were over, unless, as he said, something wonderful turned up to cause him to go to sea again. Well, the _Alba_ being completely fitted, it is only necessary to add that as many of Claude's Arctic messmates as he could find were easily prevailed upon to join the ship. Among these I need only name boy Bounce, who was rated wardroom steward; Paddy O'Connell, second officer--he was a good sailor, and true, as we already know; giant Byarnie, head steward and general superintendent; and last, but not least, Dr Barrett, surgeon, of course. His duties were bound to be very light, and he was rejoiced to have an opportunity to get that rest in southern climes which his adventures in the Arctic regions rendered a necessity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was gay and happy company that sat down to breakfast on that beautiful autumn day on which Claude and Meta were married; and perhaps the happiest, the most calmly, serenely happy face at that festive board was that of the Dowager Lady Alwyn. And Claude, with his bride, went away to sea. But one thing is worthy of note in this place. Before bidding his mother good-bye, he took the snow-bird from his shoulder and whispered some words in its ear. I do not for a moment wish any one to believe that the bird knew what was said, but one thing is certain: when Claude placed Alba in his mother's arms, it nestled there, and it never afterwards left Dunallan Towers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seated on a mossy bank, in a wooded ravine, I have been writing this last chapter, dear reader mine, while the Nith goes wimpling through the glen close beneath me. Summer winds are sighing and whispering among the silver birch trees, and their drooping branches, nodding, kiss the murmuring stream. There is a wealth of wild flowers everywhere--great banks of brambles starred over with pink-white blooms, and great banks of green and feathery breckans, up through which tower the crimson-belled stalks of the beautiful foxglove. Musing on the story I have just completed, lulled by the river's lisping song, and mournful croodle of the wild pigeons in the dark spruce thicket, I have almost dropped into dreamland. But I start as a hand is laid on my shoulder. I start and stand up. No need to be frightened. It is only Janet who confronts me--Janet, with her silvery hair, her mild eyes, and chastened face. "Janet," I say, "I have finished my story--your story." "The story of our boy," says Janet, musingly, almost sadly. "And," she adds, "you have told all about the death of my dear Dowager Lady, and how Claude never cares now to visit Dunallan Towers? Have you told how weeds now grow in the great old garden, and dark, dank nettles where the roses bloomed? How owls usurp the place of the pigeons in the ivied battlements? How on the drear, dark days of autumn the raven flaps--" "Stay, Janet, stay," I cry; "no trace of melancholy or gloom must tinge my last pages. Look, Janet, look up. What does yonder sky forebode, evil or good?" It was the parting rays of the setting sun I pointed to, gleaming red upon a lovely reach of water far down the strath, and lighting up the dark pine trees and the hills that o'ertopped them with a glory not their own. It lighted up old Janet's face, too, and her locks of silvery-grey, until her face shone--radiant. "Ah!" she murmured, "that sky bodes a bright to-morrow." So, too, shall the sunset of your life and of mine be, dear reader, if our lives are spent in the discharge of duty--be it high, be it low--and if our hearts are ever brightened with a hope that is not of this world, but lies in--the Far Beyond. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The End. 28861 ---- http://www.archive.org/details/daveporterinfarn00straiala Dave Porter Series DAVE PORTER IN THE FAR NORTH Or The Pluck of an American Schoolboy by EDWARD STRATEMEYER Author of "Dave Porter at Oak Hall," "Dave Porter in the South Seas," "Dave Porter's Return to School," "Old Glory Series," "Pan American Series," "Defending His Flag," etc. Illustrated By Charles Nuttall [Illustration: In a twinkling the turnout was upset.--_Page 206._] [Illustration: Publishers mark] Boston Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Published, March, 1908 Copyright, 1908, by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. All rights reserved DAVE PORTER IN THE FAR NORTH Norwood Press BERWICK & SMITH CO. Norwood, Mass. U. S. A. PREFACE "Dave Porter in the Far North" is a complete story in itself, but forms the fourth volume in a line issued under the general title of "Dave Porter Series." In the first volume, entitled "Dave Porter at Oak Hall," I introduced a typical American lad, full of life and vigor, and related the particulars of his doings at an American boarding school of to-day--a place which is a little world in itself. At this school Dave made both friends and enemies, proved that he was a natural leader, and was admired accordingly. The great cloud over Dave's life was the question of his parentage. His enemies called him "that poorhouse nobody," which hurt him deeply. He made a discovery, and in the second volume of the series, entitled "Dave Porter in the South Seas," we followed him on a most unusual voyage, at the end of which he found an uncle, and learned something of his father and sister, who were at that time traveling in Europe. Dave was anxious to meet his own family, but could not find out just where they were. While waiting for word from them, he went back to Oak Hall, and in the third volume of the series, called "Dave Porter's Return to School," we learned how he became innocently involved in a mysterious series of robberies, helped to win two great games of football, and brought the bully of the academy to a realization of his better self. As time went by Dave longed more than ever to meet his father and his sister, and how he went in search of them I leave the pages which follow to relate. As before, Dave is bright, manly, and honest to the core, and in those qualities I trust my young readers will take him as their model throughout life. Once more I thank the thousands who have taken an interest in what I have written for them. May the present story help them to despise those things which are mean and hold fast to those things which are good. EDWARD STRATEMEYER. January 10, 1908. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. ON THE TRAIN 1 II. A ROW IN A RESTAURANT 12 III. OFF THE TRACK 22 IV. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BARN 32 V. BACK TO OAK HALL 42 VI. GUS PLUM'S CONFESSION 51 VII. HOW JOB HASKERS WENT SLEIGH-RIDING 59 VIII. A MYSTERIOUS LETTER 69 IX. DAVE TALKS TO THE POINT 78 X. AN ADVENTURE ON ROBBER ISLAND 87 XI. A HUNT FOR AN ICE-BOAT 97 XII. THE MEETING OF THE GEE EYES 107 XIII. AN INTERRUPTED INITIATION 116 XIV. GOOD-BYE TO OAK HALL 125 XV. DAVE AND ROGER IN LONDON 134 XVI. SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION 143 XVII. ON THE NORTH SEA 152 XVIII. IN NORWAY AT LAST 162 XIX. OFF TO THE NORTHWARD 171 XX. AN ENCOUNTER WITH WOLVES 181 XXI. CAUGHT IN A WINDSTORM 190 XXII. SNOWBOUND IN THE MOUNTAINS 200 XXIII. LEFT IN THE DARK 210 XXIV. THE BURGOMASTER OF MASOLGA 219 XXV. TO THE NORTHWARD ONCE MORE 228 XXVI. DAYS OF WAITING 237 XXVII. DAVE STRIKES OUT ALONE 246 XXVIII. A JOYOUS MEETING 255 XXIX. BEARS AND WOLVES 264 XXX. HOME AGAIN--CONCLUSION 274 ILLUSTRATIONS In a twinkling the turnout was upset (page 206) _Frontispiece_ PAGE Roger shoved it aside and it struck Isaac Pludding full on the stomach 25 "Can't stop, I'm on the race-track!" yelled Shadow 58 The mule shied to one side and sent Dave sprawling on the ice 101 What was left of the camp-fire flew up in the air 120 Once they ran close to a three-masted schooner 160 "Out with the lot of them! I will take the rooms" 229 Dave received a blow from a rough paw that sent him headlong 267 DAVE PORTER IN THE FAR NORTH CHAPTER I ON THE TRAIN "Here we are at the station, Dave!" "Yes, and there is Phil waiting for us," answered Dave Porter. He threw up the car window hastily. "Hi, there, Phil, this way!" he called out, lustily. A youth who stood on the railroad platform, dress-suit case in hand, turned hastily, smiled broadly, and then ran for the steps of the railroad car. The two boys already on board arose in their seats to greet him. "How are you, Dave? How are you, Ben?" he exclaimed cordially, and shook hands. "I see you've saved a seat for me. Thank you. My, but it's a cold morning, isn't it?" "I was afraid you wouldn't come on account of the weather," answered Dave Porter. "How are you feeling?" "As fine as ever," answered Phil Lawrence. "Oh, it will take more than one football game to kill me," he went on, with a light laugh. "I trust you never get knocked out like that again, Phil," said Dave Porter, seriously. "So do I," added Ben Basswood. "The game isn't worth it." "Mother thought I ought to stay home until the weather moderated a bit, but I told her you would all be on this train and I wanted to be with the crowd. Had a fine Thanksgiving, I suppose." "I did," returned Ben Basswood. "Yes, we had a splendid time," added Dave Porter, "only I should have been better satisfied if I had received some word from my father and sister." "No word yet, Dave?" "Not a line, Phil," and Dave Porter's usually bright face took on a serious look. "I don't know what to make of it and neither does my Uncle Dunston." "It certainly is queer. If they went to Europe your letters and cablegrams ought to catch them somewhere. I trust you get word soon." "If I don't, I know what I am going to do." "What?" "Go on a hunt, just as I did when I found my uncle," was Dave Porter's reply. While the three boys were talking the train had rolled out of the station. The car was but half filled, so the lads had plenty of room in which to make themselves comfortable. Phil Lawrence stowed away his suit case in a rack overhead and settled down facing the others. He gave a yawn of satisfaction. "I can tell you, it will feel good to get back to Oak Hall again," he observed. "You can't imagine how much I've missed the boys and the good times, even if I was laid up in bed with a broken head." "You'll get a royal reception, Phil," said Dave. "Don't forget that when you went down you won the football game for us." "Maybe I did, Dave, but you had your hand in winning, too, and so did Ben." "Well, if the fellows---- Say, here comes Nat Poole." Dave lowered his voice. "I don't think he'll want to see me." As Dave spoke, a tall, fastidiously dressed youth came down the car aisle. He was not bad-looking, but there was an air of dissipation about him that was not pleasant to contemplate. He wore a fur-trimmed overcoat and a cap to match, and heavy fur-lined gloves. "Hello!" he exclaimed, on catching sight of Phil Lawrence. "Going back to the Hall, eh?" "I am, and you are going back too, Nat, I suppose." "Yes," drawled Nat Poole. He turned and caught sight of Dave and Ben. "Humph!" he muttered, and without saying more continued on his way down the aisle and through to the next car of the train. "He's real sociable, he is," observed Ben Basswood, with a grin. "I knew he wouldn't want to see me," said Dave. "What's up--more trouble, Dave?" questioned Phil. "Remember, I've been away from Oak Hall so long I've rather lost track of things." "This trouble didn't occur at the school," answered Dave. His face grew a trifle red as he spoke. "It happened back at Crumville," broke in Ben, and winked one eye. "You see, Nat wanted to come to a Thanksgiving party the Wadsworths gave. But Dave told Jessie just what sort Nat was, and she left him out at the last moment. It made Nat furious, and I've heard that he is going to do his best to square up with Dave this winter." "You're mistaken, Ben; I didn't have to tell Jessie anything," corrected Dave. "A fellow named Bangs wanted Nat invited, but Jessie didn't want him and neither did her folks. Bangs got mad over it, and said he wouldn't come either, and he and Nat went to a show instead." "Well, I heard that Nat blamed it on you." "He is apt to blame everything on me--if he can," said Dave, with a short, hard laugh. "It's his style. I suppose he'll even blame me for getting Gus Plum to reform." "Well, you did get Gus to do that," declared Ben, heartily. "It's the best thing I ever heard of, too." "If Plum cuts Poole, what's the dude to do?" asked Phil. "The two used to be great cronies." To these words Dave did not reply. He was wiping the steam from the car window. Now he peered out as the train came to a stop. "Hurrah! Here we are!" he cried, and leaped from his seat. "Where are you going?" demanded Ben. "After Roger. I know he'll be at the station, for I sent him a special message," and away went Dave after Roger Morr, one of his best and dearest schoolmates. The two met on the car platform, and as the train moved off again, both came in to join Ben and Phil. To those who have read the former volumes in this "Dave Porter Series" the boys already mentioned need no special introduction. They were all pupils of Oak Hall, a first-class boarding school located in the heart of one of our New England States. At the academy Dave Porter seemed to be a natural leader, although that place had been at times disputed by Nat Poole, Gus Plum, and others. It was wonderful what a hold Dave had on his friends, considering his natural modesty. Physically he was well built and his muscles were those of a youth used to hard work and a life in the open air. Yet, though he loved to run, row, swim, and play games, Dave did not neglect his studies, and only a short time before this story opens had won the Oak Hall medal of honor, of which he was justly proud. In times gone by Dave's enemies had called him "a poorhouse nobody"--something which had caused him a great deal of pain. When a child, he had been picked up alongside of the railroad tracks by strangers and taken to the Crumville poorhouse. At this institution he remained until he was nine years old, when a broken-down college professor named Caspar Potts, who had turned farmer, took him out and gave him a home. At that time Caspar Potts was in the grasp of a hard-hearted money lender, Aaron Poole, the father of Nat Poole, already mentioned, and the outlook soon became very dark for both man and boy. Then came an unexpected turn of affairs, and from that moment Dave's future seemed assured. As related in my first volume, "Dave Porter at Oak Hall," the boy called upon Mr. Oliver Wadsworth, a rich manufacturer of that neighborhood. The gentleman had a daughter Jessie, a bright-eyed miss some years younger than Dave. She was waiting to take an automobile ride when the gasoline tank of the machine caught fire. It was plucky Dave who rushed in and, at the peril of his own life, saved the girl from being fatally burned. The Wadsworths were more than grateful, and when Mr. Wadsworth discovered that Caspar Potts was one of his former college teachers, he insisted that both the old man and Dave come to live at his mansion. He took a great interest in Dave, more especially as he had had a son about Dave's age who had died. "The lad must go to some boarding school," said Oliver Wadsworth, and at his own expense he sent Dave to Oak Hall. With Dave went Ben Basswood, a friend of several years' standing. Dave made friends with great rapidity. First came Roger Morr, the son of a United States senator, then Phil Lawrence, whose father was a wealthy ship-owner, Sam Day, who was usually called "Lazy," because he was so big and fat, "Buster" Beggs, "Shadow" Hamilton, and a number of others, whom we shall meet as our story proceeds. For a while all went well with Dave, but then came trouble with Nat Poole, who had come to the Hall, and with Gus Plum, the school bully, and Chip Macklin, his toady. The cry of "poorhouse nobody" was again raised, and Dave felt almost like leaving Oak Hall in disgust. "I must find out who I really am," he told himself, and fortune presently favored him. By a curious turn of circumstances he fell in with an old sailor named Billy Dill. This tar declared he knew Dave or somebody who looked exactly like him. This unknown individual was on an island in the South Seas. "My father's ships sail to the South Seas," Phil Lawrence told Dave, and the upshot of the matter was that Dave took passage on one of the vessels, in company with the ship-owner's son, Roger Morr, and Billy Dill. As already related in the second volume of this series, "Dave Porter in the South Seas," the voyage of the _Stormy Petrel_ proved to be anything but an uneventful one. Fearful storms arose, and Dave and some others were cast away on an uninhabited island. But in the end all went well, and, much to the lad's joy, he found an uncle named Dunston Porter. "Your father is my twin brother," said Dunston Porter. "He is now traveling in Europe, and with him is your sister Laura, about one year younger than yourself. We must return to the United States at once and let them know of this. They mourn you as dead." There was a good deal of money in the Porter family, a fair share of which would come to Dave when he became of age. The whole party returned to California and then to the East, and word was at once sent to Europe, to David Breslow Porter, as Dave's father was named. To the surprise of all, no answer came back, and then it was learned that Mr. Porter and his daughter Laura had started on some trip, leaving no address behind them. "This is too bad," said Dave. "I wanted so much to see them." "We'll get word soon, never fear," replied his uncle, and then advised Dave to finish out his term at Oak Hall, Mr. Porter in the meantime remaining a guest of the Wadsworth family. How Dave went back to Oak Hall, and what happened to him there has already been related in detail in "Dave Porter's Return to School." His enemies could no longer twit him with being a "poorhouse nobody," yet they did all they could to dim his popularity and get him into trouble. "He shan't cut a dash over me, even if he has money," said Nat Poole, and to this Gus Plum, the bully, eagerly agreed. There was likewise another pupil, Nick Jasniff, who also hated Dave, and one day this fellow, who was exceedingly hot-tempered, attempted to strike Dave down with a heavy Indian club. It was a most foul attack and justly condemned by nearly all who saw it, and thoroughly scared over what he had attempted to do, Nick Jasniff ran away from school and could not be found. There had been a number of robberies around Oakdale, where the academy was located, and one day when Dave and his chums were out ice-boating they had come on the track of two of the robbers. Then to his surprise Dave learned that Nick Jasniff was also implicated in the thefts. He knew that Jasniff and Gus Plum were very intimate, and wondered if the bully of the school could be one of the criminals also. At length, one snowy day, he saw Plum leave the Hall and followed the fellow. Plum made for the railroad, where there was a deep cut, and into this cut he fell, just as a train was approaching. At the peril of his life Dave scrambled to the bottom of the opening and drew the bully from the tracks just as the train rolled by. If ever a boy was conquered, it was Gus Plum at that time. At first he could not realize that Dave had saved him. "To think you would do this for me--you!" he sobbed. "And I thought you hated me!" And then he broke down completely. He confessed how he had tried to injure Dave and his chums, but said he had had nothing to do with the robberies. Nick Jasniff had wanted him to go in with the robbers, but he had declined. "I am going to cut Jasniff after this," said Gus Plum, "and I am going to cut Nat Poole, too. I want to make a man of myself--if I can." But it was hard work. A short time after the railroad incident the two robbers were caught and sent to prison, to await trial, and Plum had to appear as a witness for the state and tell how he had been implicated. In the meantime Nick Jasniff ran away to Europe, taking several hundred dollars of the stolen funds with him. Dave thought he had seen the last of the young rascal, but in this he was mistaken, as the events which followed proved. CHAPTER II A ROW IN A RESTAURANT The majority of the boys had been home only for the Thanksgiving holidays. The exception was poor Phil Lawrence, who had been laid up for a number of weeks as the result of a blow on the head while playing a game of football. Phil said he felt as well as ever, but he was somewhat pale and in no humor for anything in the way of roughness. As the train stopped at one station and another along the line, it began to fill up with passengers, including a goodly number of Oak Hall students. At one place Sam Day and Shadow Hamilton came on board, followed by half a dozen snowballs, sent after them by boys who had come to see them off. "Hi! stop that!" cried Sam Day, as he tried to dodge, and just then a snowball meant for his head took a somewhat stout man in the ear. The man uttered a cry of surprise, slipped on the platform of the car, and fell flat, crushing his valise under him. At this a shout of laughter rang out from the depot platform, and the lads standing there lost no time in disappearing. "You--you villains!" roared the stout man when he could catch his breath. "I'll--I'll have you locked up!" "It wasn't my fault," answered Sam Day, trying hard to suppress the grin on his face. "Shall I help you up?" "No," grunted the man, and arose slowly. "Do you know I have a dozen fresh eggs in that valise?" "Sorry, I'm sure." "A dozen eggs!" cried Shadow Hamilton. "Well, I never! Say, that puts me in mind of a story. Once a man bought some eggs that weren't strictly fresh, and----" "Pah! who wants to listen to your stories?" interrupted the stout man. "You had better pay for the eggs that are smashed," and he entered the car in anything but a pleasant humor. Dave had come to the car door to greet Sam and Shadow and conduct them to a seat near his own. The stout man was so upset mentally that he bumped roughly into the youth. "Get out of my way, will you?" grunted the irate passenger. "Excuse me, I didn't know you owned the whole aisle," said Dave, coldly. He did not like the manner in which he had been addressed. "See here, are you another one of them good-for-nothing schoolboys?" bellowed the stout individual. "If you are, I want you to understand you can't run this train--not as far as I am concerned, anyhow." Dave looked at the man for a moment in silence. "You are very polite, I must say," he observed. "I haven't done anything to you, have I?" "No, but you young bloods are all in together. I know you! Last spring I was on the train with a lot of college boys, and they tried to run things to suit themselves. But we fixed 'em, we did. And we'll fix you, too, if you try to run matters here," and with a savage shake of his head the stout man passed down the aisle and dropped heavily into the first vacant seat he reached. "Isn't he a peach?" murmured Sam Day to Dave. "Meekest man I ever saw, and ought to have a monument for politeness." "I hope all his eggs are smashed," said Shadow Hamilton. "He certainly deserves it." "Shouldn't wonder if they are--he came down hard enough," answered Dave. By good luck all the students had seats close to each other, and as the train rolled along they told of their various holiday experiences and discussed school matters. "Just four weeks and then we'll close down for Christmas," said Roger. "We ought to have lots of fun," said Ben. "We can go skating and ice-boating, and we can build a fort----" "And snowball Pop Swingly and Horsehair," interrupted Sam, mentioning the janitor of Oak Hall and the driver for the institution. "Don't forget them or they'll feel slighted." "What's the matter with snowballing Job Haskers?" asked Phil, mentioning a teacher who was anything but popular with the students. "Oh, we'll attend to him, never fear," answered Roger Morr. "Has anybody heard from Plum?" questioned Sam, during a lull in the conversation. "I got a letter from him," answered Dave, seeing that nobody else replied. "He is afraid he is going to have a hard time of it to reform. I hope you fellows will treat him as well as you can." "I shall," said the senator's son, and several nodded. "I think I have always treated him better than he deserved," said Shadow Hamilton. He could not forget what serious trouble the former bully of Oak Hall had once caused him, when Doctor Clay's valuable collection of postage stamps had disappeared. It had been snowing slightly since morning, and now the flakes began to come down thicker than ever. As a consequence the engineer of the train could not see the signals ahead and had to run slowly, so that when the Junction was gained, where the boys had to change for Oakdale, they were half an hour late. "We've missed the connection and must remain here for just an hour and a quarter," declared Dave, after questioning the station master. "We can't get to Oak Hall until after dark." "I move we have something to eat," said Roger. "A sandwich, a piece of mince-pie, and a cup of hot chocolate wouldn't go bad." "Second the commotion!" cried Ben. "All in favor raise their left ear." "Which puts me in mind of a story," said Shadow. "Two men went to a restaurant and ordered----" "Fried snakes' livers on mushrooms," interrupted Dave. "You've told that story before." "No, I didn't, and it wasn't fried----" "I know what he means," said Phil. "It was robins' wings salted in sauerkraut." "It wasn't. This was an order of----" "Blue pumpkin rinds with mackerel sauce," interrupted Sam Day. "Very fine dish. I ate it once, when I was dining at the White House with the President." "It wasn't pumpkin rinds, or anything like it. It was a plain order of----" "Cherry roast, with minced sunflowers?" suggested Roger. "The girls at Vassar dine on 'em regularly, after playing football." "This was a plain everyday order of pork and beans," shouted Shadow, desperately. "And after the men got 'em, what do you think they did? Oh, this is a good one;" and Shadow's eyes began to sparkle. "Found fault, I suppose, because the beans weren't from Boston," said Dave. "No." "Don't keep us waiting, Shadow. Tell the story to a finish," said Phil. "Well, they got the pork and beans----" "Yes." "And they sat down, facing each other----" "All right--fire away," said Sam, as the story-teller paused. "And they began to eat----" "Glad to know they didn't begin to weep," was Roger's soft comment. "And they ate the pork and beans all up," continued Shadow, soberly. And then he stopped short and looked around blankly. "Eh?" "Well, I never!" "Is that all there is to the story?" demanded Sam. "Certainly. You didn't expect they'd buy the beans and throw them away, did you?" asked Shadow, innocently. "Sold that time!" cried Dave, good-naturedly. "Never mind; we'll let Shadow pay for the lunch we're going to have. Come on." "Not on your tintype," murmured the story-teller. "Not unless you pass around the hat and make me treasurer." They found a convenient restaurant and, pushing together two of the tables, sat down in a merry group. The proprietor knew some of them, and nodded pleasantly as he took their orders. Soon they were eating as only happy and healthy schoolboys can eat. "My, but this mince-pie is good!" declared Roger. "I could eat about a yard of it!" "A yard of pie is good," said Dave, with a smile. "Talking about a yard of pie puts me in mind of a story," came from Shadow, who was stowing away the last of a hot roast-beef sandwich. "Hold on, we've had enough!" cried Sam. "If you pile on another like that last one, we'll roll you out in the snow," was Phil's comment. "This is a real story, really it is, and it's a good one, too." "Vintage of 1864, or before Columbus landed?" inquired Ben. "I've never told this before. Some Yale students went into a butcher shop and one of 'em, to be funny, asked the butcher if he'd sell him a yard of mutton. 'Certainly,' says the butcher. 'Fifty cents a yard.' 'All right,' says Mr. Student. 'I'll take two yards.' 'A dollar, please,' says the butcher. 'Here you are,' says the student, and holds up the money. Then the butcher takes the bill, puts it in his cash drawer, and hands out--six sheep feet." "Very old and musty," was Dave's comment. "Washington told that to Cæsar when the two were planning to throw Socrates into Niagara." And then a laugh went up all around. The boys were just finishing their lunch when the door opened and a stout man walked in. He was covered with snow, and looked anything but happy. "Our friend of the smashed eggs," whispered Sam to Dave. "Wonder if he has cleaned out his valise yet." The man sat down at a side table and ordered several things. Then he happened to glance around, noticed the students for the first time, and scowled. "Humph! what you fellows doing here?" he growled. "Haven't we a right to come here?" demanded Dave, for the man was looking straight at him. "Shouldn't think the proprietor would want such gay larks as you here." "I shouldn't think he'd want such a grunt as you here," retorted Sam Day. "Hi! now, don't you talk to me that way!" roared the stout man. "I want you to understand I am a gentleman, I am." "See here, we can't have any quarreling in here," said the restaurant proprietor, coming forward. "Some of them fellows knocked me down on the train and smashed a valise full of eggs on me, Mr. Denman." "We did nothing of the sort," answered Sam. "He fell on the icy platform of the car and right on top of his valise." "And then he got up and bumped into me," added Dave. "He was very impolite, to say the least." "Look here!" roared the stout man, "I want you to understand----" "Wait a minute," interrupted Amos Denman, the restaurant keeper. "Isn't your name Isaac Pludding?" "Yes." "Then you are the man who caused the trouble at Mr. Brown's restaurant last week. I know you. Some time ago you were in here, and nothing suited you. I don't want to serve you, and you can go elsewhere for your meal." "Don't want to sell me anything?" snarled Isaac Pludding. "Not a mouthful. And, let me add, I consider these young men gentlemen, and I won't have them annoyed while they are in my place." "Oh, all right, have your own way," snarled the stout man. "I'll take my money elsewhere, I will!" He glared at the students. "But I'll get square some day for this--don't forget that!" And shaking his head very savagely, he stormed out of the restaurant, banging the door after him. CHAPTER III OFF THE TRACK "Well, if he isn't the worst yet," was the comment of the senator's son. "I hope he isn't waiting for that train," said Shadow. "I don't want to see any more of him." "Pooh! who's afraid?" asked Phil. "I guess we can make him keep his distance." "I thought I knew him when he came in, but I wasn't sure," said the restaurant keeper. "The man who runs the hotel, Mr. Brown, had a lot of trouble with him because he wouldn't pay his bill--said it was too high. Then he came here once and said the meat wasn't fresh and the bread was stale and sour. I came close to pitching him out. Don't let him walk over you--if he does take your train." "No danger," answered Dave. He had not yet forgotten the rude manner in which Isaac Pludding had shoved him. It was soon time for the Oakdale train to arrive, and the students walked back to the depot. The snow was over a foot deep and still coming down steadily. The depot was crowded with folks, and among them they discovered Isaac Pludding, with his valise and a big bundle done up in brown paper. "He certainly must be waiting for the train," said Dave; and he was right. When the cars came to a stop the stout man was the first person aboard. The students entered another car and secured seats in a bunch as before. "By the way, where is Nat Poole?" asked Roger, suddenly. "I didn't see him get off the other train." "He got off and walked towards the hotel," answered Phil. "I suppose he feels rather lonesome." "That can't be helped," said Sam. "He makes himself so disagreeable that nobody wants him around." Just as the train was about to start a boy leaped on the platform of the car our friends occupied, opened the door, and came in. It was Nat Poole, and he was all out of breath. He looked for a seat, but could find none. "They ought to run more cars on this train," he muttered, to Roger. "It's a beastly shame to make a fellow stand up." "Better write to the president of the railroad company about it, Nat," answered the senator's son, dryly. "Maybe there is a seat in the next car," suggested Phil. Nat Poole shuffled off, looking anything but pleased. Hardly had he gone when several came in from the car ahead, also looking for seats. Among them was Isaac Pludding. He had had a seat near a door, but had given it up to look for something better, and now he had nothing. He glanced bitterly at the students as he passed, then came back and leaned heavily against the seat Dave and Roger were occupying. In doing this he almost knocked Dave's hat from his head. "I'll thank you to be a little more careful," said Dave, as he put his hat into place. He felt certain that Isaac Pludding had shoved against him on purpose. "Talking to me?" growled the stout man. "I am. I want you to stop shoving me." "I've got to stand somewhere." "Well, you quit shoving me, or you'll get the worst of it," answered Dave, decidedly. At that moment the car lurched around a curve and Isaac Pludding bumped against Dave harder than ever. Thoroughly angry, the youth arose and faced the stout man. "If you do that again, I'll have you put off the train," he said. "That's right, Dave, don't let him walk over you," added Roger. "If he doesn't know his place, teach it to him," was Phil's comment. "Have me put off the train?" cried Isaac Pludding. "I'd like to see you do it! I want you to know I am a stockholder of this line." "Then it's a shame you don't provide seats for all your passengers." "That's true, too," remarked a gentleman who was standing close by. "I don't believe he owns more than one share of stock," observed Sam. "And that he most likely inherited from his great-granduncle." "I own five shares!" howled Isaac Pludding. "And I want you to know----" What he wanted the boys to know they never found out, for at that moment the train gave another lurch. It came so suddenly that the stout man was taken completely from his feet and sent sprawling in the aisle on his back. A valise from a rack over a seat came tumbling down, and, not to get it on his head, Roger shoved it aside and it struck Isaac Pludding full on the stomach, causing him to gasp. [Illustration: Roger shoved it aside and it struck Isaac Pludding full on the stomach.--_Page 25._] The boys uttered a shout of laughter, and many other passengers joined in. The floor of the car was wet from snow, and when Isaac Pludding scrambled up he was covered with dirt. Dave caught up the valise and turned it over to Sam, to whom it belonged. "Who threw that valise on me?" demanded the stout man, eyeing the boys in rage. To this there was no answer. "I guess you threw it," went on Isaac Pludding, and caught Dave by the arm. "Let go of me," said Dave, eyeing the man steadily. "I did not throw it. Let go." Isaac Pludding wanted to argue the matter, but there was something in Dave's manner that he did not like. He dropped his hold and drew back a little. "Don't you dare to shove me again--not once," continued the youth. "If you do you'll regret it. I have stood all from you that I am going to stand." "Oh, you're no good," muttered the stout man, lamely, and passed on to the end of the car. The train was coming to a halt at a place called Raytown. They were now but eight miles from Oakdale, and the students began to wonder if anybody would be at that station to meet them. "If Horsehair comes down with the carryall, he'll have all he can do to get through the snow," said Dave. "Perhaps he'll come down with four horses," suggested Roger. "One thing is certain, Doctor Clay will see to it that we get to Oak Hall somehow," said Ben. "What a rickety old railroad this side line is!" declared Phil, as the car gave several lurches. "It's a wonder they don't fix the track." "Not enough traffic to make it pay, I fancy," answered Dave. "They carry more milk and cattle than they do passengers." It was growing dark and still snowing briskly. The car was cold, and more than one passenger had to stamp his feet to keep them warm. On they plunged, through the snow, until of a sudden there came a lurch and a jerk and then a series of bumps that caused everybody to jump up in alarm. Then the train came to a stop. "What's the matter now?" "I think we must be off the track." "It's a wonder the train didn't go over." "It couldn't go over, for we are down in a cut." As one end of the car was up and the other down, the boys knew something serious was the matter. Taking up their hand baggage, they followed some of the passengers outside and jumped down in the snow. It did not take long to learn the truth of the situation. A turnout on the track had become clogged with ice, and the locomotive and two cars had jumped the track and bumped along the ties for a distance of two hundred feet. Nobody had been hurt, and even the train was not seriously damaged, although one pair of car-trucks would have to be repaired. "I don't believe they can get the cars and the locomotive back on the track right away," said Dave. "They'll have to have the wrecking train and crew down here." When appealed to, the conductor said he did not know how soon they would be able to move again. Probably not in three or four hours, and maybe not until the next morning. "I'll have to walk back to Raytown and telegraph to headquarters," he explained. "We are in a pickle, and no mistake," was Roger's comment. "I must say I don't feel like staying on the train all night--it's too cold and uncomfortable." In the group of passengers was Isaac Pludding, storming angrily at everything and everybody. "It's an outrage!" he declared, to a bystander. "I must get to Oakdale by seven o'clock. I've got a business deal for some cattle I must close. If I don't get there, somebody else may buy the cattle." "I hope he gets left," said Phil, softly. "So do I," returned Dave. "If we could only hire a big sleigh and some horses, we might drive to Oakdale," suggested Ben. "Hurrah, that's the talk!" cried Dave. "There must be some farmhouse near here." "Say, if you can get a sleigh, I'll pay my share, if you'll take me along," put in Nat Poole, eagerly. He hated to think of being left behind. "All right, Nat, I'm willing," said Dave, generously. "We've got to find the sleigh first," added the senator's son. "And see if we can get horses enough to pull it," said Ben. "Some farmers won't let their horses out in such a storm as this--and you can't blame 'em much, either." "If we can't get a sleigh, perhaps we can stay at some farmhouse all night," suggested Sam. All of the party climbed through the snow to the top of the railroad cut and then looked around for some buildings. "I see a light!" cried Phil, and pointed it out, between some bare trees. "It's a house; come on," replied Dave, and set off without delay, the others following. "Who knows but that somebody else may want to ride, and if so, we want to be first to get a sleigh." It was rather a toilsome journey to the farmhouse. Between them and the place were a barn and a cow-shed, and just as they passed the former there arose a fierce barking, and three big black dogs came bounding toward the students. "Look out! The dogs will chew us up!" yelled Nat Poole, in terror, and started to retreat. "Down!" called out Dave, who was still in advance. "Down, I say! Charge!" But instead of obeying, the big dogs continued to approach until they were within a dozen feet of the students. Then they lined up, growled fiercely, and showed their teeth. "Let us get into the barn," suggested Roger, and flung open a door that was handy. Into the building they went pell-mell, Dave being the last to enter. One dog made a dart at the youth's leg, but Dave gave him a kick that sent him back. Then the door was slammed shut and latched, and the students found themselves in utter darkness. "Wonder if they can get in any other way?" asked Phil, after a second of silence, during which they heard the dogs barking outside. "I doubt if any of the doors are open in this storm," answered Shadow. "Let us get up in--in the loft!" suggested Nat Poole. He was as white as the snow outside and his teeth were chattering from something else besides the cold. "That's a good idea," said Dave. "But we must have a light to learn where the loft is. Anybody got a match?" Nobody had such an article, and a groan went up. Nat Poole was appealed to, for the others knew he had been smoking on the train. "My matchbox is empty," said he. "I am going to hunt for the loft ladder in the dark." "Be careful, or you may run into some troublesome horse," cautioned Dave. The boys moved slowly around in the dark. They could hear the sounds of several horses feeding and the barking of the dogs. Then, quite unexpectedly, came the cracking of a board, a yell of alarm from Nat Poole, and a loud splash. "Help! I am drowning! Save me!" CHAPTER IV WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BARN "Nat has fallen into the water!" "Where is he? I can't see a thing." "He must have gone down in some cistern." These and other cries rang out, and all of the boys of Oak Hall were filled with consternation. Dave had located the splash fairly well, and as quickly as he could he felt his way in that direction. "Nat, where are you?" he called out. "Here, down in a cistern! Help me out, or I'll be frozen to death." Dave now reached the edge of the cistern. Two of the boards which had covered it had broken, letting Nat down quite unexpectedly. Fortunately there was only three feet of water in the cistern, so there was no fear of drowning. But the water was icy and far from agreeable. As Dave leaned down to give Poole his hand, the door of the barn was flung open and a farmer strode in, a lantern in one hand and a stout stick in the other. The man held the light over his head and looked around suspiciously. "Wot yeou fellers doin' here?" he demanded. "Come here with the light--one of our party has fallen into the cistern!" cried Dave. "Into the cistern, eh? Mebbe it serves him right. Ain't got no business in my barn," answered the farmer, as he came closer. "We ran in because your dogs came after us," explained Roger. "An' where did yeou come from? Ye don't belong around here, I know." "We came from the train--it's off the track," said Dave. "But help us get this boy out first and then we'll explain." "Train off the track? Well, I snum!" cried the farmer. Then he set down the lantern and aided in bringing Nat Poole to the flooring of the barn. "Putty cold, I'll bet a quart o' shellbarks," he added, grinning at the lad's wet and shivering figure. "Can't we get him into the house by the fire?" asked Ben. "We'll pay you for your trouble." Now if there was one thing Shadrach Mellick loved, it was money, and at the mention of pay he was all attention. He asked a few questions, and then led the way out of the barn and towards his house. The dogs wanted to follow, but he drove them back. "Their bark is worse nor their bite," he explained. "They wouldn't hurt yeou very much." Then he asked about the train, and the students gave him the particulars of the mishap. In the meantime Mrs. Mellick bustled around and got Nat Poole some dry clothing and allowed him to change his garments in a side room that chanced to be warm. The boys soon learned that Shadrach Mellick owned a sleigh large enough to accommodate the entire party, and also four good, strong horses. For ten dollars he agreed to take them to Oak Hall, stopping at Oakdale on the way, to see if the school sleigh was waiting for them. "The sooner we start the better," said Dave. And then he added in a whisper to Roger and Phil: "If we don't, some other passengers from the train may come up here and offer him more money for his turnout." "Let us pay him part and bind the bargain," suggested the senator's son. "I'll do it," answered Dave, and gave Shadrach Mellick two dollars. "Good enough--thet binds the bargain," said the close-fisted farmer. Nat Poole was a sight to behold in a well-worn suit several sizes too big for him, and the boys could not help but laugh when he made his appearance. "That's a real swagger suit, Nat!" cried Sam Day. "Won't you give me the address of your tailor?" "Nat can't do that," added Ben. "He wants the artist all to himself." "Which puts me in mind of a story," broke in Shadow Hamilton. "A countryman went into a clothing store to buy a suit and----" "Wow!" came from several of the students in a chorus. "That story is a hundred and fifty years old." "It's full of moth-holes, Shadow." "It isn't--I've only told it about----" "Two hundred and eleven times," finished Dave. "Shadow, you really must get a new joke-book to read." "Never mind my clothing," grumbled Nat Poole. "I couldn't help it that I fell in the cistern. The farmer had no right to cover it with rotten boards." "Yeou had no right to be in the barn," answered Shadrach Mellick, with a grin. "Howsomever, we'll let it pass. I'm satisfied ef yeou air." The sleigh was soon ready, and the students bundled in, making themselves as comfortable as possible. Nat Poole's wet clothing was placed in a sack and tied on behind. Then the farmer mounted to the front seat. "All ready?" he queried. "All ready--let her go!" sang out several of the lads. At that moment the dogs began to set up another bark, and then came a call from the darkness. "Hi, there, wait a minute!" "Who is that?" questioned Dave. "Hullo, if it isn't the stout man!" It was Isaac Pludding, true enough. He had been walking rapidly and was nearly out of wind. "Whe--where are you going?" he panted, to the farmer. "Goin' to take these chaps to Oakdale." "That is where I want to go." Isaac Pludding glared at the students. "I don't like to ride with those boys, but I suppose I can stand it. Got room for another passenger? I suppose they told you how the train broke down." "They did," answered Shadrach Mellick. "Reckon I can carry one more," he added. "But yeou'll have to pay me. These boys are paying me ten dollars for the trip." "How much do you want?" demanded Isaac Pludding. "About a dollar, I guess." "It's enough, but I'll go you," answered the stout man, and prepared to climb into the big sleigh. As soon as Isaac Pludding appeared, Dave held a whispered conversation with Roger and some of the others. Now he turned to Shadrach Mellick. "Excuse me, Mr. Mellick, but we don't propose to take another passenger," he said, decidedly. "At least, not this man." "No?" "No, sir. We hired this sleigh for ourselves alone." "And paid part of the money to bind the bargain," added Phil. "What! do you mean to say I can't ride if I want to?" cried the stout man, as unreasonable as he had been on the train. "You can't ride with us," said Roger. "What do you say?" asked Isaac Pludding of the farmer. Shadrach Mellick scratched his head. "A bargain is a bargain, Mr. Mellick," said Dave, hastily. "We hired this sleigh, and that is all there is to it." "That is true, but--er----" "Wouldn't you rather earn ten dollars than one or two?" asked Ben. "If that man is to ride we won't." "So say we all of us!" came from a number of the others. "Then I can't take yeou," said the farmer to Isaac Pludding. "These young fellers come fust." "It's an outrage!" cried the stout man. "I'll--I'll have the law on you for it." "Guess yeou air a fool," muttered Shadrach Mellick, in disgust. "Git alang there, ye lazy critters!" And with a crack of his whip he sent the double team on their way, leaving Isaac Pludding standing by the gateway, shaking his fist at the vanishing students. "He is mad now, if he never was before," observed Phil. "I wonder if we'll see any more of him," said Ben. "I don't want to see him again," answered Dave. The wagon-road to Oakdale did not run near the railroad, so they saw nothing of the train passengers as they moved along. Luckily the snowstorm was letting up, so the ride was not as disagreeable as they had anticipated. In spite of the delay the boys were in excellent spirits, the single exception being Nat Poole, who sat huddled in a seat corner, saying nothing. The boys sang songs, told funny stories, and "cut up" generally, and thus, almost before they knew it, they drew up alongside of the railroad station at Oakdale. There was no turnout there to meet them, and from the station master they learned that Jackson Lamond, the Hall driver, had been down with the carryall, but had gone back when he had learned that the train had broken down and would not arrive until morning. "Well, it doesn't matter," said Dave. "We've hired our driver to take us to the Hall, anyway." "All hands off for a hot soda!" cried Phil, as they rounded the drug-store corner, and the sleigh was stopped and they rushed in to get the refreshment. They treated Shadrach Mellick to two glasses, which put the old farmer in fairly good humor. "I don't blame ye for not wanting thet man," said he, after he had heard their story about Isaac Pludding. "Guess he's about as mean as they make 'em." "He said he had some cattle deal on in Oakdale," said Dave. "Perhaps you know something about that?" "Oh, mebbe I do. There's a city consarn buying cattle up here, now--started last fall. They're tryin' to do old Joe Parker out o' his bus'ness. Mebbe this fat feller is the city company's agent. If he is, old Joe Parker won't want him up here." "Where does Joe Parker live?" asked Dave, with interest. "We'll pass his house in a minit. There it is--over yonder, by the willer trees." "Let me off a minute at that place," went on Dave. "That's the talk!" cried Roger, catching Dave's idea. "We'll put a spoke in Pludding's wheel--if he is the rival cattle dealer." Arriving at the Parker cottage, Dave and Roger leaped down in the snow and knocked on the door. A heavy-set and rather pleasant-looking man answered their summons. "Is this Mr. Joseph Parker?" asked Dave. "That's my handle, lad. What can I do for you? Will you come in?" "No, Mr. Parker--I haven't time. I wanted to ask you, do you know a Mr. Isaac Pludding?" At this question the brow of Joe Parker darkened. "I certainly do." "He is working for some opposition in the cattle line, isn't he?" "Yes, and trying his best to do me out of my little income," was the grumbled-out answer. "Well, I thought I might do you a favor," went on Dave, and then told of his meeting with the cattle agent, and of how Pludding was trying to reach Oakdale without delay. "Is that possible!" cried Joseph Parker. "If it is, I'll have to get a hustle on me, I'm thinking. I told Farrington I'd let him know about those cattle to-day or to-morrow. I'll go right over and close the deal now--before Pludding gets here. It's Farrington's cattle he is after. I am very much obliged to you." "You are welcome," said Dave. "I only hope you get the better of the fat man," added the senator's son; and then he and Dave went back to the sleigh, and the journey to Oak Hall was resumed. CHAPTER V BACK TO OAK HALL As my old readers know, Oak Hall was an up-to-date structure built of brick and stone. Its shape was that of a broad cross, with its front facing the south. On that side, and to the east and west, were the classrooms, while the dining-hall and kitchen and laundry were on the north. Around the school was a broad campus, running down to the Leming River in the rear. Great clumps of oaks were scattered around, giving to the institution its name. "Hurrah! I see the school!" cried Sam Day, who sat in front with the sleigh driver. "So do I!" cried Roger. "Boys, let's give them a song when we drive up!" suggested Dave. "It will prove that we are not quite frozen to death." "Right you are," responded Shadow Hamilton. "Now then, all together!" And he started up the school song, sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne": "Oak Hall we never shall forget, No matter where we roam, It is the very best of schools, To us it's just like home. Then give three cheers, and let them ring Throughout this world so wide, To let the people know that we Elect to here abide!" This was sung with great gusto and immediately following came the well-known Hall rally: "Baseball! Football! Oak Hall! Has the call! Biff! Boom! Bang! Whoop!" "That's the way to do it!" sang out Dave, and then, as the sleigh drew up to the front door of the academy, he started some doggerel also sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne" and just then becoming popular: "We're here because we're here because We're here because we're here! We're here because we're here because We're here because we're here! We're here because we're here because We're here because we're here! We're here because we're here because-- _We're nowhere else just now!_" The boys sang as loudly as they could, and kept it up until the front door of the Hall opened and Job Haskers appeared, attired in a dressing-gown and wearing slippers. "Here! here! stop that racket!" cried the teacher who could never see any fun in anything. "Do you want to awaken the entire Hall?" "Oh, no, Mr. Haskers; we only thought we'd let you know that we had arrived," answered Dave, sweetly. "Well, there's no need to act like a lot of hoodlums," growled Job Haskers. "I thought you were all storm-bound at Raytown," he went on. "Lamond brought in word that the train had broken down." "It did break down, but we hired this sleigh to bring us over," answered Roger. "We said the man could put up here over-night and go back in the morning." "Ahem! I don't know about that. We are not in the habit----" began the teacher, when somebody caught him by the arm and came to the front. It was Doctor Clay, also in a dressing-gown, and smiling broadly. "How do you do, boys?" he said, cheerily. "Glad to see you! So you thought you couldn't stay away, even if the train did break down? I rather suspected some of you would try to get a sleigh over. Come right in. You must be rather cold--or did the singing keep you warm?" "How do you do, Doctor Clay?" was the answering cry, and all of the boys bounced out of the turnout, ran up the steps, and shook hands. Job Haskers was "left in the cold," so to speak, and stood in the background in disgust. He thought it was "bad discipline" to treat the scholars too good-naturedly. "Hold them down with a rod of iron," was his motto, and the boys knew it only too well. Matters were speedily explained to the master of the school, and he directed Job Haskers to call Lamond and have the horses and the sleigh taken care of, and then told Shadrach Mellick to come in and he would be given a room for the night and his breakfast in the morning. The farmer was paid off and was well pleased over the treatment received. "You appear to be the only one who has suffered," said Doctor Clay to Nat Poole. "But a good night's sleep will probably fix you up, and the housekeeper can look after your clothing." "I have plenty of other clothing in my trunk," answered Poole, and then went off to the dormitory he occupied with Gus Plum and a number of others. Dave and his chums occupied Dormitories Nos. 11 and 12, and there they found several of the other students awaiting them, including Luke Watson, who was noted as a singer and banjo-player, Bertram Vane, always called "Polly," because his manner was so girlish, and little Chip Macklin, who had been the school sneak but who had now turned over a new leaf. "It does my heart good to set eyes on you fellows again!" cried Luke Watson. "If it wasn't so late I'd get out my banjo and sing a song in your honor." "Yes, and have old Haskers up here, giving us extra work for to-morrow," answered Ben. "No, thank you, Luke, not so early in the season, please." "Delighted to see you all," lisped Polly Vane. "I trust you all had a real nice time." "I certainly did," answered Dave. "How about you, Polly? Did they invite you to any molasses-pulls or pink teas?" "Oh, I had a glorious time, Dave. My two cousins visited us--splendid girls--and they had some other girls come in, and we----" "All played blindman's-buff and hunt-the-slipper," finished Sam. "Wasn't that too delicious for anything!" and he said this in such a feminine tone that everybody but Polly laughed. The girlish student looked a bit doubtful, but was not offended. The cold ride had made the boys sleepy, and all were glad to undress and go to bed. Dave was tired out, having put in an extra-long day, and the moment his head touched the pillow he sailed off into the land of dreams and did not awaken until the morning bell was clanging in his ears. The storm had passed away, and outside it was as clear as crystal. The sun shone brightly, and this helped to put all the boys in good humor, for a gray day at Oak Hall was not to their liking. All were soon dressed, and Dave, Roger, and Phil started to go below together. In the upper corridor they came face to face with Gus Plum, the former bully. Plum looked rather pale and thin and his eyes were somewhat sunken. That the exposure of his wrongdoings had caused him much worry there could be no doubt. "How do you do, Gus?" said Dave kindly, and stepping closer he shook a hand that was almost as cold as ice. Phil and Roger merely nodded. "Oh, I'm pretty well," answered Gus Plum. "How are you?" "First-rate--that is, I would be if I could only get some word from my father and sister." "It's too bad that you don't get some kind of message." Plum lowered his voice. "I'd like to see you alone this noon or to-night. I--er--want to talk something over with you," he whispered. "All right, Gus--I'll try to see you this noon," replied Dave, in a low tone; and then all the students passed down to the dining-hall. "Plum has certainly got something on his mind," was Roger's comment. "Well, that exposure was a terrible thing for him," returned Phil. "Of course what he did wasn't as bad as what was done by Nick Jasniff and those two robbers, but it was bad enough. I'd hate to have such a black mark against my name." The Thanksgiving holidays had been rather short, and those pupils who lived a long distance from Oak Hall had remained at that institution; consequently the routine of studies was taken up that day without much trouble. Fortunately Dave was now placed under Andrew Dale, the first assistant, a teacher loved by all the scholars. "I know I shall learn faster than ever," said Dave to Roger. "Mr. Dale knows just how to bring out all there is in a fellow." "I wish the doctor would get rid of old Haskers," returned the senator's son. "I simply can't bear him." "Haskers is under contract, so I've been told, Roger. Maybe he'll be dropped when the contract runs out." Just before the bell rang for the morning session Shadrach Mellick drove off in his big sleigh. The schoolboys gave him a parting salute of snowballs which the farmer tried in vain to duck. "Hi, yeou!" he roared. "Want to knock the top of my head off? Stop it!" And then, to escape his tormentors, he whipped up his horses and dashed out of the Hall grounds at top speed. It was the last the boys saw of him for a long time. It was not until after the day's sessions were over that Dave got a chance to see Gus Plum alone. The two met in the upper hallway and walked to the dormitory the former bully occupied, and Plum locked the door. "Sit down, Dave, I want to talk to you," said Plum, and motioned Dave to the easiest chair the dormitory contained. Then he sank on the edge of a bed close by. "All right, Gus, fire away," answered Dave, and he wondered what was coming next. "I--er--I don't know how to say it--how to begin," stammered the former bully, and his face showed a trace of red in it. "But I've made up my mind to speak to you, and ask your advice. You saved me from a terrible disgrace, Dave, and I know you'll tell me the best thing to do." "What about?" "Well--about everything. First of all, about staying here. At first I thought I could do it--that I could face the crowd and live it down. But now--the way some of the boys treat me--and look at me--and the remarks made behind my back! Oh, Dave, it's terrible,--you can't imagine how hard it is!" And there was a quiver in Gus Plum's voice that meant a great deal. "I am sorry to hear of this, Gus. But you must live it down, there is nothing else to do." "I can go away--my folks are ready to send me to another school." "Don't do it--stay here and fight it out. I know how you feel--I felt that way when they called me 'a poorhouse nobody.'" "Oh, Dave, I did that! I am so sorry now!" "You are bound to win in the end--if you do what is fair and honest. So long as Doctor Clay is willing to keep you, you'd better stay by all means." "Yes, yes, I know, but--but--there is something else." Plum dropped his hands in his face. "I don't know how I am going to tell you, but I want to tell somebody. It's been on my mind ever since it happened." And then, to Dave's amazement, Gus Plum threw himself across the bed and began to sob violently. CHAPTER VI GUS PLUM'S CONFESSION That the former bully of Oak Hall was thoroughly broken-down there could be no doubt, and Dave pitied him from the bottom of his heart. He wondered what Gus Plum would have to say next, and resolved to aid the lad as much as lay in his power. "Come, Gus, you had better tell me your whole story," he said, kindly, and sitting on the bed he took one of the lad's hands in his own. "Well, you know how I promised Doctor Clay I'd turn over a new leaf, and all that," began Plum. "I haven't done it." "Oh, Gus!" "I wanted to--but the force of circumstances, and my own weakness, wouldn't let me. Do you remember how I told you about my financial affairs--losing money on that football game and all that? Well, I learned that I was deeper in debt than I thought I was. I paid what debts I could and then found out that I still owed two men in Oakdale forty dollars. I didn't dare to write home for money, for after that exposure my father said he would only allow me five dollars a month spending money and not a cent more, for the next year. I met one of the men in Oakdale the day before Thanksgiving--after you were away--and he--oh, how can I tell it!--he got me to go to that tavern with him and gamble again, in the hope of winning the money I needed." "And you gambled, Gus? That was too bad." "At first I played cards for small amounts, but then the men treated--they insisted upon my drinking--and then we made the stakes larger, and when I came away, instead of winning back the forty dollars, I found myself owing them eighty-five dollars. And now they say if I do not pay up at once they'll expose me to the doctor and my folks." Gus Plum heaved a deep sigh. "Oh, I wish I was dead!" he sobbed. "Gus, I thought you were going to give up gambling and drinking?" "I was, but those men persuaded me before I was aware. If I ever get out of this you'll never catch me doing it again--never, as long as I live!" "You say you owe them eighty-five dollars?" "Yes." "Do you owe any more than that?" "They say I owe the tavern keeper two dollars. But I don't think so. I didn't order anything." "Have you any money at all?" "Three dollars and a half." "Come to my room." "What for?" "Never mind, come along--before any of the others come up." Wondering what Dave had in mind to do, the former bully of Oak Hall followed Dave to Dormitory No. 12. Here Dave went straight to his trunk, brought out a long flat pocketbook, and began to open it. "Why, Dave, you don't mean to----" began Gus Plum, his eyes opening widely. "Gus, I am going to lend you the money, but only under one condition," said Dave. "Do you mean to say you have that much on hand?" demanded Plum. "Yes, I have exactly a hundred dollars in this pocketbook. It is a special sum that my uncle advised me to keep for emergencies. He says he may go away some time and I may need money before he can send it to me. It has nothing to do with my regular allowance. I will loan you the eighty-five dollars on one condition--no, on two conditions." "What are they?" "The first is, that you give me your word to cut out all drinking and all gambling from now on." "I'll do that readily, Dave." "And the second is, that you remain at Oak Hall and fight your way through in spite of what some of the fellows say. Show one and all that you want to make a man of yourself, and sooner or later they will respect you." "It will be a terribly hard thing to do." "Never mind, Gus, I will help you all I can, and I am sure some of the others will help you, too." For a full minute Gus Plum was silent, looking out of the long window at the gathering darkness of the short winter day. Then he turned again to Dave. "All right, I'll take you up and stay, and I'll do my level best to deserve your kindness, Dave," he said, in a husky voice. "Good! Now here is the money, in five-dollar bills. If you don't mind, I'll go along when you pay those fellows. I want to see that you get a receipt in full from them. As you say you owe them the money, we'll let it go at that, although it's more than likely they cheated you." "Maybe they did, but I can't prove it." With added thanks, Gus Plum took the eighty-five dollars and placed it carefully away in an inner pocket. "I'll write the men a note to meet me Saturday afternoon," said he. "Will that suit you?" "Yes, but don't meet them at the tavern. The depot will be better." "Very well, I'll make it the depot," answered the former bully. He was very humble, and once more Dave had great hopes of his keeping his promises. Some of the other students were now coming up, and Dave brought out some books he had brought along from home, including a fine illustrated work on polar exploration which Jessie Wadsworth had presented to him. She had written his name and her own on the flyleaf, and of this inscription Dave thought a great deal. "I've read a part of it already," he said to Gus Plum. "It's very interesting. Some day I'll let you read it, if you wish." "Thanks, perhaps I will, Dave," said the former bully, and then with a meaning look at Dave he retired. He knew Dave had brought out the book merely in order that the other lads would not ask embarrassing questions. "That is a great book," said Roger, looking it over. "Say, it must be fine to travel in the land of perpetual snow." "Providing you can keep warm," added Phil. "Talking about keeping warm, puts me in mind of a story," began Shadow Hamilton. "Now, if you'll listen I'll tell it, otherwise I won't." "How much to listen?" asked Luke Watson, meekly. "Nothing--this is free, gratis, for nothing." "I mean, what are you going to pay us for listening, Shadow?" "Oh, you go to Jericho!" growled the story-teller of the school. "Well, this is about two men who hired a room in a hotel. It was in the summer-time and the room was very hot. They opened the window on the court, but it didn't let in enough air. In the middle of the night one of the men got up in the dark. 'What you doing?' asked the other man. 'Looking for another window to open,' says the man who was up. Pretty soon he touched a glass and found what he thought was a window opening sideways. 'There, that's fine!' he said. 'It's pretty breezy--guess I'll pull up the cover a little,' said the other man, and then both slept well until morning. When they got up they found that the one fellow had opened the door to an old bookcase in a corner." "Very breezy story," was Roger's comment. "Quite a refined air about it," remarked Ben. "How did opening the bookcase make the room cooler?" demanded Dave, innocently. "Why, it didn't. The man thought----" "But you said he was cooler. He even pulled up the cover on the bed!" "Certainly. He got the impression----" "Who?" "The man. He thought----" "How could he think if he was asleep, Shadow?" "I didn't say he thought in his sleep. I said----" "Well, he went to bed anyhow, didn't he?" "Of course. But when he opened the bookcase door----" "Oh, I see, it was a refrigerator in disguise. Why didn't you tell us that before,--how the block of ice fell out on the man's left front toe and injured his spine so he couldn't sing any more?" finished Dave, and then a laugh arose, in the midst of which Shadow made a playful pass as if to box Dave's ear. "The next time I have a good story like that to tell I'll keep it to myself," he grumbled. To change the subject, some of the boys asked Luke Watson to give them a song. Luke was willing, and getting out his banjo, tuned up, and soon started a ditty about "A Coon Who Lived in the Moon," or something of that sort. Then he began a breakdown, and, unable to resist, Sam Day got up and began to dance a step he had learned from his father's coachman at home. "Good for you, Sam!" cried Dave. "That's fine!" "Sam, you ought to join the minstrels," added Roger, and began to keep time with his hands, "patting juba" as it is termed down South. Not to be outdone by Sam, Ben joined in the dance, and several lads began to "pat juba" as loudly as possible. Growing very enthusiastic, Ben leaped over a bed and back. Then Shadow Hamilton caught up a chair and began to gallop around, horseback fashion. The chair caught in a stand, and over it went, carrying a lot of books and poor Polly Vane with it. "Gracious, this won't do," murmured Dave, as he set to work to pick up the books. "Hi, stop that racket, Shadow!" he called out. "Do you want to get us all into trouble?" "Can't stop, I'm on the race-track!" yelled Shadow. "This is the last quarter. Bet I win!" and around the dormitory he spun again. This time he knocked over little Chip Macklin, sending him sprawling. "Say, let up!" called out Roger, and catching up one of the books he took aim at Shadow. "If you don't stop I'll throw this at your head." "Can't stop--let her go--if you dare!" called back Shadow. Hardly had he spoken when the senator's son let the volume drive. As he did so the dormitory door opened and Job Haskers appeared. The book missed Shadow, who dodged, and struck the door, sending that barrier up against the teacher's nose so sharply that Job Haskers uttered a shrill cry of mingled pain and alarm. [Illustration: "Can't stop, I'm on the race-track!" yelled Shadow. _Page 58._] CHAPTER VII HOW JOB HASKERS WENT SLEIGH-RIDING On the instant the noise in Dormitory No. 12 came to an end. Shadow Hamilton dropped the chair and sat upon it and Luke Watson swung his banjo out of sight under a bedspread. Dave remained on one knee, picking up the books that had been scattered. "You--you young rascals!" spluttered Job Haskers, when he could speak. "How dare you throw books at me?" He glared around at the students, then strode into the dormitory and caught Dave by the shoulder. "I say how dare you throw books at me?" he went on. "I haven't thrown any books, Mr. Haskers," answered Dave, calmly. "What!" "I threw that book, Mr. Haskers," said Roger, promptly. "But I didn't throw it at you." "Ahem! So it was you, Master Morr! Nice proceedings, I must say. Instead of going to bed you all cut up like wild Indians. This must be stopped. Every student in this room will report to me to-morrow after school. I will take down your names." The teacher drew out a notebook and began to write rapidly. "Who knocked over that stand?" "I did," answered Shadow. "It was an--er--an accident." "Who was making that awful noise dancing?" "I was dancing," answered Sam. "But I don't think I made much noise." "It is outrageous, this noise up here, and it must be stopped once and for all. Now go to bed, all of you, and not another sound, remember!" And with this warning, Job Haskers withdrew from the room, closing the door sharply after him. "Now we are in a mess!" muttered Roger. "Isn't it--er--dreadful!" lisped Polly Vane, who had taken no part in the proceedings, but had been looking over Dave's book on polar explorations. "He'll give us extra lessons for this," grumbled Roger. "Just wait and see." The next day the weather remained fine, and a number of the students went out coasting on a hill running down to the river. Dave and his friends wished they could go along, as both Sam and Ben had big bobs capable of carrying six boys each. But after the school session they had to report to Job Haskers, and he kept them in until supper-time, doing examples in arithmetic. "Say, Dave, we ought to square up for this," said Phil. "See what a lot of fun coasting we've missed." "Just what I say," added the senator's son. "We must get even with old Haskers somehow." "Remember the time we put the ram in his room?" said Sam, with a grin. "Yes, and the time we put the bats in," added Phil. "My, but didn't that cause a racket!" "Let us put something else in his room this time," said Ben. "Oh, that's old," answered Dave. "We ought to hit on something new." "If we could only play some joke on him outside of the academy," said the senator's son. "He is going to Oakdale to-night; I heard him mention it to Mr. Dale." "Did he say when he would be back?" "Yes--not later than eleven o'clock." "Maybe we can have some fun with him on his return," said Dave. "I'll try to think up something." They watched and saw Job Haskers leave the Hall dressed in his best. He drove off in a cutter belonging to Doctor Clay. But he had hardly reached the gateway of the grounds when he turned around and came back again. "Forgotten something, I suppose," said Dave, who had been watching. Job Haskers ran up the steps of the Hall and disappeared. "Come, Roger, quick!" cried Dave. "We'll unhook the horse!" The senator's son understood, and in a trice he followed Dave outside. It was rather dark, so they were unobserved. With great rapidity they unhooked the traces and unbuckled the straps around the shafts. Fortunately the horse did not move. "Wait, we'll fix up the seat for him," said Dave, and lifting the cushion he placed some snow and ice beneath. "That will make things warm for him." "I'll put a cake of ice in the bottom, too, for his feet," said the senator's son, with a grin, and did so, covering it partly with the lap-robe. Then the lads hurried into the school. Soon Job Haskers came from the Hall with a small packet in his hand. The boys watched from some side windows and saw him leap into the cutter. He took up the reins. "Get ap!" he chirped to the horse, and gave a quick jerk on the lines. The steed did as bidden and began to move out of the shafts of the cutter. At first Job Haskers could not believe the evidence of his eyesight. "Hi! hold up!" he yelled. "What the mischief! Who did----" And then his remarks came to a sudden end. He tried to hold the horse back, but could not, and in a twinkling he was dragged over the dashboard and landed head first in the snow of the road. Then the horse, no doubt startled at the unusual proceedings, started off on a trot, dragging the teacher after him. "Whoa, I say! Whoa there!" spluttered Job Haskers. "Whoa!" and he tried to regain his feet, only to plunge down once more, this time on his face. Then he let go the reins and the horse trotted off, coming to a halt near the campus gateway. If ever there was an angry man that individual was Job Haskers. He had intended to make an evening call on some ladies, and had spent considerable time over his toilet. Now his beautiful expanse of white shirt front was wet and mussed up and he had a goodly quantity of snow down his back. "Who did this? Who did this?" he cried, dancing around in his rage. "Oh, if I only catch the boy who did this, I will punish him well for it." He looked around sharply, and at that moment a student chanced to come around the corner of the Hall, on the way to the gymnasium building. Job Haskers leaped towards him and caught him roughly by the shoulder. "Ha! I have you, you young imp!" he cried. "How dare you do such a thing to me! How dare you!" And he shook the boy as a dog shakes a rat. "St--top!" spluttered the pupil, in consternation and alarm. "Stop, I say! I--I---- Oh, Mr. Haskers, let up, please! Don't shake me to pieces!" "Well, I never!" whispered Dave to Phil and Roger. "Who is it?" "Nat Poole." "Oh my! but he's catching it right enough," chuckled the senator's son. "Will unharness my horse!" went on Job Haskers. "Will throw me on my head in the snow! Oh, you imp!" And he continued to shake poor Nat until the latter's teeth rattled. "I--I won't stand this!" cried Nat at last, and struck out blindly, landing a blow on the teacher's ear. "Ha! so you dare to strike me!" spluttered Job Haskers. "I--I----" "Let go! I haven't done anything!" roared Nat. "Let go, or I'll kick!" Now, the assistant teacher did not fancy being kicked, so he dropped his hold and Nat Poole speedily retreated to a safe distance. "You unharnessed my horse----" began Job Haskers. "I never touched your horse--I don't know anything about your horse," exploded Nat. "Didn't I catch you?" "I just came from the library. I left a pair of skates in the gym., and I was going to get them. I've been in the library for half an hour," went on the dude of the school. "It's an outrage the way you've treated me. I am going to report it to Doctor Clay." And he started for the front door of the school. "Wait! Stop!" called Job Haskers, in sudden alarm. "Do you mean to say you know absolutely nothing about this?" "No, I don't." "Somebody came out here while I was in the Hall and unharnessed the horse." "Well, it wasn't me, and you had no right to pounce on me as you did," grumbled Nat Poole. "I am going to report it to Doctor Clay." "Stop! I--er--if I made a mistake, Poole, I am sorry for it," said the teacher, in a more subdued tone. "Have you any idea who could have played this trick on me?" "No, and I don't care," snorted the dudish pupil. "I am going to report to the doctor and see if he will allow an innocent pupil to be handled like a tramp." And off marched Nat Poole, just as angry as Job Haskers. "Good for Nat," whispered Phil. "I hope he does report old Haskers." "We must look out that we are not caught," answered Dave. "How funny it did look when Haskers went over the dashboard!" And he laughed merrily. The boys took themselves to a safe place in the lower hallway. They saw Nat Poole come in and march straight for Doctor Clay's office. The master of the Hall was in, and an animated discussion lasting several minutes took place. Then the doctor came out to interview Job Haskers, who in the meantime had caught the horse and was hooking him up once more. "Mr. Haskers, what does this mean?" asked the doctor, in rather a cold tone. "Master Poole says you attacked him and shook him without provocation." "Somebody has been playing a trick on me--I thought it was Poole," was the reply, and the teacher told what had happened. "Just look at that shirt, and my back is full of snow!" The doctor looked and was inclined to smile. But he kept a straight face. "Certainly nobody had a right to play such a trick," said he. "But you shouldn't punish Poole for what he didn't do. You are altogether too hasty at times, Mr. Haskers." "Am I? Well, perhaps; but some of the boys here need a club, and need it badly, too!" "I do not agree with you. They like a little fun, but that is only natural. Occasionally they go a little too far, but I do not look to a clubbing as a remedy." "I wish I could find out who played this trick on me." "Don't you think you owe Poole an apology?" "An apology?" gasped Job Haskers. Such a thing had never occurred to him. "Yes. You are certainly in the wrong." "I'll apologize to nobody," snapped the teacher. "Well, after this you be more careful as to how you attack my students," said Doctor Clay, severely. "Otherwise, I shall have to ask you to resign your position." Some sharp words followed, and in the end Job Haskers drove off feeling decidedly humble. He could not afford to throw up his contract with the doctor, and he was afraid that the latter might demand his resignation. But he was very angry, and the discovery of the ice and snow in the cutter, later on, did not tend to make his temper any sweeter. "I'll find out who did this!" he muttered to himself. "And when I do, I'll fix him, as sure as my name is Job Haskers." But he never did find out; and there the incident came to an end. The boys thought they had had fun enough for one night, and so did not watch for the teacher's return to Oak Hall. CHAPTER VIII A MYSTERIOUS LETTER In the morning mail Gus Plum received a letter postmarked London which he read with much interest. Then he called on Dave. "I've just received a letter I want you to read," he said. "It is from Nick Jasniff, and he mentions you." And he handed over the communication. It was a long rambling epistle, upbraiding Plum roundly for "having gone back on him," as Jasniff put it. The writer said he was now "doing Europe" and having a good time generally. One portion of the letter read as follows: "The authorities needn't look for me, for they will never find me. I struck a soft thing over here and am about seventy pounds to the good. Tell Dave Porter I could tell him something he would like to hear--about his folks--but I am not going to do it. I don't think he'll meet that father of his just yet, or that pretty sister of his either. She'd be all right if she didn't have such a lunkhead of a brother. Tell him that some day I'll square up with him and put him in a bigger hole than he got me into. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have to stay away as I'm doing--not but what I'm having a good time--better than grinding away at Oak Hall." As may be imagined, Dave read this letter with even greater interest than had Gus Plum. What was said about his father and sister mystified him. "Can it be possible that Nick Jasniff has met them?" he said. "To me the letter reads that way, Dave," answered Plum. "He mentions your sister as being pretty and all right, and how could he do that if he hadn't seen her? Yes, I think they must have met." "Then perhaps my folks have been in London all this time--and I didn't know it. Gus, I'd like to copy part of that letter and send it to my uncle." "Very well--and I am going to show the letter to Doctor Clay," answered the former bully of Oak Hall. Dave copied that portion of the letter which interested him and forwarded it to Dunston Porter, along with a communication in which he asked his uncle about taking a trip to London. He said he was tired of waiting and would like to start on a hunt for his father and sister without further delay. After sending the letter he talked the matter over with Roger. "You can't imagine how impatient I am to meet my father and sister," he said. "Why, some days I get so I can hardly fasten my mind on my studies, and I go in for fun just to help me forget what is on my mind." "I can appreciate your feelings, Dave," answered his chum, kindly. "I'd feel the same way if my folks were missing. If you go to London, do you know I'd like first-rate to go with you." "I'd like very much to have you, Roger. But how could you get away?" "Oh, I think I could manage that. My mother thinks I am pushing ahead almost too fast in my studies--the doctor said I was growing too fast and studying too much at the same time. I think she'd be willing for me to take the trip,--and what she says, father always agrees to." "Where are your folks--in Washington?" "Yes, they stay at a hotel there during the time Congress is in session." "Well, I will have to see what my uncle says before I make any move," said Dave; and there the talk came to an end. Gus Plum had written to the men to whom he owed his gambling debt, and they agreed to meet him at the Oakdale depot on Saturday afternoon at four o'clock. They wrote that if he did not pay up at that time in full they would expose him. "I believe they are bluffing," said Dave, after he heard of this. "They will not expose you so long as they think there is any chance of getting more money from you. I wish you could prove that you had been swindled,--then you wouldn't have to pay them a cent." "Well, I can't prove that--although I think it," answered the former bully, with a long sigh. Saturday noon it began to snow, so that the majority of the students remained indoors or spent the time over at the gymnasium. Dave excused himself to his chums and met Gus Plum at a spot agreed upon, and both set off for Oakdale on foot. "I suppose I might have asked the doctor for a cutter," said Plum. "But I was afraid he might ask embarrassing questions." "We can walk it easily enough," answered Dave. "The road is well-broken." "Dave, you are putting yourself out a good deal for me," answered Plum, gratefully. "Somehow, I'd hate to meet those men alone." "They must be scamps, or they wouldn't try to lead a student like you astray." On and on the two boys went, past several places which were familiar to them. The snow did not bother them much, and before long they reached the outskirts of the village. "There are the two men now!" cried Gus Plum, and pointed across the way. "They are not going to the depot," answered Dave. "They are turning down Main Street. Supposing we follow them, Gus?" "I'm willing, but I don't see what good it will do." "Well, it won't do any harm." The two men were burly individuals who had evidently seen better days. Each was shabbily dressed and each had a nose that was suspiciously red. Plum said that one was named Blodgett and the other Volney. "I believe they came here from Hartford," the big youth added. "I wish I had their record from that city." The men turned into a resort that was half tavern and half restaurant. At the doorway they met another burly fellow who had evidently been drinking pretty freely. "Hello, Blodgett!" cried this man. "Glad to see you again. Hello, Volney!" "How are you, Crandall," answered Blodgett, while Volney nodded pleasantly. "What brought you to town?" "Was looking for you two chaps." "Why?" questioned Volney, quickly. "Oh, I've got news that will interest you." "About Sadler?" "Yes." "Tell me about it," demanded Blodgett, hoarsely. "What has he found out?" "A whole lot." "Does he suspect us?" "I don't know as to that. He suspects somebody." "You didn't tell him anything, did you?" asked Volney, catching Crandall by the arm. "No, but he is satisfied that he was swindled. He was going to the Hartford police about it." "Hang the luck!" muttered Blodgett. "Tell us the particulars." "Come inside and I will--it's too cold out here," was the answer; and then the three men entered the tavern. Dave and Gus Plum had not heard all of the talk, but they had heard enough, and each looked at the other inquiringly. "I believe they are thorough rascals," said Dave. "I wish we could hear the rest of what that Crandall has to say." "Come with me--I've been in this building before," answered the former bully of Oak Hall. He led the way to an alley halfway down the block. This ran to the rear of the tavern, where there was a door communicating with a hallway and a back stairs. Under the stairs was a closet filled with discarded cooking utensils. The closet had two doors, one opening into a drinking-room behind the main bar-room of the tavern. Looking through a crack of the door, they saw that the three men had seated themselves, the proprietor of the resort spending his time with some men in front. "Now give us the straight of the story," Blodgett was saying. Thereupon Crandall launched into a tale that took him the best part of ten minutes to relate. From his talk it was clear that a man named Dodsworth Sadler, of Hartford, had met the three men at Albany and gambled with them on three different occasions. Sadler had lost several hundred dollars one night and nearly a thousand the next, and then Blodgett and Volney had come away. Now Sadler had discovered that marked cards were in use at the place he had visited, and he was satisfied that he had been swindled, if not in all the games at least in some of them. "Well, we did him up, that's certain," said Blodgett, with a coarse laugh. "But I don't want him to learn the truth if it can be helped." "No, we want to keep him in the dark--hold him down like that boarding-school chap here," chuckled Volney. "Never mind about that," said Blodgett, sharply. "Got somebody else on the string here, eh?" observed Crandall. "You always were the boys to keep things moving." "Oh, this is only a small affair--mere pocket money," answered Blodgett. At this point the conversation changed, and it came out that Crandall was out of money and wanted a loan of fifty dollars. "We can't give it to you now," said Volney. "But wait till to-night and I'll let you have ten dollars." "And I'll let you have the same," said Blodgett. "We've got to collect a trifle first." "All right. Twenty is little enough, but it will tide me over until I hit my streak again," answered Crandall. And after a little more talk the men arose and prepared to separate. "We've heard enough," whispered Dave to Gus Plum. "Come on," and he led the way out of the building and down the alley. "What do you think?" demanded the former bully, when they were on the street again. "Just as I suspected, Blodgett and Volney are nothing but sharpers. They undoubtedly swindled you. I shouldn't pay them a cent." "But they may expose me to the doctor, Dave." "I don't think they will--not after you talk to them." "I hardly know what to say." "Then suppose you let me do the talking, Gus?" "You?" "Yes, I fancy I know how to handle them," answered Dave, confidently. "Well, I don't want to get into any hole," said the big boy, doubtfully. "You won't get into any hole. When I get through with them, I'm sure they will be only too glad to leave you alone." The two boys talked the matter over, and at last Gus Plum agreed to let Dave conduct the affair as he thought best. Then both walked to the Oakdale depot, there to await the arrival of the two swindlers. CHAPTER IX DAVE TALKS TO THE POINT It was not long before Blodgett and Volney put in an appearance. They had had several glasses of liquor at the tavern, and walked along as if very well satisfied with themselves. "So you are here," said Blodgett, striding up to Gus Plum and holding out his hand. "Shake, my boy!" "I don't care to shake hands with you," replied the former bully of Oak Hall. "Oh, so that's your lay, is it?" sneered the man. "Very well--but I thought you were a better loser." "Let us have this meeting over as soon as possible," put in Volney. "Have you got the money?" Instead of replying, Plum looked at Dave, and then for the first time the two sharpers noticed that the lad they had come to meet was not alone. "Who's your friend? Thought you'd come alone," said Blodgett, somewhat roughly. "I believe your name is Blodgett," remarked Dave, drawing himself up and looking as businesslike as possible. "That's my name, yes. What of it?" "And your name, I believe, is Volney," went on Dave, turning to the second rascal. "Yes. Who are you?" "Never mind that just now. Both of you come from Hartford; isn't that so?" "What if we do?" asked Blodgett. "Some time ago you got this young man to gamble with you, and he lost considerable money. Now you want him to pay up." "Hadn't he ought to pay up?" asked Volney. He was growing uneasy. "He isn't going to pay you a cent." "What's that?" came quickly from Blodgett. "I say he isn't going to pay you a cent, Mr. Blodgett. Is that plain enough for you to understand?" answered Dave, sharply. "Who are you, I'd like to know, to interfere with our dealings!" cried Jack Blodgett. "Perhaps I'll tell you who I am later on. I found out about this just in time, it seems. You came from Hartford, but you have been in Albany lately. While you were in Albany you swindled a man named Dodsworth Sadler out of a large sum of money--at least twelve or fifteen hundred dollars." "Say, look here----" began Blodgett, and his tone became nervous. "You used marked cards, just as you did when you played with this young man. I think when you find yourselves in the hands of the police---- Hi! stop, don't be going in such a hurry!" For, turning swiftly, Blodgett had rushed from the depot. Volney followed him. "They are running away!" cried Gus Plum. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses. "Let us give them a good scare while we are at it," answered Dave, and he ran outside and after the swindlers, who cut across the tracks and made for the freight-house. Here a freight-train was just starting out, and the men hopped aboard and were soon out of sight. "There, I guess you have seen the last of them, Gus," said Dave, when he and the big youth had given up the chase. "Do you really think so?" "I feel sure of it." "Maybe they took you for some officer of the law." "I don't know as to that, but they were thoroughly scared. I don't believe they will ever show their faces near Oakdale again." "But they may write to Doctor Clay." "I shouldn't worry about that, Gus. They will make themselves as scarce as possible, for they will now know that Dodsworth Sadler is on the lookout for them." "Don't you think we ought to let Dodsworth Sadler know about this? I might write him an anonymous letter." "You won't have to, Gus. I'll write him a letter, telling of what I heard. That won't bring you into it at all, and as I had nothing to do with Blodgett and Volney, those fellows can't hurt me." "Oh, Dave, what a head you've got for things!" cried the former bully, admiringly. "I suppose you'll say you simply overheard the talk while you were in Oakdale." "Yes, and I'll add that when the swindlers found out I knew the truth, they jumped on a freight-train and ran away." When the two boys returned to Oak Hall, Gus Plum felt in better spirits than he had for a long time. He returned the money to Dave and thanked him over and over for all he had done. Dave penned the letter to Dodsworth Sadler without delay, and it was posted early Monday morning. "I hope I get a letter from my uncle to-day," said Dave to Roger. But no communication came, for Dunston Porter had gone to Boston on business, and did not return to Crumville for several days. The weather was now clear and bright and the wind had swept a good portion of the river clear of snow. As a consequence many of the boys went out skating, while a few brought out the ice-boats they had constructed. Among the latter affairs was the _Snowbird_, built by two students named Messmer and Henshaw. It was not a handsome craft, but it could make good speed, and that was what the boys wanted. "Come on for a sail, Dave!" called Henshaw, after school-hours on Tuesday. "It's just grand on the river." "I was going skating with Roger and Phil," was the reply. "Otherwise I'd like to go first-rate." "Tell them to come too," said Messmer, a lad who always liked to have company on his rides. The matter was quickly arranged, and Shadow Hamilton was also included in the party. The ice-boat was rather crowded, but that only added to the sport. "Hold tight, everybody!" cried Henshaw, as he raised the sail. There was a good, stiff breeze, and in a minute the _Snowbird_ was bowling along in grand style, the students shrieking their delight as they passed their numerous friends on skates. "Come along and race!" cried Roger, to Sam Day. "Give me a tow and I will," was the merry reply. "Be sure to return when you get back!" called out Ben Basswood, and this remark caused a general laugh. "Do you remember the ice-boat race we had with the Rockville cadets?" said Messmer. "Yes, and the accident," replied Dave. "We don't want to run into anything again." "I say, fellows, let us visit that cabin on the island!" cried Roger. "Maybe we'll find out something more about Pud Frodel and that other fellow." The senator's son referred to a cabin located on a lonely island some distance from Oak Hall. Here it was that the lads had discovered the two robbers with whom Nick Jasniff had been associated, and had given to the authorities the information which had led to the rascals' capture. "I'm willing to go," said Henshaw. "Only we can't stay on the island too long, for we'll have to get back before it gets too dark." As the ice-boat swept along they passed quite a number of boys on skates. Presently they came to a crowd of six, all attired in neat semi-military uniforms. "Hello, Oak Hall!" was the cry. "Hello, Rockville!" "Where are you going with that tub?" "Looking for another Rockville boat to beat!" sang out Henshaw. How he had once won an ice-boat race against the military academy lads is already known to my old readers. "Go along, we're going to build a boat that will leave you away behind," retorted one of the Rockville cadets. "Brag is a good hoss, but Get-there takes the oats!" cried Dave, and then the _Snowbird_ swept out of hearing of the military academy lads. "They didn't like it at all, that we beat them," was Roger's comment. "Wonder if they will try to build a swifter boat?" "Let them come on," answered Dave. "We can build another boat, too, if it's necessary." "Say, their blowing puts me in mind of a story," came from Shadow Hamilton. "Two little boys----" "Oh, Shadow, another?" groaned Messmer, reproachfully. "Let him tell it, it will help to pass the time," remarked Henshaw. "I know it's all about two poor lads who were caught in a snowstorm and had to shovel their way out with nothing but toothpicks." "No, it's about two boys who sold suspension bridges for a living," cried Dave, merrily. "They sold as high as eighteen a day, and----" "Say, if you want to hear this story, say so," demanded Shadow. "These little boys got to bragging what each could do. Says one, 'I kin climb our apple tree clear to the top.' Says the other, 'Huh! I can climb to the roof of our house.' 'Hum,' says the first boy, 'I can climb to the roof of our house, an' it's higher'n yours.' 'No, 'taint.' 'It is so--it's got a cupola on top.' 'I don't care,' cried the other boy. 'Our's is higher. It's got a mortgage on it--I heard dad say so!'" And a smile went the rounds. Not having any other name, the boys had christened the place for which they were bound, Robber Island. It was a lonely spot, rocky in some places and covered with woods and underbrush in others. The shore was fringed with bushes, through which the driven snow had sifted to a depth of two feet and more. "Here we are!" cried Dave, as they came in sight of one end of the island. "Lower the sail, or we'll be sliding into the trees and rocks." They made a safe landing, and then prepared to walk to the cabin, which was some distance away. Henshaw looked doubtfully at the ice-boat. "Think she'll be all right?" he asked, of Messmer. "I think so." "Oh, sure she'll be all right, with the sail down," added Roger. "Wonder if there are any wild animals on this island?" questioned Shadow. "Might be an elephant or two," answered Dave, "or half a dozen royal Bengal tigers." "Quit your fooling, Dave. I reckon you wouldn't want to meet a bear or a wildcat any more than myself." "No bears around here," said the senator's son. "Might be a wildcat though, or a fox. I'm going to get a good stick." Each student provided himself with a stout stick, and then the whole crowd moved forward in the direction of the cabin in the center of the island, never dreaming of the astonishing adventure in store for them. CHAPTER X AN ADVENTURE ON ROBBER ISLAND The way to the lonely cabin was not an easy one. There was no path, and they had to scramble over rough rocks and across fallen trees and through thick masses of brushwood. They forgot about the gully, and only remembered it when they found themselves floundering in snow up to their waists. "For gracious' sake!" cried the senator's son, as he crawled out the best way he could. "I fancied the bottom had dropped out of everything!" "I remember this hollow now," answered Dave. "We haven't got much further to go." It was a clear December day and quite light under the leafless trees. There were a few evergreens scattered about, but not many, and these hung low with their weight of snow. All was intensely silent. "This ought to be lonely enough to suit anybody," observed Henshaw. He turned to Roger. "How would you like to come out here some dark night all alone?" "None of that for me," was the quick answer. "Might meet a ghost," said Dave, with a smile. "Talking of ghosts puts me in mind of a story," said Shadow. "A boy once had to go through a dark woods all alone----" "Shadow wants to get us scared," interrupted Dave. "Oh, Shadow, I didn't think it of you! It's bad enough as it is," he went on, in seeming reproach. "Don't you know this island is haunted by the man who committed suicide here?" "A suicide, Dave?" cried the school story-teller, forgetting all about the tale he had been on the point of relating. "Sure. That man tried to kill his wife and seven children, and then hung himself from a tree not far from here. They say that twice a month his ghost appears." "It's about time for the ghost now," added Roger, scenting fun. "Listen! Didn't I hear a groan!" "Must have been that," went on Dave. "There it is again!" "I--I didn't hear anything," faltered Shadow. He was not an excessively brave lad at the best. "It's getting pretty dark," continued Dave. "That is when the ghost shows itself, so I've been informed. If we---- Look! look!" he yelled, pointing over Shadow's left shoulder. The story-teller gave a leap forward and glanced around hastily. Dave was pointing to a clump of bushes. "Wha--what did you see?" asked Shadow, in a shaking voice. "I don't know. It was tall and white----" "The ghost! The ghost!" yelled Roger. "It's coming for us!" And he began to run back. Shadow gave a scream of terror and started to run also. As if by accident, Dave allowed his foot to trip the boy up, and down went the story-teller of the Hall on his face in the snow. "Hi! hi! Don't leave me behind!" he bawled, as the others all ran. "Don't leave me!" and he scrambled up and tore along through the brushwood as if possessed. The others speedily halted and set up a shout of laughter, at which Shadow looked very sheepish. "I--I only ran for the fun of the thing," he explained, lamely. "I knew all along there wasn't a ghost." "Shadow shall lead the way," said Dave. "Go ahead, old fellow." "I--er--I don't know the path," was the quick excuse. "You go on." And Shadow dropped behind once more and stuck there during the remainder of the trip. The cabin was built of rough logs. It had been put up by some hunters years before, but the sportsmen, owing to the scarcity of game, did not come to the place any more. It was in a dilapidated condition, and the snow had driven in through the broken-out window and open doorway. "Not a very cheerful place," observed Dave, as he led the way inside. "Let us light a torch, so we can see things." They procured several pine sticks and soon had them lit, and holding these aloft surveyed the scene. All was very much as it had been during their former visit. "Nothing new, so far as I can see," was Roger's comment. "Here are some footprints in the snow," came from Messmer. "We didn't make those." "Those are the footprints of some animal!" cried Dave. "Maybe there's a bear here after all." He smiled as he made the remark. "Looks to me more like the tracks of a horse," answered Henshaw. "Maybe somebody came over here from the shore on horseback." "You want to be careful--it may be a wild beast after all," observed Shadow, nervously. At that moment came a queer sound from outside of the cabin, which caused all of the lads to start. Messmer, who had the best of the torches, dropped it, leaving them almost in darkness. "Why, I declare----" began Dave, when a form darkened the doorway and the next instant a big, bony mule entered the old cabin and stood among them. Some of the boys were frightened and started to retreat. "It's only a mule!" cried Dave. "I don't think he'll hurt anybody. But how in the world did he get here?" "His halter is broken," declared Roger. "He must have run away from somewhere." "I know that mule," declared Shadow. "He belongs to Mike Marcy." The man he mentioned was a farmer, living in the Oakdale district. Marcy was a close-fisted fellow who never wanted the schoolboys to have any of his fruit, and Dave, through no fault of his own, had once had considerable trouble with the fellow. "I think Shadow is right," said Dave. "I saw that mule around Marcy's place. If he ran away we ought to take him back to where he belongs." "Perhaps you'd have some fun trying to ride him," suggested Henshaw. "Oh, pshaw! anybody could ride that mule," declared Roger. "Why, riding a mule is as easy as riding a horse. All mules don't love to kick." "Roger shall have the honor of riding him home," said Messmer. "Think of what a reward Mike Marcy will give you," he added, with a grin. "Catch Marcy giving a reward," said Dave, laughing. "Why, he wouldn't fork over so much as a sour apple." "He'd want to charge Roger for the ride." "We can take the mule to the Hall and let Marcy come and get him," suggested Messmer. In a spirit of mischief Shadow had taken his stick and rubbed it over the mule's hind legs. There was a sudden snort and up came the beast's feet. Bang! crack! bang! they sounded on the wall of the dilapidated cabin, and Shadow leaped for his life. "Look out, he's in action!" "Clear the deck for his muleship!" "He'll have the cabin down next!" called out Dave. "Take care!" The mule continued to kick, and, standing at his head, Dave and Roger tried in vain to quiet him. Then of a sudden came a crack of another kind and the wall of the rotted cabin fell outward and the roof began to sag. "Out of this, all hands!" yelled Dave, and let go the mule. Roger did the same, and both ran out through the open doorway. Shadow was already outside, and Messmer and Henshaw started to follow. Then the mule turned, knocking Messmer down, and made a dash for liberty. The cabin swayed and groaned and began to settle rapidly. Henshaw leaped out in the nick of time, one heavy log scraping his shoulder. Messmer was half dazed by the sudden turn of affairs, and before he could arise some of the roof beams began to settle across his back. "Help! help!" he wailed. "The roof is coming down on me!" His cry of assistance struck terror to the hearts of some of his friends, and for the moment they did not know what to do. Dave was the only one of the party who remained cool, and he rushed in and caught hold of one of the falling timbers. "Prop them up!" he called. "Put your sticks under them--anything! If we don't, Messmer may be crushed to death!" Roger came forward first and the others quickly followed, the mule being, for the time, forgotten. They took their heavy sticks and set them up under the falling timbers, and Henshaw rolled in a stone that chanced to be handy. These things kept the roof from coming down further, but poor Messmer was held as if in a vise and could not be extricated. "We've got to pry the logs up a little," said Dave. "Here is a log to work with," and he pointed to one which had fallen out of the side wall. Only one torch remained lighted, and this had to be swung into a livelier blaze, so that they could see. Then they had to start operations with care, for fear they might do more harm than good. "If th--the logs co--come down on me they will ki--kill me!" gasped the unfortunate lad under the ruins. "We'll not let them come down," answered Dave. "Keep perfectly still till I tell you to move." Messmer did as directed, and Dave and the others inserted the loose log under one end of the ruins. A flat stone was used for the fulcrum, and they bore down slowly but steadily until the larger portion of the ruins was raised several inches. "It's coming!" cried Dave. "Don't go too fast. Can you loosen yourself now, Messmer?" "A little. Go a bit higher," was the reply. They went up two inches more, but now the log began to crack, for the strain upon it was tremendous. Messmer heard the ominous sound, and, with a twist, loosened himself and began to crawl forth. Dave caught him by the arms. "Out you come," he said, and gave a strong pull. And out Messmer did come, and a moment later the lever snapped in two and the ruins settled back into their former position. "I--I think I've had a narrow escape," faltered the lucky youth, when he could speak. "Much obliged to you, Dave, for hauling me out." "Talk about a mule kicking!" declared Henshaw. "He brought this cabin down quick enough." "The old place was about ready to fall down," answered the senator's son. "I think I could have shoved it down myself, had I tried. But I wonder what made the mule start kicking so suddenly. He acted as if a hornet had stung him." "I guess I was to blame," replied Shadow, sheepishly. "I rubbed him in the rear with my stick. He didn't appreciate the handling." "By the way, where is his muleship?" cried Dave, looking around in the semi-darkness. "Guess he's taken time by the forelock and run away," answered the senator's son. They looked around, but could see nothing of the animal. Some marks were in the snow, losing themselves on the rocks, and that was all. "It's time to get back to the Hall," observed Henshaw. "I am not going to lose time looking for a mule. Come on." "We can send Mike Marcy word that his mule is on the island," suggested Dave. "That wouldn't be any more than fair. If left here alone the animal may starve to death." "Mules don't starve so easily," answered Shadow. "I am not going to look for him any more," he added. They were soon on their way back to the shore where they had left the _Snowbird_. The short winter day was drawing to a close, and it was getting colder. They walked briskly, for they feared the wind would be against them on the return to Oak Hall, and they did not wish to be late for supper, for that, at the very least, would mean a lecture from Job Haskers. Henshaw was in the lead, and presently he came out on the shore, looked around in dazed fashion, and uttered a cry of dismay. And not without good reason. The ice-boat had disappeared. CHAPTER XI A HUNT FOR AN ICE-BOAT "It's gone!" "Where in the world could it have gone to?" "It was too far on the shore to be blown away." "Can anybody have stolen the craft?" Such were some of the words uttered as the students stood on the shore of the lonely island, gazing first in one direction and then in another. Darkness had now settled down, and they could see but little at a distance. "I really believe somebody took the ice-boat," remarked Dave. "As the sail was down I don't see how she could budge of herself." "Exactly my way of thinking," answered Roger. "And I've got an idea who took the craft, too." "Those Rockville cadets?" queried Henshaw. "Yes." "They wouldn't be above such a piece of mischief," said Messmer. "They feel mighty sore over the way we outsailed them that time we raced." "They'll be likely to sail the boat to our dock and leave her there," said Shadow. "Puts me in mind of a story I once heard about----" "I don't want to listen to any stories just now," grumbled Henshaw. "I want to find that ice-boat. If we can't find her we'll have to walk home." "What a pity we didn't bring our skates!" cried Dave. "The wind is very light, and if we had them we might catch up with whoever took the craft. I am by no means certain the Rockville cadets are guilty. When we met them they were going home, and they didn't know we were coming here." "Nobody knew that," said Messmer. "Who was the last person we met on the river before landing?" questioned the senator's son. All of the boys thought for a minute. "I saw Link Merwell," said Shadow. "Yes, and Nat Poole was with him," answered Henshaw. "Merwell has become quite a crony of Nat Poole's since Gus Plum dropped out." Link Merwell was a new student, who had come to Oak Hall from another boarding school some miles away. He was a tall, slim fellow with a tremendously good opinion of himself, and showed a disposition to "lord it over everybody," as Sam Day had expressed it. He was something of a dude, and it was their mutual regard for dress that caused him and Nat Poole to become intimate. "Then I believe Poole and Merwell are the guilty parties," declared Dave. "They must have seen us land, and Poole, I know, is itching to pay us back for the way we have cut him." "All of which doesn't bring back the ice-boat," observed Messmer. "The question is, What are we to do?" "Hoof it back to Oak Hall--there is nothing else," answered the senator's son, sadly. Hardly had Roger spoken when Dave heard a peculiar sound on the rocks behind the crowd. He looked back and saw Mike Marcy's mule, nibbling at some bushes. "The mule--I'm going to catch him!" he ejaculated, and made a leap for the animal. Just as the mule turned he caught hold of the halter. "Whoa there! Whoa, you rascal!" he cried, and then, watching his chance, he flung himself across the mule's back. The animal pranced around in a lively fashion. "Look out, Dave, he'll throw you!" "He'll kick you to death if he gets a chance!" "Remember, he's a vicious beast!" The mule continued to dance about and kicked high in the air, throwing Dave well forward. But the boy who had been brought up on a farm clung on, grasping the mule's ears to steady himself. Then of a sudden the mule turned and dashed away through the bushes. "He's running away with Dave!" "Look out for the tree branches!" Dave paid no attention to the cries. He had all he could do to keep from falling under the animal. Away went boy and mule, over the rough rocks in a fashion which nearly jounced the breath from the rider's body. Then, just as they came close to some low-hanging trees where Dave felt certain he would be hurt, the mule turned again, leaped for the shore, and sped out on the ice of the river. "So that's your game!" cried Dave, between his set teeth. "All right; if you want to run you can carry me all the way to Oak Hall!" Away went the mule, as if accustomed to run over the ice all his life. He was a sure-footed creature and took only one or two slides, which amounted to nothing. The boys on the shore saw Dave and mule disappear in the darkness and set up a cry of wonder. "Hi! come back here, Dave!" sang out Roger. "If you are going to ride to the Hall take us with you!" yelled Shadow. "He won't stop till he's tired out," said Henshaw. "And goodness only knows where he'll carry Dave." "Trust Dave to take care of himself," answered the senator's son. "I never saw him get into a hole but that he managed to get out again." "I hope the mule doesn't land him in some crack in the ice," said Messmer. On and on through the gathering darkness sped the mule, with Dave clinging to his back with a deathlike grip. The animal was young and full of go and seemed thoroughly to enjoy the run. "Talk about mules being slow," panted the boy. "The chap who thinks that ought to be on this steed. Why, he'd win on a race-track sure!" A half-mile was quickly covered, and then the mule neared the bank of the river, where the latter made a long curve. Here there was a fair-sized creek, and up this the animal dashed, in spite of Dave's efforts to stop him or get him to keep to the river proper. "Whoa, you rascal!" sang out the youth for at least the fiftieth time, and then he caught sight of a white sail just ahead of him. The next moment the mule bumped into the edge of the sail, shied to one side, and sent Dave sprawling on the ice. Then the animal steadied himself and made tracks for the road which led to Mike Marcy's farm. Evidently he was tired of roaming around and of being ridden, and was now going home. [Illustration: The mule shied to one side and sent Dave sprawling on the ice.--_Page 101._] Somewhat dazed, Dave picked himself up and gazed at the ice-boat. It was the _Snowbird_, and on it were Nat Poole and Link Merwell. "Hullo, if it isn't Dave Porter!" muttered Poole, in amazement. "Where did he get that mule?" questioned Merwell. "I'm sure I don't know. But this makes a mess of things. I didn't want that crowd to know we had taken the ice-boat," went on the dudish youth. Dave picked up the cap which had fallen on the ice and ran up to the ice-boat. Those on board had run into the creek by mistake and were trying to turn the _Snowbird_ around. "What are you doing with that craft?" asked Dave. "That's our business," retorted Nat Poole. "I think it is my business. That boat belongs to Messmer and Henshaw." "We found it, and we are going to have a sail back to Oak Hall," said Link Merwell. "I don't think so," answered Dave, decidedly. "What's that?" cried Merwell, sharply. He was a fellow used to having his own way. "I want that boat. I was with Messmer and Henshaw, and we left the craft on the shore of an island. It's my opinion you two chaps ran off with her." "See here, do you take me for a thief?" cried Link Merwell. And in his aggressive fashion he swaggered up to Dave. "Not that, Merwell, but I think you took the ice-boat. I am going to take her back, so I can get our crowd aboard." "And what do you expect me to do?" asked Nat Poole. "You can skate back to the Hall." "I lost one of my skates." "Then let Merwell tow you on one foot." "Oh, you needn't boss us around, Porter," growled Link Merwell. "I'm not used to it, and I won't stand for it. Poole and I are going to the Hall on the ice-boat, and that is all there is about it." He drew himself up to his full height--he was four inches taller than Dave--and glared down defiantly. This gave Nat Poole a little courage, and he ranged beside Merwell, and both doubled up their fists. They fancied they could make Dave back down, but they were mistaken. The lad who had been brought up on a farm faced them fearlessly. "There is no use of fighting about it," he said, as calmly as he could. "You have no right to this ice-boat, and you know it. If you don't give it up perhaps I'll report you." "Oh, you're a squealer, are you?" sneered Link Merwell. "It's about what I would expect from a boy brought up in a poorhouse." At this uncalled-for and cutting remark Dave's face flamed. He took one step forward and caught the tall youth by the arm, in a grip that seemed to be of steel and made Merwell wince. "Are you going to bring that up?" he asked, in a low voice. "I should have thought your friend Poole would have cautioned you that it wasn't healthy to do so." "Let go of my arm, Porter," and Merwell tried to pull himself free, but in vain. Dave's eyes were blazing like two stars and seemed to look the tall youth through and through. "I am not letting go just yet, Merwell. I want you to answer my question." "If you don't let go I'll knock you down!" cried Link Merwell, in a rage. "If you do, you'll get well punished for it. I allow nobody to talk to me as you have done." "Want to fight?" "No; but I can defend myself--I guess Nat Poole knows that." "Don't soil your hands on him, Link," said Poole. Even though they were two to one, he knew Dave's power and was afraid of him. "He can't come it over me," answered Merwell. "Let go!" and then he hauled off and tried to hit Dave in the face. The boy from the country was on guard, and ducked with a quickness that surprised his antagonist. Then he gave Merwell's arm a twist that sent the tall youth sprawling on the ice. The new pupil was amazed, and it took him several seconds to recover himself. He had not dreamed that Dave was so powerful, yet he threw prudence to the winds and rushed in, trying again to reach Dave's face with his fist. But Dave skipped to one side, put out his foot, and again Merwell went down, on his hands and knees. "I'll fix you!" he roared, scrambling up, his face red with rage. "I'll show you what I can do! How do you like that, you poorhouse rat!" This time he hit Dave in the breast. The blow was a heavy one, but it did not hurt nearly as much as did the words which accompanied it. They made Dave shiver as if with ague, and, all in a blaze he could not curb, he sprang towards Link Merwell. Out shot first one fist and then the other, the blows landing on the eye and chin of the tall youth. They made him stagger back against the ice-boat. Then came a third blow, and Merwell gave a gasp, swayed from side to side, and would have fallen had not Nat Poole caught him as he was going down. "Stop, Porter; don't hit him again!" "Merwell, do you take back what you just said?" demanded Dave, paying no attention to Nat Poole's remark. There was an instant of silence. Link Merwell wanted to answer, but was too dazed to do so. Slowly and painfully he stood erect. His head was in a whirl and one eye was rather rapidly closing. "Merwell, are you going to take back what you said?" demanded Dave, again. And he held his fist ready to strike another blow. "Ye--yes," stuttered Link Merwell. "Do--don't hit me again!" And then he collapsed in a heap at Dave's feet. CHAPTER XII THE MEETING OF THE GEE EYES When Link Merwell went down again Dave looked at Nat Poole, thinking that lad might possibly attack him. But the dudish fellow was too scared to do anything but back away to a safe distance. "Don--don't you dare to hit me, Porter!" he cried, in a trembling voice. "Don't you dare! If you do I'll tell Doctor Clay!" "If you behave yourself I'll not lay my fingers on you, Nat Poole," was the reply. "Merwell brought this on himself--you know that as well as I do." "He's pretty badly hurt, I fear." "Oh, he'll come around all right," answered Dave. "You had better see to it that he gets to the Hall safely." "Are you going to leave me?" "Yes, I want to find Henshaw and the others." Nat Poole wanted to argue, but he did not dare. Dave waited until Link Merwell sat up and opened his eyes. Then he leaped on the ice-boat and flung off the three skates he found there. "Going away?" mumbled Merwell, when he could speak. "Yes, and after this, Link Merwell, see that you keep a civil tongue in your head," answered Dave, and then he trimmed the sail of the ice-boat, shoved the craft around, and started for the river. Dave was a good deal "worked up," but he had not deemed it wise to let his enemies see it. To be called a "poorhouse rat" had stung him to the quick, and once again when touched on that subject he had found his temper as ungovernable as ever. "It's no use, I can't stand it," he told himself. "If they want me to let them alone they have got to cut that out." It was now so dark that but little could be seen on the broad river. Dave turned the craft towards Robber Island and made a long tack. He was just coming around on the other tack when there came a shout out of the darkness. "Don't run us down! Why, it's Dave!" "Right you are," was the reply. Then he saw Roger and the others, who had started to walk to Oak Hall. They were soon beside the _Snowbird_, and the craft was headed for the school. "So Poole and Merwell had her," observed Messmer, on the way. "Did you have any trouble making them give her up?" "Just a little," answered Dave, modestly. "Tell us about it, Dave!" cried the senator's son. "Somebody told me Merwell was of the scrappy kind." "I really don't like to talk about it," said Dave, his face clouding. "I had some words with Merwell and I knocked him down. Then he and Poole were willing enough to let me take the ice-boat." "You knocked Merwell down!" exclaimed Henshaw. "He's a big fellow." "Dave isn't afraid of anybody," said Roger, in a tone of pride. In the end Dave was compelled to tell his story, to which the others listened with deep interest. They understood the boy from the country perfectly, and said the treatment received had served Link Merwell right. When they reached Oak Hall they were nearly an hour late. They expected Job Haskers would lecture them and give them extra lessons to do, but fortunately they found Andrew Dale, the head teacher, in charge. He listened to their explanations with a smile. "After this you mustn't go so far, or else start earlier," said the instructor, and let them go in to supper. "Gracious! what a difference between Mr. Dale and old Haskers," was Dave's comment. "I wish all the teachers were like Mr. Dale--and Doctor Clay," returned Roger. The party were just finishing their evening meal when Nat Poole and Link Merwell slunk in. The tall youth had one eye nearly closed by the blow Dave had delivered. He glared savagely at Dave, but said nothing. "He'll chew you up--if he gets the chance," whispered Roger to Dave. "Then I won't give him the chance," answered the other, with a quiet smile. The story soon circulated among the students that Merwell and Dave had had a fight and the tall boy had gotten the worse of it. To this Dave said nothing, but Merwell explained to his friends that Porter had hit him foul, taking him completely off his guard. "The next time we meet you'll see him go down and out," added the tall boy. "He won't be in it a minute after I once get at him." Word was sent to Mike Marcy about his mule, and the farmer sent an answer back that the mule was now at home again, safe and sound. The mean fellow did not add one word of thanks for the information given to him. "That's like Marcy," said Dave. "If he thanked me for anything I think I'd drop dead." "Some men hardly know how to be civil," answered Phil. During the next few days word also came from Dodsworth Sadler that he was on the trail of Blodgett and Volney and hoped to catch them before many days. He added that he had evidence to convict the swindlers if he could only lay his hands on them. "That lets you and me out," said Dave to Gus Plum. "I don't think you'll ever hear another word from the two rascals." "If it hadn't been for you I should have paid them that money," said the former bully, gratefully. "And they would have kept me in their power if they could." Dave was anxiously awaiting a letter from his uncle, and when it came he could scarcely take time to tear open the communication, so eager was he to know its contents. The letter was very brief and simply asked the boy to come home on the following Saturday, and added that if he really wanted to go to London he could do so. Dave was to show the letter to Doctor Clay, in order to get the necessary permission to leave the Hall. "I shall be sorry to have you go, Master Porter," said the principal of the academy. "But I can understand how you feel about your father and sister, and it will perhaps be better for you to go in search of them than to sit down here and be on pins and needles over it;" and Doctor Clay smiled kindly. "Then you are really going to London!" cried Phil, when he heard the news. "Wish I was going, too!" "So do I, Phil," answered Dave. "We'd have as good a time as we did on your father's ship in the South Seas." "I am going to write to my folks about this at once," said Roger. His heart was set on going to England with his chum. As soon as Dave's friends heard that he was going away once more, several began to plan a celebration for him. "Let us hold a special meeting of the Gee Eyes, for Dave's benefit," said Sam Day; and so it was voted. The Gee Eyes, as my old readers know, was a secret organization that had existed at Oak Hall for a long time. The words stood for the two letters G and I, which in turn stood for the name of the club, Guess It. The club was organized largely for fun, and this fun consisted mainly in the initiation of new members. At one time Gus Plum had been at the head of a rival organization called the Dare Do Anything Club, but this had been broken up by Doctor Clay because of the unduly severe initiation of a small boy, named Frank Bond, who had almost lost his reason thereby. Now Gus had applied for membership in the Gee Eyes and had said that he would stand for any initiation they offered. "I have half a mind to take Plum up," said Phil Lawrence, who was the Honorable Muck-a-Muck, otherwise president, of the club. "He deserves to be put through a strong course of sprouts for what he did to Frank Bond." "All right, I am willing for one," said Buster Beggs, who was the secretary, under the high-sounding title of Lord of the Penwiper. "But we will have to ask the others first." A canvass was made and it was decided to initiate Gus Plum on Friday night, after which the club was to celebrate the departure of Dave in as fitting a style as the exchequer of the organization permitted. Plum was duly notified, and said he would be on hand as required. "And you can do anything short of killing me," he added, with a grin. "It will make Plum feel better if he suffers," said Dave. "He hasn't got Frank Bond off his mind yet." Which statement was true. Plum and Bond had made up, and the former bully now did all in his power to aid the small, timid fellow in his studies and otherwise. The club met in an old boathouse down the river. It was a bright moonlight night and about twenty members were present, all attired in their red robes and black hoods with yellow tassels. As before, some of the members had wooden swords and others stuffed clubs. Around the boathouse were hung a number of pumpkin lanterns, cut out in imitation of skulls. For the initiation of Gus Plum one of the club members had composed a new chant, which was sung slowly and impressively as the former bully of Oak Hall was led in by Buster Beggs and Sam Day. "Hoopra! hoopra! Dilly dall! Here's the victim, see him fall! Hoopra! hoopra! Dilly dees! Down upon his bended knees! Hoopra! hoopra! Dilly deet! Bind his hands and bind his feet! Hoopra! hoopra! Dilly dive! Let us cut him up alive! "Punch him, crunch him, smash him up! Let him drink the poison cup! Let him groan and let him rave As we put him in his grave!" As this strange doggerel was sung the masked students danced fantastically around Gus Plum, slapping him with their swords and clubs. Then of a sudden he was tripped up, bound hands and feet, and marched out of the boathouse. Here a bag was tied over his head, so that he could not see a thing, although the bag had holes in the rear, so that he would not be suffocated. "To the river with him!" came the loud command. "An icy bath will do him a world of good." Now if there was one thing Gus Plum hated, it was ice-cold water for bathing purposes, and the suggestion of such a bath, in the open air, with the thermometer below the freezing point, caused him to shiver. "Now, see here----" he began, and then shut his lips tightly. Come what might he resolved to utter no complaint. "What sayest thou?" demanded a voice by his side. "Wouldst thou beg off?" demanded another. "No, I'll take my medicine, no matter what it is," answered the former bully, doggedly. CHAPTER XIII AN INTERRUPTED INITIATION "He's full of grit this time," whispered Phil to Dave. "Oh, Plum isn't the boy he used to be, I am certain of that," was the low answer. Before long the students reached a point on the river front where there was a heavy clump of bushes. In a hollow between the bushes a fire had been built, and on the bushes had been hung some horse blankets, to keep off the wind. As the members of the Gee Eyes reached the hollow they saw two boys wrapped up in overcoats stealing away into the woods close by. "Hello, who are those chaps?" cried Roger. "One of them looked like Nat Poole to me," answered Dave. "Wonder what they are doing here?" "Came to see what was going on, I suppose." "I don't like fellows like Nat Poole to be hanging around," remarked Buster Beggs. The fire had been burning low, but now it was stirred up and more dry branches were piled on top, creating a roaring blaze. By the flickering glare the masked figures looked decidedly fantastic. Up to that moment the club members had been undecided what to do with Gus Plum. Some were in favor of taking off his shoes and socks and letting him down into the river through a hole in the ice, wetting him up to his knees. Others wanted him to crawl on his hands and knees to another spot on the river, quarter of a mile away. Still others wanted to make a snow house and shut him inside for awhile, letting him breathe through a piece of gaspipe which had been brought along. Others wanted him to make a ten minutes' speech on "What Mackerels Have Done for Astronomy," or some subject equally "deep." "Let us have the speech, at least first," suggested Dave. "All right, give us the subject," answered Phil, after a consultation with the other officers. "All right, I will," answered Dave, after a moment's thought. "Better take the bag off his head first." This was quickly removed, and Gus Plum was made to stand up on a rock close to the fire. "Wretch, listen!" came from one of the masked figures. "It is decreed that thou must speak for ten minutes by the second-splitting watch on a subject that shall be given to thee. Shouldst thou fail, it will be a whacking with staves for thine. Dost thou agree?" "Speak on what?" "Here is the subject," said Dave, in a disguised voice that was thin and piping: "If a Pail Lets Out Water When it Leaks, Why Doesn't a Boat Do the Same Thing?" And a snicker went round at this question. "Thou hast heard the subject. Art prepared to discourse?" asked one of the Gee Eyes. "Sure thing," answered Gus Plum, after a moment of thought. He struck an attitude. "My subject is a most profound one, first broached by Cicero to Henry Clay, during the first trip of the beloved pair to Coney Island." "Hurrah! Hooroo!" came from one of the club members. "Cicero had been speaking to just such a crowd of convicts as I am now addressing--thieves, murderers, and those who had failed to shovel the snow from their sidewalks during the months of July and August," continued Gus Plum. "Convicts is good," murmured Roger. "The boat running to Coney Island had slowed up to a walk, which caused Cicero to grow impatient, as he wanted a ride on the shoot-the-chutes. Henry Clay, along with Napoleon and a Roman sausage-maker named Hannibal, were in the bow of the craft trying to solve the fifteen puzzle by the aid of a compass and a book on etiquette. Suddenly a great commotion arose to a height of a mile or more. The boat sank to the bottom of the sea, turned over three times, and came to the surface again. A shriek arose from one of the ladies, Cleopatra's waiting-maid: 'I have lost my knitting overboard.' 'Man the pumps!' cried Cicero, and then tied his sandals around his neck for a life-preserver. Henry Clay drew a Henry Clay from his pocket and began to smoke vigorously. Hannibal said he would turn cannibal if the boat went down again. Cleopatra said she would die happy if only they would start up the phonograph, and Homer did so, with that beautiful ode entitled, 'Why Eat Turkey When Corned Beef Is So Cheap?'" "Where's the pail that leaked?" came from the crowd. "Stick to the subject." "Is the boat leaking yet?" "Be not afraid," answered Gus Plum, solemnly. "By the chronometer I have still seven minutes before the boat and pail sink out of sight forever. However, the pail was there, sitting, like a hen, on the larboard mast, filled with gooseberries, which Pocahontas had picked at dawn, in company with General Grant and King Henry the Sixty-second. Looking at this pail, John Paul Jones slapped his sailor thigh and asked, 'Why is a gooseberry?' a question which has come resounding down the ages---- Oh, thunder! Do you want to blow me to pieces!" Crack! bang! crack! boom! came four loud reports, and the fire was scattered in all directions. _Bang!_ came another report, and Dave received some burning fagots in the face. Gus Plum was hurled from the rock upon which he had been standing. _Boom!_ came a report louder than any of the rest, and what was left of the camp-fire flew up in the air as if a volcano were under it. [Illustration: What was left of the camp-fire flew up in the air. _Page 120._] All of the club members were dumbfounded, for nobody had expected anything of this sort. Half a dozen of the boys had gone down and in a twinkling the robes Roger and Ben wore were in flames. The fire lay in all directions, and now came two smaller reports and Dave saw a fair-sized fire-cracker fly apart. "Somebody put fire-crackers under the fire," he cried. "Big ones and little ones." And then, seeing Ben in flames, he rushed to the assistance of his chum. It was no easy matter to put out the fire, and before Ben was out of danger Dave got a blister on one hand. In the meantime Gus Plum had leaped towards Roger. "Roll over!" he cried, and tripped the senator's son up. Then he began to beat the flames out with his hands and with the bag that had been over his head. Roger had gotten some hot ashes in his face, and he was confused and half blinded thereby. The excitement lasted nearly five minutes, and when it was over the boys stood there with their hoods and robes off, gazing at each other nervously. "Who did this?" demanded Phil. "That was too much of a good thing," said Shadow. "Why, some of us might have been burned to death." "Kind of rough initiation," remarked Gus Plum, dryly. "But I didn't catch it as much as Roger and Ben." "That wasn't down on the programme," returned Dave. "At least, it wasn't so far as I am concerned." "I didn't know of it!" cried Buster Beggs. "Nor I!" "Nor I!" came from one after another of the other members of the Gee Eyes. "Who started the fire?" asked Phil. "I did," answered Sam Day. "I just got some wood together and lit it, that's all." "Was there anything on the ground?" "Not a thing, so far as I noticed." "Here is part of a big cannon cracker," said Dave, holding up the still burning paper. "That was big enough to blow off a fellow's hand or foot." "Say, don't you remember those fellows we saw running away!" exclaimed Roger. "To be sure!" was the quick answer. "Nat Poole was one." "Who was the other?" "He looked like Link Merwell to me," said Buster Beggs. "Then we've got an account to settle with Poole and Merwell," said Roger. "Just look at how my hands and my neck are blistered!" "And my hand," said Ben. "Oh, how it smarts! I'll have to put some oil and flour on it." "Let us declare Plum's initiation finished," said Phil. "Then we can hunt up those fellows who played this dirty trick on us." Phil's suggestion was at once adopted, and the club members scattered through the woods, to look for those who had hidden themselves. In a very few minutes Sam Day set up a shout: "Here is one of them!" "And here is the other!" called out Gus Plum and Ben, simultaneously. "You let go of me, Sam Day!" came in the voice of Nat Poole. "I didn't do anything! Let me go!" "You come along with me, Nat Poole," answered Sam, sternly. "Just look how that hand is burnt!" And in his anger Sam gave the other boy a smart box on the ear. "Oh! Don't, please don't." "You'll yell worse than that when we are through with you," answered Sam. "You bet he will," said Buster Beggs. "I got a hot cinder in my right eye." "Don't, please don't!" shrieked Nat Poole. He was a coward at heart, and the attitude of those around filled him with sudden terror. "I didn't do it, I tell you." "Then who did?" demanded Dave. "Oh, I--I can't tell you. I--I----" "Yes, you can tell," said Shadow, and gave Poole's ear a twist. The story-teller of the school had gotten some hot ashes in his mouth, which had put him in anything but a gentle humor. "It was Link Merwell. He put the crackers under the fire and let the fuses stick up," said Poole. "You're a fine sort to blab!" sneered Merwell. "Since you're willing to tell so much, I'll tell something too. He bought the fire-crackers." "Is that true, Poole?" questioned Roger. "Ye--yes, but I--I didn't know----" "He knew what I was going to do with them," broke in Link Merwell. "It was only a joke." "So is that a joke, Merwell," answered Roger, and hauling off he boxed the tall youth's right ear. "If you want to make anything out of it, do so. Look at my hands and neck. You went too far." Merwell's face blazed and he looked as if he wished to annihilate the senator's son. "Humph! I suppose you think you can do as you please, with your own crowd around you," he muttered. "You don't know how to take a joke." "I can take a joke as well as anybody, but not such a perilous trick as that." "It's on a par with the joke of the fellow who put gunpowder in a poor Irishman's pipe," broke in Shadow. "It put the Irishman's eyes out. I don't see any fun in that." "I think we ought to give them both a good licking!" cried a boy named Jason, and without more ado he took his wooden sword and gave Poole a whack across the back. Then he turned and whacked Merwell. It was a signal for a general use of the wooden swords and stuffed clubs, and in a moment the two unlucky students were surrounded, and blows fell thick and fast. Poole yelled like a wild Indian, but Merwell set his teeth and said nothing, only striking back with his fists when he got the chance. Dave took no part in the onslaught, nor did Ben and Phil. As soon as he saw a chance Nat Poole ran for his life. Link Merwell stood his ground a little longer, then he too retreated, shaking his fist at the members of the Gee Eyes. "Just wait!" he fairly hissed. "I'll get square for this, if it takes me a lifetime!" CHAPTER XIV GOOD-BYE TO OAK HALL "I'll wager Merwell is the maddest boy Oak Hall ever saw!" said Shadow, when the excitement had subsided. "Poole is a sneak, and no mistake," said Sam. "I wonder if he'll go and tell old Haskers or Doctor Clay?" "He won't dare--for he is afraid we will tell about the fire-crackers," answered Dave. "Yes, he is a sneak." "I don't see, now, how I could ever make a friend of him," declared Gus Plum. "Now, in one way, I like Merwell--he's a fighter and he doesn't care who knows it." "Yes, but he's got a wicked temper," observed Roger. "He reminds me of Nick Jasniff. They would make a team." "Where did he come from, anyway?" questioned Messmer. "From some ranch out West. His father is a big cattle-owner. He is used to life in the open air, and one of the fellows says he can ride like the wind." "We must watch him," declared Phil. "I can't do that--since I am going away," answered Dave. "I'll have to leave you chaps to fight it out." "Do you think they'll come back or send Haskers?" asked Buster Beggs. "It might be wise to leave this spot," answered Phil. "There are plenty of places we can go to." It was decided to move, and several baskets which had been stored away in the bushes were brought forth. "I've got an idea!" cried Henshaw. "Let us go to that old barn on the Baggot place. Nobody will disturb us there." "I want to fix up my burns first," said Roger. "So do I," said Ben. "Come on to the Hall--we can join the crowd later." So it was arranged, and while the senator's son and Ben went off in one direction the remaining members of the Gee Eyes took another, which led them over a small hill and through an old apple orchard. The Baggot place had not been used for several years. The house was nailed up, but the big barn stood wide open and had often been the resort of tramps. But during the hunt for the robber, Pud Frodel, and his tool, all the tramps had been rounded up and driven away. Several of the students had brought their pumpkin lanterns with them, and these were hung up on convenient nails. "Say, a small stove wouldn't go bad," suggested Messmer. "It's mighty cold in here." "Let us settle down in some hay," suggested Phil. "That will keep us warm, especially if we shut the doors and windows tight." The baskets which had been brought along were filled with good things, and these were speedily passed around. The boys fell to eating with avidity, for the adventures of the evening had made them hungry. Then Dave was called upon for a speech. "I hardly know what to say, fellow-students," he began, after a cheering and hand-clapping. "You have treated me royally to-night, and I do not intend to forget your kindness. I am sorry that I am going to leave you, but you all know what is taking me away----" "We do, and we hope you'll find your folks," put in Phil. "So say we all of us!" sang out Henshaw. "If I am successful in my search perhaps I'll return to Oak Hall before a great while," continued Dave. "In the meantime I trust you all have good times, and that you may have no more trouble with our enemies. More than this, as I expect to be away during the holidays, I wish each one a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!" As Dave concluded there was a round of applause, and the club members drank his health in lemon soda and sarsaparilla. Then some nuts and raisins were passed around, and all prepared to return to Oak Hall. "We've got to go in quietly, or else there may be trouble," said Phil. "Remember, we don't know what Merwell and Poole will do." There was no trouble, however, for which Dave was thankful, since he wished to leave the Hall with a clean record. As soon as he reached his dormitory he went to bed, and so did the other occupants of the apartment. And thus his schooldays, for the time being, came to an end. He was up bright and early and by nine o'clock was ready to enter the sleigh that was to take him to Oakdale station. The boys gathered around to see him off. "I wish I was going with you," said Phil. "You must write me regularly." "I'll do that, Phil. And you must tell me all about what happens here." "Remember, Dave, I'll join you if I possibly can," said Roger. "Let me know where I can telegraph or telephone you." "Sure, Roger, and if you can join me I'll like it first-rate." An hour later Dave was on the train and speeding towards Crumville. He had sent word ahead when he would arrive, and at the station he found the Wadsworth sleigh, with Caspar Potts and Jessie Wadsworth awaiting him. The old professor looked hale and hearty, although his form was slightly bent and his hair was gray and white. Jessie, round-cheeked and rosy, was the picture of health and beauty. "There he is! There's Dave!" cried the miss, and leaped to the sidewalk to shake hands. "Why, how tall you are getting, Jessie," said the boy, and then blushed, for the handshake she gave him was a very cordial one. "How do you do, Professor?" And he shook hands with the man who had done so much for him in his younger years. "I am very well indeed, Dave," answered Professor Potts. "Will you sit up here by me, or with Miss Jessie?" "Dave must come in with me," said Jessie, promptly. "Did my Uncle Dunston come?" questioned the boy, looking around, for he had fully expected to see his relative. "No, he has a touch of rheumatism in his left knee," answered Caspar Potts. "That's too bad." Dave assisted Jessie to a seat and then got in beside her, and tucked in the handsome fur robe. Off went the team at a spanking gait, past the stores of the town and then in the direction of the Wadsworth mansion. Many looked at Dave as he rode by and thought him a lucky boy--and he certainly was lucky, and thankful for it. The mansion reached, Dave was warmly greeted by Mrs. Wadsworth, and, later on, by Mr. Wadsworth, who had been to his large jewelry works on business. The lad found his Uncle Dunston in his room, in an easy-chair, with his rheumatic leg resting on a low stool. "It's not so very bad, Dave," said Dunston Porter, after their greeting was over. "I hope to be around again before long. But it is too bad it should come on at this time, when I had hoped to go to London with you." Dave sat down, and a conversation lasting the best part of an hour ensued. The boy told all he knew about Nick Jasniff, and showed the letter which Gus Plum had received. Dunston Porter said he had sent several cablegrams to London, but so far had heard nothing of satisfaction. "I even sent a money order to this Nick Jasniff, thinking he might try to get it cashed, but the order has not been called for. The money was cabled to London and then put in a letter for the General Delivery department. Evidently this Jasniff is keeping shady, or otherwise he has left the city or is living under an assumed name." "I know pretty much the sort of a chap he is," said Dave. "He likes to go to the theater, and he was a great chap to bowl. If I go over there I am going to hunt up the bowling places, if there are any, and take a look in at the different theaters. If he is in London I ought to run across him some day. And I'll try finding him by letter and by a notice in the newspapers, too." Dave was a very busy boy for the next few days, perfecting his plans to visit England. Yet he managed to spend several happy hours with the others and especially with Jessie, who now acted more like a young lady than a girl. Truth to tell, Dave thought a great deal of the rich manufacturer's daughter, and Jessie seemed always to want him around, that they might sing together, or play games, or go out for a sleigh-ride. "You mustn't forget us when you are in London," said Jessie. "I want you to send me some postal cards--the picture kind." "I'll send you one every day," replied Dave. "The very nicest I can find." "With pictures of the places you visit?" "Yes." "Then you must tell me about the places in your letters." "Do you want me to write?" "Of course, and I'll write too," said Jessie, and gave him one of her sunniest smile. Dave thought of that smile long afterwards--when he was in London and in the far northland--and it always brightened him in spirits. On the day before his departure Dave received a telegram from Roger. It was short and characteristic: "Hurrah! Engage stateroom for two. What steamer?" "Good for Roger!" cried Dave, as he showed the message to his uncle. "He has permission to go with me. Now I won't be lonely." "I am glad to know he is going along," said Dunston Porter. "Not but that I know you can take care of yourself, Dave." Dave at once sent word to New York, to the steamship office, and by night the matter of a stateroom for two was arranged. Then he sent word to Roger where his chum could meet him. He spent a quiet evening at the Wadsworth mansion. Jessie and the others did what they could to cheer him, but they realized what was on his mind. "Oh, Dave, I do so hope you will find your father and your sister!" said Jessie, on bidding him good-night. "I want to know Laura; I know I shall love her--for your sake!" And then she ran off. Dave watched her mount the stairs and disappear in her room, and then he retired to his own apartment, more thoughtful than ever, yet with a warm feeling in his heart that was peculiar to itself, for it only came when he saw Jessie or was thinking of her. CHAPTER XV DAVE AND ROGER IN LONDON "Off at last!" "Yes, Roger, and I am not sorry for it." "And just to think, Dave, inside of a week we'll be in England! It doesn't seem possible." The two boys were standing on the deck of the great steamer, watching the last sight of New York City as it faded from view. Mr. Wadsworth and Caspar Potts had come down to see them off, and all had had a fine meal together at the old Astor House. It was a clear, cold day, and the boys were glad enough to button their overcoats as they remained on deck watching the last bit of land disappear from view. Then they swept by the Sandy Hook lightship and out into the broad Atlantic, rolling majestically in the bright sunlight. By good luck Dave had managed to obtain a first-class stateroom, and the chums felt very comfortable when they settled down in the apartment. But they did not know a soul on board, and it was not until the second day out that they made a few acquaintances. "I think we are going to have a fine trip over," said the senator's son, on the evening of the second day. "Don't you think so, Dave?" "I'll tell you better when we reach the other side," answered the boy from the country, with a laugh. "I don't know much about the Atlantic. When we were traveling on the Pacific I know the weather changed very quickly sometimes." That very night came a heavy blow and by morning the seas were running high. The air was piercing cold, and everybody was glad enough to remain in the cabins. Dave, returning from the ship's library with a volume on travels in England, found Roger had gone to their stateroom. "Seasick, I'll wager a new hat," he said to himself, and hurried to the apartment. Sure enough, the senator's son was on his berth and as pale as death. "Can I do anything?" asked Dave, kindly. "Nothing," groaned Roger. "Only make the boat stop for a minute--just one minute, Dave!" "I would if I could, Roger. But maybe you'll get over it soon," he added, sympathetically. "Perhaps--after my insides have had their merry-go-round ride," was the mournful reply. Fortunately the heavy blow did not last long, and by the morning of the fourth day the Atlantic was comparatively calm. Dave had not been seasick in the least, and he was glad to see his chum come around once more. Roger greeted him with a faint smile. "I was going to fight against it," said the senator's son. "But when it caught me I had to give in first clip. O dear! I don't see what seasickness was invented for!" And he said this so seriously that Dave was forced to laugh outright. As soon as it had been decided that he was to go to London, Dave had begun to study up about the place, so that he might not be "too green" when he arrived there. He had two guide-books, and on the steamship he met several people who were only too willing to give him all the information at their command. "London isn't New York, my boy," said one old gentleman to whom he spoke. "It's larger and it's different. But if you're used to big cities you'll soon find yourself at home there." Soon the two boys were watching for a sight of land, and when it came they learned that they were in the English Channel and nearing the Isle of Wight. Here there was plenty of shipping, from all parts of the world, and they passed several other big liners, bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Southern ports. "This is certainly the age of travel," was Dave's comment, as they watched the boats pass. "Everybody seems to be going somewhere." By the time they reached Southampton there was great bustle on board. Custom House regulations had to be met, after which Dave and Roger took their first ride in an English railway coach and soon reached the greatest city of the world. They had brought with them only their largest dress-suit cases, and these they carried. They had already decided to go to a small but comfortable hotel called the Todham. A cabman was handy, who had their dress-suit cases almost before they knew it. "What's the fare to the hotel?" demanded Dave. The Jehu said several shillings, but when Dave shook his head the fellow cut the price in half and they sprang in and were off. The brief ride was an interesting one, and they could not help but contrast the sights to be seen with those of New York and Chicago. "It's certainly different," said Roger. "But I guess we can make ourselves at home." The hotel was in the vicinity of Charing Cross, and the two boys obtained an elegant apartment looking down on the busy street. They were glad to rest over Sunday, only going out in the morning to attend services at one of the great churches. "Well, Dave, now you are here, how are you going to start to look for Nick Jasniff?" questioned Roger. "It seems to me that it will be a good deal like looking for a needle in a haystack." "I am going to advertise and then try all the leading hotels," was the answer. "I have a list of them here. If you want to help, you can visit one group of them while I visit another." The senator's son was willing, and they started off without delay. During the day Dave rode around to exactly twenty-two places, but at each hostelry was met with the reply that no such person as Nicholas Jasniff had registered there. "One day wasted," he sighed, but altered his opinion when he rejoined his chum. "Jasniff was at the Hotel Silverin," said Roger. "But he left there a little over two weeks ago." "Did he leave any directions for forwarding mail?" "Yes, here is the address." The senator's son drew a notebook from his pocket. "43, Pulford Road, Noxham." "Let us look up the place," went on Dave, eagerly, and got out his map of London and its suburbs. It was in the northern end of the metropolis, and they found a railway running in that direction. "We can't go to-night very well, but we can try it the first thing in the morning," said Dave; and so it was decided. On arriving in the vicinity of 43, Pulford Road, the two youths found the neighborhood anything but first-class. The houses were old and dirty-looking and had about them a general air of neglect. "What do you want?" demanded the tall and angular woman who answered their summons at the door. "Good-morning, madam," said Dave, politely. "I am looking for a young gentleman named Nicholas Jasniff. I believe he boards here." "Oh, so that's it," said the woman. She eyed Dave and Roger in a suspicious manner. "Who told you he was boarding here?" "We heard so down at our hotel." "He isn't here--he went away last week--owing me one pound six," was the spiteful answer. "I wish I had my hands on him. It's Kate Clever would teach him a lesson, the scamp!" "So he ran away owing you some board money?" said Roger. "He did that." "And you haven't any idea where he is?" "I have and I haven't. Are you friends of his?" "Not exactly, but we wish very much to find him." "I am not the one to do him a favor--after him treating me so shabbily," said the woman, spitefully. "You'll not be doing him a favor," returned Dave. "To tell you the truth, I want to catch him for some other wrong he's been doing." "Oh, that's it, is it?" The woman became more interested. "You are from the States, aren't you?" "Yes." "He was from the States. He pretended that he wasn't, but I knew differently. He got letters from America--I saw one of them." "And where did he go, if you please?" asked Dave. The tall woman drew up her angular shoulders and pursed up her thin lips. "If you'll pay that board money I'll help you to find him." "Very well, if we find him I'll pay you the one pound and six shillings," answered Dave. He did not wish to waste time that might be valuable. "Come in the parlor and I'll tell you what I know," said Kate Clever. They entered the little musty and dusty parlor, with its old haircloth furniture and its cheap bric-a-brac. The woman dusted two of the chairs with her apron and told them to be seated. "I am a poor widow," she explained. "I have to make my living by taking boarders. This Jasniff paid me only one week's board. He said he expected to get some money, but while I was waiting he took his bag and box and slipped away one day when I was to market." "I thought he had plenty of money," said Roger. "He ran away with enough." "Ran away with enough? Was he a thief?" "Yes." "O dear! Then I am glad he is out of my house. Really! we might all have been murdered in our beds!" And the woman held up her thin hands in horror. After that she told what she could of Nick Jasniff. She said he had spent a good part of his time, both day and night, down in the heart of London, visiting the theaters and other places of amusement. Once he had complained of being robbed of his pocketbook on a tram-car, and again he had lost himself in Cheapside and fallen in with some thugs who had tried to carry him into an alleyway. In the fight that followed he had had an eye blackened and the sleeve torn from his coat. She had sewed on the sleeve again, but he had paid her nothing for the work. "He spoke once of visiting an old friend named Chesterfield, who lived in Siddingate," said the woman. "He said he might meet his father there. Maybe if you can find this Chesterfield you'll find him." "We can try, anyway," answered Dave. "Is that all you can tell about him?" "I don't know of much else, Mr.---- I haven't learned your name yet." "My name is David Porter. This is my friend Roger Morr." "Porter? Why, I've heard that name somewhere." The woman mused for a moment. "Why, yes, Nicholas Jasniff had a friend by that name--a gentleman much older than you." "A friend!" gasped Dave. "Oh, that can't be true, Mrs. Clever!" "Well, I heard him say something about a man named Porter. They had met somewhere--I think in London. The man had a daughter named Laura, and I think this Jasniff had been calling upon her." CHAPTER XVI SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION Dave felt like groaning when he heard Mrs. Clever's words. Then what Jasniff had written in the letter to Gus Plum was true--he had met Mr. Porter and Laura. Had he tried to set himself up as a friend? It was more than likely. "And father and Laura don't know what a rascal he is," Dave murmured to his chum. "Oh, I feel as if I could wring his neck! For all I know, he has been making himself agreeable to my sister. Isn't it enough to make one's blood boil?" "It certainly is, Dave. But I fancy your sister will soon be able to size up such a fellow as Jasniff." "Perhaps, although he can be very oily when he wants to be. Oh, if only I knew where my folks were!" sighed the boy from the country. Mrs. Clever could tell nothing more about Nick Jasniff or about the Porters. But she promised to send Dave word if she heard anything, and seeing that she was poor Dave paid her the money out of which Jasniff had swindled her, about six dollars and a half. Then the two youths took their departure, stating they might call again. "Let me know beforehand," said Mrs. Clever, "and I'll treat you handsome-like." She offered them some cakes and ale, but they politely declined the refreshments. From the woman they learned the easiest way to reach Siddingate, and arrived at that London suburb shortly after the dinner-hour. Here they procured a hearty meal at the leading hotel and from a directory learned that six Chesterfields lived in that vicinity--one an ironmonger, otherwise a hardware dealer; another a draper, that is, a dry-goods merchant; and a third a stoker, which meant that he was a locomotive fireman. The other three were not put down as in business. "I don't think we'll try to hunt up the stoker," said Dave. "Most likely he's off on a run. We can try the storekeepers and then the others." The ironmonger, a burly, red-faced man, had never heard of Jasniff, but the draper, while he did not know anybody of that name, said that one of the other Chesterfields, whose first name was Philip, had some relatives in the United States, including some folks who were now traveling either in England or Scotland. "Thank you; we'll hunt him up," said Dave. "Where does he live?" "Any cabman can tell you," was the answer. "Better ride out--it's a cold walk." It was cold, with the snow covering the ground to the depth of two inches or more. The air was very raw, and a regular London fog was settling down over the land. A cabman was readily found, and inside of a few minutes they were on their way to the Philip Chesterfield estate. From the driver they learned that this Chesterfield was an old man, rather peculiar in his ways, and that he entertained visitors but seldom. "It would be queer for Nick Jasniff to visit such a man," remarked Dave. "But I don't want to let any chance of locating him slip by." "Nick may be glad enough to get a roof over his head, if his money is gone," answered Roger. The cab presently turned up a side road and approached the stone wall of a fair-sized estate, the mansion of which stood back in a patch of old trees. As they entered the gateway Dave saw a door open and a boy came out on a veranda. "There he is!" he gasped. "There is Nick now!" "You're right!" exclaimed the senator's son. "This is luck, and no mistake." As the cab came closer Nick Jasniff gazed at it curiously, to see whom it might contain. Not to be recognized too quickly, Dave kept his face averted and cautioned his chum to do the same. "Say! I say----" began the youth who had run away, when Dave leaped out and confronted him. "Whe--where did you come from?" "From Oak Hall," answered Dave, coolly. "I fancy you didn't expect to see me so soon, Jasniff." "Humph!" The runaway boy did not know what to say. "I--er---- Been following me up, I suppose?" "I have." "You didn't expect me, did you?" put in Roger, with a grin. "I didn't," growled Nick Jasniff. "Any more?" and he gazed anxiously into the cab, half expecting an officer of the law to put in an appearance. "No more just now," said Dave, with peculiar emphasis. "What do you want?" Jasniff was gradually regaining his self-possession. "I want a whole lot of things," answered Dave. "Do you want to do your talking here or in the house?" And he glanced at the cab driver, who was staring at the boys with his mouth open in curiosity. "You can come in, if you wish," was the awkward answer; and Nick Jasniff led the way into the old mansion, which was semi-dark and not more than half warmed. "Do you know who lives here?" he continued. "Your relative, Philip Chesterfield," answered Roger. "Humph! He's a great-uncle of mine and very old. He is down with gout. Come into the library. We needn't disturb him." They filed into the apartment mentioned, a long, low room, the walls of which were lined with shelves filled with musty volumes. Dave kept his eyes on Jasniff, and this the runaway noticed. "Think I'm going to skip?" he queried, sourly. "I'll not give you the chance," was the ready answer. "You think you've got me foul, don't you?" "Doesn't it look like it?" "You can't make me go back to the United States." "Perhaps I can." "My folks have settled up that Pud Frodel affair for me--did it only a few days ago." "But they didn't settle up with Mrs. Clever. She was swindled out of some board money." "I--er--I was going to send her that money to-day." "Then you had better pay me, for I settled the account," answered Dave. "But let us drop this talk for the present, Jasniff. I want you to tell me all you know about my father and my sister." "Humph! I haven't got to tell you anything if I don't want to." "Yes, you have got to!" cried Dave. A dangerous gleam came into his eyes. "Out with it at once. Where is my father?" "See here, Porter, I don't propose to be bullied. I----" "You answer my question, Nick Jasniff. If you don't I'll call in an officer at once and have you placed under arrest." "You can't do it." "I can and will. If I can't have you held on one charge I'll have you held on another. I want the truth from you, and I want it right away." Dave had followed Nick Jasniff to a window, and faced the runaway with such sternness and determination that the latter cowed before him. "I--er--that is, your father went north, last week." "Where to?" "He said he was going to Christiania, Norway." "Christiania, Norway?" repeated Dave. He knew there was such a place, but that was all. "What for?" "Oh, he was interested in an expedition that was going to the upper interior--some kind of a scientific expedition, I think. He was full of it--said they hoped to make all kinds of discoveries." "Whose expedition was it?" "It was gotten up by two men named Lapham and Hausermann." "I read about that expedition!" cried Roger. "There was an account of it in this morning's _Times_." "When was it to start?" asked Dave, anxiously. "I don't know." "Do you know, Jasniff?" "Not exactly--some time this week, I think." "Was my sister Laura going with my father?" went on Dave, anxiously. "No." "Where is she?" "I give it up." "Jasniff, tell me the truth!" And again Dave looked at the runaway sternly. "I don't know where she is." "You met her." "Certainly--half a dozen times." "How did you get acquainted with my folks?" "Oh, I met them by accident, and as soon as I learned who they were I introduced myself and said I knew your uncle Dunston Porter." "What did you say about me?" and now Dave was more anxious than ever. "I--er--I----" "Come, out with it, and tell the exact truth, Jasniff, or it will be the worse for you." "I--er--I didn't mention you," stammered the runaway. He could scarcely bring himself to speak the words. "You didn't!" "What! do you mean to say you met Mr. Porter and his daughter and didn't let them know that Dave was alive and that he was looking for them?" demanded Roger. "It wasn't my business to tell them," answered Jasniff, doggedly. "Nick Jasniff, you are the meanest fellow I ever met in my whole life!" burst out the senator's son. "For two pins I'd give you the worst thrashing you ever received. Didn't you know how happy it would make Mr. Porter and his daughter to know that Dave was alive?" "I--er--that wasn't my business. Dave was no friend of mine--why should I put myself out to do him a good turn? If he wants to find his father and his sister let him do it." "Did you become well acquainted with my sister?" asked Dave, after a pause. "Fairly well, yes." "Did you take her out anywhere?" "No--er--she wouldn't go with me." "I am glad to hear it. You say you have no idea where she is now?" "Not exactly. There was an American family named Endicott over here. They came from somewhere out West. They had a daughter about Laura's age, and the two were chums. I think your sister sailed with the Endicotts for the States." "Did they write to my uncle?" "I don't know, but I think not, for they thought your uncle was still knocking around the South Sea Islands." "And you wouldn't tell them a word!" cried Dave, bitterly. "Jasniff, I never supposed any fellow could be so cruel and hard-hearted." "Humph! I haven't forgotten what I had to suffer," muttered the runaway. "You brought all that on yourself. You had no business to go in with those two thieves. If you had remained honest there would have been no call for you to run away." "Oh, don't preach, Dave Porter." "What Dave says is true, Jasniff," said Roger. "If you have suffered, it is all through your own dishonesty." "Who says a relative of mine is dishonest!" came a loud, harsh voice from the doorway of the library, and turning quickly Dave and Roger found themselves confronted by an old man, white with sudden rage, and brandishing a heavy cane in his hand. CHAPTER XVII ON THE NORTH SEA Both Dave and his chum were startled by the sudden interruption, and for the moment did not know what to say. They looked at the old man and then at Nick Jasniff. The latter turned pale and seemed thoroughly ill at ease. "Who says a relative of mine is dishonest?" repeated the old man, and now he strode up to Dave and raised the cane over the youth's head. "If you refer to this boy as your relative, I say he is dishonest," answered Dave, stoutly. "And so do I," added the senator's son. "Nicholas dishonest! It cannot be! There must be some mistake." "I am sorry for you, sir, but there is no mistake," returned Dave. "Who are you, sir?" "My name is David Porter. I come from the United States. Nicholas and myself and my friend here all attended the same boarding school." "The place called Oak Hall?" "Yes, sir. I presume you are Mr. Philip Chesterfield." "I am, and I am a great-uncle to Nicholas." The old man lowered his cane. "What do you know of Nicholas?" he questioned, curiously. "I know a great deal, Mr. Chesterfield. If you care to hear the story I will tell it to you." "Don't you listen to him, Uncle Phil," stormed Nick Jasniff, in increasing fear. "He'll tell you nothing but a bundle of lies." "I can prove every statement I make," answered Dave. "Dave will tell you nothing but the truth," added Roger. "Who are you, young man?" "My name is Roger Morr." "He is the son of United States Senator Morr," added Dave. "Ah, indeed!" The fact that Roger's father occupied a high political position seemed to have considerable effect on Philip Chesterfield. "They are a couple of fakirs!" cried Nick Jasniff. He knew not what else to say. "Nicholas, be silent. I will listen to their story, and then you can have your say." "If you are going to listen to them, I'll get out," stormed the runaway, and edged for the door. "No, you don't; you'll stay here!" exclaimed Dave, and blocked the way. "I came all the way from America to catch you, and you are not going until I get through with you." A brief war of words followed, which came to an end when the old gentleman locked the door. Then he had Dave and Roger tell their tale in full, after which he asked a number of questions. Nick Jasniff wanted to break into the conversation a number of times, but was not permitted to do so. "Nicholas, if this is true, you are a young scoundrel, and I do not want you in my house another day!" exclaimed Philip Chesterfield. "I shall send a telegram to your father at once, asking him to come on." "Where is Mr. Jasniff?" asked Dave. "In Italy--he went there for his wife's health." "Did Nicholas tell you anything about my folks?" went on Dave. "Nothing excepting that he had met a Mr. Porter and his daughter, and that the father had sailed for Norway and the daughter for the States." "Then that news must be true," said Roger. "Dave, the best thing you can do is to go to Christiania at once." "Exactly my way of thinking, Roger." "And about Nick----?" "You shan't do anything to me!" roared the runaway. "I won't stand for it." "I shall notify the authorities in America where you are," answered Dave. "Then they can do as they please in the affair." A little later Dave and Roger left the mansion, Philip Chesterfield bidding them a formal good-bye. Nick Jasniff was sullen and looked as if he wanted to kill both boys. "He'll get back at us some day, if he can," observed the senator's son, as they drove back to Siddingate. Arriving at the town, the two youths took the first train back to London proper. Here they found that to get to Christiania they would have to take a train to Hull and from there try to obtain passage on some vessel bound for the Norwegian capital. "It's only a four hours' ride to Hull," said Dave, consulting a time-table. "I can get there to-night, if I wish." "All right, let us take the first train." "Do you want to go to Hull to see me off, Roger?" "I am not going to see you off, Dave." "What do you mean?" "I am going with you--if you'll have me." "To Norway?" "Sure--anywhere." "But what will your folks say?" "They won't mind--so long as I keep out of trouble. I told father we might go further than England." "I'll be pleased to have you along." They settled up at the hotel, and quarter of an hour later were at the station. At the "booking office," as it is called in England, they procured tickets for seats in a first-class coach, and soon the train came along. "It seems funny to be locked up in such a coach as this," remarked Dave. "I must say, I like our style of open car best." They were soon leaving the smoky and foggy city of London behind and rushing northward. Only two stops were made, one at Leicester and the other at Sheffield. "Here is where the celebrated Sheffield cutlery comes from," observed Roger, as the last stop was made. "If we were going to stop over I'd buy a pocket-knife for a souvenir." "Remember, we must get some picture postals at Hull," answered Dave, who had not forgotten the promise made to Jessie. He had already sent her over a dozen cards. Hull is one of the main seaports of England, and ship-building and sail-making are great industries there. In the harbor were a great many steamers and sailing vessels, bound for ports all over the world. Dave was in a fever of anxiety. He had been unable to ascertain when the expedition in which his father was interested was to start northward from Christiania, and, as a consequence, he wanted to reach the Norwegian capital city with the least possible delay. "It will be just my luck to arrive there after the expedition has left," he half groaned to his chum. "Let us hope for the best, Dave." As late as it was, the two youths skirmished around and finally learned that a steamer would leave Hull for Christiania two days later. On this they booked passage, and then Dave hurried to the nearest telegraph office and sent a cablegram to Christiania, addressed to his parent. The message ran as follows: "Wait until I reach you. Your long-lost son, "DAVID PORTER." "That ought to hold him," said he to Roger. "Of course it will--if he gets it, Dave." The message sent, the two boys looked around for a hotel, and then obtained a decidedly late supper. When they retired, Roger slept "like a top," as he expressed it, but Dave lay awake for hours, wondering what the future held in store for him. Now that he seemed so close to his father he could scarcely wait for the time to come when they should meet face to face. Roughly estimated, the distance from Hull to Christiania is about six hundred miles. As it was winter, the harbor of the Norwegian capital was frozen up, so the steamer could not go further than Dröbak, a seaport eighteen miles south of the capital. Owing to the wintry weather Dave learned that it would take three full days to make the voyage. It was not particularly cold on leaving Hull, but as soon as the steamer struck the full sweep of the winds on the North Sea the thermometer went down rapidly. "Phew! but this is cold!" ejaculated Roger, as he buttoned his coat tightly. "It's like being down on the coast of Maine." "Just wait until we get to Norway--there is where you'll find it cold," was Dave's reply. "Maybe we'll have to invest in fur overcoats." "Well, I am willing," answered the senator's son, with a laugh. Fortunately, both boys had been supplied with considerable cash and ample letters of credit, so that monetary matters did not bother them. Before leaving Hull, Dave supplied himself with an English-Danish Self-Educator, and on the ship both he and Roger studied the volume with interest. "I want to know a few words," said the senator's son. "It is awful to be in a country when you're not able to speak a word of the language." On the second day of the voyage the two boys got something of a scare. They heard an explosion and then a great cloud of steam spread over the vessel. "Something has burst, that's certain!" cried Dave. "Let us go on deck and see what is wrong." They hurried out on the main deck and there found a great number of passengers, all in a state of excitement. A few were on the point of leaping overboard, thinking the ship was going to sink. But the officers were cool and collected, and did all in their power to restore confidence. "Nothing serious has occurred," was the announcement one of the officers made, in the presence of Dave and his chum. "A steam-pipe burst and one of the engineers was scalded, that is all. The pipe will be repaired as quickly as possible." "Will this delay us much?" asked Dave. "That I cannot say," was the answer. The rest of the day passed quietly enough. The steamer moved along slowly, for the engines were badly crippled. Dave, thinking only of the time in which he might reach his destination, walked the deck impatiently. "I'll wager this means another day," said he to his chum. "More than likely," was the reply. "Well, since it can't be helped you'll have to make the best of it." "Yes, I know, Roger, but I'd give almost anything to be in Christiania now." "I can appreciate how you feel. I'd be the same way, if I were in your place, Dave," was the kindly answer of the senator's son. That night a heavy snowstorm came on, and by morning all around the ship was completely shut out of sight. The steam-pipe had now been mended, but the engines had to be kept down at a low speed for fear of running into some other craft. The foghorn was blown constantly, and occasionally came an answering sound from another vessel. Once they ran close to a three-masted schooner, and then the bell on that ship was rung with a loud clamor. "That was a narrow escape," said Dave, after the schooner had drifted from sight. Towards night the snowstorm increased in violence. The wind piped merrily over the deck of the steamer and the boys were glad to remain inside. They turned in early, since there was nothing else to do. [Illustration: Once they ran close to a three-masted schooner.--_Page 160._] Dave could not sleep at first, but presently dropped into a light doze. When he awoke he sat up with a start. He had heard a strange noise, but now all was silent. He called to Roger, but received no reply. Then he called again and got up and lighted the room. "Roger, where are you?" he repeated, and then looked toward his chum's berth. To his amazement the berth was made up as if it had never been occupied, and Roger was gone. CHAPTER XVIII IN NORWAY AT LAST There is no denying the fact that Dave was startled. It was one thing to have Roger missing, it was quite another to have his chum gone and have the berth made up as if it had never been occupied. "He went to bed--I saw him go," muttered the boy from the country to himself. "Am I dreaming, or what can the matter be?" The more Dave thought over the affair the more was he puzzled. As quickly as he could, he put on some of his clothing and slipped on his shoes. Then he opened the stateroom door and stepped out into the passageway leading to the main saloon. There was a dim light burning outside, and nobody appeared to be in sight. Dave looked up and down the passageway eagerly, and even stepped to one of the corners. Then he walked to the main saloon, with its big sofas and easy-chairs, and its grand piano. Not a soul was in sight anywhere. "Well, if this isn't the queerest yet," he murmured, and pinched himself, to make certain that he was not dreaming. He walked to one end of the saloon and then to the other, and then started for the stairs leading out on deck. At that moment there came an extra-heavy gust of wind and the steamer rocked violently. Dave was thrown on his side and fell headlong over the end of a sofa. As he went down he heard several cries, one in a voice that sounded familiar to him. "That must have been Roger," he told himself. "Where can he be?" And then he called out loudly: "Roger! Roger Morr! Where are you?" The boat continued to toss and pitch, and now Dave had all he could do to keep his feet. When he reached the entrance to the main deck he was stopped by one of the under officers. "Too rough to go out there." "I am looking for my friend," answered Dave, and told of the disappearance of the senator's son. "Perhaps he's walking in his sleep," suggested the officer. "That may be it!" cried Dave. "Queer I didn't think of it. He told me he got up once in a great while." "If he was walking in his sleep the lurching of the boat must have awakened him--if he cried out. Maybe he went back to his stateroom," continued the ship's official. "I'll go back and see." Not without some difficulty Dave returned to his stateroom. The steamer was pitching and tossing dreadfully, and the wind made a wild whistling sound overhead. He heard the overturning of a table or a chair and the crash of glassware. "We are going to have a tough night of it," he reasoned. "Guess further sleep will be out of the question." Hoping he would find his chum in the stateroom, Dave returned to the apartment. Here another surprise was in store for him. The door was locked from the inside. He rapped loudly several times. "Hello! Who's there?" came in a sleepy voice. "Roger, is that you? Let me in." "Dave, I declare! Why, I thought you were in your berth." The senator's son came to the door and opened it. Dave entered the stateroom, which was dark. "Roger, where have you been?" he demanded. "So you knew I went out, did you?" asked the senator's son, in a voice that showed he was vexed. "I thought I went out and came back without your knowing it. I thought you were still in your berth." "I got up, made a light, and found you gone--and the berth made up as if you hadn't used it." Dave paused and looked at his chum, who had just lit up. "Well--er--I might as well tell you. I must have been walking in my sleep," stammered Roger, and got red. "I'm as bad as Shadow Hamilton." "Well, I hope you didn't steal anything, as he did," added Dave hastily, referring to an unfortunate incident already well known to my old readers. "I don't think I did--but I don't know where I went." "You made up your bed, too." "Did I? That's queer." "And you don't know where you went at all, Roger?" "No, I haven't the slightest idea." "Were you dreaming?" "I think I was--I'm not sure. It was something about Nick Jasniff--he was trying to take something from me and I got afraid of him. That is all I can remember." "I thought I heard you scream--when the vessel gave that awful lurch a few minutes ago." "That woke me up, and I found myself in one of the passageways not far from here. I was dazed by the tumble I received, but got back here all right." "After this you had better tie yourself to the bed," was Dave's final remark, and then he turned in again and the light was again extinguished. But anything more than fitful dozes could not be had. The North Sea is well known for its violent storms during the winter months, and this one proved to be a "corker," as Dave called it afterwards. The waves were lashed into a tremendous fury, and some broke over the steamer's deck with terrific force, one carrying away a twenty-foot section of the forward rail. The high wind was accompanied by a snow that was as fine and hard as salt, and this sifted through every crack the windows and doors afforded. "No port to-day," said Dave; and he was right. To run close to the Norwegian coast in such a high wind, and with so much snow flying, was dangerous, and they had to remain for twenty-four hours longer at the entrance to Christiania Fjord--_fjord_ being the local name for bay. But at last the snow stopped coming down and the wind subsided a little, and the steamer headed up the bay to Dröbak, located on the east shore of the harbor. Here there was a good deal of floating ice, and plowing among it were vessels of all kinds and sizes, all covered with ice and snow. "It's wintry enough up here, goodness knows," remarked Roger. "I wonder how far north Christiania is?" "I was looking it up on the map," answered Dave. "It is located about sixty degrees north, which is just about the latitude of the lower coast of Greenland." "What, as far north as that! No wonder it is cold." "Don't forget, Roger, that Norway is the Land of the Midnight Sun. At the far north they have a night lasting about three months." "Well, I don't want such a night as that, just yet." "No--you might do too much sleep-walking," and Dave grinned. "Oh, cut that out!" and the face of the senator's son grew red. "I shan't mention it again." Dröbak is but a small place, containing less than twenty-five hundred inhabitants, but during the winter all the shipping of the fjord congregates there, and as a consequence the scene was a lively one. The boys were quickly landed, and then from one of the dock officials learned where they could get a train running to the capital. Their baggage had been examined and passed upon by the usual custom officials. "Well, this is certainly a second-rate railroad," was Dave's comment, as they seated themselves in the stuffy coach and had the door locked upon them. Then the train moved off at a slow rate of speed that was tantalizing to both. With half a dozen stops, it took them nearly an hour to reach Christiania, only eighteen miles away. Looking out of the window, the landscape was a dreary one, of marshland on one side and rocks on the other, all covered with ice and snow. The coach had no heat in it, and Roger declared that his feet were half frozen. "Puts me in mind of the time I visited a lumber camp in upper Maine," he told his chum. "It was in the winter-time, and they only ran one train a day, of two cars, a freight and a combination of everything else. We were delayed on the road, almost snowed in, and I didn't thaw out for a week afterwards." At the railroad station in Christiania they had some trouble passing the guard. Again their baggage was looked over, and they were taken to an office and asked a dozen or more questions by a man who looked as if he might be a police-inspector. What it was all about they could not make out, but at first the officer was not inclined to let them go. "Perhaps you had better go back to where you came from," said the man to Dave. "Why, what's the trouble?" demanded the youth. "I am sure I have done no wrong." "What brought you to Norway?" "I am looking for my father. His name is David Porter, like my own. He has joined the Lapham-Hausermann Expedition, bound for the interior of Norway." "Exactly," and the officer looked wise. "Who is this young man?" "This is my friend, Roger Morr. He is traveling with me for company." "You are very young to be traveling alone." "I can't help that. I want to find my father, and do it as soon as I can." "Is he expecting you?" "I don't know. I sent him a cablegram, but I do not know if he received it." "That expedition--do you know anything about it?" asked the officer, shrewdly. "No, sir--nothing more than what I saw in the English papers." "Didn't your father tell you anything about it?" "No, he couldn't." And Dave hesitated. "Why?" "Because--well, he doesn't know me--that is, he doesn't know I am alive." "This is extraordinary, young man!" exclaimed the officer of the police, for such the man was. "I think you had better explain." "I am in a great hurry, sir," pleaded Dave. "He wants to catch his father before the expedition leaves Christiania," put in Roger. "Before it leaves?" "Yes." The police official drew up his shoulders and made a wry face. "Has it left already?" questioned Dave, eagerly. "To be sure--four days ago," was the answer, which filled Dave's heart with fresh dismay. CHAPTER XIX OFF TO THE NORTHWARD Dave and Roger were told to follow the police officer, and did so, to a large stone building, located on one of the principal streets of the Norwegian capital. As they walked along many gazed at the American boys with interest. Conducted into a plainly furnished office, the boys were told to sit down. Then they were asked if they had any objection to their baggage being examined. "Not the slightest," answered Dave, and Roger said the same. "At the same time I wish you to understand one thing," went on Dave's chum. "I am the son of a United States senator, and if I have to suffer any indignity at your hands you'll hear from it later, through the proper authorities." "A United States senator's son!" murmured the police official. "Ah!" He took a long breath. "I shall not detain you a second longer than is necessary, sir," he went on, more civilly. After that Dave and Roger were asked a great number of additional questions, and Dave had virtually to tell his story from beginning to end. Several officials listened with interest, but whether they believed him or not the boy could not tell. "I am afraid you will have hard work finding your parent," said the police officer, at the conclusion of the interview. "He must have left some directions behind--for forwarding mail, and the like." "Possibly, but I doubt it. The expedition was bound up into the mountains,--so it was said. The means of communication are very poor at this time of year." The baggage was gone over with care, and the examination was evidently a disappointment to those who made it. A long talk in Norwegian followed between several police officials, and then Dave and Roger were told that they could go. "Would you mind telling me what it is all about?" questioned Dave, when he was ready to leave. "You will have to excuse me, but I am not permitted to answer that question," said the man who had brought them in, gravely. "If we have detained you without just cause, we are very sorry for it." And that was all he would say. "It's mighty queer, to say the least," observed Roger, after they had taken their departure. "Dave, what do you make of it?" "I think they took us to be some foreigners who had come to Norway for no good purpose. You must remember that throughout Europe they have great trouble with anarchists and with political criminals who plot all sorts of things against the various governments. Maybe they took us to be fellows who had come here to blow somebody up." "They ought to know better than that. I don't think we look like anarchists." "Since that uprising in Russia, and the attempt on the king in Italy, every nation over here looks with suspicion on all foreigners. But there is something else to it, I imagine," went on Dave, seriously. "Those fellows acted as if they didn't think much of this expedition which my father has joined. Maybe that is under suspicion, too." "Yes, I noticed that--and if it is true, your father may have some trouble before he leaves Norway." "I wish I could get to him at once. I could warn him." From an Englishman on the steamer the boys had learned of a good hotel where English was spoken, and there they obtained a good room for the night. Before going to bed Dave mailed several postals to Jessie, and also a letter to his Uncle Dunston and another to Phil Lawrence, for the benefit of the boys at Oak Hall. It was not difficult in Christiania to find out when the Lapham-Hausermann Expedition had left the capital, or what had been its first stopping-place. It had taken a railroad train to Pansfar and then gone northward to the mountain town of Blanfos--so called because of the waterfall in that vicinity--a waterfall being a _fos_ in the native tongue. "I don't see anything to do but to journey to Blanfos," said Dave. "I presume it will be a mighty cold trip, and you needn't go if you don't wish to, Roger." "Didn't I say I'd go anywhere you went--even if it's to the North Pole?" was the answer. "Come on,--I'm ready to start any time you are." "I don't think we'll get to the North Pole, but we may get to the North Cape. But we can't start until we've got those fur overcoats we talked about." At several of the shops in Christiania they procured all the additional clothing they thought they needed. Some of their lighter-weight stuff they left behind, not wishing to be encumbered with too much baggage. They booked for Pansfar at the railroad station, and by the middle of the afternoon of the second day in Norway were bound northward. "There is that police official, watching us!" cried Roger, as the train was about to depart. He was right--the man was in sight, but he quickly lost himself in a crowd, and whether he got on the train or not they could not tell. The train was but scantily filled, and only four people occupied the coach with the young Americans. One couple was evidently a newly married pair who had been on a wedding trip to Christiania, and they were very retired and shy. The other pair were a burgomaster and his wife, from some interior town. The burgomaster--who held a position similar to that of a mayor in an American city--wanted everybody to know who he was, and was thoroughly disagreeable. He crowded Dave into a corner until the youth could hardly get any air. "I'll thank you not to crowd so much--there is plenty of room," said the boy. The Norwegian did not understand, and continued to crowd the youth. Then Dave grew thoroughly angry and crowded back, digging his elbow well into the burgomaster's fat ribs. This caused the man to glare at the young American. Nothing daunted, Dave glared back. "What do you do that for?" demanded the burgomaster, sourly. "I don't speak Norwegian," answered Dave, brokenly, for that was one of the native phrases he had picked up. "But I want you to quit crowding me," he added, in English, and moved his elbows to show what he meant. The burly Norwegian had supposed he would daunt Dave by his looks, and when he saw that the young American was unmoved he was nonplussed. He growled out something to his wife, who grumbled something in return. He did not budge, and Dave continued to hold his elbow well in the fellow's ribs. The situation had its comical side, and it was all Roger could do to keep from laughing. "If you don't stop that, I'll have you put off the train!" roared the burgomaster. As Dave did not understand, he said nothing. A few minutes passed, and the train came to a halt and the door was unlocked. Nobody got out, but a round and ruddy-faced man got in and nodded to all those present. "Guard! guard! Come here!" roared the burgomaster, but even as he spoke the door was closed and locked again, and the train moved off. Then of a sudden the Norwegian grabbed Dave by the shoulder. "Let go there!" cried the youth, and took hold of the man's fat wrist. He gave such a tight squeeze that the burgomaster was glad enough to release his hold. "I say, what's the matter here?" demanded the man who had just come in, and spoke in a distinctly English tone of voice. "He's been shoving me into a corner and I told him to quit," answered Dave, glad to be able to make himself understood to somebody besides Roger. The Englishman looked at the Norwegian and gave a grunt of disgust. "Can't you let the lad alone?" he demanded, in Norwegian. "He's not hurting you any, is he? What's the use of acting as if you owned the whole coach?" The burgomaster attempted to answer, but the Englishman would scarcely listen. He liked Dave's looks, while he could readily see that the Norwegian was nothing but a bully. He said he didn't care if the man was a burgomaster, if Dave wasn't doing anything wrong he must be let alone, and a good deal more to the same effect. He and the Norwegian got into a spirited argument, but finally the burgomaster cooled down a bit, got up and bounced down on another seat, and his wife followed him. "Some of these blooming chaps are as overbearing as they can be," remarked the Englishman, after matters had quieted down. "Now this fellow is the burgomaster of some small town up here in Norway, and on that account he thinks he can treat folks as he pleases. I am glad to know you stood up for your rights. Never let them walk over you. Old England every time, say I!" And he smiled broadly. "I am much obliged to you for what you did," answered Dave, smiling back. "A fellow is at a disadvantage when he can't speak the language." "That's true, lad. What part of our country do you come from?" "I come from the United States, and so does my friend here," and the young American introduced himself and Roger. "Well now, isn't that strange!" exclaimed the newcomer. "And I took you to be English lads sure. Well, next to being English I'd prefer to be an American. My name is Granbury Lapham." "Granbury Lapham!" cried Dave, quickly. "Not the Lapham of the Lapham-Hausermann Expedition?" "No, not exactly that, lad, but close to it. That Lapham is my brother Oscar. He is younger than I and daffy on the subject of investigations. As soon as I heard he had started for the mountains of Norway I came over to find out just what he was doing. I don't want him to investigate some high mountain in a snowstorm, fall over some precipice, and kill himself." "You are going to join the expedition?" "Yes, if I can find it. But what do you know about it?" "I am going to join it also, and so is my friend," and then Dave had to give his reasons. Granbury Lapham listened with many a nod to the recital. "I declare, Master Porter, it sounds like a six-shilling novel, don't you know," he said. "So you haven't ever seen this father of yours? Small wonder you're in a hurry to run across him. Well, I'll assist you all I can. I presume we had better travel together." "With pleasure!" cried Dave, and he and the Englishman shook hands. Then Granbury Lapham told something of himself, and thus the time passed until Pansfar was reached. Here they got out, the burgomaster scowling after them as they departed. The Englishman had visited Norway a number of times and spoke Danish and Norwegian very well. He led the way to a tavern, where all enjoyed a smoking-hot meal, with some steaming coffee. "In the parts of Norway where there are no railroads the stage and sleigh lines, so called, are under the control of the government. The drivers are allowed to charge just so much for driving a person from one place to another, and the road-houses along the way are also subject to official control, and you can always get your meals for a stated price." "I suppose a fellow can get extras," suggested Roger. "Certainly--whatever you pay for," answered Granbury Lapham, with a laugh. He said that the Lapham-Hausermann Expedition consisted of six members, including Mr. Porter. What the object was he did not particularly know, excepting that his brother wanted to gather information concerning the hardy plants of Norway. He knew the party were going to keep to what was known as the Sklovarak Highway as far as Fesfjor and then to a new road leading directly northward. "I think the best thing we can do is to hire a good sleigh and a double team of horses," said the Englishman. "We'll want a good driver too, one who knows all the roads." It took them until the next day to obtain just what they wanted. The sleigh was a commodious one, and in it they placed such things as the driver advised them to take along. Then, wrapped in fur overcoats and wearing fur caps, they set off, on a tour that was destined to be filled with not a few perils and strange adventures. CHAPTER XX AN ENCOUNTER WITH WOLVES "Well, this is certainly a strange Christmas day!" It was Dave who spoke. He stood in the doorway of a small log hut, gazing anxiously out at the landscape before him. He was in the very heart of Norway, and on every side loomed the mountains with their covering of ice and snow. Just behind the hut was a patch of firs, the only trees growing in that vicinity. In front was what in summer was a mountain torrent, now a mass of irregular ice, the hollows filled with snow. The party had arrived at this place the night before, after four days of almost constant traveling. But here a blinding snowstorm had brought them to a halt, the driver of the sleigh refusing to trust himself and his turnout on the mountain trail beyond. "It is a bad road," said he to Granbury Lapham, in Norwegian. "A slip and a slide and we should all be killed. We must wait until the storm is over." And so they put up at this hut by the roadside, and the horses were stabled in a cow-shed in the rear. The four days of traveling in the heart of Norway had been full of interest to Dave and Roger. They had passed through half a dozen towns and as many more villages, and had met not a few people on the road, some dressed like ordinary Europeans and others in the bright-colored clothing of their forefathers. They had had "all kinds of meals, mostly bad," as Dave declared, and both boys longed for some "United States cooking," as Roger said. But one thing pleased them--wherever they slept the beds were good and the rooms as clean as wax. Up to the day previous they had heard a number of times about the scientific expedition, which was said to be just ahead. But then somebody had sent them astray, and in trying to get on the right road they had been caught in the snowstorm and been forced to take to the shelter as described. "Too bad, Dave; especially when you hoped to meet your father by Christmas," said Roger. "But shut the door--it is too cold for comfort out there." "I opened it to get a whiff of fresh air,--it's vile inside, when the cooking is going on--they use so much fat for frying." The hut was the property of a sturdy mountaineer, who possessed half a dozen cows and a large flock of sheep. He was a big fellow, all of six feet four inches high, with yellowish hair and bright blue eyes. He was generally good-natured, but the boys once saw him give his oldest son a box on the ear that sent the youngster rolling over and over on the floor. "He's got a hand on him like a ham," remarked the senator's son. "I shouldn't want him to strike me." "Most of these Norwegian mountain folks are big and strong," said Granbury Lapham. "I fancy the puny ones die off young." "What do they do for a living? They can't farm much around here," said Dave. "They raise sheep, goats, and cows, and a good many of them are wood-choppers. Norwegian lumber is a great thing in the market, and of late years the paper mills are after wood-pulp, which they get from the small growth. Along the coast nearly all the inhabitants are fishermen." The family of the hut-owner consisted of his wife and seven children. For Christmas dinner there were a hare potpie, carrots and onions, and a pudding with honey sauce. The children had a Christmas tree, brought in by their father from the forest, and this was decorated with fancy-colored papers, and rings, stars and animals, all made of a kind of ginger and spice dough and baked by the housewife. There were a few presents, and the boys and Granbury Lapham added to these by giving the children each a small silver piece, which delighted them hugely. "I'll wager they are having a fine dinner at the Wadsworth home," said Dave, with a sigh. In his mind's eye he could see Jessie, his Uncle Dunston, and all the others, making merry around the board. "Don't mention it, Dave," answered his chum. "We generally have a bang-up time, too." "What I miss most of all is my plum-pudding, don't you know," remarked Granbury Lapham. "I've had plum-pudding for Christmas ever since I was a baby." "I'd like to know how my father is faring." "And my brother," added the Englishman. "Well, we are bound to catch up to them soon, so don't let us worry about it any more," said the senator's son, cheerfully. The mountaineer was something of a huntsman, and showed the boys his shotgun, a weapon they considered rather antiquated, yet one capable of doing good service. "He says he once brought down a bear with that gun," said Granbury Lapham. "It must have been at close quarters, for, as I understand it, a Norway bear is a pretty tough creature to kill." "Do they have many wild animals up here?" questioned Roger, with interest. "They have, besides bears, a good many wolves, some lynxes, and also red deer, reindeer, hares, and a variety of small animals." "We must go out hunting before we leave Norway!" cried Roger, who liked the sport very much. "All right, I'm willing," answered Dave. "But I should like to find my father first," he added, hastily. "Oh, of course." The evening of Christmas Day was spent in watching the children around the decorated tree, which was lit up with a dozen or more tiny candles, of home production. Then the boys turned in and Granbury Lapham followed. About the middle of the night came a great disturbance, and in a minute the household was in an uproar. They heard the mountaineer call to his wife, and then, lantern in hand, he rushed outside and toward the sheepfold, back of the cow-shed. "Some wolves have gotten among the sheep," explained Granbury Lapham, after a few words with the woman of the hut. "The man is going after them with his gun." "Let us see if we can aid him!" exclaimed Roger, and slipped on such of his clothing as he had taken off. He had a loaded pistol in his pocket. "If you go out, I'll go too," answered Dave, and followed his chum to the rear of the hut. He, too, had a pistol, purchased before going on the journey in the sleigh, and now he looked to see that the weapon was in condition for use. Outside, they heard the mountaineer calling loudly, although they could not make out what was being said. There was a commotion in the sheepfold and also in the cow-shed. Then came a crashing sound, and from the cow-shed came one of the horses. "Hullo! one of the horses is running away!" cried Dave. "This won't do at all! Whoa! Whoa, there!" But the steed did not whoa--evidently not understanding such a command! On it went, around the corner of the hut and along the snowy trail. The sleigh driver was up and after it, and set off on a labored run, cracking a whip as he went. "I see a wolf!" cried Roger. The beast had just left the sheepfold and was carrying something in its mouth. Evidently it was nearly famished, or it would never have stopped to carry off such a burden. "It's a sheep!" said Dave. As he spoke, the senator's son fired, and the bullet from his pistol hit the wolf in the side. The beast staggered for a second and then kept on, still carrying the sheep in its strong teeth. "He's game, that's sure," said Dave, and now he, too, fired, running forward as he did so. Then came the roar of the shotgun from the sheepfold and out came another wolf, followed presently by a third. The fourth and last of the pack was instantly killed by the mountaineer, who literally, at close range, blew the animal's head off. Dave's shot caused the wolf with the sheep to falter, and presently it dropped its burden and limped away for the nearest patch of firs. As it did this the second and the third wolf ranged up by the side of the two young Americans. Roger fired three shots in succession and Dave fired twice, but the animals were so quick that but little damage was done. One beast was hit in the tail and the other in the shoulder, and this made them extremely ugly. Granbury Lapham had come out, but was at the sheepfold with the mountaineer. As a consequence the two boys faced the two wolves alone. One was sniffing at the body of the dead sheep, and now it essayed to raise the carcass up. "He's going to run off with that sheep!" cried Roger. "Not if I know it!" answered Dave, and rushing closer, he took the best aim the night afforded and blazed away. The wolf dropped the carcass, gave a vicious snarl, and turned abruptly. "Look out!" yelled the senator's son, and scarcely had he spoken when the wolf was at Dave's very feet, glaring ferociously into the youth's face. Dave wanted to fire at the animal, but only a click of the hammer followed the pulling of the pistol's trigger. It was a moment of peril, but Roger came to the rescue. Not to hit his chum, he ran around to the wolf's side and blazed away twice in rapid succession. This was too much for the wolf, and with only a grunt it rolled over and stretched out dead. "Good for you, Roger!" said Dave. "If you hadn't---- Look out, here comes the other wolf!" Dave was right: undaunted by the death of its mate, the last wolf--the largest of the pack of four--had leaped up through the snow and darkness. It was so hungry that the smell of blood maddened it beyond all endurance. It leaped so close to Dave it brushed his legs, then grabbed the sheep and began to drag the carcass rapidly through the snow. "He's game, I must say!" cried Roger, and reloaded his pistol, while Dave did the same. Then came a shout from the sheepfold and the mountaineer put in an appearance, followed by Granbury Lapham. The man of the place was angry, for three of his best sheep had been killed. He blazed away as soon as he saw the wolf, but his aim was poor, and the snow, blown up by a sudden wind, almost hid the beast from sight. Then the Englishman fired, hitting the wolf in the right hind leg. The animal whirled savagely, dropped the sheep, gave a snarl of rage, and suddenly confronted Roger. "Get back, you!" yelled the senator's son, and fired point-blank at the wolf. He hit only one ear, and in a twinkling the wolf was on his breast, trying his best to get at Roger's throat. CHAPTER XXI CAUGHT IN A WINDSTORM It was an anxious moment for all, and the others expected to see poor Roger almost torn to pieces. The wolf was big and strong, and hunger and the wounds it had received made it a formidable antagonist. Its eyes gleamed like those of a tiger. "Help! help!" cried Roger, and then his words were drowned in the crack of Dave's pistol. Taking the best aim he could, the youth fired three times, and the wolf was hit in the side and the rump. It fell to the ground, whirled over and over in the snow, and started for Dave. Then Granbury Lapham fired, and the wolf fell over on its side. A moment later the mountaineer rushed in, and with a club he had picked up at the sheepfold dashed out the brains of the creature; and thus the strange and unexpected encounter came to an end. Roger had suffered little more than a few scratches, yet he was so weak that the others had to support him back to the hut. "I--I felt it was my last minute on earth!" he gasped. "If that wolf had been left alone another ten seconds he would have bitten me in the throat!" "He was certainly a savage beast," replied Dave. He, too, was trembling, in spite of all he could do to control himself. Several lights were now lit; and leaving Roger at the hut, the others went around to view the damage done. The mountaineer mourned the loss of his sheep, but was rejoiced to know so many wolves were dead. "I know that big wolf," he told the Englishman. "He had given me a great deal of trouble. He was the leader of the pack. Now he is gone, perhaps I shall have peace for the rest of the winter." The sleigh driver had returned with the runaway horse. The animal was highly excited and the driver had all he could do to quiet the steed. "I could tell a long story about this horse," said the sleigh driver. "Once we were caught near Stamo in a great snow. The wolves came after us and this horse was bitten in the flank. That is what made him so afraid. The other horses do not know what wolves really are, and they did not mind them any more than they would so many dogs." "This is a Christmas night to remember," said Dave, when they finally turned in again. "Roger, if this sort of thing keeps up, we are in for a trip full of excitement." "Thank you, I don't want to meet any more wolves," replied the senator's son. All were worn out by what had happened and glad to sleep late the following day. When they arose they found the storm had cleared away and it was as bright as could be expected at this time of year. Once more the sleigh was brought forth and the double team harnessed up. From the mountaineer they obtained a few extra provisions, including a portion of the mutton that had been killed. For this the man would take no pay, but the boys made his wife a present of some silver that pleased the family very much. "And now to catch the exploring party!" cried Dave. "I don't think they traveled any further than we did in that awful snowstorm." "It all depends upon what road they were on, so Hendrik tells me," answered Granbury Lapham. Hendrik was the sleigh driver, a good-natured man, although rather silent. "Does he mean that they could travel on some of the roads, even if it did storm?" asked Dave. "Yes." "Well, all we can do is to follow them the best we know how," said Roger. The new fall of snow had made traveling very heavy, and by noon they had covered only nine miles. Not a hut was in sight, and they made a temporary camp at the edge of a pine forest, where the trees sheltered them from the wind. A fire was built and they broiled a piece of mutton and made a large pot of coffee. "What a sparsely settled country this is!" remarked the senator's son. "I declare, it looks like some spots in the far West of the United States." "Norway is the most thinly settled country of Europe," answered Granbury Lapham. "And instead of growing better it seems to grow worse. Many of the peasants emigrate to Canada and the United States, where they can get productive farms without much trouble." It was necessary to let the horses rest for an hour, and during that time the two boys strolled around the vicinity. There was, however, not much to see, and once off the road they found walking uncertain and dangerous. "I can now understand why the driver didn't want to go on in that storm," was Dave's comment, when he pulled himself out of a gully several feet deep. "A little more and I'd have gone heels over head, and what would happen to the turnout in such a place I don't know." "If the sleigh breaks down, or we lose a horse, it will be very bad," answered the Englishman, gravely. "The further north we go the more careful we must be, or we may not get back in safety. I think that exploring expedition was rather a foolhardy undertaking--at this season of the year." "I believe I know what prompted my father to undertake it," said Dave. "It was the spirit of adventure. My Uncle Dunston says my father loves an adventure of any kind." "Do you take after him?" asked the Englishman, with a twinkle in his eyes. "I think I must--otherwise I shouldn't be here," and Dave smiled broadly. The sleigh driver said that if they made good time during the afternoon they would reach the village of Bojowak by five or six o'clock. Here he was certain they would hear further of the exploring party. "Then let us hurry all we can," said Dave. "If it is too much of a pull for the horses, I, for one, am willing to walk part of the way." "So am I," added the senator's son, and the Englishman also agreed to this, although he declared that trudging in the deep snow generally winded him greatly. They were now approaching a dangerous part of the road, which ran around the western slope of two fair-sized mountains. They progressed with care, and frequently the driver would go in advance, to make sure that the footing was good. "If only the fellows of Oak Hall could see us now!" declared Dave. "Wonder what they would say?" "I must take another snapshot or two," answered Roger. He had brought a folding pocket camera with him and had already taken several rolls of pictures. None of the films had been developed, so he could not as yet tell how the snapshots would turn out. Now he took a picture of Dave knee-deep in snow, with the turnout and the others in the background. "I ought to have a picture of that fight with the wolves," said Roger, when he put his camera away. "When we tell about it at the Hall some of the fellows will be sure to say it's a fish-story." "Nat Poole won't believe it for one, Roger; and I don't think Merwell will believe it either." At the mention of Merwell's name Dave's face clouded for an instant. "I wish Merwell would leave Oak Hall, Roger," he said. "Somehow, I like that chap less than I do Nat Poole or anybody else--even Jasniff." "So do I. Poole is a fool, and Jasniff is a hot-headed scamp, but this Merwell----" The senator's son could not finish. "I believe Merwell has the making of a thoroughly bad fellow in him," finished Dave. "I don't see how Doctor Clay allowed him to join the school." On and on went the sleigh. The road was up hill, and all hands walked. Once they passed a man on horseback, wrapped up in furs. He stared at them curiously. "Stop, please!" called out Granbury Lapham, in Norwegian, and the traveler came to a halt. When questioned he said he had heard about the strange party of six men who had come into that part of Norway, and he had also heard that the authorities were watching them. "But where did they go to?" asked the Englishman. That the man could not tell, but said they might possibly find out at Bojowak, from a man named Quicklabokjav. "What a name!" cried Dave. "It's bad enough--but I have heard worse," answered Granbury Lapham. "Some of the Norwegian names are such that a person speaking the English tongue cannot pronounce them correctly." They were now more anxious than ever to reach Bojowak, which Hendrik said was a village of about sixty or seventy inhabitants. The people were mostly wood-choppers, working for a lumber company that had located in that territory two years before. The wind was beginning to rise again. This blew the snow down from the mountain side, and occasionally the landscape was all but blotted out thereby. They struggled along as best they could, the driver cracking his whip with the loudness of a pistol. They passed around one edge of the mountain, only to view with consternation a still more dangerous stretch of road ahead. "Dave, this is getting interesting," remarked Roger, as the horses stopped for a needed rest. "I don't like the looks of that road, Roger. There is too much snow on the upper side and too deep a hollow on the lower." "Right you are." The senator's son turned to the Englishman. "Mr. Lapham, will you ask Hendrik if he thinks it is safe to go on?" When appealed to, the burly sleigh driver merely shrugged his shoulders. Then he looked up the mountain side speculatively. "He says he thinks we can get through if the wind doesn't blow too strongly," said Granbury Lapham, presently. "But the wind is blowing strong enough now," answered Roger. "And it is gradually getting worse," added Dave. Once again they went forward, but now with added caution. Ahead of them was a point where the firs stood in a large patch with the road cut through the center. As they entered the forest the wind whistled shrilly through the tree branches. "I'd give a good bit to be safe in that village," remarked Roger, after listening to the wind. "After we leave this patch of timber we are going to have our own troubles on the road." They looked at the sleigh driver and saw that he, too, was disturbed. He stopped the team and gazed upward between the firs to the dull and heavy sky. Then he shook his head slowly. "He says another storm is coming," said Granbury Lapham. "It is a great pity that it can't keep off until we reach Bojowak." They were in the very center of the patch of firs when the wind increased as if by magic. It caught up the loose snow and sent it whirling this way and that, almost blinding the travelers. The horses, too, could not see, and they stopped short, refusing to go another step. The driver looked around again, and now his face showed that he was frightened. "He says we must gain shelter of some kind," said the Englishman, after a few hurried words had passed. "He thinks it will be dangerous to remain here among the trees." "The shelter of the trees is better than nothing," answered Roger. "If we were in the open and this wind---- Gracious! listen to that!" A sudden rush of wind swept through the forest, causing the trees to sway and creak. The loose snow was blown in all directions, and they had to be careful that they did not get their eyes and mouths full of the stuff. "It's almost as bad as a--a blizzard!" panted Dave. "And I really think it is growing worse every minute!" "The question is, where shall we go?" said Granbury Lapham. "Perhaps the driver knows of some shelter," suggested Dave. "If he does----" The Englishman got no further, for at that moment came another rush of air. It bore down upon the forest with terrific force, and a second later they heard several trees go down with crashes that terrified them to the heart. It was a most alarming situation, and what to do to protect themselves nobody seemed to know. CHAPTER XXII SNOWBOUND IN THE MOUNTAINS "If we stay here we'll be in danger of the falling trees!" cried Dave. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the fury of the elements. "That's true, but where are we to go?" questioned Roger. The look in his eyes showed his keen anxiety. "Isn't there some kind of a cliff around here, under which we can stand?" asked Granbury Lapham of the sleigh driver. Hendrik shrugged his shoulders for a moment, then suddenly tossed his head. "Yes, I know such a spot," he said, in his native tongue. "Come, we will try to reach it before it is too late." Amid the howling of the wind and the swirling of the snow, the horses and sleigh were turned partly around, and they struck off on a side trail, leading up the mountain. On and on they toiled, a distance of perhaps five hundred feet, although to the boys it seemed a mile or more. The wind was so strong it fairly took their breath away, and the snow all but blinded them. They had to walk, for it was all the double team could do to drag the turnout over the rough rocks and through the snow. Once Dave slipped, bumped against the Englishman, and both rolled downward a distance of several yards. "Excuse me!" panted the young American. "My feet went up before I was aware." "Don't mention it, my lad," was the gasped-out answer. "I fancy we're all doing the best we can." Presently, through the driving snow, came the sight of a high, rocky wall. The sleigh driver halted and warned the others to do likewise. "He says there is a pocket at the base of the cliff and we must be careful that we don't fall in it," said Granbury Lapham. "Let us wait until he makes certain it is perfectly safe." In a few minutes Hendrik, having gone forward, came back and led the horses closer to the rocky wall, which towered over their heads a distance of a hundred feet or more. Toward the base the wall receded about a rod, so that the overhanging portion afforded a little shelter below. Outside of this shelter was a drift of snow as high as their heads, and the travelers had not a little trouble in getting through it. "Well, this is certainly better than nothing," remarked Dave, as he shook the snow from his garments. "So long as the wind comes from down the mountain we'll be safe enough." Hendrik proved a practical fellow in the emergency. He found a spot where some small rocks outside of the cliff set up something of a barrier in front. Then he unhitched the horses, took the outfit from the sleigh, and turned the sleigh upon its side. Not content with this, he found some fir saplings, cut them down with an axe he carried, and on them spread out the lap-robes. By the time he had finished they had quite a shelter from the wind and cold. "Make a little fire now," he said, to the Englishman. "But be very careful that the forest does not catch." And then he explained that to allow the forest to burn in Norway was a prison offence. "It's an outrage to burn down a forest, anyway," said Roger. "It takes so long for the trees to grow again." "Yes, and they are never so nice afterwards either," added Dave. With security from the storm, at least for the time being, everybody found himself hungry. A small fire of fir branches was started, and over this they made a pot of coffee and broiled a piece of the mutton brought along. They had some bread with them, and also some cheese-cake, and managed to make a square meal. They took their time eating, since there was nothing else to do. "Wonder how long we'll have to stay here?" mused the senator's son. "Until this awful wind lets up, I guess," answered Dave. "My! just listen to it roar and whistle! I shouldn't care to be out on the mountain top." "You couldn't stand up there." Hendrik brought in a large bundle of sticks and kept the fire going, so that they were soon well warmed. In the meantime it was growing darker and darker. "We'll have to stay here until morning," announced Granbury Lapham. "To attempt to move in this darkness would be foolhardy." There was absolutely nothing to do after that but sit down and rest, and soon the dancing of the fire made Dave sleepy. He rolled up in a blanket and closed his eyes, and presently Roger followed his example. When the two boys awoke it was morning, but only a faint light reached them in their sleeping place under the cliff. They found Granbury Lapham already up. The sleigh driver, worn out, was stretched beside the fire, snoring lustily. "Why, what has happened?" asked Dave, trying to look beyond the shelter. "I declare, it looks as if we were snowed in!" "That's about the size of it," returned the senator's son. "And it looks to me as if it was still snowing." "We'll have a time getting out on the road." It was snowing thickly, so that but little could be seen beyond the improvised shelter. Fortunately, however, the wind had gone down, so that it was not nearly so cold as it had been. They made themselves breakfast, and then Granbury Lapham aroused the sleigh driver. Hendrik went beyond the shelter before eating and shook his head dubiously. "It will be a hard road to travel," he announced, in Norwegian, to the Englishman. "A hard road indeed!" "Don't you think we can reach Bojowak to-day?" asked Granbury Lapham. "We can try," was the non-committal reply. They did not start until nearly noon. First Hendrik broke the road with the horses alone and then came back for the sleigh. It took a full hour to get down to the spot where they had turned off the Bojowak highway the day previous. Even then they broke one of the traces and had to stand around while the leather was mended. The falling snow was so thick they could not see any distance ahead. It clung to their fur caps and overcoats until each looked "like a regular Santa Claus," as Dave declared. Beyond the forest the road ran along a ridge, and here they found traveling much easier, so that all entered the sleigh once more and rode. But at the end of the ridge they found a hollow covered even with snow. "What's the trouble now?" questioned the Englishman, as Hendrik pulled in his four horses. "I must see how deep it is first," was the reply, and the Norwegian jumped out and walked ahead with a long and slender pole he had brought along. Of a sudden he sank up to his waist. Then he stuck his pole down ahead of him. The snow was all of seven feet deep. He shook his head vigorously. "We can't drive through there," said Dave. "Now what's to be done?" Roger and Granbury Lapham stared around helplessly. The driver came back and began an inspection of the ground to the left. Here was another ridge. He said they might try skirting that, since there seemed nothing else to do. "All right, anything so long as we get to Bojowak!" cried Dave. The sleigh was turned partly around and the horses tugged and labored bravely to get through the snow on the new route. They went up a small rise of ground and then along a ridge that did not appear to be more than two yards wide. At one point there was a sharp decline on the left. "We'll have to be careful here!" cried the Englishman to the driver. "Otherwise we may all take a tumble." He had hardly spoken when a sleigh ran up on a rock on one side and plunged into a hollow on the other. In a twinkling the turnout was upset. Dave felt himself pitched out and rolled over and over before he could stop himself. Then he went down and down, he knew not whither. His hand touched that of Roger, and instinctively the two chums clung to each other. The snow filled their eyes, ears, and noses, and almost smothered them. They saw a little light, and then suddenly all became pitch-dark around them. For several seconds after they fell neither spoke, for each was busy collecting his scattered senses. They were side by side on their backs and the snow was still all around them. Dave put out an arm, felt something of an opening, and crawled into it. "Roger, are you all right?" "I--I guess so!" came in a spluttering voice. "But I must have rolled ov--er a hun--hundred times!" "So did I. We came down on the lightning express, didn't we?" "Where are we, and where is the sleigh?" "Don't ask me. We're at the bottom of some place. Come here, there is more room to breathe." The senator's son followed Dave into the opening the latter had found. All was so dark here they could not see a thing. They stood close together, fearing to take another step. "Hello! hello!" yelled Dave, when he had his breath back, and Roger quickly joined in the cry. To their consternation there was no answer. "Most likely the others went down, too," said Dave. "Then they ought to be near here." "Unless they slipped clear down to the bottom of the mountain. If they did that I guess it's good-bye to them." "Oh, do you think they've been killed, Dave?" "I don't know what to think. Let us call again." They did so, a dozen times or more. But no answer came back. All around them it was as silent as a tomb. While procuring their outfit Dave had invested in a pocket lantern, and this he now brought forth and lit. By the tiny rays he made out that they had tumbled into a hollow between several large rocks, over which the snow and ice hung thickly. A big bank of snow was in front of them and behind was a black-looking space of uncertain depth. "Roger, I must confess, I don't like the look of things." "Don't like the look of things? Well, I guess not, Dave! How are we ever to get out?" "I don't know." "But we've got to get out somehow," went on the senator's son, desperately. "We can't stay here forever." "Not unless this place becomes our tomb." "You are cheerful, to say the least," answered Roger, with a shiver. "I don't intend the place shall be my tomb," went on Dave, sturdily. "I am going to get out somehow. Let us do a little exploring." "What! go into that black hole behind us? Why, we may fall into a bottomless pit!" "Not if we are careful." "I don't want to take any more chances--I've taken enough." Dave held the light low so that he could see where he was going and walked into the opening behind him for a couple of rods. Roger followed very gingerly, for he did not want to be left behind. The opening proved to be a cave in the mountain side and the roof and flooring were of almost solid rock. Walking was very rough, and they could not tell how far the cave extended or in what direction. "I am going to call again," said Roger, and going back to the mouth of the cave they set up as strong a cry as before. At first they fancied somebody answered them, but then all became silent. "Nothing doing," murmured the senator's son, and his face took on a look of deep anxiety. "Dave----" He stopped short. "What?" "Nothing, only--do you really think the others were killed?" "Let us hope not," was Dave's grave reply. CHAPTER XXIII LEFT IN THE DARK The thought that their two companions might possibly have been killed by the toppling over of the sleigh filled Dave and Roger with fresh horror, and for several minutes neither of the youths spoke. They listened for some sound, but none came. Then Roger heaved a deep sigh. "Perhaps we had better try to climb out," he suggested, timidly. "I've thought of that, Roger. But what if we slip when we get out? Why, the bottom of the valley is quarter of a mile further down. I don't want such a tumble, on top of the one we have already experienced." "If we ever get out we'll have plenty of news to send home," was the senator's son's comment. "True; but let us get out before we think of sending news." They talked the matter over, and at length concluded to do a little more exploring of the cave. Dave turned up the pocket lantern as high as possible, and as he did this Roger took from his pocket a short, strong cord. "I thought this might come in useful, for tying up our supplies," explained the senator's son, "so I brought it from the last house we stopped at. Tie one end around your waist, Dave, and I will hold fast to the other end. Then I'll walk behind you, and if you go into a hole----" "I may drag you behind me," finished Dave. "No, I'll look out for that,--only be as careful as you can." "I'll take no more risks than are necessary." They moved forward slowly and cautiously, first to one side of the cavern and then to the other. At last they struck what appeared to be a passageway running parallel to the mountain side. "Let us follow this," suggested Dave. "It may bring us out somewhere on the road." Roger was willing to do anything his chum suggested. It was a hard journey, over rocks that were sharp and slippery. In some spots they found a coating of ice and above their heads long icicles hanging from the roofing. Roger slipped and fell and came down with such a jar that a great icicle weighing at least twenty pounds came down close to his head, smashing into many pieces and scattering over both him and Dave. "Hi! look out!" cried Dave. "If we got one of those on our heads----" His voice echoed loudly throughout the cave, and then down came two more icicles, one hitting his shoulder. He was thoroughly alarmed and leaped to a spot beyond, literally dragging Roger with him. "That was a close shave!" murmured the senator's son. "Dave, this spot is full of perils!" On they went once more, until Dave was almost certain he saw some sort of an opening ahead of them. He pointed it out; and just then the tiny light of the pocket lantern began to flicker. "Dave, the light is going out!" "I know it." "Can't you turn it up a bit?" "No; the oil is gone," was the answer, after Dave had shaken the lantern to make certain of that fact. "What will we do if we are left in the dark?" "Hurry; I think we can reach that opening--if it is an opening." They ran, and as they did so the lantern flickered up for the last time and went out. Then Dave stopped short and Roger clung to him. "Don't stop here, Dave!" "I won't--but we must go slow, or we'll knock our heads on a rock or on the icicles." They advanced with all the caution they could command. Each was filled with a nameless dread, for if there was no opening ahead what should they do? To go back the way they had come was next to impossible in the dark. A dozen steps, and both went down in a hollow, Roger rolling on top of his chum. The spot was like a huge washbowl, and all of the sides were covered with ice. They tried to scramble out, only to slip back over and over again. "This is the limit!" cried Roger, desperately. "If we---- Oh, wait!" He felt in his pocket. "Hurrah!" "What is it?" "I've got five matches. I'm going to light one." "Make it last as long as possible," was Dave's advice. The match was ignited and the boys gazed around the hollow. Dave found some bits of projecting rocks and pulled himself up, and Roger came behind, the match burning itself out in the meanwhile. Then they pushed on, until they presently came to an opening through which the snow came down. "Out at last!" murmured Dave. "I am thankful for that!" "We have reached the open air, but we are not out of our difficulty," returned the senator's son. "I can't see anything of the road, can you?" "Not yet, but it must be somewhere in the neighborhood, for we went upward in the cave." They had come out at a point where there was a small table-land, which the wind of the night before had swept almost clear of snow. Below was the valley and above them a patch of firs. "That's the forest," said Dave, pointing upward. "The road runs through there. I think the place where we took the tumble is over yonder." "Let us call to the others again." Once more they raised their voices, and from a distance came an answering call from Granbury Lapham. "Where is he?" queried Roger. "I can't see anything through this snow." "Neither can I." They called again, and at last made out that the Englishman was above them. Then they said they were going to try to get to him and commenced the struggle. It was a hard task, and took not only their strength but also their breath. They could not see the man, and it was only by continual calling they finally located him. "We all took a great tumble, don't you know!" cried Granbury Lapham. "Were you hurt?" "Not enough to mention," answered Dave. "Where is the sleigh driver?" "He tried to stop the horses, I think. They ran away after the sleigh turned over. I wanted to help and the first thing I knew I went down, too." "Do you know where the road is?" asked Roger. "Not far above us. But I slipped back several times trying to get to it." Now was no time to compare notes, and all three started to ascend the mountain side to where they thought the road must be located. As they could not get up the icy slopes they pushed on to where there was a stunted growth of pines. Here, by clinging to one tree after another, they at last reached a point where trudging through the snow became comparatively easy. "I got a pretty bad scare when I came down the mountain side," said Granbury Lapham, when they stopped to rest. "A bear came along not more than fifty feet in front of me." "A bear!" cried the two boys, simultaneously. "Yes, and a mighty big fellow, too, I can tell you." "What did you do?" "I felt for my pistol, but it was gone--I must have dropped it in the snow when I tumbled. At first I thought the beast would attack me, but he gave one look and then jumped away in the snow--and that's the last I saw or heard of him." Both of the boys felt instinctively for their weapons and were glad to learn that they were safe. "I don't want to see any bears," observed Dave. "All I want is to go on and join my father." "And all I want to do is to find my brother," answered Granbury Lapham. "I sincerely trust they are safe." "We all hope for that," answered the senator's son. By the time they gained the mountain road it had stopped snowing, so that they could see a fair distance ahead and behind. Dave gave a long look in advance. "There is something," he said. "I think it must be our turnout." "It certainly is the sleigh," said Roger, a minute later. "But it is still turned over." "Yes, and the two front horses are gone," added the Englishman. As tired as they were, they pressed forward with all possible speed, and soon came up to the overturned sleigh, with its scattered outfit. Some of their goods had gone down the mountain side out of sight and the rest were covered with snow. The horses were nervous and on the point of dashing off, so that Dave had to go to their heads to quiet them. "Do you know what I think?" said the boy. "The front team broke loose somehow, and Hendrik has gone after them." "Well, I hope he catches 'em and brings 'em back," answered Roger. They unhooked the team attached to the sleigh and tied them to the nearest tree, some distance off. Then all hands got at the heavy turnout and righted it and cleaned it out. This done, they put in the robes and all they could find of their belongings. Thus an hour went by. "Hendrik doesn't seem to be coming back," said Dave. "Perhaps those horses went a long distance and it might be as well to follow them--if the single team can do it." "Let us try the horses that are left, anyway," returned Roger. "We can let Mr. Lapham drive while we walk ahead and make sure of the road." They hooked up with care and the Englishman took the reins. It was all the two animals could do to start the sleigh, for the road was slightly upward for quarter of a mile. But then it ran downhill and going became almost too easy. "They'll be running away, if we don't look out," said Granbury Lapham, after Dave and Roger had jumped in on the rear seat. "There doesn't seem to be any whoa in them." "Shall I drive?" asked Dave. "Do you know anything about horses? My knowledge is rather limited." "Yes, I used to live on a farm when I was younger. I'll take the reins." Dave started to step from the rear to the front seat of the sleigh. As he did this the turnout reached a point in the road where the downgrade was greater than ever. Away went the horses, taking the bits in their teeth. The shock threw Dave backward into Roger's lap. "Hi! hi!" yelled Granbury Lapham, in quick alarm. "They are running away! Stop them! Whoa! whoa!" And he tugged helplessly at the lines. The steeds paid no attention to the command to stop and the pulling on the reins did not appear to bother them in the least. On and on the downgrade of the mountain road they bounded, causing the sleigh to bounce from one side to the other. They were certainly running away, and to the occupants of the sleigh it looked as if each moment might bring a smash that would terminate fatally. CHAPTER XXIV THE BURGOMASTER OF MASOLGA Granbury Lapham had had practically no experience with horses and in the present trying emergency he was as helpless as an infant. He sawed this way and that on the reins, and yelled at the top of his lungs. This merely served to frighten the steeds still more, and away they sprang at a greater speed than ever. "We'll be killed!" gasped Roger. He stood up, pale with fright. "Don't jump out!" cried Dave. "Maybe I can stop them." As quickly as he could, he gained the front seat of the turnout and took the reins from the Englishman's hands. He saw at once that the horses had the bits in their teeth and that pulling on the lines would do little if any good. By this time they had gained a level stretch of road, but ahead was a decline greater than that just passed. If they reached that spot an accident would be inevitable. On one side of the road was the upward slope of the hill, on the other the treacherous downward slope that had already caused them so much trouble. Dave hesitated for a moment, then pulled on one side of the reins with might and main, allowing the other side to drop entirely. At first the horses did not heed, but presently one began to lose temper and courage and turned in toward the upward slope. Then the other had to come around, and in a twinkling the team was literally climbing the mountain side, dragging sleigh and occupants behind them! "Look out! We'll all go over!" cried the senator's son. "Hold tight; they're bound to stop soon, they can't keep this up!" yelled back Dave, and even as he spoke the horses, blowing heavily, slackened up, came to a walk, and then stopped short. "Really, don't you know----" began Granbury Lapham, and knew not what to say. "Now you can get out, if you wish," said Dave, and gathered up both reins once more. "I guess they have had their fill of running away." "You turned them up the hill nicely." "It was a hard pull," said Roger. "Dave, are you going to get out?" he added, as he hopped to the ground. "No, I am going to turn them around and drive them down to the road." "They'll run away with you!" ejaculated the Englishman, in alarm. "I won't give them a chance," was the quiet but firm reply. "If you are going to ride, I'll do the same," said Roger, and clambered back to his seat again. Granbury Lapham said he would walk for a while. "I want to see how they act," he remarked, frankly. "I am not going to risk my neck again until I know what I am doing." With a firm hand Dave started the horses and turned them partly around. They were inclined to be fretful, but he gave them no chance to gain the mastery. He spoke to them in a voice they could not help but notice, and was ready to turn them up the mountain side again at the first indication of another "break." "Dave, you certainly know how to manage horses," spoke up Roger, when the road was reached. "It must be born in you." "I suppose it is, Roger. My Uncle Dunston tells me that my father is a very good horseman and that he and my mother used often to go out horseback riding together." Seeing how well Dave managed, Granbury Lapham entered the sleigh once more, and away they went along the road and down the decline previously mentioned. To retard the movement of the turnout and thus ease the team, Dave kept partly in the deep snow, and consequently there was no excuse for the horses running away. Nearly a mile was covered when they saw Hendrik returning with the other team. The Norwegian sleigh driver hailed their approach with joy, which was considerably increased when he learned that the sleigh and the other horses had suffered no damage and that the greater part of the outfit had been saved. "I was afraid somebody had fallen down the mountain side and been killed," said he to Granbury Lapham. "It is a most dangerous portion of this road. Last winter two men and a woman lost their lives close to this very spot." "We had all the trouble we wanted," said Dave, when the driver's remarks had been translated by the Englishman. Hendrik looked over the sleigh and the harness with care, and quarter of an hour later they were moving toward Bojowak as rapidly as the state of the road permitted. They had to pass through two hollows, and here the men and boys walked, for it was all the double team could do to get through. "I see smoke!" cried Dave, presently. "It seems to come from a chimney." "Bojowak," said the sleigh driver, nodding his head. "Hurrah! We'll soon be there!" cried Roger. He looked at his chum. "You won't be sorry, Dave?" "No, indeed," was the ready answer. They had to pass around a spur of the mountain, which took another half-hour, and then came in full view of Bojowak, a village, the houses, or rather cabins, of which seemed to fairly cling to the side of the mountain. There was but one street, and most of the residences were located on the upper side of this, with barns and sheds below or attached to the dwellings. Their arrival was noted with considerable curiosity, and the sleigh driver was plied with innumerable questions as to what had brought him thus far in such weather. He quickly explained, and then asked concerning the exploring expedition, and Granbury Lapham asked a number of similar questions. "The expedition left Bojowak two days ago," said the Englishman, after he had learned the news. "It moved on to a sheep-station called Plivohav, six miles from here. From Plivohav the party was going to try to reach the top of the mountain called Thundercap." "Is there any kind of a good road to Plivohav?" asked Dave, eagerly. "No, it is a very poor road." "Then we can't use the sleigh?" "No, we'll have to go there either on foot or on horseback. The explorers used horses." "Oh, let us go on horseback!" urged Roger. "I don't want to walk." "I certainly prefer riding," added Dave. "I'm not much in a saddle, but I fancy I can stand it," said Granbury Lapham. "We can take Hendrik with us, and as we have four steeds that will give each of us a mount." Dave was desirous of going ahead at once, but it was too late, and the horses were so worn out, it was decided to remain at Bojowak over night. There was something of a road-house, used principally during the summer, and at this they asked for accommodations for the whole party and also for the horses. "I think I can accommodate you," said the landlord, a burly and rather rough-looking Norwegian. "Wait till I call my wife and see what rooms are vacant. We have quite a number of guests. The burgomaster of Masolga is here with his brother and his wife. They, too, came in all this storm." The landlord went out, leaving the two American boys and the Englishman in the public room of the road-house. Scarcely had he departed when a side door opened and a man came in, evidently not in the best of humor. "You dog of a landlord!" he cried, in Norwegian. "Where are you? My room is as cold as a barn. I want some extra wood put on the fire at once. This is a scurvy way to treat the burgomaster of Masolga." "Hello!" cried Dave, in a low voice, and plucked his chum by the sleeve. "Here is the brute of the railway coach." "Sure enough," murmured the senator's son. "I never thought we'd meet him up here. Wonder if he'll say anything if he sees us?" "Humph! so he's the burgomaster of Masolga, eh?" muttered Granbury Lapham. "I pity the townfolks under him." "I say, do you hear, landlord?" stormed the burgomaster, striding around. "Are you deaf, that I must wear my lungs out calling you? If I had---- Ha!" He stopped short, for his striding around had brought him face to face with our friends. He was astonished, then glared at the three as if they were deadly enemies. "You!" he cried. "You! What brought you to this place? Are you following me?" "We are not following you," answered the Englishman. "I thought I was done with you! That I would never behold any of you again!" went on the burgomaster. "You are English cattle." "And you are a Norwegian pig," answered Granbury Lapham. His English blood could not stand the insult. "Ha! this to me? Me! the burgomaster of Masolga!" The speaker stamped violently on the floor with his heavy boot. "You shall pay for that insult! A pig! I will show you!" "You started the quarrel, I did not," said the Englishman. He was a trifle alarmed over the turn affairs had taken. "Are you stopping here?" demanded the burgomaster, after an ugly pause. "We expect to stop here." "It shall not be--I will not have you in the house with me! Such English cattle! Hi, you, Mina!"--this to a servant who had come in. "Call your master at once, I must see him." The servant departed, her wooden shoes clattering loudly on the bare floor. The burgomaster of Masolga paced up and down, slapping his hands together. "I will show you your place!" he muttered, with a malicious look on his face. "Wait! Yes, wait!" In a moment more the landlord came in, almost out of breath. "A thousand pardons!" he said, bowing low. "It was stupid of Jan to let the fire burn low. I have ordered more wood, and----" "Let that pass, for the present," answered the burgomaster. "It is about these fellows I want to question you. Have they engaged rooms here?" "They want rooms, sir, and we have two that----" "You must not take them in!" roared the burgomaster of Masolga. "I forbid it." "Forbid?" gasped the astonished landlord. "Yes, forbid. They are nothing but English cattle. I met them on the train. They insulted me grossly. They must go elsewhere for accommodations." "Have you two vacant rooms?" demanded Granbury Lapham, coming to the front. "Yes, but--but----" "We'll take them," answered the Englishman, quickly. He felt certain no other accommodations could be had in the village. "Thank you, sir, but----" "He cannot have the rooms--I will take them myself!" howled the burgomaster. "I have already taken them," answered the Englishman, quietly. "I will pay in advance for them, if necessary," and he pulled out his purse. "It shall not be!" stormed the burgomaster of Masolga. "I forbid it! I will pay for the rooms, if needs be. Those English cattle shall not sleep under the same roof with me and my family." CHAPTER XXV TO THE NORTHWARD ONCE MORE "What's the trouble about?" asked Dave, coming forward. "That brute doesn't want us to stay here," explained Granbury Lapham. "He forbids the landlord renting us rooms." "Are there any rooms vacant?" questioned Roger. "Two." "We'll take them!" cried Dave. "He can't stop us." "I've already said I'd take them. But the burgomaster won't listen to it." "The landlord has got to let us have the rooms," said Dave. "If his place is a public road-house we are entitled to accommodations, and at the legal rate----" "By Jove, you're right! How stupid of me to forget!" cried the Englishman. He turned to the landlord. "I demand those rooms," he said, in Norwegian. "That man shall not keep us out of your place. It is a public house. I demand my rights." [Illustration: "Out with the lot of them! I will take the rooms." _Page 229._] "Yes! yes!" replied the landlord. "But, sir----" "Ha! Do not listen to him, Voshof," said the burgomaster. "Who is more important here, he or I? Out with the lot of them! I will take the rooms, and if every apartment is occupied, why you cannot accommodate them, can you?" "Here is my money," said Granbury Lapham. He placed several silver thalers on the table. "I believe you know the law. If you do not, my friends and I do." The landlord was in a quandary. Ordinarily he would have sided with the burgomaster of Masolga, but there were several considerations which made him pause. In the first place, he did not like the burgomaster, for he was very dictatorial and few things at the inn suited him and his party; in the second place, the foreigners usually paid liberally for what they got, generous "tips" were not withheld; and lastly, and this was equally important, the landlord had once refused a man a room when he was by law entitled to accommodations and he had been fined for the offense. He did not want to be dragged into court again, for his license might possibly be taken from him. "He pays for the rooms, I am helpless," said the landlord, taking up the thalers. "I will see to it that you are not molested by any one," he added, gravely. At this the burgomaster stormed and raved, calling Granbury Lapham a number of hard names. The Englishman would not stand such insults, and rushing up he caught the Norwegian official by the arm. "Stop!" he cried. "Any more such words, and I will knock you down. My friends and I did not come here to be insulted. We are gentlemen, and we expect to be treated as such. Landlord, I look to you for protection while under your roof." "There must be no quarreling here," said the landlord. "The law does not allow it." He paused for an instant. "I will show you gentlemen to your rooms." He turned to the burgomaster of Masolga. "Your fire shall be attended to immediately." "I shall remember this!" cried the burgomaster, quivering with rage. "I shall remember it! I shall never come here again!" And he stormed from the room. "He is a very passionate man," said the landlord, when he was alone with our friends. "I do not care if he stays away. He is poor pay and he wants too much for his money." "We shall pay you well if you treat us fairly," answered Granbury Lapham, and slipped an extra thaler into the inn-keeper's ready hand. "Depend upon me to do my best, sir," was the quick answer, and then the travelers were shown to two connecting rooms, plainly but comfortably furnished. One had a broad fireplace, and in this a roaring fire was soon blazing. That there might be no further trouble they were served with supper in a private dining-room; so they saw practically nothing more of the hot-headed and unreasonable burgomaster of Masolga. "We have to thank you for getting through in this instance," said Dave, warmly, to Granbury Lapham. "I realize now we should have been at a tremendous disadvantage had Roger and I undertaken this trip alone--neither of us being able to speak more than a few words of the language." "I am glad I fell in with you," was the Englishman's reply. "'Twould have been mighty lonely without you, don't you know." Despite the adventures through which they had passed, the young Americans slept soundly that night and did not awaken until eight in the morning. It was cold and cheerless, no sun showing in the sky, and there was a promise of more snow in the air. A good breakfast was procured, and they settled with the landlord and "tipped" him in a fashion that made him bow almost to the ground. "Come again, and welcome, sirs," he said. "And do not mind what the burgomaster said. More than likely he will soon lose his position, for many people are dissatisfied with him, and he is exceedingly slow in settling his debts." They were soon on horseback, the sleigh having been put away under one of the sheds. Hendrik led the way, past the village and then to what was little better than a mountain trail, winding in and out through several patches of firs and then across some rough rocks. At the latter spot there was a good deal of ice, and once Roger's horse went down, carrying his rider with him. "Are you hurt, Roger?" asked Dave, leaping down to his chum's assistance. "I don't think so," was the reply of the senator's son. But when he arose he drew in a sharp breath. "He caught my left ankle and I reckon he twisted it a little." The horse was gotten up and Dave assisted Roger to mount. It was painful to stand on the injured ankle, but Roger said it was all right when he was in the saddle. "Be careful after this," said Dave, and they were cautious at every spot where the ice showed itself. The scenery around them was magnificent, but it was such a gray day this was practically lost upon them. They were going steadily upward and to the north of Norway, and they could feel the air growing colder. Only the firs stood out against the sky; all else was snow and ice. "This is winter weather, and no mistake," remarked Roger. "I don't know that I want to go much further north." "How desolate it is!" said Dave. "Not a sign of a house or hut anywhere! It's as bad as being in the far West of our country in mid-winter." "Hark! I hear bells!" cried Granbury Lapham. "Can another sleigh be coming?" They looked in the direction from whence the sound came, and presently made out something moving below them, on a road in the valley. "I really believe it is a sled with a reindeer attached!" cried Dave. And such proved to be the case. But before they could get a good look at the novel turnout, sled and reindeer flashed out of sight. "I shouldn't mind having a ride behind a reindeer myself," said Dave, as they resumed their journey. "Nor I," added his chum. At the end of three hours of hard traveling they came in sight of the sheep-station for which they were bound. It was composed of a log cabin and half a dozen large sheds, surrounded by a high fence. Nobody was in sight, and they had to call several times before the care-taker of the place put in an appearance. "Have you a party of strangers here?" questioned Granbury Lapham. "Yes," was the answer, "but they are not here just now." "A scientific exploring party?" "Yes." "Where have they gone?" "They started this morning for the top of old Thundercap," said the sheep raiser. "They will be back by to-morrow night." "Found at last," said the Englishman, joyfully, and translated what had been said to Dave and Roger. "Back to-morrow night," murmured Dave. His heart began to beat rapidly. "I wish they'd come to-night. I can hardly wait." The sheep raiser was questioned further, and told them the party was made up of Mr. Porter, Mr. Lapham, and five others, including a Norwegian guide named Bjornhof. He said they had a number of scientific instruments with them, and talked of gold and silver and other precious metals. "Maybe they are trying to locate a mine," suggested Roger. "If they are, I fancy they will be disappointed," answered Granbury Lapham. "Norway has been pretty well explored for minerals and the best of the mines have been located." "This region doesn't look as if it had been explored very much," returned Dave. "It's about as wild and primitive as could be." The sheep-station afforded but meager accommodations, and they were glad that they had brought along some supplies. There was, to be sure, plenty of mutton, but who wanted to eat that all the time? "I don't mind lamb," said the senator's son. "But mutton, especially when it is strong, is another matter." "Which puts me in mind of a story, as Shadow Hamilton would say," said Dave, with a smile. "A young housewife was going to have a number of her husband's friends to dinner, and her husband told her to get a big leg of lamb for roasting. So she went to the butcher. 'Give me a leg of lamb,' she said. 'I want a very large one. I think you had better give it to me from a lamb four or five years old.'" "And that puts me in mind of another," answered the senator's son. "A country boy went to town and there saw a circus parade including two camels. When he got back home he told his folks that the parade was all right, but he thought it was a shame to drive around such long-necked, hump-backed cows!" The sheep raiser told them that all the members of the exploring party were in excellent health. He said one of the men resembled Dave very much, and smiled broadly when told the man was the lad's father. When Granbury Lapham added that the two had not met since Dave was a little fellow, the sheep raiser opened his eyes wide in astonishment. "'Tis like a fairy tale," said he, and then told them several fairy tales he had heard when a boy. He was an uneducated man and his life was exceedingly simple, and the fairy tales were, consequently, very wonderful to him. "Imagine such a man set down in the heart of New York or Chicago," observed Roger. "How his eyes would open and how he would stare!" "If you told him of all the wonders of the big cities he wouldn't believe you," answered Dave. "I once started to tell one of those natives of the South Sea Islands about the Brooklyn Bridge and when I pointed out how long it was, and said it hung in mid-air, he shook his head and walked away, and I know he thought I was either telling a lie or was crazy." The day passed slowly, especially to Dave, who could scarcely wait for the hour to arrive when his father should come back. What a meeting that would be! It made the tears stand in his eyes to think about it. "Dear, dear father!" he murmured to himself. "I know we are going to love each other very, very much!" CHAPTER XXVI DAYS OF WAITING With the coming of night a strong wind sprang up, and by ten o'clock it was blowing a gale. The wind caused the house to rock and groan, and for the travelers sound sleep was out of the question. The man in charge, however, had experienced such a condition of affairs before and did not appear to mind it. "Some great winds here at times," he said to Granbury Lapham. "Once the top of the house was blown off and sailed away down into the valley." "Excuse me, but I don't want to be here at such a time, don't you know," answered the Englishman. The wind increased steadily, and at midnight it was blowing so furiously that Dave thought the shelter might go over. He went towards the door, to find a quantity of snow sifting in above the sill. "Hello, it must be snowing again!" he remarked. "That's too bad, for it will make traveling worse than ever." It was snowing, and the downfall continued all night and half of the next day. The wind piled it up against the house until it reached the roof, burying two of the windows completely from sight. "This is a regular North Pole experience," remarked Roger, as he bustled around in the morning, trying to get warm. "I don't know that I want to go much further north." "Don't want to become an arctic explorer, then?" queried Granbury Lapham. "Not much! Say, stir up the fire, or I'll be frozen stiff." Wood was piled on the fire, and soon a pot of steaming coffee made all feel better. When the man in charge went out to look at the sheep in the various folds Dave went with him. The air was filled with snow, and it was very dark. "This is terrible," said Dave, on returning. He was thinking of his father and the others of the exploring party. "Land of the Midnight Sun," returned the senator's son, laconically. "The man says they'll not return to-day," said Granbury Lapham. "It would not be safe on the mountain trail." "I thought as much," answered Dave. "Well, all we can do, I suppose, is to wait." And he heaved a deep sigh. The day passed slowly, for the place afforded nothing in the way of amusement, and even if it had, Dave was too much worried about his father to be interested. All went out among the sheep and saw them fed. The folds were long, low, and narrow, and the occupants huddled together "just like a flock of sheep," as Roger remarked with a grin. "What timid creatures they are," said he, a little later. "I suppose you can do almost anything with them." "Not with the rams," answered Dave. And then he went on: "Do you remember Farmer Cadmore's ram and how we put him in Job Haskers' room?" "I don't believe these animals are quite so ugly," said the senator's son, and went up to one of the rams in question. The animal backed away a few feet, then of a sudden it leaped forward, lowered its head, and sent Roger sprawling on his back. "Wow!" grunted the youth. "Ho! chase him off!" And he lost no time in rolling over and getting out of harm's way. "Gracious, but that was a crack in the stomach, all right!" he groaned. "He's what you can call a battering-ram," observed Dave. "Yes, and a ram-bunctious one at that." "Don't ram-ble in your talk, Roger." "If he goes on another ram-page I won't ram-ble, I'll run." "Say, this joke has too many ram-ifications for me, let us drop it," said Dave, and with a merry laugh both lads changed the subject. The hours dragged by slowly. At noon they took their time eating a meal that all hands prepared. Fortunately they had with them a few canned goods, which gave them something of a change in their diet. When night came again the wind arose once more. But now the house was so completely buried in the snow that it was scarcely touched. Dave was worn out and slept soundly, and the others did not awaken him until nearly nine o'clock. "Any news?" was his first question on arising. "Nothing," answered Granbury Lapham. "Porter, I am growing worried," he added, seriously. "I think we have good cause to worry, Mr. Lapham. It is no joke to be out on a mountain top in such weather as this." "The man here tells me there are several shelters up there, one built between the rocks where the wind cannot touch it. But for all that I am worried." "Do you suppose they have enough food with them?" "They should know enough to go well supplied." All of that day and the next went by, and still nobody appeared at the sheep-station. Another snowstorm was brewing, and when it came the air was so filled with it that nobody could venture outside. The young Americans and the Englishman paced the floor of the shelter impatiently, but could do nothing. Their food was limited, and the tobacco for Granbury Lapham's pipe ran low, which caused the man additional trouble. "I can get along with a poor meal, but I must have my smoke," he said. A day later they were seated around the fire discussing the situation when Roger gave a cry. "Well, I never!" "What's up now?" asked Dave. "Why, we've gotten into a new year and nobody ever noticed it!" "By Jove, that's so!" answered Granbury Lapham. "Well, here's a Happy New Year to all of you." "A poor beginning makes a good ending, they say," said Dave. "Let us hope that proves true in this instance." He was sorry he had not been in a position to send New Year greetings to those at home, and especially to Jessie. Sunday passed drearily, and also Monday. On Tuesday it began to clear and the wind dropped entirely. Then the house was opened and they went forth, and the man in charge busied himself with his sheep. Two of the animals had died from the cold, and one had been trampled to death in the huddling together to keep warm. "Thank fortune, the horses are all right," said Roger, after an inspection. With the coming of comparatively good weather they watched eagerly for the return of the exploring party. The sheep-station keeper pointed out to them where the mountain trails ran and told them the party must come by way of one of them, for to descend in any other manner would be impossible. "I really can't see how they are going to get down in such a snow," was Dave's comment. "Why, in some places it must be ten feet deep or more." "The wind has swept some places clear," was Granbury Lapham's answer. "As far as possible they'll stick to those cleared spots." "It must be fearfully slippery," said Roger. "And if any of them takes a tumble----" He did not finish. The day was coming to a close when Dave, who was still on the watch, uttered a shout. "I see somebody, up on yonder trail!" he cried. "One, two, three of them!" "Only three?" queried Granbury Lapham. "That is all, so far." All ran out and looked to where Dave pointed. Three men were coming along the trail slowly. Sometimes they would be in snow up to their waists, and then again they could be seen crawling cautiously over the icy rocks which had been swept clear of snow. "If we only had a field-glass!" murmured Dave. He wondered if one of the men could be his father. The men were only in sight a few minutes, then some projecting rocks hid them from view. The man in charge of the sheep-station was questioned, and he told them it would take the men on the mountain a good two hours to get down to the house, as the trail wound around considerably to avoid several dangerous cliffs. "Let us go out to meet them," said Dave. "I can't stand this hanging around doing nothing." "All right, I'll go with you," answered his chum. Granbury Lapham was also anxious; and in a few minutes the three started out, along a road the sheep-station keeper pointed out. It was now dark, but they kept to the road with ease, as it ran between several patches of stunted pines. No words can describe the feeling that filled Dave's heart. Was he to meet his father at last? At times he trembled like a leaf just to think of it. His eyes were on the alert, and after trudging along for half an hour he made out several forms approaching down the mountain trail. He set up a shout and so did his companions, and presently came an answering call. In a few minutes the two parties were within speaking distance. Dave gave each of the three newcomers a searching look, and his heart sank. Not one of them was his father. The three men were the Norwegian guide and two individuals named Hausermann and Davis. They were almost exhausted by their journey, and begged to be conducted to the sheep-station and given something to eat before telling their story. "But my brother--what of him?" demanded Granbury Lapham. "Who is your brother?" asked Samuel Hausermann. "Philip Lapham, the head of this expedition." "Oh, so you are Philip's brother. Well, he is safe--at least he was when we left him. He hurt his knee a little, slipping over some rocks, but it didn't amount to much." "And what of my father, David Porter?" put in Dave, anxiously. "He was with you, wasn't he?" "Yes, he was with us," answered Samuel Hausermann. "But he----" The man stopped speaking and looked at his companions. "But what? Oh, don't say something has happened to him!" cried Dave, and a sudden chill took possession of his heart. "We're hoping he is safe," said Charles Davis. "You see, he went out yesterday, to look for some food. It was very slippery on the rocks and the wind knocked him down and rolled him over a cliff." "And then----" Dave could hardly speak. "We tried to get to him, but couldn't," said Samuel Hausermann. "Our rope wasn't long enough. Then he tried to climb up the cliff, but the snow seemed to blind him and he lost his grip, went down, and disappeared over another cliff about a hundred feet below. And that's the last we saw or heard of him." CHAPTER XXVII DAVE STRIKES OUT ALONE It was dismaying news, and utterly downcast Dave followed the others to the sheep-station and listened to the details of what the newcomers had to tell. It was a long story, and while they related it a good hot meal was prepared for them. "We reached the top of the mountain in safety and also the plateau of the smaller mountain beyond," said Samuel Hausermann. "That was the place for which we were bound. Shortly after that the snowstorm came on, and the high winds, and it was all we could do to gain one of the old shelters up there between the rocks. In journeying around we lost a good portion of our outfit, including some of the provisions, and all we had to live on for two days was some venison--Mr. Porter shot a small red deer--and some beans and crackers. We had intended to do some more exploring, but the weather put a stop to everything of that sort. Then one of the party, Mr. Jackson, took sick and we had to do what we could to get him well again. At last Mr. Porter went out to see if he couldn't bring down something in the way of game. He could get only some small birds and they lasted only one meal. Then he went out again, after an elk he had seen at a distance. That was when he took the tumble over the cliffs." "Are you sure he wasn't killed?" asked Dave. "I am sure of nothing, my lad. But I think the chances are he fell in the deep snow, or on some of the fir trees, and that that saved his life." "What time was this yesterday?" "About noon. After that we decided to come down here, and at the same time look for your father. Philip Lapham said he would remain, to look after Jackson, who was as yet too weak to walk. We left all our provisions up there and came down here as fast as we could--and here we are." This was all Samuel Hausermann could tell, and Charles Davis corroborated his statement. Dave shook his head sadly. "Even if my father wasn't killed by the tumble he took, maybe he was starved or frozen to death," he said to Roger. "Hope for the best, Dave," was all the senator's son could answer. The Norwegian guide, Bjornhof, had agreed to go back to the mountain top with a load of provisions. He had expected to go alone, but Dave said he would go also, to see if he could not find what had become of his parent. Then Granbury Lapham said he would go also. "Maybe I'd better go too," said Roger. "No, Roger," answered Dave. "It wouldn't be fair to ask you to do that. There is too much of peril, and you must remember what you promised your mother and father. You stay here with Mr. Davis and Mr. Hausermann." And so it was finally settled. All of the party were provided with knapsacks, which they filled with the best provisions available. The guide also carried an extra bag of stuff, strapped across the back of his neck. He was a brawny fellow, over six feet in height, and did not seem to mind the load in the least. He had a gun, and Dave and Granbury Lapham each carried a pistol and a box of cartridges. "Good luck to you, Dave," said the senator's son on parting, and he shook hands warmly. "Remember, I shall be very anxious until I hear from you again." He followed his chum a short distance up the mountain trail, and the two were loath to separate. The route was rocky and uncertain, and during the next two hours Dave realized what climbing the Alps must be. At certain spots they had to help one another along, using a rope for that purpose. Once they crossed a split in the rocks several feet wide and of great depth, and it made Dave shudder to peer down into the dark and forbidding depths below. Yet he thought very little of the perils of that arduous journey. His mind was constantly on his parent. Would he find his father alive, or had the fall over the cliffs killed his parent? "God grant he is alive!" he said to himself, over and over again. They had started directly after breakfast, and by noon reached a small level spot where they took a well-deserved rest. From this place the guide pointed out the cliffs from which Mr. Porter had fallen. "But you cannot reach them from here," he explained, in his native dialect, to Granbury Lapham. "To get to them we must walk at least a mile further. And even then I know of no way to reach the spot to which the poor man fell." "I'll reach that somehow," said Dave, when the guide's words had been translated to him. "Well, lad, you must be careful," cautioned Granbury Lapham. "No use in your losing your life, you know." But Dave merely shook his head. He was bound to find his father, dead or alive, no matter what the cost. For the time being he could think of absolutely nothing else. That, and that alone, possessed him, heart and soul. The air was clear, with little or no wind, which was one comfort. As they went on they had to pass around great ridges of snow and over hummocks of ice, where the water had frozen while tumbling down the mountain side. There were but few trees in that vicinity, although a small forest grew at the foot of the cliffs. At last they reached a spot where the guide said a small and decidedly uncertain trail led to the bottom of the upper cliff--the first one over which Mr. Porter had fallen. "Then that is where I am going," said Dave. "Perhaps I can find out something about my father there." "You had better come with us," answered Granbury Lapham. "As soon as I have met my brother we can all come back to this place." "No, you can come back anyway--I'll stay here now and look around," replied the youth, firmly. Bjornhof pointed out the exact spot from which Mr. Porter had fallen, and without waiting Dave trudged off, and the others continued their climb up the mountain. Soon a point of rocks separated them, and Dave found himself utterly alone. Had he had less to think about the boy might have felt very lonely. But now his heart was filled with thoughts of his parent, and he never gave the situation in which he was placed any consideration. On and on he hurried. Twice he fell on the slippery rocks, but picked himself up just as quickly. In his mind's eye he could see his father helpless at the bottom of the cliffs, with a broken leg or a fractured rib, or suffering for the want of food and warmth. Such thoughts were terrifying, and caused him to shudder from head to foot. "This must be the place!" He spoke the words as he came to a spot where footprints in the snow were plainly visible. He looked around eagerly and made out where his father had slipped from that cliff to the hollow below. Here was a long icy slide, and Dave did not dare to venture too close to the brink, for fear of going over. "That hollow must be at least a hundred feet deep," reasoned the youth. "How am I ever to get down there?" He called out, but no answer came back. Then he walked slowly to the far end of the cliff, behind and over some jagged rocks which at first seemed to completely bar the way. He heaved a long sigh, then looked at the very end of the cliff. Here the rocks were notched and uneven, and he found a spot where he could drop a distance of fifteen feet in safety. But after that? "If I get down there perhaps I won't be able to get back--if I want to," he reasoned. "But I'm going down, anyway--and find out what became of father," he added, recklessly. The drop taken, he found himself on a ledge several yards wide and twice as long. To his delight back of the ledge was a hollow leading downward. "Perhaps that goes to the bottom of the cliff," he mused. "I'll try it, anyway." The passageway was dangerous, being covered with ice, and he had to move literally an inch at a time. Once he slipped, but caught fast to a ridge of ice just in time to save himself. It made his heart leap into his throat, yet he kept on. He was so eager to gain the object of his quest that no peril, no matter how great, could have daunted him. Surely "blood is thicker than water" every time. Having gained the bottom of the hollow inside of the cliff, he turned to where a streak of light showed. Here was a narrow slit leading to the greater hollow outside of the cliff. It was so small that the youth squeezed through with difficulty and had even more trouble getting his knapsack on the other side. He now stood where there was a gentle slope leading to the firs growing at the foot of the cliff. Here there was a great drift of snow, in some spots fifteen and twenty feet high. "I wonder if father came down in that?" he mused. "If he did he wouldn't be apt to break any bones. But he might get smothered before he could find his way out, especially if the fall took his breath away." He gazed around in the drift and saw a spot where it looked as if the snow had been disturbed. Then he saw what looked to be footprints further on, leading among the firs. "Hello! hello!" he called, with all the strength of his lungs. "Mr. Porter! Where are you?" His voice echoed along the rocks and beyond, and he waited with bated breath for a reply, but, as before, none came. What should he do next--go on or search the immense snowdrift for his father's body? He deliberated for several minutes, then moved onward. "I must see if he is alive," he reasoned. "I can always come back for his body later--if I have to." The edge of the fir forest gained, Dave paused once more. Here was a track in the snow, but whether made by a human being or a wild animal he could not tell. Then he uttered a sharp cry and rushed forward to pick something up. It was a box that had contained rifle cartridges. It was empty and practically new. Had his father possessed that and discarded it? Suddenly he thought of something new, and pulling out his pistol fired it off as a signal. The last echo had hardly died out when an answering shot came back. His face lit up with joy, then grew sober again. Perhaps the shot had come from above, from Granbury Lapham or the others up there. But no, it had seemed to be further down--beyond the line of firs which confronted him. At the risk of wasting too much ammunition he fired again. But this time no signal came back. "If it was father he'll want to save his shots--especially if his cartridge box is empty," thought Dave. Then he resolved to push on through the timber, calling his parent in the meanwhile. CHAPTER XXVIII A JOYOUS MEETING Dave had proceeded a distance of fifty yards into the patch of firs when he came to a halt. A peculiar sound to his left had caught his ears. He had never heard such a sound before and he wondered what it was. "Must have been some bird--or a wild animal," he murmured, after he had listened for some time. "There ought to be many kinds of small wild animals in a place like this." He proceeded on his way again, but a dozen steps further came to another halt. Something lay in the snow at his feet. It was a fur glove. He picked it up, looked it over, and then, in his agitation, dropped it. The glove was stained with blood! "Can that be father's glove?" he thought. "And if it is, how does it happen that it is covered with blood?" A shiver ran down his backbone that was not caused by the cold, and for the minute he could hardly move. He tried to call once more, but his throat was so dry he could scarcely make a sound. Again from a distance came that peculiar noise, low and muttering. He now recognized it as a growl, but whether of a dog or a wild beast he could not determine. He brought out the pistol he had placed in his pocket and held it ready for use. "Footprints!" The word came from his lips involuntarily. He had reached a spot where the snow was only a few inches deep, and here the footprints of a man were plainly to be seen. They led through the belt of firs and then towards the jagged rocks at the base of a high cliff. Again that suspicious growl reached him, and now Dave saw a dark object just as it disappeared around a corner of rock close to some brushwood. "Was that a beast or a man crawling in the snow?" he asked himself. "That sound came from an animal, but the thing didn't look like a beast." He went on, more cautiously than ever. Then he heard a sudden cry that made every nerve in his body tingle: "Get back there! Get back, you brute!" It was a man's voice, weak and exhausted, trying to keep off some wild beast. Then came a low growl, followed by the discharge of a pistol, and a few seconds later there came running toward Dave a full-grown bear, growling savagely and wagging its shaggy head from side to side. The youth was surprised but not taken off his guard, and as the animal came closer he leveled his weapon, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The bear had raised up on its hind legs and the bullet took it straight in the breast, inflicting a bad but not a mortal wound. Then Dave started to fire a second time, but in a twinkling the bear leaped over a low rock and disappeared in the brushwood. Listening, Dave heard it lumbering away, growling with rage and pain as it went. "Hello!" came a faint voice. "Is that you, Lapham?" "No, it is somebody else," answered Dave. He could scarcely speak, he was so agitated. "Where are you?" "Here, near the cliff. I am wounded, and I--I----" The voice died out completely. "I'm coming!" shouted Dave. "Just let me know where you are." For a minute there was no answer, and Dave continued to call. Then came what was half call and half moan. With ears on the alert, the boy followed up the sounds and quickly came in sight of a man, wrapped up in a fur overcoat and crouched in a heap between two rocks at the base of the cliff. He held a pistol in his hand, but the weapon was empty. For the instant man and boy faced each other--the former too weak to speak and the latter too agitated to do so. Dave's heart was beating like a trip-hammer and for the time being his surroundings were completely forgotten. "Are you--are you----" he began. "Are you David Porter?" he blurted out. "Yes," was the gasped-out reply. "Yo--you----" "And you don't know me! Oh, father!" "Eh? What's that?" asked the man, rising up slightly. "You don't know me? But of course you don't--if you didn't get the letters and telegrams. I am your son, Dave Porter." "My son? Wha--what do you mean? I--er--have no son. I had one, years and years ago, but----" Mr. Porter was too weak to go on. He sat staring at Dave in bewilderment. "You lost him, I know. He was stolen from you. Well, I am that son. I have been looking for you for months. I found Uncle Dunston first, and then we sent letters and cablegrams to you, but no answer came back. Then I started out to hunt you up--and here I am." Dave was on his knees and holding his father's blood-stained hand in his own. "I see you are hurt; I'll----" "My son? My son?" queried Mr. Porter, like one in a dream. "Can this be true?" He gazed unsteadily at Dave. Then he closed his eyes and went off into a dead faint. The youth was startled, for he saw that his parent might be dying. His hand was hurt and he had scratches on his ear, and one knee of his trousers was blood-stained. "I must help him--he must not die!" thought Dave, and set to work with feverish haste, doing all that was possible under the circumstances. From his shirt he tore off the sleeves and used them as bandages. Then he rubbed his father's face with snow. Presently the man opened his eyes and stared again at Dave. "Did yo--you say you were my--my son?" he asked, in a weak, incredulous voice. "If you are David Breslow Porter, a twin brother to Dunston Porter." "I am." "Then I am your son--the one who was stolen from you by the nurse, Polly Margot, and her worthless husband, Sandy." "It is--is marvellous! I can hardly believe it!" murmured Mr. Porter. "But it is true--and I can easily prove it, father," answered the youth, in a happy tone. He bent over and kissed his parent. "Oh, I am so glad I have found you!" "Yes! yes! I am glad too!" Mr. Porter's eyes began to beam. "But I--I--really can't understand it yet! I--my son, my little Dave! Why, it sounds like a fairy tale! I must be dreaming." He caught Dave by the shoulder. "Is it really, really so?" "It is, father, and I'll explain it all after awhile. But now you are hurt, and you must take it easy. Did you tumble over the cliff, or did that bear----" "Both, Dave. How queer it sounds to call you Dave, _my_ Dave!" Mr. Porter caught the boy around the neck. "I can't believe it yet--I really can't. Where have you been all these years? And how did you learn----" "I'll tell you afterwards, father--when we are safe. Then you fell over the cliff?" "Yes, and while I was trying to crawl away to some spot to rest the bear got after me and scratched me in the ear. I let him have a bullet in his neck and that made him retreat. But then he came at me again, and I don't know what I should have done if it hadn't been for your arrival. The pistol is empty, as you can see." "You heard my shot and you signaled back, didn't you?" "Yes, I signaled back and shot at the bear at the same time. But that shot didn't hit him, although it made him keep his distance for awhile." "I see your pistol is the same size as mine, so I'll load them both--in case the bear comes back." Dave set to work immediately and soon had the work completed. "Now you must have something to eat and to drink, and then you'll feel better." He unslung his knapsack and brought forth his provisions, and sitting in the shelter of the cliff prepared a meal. Over some lighted brushwood he made a canteen of coffee, of which his father partook with satisfaction, and then ate a sandwich and some crackers and cheese. As he supplied his parent Dave told a good portion of his story, although he went into few details. "It is queer that I never received any of those letters and cablegrams," said Mr. Porter. "Yet you must remember I thought your uncle was still among the South Sea Islands. He wrote to me that he was going on a trip that might last two years or more and might not be able to write to me for some time. Laura, your sister--how surprised she will be!--and myself traveled down to Rome and through Spain and then came up to Berlin. There I fell in with Hausermann and, later on, with Philip Lapham. They told me of this expedition into Norway, and got me interested financially. Your sister wanted to go to the United States, with some close friends, and I let her go and came up here. We traveled to Norway somewhat in secret, for we did not wish to let the object of our expedition become known. On that account we had some trouble with the police, who took us for political intriguers. After that we left no addresses behind us--which accounts for the non-delivery of the cablegram you sent to me from England." "But what brought you up into this portion of Norway, father, and at this time of the year?" "We came to locate a valuable mine, or rather a series of mines, in this section. Hausermann had some information about them, but had no money, and he came to me and then to Philip Lapham, and we 'staked' the expedition, as miners call it. We came up this winter because we heard that three other parties were coming up next spring and next summer, and we wanted to get in ahead." "And have you done that?" asked Dave, with interest. "Not as yet. We have found some traces of copper at one point and nickel at another, but not the rich deposits the information we possessed led us to believe could be located." "Never mind, now we are together, perhaps you'll have better luck, father. I'll help you." Dave smiled broadly. "Tell me about yourself, and about my sister Laura, won't you?" Both sat in front of the tiny camp-fire, Mr. Porter's bandaged head resting on Dave's shoulder, and a hand clasping that of the boy. They were supremely happy, and for the time being the world around them was forgotten. Mr. Porter told much about himself and of his travels, and Dave related how he had been raised at the poorhouse and taken care of by Caspar Potts and Oliver Wadsworth, and how he had fallen in with Billy Dill, the sailor, and gone to the South Sea Islands and found his Uncle Dunston. "I know your sister Laura will be overjoyed to learn the news," said Mr. Porter. "She has often said how nice it would be if she had a sister or a brother. Since your mother's death we have been very lonely. Ah, if your mother could only have seen this day!" And the tears stood in Mr. Porter's eyes. Then he drew Dave to his breast, and a warm embrace by both followed. They had completely forgotten their surroundings when a deep growl close at hand aroused them and caused the boy to leap to his feet. He gazed into the brushwood fronting the jagged rocks and the base of the cliff and uttered a cry of alarm. "What is it, Dave?" questioned his father. "Two bears--the one we wounded and another and bigger one." CHAPTER XXIX BEARS AND WOLVES At the announcement from Dave, Mr. Porter tried to rise to his feet. He could not stand on both legs, and so had to rest against one of the rocks. From this point he, too, could see the two bears; but a moment later both animals were hidden completely by the brushwood and the snow. "I am afraid they mean business," said Dave, anxiously. "They are hungry and the deep snow has made it hard for them to get food," answered Mr. Porter. "I thought bears went into winter quarters in a place like this." "So they do sometimes, but not always. Besides, I disturbed the wounded bear when I fell over the cliff, and I presume that other beast is his mate." "I wish I had a rifle. I could get a better shot than with this pistol." "A good double-barreled shotgun would be a fine thing, Dave. But we'll have to use what we've got. Don't shoot until you are certain of your aim," added Mr. Porter. A portion of his strength had come back to him, and the new alarm gave him temporary vigor. Yet he knew that to fight off two angry bears would not be easy, and he looked around for some better shelter than that which they at present possessed. "Here is a small opening between the rocks,--let us back into it, if the bears press us too closely," said he. He had scarcely spoken when the wounded bear advanced, followed closely by its mate. Dave waited until the foremost beast was within a dozen paces of him, then he fired. There was a growl of pain and the bear tumbled back, landing against its mate. "Good!" cried Mr. Porter. "Look out!" he added, a second later. "The other one is coming!" He was right. The bigger bear of the two came forward with a bound, landing almost at Dave's feet. Crack! crack! went Mr. Porter's pistol, and the huge animal was hit twice, in the breast and in the neck. The bear uttered a sound that was half growl and half yelp and then came on again. Crack! went Dave's pistol, and the bullet hit the beast directly in the teeth, knocking one of them down the animal's throat. Wounded and alarmed, the bear stood still, and again the boy fired, and then the bear turned and lumbered away into the brushwood, wounded just sufficiently to make it thoroughly disagreeable. The other bear followed; and the battle, for the time being, came to an end. "Come, Dave, it is dangerous to stay out here," said Mr. Porter. "Let us go back into the hollow, and bring that fire with you if you can." Mr. Porter crawled back and the youth followed, dragging the burning brushwood behind him. Then Dave took both pistols and reloaded the empty chambers with all possible speed. "I see you have learned the first rule of hunting," said his father, with a smile. "What is that?" "Never to carry around an empty or partly empty weapon. I kept my pistol loaded up as long as I had any cartridges left." "I wish I had some more brushwood to put on the fire--that would keep the beasts off. Wonder if I can't break some of the stuff off?" "Don't go out yet, Dave--it's dangerous," pleaded Mr. Porter. "I'll keep my eyes on the bears, never fear," was the reply. With caution the youth crawled over to the nearest patch of brushwood, a distance of fifty feet. As he broke off some of the dry twigs a low growl reached his ears. But he kept at the task until he had as much as he thought he could carry. But Dave never got the brushwood where he wanted it, for as he commenced to drag it along both bears leaped from their hiding-place and one landed almost on top of him. Crack! crack! went his pistol, and the weapon Mr. Porter possessed sounded out three times. Each bear was wounded again, but Dave received a blow from a rough paw that sent him headlong. He rolled over and over in the snow, and then leaped for the shelter, and his father dragged him to temporary safety. While this was going on the bears started to retreat. This time they left the brushwood entirely and stationed themselves behind the nearest belt of firs, about fifty yards away. [Illustration: Dave received a blow from a rough paw that sent him headlong.--_Page 267._] "I told you to be careful," said Mr. Porter, as Dave got up and faced about. "Are you seriously hurt?" "N--no, bu--but that bear knocked me do--down as if he was a pri--prize-fighter!" gasped Dave. "Phew! but they are powerful!" "If he hadn't been wounded he might have killed you. You must take no more chances. Promise me you won't, Dave. I don't want to lose you right after finding you!" And Mr. Porter turned an appealing look into the lad's eyes. "I'll be on guard, father. And don't you take any chances either," added Dave, gazing at his father in a manner which spoke volumes. They found the hollow under the cliff to be less than two yards deep and of about the same width. The rocks overhead hung down so that they touched Dave's head. In front was a small snowdrift, looking over which father and son could just make out the two bears, as they squatted on the ground between the firs. The beasts did considerable growling and did what they could to take care of their wounds, yet they showed no disposition to leave that vicinity. "They must be very hungry," was Mr. Porter's comment. "Otherwise they wouldn't remain here after being punished so badly;" and he was right: the animals were well-nigh starved, hence their recklessness. Half an hour went by, and Dave and his parent remained under the cliff. Without a fire it was extremely cold, and they had to stamp around to keep warm. At times Mr. Porter felt rather faint from his wounds, but he kept this from Dave as much as possible. Yet presently the boy noticed it. "I must get you out of this soon," he said. "You need regular medical attention." "I shan't mind it, Dave, if only I can keep warm." "Maybe I can get that brushwood now, father." "No, do not attempt it." There was a spell of silence after that, and then Dave raised his pistol. "Do you know what I am going to do?" he said. "I am going to discharge four shots at the bears. Even at this distance I ought to be able to do some damage." "Well, you can try it, Dave. But I don't think you'll accomplish a great deal. Their hide is too tough." Dave brushed the snow from the rocks in front of him, knelt down, and rested his arm with care. Then he took careful aim at the bear that had first appeared. Crack! went the pistol four times in rapid succession. The bear gave a leap, clawed at its face several times, and then, with a grunt of agony, turned and fled among the firs and out of sight. "Hurrah! that did some damage!" cried the youth, as he started to reload. "Now I'll see if I can hit the other bear---- Hello, he's gone, too!" The boy was right, the larger beast was also lumbering off, evidently frightened by the way its mate had been treated. Soon it, too, had disappeared from view. Mr. Porter and Dave watched for a long time, but neither animal came back. "They may possibly return, but I doubt it," said Dave. "Anyway, I don't think they'll come back right away, and that will give us a chance to escape." "Not if we must go back through that patch of timber, my son." "Let us try to get away by walking along the base of the cliff. We are bound to strike some sort of a mountain trail sooner or later. But, pshaw, I forgot that you can't walk. Well, maybe I can carry you." "No, it will be too much of a load, Dave. We had better wait awhile." And so they sat down and waited, after Dave had brought in the brushwood he had previously broken off. A roaring fire cheered them greatly, and once more each related his experiences. Mr. Porter told how he had traveled in many parts of the world, and said that Dave must some day do the same. He asked the youth about his education, and when Dave related how he had won the medal of honor at Oak Hall his face beamed with pleasure. "I certainly owe Professor Potts and Mr. Wadsworth a good deal," he said. "And I shall not forget them. You could not have fallen among better friends." "I believe that," answered Dave, warmly. "Professor Potts and all of the Wadsworths have been just as good as they could be to me." Almost before they knew it darkness came on. Dave brought in more of the brushwood and even dragged over some limbs of a fallen fir. Luckily he had brought along enough provisions for several meals, and they proceeded to make themselves as comfortable as possible in the hollow of the cliff. They ate slowly, talking the while and each smiling warmly into the face of the other. "It seems almost too good to be true," said Mr. Porter, not once but several times. "And, oh, I am so thankful!" responded Dave. Mr. Porter was so weak he needed sleep, so Dave told his parent to lie down on some of the brushwood, which he spread out as a couch next to the rocky wall. "But what will you do, my son?" asked Mr. Porter. "I'll remain on guard--so those bears don't get a chance to surprise us." "But aren't you sleepy?" "No--I'm so happy I don't think I'll be able to sleep for a week." Mr. Porter lay down and closed his eyes, but it was a good hour before he dropped into a doze. Dave sat by the fire, where he could look at his father's face. It seemed as if he would never get done gazing at those features, so like his Uncle Dunston's. "Found at last!" he murmured. "Found at last, and thank God for it!" Two hours passed, and still Dave sat in the same position, thinking of the past and speculating on the future. He thought of his sister Laura and wondered how soon they would meet, and if she and Jessie would become friends. "What's that?" The boy leaped to his feet, and the sudden movement aroused his father. Both listened to a yelping and a growling at a distance. The yelping grew louder and louder, while the growling grew fainter. "I know what it is!" cried Dave, at length. "Some wolves have gotten on the trail of those wounded bears. Now there will be a battle royal!" "You must be right, Dave. Hark! The wolves must number a dozen or more." "Sounds like about half a hundred to me, father." The battle took place at the far end of the forest of firs and gradually grew fainter and fainter. Mr. Porter shook his head doubtfully. "I don't like this, Dave." "What, aren't you glad that the bears have been attacked? I am." "It isn't that. If those wolves want more meat they'll follow up that bloody trail--and it leads directly over here." "Phew! I never thought of that. I'll stir up the fire--that will help to keep them at a distance." Dave set to work with avidity, piling on nearly all of the brushwood that was left. He had just completed the task when he chanced to look beyond into the waste of snow. He saw a pair of gleaming eyes--then another pair and still another. "The wolves are coming, father!" he cried, in consternation. "I see them, Dave, and we are going to have the fight of our lives to keep them off," answered Mr. Porter. CHAPTER XXX HOME AGAIN--CONCLUSION In a few minutes the wolves had come up and were glaring at Mr. Porter and Dave as they crouched close to the camp-fire. There were fourteen of the beasts, all large, lean, and hungry-looking. They sniffed the air and set up yelps and mournful howls. Two found the spot where one of the bears had been wounded and pawed at the blood which had saturated the snow. "Oh, for a brace of good shotguns!" sighed Dave. "We could scatter them in short order." "When we shoot we must make every shot tell," said his father. "And keep the cartridges where we can get at them quickly. How many left, Dave?" The youth counted the contents of the box he carried. "Seventeen." "Hardly enough for fourteen wolves. Yes, we must be very careful. If they---- They are coming closer!" "Let us fire off one pistol at a time!" cried Dave. "Then we'll always have one ready for use." Mr. Porter did not answer, for he was aiming at the nearest beast. With the discharge of the pistol the wolf leaped high in the air, turned and came down on its side, and began to kick the snow in its death agony. "A good shot!" exclaimed Dave. "You can try your luck," said Mr. Porter. "I will take out that empty shell and reload." The other wolves had surrounded the one that was dying, and taking aim at the center of the pack Dave let drive. One wolf was hit in the nose and the bullet glanced off and hit another in the jaw. Wild yelps of pain followed, and the two wolves turned and ran for cover with all possible speed. "We have gotten rid of three of them," said Dave, with much satisfaction. "If we keep this up we'll soon get rid of the rest." "It is snowing again," announced Mr. Porter. He was right, and soon the downfall became so heavy that they could see next to nothing beyond the circle of light made by the camp-fire. But that the wolves were still near they knew by the yelps and snarls which occasionally reached their ears. A quarter of an hour went by, and the snow came down as thickly as ever. A light wind had sprung up, and this sent the flakes directly into the hollow under the cliff. Mr. Porter heaved a sigh. "More bad luck," he observed. "By morning, if this keeps on, we'll be snowed in." "Look," said Dave. "I believe the wolves are getting ready to rush us!" Both strained their eyes and soon saw seven or eight of the beasts sneaking softly up through the snow. The light from the camp-fire shone in their eyes and on their white fangs. They were growing desperate, and hoped by sheer force of numbers to lay their human prey low. "Fire three shots, Dave, and I will do the same," said Mr. Porter, in a low tone. "Aim as carefully as you can, my boy." The various shots rang out in rapid succession. How much damage was done they could not tell, although they saw two wolves go down and lie still. The others retreated, some limping, and the entire pack went back to the shelter of the brushwood. They had now only a few cartridges left, and these they divided between them. Then Dave stirred up the fire a little and placed the burning sticks so they would last as long as possible. Father and son looked at each other and suddenly stepped closer and embraced. "God grant, now we have found each other, that we get from this spot in safety," murmured Mr. Porter, fervently. "Oh, we must get away!" added Dave, impulsively. "All we can do is to fight to the last, Dave." "Yes." Both knew only too well what to expect should the wolves get the better of the contest. "As cruel as a wolf" is a true saying. They would be torn limb from limb and only their bones would be left to tell to some later traveler the story of their fate. They decided, with set faces and shut teeth, to fight to the very last. Another quarter of an hour went by, and soon they heard the wolves coming back. Neither said a word, but both looked at each other. "Take those on the left,--I will take those on the right," whispered Mr. Porter. "But be careful--every shot means so much!" "I'll shoot my very best," answered Dave. After that not a word was spoken. Silently the beasts came closer and closer. Dave's heart began to beat rapidly. Then, when he could wait no longer, he aimed at the nearest animal on the left and pulled the trigger. Two shots, one from the son and the other from the father, rang out almost simultaneously, and down went two wolves mortally wounded. Crack! went Dave's weapon a second time, and now a wolf was hit in the neck. Then Mr. Porter fired, sending a bullet into a breast that was presented to view. With four of their number out of the fight, the other wolves turned and fled into the brushwood and then toward the forest of firs. The battle had been of short duration, but the excitement had been intense, and Dave found himself bathed in a cold perspiration from head to foot. His father, too, was weak, and now sank on the rocks, breathing heavily. Only one small branch of a tree remained for the fire, and this Dave set up, so that it might burn as a torch. When that was gone they would be in utter darkness--and then? The youth shivered as he asked himself the question. He knew that wild animals love the darkness and are braver in it than in the light. "Hello! hello! hello!" Loud and clear from above the cliff the cry rang out a dozen times or more. At first Dave thought he must be dreaming, then he roused up and so did his parent. "What was that?" demanded Mr. Porter. "Somebody calling, I think." Dave ran out of the hollow and looked upward through the falling snow. "Who calls?" he yelled, at the top of his lungs. "It is I, Granbury Lapham, and I have my brother and the others with me. Is that you, Porter?" "Yes." "Have you found your father?" "Yes." "How is he?" came in another voice--the voice of Philip Lapham. "He is hurt a little, but not much." "I'll be all right if I can only get out of here," called Mr. Porter, coming out so that he could look up the cliff. "We've been having our own troubles with two bears and a pack of wolves." "We thought there must be trouble--by the shots fired," said Granbury Lapham. "That's why we started out in the darkness." He waved a torch in the air. "Can you see us?" "We can see a light," answered Dave. He took up the branch from the fire. "Can you see our light?" "Yes." A long talk followed, and the party above, numbering four, said they had brought along a good rope. This they lowered, and after not a little difficulty Mr. Porter and Dave were raised up to the ledge above. "There come the wolves again!" cried the youth, as he reached the ledge. "Have you a shotgun with you?" "Yes," said Philip Lapham. "Please lend it to me." The weapon was passed over, and Dave blazed away twice in rapid succession. A wild snarling and yelping followed, and then the wolves disappeared; and that was the last seen of them. "We are well out of that," murmured Mr. Porter. "And I am glad of it." "And I am glad too," added Dave. As it was snowing heavily the party did not waste time on the edge of the cliff, but moved back to a small hut built on the mountain side and which was easily located by the Norwegian guide. Here they found the others of the exploring party, and here Mr. Porter and Dave were served with a hot meal and made as comfortable as possible. The snow lasted until noon of the next day, and then it grew clear and much warmer. On the following day Dave and his father and the guide went down the mountain to the sheep-station. Before they left they bade the Laphams and the others good-bye, and Mr. Porter said he would leave the question of locating the mines entirely in Philip Lapham's charge. "You can draw on me for my full share of the expenses," said Mr. Porter. "And if nothing comes of the venture I won't complain." It may be added here that, later on, several mines of considerable importance were located, and when Mr. Porter sold out to a syndicate that was formed he realized a profit of about fifteen thousand dollars. At the sheep-station Dave found Roger anxiously awaiting his return. The senator's son was delighted to meet Mr. Porter, and the two immediately became great friends. As the weather remained fine it was decided to start on the return to Christiania without delay. Mr. Porter took Granbury Lapham's place in the sleigh, and the party took with them a good stock of provisions. The journey was not without excitement, for they met and killed two wolves, and once they rolled down a small hill and were dumped in the snow, but in the end they arrived safely at the nearest railroad station, and from that point the remainder of the trip was easy. At the Norwegian capital a long cablegram was sent to Dunston Porter by Dave and his father, telling of their meeting and stating that they and Roger would return to the United States at once. They also wanted to send a cablegram to Laura, but could not, for they did not know her exact address. "I shall have to wait until I hear from her, or until we get on the other side," said Mr. Porter. "More than likely she is somewhere out West,--perhaps on Mr. Endicott's ranch with Belle Endicott, her friend. I had the address of the ranch, but I lost it while I was up in the mountains." From Christiania, or rather the seaport, Dröbak, they obtained passage on a swift-sailing vessel to Hull, and then took a train across England to Liverpool. They had already telegraphed ahead for staterooms on a Cunard steamer bound for Boston, and two hours after arriving at Liverpool were on board and leaving the dock. "This is fast traveling," remarked Roger, as they stood on the deck, watching the shipping scene around them. "In less than a week we'll be home. Dave, in some respects our trip to Norway seems like a dream." "That is true, Roger--but what a happy dream!" And Dave's face fairly beamed with thankfulness. When they took the train from Boston to Crumville Dave could scarcely control himself. Word had been sent ahead to the Wadsworths and Caspar Potts, and at the depot the travelers found all of their friends awaiting them. Mr. Porter was quickly introduced, and shook hands warmly all around. "Oh, Dave, I'm so glad to see you back!" cried Jessie. "And to think you have really found your father at last! Isn't it splendid!" "Yes, Jessie; and if I'm not the happiest boy in the world--well, I ought to be, that's all." "And what a fine man he is--and looks very much like your Uncle Dunston, and looks like you, too," added the girl. She lowered her voice and it trembled a little. "I am so happy--for your sake, Dave!" And the tears stood in her deep, honest eyes. It was truly a great home-coming, and Dave's father was told to make himself perfectly at ease by Mr. Wadsworth. "You have been more than kind to Dave," said Mr. Porter. "You and your family, and Professor Potts. Dave has told me all about it. I do not know if I can ever repay you, but I shall try my best." And he shook hands all over again. On the very day that Dave reached Crumville came a letter from Phil Lawrence, who had received word that Dave was coming home. In this communication Phil said that matters were running smoothly at Oak Hall. Sam Day and Ben Basswood had had some trouble with Nat Poole, and the dude had received a well-deserved thrashing. Gus Plum was keeping very quiet, and had made a few more friends. "You will be surprised to hear the news about Link Merwell," wrote Phil. "I cannot tell you the start of it, but it ended in a great row between Merwell and Mr. Dale. Merwell is very bitter about it, and claims that I in some way got him into trouble. He went home for a vacation, and before he left he shook his fist in my face and said, 'I'll get even with you some day, and I'll get even with that friend of yours, Dave Porter, too.' He was fearfully ugly, and acted as if he wanted to eat somebody up." "Humph, that is cheerful news," remarked Roger, after Dave had shown him the letter. "Dave, you want to watch out for Merwell." "I certainly will, Roger. Don't you remember what I once said? In some respects he is a worse chap than Nick Jasniff and a good deal worse than Gus Plum ever was." And that Dave was correct will be proved in the next volume of this series, to be entitled, "Dave Porter and His Classmates; or, For the Honor of Oak Hall." In that volume we shall meet all our friends again, and also Laura Porter, and learn how Dave met the underhanded work of Link Merwell and what was the result. On Friday evening following Dave's return to the Wadsworth home he was surprised to receive a visit from Phil, Ben, Sam, and Shadow. They burst into the house like a cyclone and nearly hugged him to death, and then shook hands all around, not forgetting Dave's father, who was quickly introduced. "We simply couldn't stay away," said Phil. "We stormed Doctor Clay's office and he let us off until Monday morning." "We want to hear all about your adventures in the far north," added Ben. "How you discovered the North Pole, and shot bears and wolves----" "And gave Nick Jasniff his set-back," interrupted Sam. "And how you found your father." "Which puts me in mind of a story," said Shadow. "A fellow once----" "Hold hard, Shadow!" interrupted Phil. "Dave has the floor this time. Your stories must wait until he's through." "All right," answered the story-teller of the school, cheerfully. "I'd rather listen to Dave, anyway, for I know he's got something worth telling." And then all sat down, and Dave told his tale, just as I have related it here. It took until midnight, and when he had finished, all said good-night to each other and went to bed. And here let us say good-night, too. THE END * * * * * EDWARD STRATEMEYER'S BOOKS Old Glory Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.75 per volume._ UNDER DEWEY AT MANILA. UNDER OTIS IN THE PHILIPPINES. A YOUNG VOLUNTEER IN CUBA. THE CAMPAIGN OF THE JUNGLE. FIGHTING IN CUBAN WATERS. UNDER MacARTHUR IN LUZON. Soldiers of Fortune Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.75 per volume._ ON TO PEKIN. AT THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR. UNDER THE MIKADO'S FLAG. WITH TOGO FOR JAPAN. Colonial Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.75 per volume._ WITH WASHINGTON IN THE WEST. ON THE TRAIL OF PONTIAC. MARCHING ON NIAGARA. THE FORT IN THE WILDERNESS. AT THE FALL OF MONTREAL. TRAIL AND TRADING POST. Mexican War Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume $1.00._ FOR THE LIBERTY OF TEXAS. WITH TAYLOR ON THE RIO GRANDE. UNDER SCOTT IN MEXICO. Pan-American Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume $1.00._ LOST ON THE ORINOCO. YOUNG EXPLORERS OF THE AMAZON. THE YOUNG VOLCANO EXPLORERS. TREASURE SEEKERS OF THE ANDES. YOUNG EXPLORERS OF THE ISTHMUS. CHASED ACROSS THE PAMPAS. Dave Porter Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.75 per volume._ DAVE PORTER AT OAK HALL. DAVE PORTER ON CAVE ISLAND. DAVE PORTER IN THE SOUTH SEAS. DAVE PORTER AND THE RUNAWAYS. DAVE PORTER'S RETURN TO SCHOOL. DAVE PORTER IN THE GOLD FIELDS. DAVE PORTER IN THE FAR NORTH. DAVE PORTER AT BEAR CAMP. DAVE PORTER AND HIS CLASSMATES. DAVE PORTER AND HIS DOUBLE. DAVE PORTER AT STAR RANCH. DAVE PORTER'S GREAT SEARCH. DAVE PORTER AND HIS RIVALS. DAVE PORTER UNDER FIRE. DAVE PORTER'S WAR HONORS. Lakeport Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.75 per volume._ THE GUN CLUB BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE FOOTBALL BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE BASEBALL BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE AUTOMOBILE BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE BOAT CLUB BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE AIRCRAFT BOYS OF LAKEPORT. American Boys' Biographical Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.75 per volume._ AMERICAN BOYS' LIFE OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. AMERICAN BOYS' LIFE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT. * * * * * DEFENDING HIS FLAG. _Price $1.75_ * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE The page numbers of illustrations have been changed to reflect their new positions following transcription, and they are now indicated in the illustration list by 'Page' instead of 'Facing Page'. Printer's errors have been corrected. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been retained. Advertisements have been transferred to the rear of the book. 34347 ---- EDWARD STRATEMEYER'S BOOKS Old Glory Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.50 per volume._ UNDER DEWEY AT MANILA. A YOUNG VOLUNTEER IN CUBA. FIGHTING IN CUBAN WATERS. UNDER OTIS IN THE PHILIPPINES. THE CAMPAIGN OF THE JUNGLE. UNDER MacARTHUR IN LUZON. Soldiers of Fortune Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.50 per volume._ ON TO PEKIN. UNDER THE MIKADO'S FLAG. AT THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR. WITH TOGO FOR JAPAN. Colonial Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.50 per volume._ WITH WASHINGTON IN THE WEST. MARCHING ON NIAGARA. AT THE FALL OF MONTREAL. ON THE TRAIL OF PONTIAC. THE FORT IN THE WILDERNESS. TRAIL AND TRADING POST. Mexican War Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume $1.00._ FOR THE LIBERTY OF TEXAS. WITH TAYLOR ON THE RIO GRANDE. UNDER SCOTT IN MEXICO. Pan-American Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume $1.00._ LOST ON THE ORINOCO. THE YOUNG VOLCANO EXPLORERS. YOUNG EXPLORERS OF THE ISTHMUS. YOUNG EXPLORERS OF THE AMAZON. TREASURE SEEKERS OF THE ANDES. CHASED ACROSS THE PAMPAS. Dave Porter Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.50 per volume._ DAVE PORTER AT OAK HALL. DAVE PORTER IN THE SOUTH SEAS. DAVE PORTER'S RETURN TO SCHOOL. DAVE PORTER IN THE FAR NORTH. DAVE PORTER AND HIS CLASSMATES. DAVE PORTER AT STAR RANCH. DAVE PORTER AND HIS RIVALS. DAVE PORTER ON CAVE ISLAND. DAVE PORTER AND THE RUNAWAYS. DAVE PORTER IN THE GOLD FIELDS. DAVE PORTER AT BEAR CAMP. DAVE PORTER AND HIS DOUBLE. DAVE PORTER'S GREAT SEARCH. DAVE PORTER UNDER FIRE. DAVE PORTER'S WAR HONORS. Lakeport Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.50 per volume._ THE GUN CLUB BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE BASEBALL BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE BOAT CLUB BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE FOOTBALL BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE AUTOMOBILE BOYS OF LAKEPORT. THE AIRCRAFT BOYS OF LAKEPORT. American Boys' Biographical Series _Cloth. Illustrated. Net $1.50 per volume._ AMERICAN BOYS' LIFE OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. AMERICAN BOYS' LIFE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT. DEFENDING HIS FLAG. _Price $1.50._ [Illustration: The canoe was sent closer and finally beached.--_Page 258._] Dave Porter Series DAVE PORTER IN THE SOUTH SEAS OR THE STRANGE CRUISE OF THE STORMY PETREL BY EDWARD STRATEMEYER Author of "Under Togo for Japan," "Under the Mikado's Flag," "At the Fall of Port Arthur," "Old Glory Series," "Pan-American Series," "Colonial Series," "American Boys' Biographical Series," etc. _ILLUSTRATED BY I. B. HAZELTON_ BOSTON LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. Published, August, 1906 COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD CO. _All rights reserved_ DAVE PORTER IN THE SOUTH SEAS Norwood Press BERWICK AND SMITH CO. NORWOOD, MASS. U. S. A. PREFACE "Dave Porter in the South Seas" is a complete story in itself, but forms the second volume in a line issued under the general title of "Dave Porter Series." In the first volume of this series, called "Dave Porter at Oak Hall," I introduced a typical American boy, and gave something of his haps and mishaps at an American boarding school of to-day. At this school Dave made a number of warm friends, and also a few enemies, and was the means of bringing one weak and misguided youth to a realization of his better self. Dave was poor and had to fight his way to the front, and this was not accomplished until he had shown those around him what a truly straightforward and manly fellow he was. The one great cloud over Dave's life was the question of his parentage. He had been raised by those who knew practically nothing of his past, and when he thought that he saw a chance to learn something about himself, he embraced that opportunity eagerly, even though it necessitated a long trip to the South Seas and a search among strange islands and still stranger natives. Dave makes the trip in a vessel belonging to the father of one of his school chums, and is accompanied by several of his friends. Not a few perils are encountered, and what the boys do under such circumstances I leave for the pages that follow to tell. In penning this tale, I have had a twofold object in view: first, to give my young readers a view of a long ocean trip and let them learn something of the numerous islands which dot the South Seas, and, in the second place, to aid in teaching that old truth--that what is worth having is worth working for. Again I thank the many thousands of boys and girls, and older persons, too, who have shown their appreciation of my efforts to amuse and instruct them. I can only add, as I have done before, that I sincerely trust that this volume fulfills their every reasonable expectation. EDWARD STRATEMEYER. April 10, 1906. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BOYS OF OAK HALL 1 II. A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST 10 III. THREE CHUMS ON THE RIVER 19 IV. A PLOT TO "SQUARE UP" 28 V. WHAT THE PLOT LED TO 37 VI. THE FUN OF A NIGHT 46 VII. GUS PLUM'S MYSTERIOUS OFFER 55 VIII. SHADOW HAMILTON'S CONFESSION 64 IX. ABOUT ATHLETIC CONTESTS 72 X. HOW A RACE WAS WON 81 XI. A FIGHT AND ITS RESULT 90 XII. SHADOW AS A SOMNAMBULIST 100 XIII. A PHOTOGRAPH OF IMPORTANCE 110 XIV. A GLEAM OF LIGHT 119 XV. WINDING UP THE SCHOOL TERM 128 XVI. PREPARING FOR A LONG TRIP 137 XVII. THE TRIP TO THE FAR WEST 146 XVIII. SAILING OF THE "STORMY PETREL" 155 XIX. DAYS ON THE OCEAN 164 XX. CAUGHT IN A STORM 174 XXI. CAVASA ISLAND AT LAST 183 XXII. ABOUT SOME MISSING MEN 192 XXIII. IN WHICH THE SUPERCARGO IS CORNERED 201 XXIV. THE CARGO MYSTERY EXPLAINED 210 XXV. SWEPT ONWARD BY A TIDAL WAVE 219 XXVI. EXPLORING A TROPICAL ISLAND 228 XXVII. A MAP AND A PLOT 237 XXVIII. MAROONED 245 XXIX. THE COMING OF THE NATIVES 254 XXX. THE RETAKING OF THE "STORMY PETREL" 262 XXXI. LIFTING THE CURTAIN 270 XXXII. HOMEWARD BOUND--CONCLUSION 278 ILLUSTRATIONS The canoe was sent closer and finally beached (page 258) _Frontispiece_ Page Dave cleared the last hurdle, and came in a winner 87 "Tell me his name, at once!" 121 "Good-by to Oak Hall!" 137 Another flash lit up the scene 179 The former supercargo was washed off the steps and came down flat on his back 225 Billy Dill managed to catch the last one and turn him over 233 "I have come about seven thousand miles to see you" 274 DAVE PORTER IN THE SOUTH SEAS CHAPTER I THE BOYS OF OAK HALL "Hello, Dave; where are you bound?" "For the river, Phil. I am going out for a row. Want to come along?" "That suits me," answered Phil Lawrence, throwing down the astronomy he had been studying. "But I can't stay out late," he added, reaching for his cap. "Got two examples in algebra to do. Have you finished up?" "Yes," answered Dave Porter. "They are not so hard." "And your Latin?" "That's done, too." Phil Lawrence eyed the boy before him admiringly. "Dave, I don't see how you manage it. You're always on deck for fun, and yet you scarcely miss a lesson. Let me into the secret, won't you?" "That's right, Dave; pull the cover off clean and clear," came from a youth who had just entered the school dormitory. "If I can get lessons without studying----" "Oh, Roger, you know better than that," burst out Dave Porter, with a smile. "Of course I have to study--just the same as anybody. But when I study, I study, and when I play, I play. I've found out that it doesn't pay to mix the two up--it is best to buckle your mind down to the thing on hand and to nothing else." "That's the talk," came from a boy resting on one of the beds. "It puts me in mind of a story I once heard about a fellow who fell from the roof of a house to the ground----" "There goes Shadow again!" cried Roger Morr. "Shadow, will you ever get done telling chestnuts?" "This isn't a chestnut, and I haven't told it over twice in my life. The man fell to the ground past an open window. As he was going down, he grabbed another man at the window by the hair. The hair--it was a wig--came off. 'Say,' yells the man at the window. 'Leave me alone. If you want to fall, 'tend to business, and fall!'" And a smile passed around among the assembled schoolboys. "Perhaps Roger would like to come along," continued Dave. "I was going out for a row, and Phil said he would go, too," he explained. "That suits me," answered Roger Morr. "It will give us an appetite for supper." "What about you, Shadow?" and Dave turned to the youth on the bed. Maurice Hamilton shook his head slightly. "Not to-day. I am going to take a nap, if I can get it. Remember, I was up half the night." "So he was," affirmed Phil Lawrence. "But he hasn't said what it was about." "Not much," growled the boy called Shadow. He was very tall and very thin, hence the nickname. Turning over, he pretended to go to sleep. "There is something wrong about Shadow," said Dave as he and his two companions left the school building and hurried for the river at the back of the grounds. "He has not been himself at all to-day." "I think he has had something to do with that bully, Gus Plum," said Phil. "I saw them together two days ago, and both were talking earnestly. I don't know exactly what it was about. But I know Shadow has been very much disturbed ever since." "Well, the best he can do is to leave Plum alone," returned Dave, decidedly. "I can tell you, fellows, that chap is not to be trusted; you know that as well as I do." "Of course we know it," said Roger Morr. "Didn't I warn you against Gus Plum before you ever came to Oak Hall? And now that Chip Macklin has turned over a new leaf and refused to be Plum's toady any longer, the bully is worse than ever. Only yesterday Buster Beggs caught him back of the gym., abusing one of the little fellows. Buster is generally too lazy to rouse up, but he said it made him mad, and he told Plum to stop, or it would be the worse for him, and Plum went off grumbling." "It's a great pity Plum can't reform, like Macklin. I declare, Chip is getting to be quite a decent sort, now." "It's not in Plum to reform," exclaimed Phil Lawrence. "If I were Doctor Clay, I'd get rid of him. Why, such a chap can keep a whole school in hot water." "Somebody said that Plum's father had lost a good bit of his money," observed Roger Morr. "If that is so, it must be a bitter pill for Gus to swallow." "Well, I wouldn't taunt him with it, if it's true," replied Dave, quickly. "Oh, I shan't say a word--although he deserves to have it rubbed in, for the way he treated you, Dave." "Yes, that was a jolly shame," commented Phil. "It makes me angry every time I think of it." "I am willing to let bygones be bygones," said Dave, with a little smile. "As it was, it only showed me who my true friends were, and are. I can afford to get along without the others." "And especially after we waxed Plum and his crowd at baseball, and then won our great victory over the Rockville boys," said Roger. "Oh, but wasn't that a dandy victory! And didn't we have a dandy celebration afterwards!" "And do you remember the big cannon cracker we set off in the courtyard?" Dave's eyes began to twinkle. "I heard afterwards that Pop Swingly, the janitor, was scared almost to death. He thought somebody was trying to blow up the building." "Yes, and Job Haskers said if he could catch the fellow who----" Phil broke off short. "Here comes Gus Plum, now," he whispered. The others looked up, and saw coming toward them across the school grounds a tall, broad-shouldered individual, loudly dressed, and with a shock of uncombed hair and a cap set over on one ear. "Hello, Plum," said Dave, pleasantly, while his two companions nodded to the newcomer. "Hello, yourself," came shortly from Gus Plum. "Hold up a minute," he went on, planting himself in front of the three. "What's wanted?" questioned Phil, in a little surprise. "I want to know if Shadow Hamilton has been saying anything about me to you," growled the bully of Oak Hall. "I haven't heard anything," answered Phil, while Dave and Roger shook their heads. "Humph! He had better not!" muttered Plum, with a scowl. "If he does----" The bully did not finish. "I hope there is no more trouble in the air," was Dave's comment. "There will be trouble, if Hamilton opens his trap. I won't allow anybody in this school to talk about me, and all of you had better understand it," and the bully glared at the others defiantly. "I am sure I don't know what you are talking about," said Dave. "I haven't said anything about you." "And you haven't heard anything?" inquired Gus Plum, with a look of keen anxiety showing on his coarse face. "I've heard some roundabout story about your father losing money," said Roger, before Dave could answer. "If it is true, I am sorry for you, Gus." "Bah! I don't want your sympathy. Did Hamilton tell you that story?" "No." "I suppose you are spreading it right and left, eh? Making me out to be a pauper, like your friend Porter, eh?" continued Gus Plum, working himself up into a magnificent condition of ill-humor. "I am not spreading it right and left," answered Roger, quietly. "And I am not a pauper, Plum!" exclaimed Dave, with flashing eyes. "I thought we had settled that difference of opinion long ago. If you are going to open it up again----" "Oh, don't mind what he says, Dave," broke in Phil, catching his chum by the arm. "You know nobody in the school pays attention to him." "I won't let any of you run me down!" roared Gus Plum. "Now, just you remember that! If any of you say a word about me or my father, I'll make it so hot for you that you'll wish you had never been born. My father has lost a little money, but it ain't a flea-bite to what he is worth, and I want everybody in this school to know it." "And I want you to know that you cannot continue to insult me," blazed out Dave. "I am not as rich as most of the boys here, but----" "He is just as good as any of us, Plum, remember that," finished Phil. "It is an outrage for you to refer to Dave as a pauper." "Well, didn't he come from the poorhouse, and ain't he a nobody?" sneered the bully. "He is a better fellow than you will ever be, Plum," said Roger, warmly. He and Phil were both holding Dave back. "Don't listen to him, Dave." "Yes, but, fellows----" Dave's face was white, and he trembled all over. "I know it cuts you," whispered Roger. "But Plum is a--a brute. Don't waste your breath on him." "Ho! so I am a brute, am I?" blustered the big bully, clenching his fists. "Yes, you are," answered Roger, boldly. "Any fellow with a spark of goodness and honor in him would not speak to Dave as you have done. It simply shows up your own low-mindedness, Plum." "Don't you preach!" shouted the bully. "Say another word, and I'll--I'll----" "We are not afraid of you," said Phil, firmly. "We've told you that before. We intend to leave you alone, and the best thing you can do is to leave us alone." "Bah! I know you, and you can't fool me! You say one thing to my face and another behind my back. But don't you dare to say too much; and you can tell Shadow Hamilton not to say too much, either. If you do--well, there will be war, that's all--and all of you will get what you don't want!" And with this threat, Gus Plum hurried around a corner of the school building and out of sight. "What a cad!" murmured Phil. "He is worked up; no disputing that," was Roger's comment. "He acts as if he was afraid something was being told that he wished to keep a secret." The hot blood had rushed to Dave's face, and he was still trembling. "I wish I had knocked him down," he said in a low tone. "What good would it have done?" returned Roger. "It would only get you into trouble with the doctor, and that is just what Plum would like. When it comes to a standing in the class, he knows he hasn't as much to lose as you have. He is almost at the bottom already, while you are close to the top." "But, Roger, he said--oh, I can't bear to think about it! I suppose he blabs it to everybody, too, and they will think----" "Don't give it another thought, Dave," said Phil, soothingly, and he turned his chum toward the river again. "Dismiss Plum and all his meanness from your mind." "I wish I could," answered Dave, and his voice had a great deal of seriousness in it. CHAPTER II A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST As the three boys hurried to the river, Dave Porter felt that all his anticipated sport for that afternoon had been spoiled. He had been brought face to face once more with the one dark spot in his history, and his heart was filled with a bitterness which his two loyal chums could scarcely comprehend. Dave was indeed a poorhouse boy, and of unknown parentage. When but a few years of age, he had been found one evening in the summer wandering close to the railroad tracks just outside of the village of Crumville. How he was found by some farm hands and taken to a house and fed and cared for otherwise, has already been related in the first volume of this series, entitled "Dave Porter at Oak Hall." At first, every effort to learn his identity was made, but, this failing, he was turned over to the poorhouse authorities. He said his name was Dave, or Davy, and sometimes added Porter, and then Dun-Dun, and from this he was called Dave Porter--a name which suited him very well. Dave remained at the poorhouse until he was about nine years old, when he was taken out of that institution by a broken-down college professor named Caspar Potts, who had turned farmer. He remained with the old professor for several years, and a warm friendship sprang up between the pair. Caspar Potts gave Dave a fair education, and, in return, the boy did all he could for the old man, who was not in the best of health, and rather eccentric at times. Unfortunately for Professor Potts, there was in the neighborhood a hard-hearted money-lender named Aaron Poole, who had a mortgage on the old educator's farm. The money-lender had a son named Nat, who was a flippant youth, and this boy had trouble with Dave. Then the money-lender would have sold out the old professor, had not aid come opportunely from a most unexpected quarter. In this volume it is unnecessary to go into the details of how Dave became acquainted with Mr. Oliver Wadsworth, a rich manufacturer of the neighborhood, and how the boy saved Jessie Wadsworth from being burned to death when the gasoline tank of an automobile exploded and enveloped the young miss in flames. For this service the Wadsworths were all more than grateful, and when Dave told his story Oliver Wadsworth made the discovery that Caspar Potts was one of the professors under whom he had studied in his college days. "I must meet him and talk this over," said the rich manufacturer, and the upshot of the matter was that the professor and Dave were invited to dine at the Wadsworth mansion. This dinner proved a turning point in the life of the poorhouse youth. Mr. Wadsworth had lost a son by death, and Dave reminded him strongly of his boy. It was arranged that Caspar Potts should come to live at the Wadsworth mansion, and that Dave should be sent to some first-class boarding school, the manufacturer agreeing to pay all bills, because of the boy's bravery in behalf of Jessie. Oak Hall was the school selected, a fine institution, located not far from the village of Oakdale. The school was surrounded by oaks, which partly shaded a beautiful campus, and the grounds, which were on a slight hill, sloped down in the rear to the Leming River. Dave's heart beat high when he started off for Oak Hall, and he had a curious experience before he reached that institution. The house of a Senator Morr was robbed, and the boy met the robber on the train, and, after a good deal of trouble, managed to recover a valise containing a large share of the stolen goods. This threw Dave into the company of Roger Morr, the senator's son, and the two became warm friends. Roger was on his way to Oak Hall, and it was through him that Dave became acquainted with Phil Lawrence--reckoned by many the leader of the academy; Maurice Hamilton, generally called Shadow; Sam Day, Joseph Beggs,--who always went by the name of Buster, because he was so fat,--and a number of others. In Crumville Dave had had one boy friend, Ben Basswood, and Ben also came to Oak Hall, and so did Nat Poole, as flippant and loud-mouthed as ever. But Dave soon found out that Nat Poole was not half so hard to get along with as was Gus Plum, the big bully of the Hall. There was a difference of opinion almost from the start, and Plum did all he could to annoy Dave and his friends. Plum wanted to be a leader in baseball and in athletics generally, and when he found himself outclassed, he was savagely bitter. "I'll get square!" he told his toady, Chip Macklin, more than once; but his plans to injure Dave and his chums fell through, and, in the end, Macklin became disgusted with the bully and left him. Most of the boys wanted nothing to do with the boy who had been the bully's toady, but Dave put in a good word for him, and, in the end, Macklin was voted a pretty fair fellow, after all. With the toady gone, Gus Plum and Nat Poole became very thick, and Poole lost no opportunity of telling how Dave had been raised at the poorhouse. Gus Plum took the matter up, and for a while poor Dave was made miserable by those who turned their backs on him. But Doctor Clay, who presided over the academy, sided with Dave, and so did all of the better class of students, and soon the affair blew over, at least for the time being. But now the bully was agitating it again, as we have just seen. During the winter term at Oak Hall one thing of importance had occurred, of which some particulars must be given, for it has much to do with our present tale. Some of the boys, including Dave, had skated up the river to what was locally called the old castle--a deserted stone dwelling standing in a wilderness of trees. They had arrived at this structure just in time to view a quarrel between two men--one a sleek-looking fellow and the other an elderly man, dressed in the garb of a sailor. The sleek-looking individual was the man who had robbed Senator Morr's house, and just as he knocked the old sailor senseless to the ground, the boys rushed in and made him a prisoner. When the old sailor came to his senses, he stared at Dave as if the boy were a ghost. He said his name was Billy Dill and that he had sailed the South Seas and many other portions of the briny deep. He insisted that he knew Dave well, and wanted to know why the youth had shaved off his mustache. The boys imagined that the tar was out of his head, and he was removed to a hospital. Later on, as Dave was so interested in the man, Mr. Wadsworth had him taken to a private sanitarium. Here he lingered for awhile between life and death, but at last grew better physically, although his mind was sadly unbalanced, and he could recall the past only in a hazy way. Yet he insisted upon it, over and over again, that he had met Dave before, or, if not the youth, then somebody who looked exactly like him, although older. Pressed to tell his story, he said he had met this man on Cavasa Island, in the South Seas. He also mentioned a crazy nurse and a lost child, but could give no details, going off immediately into a wild flight about the roaring of the sea in his ears and the dancing of the lighthouse beacon in his eyes. "He must know something of my past," Dave said, when he came away from visiting the old tar. "Oh, if only his mind were perfectly clear!" "We must wait," answered Oliver Wadsworth, who was along. "I think his mind will clear after awhile. It is certainly clearer now than it was some months ago." "The man he knows may be my father, or some close relative." "That may be true, Dave. But don't raise any false hopes. I should not like to see you disappointed for the world." Dave knew that Phil Lawrence's father was a shipping merchant of considerable standing, owning an interest in a great number of vessels. He went to Phil and learned that the boy was going to take a trip to the South Seas that very summer, and was going to stop at Cavasa Island. "I am going on business for my father," explained Phil. "It is something special, of which he wishes the supercargo to know nothing." And then he told Dave all he knew of Cavasa Island and its two towns and their inhabitants. After that, Dave sent a letter to both of the towns, asking if there were any persons there by the name of Porter, or if any English-speaking person had lost a child years ago, but so far no answer had been received. Of course, Phil wanted to know why Dave was so anxious to learn about his proposed trip, and, in the end, the poorhouse boy told his story, to which his chum listened with interest. "Phil, what would you say if I wanted to go with you on that trip to Cavasa Island?" Dave had said, after his story was finished. "Do you really mean it, Dave?" had been the return question, and Phil's face had shown his astonishment. "I do--if matters turn out as I think they may." "That is, if that old sailor gets around so that he can tell a pretty straight story?" "Yes." "Well, I'd like your company, first-rate. But--" Phil drew a deep breath--"I'd hate to see you go on a wild-goose chase. Think of traveling thousands of miles and then being disappointed at the end of the trip. That old sailor may simply be crazy." "I don't think so. Why should he mention a lost child--a boy?" "Well, that is the only thing that makes it look as if there was something in the story. But couldn't I do the looking for you?" "No, I'd prefer to do that myself. Besides, you must remember, that sailor did not come directly from Cavasa Island to this country. So, whoever was on the island--I mean the person I may be interested in--may have gone elsewhere--in which case I should want to follow him." "I see. Well, Dave, do what you think is best, and may good luck go with you!" Phil had said; and there the conversation on the subject had come to a close. It was not until a week later that Dave had called on Billy Dill again--to find the old tar sitting on a porch of the sanitarium, smoking his pipe contentedly. "On deck again, my hearty!" had been the greeting. "Give us your flipper," and a warm handshake had followed. But the visit had been productive of little good. Billy Dill could remember nothing clearly, excepting that he knew a man who looked very much like Dave, and that that man had been his friend while he was stranded on Cavasa Island and looking for a chance to ship. He said he could recall a bark named the _Mary Sacord_ and a crazy nurse called Polly, but that was all. "I had a picter o' that man once--the feller that looks like you," he said. "But I dunno what's become o' it," and then he had scratched his head and gone off into a rambling mumble that meant nothing at all. And Dave had gone back to Oak Hall more mystified than ever. CHAPTER III THREE CHUMS ON THE RIVER Down at the boathouse the three boys procured a round-bottomed rowboat, and were soon on the river. Roger took one pair of oars and motioned to Phil to let Dave take the other. "Let him do the most of the rowing--it will help him to forget his troubles," he whispered, and Phil understood. It was a beautiful afternoon in the early summer, with just the faintest breeze stirring the trees which lined the river bank on either side. The boys pulled a good stroke, and Roger purposely kept Dave at it, until both were thoroughly warmed up. "You're improving in your stroke," remarked Dave, as they came to a bend in the watercourse and rested on their oars for a minute. "Perhaps you are training for the boat races." "Well, I shouldn't mind going into a race," returned the senator's son. "It would be lots of sport, even if I didn't win." "I am going into some of the field contests this summer," said Phil. "That is, if they come off before I go away." "When do you expect to start?" "I don't know yet. It depends upon when one of my father's vessels gets back to San Francisco and ships her cargo." "I've heard a rumor that the Hall is to be shut up early this summer," said Dave. "The doctor is thinking of building an addition before the fall term begins, and he wants to give the masons and carpenters as much of a show as possible." "Do you remember that day we were on the river, and Gus Plum ran into us with that gasoline launch?" observed Phil. "My, what a mess we were in!" "I've had trouble with him ever since I clapped eyes on him," answered Dave. "Oh, let's talk about something else!" cried Roger. "No matter where we start from, we always end up with Gus Plum. And, by the way, do you notice how thick he is with Nat Poole since Macklin has refused to toady to him?" "They are almost of a stripe, Roger," answered Dave. "I know Nat Poole thoroughly. The only difference is that Poole is more of a dandy when it comes to dress." "Poole says he is going in for athletics this summer," said Phil. "I overheard him telling Luke Watson so." "Is Luke going into training?" "I don't think so. He loves his banjo and guitar too much." "Well, I'd love them, too, if I could play as he does," returned Dave. "Luke told me he had noticed something strange about Shadow," put in Roger. "He asked me if I knew what made Shadow so worried. He said he hadn't heard a funny story out of him for a week, and that's unusual, for Shadow is generally telling about a dozen a day." "It is possible that he may be fixing for a regular spell of sickness," was Dave's comment. "That's the way some things come on, you know." The boys resumed their rowing, and Roger put on a burst of speed that made Dave work with a will in order to keep up with him. Then, of a sudden, there came a sharp click and the senator's son tumbled over backwards, splashing the water in every direction. "Whoop! look out!" yelled Phil. "I don't want any shower-bath! Did you catch a crab, Roger?" "N--no, I didn't," spluttered the senator's son, when he had regained a sitting position. "There's the trouble," and he pointed to a broken oarlock. "That's too bad," declared Dave. "Boys, we shall have to have that fixed before we take the boat back to the boathouse--or else we'll have to tell Mr. Dale." The man he mentioned was the first assistant instructor at the Hall. "Let us row down to Ike Rasmer's boathouse and see if he will sell us an oarlock," suggested Roger. "He ought to have plenty on hand." "All right," said Phil; "and, as both of you must be tired now, I'll take my turn," and he motioned to Dave to change seats with him, while Roger drew in his remaining oar. The man whom Roger had mentioned was a boatman who rented out craft of various kinds. His boathouse was about half a mile away, but Phil covered the distance with ease. They found Rasmer out on his little dock, painting a tiny sloop a dark green. "How do you do, boys?" he called out, pleasantly. "Out for an airing?" "No, we came down to see if you needed any painters," answered Dave. "Well, I dunno. What do you think of this job of mine? Ain't it pretty slick?" And Ike Rasmer surveyed his work with evident satisfaction. "It's all right, Ike," answered Roger. "When you give up boating, take to house-painting, by all means." "House-painting?" snorted the man. "Not fer me! I ain't goin' to fall off no slippery ladder an' break my neck. I'd rather paint signs. What's that you've got, a broken oarlock?" "Yes, and I want to know if you'll sell me one to match?" "Sure I will," answered Ike Rasmer, with a twinkle in his eye. He threw down his paint brush and walked into his boathouse. "Here you be, my boy!" And he held up the parts of a broken oarlock. "Well--I--I didn't want a broken one," stammered the senator's son. "Didn't ye say you wanted one to match? Ho, ho! I reckon I cotched you that trip, didn't I?" And the man continued to laugh, and Dave and Phil joined in. "Ike must have swallowed a whetstone this morning," observed Dave. "A whetstone?" queried the old boatman. "Why?" "You're so awfully sharp." "Ho, ho! That's one on me, sure enough." The man slapped Dave on the shoulder. "You Hall boys are the cute ones, ain't ye? Well, if you want a good oarlock, you shall have it," and he brought forth a number, that Roger might make his selection. The senator's son did so, and paid for it out of his pocket-money. "We ought to pay for part of that," said Dave, always ready to do what was fair. "Oh, don't bother, Dave; it's only a trifle," answered his chum. "Say, some of you boys are out pretty late nights," observed Ike Rasmer, as he resumed his painting, and while Roger was adjusting the new oarlock to the gunwale of the Hall boat. "Out late?" queried Phil. "Yes, mighty late." "I haven't been out for a month." "Nor I," added Dave and Roger. "I see that young Hamilton not long ago--the fellow that tells stories whenever he can get the chance. And I saw Gus Plum, too." "Together?" asked Dave, with sudden interest. "Oh, no. But they were out the same night." "Late?" "I should say so--after twelve o'clock." "What were they doing, Ike?" asked Phil. "Rowing along the river. Each had a small boat--I guess one from the school. It was bright moonlight, and I saw them quite plainly when they passed Robbin's Point, where I was fishing." "And each was alone?" "Yes. Hamilton was right ahead of Plum, and both rowing along at good speed, too. I thought it was mighty strange, and made up my mind I'd ask you boys about it. But, say, I don't want you to get them into trouble," added the old boatman, suddenly. "They are both customers of mine, sometimes." "I shan't say anything," answered Roger. "But this puzzles me," he continued, turning to his friends. "Each boy was alone in a boat?" queried Dave. "Yes." "And Plum was following Hamilton?" "He seemed to be. Anyway, his boat was behind the other." "Was anybody else around?" asked Phil. "I didn't see a soul, and the river was almost as bright as day." "Did you see them a second time?" asked Dave. "No, for I was getting ready to go home when they came along. I don't know where they went, or when they got back." Ike Rasmer could tell no more than this, and as it was getting late the three boys lost no time in shoving off once more and pulling for the Hall boathouse. "This stumps me," declared the senator's son. "What do you make of it? Do you think Shadow and Plum are up to something between them?" "No, I don't," answered Dave, decidedly. "Shadow is not the fellow to train with Gus Plum. He doesn't like the bully any more than we do." "No wonder Shadow feels sleepy, if he spends his nights on the river," said Phil. "But I can't make out what he is up to, I must confess. If it was some fun, he would surely take somebody with him." The boys pulled with all their strength, yet when they arrived at the Hall boathouse, they found that they were exactly twelve minutes behind the supper hour. "No time to wash up," said Roger. "We'll be lucky if we can slip into the dining room without being observed." With all speed they tied up their craft and ran for the school building. They were just entering the side door when they were brought face to face with Job Haskers, the second assistant teacher and a man who was very dictatorial in his manner. "Stop!" cried Job Haskers, catching Dave by the shoulder. "What do you mean by coming in at this hour?" "We were out on the river and broke an oarlock, Mr. Haskers," replied Dave. "Humph! an old excuse." "It is the truth, sir," and Dave's face flushed. "I broke the oarlock," said Roger. "We got back as soon as we could--as soon as we got a new lock at Ike Rasmer's boathouse." "We cannot allow pupils to come in half an hour late," went on Job Haskers, loftily. "Directly after supper, report to me in classroom 7," and he passed on. "We are in for it now," grumbled Phil. "It's a shame! It wasn't our fault that the oarlock broke." "Wonder what he will make us do?" came from the senator's son. "Something not very pleasant," answered Dave. He had encountered the second assistant many times before and knew the harsh instructor well. They were soon in their seats at the table. Some of the other students looked at them inquiringly, but nothing was said. Not far from Dave sat Gus Plum and Nat Poole, and both favored the poor boy with a scowl, to which Dave paid no attention. The meal finished, Dave, Phil, and the senator's son brushed up a bit, and then hurried to classroom 7, located in an angle of the building. They were soon joined by Job Haskers. "The three of you may remain here and each write the word 'Oarlock' two hundred times," said the second assistant. "As soon as all of you have finished, ring the bell, and I will come and inspect the work. It must be neatly done, or I shall make you do it over again." And then he left them to themselves, going out and closing the door tightly after him. CHAPTER IV A PLOT TO "SQUARE UP" "Phew! but this is a real picnic!" came softly from Phil. "He's as kind as they make 'em, isn't he?" "It's a jolly shame," grumbled the senator's son. "To make us stay in this stuffy classroom on such a fine evening as this." "I am glad I finished with my lessons," was Dave's comment. "But I am sorry for you two. But, as there is no help for it, we might as well get to work. The sooner begun, the sooner done, you know." And he began to write away vigorously on one of the pads the teacher had pointed out to them. "I wish old Haskers had to write it himself," growled Roger, as he, too, went at the task. "Oh, but isn't he the mean one! I don't see why the doctor keeps him." "He's smart, that's why," answered Phil. "I wish we could get square for this. I'm sure Doctor Clay would have excused us, had he known the facts. I've a good mind to go to him about it." "Don't you do it, Phil," cried Dave. "It's not worth it. Get to work--and we'll think about squaring up afterwards." In a minute more all three of the boys were writing as rapidly as their fingers could travel over the paper. Roger was the best penman of the three and finished several minutes before the others. He began to walk up and down the room, whistling softly to himself. "Yes, I go in for squaring up with old Haskers," he said, rather loudly. "He's about as mean----" And then he stopped short, as the door swung open and the second assistant appeared. "Huh!" he snorted. "Were you alluding to me, Master Morr?" he demanded. Roger stammered, and his face turned red. "Her--here are the words," he stammered. "Two hundred, eh? Well, you may write a hundred more, and after this be careful of what you say." And then Job Haskers turned to Dave and Phil. "That is all right, you two can go." "Can I stay with Roger?" asked Dave. "No, I shall remain here myself," was the cold answer, and then Dave and Phil had to leave. "I'll wager Roger feels like hugging him," was Phil's comment. "He will want to get square now, sure." The two boys went out on the campus for awhile and then up to their dormitory, where they found a small crowd assembled, some talking, and a few studying. The door to the adjoining dormitory was open, and there Luke Watson was playing on a banjo, while another student was singing a negro song in a subdued voice. "I say, Dave, will you explain something to me?" said a voice from a corner. The question came from Chip Macklin, Gus Plum's former toady. The small boy was working over a sheet of algebra sums. "Certainly," said Dave, readily, and sat down by the other's side. "Now, what is it? Oh, I see. I got twisted on that myself once. This is the proper equation, and you can reduce it this way," and he was soon deep in the problem, with Chip looking on admiringly. When the problem had been worked out and explained in detail, the small boy was very grateful. "And, Dave," he went on, in a low tone, "I--I want to tell you something. Be on your guard against Plum and Nat Poole." "Why?" "Because they are plotting mischief. I heard them talking in the gym. I don't know what it is about, but they are surely up to something." "I'll remember, Chip, and much obliged," answered Dave, and then he turned to the other boys, leaving the small youth to finish his examples. "Hello, where have you been?" came from stout and lazy Buster Beggs. He was sprawled out on the end of a couch. "I noticed you didn't get to supper till late, and went right off, directly you had finished." "Had a special session with Haskers," answered Dave. "He wants me to improve my handwriting." There was a smile at this, for all the boys knew what it meant. "Oh, that fellow is a big peach, he is!" came from Sam Day, who sat in one of the windows. "Yesterday, he made me stay in just because I asked Tolliver for a lead pencil." "He was mad because Polly Vane caught him in an error in grammar," added another youth. "Didn't you, Polly?" he added, addressing a rather girlish-looking boy who sat near Chip Macklin. "I did," was the soft answer. "It was rather a complicated sentence, but perfectly clear to me," explained the boy. "I don't wonder, for Polly fairly lives on grammar and language," put in Phil. "I don't believe anybody could trip him up," and this compliment made Bertram Vane blush like a girl. He was in reality one of the best scholars in the academy. "Which puts me in mind of a story," came from one of the cots. "An----" "Hello, are you awake, Shadow?" cried Sam Day. "I thought you were snoozing." "So I was, but I am slept out, and feel better now. As I was saying, an old farmer and a college professor went out rowing together. Says the college professor, 'Can you do sums in algebra?' 'No,' answers the farmer. 'Then you have missed a great opportunity,' says the professor. Just then the boat struck a rock and went over. 'Save me!' yells the professor. 'Can't you swim?' asked the farmer. 'No.' 'Then you have lost the chance of your life!' says the farmer, and strikes out and leaves the professor to take care of himself." "Two hundredth time!" came in a solemn voice from the doorway to the next room. "Wha--what do you mean? I never told any story two hundred times," cried Shadow Hamilton. "And that puts me in mind----" "Shadow, if you tell another as bad as that, I'll heave you out of the window," came from Sam Day. "That has moss on it three inches th----" "Oh, I know you, Lazy; you're jealous, that's all. You couldn't tell a story if you stood on your head." "Can you, Shadow?" and then a general laugh went up, in the midst of which the door opened, and Job Haskers entered. On catching sight of the unpopular teacher, Sam Day lost no time in sliding from the window-sill to a chair. "Boys, we cannot permit so much noise up here!" cried Job Haskers. "And that constant strumming on a banjo must be stopped. Master Day, were you sitting in the window?" "I--er--I think I was," stammered Sam. "You are aware that is against the rules. If you fell out, the Hall management would be held responsible. After school to-morrow you can write the words, 'Window-sill,' two hundred times. Hamilton, get up, and straighten out that cot properly. I am ashamed of you." And then the hated teacher passed on to the next dormitory. "I told you to get out of the window," said Macklin, as soon as they were alone. "I was caught that way myself once, and so was Gus Plum." "Lazy is going to learn how to write a little better, too," said Dave, with a grin. At that moment Roger came in, looking thoroughly disgusted. "Made me write half of it over again," he explained. "Oh, it's simply unbearable! Say, I am going to do something to get square, as sure as eggs is eggs." "Eggs are eggs," corrected Polly Vane, sweetly. "Oh, thanks, Polly. What about a tailor's goose?" "Eh?" "If one tailor's goose is a goose, what are half a dozen?" "Tailor's geese, I suppose--but, no, you'd not say that. Let me see," and the girlish youth dove into his books. "That's a serious question, truly!" he murmured. "Well, I am willing to get square, too," put in Sam Day. "So am I," grunted Shadow Hamilton. "There was no need to call me down as he did, simply because the cot was mussed up a bit. The question is, what's to be done?" The boys paused and looked at each other. Then a sudden twinkle came into Dave's clear eyes. "If we could do it, it would be great," he murmured. "Do what, Dave?" asked several at once. "I don't care to say, unless I am certain we are all going to stand together." "We are!" came in a chorus from all but Polly Vane, who was still deep in his books. "What about you, Polly?" called out Roger. "Me? Why--er--if a tailor's goose is a real goose, not a flatiron goose----" "Oh, drop the goose business. We are talking about getting square with Haskers. Will you stand with the crowd?" "You see, we don't want to make gooses of ourselves," said Phil, with a wink at Polly Vane. "I'll stand by you," said Polly. "But please don't ask me to do something ridiculous, as when we dumped that feather bed down from the third-story landing, and caught those visitors, instead of Pop Swingly." "I was only thinking of Farmer Cadmore's ram," said Dave, innocently. "He is now tied up in a field below here. I don't think he likes to be out over night. He'd rather be under shelter--say in Mr. Haskers' room." "Whoop!" cried Roger. "Just the thing! We will store him away in old Haskers' closet." This plan met with instant approval, and the boys drew straws as to which of them should endeavor to execute the rather difficult undertaking. Three were to go, and the choice fell upon Dave, Phil, and Sam Day. The others promised to remain on guard and issue a warning at the first intimation of danger. "I think the coast will be fairly clear," said Sam Day. "I heard Haskers tell Doctor Clay he was going out to-night and would not be back until eleven, or after. That ought to give us plenty of time in which to do the trick." The three boys could not leave the dormitory until the monitor, Jim Murphy, had made the rounds and seen to it that all was right for the night and the lights put out. Then they stole out into the hallway and down a back stairs. Soon they were out of the building and making for Farmer Cadmore's place. As they left the Hall they did not see that they were being watched, yet such was a fact. Nat Poole had been out on a special errand and had seen them depart. At once that student hurried to tell his friend, Gus Plum. "Going out, eh?" said the big bully. "Yes, and I heard them say something about making it warm when they got back," returned Nat Poole. "Humph! Nat, we must put a spoke in their wheel." "I'm willing. What shall we do?" "I'll think something up--before they get back," replied the bully of Oak Hall. "They haven't any right to be out, and I guess we've got 'em just where we want 'em." CHAPTER V WHAT THE PLOT LED TO It was a clear night, with no moon, but with countless stars bespangling the heavens. All was quiet around Oak Hall, and the three boys found it an easy matter to steal across the campus, gain the shade of a row of oaks, and get out on the side road leading to the Cadmore farm. "We don't want to get nabbed at this," was Phil's comment. "If Farmer Cadmore caught us, he would make it mighty warm. He's as irritable as old Farmer Brown, and you'll remember what a time we had with him and his calf." "Does he keep a dog?" asked Dave. "I haven't any use for that sort of an animal, if he is savage." "No, he hasn't any dog," answered Phil. "I was asking about it last week." But Phil was mistaken; Jabez Cadmore did have a dog--one he had purchased a few days before. He was a good-sized mastiff, and far from gentle. Walking rapidly, it did not take the three boys long to reach the first of Farmer Cadmore's fields. This was of corn, and passing through it and over a potato patch, they came to an orchard, wherein they knew the ram was tied to one of the trees. "Now, be careful!" whispered Dave, as he leaped the rail-fence of the orchard. "Somebody may be stirring around the farmhouse"--pointing to the structure some distance away. "Oh, they must be in bed by this time," said Phil. "Farmers usually retire early. Cadmore is a close-fisted chap, and he won't want to burn up his oil or his candles." With hearts which beat rather rapidly, the boys stole along from one tree to another. Then they saw a form rise out of the orchard grass, and all gave a jump. But it was only the ram, and the animal was more frightened than themselves. "Look out that he doesn't butt you," warned Dave. "Some of 'em are pretty _ram_bunctious." They approached the ram with caution, and untied him. Then Phil started to lead him out of the orchard, with Dave and Sam following. At first he would not go, but then began to run, so that Phil kept up with difficulty. "Stop!" cried the boy. "Not so fast! Don't you hear?" But the ram paid no attention, and now turned to the very end of the orchard. Here the ground was rough, and in a twinkling all three of the boys went down in a hollow and rolled over and over, while the ram, finding himself free, plunged on, and was hidden from view in the darkness. "He got away!" gasped Phil, scrambling up. "We must--Hark!" He stopped short, and all of the boys listened. From a distance came the deep baying of the mastiff. The sounds drew closer rapidly. "A dog--and he is after us!" cried Dave. "Fellows, we have got to get out of this!" "If we can!" replied Sam Day. "Which is the way out? I am all turned around." So were the others, and they stared into the darkness under the apple trees in perplexity. The dog was coming closer, and to get away by running appeared to be out of the question. "Jump into a tree!" cried Dave, and showed the way. The others followed, clutching at some low-hanging branches and pulling themselves up as rapidly as possible. Dave and Sam were soon safe, but the mastiff, making a bound, caught Phil by the sole of his shoe. "Hi!" roared Phil. "Let go!" And he kicked out with the other foot. This made the mastiff make another snap, but his aim was poor, and he dropped back to the ground, while Phil hauled himself up beside his companions. "Phew! but that was a narrow escape and no mistake," was the comment of the big youth, after he could catch his breath. "I thought sure he had me by the foot!" "We are in a pickle," groaned Sam. "I suppose that dog will camp right at the foot of this tree till Farmer Cadmore comes." "Yes, he is camping now," announced Dave, peering down into the gloom. The moment the mastiff saw him, the canine set up a loud barking. For a full minute after that none of the boys spoke, each being busy with his thoughts. "We are treed, that is certain," said Phil, soberly. "And I must say I don't see any way to escape." "Yes, and don't forget about the ram," added Sam. "Old Jabez Cadmore will want to know about him, too." "I've got an idea," said Dave, presently. "Perhaps it won't work, but it won't do any harm to try it." "Give it to us, by all means!" "The trees are pretty thick in this orchard. Let us try to work our way from one tree to another until we can reach the fence. Then, perhaps, we can drop outside and get out of the way of that animal." This was considered a good plan, and they proceeded to put it into execution at once. It was no easy matter to climb from tree to tree, and each got a small rent in his clothing, and Sam came near falling to the ground. The mastiff watched them curiously, barking but little, much to their satisfaction. At last, they came to the final row of apple trees. A long limb hung over a barbed-wire fence, and the boys paused, wondering if it would be safe to drop to the ground. "If that mastiff should come through the fence, it would go hard with us," was Phil's comment. "I'd rather stay up here and take what comes." "I am going to risk it," answered Dave. "I see a stick down there, and I'll grab that as soon as I land," and down he dropped, and caught up the stick with alacrity. The dog pounced forward, struck the sharp barbs of the fence, and retreated, howling dismally with pain. Then he made another advance, with like results. "Hurrah! he can't get through!" ejaculated Dave. "Come on, fellows, it's perfectly safe." And down his chums dropped, and all hurried away from the vicinity of the orchard. "We had better be getting back," said Sam, after the orchard and potato patch had been left behind. "That farmer may be coming after us before we know it. He must have heard the dog." But in this he was mistaken, the distance from the house was too great, and the farmer and his family slept too soundly to be disturbed. "It's too bad we must go back without the ram," observed Dave. "The other fellows will think we got scared and threw up the job." "Well, it can't be helped," began Phil, when he caught sight of something moving along the road ahead of them. "Look! Is that the ram?" "It is!" exclaimed Dave. "Wait! If you are not careful, he'll run away again. Stay here, and I'll catch him. I was brought up on a farm, and I know all about sheep." The others came to a halt, and Dave advanced with caution until he was within a few feet of the ram. Then he held out his hand and made a peculiar sound. The ram grew curious and remained quiet, while the youth picked up the end of the rope which was around the animal's neck. "I've got him," he said, in a low, even tone. "Now, keep to the rear and I'll manage him." And on they went. Once in a while the ram showed a disposition to butt and to stop short, but Dave coaxed him, and the trouble was not great. When they came in sight of the school building, they realized that the most difficult part of the task lay before them. It was decided that Dave should keep the ram behind the gymnasium building until Sam and Phil ascertained that the coast was clear. Left to himself, Dave tied the ram to a post and crawled into the gymnasium by one of the windows. He procured several broad straps, and also a small blanket. Just as he came out with the things, Sam and Phil came hurrying back, each with a look of deep concern on his face. "The jig is up!" groaned Sam. "Plum and Poole are on to our racket, and they won't let us in!" "Plum and Poole!" exclaimed Dave. "Are they at that back door?" "Yes, and when we came up, they jeered us," said Phil. "Oh, but wasn't I mad! They said if we tried to force our way in, they'd ring up the doctor, or Mr. Dale." "Does our crowd know about this?" "I don't think they do." "Plum and Poole intend to keep us out all night, eh?" "It looks that way. They said we could ask Haskers to let us in when he came." "I am not going to Haskers," said Dave, firmly. "Sam, you look after this ram for a few minutes. I'll make them let us in, and not give us away, either. Phil, you come along." "But I don't see how you are going to do it," expostulated the big boy. "Never mind; just come on, that's all. Plum isn't going to have a walk-over to-night." Somewhat mystified, Phil accompanied Dave across the campus and to the rear door of the Hall. Here the barrier was open only a few inches, with Plum peering out, and Poole behind him. The face of the bully wore a look of triumph. "How do you like staying out?" he whispered, hoarsely. "Fine night for a ramble, eh? You can tell old Haskers what a fine walk you have had! He'll be sure to reward you handsomely!" "See here, Plum, I am not going to waste words with you to-night," said Dave, in a low, but intense, tone. "You let us in, and at once, or you'll regret it." "Will I?" "You will. And what is more: don't you dare to say a word to anybody about what is happening now." "Oh, dear, but you can talk big! Maybe you want me to get down on my knees as you pass in," added the bully, mockingly. "If you don't let us in, do you know what I shall do?" continued Dave, in a whisper. "I shall go to Doctor Clay and tell him that you are in the habit of going out after midnight to row on the river." If Dave had expected this statement to have an effect upon the bully, his anticipations were more than realized. Gus Plum uttered a cry of dismay and fell back on Nat Poole's shoulder. His face lost its color, and he shook from head to foot. "Yo-you----" he began. "Wha-what do you know about my--my rowing on the river?" "I know a good deal." "Yo-you've been--following--me?" For once the bully could scarcely speak. "I shan't say any more," said Dave, giving his chum a pinch in the arm to keep quiet. "Only, are you going to let us in or not?" "N-no--I mean, yes," stammered Gus Plum. He could scarcely collect himself, he seemed so upset. "You can come in. Poole, we'll have to let them in this time." "And you will keep still about this?" demanded Dave. "Yes, yes! I won't say a word, Porter, not a word! And--and I'll see you to-morrow after school. I--that is--I want to talk to you. Until then, mum's the word on both sides." And then, to the astonishment of both Dave and Phil, Gus Plum hurried away, dragging Nat Poole with him. CHAPTER VI THE FUN OF A NIGHT "My gracious, Plum acts as if he was scared to death," observed Phil, after the bully and his companion had departed, leaving the others a clear field. "He certainly was worked up," returned Dave. "I wonder what he'll have to say to-morrow?" There was no answering that question, and the two boys hurried to where they had left Sam without attempting to reach a conclusion. They found their chum watching out anxiously. "Well?" came from his lips as soon as he saw them. "It's all right," answered Dave, and told as much as he deemed necessary. "Come, we must hurry, or Job Haskers will get back before we can fix things." "This ram is going to be something to handle," observed Phil. "No 'meek as a lamb' about him." "I'll show you how to do the trick," answered the boy from the country, and with a dexterous turn of the horns, threw the ram over on one side. "Now sit on him, until I tie his legs with the straps." In a few minutes Dave had the animal secured, and the blanket was placed over the ram's head, that he might not make too much noise. Then they hoisted their burden up between them and started toward the Hall. It was no easy matter to get the ram upstairs and into Job Haskers' room. On the upper landing they were met by Roger and Buster Beggs, who declared the coast clear. Once in the room of the assistant teacher, they cleared out the bottom of the closet and then, releasing the animal from his bonds, thrust him inside and shut and locked the door, leaving the key in the lock. "Now, skip!" cried Dave, in a low voice. "He may cut up high-jinks in another minute." "Here is an apple he can have--that will keep him quiet for awhile," said Roger, and put it in the closet, locking the door as before. The ram was hungry, and began to munch the fruit with satisfaction. A few minutes more found the boys safe in their dormitory, where they waited impatiently for the second assistant teacher to get back to Oak Hall. At last they heard him unlock the front door and come up the broad stairs. Then they heard his room door open and shut. "Now for the main act in the drama," whispered Roger. "Come on, but don't dare to make any noise." All of the boys, including little Macklin and Polly Vane, were soon outside of dormitories Nos. 11 and 12--the two rooms the "crowd" occupied. They went forth on tiptoe, scarcely daring to breathe. Arriving at Job Haskers' door, they listened and heard the teacher preparing to go to bed. One shoe after another dropped to the floor, and then came a creaking of the bed, which told that he had lain down. "That ram isn't going to do anything," began Sam, in disgust, when there came a bang on the closet door that caused everybody to jump. "Wha-what's that?" cried Job Haskers, sitting up in bed. He fancied somebody had knocked on the door to the hall. Another bang resounded on the closet door. The ram had finished the apple, and wanted his freedom. The teacher leaped to the middle of the bedroom floor. "Who is in there?" he demanded, walking toward the closet. "Who is there, I say?" Getting no answer, he paused in perplexity. Then a grin overspread his crafty face, and he slipped on some of his clothing. "So I've caught you, eh?" he observed. "Going to play some trick on me, were you? I am half of a mind to make you stay there all night, no matter who you are. I suppose you thought I wouldn't get back quite so early. In the morning, I'll----" Another bang on the door cut his speculations short. He struck a match and lit the light, and then unlocking the closet door, threw it wide open. What happened next came with such suddenness that Job Haskers was taken completely by surprise. As soon as the door was opened, the ram leaped out. He caught one glimpse of the teacher, and, lowering his head, he made a plunge and caught Job Haskers fairly and squarely in the stomach, doubling up the man like a jack-knife. Haskers went down in a heap, and, turning, the ram gave him a second prod in the side. "Hi! stop! murder! help!" came in terror. "Stop it, you beast! Hi! call him off, somebody! Oh, my!" And then Job Haskers tried to arise and place a table between himself and the ram. But the animal was now thoroughly aroused, and went at the table with vigor, upsetting it on the teacher and hurling both over into a corner. By this time the noise had aroused nearly the entire school, and pupils and teachers came hurrying from all directions. "What is the trouble here?" demanded Andrew Dale, as he came up to where Dave was standing. "Sounds like a bombardment in Mr. Haskers' room, sir," was the answer. "Mr. Haskers is trying some new gymnastic exercises," came from a student in the rear of the crowd. "Maybe he has got a fit," suggested another. "He didn't look well at supper time." The racket in the room continued, and now Doctor Clay, arrayed in a dressing-gown and slippers, came upon the scene, followed by Pop Swingly, the janitor. "Has Mr. Haskers caught a burglar?" asked the janitor. "That's it!" shouted Phil, with a wink at his friends. "Look out, Swingly, that you don't get shot!" "Shot?" gasped the janitor, who was far from being a brave man. "I don't want to get shot, not me!" and he edged behind some of the boys. Doctor Clay hurried to the door of the room, only to find it locked from the inside. "Mr. Haskers, what is the trouble?" he demanded. Another bang and a thump was the only reply, accompanied by several yells. Then, of a sudden, came a crash of glass and an exclamation of wonder. "Something has gone through the window, as sure as you are born!" whispered Dave to Roger. "Oh, Dave, you don't suppose it was Haskers? If he fell to the ground, he'd be killed!" "Open the door, or I shall break in!" thundered Doctor Clay, and then the door was thrown open and Job Haskers stood there, a look of misery on his face and trembling from head to foot. "What is the trouble?" asked the doctor. "The ram--he butted me--knocked me down--nearly killed me!" spluttered the assistant teacher. "The ram--what ram?" "He's gone now--hit the window and jumped out." "Mr. Haskers, have you lost your senses?" "No, sir. There was a ram in this room--in the closet. I heard him, and opened the door--I--oh! I can feel the blow yet. He was a--a terror!" "Do you mean a real, live ram?" questioned Andrew Dale, with a slight smile on his face--that smile which made all the boys his friends. "I should say he was alive! Oh, it's no laughing matter!" growled Job Haskers. "He nearly killed me!" "An' did he go through the winder?" asked Pop Swingly, as he stepped to the broken sash. "He did--went out like a rocket. Look at the wreck of the table! I am thankful I wasn't killed!" "How did the ram get here?" asked Doctor Clay. "How should I know? He was in the closet when I came in. Some of those villainous boys--" "Gently, Mr. Haskers. The boys are not villains." "Well, they put the ram there, I am sure of it." The doctor turned to the janitor. "Swingly, go below and see if you can see anything of the ram. He may be lying on the ground with a broken leg, or something like that. If so, we'll have to kill him, to put him out of his misery." The janitor armed himself with a stout cane and went downstairs, and after him trooped Andrew Dale and fully a score of boys. But not a sign of the ram was to be seen, only some sharp footprints where he had landed. "Must have struck fair an' square, an' run off," observed the janitor. "Rams is powerful tough critters. I knowed one as fell over a stone cliff, an' never minded it at all." "Let us take a look around," said the first assistant. "Boys, get to bed, you'll take cold in this night air." And then the students trooped back into the Hall. Upstairs they found that Job Haskers and Doctor Clay had gotten into a wrangle. The assistant wanted an examination of the boys at once, regardless of the hour of the night, but Doctor Clay demurred. "We'll investigate in the morning," said he. "And, as the window is broken out, Mr. Haskers, you may take the room next to mine, which is just now vacant." "Somebody ought to be punished----" "We'll investigate, do not fear." "It's getting worse and worse. By and by there won't be any managing these rascals at all," grumbled the assistant teacher. "Some of them ought to have their necks wrung!" "There, that is enough," returned the doctor, sternly. "I think we can manage them, even at such a time as this. Now, boys," he continued, "go to bed, and do not let me hear any more disturbances." And he waved the students to their various dormitories. "Say, but isn't old Haskers mad!" exclaimed Roger, when he and his chums were in their dormitory. "He'd give a good bit to find out who played the joke on him." "I hope that ram got away all right," came from Dave. "I didn't want to see the animal injured." "I think Pop Swingly is right, animals like that are tough," was Buster Beggs' comment. "More than likely he is on his way back to Farmer Cadmore's farm." "We'll find out later on," put in Sam Day. "There is another thing to consider," continued Dave. "It wouldn't be right to let Doctor Clay stand for the expense of that broken window. I think I'll send him the price of the glass out of my pocket money." "Not a bit of it!" exclaimed Phil. "Let us pass around the hat. We are all in this as deep as you." And so it was decided that all of the students of dormitories Nos. 11 and 12 should contribute to the fund for mending the broken sash. Then, as Andrew Dale came around on a tour of inspection, all hopped into bed and were soon sound asleep. CHAPTER VII GUS PLUM'S MYSTERIOUS OFFER When Doctor Clay came to his desk on the following morning, he found an envelope lying there, on which was inscribed the following: "To pay for the broken window. If it costs more, please let the school know, and we'll settle the bill." Three dollars was inclosed. This caused the worthy doctor to smile quietly to himself. It took him back to his college days, when he had aided in several such scrapes. "Boys will be boys," he murmured. "They are not villains, only real flesh-and-blood youngsters." "You are going to punish those boys?" demanded Job Haskers, coming up. "If we can locate them." "Humph! I'd catch them, if it took all day." "You may do as you think best, Mr. Haskers; only remember you have young gentlemen to deal with. I presume they thought it only a harmless prank." "I'll prank them, if I catch them," growled the assistant to himself, as he walked away. Word had been passed around among the boys, and when the roll was called all were ready to "face the music." "Who knows anything about the proceedings of last night?" began Job Haskers, gazing around fiercely. There was a pause, and then a rather dull boy named Carson arose. "Great Cæsar! Is he going to blab on us?" murmured Phil. "What have you got to say, Carson?" asked the teacher. "I--I--I kn-know wh-what happened," stuttered Carson. "Very well, tell me what you know?" "A ra-ra-ra-ram got into your ro-ro-ro-room, and he kno-kno-kno-knocked you d-d-d-down!" went on the boy, who was the worst stutterer at Oak Hall. "Ahem! I know that. Who put the ram in my room?" "I d-d-d-d----" "You did!" thundered the teacher. "How dare you do such a thing!" "I d-d-d-d----" "Carson, I am--er--amazed. What made you do it?" "I d-d-d-didn't say I d-d-d-did it," spluttered poor Carson. "I said I d-d-d-didn't know." "Oh!" Job Haskers' face fell, and he looked as sour as he could. "Sit down. Now, then, whoever knows who put that ram in my room last night, stand up." Not a boy arose. "Will anybody answer?" stormed the teacher. There was utter silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock on the wall. Dave looked at Gus Plum and Nat Poole, but neither budged. "I shall call the roll, and each boy must answer for himself," went on Job Haskers. "Ansberry!" "I can tell you nothing, Mr. Haskers," was the reply, and the pupil dropped back into his seat. "Humph! Aspinwell!" "I can tell you nothing, Mr. Haskers." "Babcock!" "I can tell you nothing, Mr. Haskers." "This is--er--outrageous! Beggs!" "Sorry, but I can tell you nothing, Mr. Haskers," drawled the fat youth. After that, one name after another was called, and every pupil said practically the same thing, even Plum and Poole stating that they could tell nothing. When the roll-call was finished, the teacher was fairly purple with suppressed rage. "I shall inquire into this at some future time!" he snapped out. "You are dismissed to your classes." And he turned away to hide his chagrin. "Do you think we are safe?" whispered Phil to Dave, as they hurried to their room. "I think so," was the country boy's reply. And Dave was right--the truth concerning the night's escapade did not come out until long after, when it was too late to do anything in the matter. Dave was anxious to make a record for himself in his studies, and, with the end of the term so close at hand, he did his best over his books and in the classroom. He was close to the top of his class, and he was already certain of winning a special prize given for mathematics. Roger was just behind him in the general average, and Phil was but five points below, with a special prize for language to his credit. The best scholar of all was Polly Vane, who, so far, had a percentage of ninety-seven, out of a possible hundred. Dave had not forgotten what Gus Plum had said, and just before the session for the day was ended received a note from the bully, asking him to come down to a point on the lake known as the Three Rocks, and located at the extreme limit of the academy grounds. Plum asked him particularly to come alone. "Aren't you afraid Plum will play some trick on you?" asked Phil, who saw the note delivered, and read it. "I'll be on my guard," answered Dave. "I am not afraid of him, if it should come to an encounter between us." Having put away his books, Dave sauntered down to the spot mentioned, which was behind a thick fringe of bushes. Plum was not yet there, but soon came up at a quick walk. "I couldn't get away from Poole," explained the bully. "Are you alone?" and he gazed around anxiously. "Yes, I am alone," answered Dave, coolly. There was a silence, and each boy looked at the other. Dave's eyes were clear, but the bully's had something of the haunted in them. "You said something about me last night," began Plum, lamely, "something about my being on the river." "I did." "Did you see me on the river?" "I am not going to answer that question just yet, Plum." "Huh! Maybe you are only joking?" "Very well, you can think as you please. If you want to talk to me, very well; if not, I'll go back to the school," and Dave started to walk away. "Hold on!" The bully caught the country boy by the arm. "If you saw me on the river, what else did you see?" "You were following Shadow Hamilton in a boat." "I wasn't--I didn't have anything to do with Hamilton. I--I didn't know he was out till afterwards," went on the bully, fiercely. "Don't you say such a thing--don't you dare!" His face was very white. "You are not going to get me into trouble!" "Is that all you have to say, Plum?" "N-no. I want to talk this over, Porter. I--that is--let us come to terms--that's the best way. It won't do you any good to try to get me into trouble. I--I haven't done anything wrong. I was out on the river by--by accident, that's all--got it into my head to have a lark that night, just as you went out for a lark last night." "Well, what do you want to see me about, then?" questioned Dave. He could readily see that the bully had something on his mind which troubled him greatly. "I think we might as well come to terms--you keep still and I'll keep still." "I haven't said anything, Plum." "Yes, but you might, later on, you know. I--that is, let us make a sure thing of this," stammered the bully. "What are you driving at, Plum? Talk out straight." "I will." The bully looked around, to make certain that nobody was within hearing distance. "You're a poor boy, Porter, aren't you?" "I admit it." "Just so. And, being poor, some pocket money comes in mighty handy at times, doesn't it?" "I have some spending money." "But not as much as you'd like; ain't that so?" "Oh, I could spend more--if I had it," answered Dave, trying to find out what the other was driving at. "Well, supposing I promised to give you some money to spend, Porter, how would that strike you?" Dave was astonished, the suggestion was so entirely unexpected. But he tried not to show his feelings. "Would you give me money, Gus?" he asked, calmly. "Yes, I would--if you'd only promise to keep quiet." "How much?" "Well--I--er--I'd do the right thing. Did Phil Lawrence see me on the river?" "No." "Any of the other boys?" "Not that I know of." "Then you were alone." Gus Plum drew a sigh of relief. "Now, let us come to terms, by all means. I'll do the square thing, and you'll have all the pocket money you want." "But how much are you willing to give me?" queried Dave, his curiosity aroused to its highest pitch. "I'll give you"--the bully paused, to add impressiveness to his words--"I'll give you fifty dollars." "Fifty dollars!" ejaculated Dave. He was bewildered by the answer. He had expected Plum to name a dollar or two at the most. "Ain't that enough?" "Do you think it is enough?" asked the country boy. He scarcely knew what to say. He was trying to study the bully's face. "Well--er--if you'll give me your solemn word not to whisper a word--not a word, remember--I'll make it a--a hundred dollars." "You'll give me a hundred dollars? When?" "Before the end of the week. I haven't the money now, but, if you want it, I can give you ten dollars on account--just to bind the bargain," and the bully drew two five-dollar bills from his vest pocket. "But, remember, mum's the word--no matter what comes." He thrust the bills at Dave, who merely looked at them. Then the country boy drew himself up. "I don't want a cent of your money, Gus Plum," he said, in a low, but firm, voice. "You can't bribe me, no matter what you offer." The bully dropped back and his face fell. He put his money back into his pocket. Then he glared savagely at Dave. "Then you won't come to terms!" he fairly hissed between his teeth. "No." "You had better. If you dare to tell on me--breathe a word of what you saw that night--I'll--I'll make it so hot for you that you'll wish you had never been born! I am not going to let a country jay like you ruin me! Not much! You think twice before you make a move! I can hurt you in a way you least expect, and if I have to leave this school, you'll have to go, too!" And shaking his fist at Dave, Gus Plum strode off, leaving Dave more mystified than ever before. CHAPTER VIII SHADOW HAMILTON'S CONFESSION "I simply can't understand it, Phil. Gus Plum was frightened very much, or he would never have offered me a hundred dollars to keep quiet." Dave and his chum were strolling along the edge of the campus, an hour after the conversation recorded in the last chapter. The boy from the poorhouse had told Phil all that had occurred. "It is certainly the most mysterious thing I ever heard of, outside of this mystery about Billy Dill," answered Phil. "Plum has been up to something wrong, but just what, remains to be found out." "And what about Shadow Hamilton?" "I can't say anything about Shadow. I never thought he would do anything that wasn't right." "Nor I. What would you advise?" "Keep quiet and await developments. Something is bound to come to the surface, sooner or later." "Hello, you fellows, where are you bound?" came in a cry, and looking up they saw a well-known form approaching. "Ben!" cried Dave, rushing up to the newcomer and shaking hands warmly. "When did you come in? And how are all the folks at Crumville? Did you happen to see Professor Potts and the Wadsworths?" "One question at a time, please," answered Ben Basswood, as he shook hands with Phil. "Yes, I saw them all, and everybody wants to be remembered to you. Jessie sends her very sweetest regards----" "Oh, come now, no fooling," interrupted Dave, blushing furiously. "Tell us the plain truth." "Well, she sent her best regard, anyway. And all the others did the same. The professor is getting along finely. You'd hardly know him now, he looks so hale and hearty. It did him a world of good to go to live with the Wadsworths." "You must have had a pretty nice vacation," observed Phil. "Yes, although it was rather short. But, say, have you fellows heard about Plum's father?" went on Ben Basswood, earnestly. "We've heard that he lost some money." "Yes, and he has tied himself up in some sort of underhanded get-rich-quick concern, and I understand some folks are going to sue him for all he is worth. That will be rather rough on Gus--if his father loses all his money." "True enough," said Dave. "But tell us all the news," he continued, and then Ben related the particulars of affairs at Crumville, and of a legal fight between his father and Mr. Aaron Poole, in which Mr. Basswood had won. "That will make Nat more sour on you than ever," observed Phil. "Maybe; but I can't help it. If he leaves me alone I'll leave him alone." The following day passed quietly at Oak Hall. Gus Plum and Nat Poole kept by themselves. Shadow Hamilton appeared to brighten a little, but Dave observed that the youth was by no means himself. He did not care to play baseball or "do a turn" at the gym., and kept for the most part by himself. Saturday passed, and on Sunday a large number of the students marched off to three of the town churches. Dave, Roger, and Phil attended the same church and Ben went with them, and all listened to a strong sermon on Christian brotherhood, which was destined to do each of them good. "It makes a fellow feel as if he's got to help somebody else," said Roger. "Well, it is our duty to help others," answered Dave. "The fellow who isn't willing to do that is selfish." "You've certainly helped Macklin, Dave," said Ben. "I never saw such a change in a fellow. I'll wager he is more than happy to be out of Gus Plum's influence." "I'd help Plum, too, if he'd let me," said Dave, and then gave a long sigh. Two days later there was a sensation at the school. Doctor Clay came into the main classroom in the middle of the forenoon, looking much worried. "Young gentlemen, I wish to talk to you for a few minutes," he said. "As some of you may know, I am the proud possessor of a stamp collection which I value at not less than three thousand dollars. The stamps are arranged in three books, and I have spent eight years in collecting them. These books of stamps are missing, and I wish to know if anybody here knows anything about them. If they were taken away in a spirit of fun, let me say that such a joke is a poor one, and I trust the books will be speedily returned, and without damage to a single stamp." All of the boys listened with interest, for many of them had inspected the collection, and they knew that stamp-gathering was one of the kind doctor's hobbies. "Doctor, I am sorry to hear of this," said one boy, named Bert Dalgart, a youth who had a small collection of his own. "I looked at the collection about ten days ago, as you know. I haven't seen it since." "Nor have I seen it," said Roger, who also collected stamps. "Is there any boy here who knows anything at all about my collection?" demanded the doctor, sharply. "If so, let him stand up." There was a pause, but nobody arose. The master of Oak Hall drew a long breath. "If this is a joke, I want the collection returned by to-morrow morning," he went on. "If this is not done, and I learn who is guilty, I shall expel that student from this school." He then passed on to the next classroom, and so on through the whole academy. But nothing was learned concerning the missing stamp collection, and the end of the inquiry left the worthy doctor much perplexed and worried. "That is too bad," was Dave's comment, after school was dismissed. "That was a nice collection. I'd hate to have it mussed up, if it was mine." "The fellow who played that joke went too far," said the senator's son. "He ought to put the collection back at once." The matter was talked over by all the students for several days. In the meantime Doctor Clay went on a vigorous hunt for the stamp collection, but without success. "Do you think it possible that somebody stole that collection?" questioned Dave of Phil one afternoon, as he and his chum strolled in the direction of Farmer Cadmore's place, to see if they could learn anything about the ram. "Oh, it's possible; but who would be so mean?" "Maybe some outsider got the stamps." "I don't think so. An outside thief would have taken some silverware, or something like that. No, I think those stamps were taken by somebody in the school." "Then maybe the chap is afraid to return them--for fear of being found out." So the talk ran on until the edge of the Cadmore farm was gained. Looking into a field, they saw the ram grazing peacefully on the fresh, green grass. "He's as right as a button!" cried Phil. "I guess he wasn't hurt at all, and after jumping from the window he came straight home," and in this surmise the youth was correct. As the boys walked back to the school they separated, Phil going to the gymnasium to practice on the bars and Dave to stroll along the river. The boy from Crumville wanted to be by himself, to think over the past and try to reason out what the sailor had told him. Many a time had Dave tried to reason this out, but always failed, yet he could not bear to think of giving up. "Some time or another I've got to find out who I am and where I came from," he murmured. "I am not going to remain a nobody all my life!" He came to a halt in a particularly picturesque spot, and was about to sit down, when he heard a noise close at hand. Looking through the bushes, he saw Shadow Hamilton on his knees and with his clasped hands raised to heaven. The boy was praying, and remained on his knees for several minutes. When he arose, he turned around and discovered Dave, who had just started to leave the spot. "Dave Porter!" came in a low cry, and Hamilton's face grew red. "Hello, Shadow! Taking a walk along the river? If you are, I'll go along." "I--I was walking," stammered the other boy. His eyes searched Dave's face. "You--were you watching me?" he asked, lamely. "Not exactly." "But you saw me--er----" "I saw you, Shadow, I couldn't help it. It was nothing for you to be ashamed of, though." "I--I--oh, I can't tell you!" and Hamilton's face took on a look of keen misery. "Shadow, you are in some deep trouble, I know it," came bluntly from Dave. "Don't you want to tell me about it? I'll do what I can for you. We've been chums ever since I came here and I hate to see you so downcast." "It wouldn't do any good--you couldn't help me." "Are you sure of that? Sometimes an outsider looks at a thing in a different light than that person himself. Of course, I don't want to pry into your secrets, if you don't want me to." Shadow Hamilton bit his lip and hesitated. "If I tell you something, will you promise to keep it to yourself?" "If it is best, yes." "I don't know if it is best or not, but I don't want you to say anything." "Well, what is it?" "You know all about the doctor losing that collection of stamps?" "Certainly." "And you know about the loss of some of the class stick-pins about three weeks ago?" "Yes, I know Mr. Dale lost just a dozen of them." "The stick-pins are worth two dollars each." "Yes." "And that stamp collection was worth over three thousand dollars." "I know that, too." "Well, I stole the stick-pins, and I stole the stamp collection, too!" CHAPTER IX ABOUT ATHLETIC CONTESTS "You stole those things, you!" gasped Dave. He could scarcely utter the words. He shrank back a step or two, and his face was filled with horror. "Yes, I did it," came from Shadow Hamilton. "But--but--oh, Shadow, you must be fooling! Surely, you didn't really go to work and--and----" Try his best, Dave could not finish. "I stole the things; or, rather, I think I had better say I took them, although it amounts to the same thing. But I don't think I am quite as bad as you suppose." "But, if you took them, why didn't you return them? You have had plenty of time." "I would return them, only I don't know where the things are." "You don't know? What do you mean?" "I'll have to tell you my whole story, Dave. Will you listen until I have finished?" "Certainly." "Well, to start on, I am a great dreamer and, what is more, I occasionally walk in my sleep." "Yes, you told me that before." "One morning I got up, and I found my clothes all covered with dirt and cobwebs and my shoes very muddy. I couldn't explain this, and I thought some of the fellows had been putting up a job on me. But I didn't want to play the calf, so I said nothing. "Some days after that I found my clothing in the same condition, and I likewise found that my hands were blistered, as if from some hard work. I couldn't understand it, but suddenly it flashed on me that I must have been sleep-walking. I was ashamed of myself, so I told nobody." "Well, but this robbery----" began Dave. "I am coming to that. When Doctor Clay spoke about his stamp collection, I remembered that I had dreamed of that collection one night. It seemed to me that I must run away with the collection and put it in a safe place. Then I remembered that I had dreamed of the stick-pins at another time, and had dreamed of going to the boathouse to put them in my locker there. That made me curious, and I went down to the locker, and there I found--what do you think? One of the stick-pins stuck in the wood." "A new one?" "Exactly. That made me hunt around thoroughly, and after a while I discovered this, under my rowing sweater." As Shadow finished, he drew from his pocket a doubled-up sheet of paper. Dave unfolded it, and saw it was a large sheet of rare American postage stamps. "Did you find any more than this?" The other youth shook his head. "Did you hunt all around the boathouse?" "Yes, I hunted high and low, in the building and out. I have spent all my spare time hunting; that is why I have had such poor lessons lately." "Don't you remember going out to row during the night, Shadow?" At this question, Shadow Hamilton started. "What do you know about that?" he demanded. "Not much--only I know you were out." "Do you know where I went to?" "I do not." "Well, neither do I. I dreamed about rowing, but I can't, for the life of me, remember where I went. I must have gone a good way, for I blistered my hands with the oars." "And yet you can't remember?" "Oh, I know it sounds like a fairy tale, and I know nobody will believe it, yet it is true, Dave, I'll give you my word on it." "I believe you, Shadow. Your being out is what has made you so tired lately. Now you have told me a secret, I am going to tell you one. Ike Rasmer saw you out on the river at night, passing Robbin's Point. And there is something stranger to tell." "What is that?" "Are you dead certain you were asleep on the river?" "I must have been. I remember nothing more than my dream." "Do you know that you were followed?" "By Rasmer?" "No, by Gus Plum." "Plum!" gasped Shadow Hamilton, and his face turned pale. "Are--are you certain of this?" "That is what Ike Rasmer told me," and then Dave related all that the old boatman had said. "That makes the mystery deeper," muttered Shadow. "It puts me in mind of a story I once--but I can't tell stories now!" He gave a sigh. "Oh, Dave, I am so wretched over this! I don't know what to do." "I know what I'd do." "What?" "Go and tell Doctor Clay everything." "I--I can't do it. He thought so much of that stamp collection--he'll surely send me home--and make my father pay for the collection, too." "I don't think he'll send you home. About pay, that's another question. In one sense, you didn't really steal the stamps. A fellow isn't responsible for what he does in his sleep. I'd certainly go to him. If you wish, I'll go with you." The two talked the matter over for half an hour, and, on Dave's continual urging, Shadow Hamilton at last consented to go to Doctor Clay and make a clean breast of the matter. They found the master of Oak Hall in his private office, writing a letter. He greeted them pleasantly and told them to sit down until he had finished. Then he turned around to them inquiringly. It was no easy matter for Shadow Hamilton to break the ice, and Dave had to help him do it. But, once the plunge was taken, the youth given to sleep-walking told him his story in all of its details, and turned over to the doctor the stick-pin and the sheet of stamps he had found. During the recital, Doctor Clay's eyes scarcely once left the face of the boy who was making the confession. As he proceeded, Shadow Hamilton grew paler and paler, and his voice grew husky until he could scarcely speak. "I know I am to blame, sir," he said, at last. "But I--I--oh, Doctor Clay, please forgive me!" he burst out. "My boy, there is nothing to forgive," was the kindly answer, that took even Dave by surprise. "It would seem that you have been as much of a victim as I have been. I cannot blame you for doing these things in your sleep. I take it for granted that you have told me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" "I have, sir, I have!" "Then there is nothing to do but to investigate this as far as we can. Of course, I realize that it would cut you to have everybody in the school know of your sleep-walking habit." "Yes, sir. But I shouldn't care, if only you could get back the stamps and the pins." "Is Rasmer sure he saw Plum following Hamilton on the river?" asked the doctor, turning to Dave. "That is what he told Morr, Lawrence, and myself the day we stopped at his boathouse for a new oarlock." "Then I must see him and have a talk with him," said the master of Oak Hall; and after a few words more the boys were dismissed. On the following morning, Doctor Clay drove down to Ike Rasmer's place. The boatman was pleasant enough, but he remembered that Gus Plum was one of his customers, and when questioned closely, said he could not testify absolutely to the fact that it had been Plum who had followed Hamilton on the river. "You see, my eyesight ain't of the best, doctor," said Rasmer, lamely. "I saw Hamilton full in the face, but the other feller had his face turned away from me. I ain't gittin' nobody into trouble, 'less I am sure of what I am doin'--that's nateral, ain't it?" "Very," answered Doctor Clay, coldly, and returned to the academy in deep thought. He realized that Ike Rasmer was now on his guard, and would tell no more than was absolutely required of him. The next movement of the worthy doctor was to call Gus Plum into his office. The bully was anxious, but had evidently nerved himself for the ordeal. "No, sir, I have not been out on the river at night this season," said he, blandly, in reply to the doctor's question. "I have not dared to go out so late, for I take cold too easily." And he coughed slightly. This was all Doctor Clay could get from Plum, and he dismissed the bully without mentioning Hamilton or the missing pins and stamps. Then the doctor called in Andrew Dale, and the two consulted together for the best part of an hour; but what the outcome of that discussion was the boys were not told. A day later, however, Shadow Hamilton was told to change his sleeping quarters to a small room next to that occupied by Andrew Dale. "Hello! Shadow is going to get high-toned and have a sleeping-room all to himself!" cried Roger, and would have asked some questions, only Dave cut him short. "There is a good reason, Roger," whispered the country boy. "But don't ask me to explain now. If you question Shadow, you'll only hurt his feelings." This "tip" spread, and none of the boys after that said a word before Hamilton about the change. But later all came to Dave and asked what it meant. "I wish I could tell you, but I can't, fellows. Some day, perhaps, you'll know; until then, you'll have to forget it." And that is all Dave would say. The boys were too busy to give the mystery much attention. A series of athletic contests had been arranged, and all of the students who were to take part had gone into training in the gymnasium, and on the cinder-track which was laid out in the field beyond the last-named building. The contests were to come off on the following Saturday, and, to make matters more interesting, Doctor Clay had put up several prizes of books and silver medals, to be presented to the winners. Dave had entered for a hurdle race, and Roger, Phil, and Ben were in various other contests. Dave felt that he would stand a good chance at the hurdles, for on Caspar Potts' farm he had frequently practiced at leaping over the rail fences while on the run. He did not know surely who would be pitted against him until Ben Basswood brought him the news. "Gus Plum, Fanning, and Saultz are in the hurdle race," said Ben. "Plum says he feels certain he will win." "Plum," repeated the country boy. "I knew the others were in it, but I didn't think Gus would take part." "He went in right after he heard that you had entered. He says he is going to beat you out of your boots. He wanted to bet with me, but I told him I didn't bet." "Is Nat Poole in the race?" "No, he is in the quarter-mile dash, against me and six others. He thinks he will win, too." "I don't think he will, Ben. You can outrun him." "Anyway, I am going to try," answered Ben Basswood. CHAPTER X HOW A RACE WAS WON It was a bright, clear day in early summer when the athletic contests of Oak Hall came off. All the academy boys assembled for the affair, and with them were a number of folks from the town, and also some students from the Rockville Military Academy, a rival institution of learning, as my old readers already know. The contests began with pole vaulting and putting the shot, and, much to the surprise of all, Chip Macklin won out over half a dozen boys slightly larger than himself. Luke Watson also won one of the contests, and the banjo player and Macklin were roundly applauded by their friends. "Dave Porter coached Macklin," said one small boy to another. "I saw him doing it. I can tell you, Chip is picking up." "Yes," was the answer. "And he doesn't seem to be afraid of that bully of a Plum any more, either." After the shot-putting and vaulting came the quarter-mile dash, for which Ben had entered. "Go in and win, Ben!" cried Dave, to his old chum. "I know you can do it if you'll only try." "Nat Poole will win that race!" came roughly from Gus Plum, who stood near. "Hi, catch the ball, Gus!" sang out Nat Poole, from across the field, and threw a ball in Ben's direction. Plum leaped for the sphere, bumped up against Ben, and both went down, with the bully on top. "Plum, you did that on purpose!" cried Roger, who was close by. "Shame on you!" "Shut up! I didn't do it on purpose!" howled the bully, arising. "Say that again and I'll knock you down!" "You certainly did do it on purpose," said Phil, stepping up quickly. "You ought to be reported for it." "Aw, dry up!" muttered Plum, and walked away. When Ben arose he could scarcely get his breath. He was not hurt, but the wind had been knocked completely out of him. "I--I don't know if I can ru-run or not!" he gasped. "He came--came down on me like a ton of bricks!" "Wait, I'll speak to Mr. Dale about this," said Dave, and ran off. As a result of the interview the contest was delayed ten minutes--another taking its place--much to the disgust of Gus Plum and Nat Poole, both of whom had reckoned on putting Ben out of the contest. At the start of the quarter-mile dash Nat Poole and two others forged ahead, but Ben was on his mettle, and, setting his teeth, soon began to close up the gap. "Go it, Ben!" yelled Dave. "You can win, I know it!" "Sail right past 'em!" came from the senator's son. "Hump yourself, old man!" "Make 'em take the dust!" added Phil. Ben hardly heard the words, for he was now running with all his strength. He passed first one boy and then another, and then came abreast of Nat Poole. So they moved on to within a dozen paces of the finish. Then Ben made a leap ahead, and so did one of the other contestants, and Ben came in the winner, with the other boy second, and Nat Poole third. A roar went right across the field. "Ben Basswood wins!" "Jake Tatmon is second!" "Nat Poole came in only third, and he boasted he was going to win, sure!" As soon as the race was over, Nat Poole sneaked out of sight, behind some friends. He was bitterly disappointed, and could scarcely keep from running away altogether. "You didn't fix him at all," he whispered to Gus Plum, when he got the chance. "He was in prime condition." "I did the best I could--you saw him go down, with me on top of him," retorted the bully. "Now, don't you forget what you promised," he added, sharply. "Oh, I'll keep my word, don't fear," growled Nat Poole. "I hate Dave Porter too much to let him win!" There were some standing and running jumps, in which Roger and Phil won second and third places, and then came the hurdle race, in which Dave was to participate. In the meantime Nat Poole had shed his track outfit and donned his regular clothes and a rather heavy pair of walking shoes. "Please let me pass," said he to the crowd in which Dave was standing, and, without warning, brought one of his heavy shoes down smartly on Dave's light, canvas foot-covering. "Ouch!" cried the country boy, and gave Poole a quick shove. "What do you mean by stepping on my foot in that fashion, Nat Poole?" "Oh, excuse me," said the Crumville aristocrat, coolly. "Didn't know it was your foot, Porter, or I shouldn't have stepped on it for anything." "You've just about lamed me!" gasped Dave. The pain was still intense. "Dave, I believe this is a put-up job!" said Ben, quickly. "Plum agreed to lame me so that Poole could win, and now Poole is trying the same trick on you for Plum's benefit." "No such thing!" roared Nat Poole, but his face grew fiery red. "It was a pure accident. I don't have to lame Porter. Plum will win, anyhow." "It certainly looks suspicious," said Shadow Hamilton. "He hadn't any business to force his way through our crowd." "Oh, don't you put in your oar, you old sleep-walker!" growled Nat Poole, and then hurried off and out of sight behind the gymnasium. At the parting shot Shadow became pale, but nobody seemed to notice the remark. "Can you go ahead?" asked Phil, of Dave. "I think so," was the answer. "But that was a mean thing to do. He came near crushing my little toe." Fortunately, several of the hurdles had not been properly placed, and it took some little time to arrange them properly. During that interval Roger dressed the injured foot for his chum, which made it feel much better. "Are you all ready?" was the question put to the contestants, as they lined up. Then came a pause, followed by the crack of a revolver, and they were off. The encounter with Nat Poole had nerved Dave as he had seldom been nerved before. Ben had won, and he made up his mind to do the same, regardless of the fact that Gus Plum and one of the other boys in the race were bigger than himself. He took the first and second hurdles with ease, and then found himself in a bunch, with Plum on one side and a lad named Cashod on the other. "Whoop her up, Cashod!" he yelled out. "Come on, and show the others what we can do!" "Right you are, Porter!" was the answering cry. "Not much!" puffed out Gus Plum. "I'm the winner here!" "Rats!" answered Dave. "You'll come in fifth, Plum. You're winded already!" And then, with a mighty effort, he leaped to the front, with Cashod on his heels. "Poole didn't do your dirty work well enough," he flung back over his shoulder as he took his fourth hurdle. The taunts angered Gus Plum, and this made him lose ground, until, almost before he knew it, the third pupil in the race dashed past him. Then he found himself neck-and-neck with the fifth contestant. "Here they come!" "Dave Porter is ahead, with Cashod second!" "Collins has taken third place!" "Plum and Higgins are tied for fourth place!" "Not much! Higgins is ahead!" "And there goes Sanderson ahead of Plum, too! Phew! Wonder if that is what Plum calls winning? He had better study his dictionary!" [Illustration: Dave cleared the last hurdle and came in a winner.--_Page 87._] With a mighty leap Dave cleared the last hurdle, and came in a winner. Then the others finished in the order named, excepting that Gus Plum was so disgusted that he refused to take the last hurdle, for which some of the boys hissed him, considering it unsportsmanlike, which it was. "My shoe got loose," said the bully, lamely. "If it hadn't been for that, I should have won." But nobody believed him. "Dave, the way you went ahead was simply great," cried Phil. "It was as fine a hurdle race as I ever saw." "Yes, and he helped me, too," said Cashod. "I was thinking Plum would go ahead, until Porter laughed at him. It was all right," and Cashod bobbed his head to show how satisfied he was. If Nat Poole had been disgusted Gus Plum was more so, and he lost no time in disappearing from public gaze. The two cronies met back of the gymnasium. "You hurt Porter about as much as I hurt Basswood," Plum grumbled. "If you can't do better than that next time, you had better give up trying." "Oh, 'the pot needn't call the kettle black,'" retorted Poole. "You made just as much of a mess of it as I did. We'll be the laughing stock of the Porter crowd now." "If they laugh at me, I'll punch somebody's nose. As it is, I've got an account to settle with Porter, and I am going to settle it pretty quick, too." "What do you mean?" "He jeered me while we were in the race. He has got to take it back, or there is going to be trouble," muttered the bully, clenching his fists. In his usual bragging way Gus Plum let several students know that he "had it in" for Dave, and this reached the country boy's ears the next day directly after school. "I am not afraid of him," said Dave, coolly. "If he wants to find me, he knows where to look for me." Shortly after this Dave and some of his chums took a walk down to the boathouse dock. There they ran into Plum, Poole, and several of their admirers. "Here is Porter now!" said one boy, in a low voice. "Now is your chance, Gus." "Yes, let us see you do what you said," came from another. Plum had not expected an encounter so soon, but there seemed to be no way of backing out, so he advanced quickly upon Dave, and clenched his fists. "You can fight, or apologize," he said, loudly. "Apologize, to _you_?" queried Dave, coolly. "Yes, to me, and at once," blustered the bully. "I am not apologizing to you, Plum." "Then you'll fight." "If you hit me, I shall defend myself." "Hit you? If I sail into you, you'll think a cyclone struck you. If you know where you are wise, you'll apologize." "On the contrary, Plum, I want to let you and all here know what I think of you. You are a bully, a braggart--and a coward!" Dave's eyes were flashing dangerously, and as he gazed steadily at Plum, the latter backed away a step. "You--you dare to talk to me like that?" "Why not? Nobody ought to be afraid to tell the truth." "Oh, don't stand gassing!" burst out Nat Poole. "Give it to him, Gus--give it to him good and hard." "I will!" cried the bully, and making a quick leap, he delivered a blow straight for Dave's face. Had the blow landed as intended, the country boy would undoubtedly have sustained a black eye. But Dave ducked slightly, and the bully's fist shot past his ear. Then Dave drew off and hit Plum a stinging blow on the chin. "A fight! A fight!" was the rallying cry from all sides, and in a twinkling a crowd assembled to see the impromptu contest. CHAPTER XI A FIGHT AND ITS RESULT "Dave, if you fight, and Doctor Clay hears of it, you'll get into trouble," whispered Roger. "You know what his rules are." "I am not going to fight, but I'll defend myself," was the calm answer. "Maybe you're afraid to fight," sneered Nat Poole, who stood close by. Before the country youth could answer, Gus Plum sprang forward and aimed another blow at Dave's face. Dave ducked, but was not quite quick enough, and the fist of his enemy landed on his ear. This aroused the boy from Crumville as never before. The look on the bully's face was such as to nerve him to do his best, and, casting prudence to the winds, he "sailed in" with a vigor that astonished all who beheld it. One fist landed on Plum's nose and the other on the bully's chin, and down he went in a heap against the boathouse. "Have you had enough?" demanded Dave, his eyes fairly flashing. "No!" roared the bully, and scrambling up, he rushed at Dave, and the pair clenched. Around and around the little dock they wrestled, first one getting a slight advantage and then the other. "Break away!" cried some of the students. "Break away!" "I'll break, if he'll break!" panted Dave. Plum said nothing, for he was doing his best to get the country boy's head in chancery, as it is termed; that is, under his arm, where he might pummel it to his satisfaction. But Dave was on his guard, and was not to be easily caught. He knew a trick or two, and, watching his opportunity, led Plum to believe that he was getting the better of the contest. Then, with remarkable swiftness, he made a half-turn, ducked and came up, and sent the bully flying clean and clear over his shoulder. When this happened both were close to the edge of the dock, and, with a cry and a splash, Gus Plum went over into the river. "Gracious! did you see that fling!" "Threw him right over his head into the river!" "The fellow who tackles Dave Porter has his hands full every time!" So the comments ran on. In the meantime Dave stood quietly on the edge of the dock, watching for the bully, and trying to regain his breath. Plum had disappeared close to the edge of the dock, and all the bystanders expected him to reappear almost immediately. But, to their surprise, he did not show himself. "Where is he? Why doesn't he come up?" "He must be playing a trick on Porter. Maybe he is under the dock." "No, he can't get under the dock. It is all boarded up." "He must have struck his head on something, or got a cramp, being so heated up." Dave continued to wait, and as his enemy did not come to light, a cold chill ran over him. What if Plum was really hurt, or in trouble under water? He knew that the bully was not the best of swimmers. "There he is!" came in a shout from one of the boys, and he pointed out into the stream, to where Gus Plum's body was floating along, face downward. Dave gave one look and his heart seemed to leap into his throat. By the side of the dock was a rowboat, with the oars across the seats. He made a bound for it. "Come," he said, motioning to Roger, and the senator's son followed him into the craft. They shoved off with vigor, and Dave took up the oars. Then another boat put off, containing Poole and two other students. A few strokes sufficed to bring the first rowboat up alongside of the form of the bully. Plum had turned partly over and was on the point of sinking again, when Roger reached out and caught him by the foot. Then Dave swung the rowboat around, and after a little trouble the two got the soaked one aboard. Gus Plum was partly unconscious, and a bruise on his left temple showed where his head had struck some portion of the dock in falling. As they placed him across the seats of the rowboat, he gasped, spluttered, and attempted to sit up. "Better keep still," said Dave, kindly. "We don't want the boat to go over." "Where am I? Oh, I know now! You knocked me over." "Don't talk, Plum; wait till we get back to shore," warned Roger. A few strokes took the boat back to the dock, and Dave and Roger assisted the dripping youth to land. Gus Plum was so weak he had to sit down on a bench to recover. "You played me a mean trick," he spluttered, at last. "A mean trick!" "That's what he did," put in Nat Poole, who had also returned to the dock. "I guess he was afraid to fight fair." "I suppose you wanted to drown me," went on the bully of Oak Hall. "I didn't want to drown you, Plum--I didn't even want to push you overboard. I didn't think we were so close to the dock's edge." "Humph! It's easy enough to talk!" Gus Plum gazed ruefully at his somewhat loud summer suit. "Look at my clothes. They are just about ruined!" "Nonsense," came from Roger. "They need drying, cleaning, and pressing, that's all. You can get the job done down in Oakdale for a dollar and a half." "And who is going to pay the bill?" "Well, if you are too poor to do it, I'll do so," answered Roger. This reply made the bully grow very red, and he shook his fist at the senator's son. "None of your insinuations!" he roared. "I am not poor, and I want you to know it. My father may have lost some money, but he can still buy and sell your father. And as for such a poorhouse nobody as your intimate friend there, Porter----" "For shame, Plum!" cried several. "Oh, go ahead and toady to him, if you want to. I shan't stop you. But I'd rather pick my company." "And so would I," added Nat Poole. "I once heard of a poorhouse boy who was the son of a thief. I'd not want to train with a fellow of that sort." Dave listened to the words, and they seemed to burn into his very heart. He came forward with a face as white as death itself. "Nat Poole, do you mean to insinuate that I am the son of a thief?" he demanded. "Oh, a fellow don't know what to think," replied the Crumville aristocrat, with a sneer. "Then take that for your opinion." It was a telling blow, delivered with a passion that Dave could not control. It took Nat Poole squarely in the mouth, and the aristocrat went down with a thud, flat on his back. His lip was cut and two of his teeth were loosened, while the country's boy's fist showed a skinned knuckle. "Whoop! did you see that!" "My! what a sledge-hammer blow!" "Poole is knocked out clean!" Such were some of the comments, in the midst of which Nat Poole sat up, dazed and bewildered. Then he gasped, and ejected some blood from his mouth. "You--you----" he began. "Stay where you are, Nat Poole," said Dave, in a voice that was as cold as ice. "Don't you dare to budge!" "Wha-what?" "Don't you dare to budge until you have begged my pardon." "Me? Beg your pardon! I'd like to see myself!" "Well, that is just what you are going to do! If you don't, do you know what I'll do? I'll throw you into the river and keep you there until you do as I say." "Here, you let him alone!" blustered Plum, starting to rise. "Keep out of this, Plum, or, as sure as I'm standing here, I'll throw you in again, too!" said Dave. "Dave----" whispered Roger. He could see that his friend was almost beside himself with passion. "No, Roger, don't try to interfere. This is my battle. They have been talking behind my back long enough. Poole has got to apologize, or take the consequences, and so has Plum. I'll make them do it, if I have to fight them both!" And the eyes of the country boy blazed with a fire that the senator's son had never before seen in them. "I don't deny that I came from the poorhouse, and I don't deny that I know nothing of my past," went on Dave, speaking to the crowd. "But I am trying to do the fair thing, every boy here knows it, and--and----" "We are with you, Dave!" came from the rear of the crowd, and Luke Watson pushed his way to the front, followed by Phil, Shadow, and Buster Beggs. "Dave Porter is one of the best fellows in this school," cried Phil. "And Plum and Poole are a couple of codfish," added Buster. "I--I--am a codfish, am I?" roared Plum. "You are, Gus Plum. You say things behind folks' backs and try to bully the little boys, and in reality you are no better than anybody else, if as good. You make me sick." "I'll--I'll hammer you good for that!" "All right, send me word when you are ready," retorted Buster. In the meantime Dave was still standing over Nat Poole. Suddenly he caught the aristocratic youth by the ear and gave that member a twist. "Ouch! Let go!" yelled Nat Poole. "Let go! Don't wring my ear off!" "Will you apologize?" demanded Dave, and gave the ear a jerk that brought tears to Poole's eyes. "I--I--oh, you'll have my ear off next! Oh, you wait--oh! oh! If I ever get--_ouch_!" "Say you are sorry you said what you did to me," went on Dave, "or into the river you go!" And despite Poole's efforts, he dragged the aristocrat toward the edge of the dock. "No! no! Oh, I say, Porter! Oh, my ear! I don't want to go into the river! I--I--I take it back--I guess I made a mistake. Oh, let me go!" "You apologize, then?" "Yes." "Then get out, and after this behave yourself," said Dave, and gave Nat Poole a fling that sent him up against the boathouse with a bang. In another instant he was by Gus Plum's side. "Now it's your turn, you overgrown bully," he continued. "Wha-what do you mean?" stammered Plum, who had looked on the scene just enacted with a sinking heart. "I mean you must apologize, just as Poole has done." "And if I won't?" "I'll thrash you till you do--no matter what the consequences are," and Dave hauled off his jacket and threw off his cap. "Would you hit a fellow when he is--er--half drowned?" whined the bully. "You're not half drowned--you're only scared, Plum. Now, then, will you apologize or not?" And Dave doubled up his fists. "I--I don't have to. I--I--_oh_!" The words on Plum's lips came to a sudden end, for at that instant the country boy caught him by the throat and banged his head up against the boathouse side. "Now apologize, and be quick about it," said Dave, determinedly. "Oh, my head! You have cracked my skull! I'll--I'll have the law on you!" "Very well, I'm willing. But you must apologize first!" And Plum's head came into contact with the boathouse side again, and he saw stars. "Oh! Let up--stop, Porter! Don't kill me! I--I--take it back! I--I apologize! I--I didn't mean anything! Let up, please do!" shrieked Gus Plum, and then Dave let go his hold and stepped back. "Now, Gus Plum, listen to me," said the country boy. "Let this end it between us. If you don't, let me tell you right now that you will get the worst of it. After this, keep your distance and don't open your mouth about me. I shan't say anything to Doctor Clay about this, but if you say anything, I'll tell him all, and I know, from what he has already said, that he will stand by me." "Maybe he doesn't know----" "He knows everything about my past, and he has asked me to stay here, regardless of what some mean fellows like you might say about it. But I am not going to take anything from you and Poole in the future; remember that!" added Dave, and then he picked up his cap and jacket, put them on, and, followed by Phil, Roger, and a number of his other friends, walked slowly away. CHAPTER XII SHADOW AS A SOMNAMBULIST The manner in which Dave had brought Gus Plum and Nat Poole to terms was the talk of Oak Hall for some time, and many of the pupils looked upon the country boy as a veritable leader and conqueror. "I wish I had been there," said Chip Macklin to Roger. "It must have been great to see Plum and Poole eat humble pie. What do you think they'll do about it?" "They won't do anything, just at present," answered the senator's son. "They are too scared." And in this surmise, Roger was correct. But, though the majority of the students sided with Dave, there was a small class, made up of those who were wealthy, who passed him by and snubbed him, not wishing to associate with anybody who had come from a poorhouse. They said nothing, but their manners were enough to hurt Dave greatly, and more than once the country boy felt like packing his trunk and bidding good-by to Oak Hall forever. But then he would think of his many friends and of what kind-hearted Doctor Clay had said, and grit his teeth and declare to himself that he would fight the battle to the end, no matter what the cost. If the story of the encounter came to the ears of the master of the school or the teachers, nothing was said about it, and, in the multitude of other events coming up, the incident was forgotten by the majority. But Dave did not forget, and neither did Plum and Poole. "Oh, how I detest that chap!" grumbled Poole to Plum, one night when they were alone. "Gus, we must get square." "That's right," returned the bully. "But not now. Wait till he is off his guard, then we can fix him, and do it for keeps, too!" On the following Saturday evening Chip Macklin called Dave to one side. The young student was evidently excited over something. "What is it, Chip?" asked Dave. "Hurry up, I can't wait long, for I want to join the fellows in the gym." "I want to tell you something about Gus Plum," was the answer. "I think I've discovered something, but I am not sure." "Well, out with it." "This afternoon I got permission to ride over to Rockville on my bicycle, to get some shirts at the furnishing store there. Well, when I came out of the store, I saw Gus Plum coming out of the post-office on the opposite side of the street. He had some letters in his hand, and he turned into the little public park near by, sat down on a bench, and began to read them." "Well, what is remarkable about that, outside of the fact that he is supposed to get all his letters in the Hall mail?" remarked Dave. "That's just it. I made up my mind something was wrong, or else he'd have his mail come here. I saw him tear three of the envelopes to pieces and scatter the bits in the grass. When he went away, I walked over to the spot and picked up such bits of paper as I could find. Of course, you may say I was a sneak for doing it, but just look at what I found." "I have no desire, Chip, to pry into Plum's private affairs." "Yes, but this is not his private affair--to my way of thinking. It concerns the whole school," returned Chip Macklin, eagerly. Dave glanced at the bits of paper, and at once became interested. One piece contained the words, "Stamp Dealer"; another, "Rare Sta-- w York," and another, "Stamps Bought and Sold by Isaac Dem-- --nett Street, Sa----" "These must have come from dealers in stamps," said Dave, slowly. "That is what I thought." "Did you ever know Gus Plum to be interested in stamps?" "No." "Were the letters addressed to him?" "I don't know. Strange as it may seem, I couldn't find any of the written-on portions of the envelopes." "Did Plum see you?" "Not until later--when I was on my way back to the Hall." "What did he say?" "Nothing. He acted as if he wanted to avoid me." After this the pair talked the matter over for several minutes, but could reach no satisfactory conclusion regarding the bits of paper. "Do as you think best, Chip," said Dave, at last. "If you want to go to Doctor Clay, I fancy he will be glad to hear what you have to say." "Well, if Plum has those lost stamps, don't you think he should be made to return them?" "By all means. But you've got to prove he has them first, and the doctor won't dare to say anything to Plum until he is sure of what he is doing. Otherwise, Plum's father could raise a big row, and he might even sue the doctor for defamation of character, or something like that." A little later found Chip Macklin in the doctor's office. The small boy was rather scared, but told a fairly straight story, and turned over the bits of paper to the master of the Hall. Doctor Clay was all attention. "I will look into this," he said. "In the meantime, Macklin, I wish you would keep it to yourself." "I have already told Dave Porter about it. I wanted his advice." "Then request Porter to remain quiet, also," and Chip said that he would do as asked, and later on did so. The end of the school term was now close at hand, and Dave turned to his studies with renewed vigor, resolved to come out as near to the head of the class as possible. He received several letters from Professor Potts, Mr. Wadsworth, and a delicately scented note from Jessie, and answered them all without delay. The letter from Jessie he prized highly, and read it half a dozen times before he stowed it carefully away among his few valued possessions. On Wednesday evening Dave partook rather freely of some hash that was served up. On the sly, Sam Day salted his portion, and, as a consequence, the country boy went to bed feeling remarkably thirsty. He drank one glass of water, and an hour later got up to drink another, only to find the water pitcher empty. "It's no use, I've got to have a drink," he told himself. "And if I catch the fellow who salted my hash----" He slipped into part of his clothing, and, taking the water pitcher, made his way through the hallway to the nearest of the bathrooms. Here he obtained the coldest drink possible, and then, filling the pitcher, started to return to dormitory No. 12. As he neared the dormitory, he saw somebody pass along the other end of the hallway. It was a boy, fully dressed, and with a cap set back on his head. "Shadow Hamilton!" he murmured, as the boy passed close to a dimly burning hall light. "Now, what is he up to?" He put down his pitcher and stole forward, until he was directly behind Shadow. Then, of a sudden, he beheld the boy swing around and put out his hands, feeling for the rail of a rear stairs. Shadow Hamilton was fast asleep. "He is doing some more of his sleep-walking!" thought Dave. "Now, what had I best do?" There was no time to think long, for the sleep-walker was already descending the back stairs slowly and noiselessly. Dave hurried into the dormitory, set down the pitcher, and aroused Roger, who was nearest to him. "Come, quick!" he whispered. "Slip on your clothes, and don't make any noise." "Oh, I'm too sleepy for fun!" murmured Roger. "This isn't fun, it's important. Come, I say!" Thus aroused, the senator's son rolled from his couch and hurried into his clothing. In a few minutes both boys had their shoes and caps on, and along the hallway they sped, and down the back stairs. The door below was unlocked, but closed. Soon they were out in the rear yard of the Hall, and there they beheld Shadow Hamilton walking slowly in the direction of the boathouse. "Who is it?" whispered Roger. "It is Shadow. He is walking in his sleep. I want to find out where he is going and what he'll do." "Humph! This certainly is interesting," answered the senator's son. "Whatever you do, Roger, don't arouse him, or there may be an accident," cautioned Dave. "Let him go his own way." "But he may hurt himself, anyway." "No, he won't. A sleep-walker can walk a slack wire, if he tries it, and never tumble. Haven't you heard of them walking on the ridge pole of a house? I have." "I've read about such things. And I know they say you mustn't arouse them. He is going into the boathouse!" The chums ran forward and reached the doorway of the boathouse just as Shadow Hamilton was coming out. The somnambulist had a pair of oars, and he stepped to the edge of the dock and untied one of the boats and leaped in. "I must find them!" they heard the youth mutter to himself. "I must find them and bring them back!" "Did you hear that?" asked Roger. "What is he talking about?" "That remains to be found out. Come, let us follow him," returned Dave. They procured two pairs of oars, and were soon in another boat and pulling behind Shadow Hamilton. The boy who was asleep seemed to possess supernatural strength, and they had no easy time of it keeping up with him. His course was up the Leming River, past Robbin's Point, and then into a side stream that was rather narrow, but almost straight for a distance of two miles. "Do you know where this stream leads to?" questioned Roger. "I do not." "Almost to the old castle that we visited last winter on our skates, the day we caught that robber and saved Billy Dill. The river makes half a dozen twists and turns before the castle is reached, but this is a direct route and much shorter." "Can it be possible that Shadow is going to the old castle?" queried the country boy. "I'm sure I don't know. We'll learn pretty soon." As my old readers know, the place referred to was a dilapidated structure of brick and stone which had been erected about the time of the Revolutionary War. It set back in a wilderness of trees, and was given over largely to the owls and to tramps. It belonged to an unsettled estate that had gone into litigation, and there was no telling if it would ever be rebuilt and occupied in a regular way. It was dark under the trees, but by pulling close to the boat ahead, Dave and Roger managed to keep Shadow Hamilton in sight. As soon as the somnambulist came near to the castle he ran his boat up the bank, leaped ashore, and stalked toward the building. "He has disappeared!" cried Roger, softly. "I see him," answered Dave. "Come!" and he led the way into the old structure and to the very rooms where the encounter with the robber and with Billy Dill had occurred. Scarcely daring to breathe, they watched Shadow move around in an uncertain way, touching this object and that, and opening and shutting several closet doors, and even poking into the chimney-place. "Gone! gone! gone!" they heard him mutter. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" And he gave a groan. Five minutes passed and the sleep-walker left the castle and hurried to his boat. His course was now down the stream toward the Hall, and Dave and Roger followed, as before. At the dock the boats were tied up, the oars put away, and Shadow Hamilton went back to the room from which he had come. Peering in, Dave and Roger saw him undress and go to bed, just as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. CHAPTER XIII A PHOTOGRAPH OF IMPORTANCE "I should not believe it, had I not seen it with my own eyes." It was in this fashion that Roger expressed himself on the following day, when discussing the affair of the night previous with Dave. Shadow was around, as usual. He looked sleepy, but otherwise acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "It certainly is remarkable," was Dave's comment. "The question is, what made him go to the castle? I think I know, but I cannot speak about it. But I'll tell you what I should like to do, Roger: go up to the castle while it is daylight and take a thorough look around." Roger was willing to do this, and the upshot of the talk was that Dave and the senator's son paid the old brick-and-stone structure a visit on the following Saturday half-holiday, taking Phil and Ben with them. They went up in a boat by the short route, arriving there about half-past three o'clock. There was not a soul about the deserted mansion, and the few birds flew away at their approach. It was a clear, sunny day, and they lost no time in throwing every door and window wide open, so that they might have the full benefit of the light and fresh air. "Here is the room in which he moved around the most," remarked Roger, gazing around earnestly. "But I can't say that I see anything unusual, do you?" They were all searching around, and after a few minutes had passed Ben uttered a low cry and held up a small object, almost covered with dust and dirt. "A class pin!" cried Dave. "We must see if we can find any more of them." It was not long before Phil came upon two pins sticking on a board of a closet. Then Roger ran into the next room and, after a short hunt, uncovered a flat pasteboard box with several more of the class pins, each a bit tarnished by the dampness, but otherwise uninjured. "He must have come for the pins," said Ben. "That solves the mystery of how they disappeared from Mr. Dale's possession." "Here is a postage stamp!" ejaculated Phil, and held it up. "It's an old German issue," he added. "And here are half a dozen others, all evidently torn from a sheet. Boys, Shadow must have taken the doctor's collection!" Dave said nothing to this, for he had discovered a cupboard in a corner, tightly closed and with the wooden button of the door missing. He now opened the door of the cupboard with a knife. "Hello, what's in there?" asked Roger, who was behind him. "Seems to be some clothing," answered Dave, and hauled forth some loose garments and also an old satchel. The garments formed part of a sailor's garb, and the satchel was marked on the bottom with the name, "William Dill." "It's Billy Dill's missing outfit!" cried Dave, eagerly. "Oh, Roger, how glad I am that I have found this! It's the best yet!" All the boys were interested, for they knew Dave's story and the tale of the strange sailor. As Dave ran to the light with the satchel, they crowded around him. "I think I am fully justified in opening this grip," said the country boy. He was so agitated he could scarcely speak. "Why, certainly," cried Phil. "Open it, by all means. It may throw light on some things which Billy Dill has been unable to explain." The satchel was not locked and came open with ease. Inside was a bag containing some loose silver and a roll of forty-six dollars in bankbills. There was also a locket, containing the picture of a motherly old lady, probably the sailor's parent. Under the locket were a small Bible and a work on ocean navigation, and at the bottom a thick, brown envelope containing a photograph. "Let us see whose picture that is," said Phil, and Dave opened the envelope and drew the photograph forth. As he held it up there was a general cry, in which he was forced to join. "That's the man who looks like you, Dave!" cried Roger. "What a striking resemblance!" exclaimed Phil. "And he has the mustache, just as the sailor said," added Ben. "Dave, that man looks enough like you to be your older brother, or your father!" Dave said nothing, for he was too much overcome to speak. As he gazed at the picture, he began to tremble from head to foot. Taking away the mustache, the face was exactly like his own, only older and more careworn. He did not wonder that Billy Dill had become confused because of the resemblance. He turned the picture over. There was not a scrap of printing or writing on it anywhere. What was the meaning of this mystery? What was this man to him? Was he the man who had once lost a child through a crazy nurse? In his perplexed state of mind, the questions were maddening ones to the boy. "What do you think of it, Dave?" asked Phil, after a pause, and the eyes of all the others were turned on the poorhouse boy. "What do I think of it?" he repeated, slowly. "I think this: I am going to find this man, if he is alive, even if I have to go around the world to do it. He must know something of my past--most likely he is a relative of mine. I am going to be a poorhouse nobody no longer. I am going to establish my identity--and I am going to do that before I do anything else." Dave spoke deliberately, weighing every word. It was almost as if he was registering a vow. The others saw a look of determination settle on his face, and knew that he would do as he said. The boy from the country had suddenly lost interest in clearing up the mystery surrounding Shadow Hamilton, and allowed the others to finish the search for class pins and postage stamps. One more pin was found and three rare stamps from Brazil, and then the search was abandoned, and they returned to Oak Hall, Dave carrying the sailor's possessions. That evening there was an interesting interview in Doctor Clay's office, in which Dave and his friends took an active part. The worthy master of Oak Hall listened to all the boys had to tell with keen attention, and smiled quietly when told how Dave and Roger had first followed Shadow in his somnambulistic feat. He took possession of the class pins and the stamps, and said the latter were undoubtedly from his collection. "We now have nearly all of the class pins," he said. "But fully nine-tenths of the postage stamps are still missing and they represent a value of at least twenty-five hundred dollars. I am tolerably sure that Maurice Hamilton took them in his sleep, but the question is, did he destroy the others, or did somebody else come along and take them?" "I believe Chip Macklin came to see you, sir," said Dave, significantly. "He did, Porter, and I am going to follow that clew up--if it is a clew," answered Doctor Clay, gravely. After the others had departed, Dave showed the things he had found belonging to Billy Dill. The master of the Hall was as much astonished as anybody over the resemblance between his pupil and the photograph, and examined the picture with care. "I do not wonder that you wish to investigate this," said he. "I should wish to do so, were I in your position." "I have simply got to do it, Doctor!" cried Dave. "I shall not be able to settle my mind on a thing until it's done. Would you go home and see Mr. Wadsworth and Professor Potts first, or go direct to that sailor?" "Why not send a long letter to your friends, telling them what you have told me? You can add that I agree that the photograph resembles you closely, and that you wish to talk the matter over once again with this William Dill." As impatient as he was, Dave concluded to follow this advice, and a letter of ten pages was sent to Mr. Wadsworth and to Caspar Potts the next morning. In the meantime, it may be added here, Doctor Clay had a closer watch than ever set on Shadow Hamilton's movements, and he also began a quiet investigation of Gus Plum's doings. The letter that Dave sent to Crumville created a sensation in the Wadsworth household, and was read and re-read several times by the members of the manufacturer's family and by Professor Potts. "There is undoubtedly something in this," said the professor. "It certainly is entitled to a strict investigation. If you will permit me, I will run up to Oak Hall to see Dave, and then take him to see this Billy Dill." "I will go with you," answered the rich manufacturer. "The outing will do us both good, and I am greatly interested in Dave's welfare. I only trust that there is a happy future in store for him." "And I say the same, sir, for no boy deserves it more," answered Professor Potts. A telegram was sent to Dave, and on the following day Oliver Wadsworth and Caspar Potts journeyed to Oakdale. Dave met them at the depot with the Hall carriage. "There he is!" exclaimed old Caspar Potts, rushing up and shaking hands. "My boy! my boy! I am glad to see you again!" And he fairly quivered with emotion. "And I am glad to see you," cried Dave, in return. He shook hands with both men. "Mr. Wadsworth, it was kind of you to answer my letter so quickly," he added. "I knew you would be anxious, Dave. My, how well and strong you look! The air up here must do you good." "It is a very healthful spot," answered the youth, "and I like it better than I can tell." "A fine school--a fine school!" murmured Professor Potts. "You could not go to a better." On the way to the Hall, Dave told his story in detail, and exhibited the photograph, which he had brought with him, scarcely daring to leave it out of his sight. "It is just as you have said," remarked Oliver Wadsworth. "A most remarkable resemblance, truly!" "That man must be some relative to Dave," added Caspar Potts. "There could not be such a resemblance otherwise. It is undoubtedly the same strain of blood. He may be a father, uncle, cousin, elder brother--there is no telling what; but he is a relative, I will stake my reputation on it." The visitors were cordially greeted at Oak Hall by Doctor Clay and made to feel perfectly at home. They were given rooms for the night, and in the morning the doctor and his visitors and Dave had breakfast together. It had been decided that a visit should be paid to Billy Dill that very afternoon, and by nine o'clock Mr. Wadsworth, Professor Potts, and Dave were on the way to the town where was located the sanitarium to which the sailor had been taken. Dave had the tar's satchel and clothing with him, and the precious photograph was stowed away in his pocket. Just then he would not have parted with that picture for all the money in the world. CHAPTER XIV A GLEAM OF LIGHT "I would advise that you keep that satchel and the picture out of sight at first," said Professor Potts, as he rang the bell of the sanitarium. "Talk to the old sailor and try to draw him out. Then show him his belongings when you think the time ripe." Mr. Wadsworth and Dave thought this good advice, and when they were ushered into the old sailor's presence, the boy kept the satchel behind him. "Well, douse my toplights, but I'm glad to see ye all!" cried Billy Dill, as he shook hands. "It's kind o' you to pay a visit to such an old wreck as I am." "Oh, you're no wreck, Mr. Dill," answered Oliver Wadsworth. "We'll soon have you as right and tight as any craft afloat," he added, falling into the tar's manner of speaking. "Bless the day when I can float once more, sir. Do you know, I've been thinkin' that a whiff o' salt air would do me a sight o' good. Might fix my steerin' apparatus," and the tar tapped his forehead. "Then you must have a trip to the ocean, by all means," said Caspar Potts. He turned to the rich manufacturer. "It might be easily arranged." "Dill, I want to talk to you about the time you were out in the South Seas," said Dave, who could bear the suspense no longer. "Now, please follow me closely, will you?" "Will if I can, my hearty." The sailor's forehead began to wrinkle. "You know my memory box has got its cargo badly shifted." "Don't you remember when you were down there--at Cavasa Island, and elsewhere--how hard times were, and how somebody helped you." "Seems to me I do." "Don't you remember traveling around with your bundle and your satchel? You had some money in bankbills and some loose silver, and a work on navigation, and a Bible----" "Yes! yes! I remember the Bible--it was the one my aunt gave me--God bless her! She, Aunt Lizzie--took care o' me when my mother died, an' she told me to read it every day--an' I did, most o' the time." "Well, you had the Bible and your satchel and your bundle of clothes," went on Dave, impressively. "And at that time you fell in with a man who afterwards gave you his photograph." "So I did--the man who looks like you. But I----" "Wait a minute. Don't you remember his telling you a story about a crazy nurse and a lost child?" "I certainly do, but----" Dave drew the photograph from his pocket and thrust it forward, directly before the tar's eyes. "There is the man!" he cried. "Now, what is his name? Tell me his name, at once!" [Illustration: "Tell me his name, at once!"--_Page 121._] "Dunston Porter!" fairly shouted the sailor. "Dunston Porter! That's it! I knew I would remember it sometime! Dunston Porter, of course it was! Funny how I forgot it. Better write it down, afore it slips my cable again." "Dunston Porter!" murmured Dave, and the others likewise repeated the name. "Ha! this is remarkable!" ejaculated Caspar Potts. "Dave, do you remember what you called yourself when you were first found and taken to the poorhouse." "I do, sir. I called myself Davy, and Porter, and Dun-Dun." "Exactly, and Dun-Dun meant Dunston. You were trying to repeat the name, 'Dunston Porter'!" "That would seem to be the fact," came from Oliver Wadsworth. "And if so----" He paused significantly. "You think my real name is Dunston Porter?" "Either that, or else that is the name of some relative of yours." Dave's heart beat fast. He felt that he was getting at least a faint glimpse of his past. He turned again to Billy Dill. "Then this Dunston Porter was your friend?" he observed. "He was, and he helped me when I was stranded," was the answer. "I can't give ye all the particulars, cos some o' 'em is more like a dream than anything to me. When I try to think, my head begins to swim," and the sailor wrinkled his forehead as before and twitched his eyes. "Tell me one thing," said the rich manufacturer, "Do you think this Dunston Porter is still at Cavasa Island, or in that locality?" "I suppose so--I don't know." "When did you come away from there?" asked Professor Potts. "It must be nigh on to a year ago. I came straight to 'Frisco, went up the coast on a lumber boat to Puget Sound, and then took passage to New York. Next, I drifted up here to look up some friends, and you know what happened after that." "Was Dunston Porter alone out there?" questioned Oliver Wadsworth. "Why--er--I can't say as to that. He didn't say much about himself, that I can remember. Once he told me about that child, but--but it's hazy--I can't think! Oh, it drives me crazy when I try to think! The roar of the sea gets in my ears, and the light from the lighthouse fires my brain!" And the old tar began to pace the floor in a rolling gait. "He is growing excited!" whispered Caspar Potts. "It is too bad! Were he in his right mind, he might be able to tell us a great deal." "Supposing we go out and have lunch together," suggested Oliver Wadsworth. "And then we can go for a ride on the lake." He spoke to the sanitarium manager, and the upshot of the matter was that the whole party went out to a hotel for dinner. Previous to going, Dave gave Billy Dill the satchel and money and the bundle, which seemed to tickle the tar immensely. "Douse my toplight, but I feel like old times again!" he cried, when they had had a good dinner and were seated on the forward deck of one of the lake boats, used to take out pleasure parties. "Oh, but I love the water!" "I suppose this doesn't look anything like around Cavasa Island," remarked Dave, trying to draw the sailor out. "Not much, my boy. Cavasa Island has a volcano in the middle of it, and once in a while that volcano gets busy, and folks run for their lives. An' they have earthquakes, too. Once I was out with Dunston Porter, and along came an earthquake, and the other fellow, Mr. Lemington, almost had his leg broken." "Who was Mr. Lemington?" asked Caspar Potts, quickly. "Why, he was Dunston Porter's partner in the treasure-hunting scheme. Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I? Funny, how it slipped my mind, eh? They went to the volcano for the treasure. I guess that was when the baby disappeared--and that other man--I don't remember much of him, he was wild. It was misty, misty. But they didn't get any treasure, I know that. And then Mr. Lemington got disgusted and sailed for Australia." "Did you ever see the baby?" asked Dave. "Did I? Why--I think so. I don't remember." This was all they could get out of the sailor, try their best, and, upon Oliver Wadsworth's advice, they did not bother him any further. Before returning to the sanitarium, the rich manufacturer called Dave to one side. "Dave, do you want to go to Cavasa Island?" he asked, with a quiet smile. "I do," was the prompt answer. "I was going to speak to you about it. You know I told you that Phil Lawrence is going--on one of his father's ships this summer. I'd like very much to go with Phil." "Then you shall go, if we can make the necessary arrangements. Now, what I want to know is: Do you not think it would be an excellent thing to take this Billy Dill along? The trip might cure him entirely, and he might aid you greatly in clearing up this mystery." "Why, Mr. Wadsworth, you must have been reading my thoughts!" exclaimed the country boy. "I was going to suggest that very thing." "Then we will speak to Dill about it before we leave him. Do you know when your friend Lawrence is to join his father's ship?" "No, sir; but I can soon find out. And here is Mr. Lawrence's address, if you want it," added Dave, and wrote it on a card. When the idea of sailing on the Pacific once more was broached to Billy Dill, his eyes lit up with pleasure. "I'd like nothing better!" he cried. "I've been a-thinkin' I might ship again. I can't stay an' be spongin' on you folks any longer, it wouldn't be proper. I want to pay up, now Dave has found my money for me." "Keep your money, Dill," returned Oliver Wadsworth. "You may need it later." And then he explained what Dave wished to do, and how the tar might accompany the youth on his long trip. "I'll go--an' glad o' the chance," said Billy Dill, readily. "Just draw up your articles, an' I'll sign 'em any time ye want." And so the matter was settled. Dave returned to Oak Hall late that night in a very thoughtful mood. So much had been done and said that he wanted time in which to think it over. It was not until the next day that he got a chance to talk matters over with Phil and Roger, both of whom listened attentively to his tale. "It seems to me you are learning something, Dave," said Roger. "I hope the whole matter is cleared up before long. Then Plum and Poole will have to stop casting slurs on you." "And now, Phil, I want to go out to the South Seas with you," continued Dave. "And, what is more, I am going to ask your father to find a place on the vessel for Billy Dill." "I fancy he'll do that, if I ask him," answered Phil. "I'll write and tell the whole story, and I know he will be as much interested as I am." "I wish I was going on that trip with you," said Roger. "Such an outing would suit me to a T." "I guess there will be room enough for another passenger," answered Phil. "Why don't you ask your folks about it?" "I will!" burst out the senator's son. "They are going to Europe, you know. I was to go along, but I'll see if I can't go with you two instead." After that there was a good deal of letter-writing, and the boys waited anxiously for replies. In the meanwhile, the final examinations for the term began. Dave did his best to keep his mind on his lessons, and succeeded so well that he came out second from the top, studious Polly Vane heading the list. Roger came next to Dave, with Ben Basswood fourth, Phil sixth, and Sam Day seventh. Gus Plum was almost at the end of the list, and Nat Poole was but little better. In a lower class, Luke Watson stood second, Buster Beggs fourth, and Chip Macklin fifth. Shadow Hamilton, although generally a good student, dropped to tenth place in his class. "I am more than gratified at this showing," said Doctor Clay, when the examinations were over. "The general average is higher than usual. You have done well, and I shall award the prizes with much pleasure." After that there was an entertainment lasting the best part of the afternoon, and in the evening the students celebrated by a bonfire on the campus and a general merrymaking. They sang the school song over and over again, and gave the Hall cry: "Baseball! Football! Oak Hall Has the call! Biff! Boom! Bang! Whoop!" "To-night's the night!" whispered Phil, as he entered the school with his chums. "Just wait and see!" CHAPTER XV WINDING UP THE SCHOOL TERM "I must say, I don't feel much like fun to-night," observed Dave, as he hurried up the stairs to dormitory No. 12. "I am anxious to get started on that trip to the Pacific." "Oh, that will hold for one day longer," said Ben. "I wish I was going, too. Roger, have you got word yet?" "No, but I expect a letter to-morrow. If it doesn't come, I'll have to wait till I get home." Dave was in advance and was the first to throw open the dormitory door. As he did so, a powerful smell of onions greeted him. "Great Cæsar!" he ejaculated. "Smells like an onion factory up here. Somebody must have been eating a dozen or two. Open the window, Phil, while I make a light." "Hello, what's this!" spluttered Ben, and fell headlong over something. "A decayed cabbage! Who put that on the floor?" "Look out, everybody!" shouted Roger. "I just stepped on something soft. Phew! Some decayed sweet potatoes!" By this time Dave made a light, and all of the boys who had come up gazed around the dormitory. Then a cry of amazement and anger arose. "This is a rough-house, and no mistake!" "Somebody has been heaving decayed vegetables all over the room!" "Yes, and ancient eggs, too! This is an outrage!" "Here is a rotten cabbage in my trunk!" called out Roger. He held the object at arm's length. "I'd like to soak the fellow who did it!" he added, savagely. With caution, all made an investigation. They found their clothing and other belongings disarranged, and decayed vegetables, stale eggs, and sour milk were everywhere in evidence. It was a mess bad enough to make them weep. "We ought to report this," was Phil's comment. "I don't mind real fun, but this is going too far." "This stuff must have come from the cellar," put in Buster Beggs. "I heard the head cook telling Pop Swingly that the place must be cleaned out, or he would report it to the doctor. Swingly said he didn't know the bad stuff was there." "Well, Swingly didn't put the stuff here," put in Dave. "It's the work of some of the other fellows." "I know where the janitor is!" cried Ben. "Shall I go down and question him? Maybe he can give us a pointer." "Yes, go ahead," said Dave. "And I'll go along," added the senator's son, and a moment later the two boys were off. While the pair were gone, the others surveyed the damage done. The most of the decayed vegetables were swept into a corner, and then the boys did what they could toward straightening out their things. "Here's a stale egg in my hat-box!" groaned Sam. "I'd like to throw it at some fellow's head!" Dave had found his trunk open, and was searching the box with care. Suddenly he gave a loud cry: "It's gone! It's gone!" "What's gone?" queried Phil. "The photograph! I had it among my books and papers, and the whole bunch is missing!" "You mean the photo of the man who looks like you?" asked Sam, quickly. "Yes." Dave gave a groan that came straight from his heart. "Oh, boys, I must get that back! I can't afford to lose it! I must get it back! It is worth more to me than anything in the world!" He was so agitated that he could scarcely control himself. "Let us hunt for the picture," came from Buster Beggs, who knew about the photograph, and all started a search, which lasted until Ben and Roger returned. "We've discovered the chaps who are responsible," said Ben, in triumph. "They are Gus Plum and Nat Poole," asserted the senator's son. "Pop Swingly was throwing this stuff away in a hole back of the campus, when Plum and Poole came up. He heard them talking about playing a trick, but he didn't think they'd lower themselves by touching the mess. I suppose they thought that they were doing something quite smart." "Dave's photo is gone," said Phil. "We have been hunting for it everywhere." "You don't say! Dave, that is too bad." "We ought to make Plum and Poole clean up this mess," came from Buster. "Let us try to capture them." The suggestion met with instant approval, and the boys started to locate the bully and his crony. Plum and Poole were still below, but Shadow Hamilton announced that they were preparing to come up by a side stairs. "We must get them, sure!" cried Dave. "I want that picture back, if nothing else." Soon one boy, who was acting as a spy, announced the coming of Plum and Poole. The pair were allowed to reach the door of their dormitory, when they were pounced on from behind and made prisoners. They tried to escape, but the crowd was too many for them, and towels pulled down over their mouths kept them from raising an outcry. "What's the meaning of this?" spluttered Nat Poole, when he found himself and his crony in dormitory No. 12, and with the door closed and locked. "It means, in the first place, that I want my things back," said Dave, "and especially a photograph that was between my books." "Humph! that photo is burned up," growled Gus Plum. "Gus Plum!" gasped Dave. He could say no more. "Plum, do you mean to say you burned that picture up?" demanded Roger. "If you did, you ought to be tarred and feathered for it!" "He wouldn't dare to do it!" came boldly from Phil. "If he did, I know what Dave will do--have him sent to jail for it." "Bah! You can't send me to jail for a little fun," blustered the bully. "That is no fun, Plum," put in Ben. "That photo was of great importance. If you burned it up, you will surely suffer." "Is it really burned or not?" muttered Dave, hoarsely. "Answer me, you--you cur!" and he caught the bully by the throat. "Le-let go--don't strangle me! N-no--it's all right. I was only fooling." "Then, where is it?" "In the--the closet--on the top shelf." Dave dropped his hold and ran to the closet pointed out. True enough, on the top shelf, in a back corner, were the books, with the precious photograph between them. Dave lost no time in placing the picture in an inside pocket. "You're a fine fellow, not to take a bit of fun without getting mad," grumbled Gus Plum. He did not dare to say too much in such a crowd. "So you call this fun?" remarked Phil, sarcastically. "Fun! to play the scavenger and bring this stuff up here? Well, I must say, I don't like your preference for a calling." "Look here, you needn't call us scavengers!" howled Nat Poole. "I am a gentleman, I am!" "Well, you brought this up here, you and Plum." "It was only a--re--a joke. Everybody has got to put up with jokes to-night." "Well, you are going to put up with a little hard work," came from Roger. "Work?" "Yes. You and Plum are going to clean up the muss and put this room in apple-pie order." "Huh! I see myself doing it!" stormed the aristocratic youth. "You will do it," observed Ben. "Isn't that so, fellows?" There was a chorus of approvals. "So take off your coats and get to work," said Dave, who felt easier, now that he had the picture back. "I guess you both need a little exercise." "I'll be hanged if I do a stroke!" roared Gus Plum. Hardly had he spoken, when Ben caught up a pitcher of ice-water and held it over the bully's head. "Take your choice, Plum!" he cried, and allowed a little of the ice-water to trickle down the bully's backbone. There was a roar of fright and a shiver. "Oh! Don't do that! Do you want to freeze me to death!" "Now, Poole, maybe you want some," added Ben, advancing. Poole tried to retreat, stumbled, and sat down heavily on a decayed cabbage, which squashed beneath him. He set up a roar. "Now see what you've done, Ben Basswood! My best gray suit, too! I'll fix you for this!" "Both of you must get to work!" declared Dave. "We'll give you two minutes in which to get started. If you don't start----" "We'll roll you in the decayed vegetables and kick you out," finished Buster Beggs. With the term so nearly ended, he was growing reckless. "I'll play timekeeper," and he drew out his watch. Plum and Poole begged and protested, but all to no purpose, and, badly scared, took off their coats and cuffs, rolled up their sleeves, and began to clean up the muss they had made. While this was under way, the other boys of the dormitory came up and viewed the scene with amazement and satisfaction. At last the dirty job was at an end, at least so far as Plum and Poole could go. They had worked hard and were bathed in perspiration, and their hands were in anything but a clean condition. Both were "boiling mad," but neither dared to say a word, for fear the others would make them do more. "Now you have learned your trade," said Phil, finally, "you can graduate as full-fledged scavengers. When you go out, don't fail to place that bag of nasty stuff in a corner of your own room. The smell will give you both pleasant dreams." "Phil Lawrence----" began the bully. "Just wait till I----" came from Nat Poole. "Silence!" cried Dave. "Not a word, or you'll be sorry. Take up the bag. Now, march!" The door was flung open, and with the bag of messy stuff between them, Plum and Poole marched forth into the corridor and to the stairs leading to the back yard. The boys of dormitory No. 12 watched them out of sight, then returned to their room. "I'll wager they are the maddest boys in the Hall," said Dave, when the door had been locked once more. "Will they come back, do you think?" questioned Roger. "I don't think so. But we can be on our guard." They remained on guard for half an hour, but Plum and Poole did not reappear. They had had enough of their so-called fun, and they sneaked out of sight at the first opportunity. But, without this, there was fun galore that night in the various dormitories. Two crowds of boys held feasts, to which even the monitors were invited, and dormitories Nos. 3 and 4 got into a pillow fight, in the midst of which Job Haskers appeared. The teacher was knocked over by a pillow, and then some other pillows were piled on top of him. After that he was hustled out of the room, and, completely bewildered, he rolled down the broad stairs, bumping on every step. Then Pop Swingly came up, followed by "Horsehair," the carriage driver, to quell the disturbance, and each received a pitcher of ice-water over his head, which made both beat a hasty retreat. But by one o'clock the school quieted down, and all of the pupils went to sleep as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. CHAPTER XVI PREPARING FOR A LONG TRIP [Illustration: "Good-by to Oak Hall!"--_Page 137._] "Whoop! hurrah! Off we go! Good-by to Oak Hall!" The carryall belonging to the school was moving away from the campus. It was loaded with students and behind it came two wagons, full of trunks and dress-suit cases. Back on the campus a crowd was assembled to bid the departing ones good-by. "Write to me often!" "Don't forget, Tom! Atlantic City, middle of August!" "Be sure and ask him to join the team!" "Yes, we are going to Casco Bay. Come up, if you can." "Tell Jack----Say, get off my toes, will you? Tell Jack to come up to Lake Titus, back of Malone. We'll give him a dandy----" "_Toot! toot! toot!_ Now then, Horsehair, start 'em up, and be lively, or I'll miss that connection for Albany!" "I'll start 'em up, all right, if you young gents will give me a show," responded the driver. "Say, Buster, don't use the whip. Give me the reins, Master Porter." "Don't you want me to drive, Horsehair?" "No, I want----Say, you in the back, give me my hat, will you?" shouted the driver, turning around. "I ain't a-going a step till I git that hat!" "All right, Horsehair, darling!" replied Sam Day. "I thought I'd keep it to remember you by, but if you want----" "Which puts me in mind of a story," said Shadow Hamilton. He had caught the humor of the occasion. "A lady once----" "No stories allowed," broke in Phil. "I can't tell a story unless I speak it aloud," answered Shadow, tartly. "Phew, what a pun!" came from Roger. "Somebody please dump him off for that." "Hold tight, all of you!" called out the anxious driver, and with a lurch the carryall made a turn and started out of the academy grounds and along the broad highway leading to Oakdale. All of the boys shouted themselves hoarse, and horns and rattles added to the din. Such a thing as holding the students in was out of the question, and Doctor Clay and his assistants did not attempt it. The doctor and Andrew Dale smiled broadly and waved their hands, and only Job Haskers looked bored. The other teachers were busy in the building and did not show themselves. This was the first load to leave, and another was ready to depart directly after dinner. Nearly all of the boys were in high spirits, and sang and "cut up" all the way to the town, much to the terror of Jackson Lemond, known only to the lads as Horsehair, because he carried the signs of his calling continually. If there was one boy in the crowd particularly sober at times, it was Shadow Hamilton. Doctor Clay had communicated with his parents, and Mr. Hamilton and the master of the school had had a long conference regarding the pins and stamps that had been taken. Shadow's father had agreed to pay for the missing articles, if they could not be recovered inside of the next few months. In the meantime, a private detective was to be called in to watch the movements of Gus Plum. At Oakdale the party split into three parts, one to go up the railroad line, another to go down, and the third to take the connection for Albany. Phil, Roger, Ben, and Dave took the same train, and managed to get seats together. "I wish I had heard from my folks," remarked Roger. "But I think it is all right," he added, hopefully. "Don't be too sure, Roger," said Dave. "I don't want you to be disappointed." "I shall write to you as soon as I get home and can talk to my father," said Phil to Dave. "We'll be able to arrange everything without much trouble, I am sure." Near the end of their journey Dave and Ben found themselves alone, Roger and Phil having said good-by at places further up the road. As they neared Crumville, the heart of the country boy beat quicker. How many things had happened since he had left that town to go to Oak Hall! "I see the old white church steeple!" cried Ben, as they came out of a patch of timber. "Looks natural, doesn't it?" "I feel as if I had been away a year, instead of a few months," answered Dave. He was peering anxiously out of the window. "Here we come to the station, and, yes, there is Mr. Wadsworth's automobile, and Mr. Wadsworth himself and Jessie!" Soon the train came to a halt, and they piled out, dress-suit cases in hand, and walked over to the automobile. "How do you do?" cried Jessie Wadsworth, a beautiful miss of thirteen, with soft eyes and golden curls. "I told papa you would be on this train." "How do you do?" returned Dave, dropping his suit case to lift his cap and shake hands. "I hope you are well." "Oh, I am," replied the miss, shaking back her curls. "How do you do, Ben?" And then there was more handshaking. Both of the boys were invited to enter the automobile, and did so, and in a few minutes Ben found himself at his own door. Then the machine was turned toward the Wadsworth mansion. "I like to go riding with papa," explained Jessie. "I never go out with our man, though. Not since--you know!" and she turned a pair of grateful eyes upon Dave that made the boy color up. "The machine appears to be perfectly safe, since we have had it repaired," put in Mr. Wadsworth. "But our man is better with the horses." At the mansion Mrs. Wadsworth, an aristocratic but motherly lady, came out to greet Dave, followed by Caspar Potts, whose face was wreathed in smiles. All told, it was a homecoming that would have warmed the heart of any lad, and it made Dave forget completely that he was a "poorhouse nobody." "You must tell me all about everything," said Jessie, after a somewhat elaborate supper had been served. "I don't want to miss a single thing!" "Seems to me you are cutting out a big job for Dave," laughed her father. "Well, I guess I can tell all she'll wish to hear," answered the youth, and seated at one end of a couch, with Jessie at the other, he told much of his life at Oak Hall, with its studies, its pranks, and its athletic sports. Dave could see the humorous side of a thing as well as anybody, and some stories he told made Mr. and Mrs. Wadsworth laugh as well as Jessie. On his trials he touched but lightly, for he could not dream of giving his little lady friend pain. On the following day Nat Poole came home, and Dave met the aristocratic youth in one of the stores of Crumville. Poole gave him a glassy stare and did not speak. A few minutes later Dave met Ben. "Just ran into Poole," said the latter, "and what do you think, he made out that he didn't see me." "He was in Parsons' store, but he wouldn't speak to me, either," answered Dave. "He must feel awfully sore. But I shan't mind." "Nor I, Dave. I never did like that fellow, and I don't like his father, either. By the way, have you heard anything more about the farm that belongs to Professor Potts?" "Yes, and I am glad, and so is he, that we didn't let Nat's father get hold of it. The new trolley company is going to put a line past it, and Mr. Wadsworth says it will be quite valuable in time." Two days passed, and then Dave got long letters from Phil and Roger. Senator Morr had been to see Mr. Lawrence and had arranged to have his son go on the long trip to the South Seas. Roger was almost wild with joy, and said he was going to prepare for the trip immediately. The letter from Phil told Dave that the start for San Francisco was to be made on the following Monday morning. All the boys were to meet at the Grand Central Depot, in New York City, and take the limited express which left for Chicago at noon. "I will go with you as far as New York," announced Mr. Wadsworth. "I wish to see that your journey is safely begun." The last days of the week were busy ones for Dave. A steamer trunk was procured for him, and into this was packed his outfit, including a semi-nautical suit that fitted him to perfection and gave him quite a sailor look. "I suppose you'll be a regular sailor by the time you come back," said Jessie. "I don't know about that," answered Dave. "I am not going for that purpose," and his tone grew serious. "Oh, I know that, Dave. I hope you find what you are going for. But--but----" "But what, Jessie?" "Oh, I--I don't want you to leave us, Dave. If you find a father, or an uncle, or brother, or somebody like that, I suppose you won't stay with us any more." And the young miss pouted engagingly. "I'll certainly not care to leave you, Jessie," he answered, gently. "But you cannot blame me for wanting to find out who I am, I am sure." "Oh, no, Dave!" "I don't want to remain a nobody and have folks shun me on that account." "Who would do such a thing?" she asked, her eyes opening widely. "Oh, a good many folks." "It is very mean of them," came from the little miss, firmly. "But, never mind, Dave, I'll not shun you," she went on, catching his hand and squeezing it as hard as she could. "We're going to be just like a brother and sister always, aren't we?" "If you say so." "Don't you say so, Dave?" "Yes, Jessie." "Then that is settled, and we won't talk about it any more. Shun you! I just want to see them do it! I won't speak to anybody that does such a thing!" And Jessie looked as tragic as a miss of thirteen can look. Among the things provided by thoughtful Mr. Wadsworth for Dave was a money belt, and in this was placed a fair amount of bankbills, and also a letter of credit. "Mr. Wadsworth, you are more than kind!" cried the country boy, and something like tears stood in his honest eyes. "How can I ever repay you?" "In one way only, Dave. By making a real man of yourself." "I shall do my best, sir." "Then that is all I ask." Billy Dill had been communicated with, and Caspar Potts went after the tar and brought him to Crumville, where Oliver Wadsworth procured the sailor a new outfit. Billy Dill's health was now restored completely, and the only thing he suffered from was a slight loss of memory, and even that defect seemed to be gradually wearing away. "I'll be the happiest tar afloat when I have the rolling ocean under me once more," said he to Dave. "Cables an' capstans! but I do love the salt breeze!" "Well, you'll soon get enough of it," answered the boy. "We have a long trip before us." CHAPTER XVII THE TRIP TO THE FAR WEST "My stars! what a very busy place!" This was Dave's exclamation as he and Oliver Wadsworth hurried along one of the streets of New York City, on the way to buy some small thing which had been forgotten. They had arrived in the metropolis an hour ahead of time, and the country boy had stared at the many sights in wonder. "It is one of the busiest cities in the world," answered the manufacturer, with a smile. "A fortune can be made or lost here in no time." "I believe you. And the people! Why, there is a regular crowd, no matter where you turn." "Don't you think you'd like the city, Dave?" "I don't know--perhaps I should, after I got used to it." Roger and Phil had not yet come in, and they had left Billy Dill at the depot to watch out for them. On returning to the station, Dave and Mr. Wadsworth met the three at the doors. "Here we are again!" cried Roger, shaking hands. "And not very much time to spare, either." "Is the train in?" asked the manufacturer. "Will be in a few minutes, so the gateman said," answered Phil. They saw to it that their trunks were properly cared for, and a short while after the cars came in and they climbed aboard. Seats had been engaged beforehand, so there was no trouble on that score. "Now remember to write whenever you get the chance," said Oliver Wadsworth to Dave. "And if you run short of funds, don't hesitate to let me know." "I'll remember, and thank you very much," replied Dave, and then the long train moved off, slowly at first, and then at a good rate of speed. Dave's long journey to solve the mystery of his identity had begun. "Say, what mountain is this we're goin' under, anyway?" came presently from the sailor. "I noticed it when I came to New York." "This isn't a mountain," laughed Roger. "It is New York City itself. We are under the streets." "Great whales! Wonder they don't knock down the wall o' somebuddy's cellar!" It was not long before they came out into the open, and then both Dave and the sailor looked out of the windows with interest. Phil and Roger were more used to traveling, and spent the time in pointing out objects of interest and in answering questions. The fine coach was a revelation to Billy Dill, who, in the past, had traveled exclusively in the ordinary day cars. "These here seats are better nor them in a barber shop," he observed. "An' thet little smoking-room is the handiest I ever see. But, boys, we made one big mistake," he added, suddenly. "What's that?" asked Phil. "Unless we tie up to an eatin' house on the way, we'll be starved. Nobody brung any grub along." "Don't worry about that," said Roger, with a wink at the others. "I think I can scrape up some crackers and cheese somewhere." "Well, that's better--although I allow as how we could have brought some ham sandwiches as well as not." They had all had dinner, so nobody was hungry until about six o'clock, when a waiter from the dining-car came through in his white apron. "First call to supper!" "Wot's thet?" queried Billy Dill. "Come and see," answered Dave, and led the way to the dining-car. When the old sailor saw the tables, and saw some folks eating as if at home, he stared in amazement. "Well, keelhaul me, if this don't beat the Dutch!" he ejaculated, dropping into a chair pointed out to him. "Reg'lar hotel dinin'-room on wheels, ain't it? Never heard o' such a thing in my life, never! Say, Roger, better keep that crackers an' cheese out o' sight, or they'll laugh at ye!" he added, with a chuckle. "You never saw anything like this, then?" asked Dave. "Never. I allers traveled in one o' them, plain, every-day kind o' trains, an' took my grub along in a pasteboard box." Though amazed, Billy Dill was not slow about eating what was set before him, and he declared the repast the finest he had ever tasted. After the meal he went into the smoking compartment for a smoke, and then came back to the boys. "Feelin' a bit sleepy," he announced. "I suppose there ain't no objections to my going to sleep." "Not at all," said Phil. "Do you want your berth made up right away?" "Humph! that's a good one!" laughed the tar. "They may have an eatin' room, but they ain't got no bedrooms, an' I know it. I'll do my best in the seat, though I allow a reg'lar long sofy would be better." "Just you wait until I call the porter," said Roger, and touched the push-button. "This gentleman will have his berth made up," he went on, as the porter appeared. "Yes, sah." "Make it up with real sheets, messmate," put in Billy Dill, thinking it was a joke. "An' you might add a real feather piller, while ye are at it." "Yes, sah," answered the porter, with a grin. "Please step to another seat, sah." "Come," said Dave, and arose and took Billy Dill to the opposite side of the sleeping-coach. The old tar dropped into a vacant seat and watched the porter as he began to make up the berths. From a smile his face changed to a look of wonder, and when he saw the clean sheets, blankets, and pillows brought forth he could scarcely control himself. "Cables, capstans, an' codfish!" he murmured. "Thet beats the dinin'-room, don't it? Say, maybe they hev got a ballroom on board, an' a church, an' a--a--farm, an' a few more things." "Not quite," answered Roger, with a laugh. "But there is a library, if you want any books to read." "Beats all! Why, this here train is equipped like a regular ship, ain't she?" "Almost," said Dave. "Here are two berths; you can take one and I'll take the other." "Good enough, Dave. Which will ye have?" The boy said he preferred the lower berth, and Billy Dill swung himself up in true sailor fashion to that above. "Makes me think o' a ship!" he declared. "I know I'll sleep like a rock!" And half an hour later he was in the land of dreams, and then the boys also retired. Morning found them well on their way to Chicago, and just before noon they rolled into the great city by the lakes. Here they had two hours to wait, and spent the time in getting dinner and taking a short ride around to see the sights. "This is as far west as I have been," said Roger. "The rest of the journey will be new to me." "I once took a journey to Los Angeles," said Phil. "But I went and returned by the southern route, so this is new to me also." "I have never traveled anywhere--that is, since I can remember," put in Dave. "But I am sure I am going to like it--that is, if I don't get seasick when I am on the ocean." "Oh, I suppose we'll all get our dose of that," responded the senator's son. "Maybe not," said Billy Dill. "Some gits it, an' some don't." Nightfall found them well on the second portion of their journey to San Francisco. There was an observation car on the train, and the whole party spent hours seated on camp-chairs, viewing scenery as it rushed past them. Now and then, for a change, they would read, and Billy Dill would smoke, and the boys often talked over what was before them. "My father said I might tell you the object of my trip," said Phil to his chums. "But he does not want anybody else to know of it, unless it becomes necessary for me to say something to the captain. The supercargo of the ship is a man named Jasper Van Blott. He has worked for my father for some years, and my father always thought him honest. But lately things have happened which have caused my father to suspect this supercargo. He sometimes disposes of certain portions of a cargo, and his returns are not what they should be." "Then you are to act as a sort of spy," said Roger. "I am to watch everything he does without letting him know exactly what I am doing. And when he makes a deal of any kind, I am to do my best to ascertain if his returns are correct. If I find he is honest, my father is going to retain him and increase his salary; if he is dishonest, my father will discharge him, and possibly prosecute him." "Have you ever met this Van Blott?" asked Dave. "Once, when he called on my father two years ago. He is a smooth talker, but I did not fancy his general style. He is supposed to be a first-class business man, and that is why my father has retained him. I do not believe Captain Marshall likes him much, by the way he writes to father." "Have you ever met Captain Marshall?" "Oh, yes, twice. You'll like him, I know, he is so bluff and hearty. My father has known him for many years, and he thinks the captain one of the best skippers afloat. He has sailed the Pacific for ten years and never suffered a serious accident." "In that case, we'll be pretty safe in sailing under him," observed Roger. "It will certainly be a long trip--four thousand miles, or more!" "Do you know anybody else on the ship?" asked Dave. "I do not, and I don't know much about the ship herself, excepting that she is named the _Stormy Petrel_. Father bought her about a year ago. She is said to be a very swift bark, and yet she has great carrying capacity." "Will you please explain to me just what a bark is?" said Roger. "I must confess I am rather dumb on nautical matters." "A bark is a vessel with three masts. The front mast, or foremast, as sailors call it, and the main, or middle, mast are rigged as a ship, that is, with regular yardarms and sails. The back mast, called the mizzen mast, is rigged schooner fashion, that is, with a swinging boom." "That's plain enough. Hurrah for the _Stormy Petrel_! Dave, we'll be full-fledged sailors before we know it." "We must get Billy Dill to teach us a thing or two before we go aboard," said the country boy. "Then we won't appear so green." This all thought good advice, and for the remainder of the journey they frequently talked nautical matters over with the old tar. Billy Dill had his book on navigation with him, and also a general work on seamanship, and he explained to them how a ship, and especially a bark, was constructed, and taught them the names of the ropes and sails, and many other things. "You'll soon get the swing on it," he declared. "It ain't so much to learn fer a feller as is bright an' willin' to learn. It's only the blockheads as can't master it. But I allow as how none o' you expect to work afore the mast, do ye?" "Not exactly," answered Phil. "But there is no harm in learning to do a sailor's work, in case we are ever called on to take hold. Somebody might get sick, you know." "Thet's true, lad--an' I can tell ye one thing: A ship in a storm on the Pacific, an' short-handed, ain't no plaything to deal with," concluded the old tar. CHAPTER XVIII SAILING OF THE "STORMY PETREL" As soon as the party arrived at San Francisco, Phil set out to learn if the _Stormy Petrel_ was in port. This was easy, for the firm of which Mr. Lawrence was the head had a regular shipping office near the docks. "Yes, she is in and almost loaded," said the clerk at the office, as soon as he learned Phil's identity. "I'll take you down to her, if you wish." "Very well," answered the youth, and soon he and his chums and Billy Dill were on board of the bark. A gang of stevedores were on hand, bringing aboard boxes, crates, and barrels, and in the midst of the crowd were Captain Frank Marshall and Van Blott, the supercargo, both directing operations. "Well! well!" ejaculated the captain, on catching sight of Phil. "Got here at last, eh? Glad to see you. So these are the young gentlemen to go along? Well, I reckon you'll find the trip long enough. Glad to know you, Porter, and the same to you, Morr. Yes, we are mighty busy just now. Got a little of the cargo in the wrong way--tell you about it later"--the last words to Phil. "I shall be glad of your company. Go down into the cabin and make yourselves at home, and I'll be with you presently." "Thank you," answered Phil. "But is that Mr. Van Blott over yonder?" "It is. Want to see him? Trot along, if you do." And the captain turned to his work once more. By his general manner Captain Marshall showed that he did not wish to come into contact with the supercargo just then, and Phil walked over to that personage alone. The supercargo was a tall, thin individual with a sallow face and a thin, yellowish mustache. "This is Mr. Van Blott, I believe," said Phil. "Yes," was the short and crusty answer, and the supercargo gave the boy a sharp look. "I am Phil Lawrence. I guess you do not remember me?" "Oh!" cried the supercargo, and his manner changed instantly. "How do you do? I didn't think you'd be here quite so soon. I hope your father is well?" "Yes, sir. Then you got his letter, Mr. Van Blott?" "Yes, this morning. I haven't read it very carefully yet. He said something about you helping me, if I needed help. Well, I won't bother you much. I have done the work alone in the past, and I can do it now." "I am willing to do all I can to assist you," said Phil, politely. "I don't doubt it. But I won't trouble you--so you and your friends can just lie back and enjoy yourselves," returned Jasper Van Blott, smoothly. "No use in working, when you are on a vacation." "Oh, I shan't call it work. I want to learn a little about the business. Some day, you know, I am to go into my father's office." At this a slight frown crossed the supercargo's face, but he quickly smiled it off. "As you please," he said. "But excuse me now, I'm very busy. We are trying to get ready to sail to-morrow by noon, and there is still a great deal to do." In some way Phil felt himself dismissed, and he rejoined Dave and Roger, who were standing by the companionway. All went below, to find the cabin of the _Stormy Petrel_ deserted. "This is a fine cabin," remarked Dave, gazing around. "It's as cozy as can be." "Where is Billy Dill?" asked Phil. "He said he'd go forward and await orders." "Did he say anything about the vessel?" "Said she looked to be a first-class sailer and in prime condition," answered the senator's son. "He was delighted with her." "What do you think of the captain?" "I think I shall like him," returned Dave. "Roger thinks the same." "I don't like that supercargo," went on Phil, lowering his voice. "I am afraid I shall have trouble with him before the trip is over. He doesn't want me to know a thing about what he is doing." A little later Captain Marshall came in and showed them the staterooms they were to occupy--one fair-sized one for Dave and Roger and a smaller one adjoining for Phil. Then he introduced the boys to his first mate, Paul Shepley, and to several others. When he got Phil by himself he asked the youth if the supercargo had said anything about the loading of the bark. "Not a word," answered Phil. "Why do you ask that question?" "We had some trouble just before you came on board. Mr. Van Blott wanted some things done one way and I wanted them another. He thinks he can run things, but I am going to let him understand that I am master here. I tell you this, because I want you to understand how matters are going." "From what you say, I don't think you like Mr. Van Blott," said Phil. "If so, let me say, I don't think I shall like him myself." "Oh, I can get along with him, if he will mind his own business and do what is right," answered the captain of the _Stormy Petrel_. "But he must not attempt to dictate to me, even if he is the supercargo." "Well, I trust we have no trouble," answered Phil, with a sigh. But the trouble, he felt, was already in the air. Late that afternoon their baggage came on board, and the boys set to work to establish themselves on the ship which was to be their home for so many weeks to come. In the meantime Billy Dill reported to the captain, and was assigned to his place in the forecastle as an extra hand at full pay. The old tar was pleased mightily, and the smell of oakum and bilge water appeared to act on him like a tonic. He was one to make friends readily, and soon established himself as a favorite among the foremast hands. In the morning the boys took a final run ashore, purchasing a few things they thought they needed and mailing some long letters home. Coming back to the bark, they caught sight of the supercargo coming, with another man, from a drinking place on a corner. "Humph! that shows he drinks," muttered Phil. "I think most seafaring men do," answered Roger. "Captain Marshall does not." They had to pass the supercargo, who stood on the corner with his back to them, talking to the other man. Just as they went by, they heard Van Blott remark: "Don't worry; this trip is going to pay me big, Bangor, and when I come back you shall have all that is coming to you." This was all the three boys heard, but it set Phil to thinking. "I'd like to know how this trip is going to pay him big," said the shipowner's son. "Father says he gets his regular salary and a small commission." "Perhaps he has some private deal he wishes to put through," suggested Dave. "No; by his agreement he has no right to do any outside work. His time belongs exclusively to the _Stormy Petrel_ and her cargo." They returned to the bark, and quarter of an hour later the supercargo followed, with a flushed face that showed he had been imbibing more liquor than was good for him. "Are you ready to sail?" demanded Captain Marshall, striding up. "All ready," was the surly response, and the supercargo walked down to his stateroom and disappeared. Orders were given to cast off, and in a very few minutes the bark was on her way from San Francisco Bay toward the Golden Gate. It was a perfect day, and by nightfall the harbor was left behind and land became a mere speck in the distance. The first night on the bark passed pleasantly enough for the three chums. At first the quarters on the vessel appeared small to them, but they soon grew accustomed to the change. All slept soundly and they were out on deck very shortly after sunrise. "Well, how do you like life on _Mother Carey's Chicken_?" asked Phil, when they were gazing at the rolling ocean. "_Mother Carey's Chicken_?" repeated Dave, with a puzzled look. "Oh, I know what he means!" cried Roger, with a laugh. "A stormy petrel is a bird that the sailors call a Mother Carey's chicken." "What a name! I think I like _Stormy Petrel_ better," observed Dave. "But, I say, isn't this just grand! A fellow can open his lungs and drink in ozone by the barrel!" "And hardly a cloud in the sky," added Roger. "If this is any criterion, we'll have the finest kind of a trip." "Well, boys, I see you are up on time," came from a little behind them, and now Captain Marshall strode up. "Fine sea this, and a fine breeze, too." "How long will this nice weather last?" asked Roger. "Humph!" The captain humped his shoulders. "No man alive can tell that. A few days, at least, maybe a week or more. But, sooner or later, we'll pay up for it. The finer the weather, the bigger the storm to follow." "I shouldn't mind an ordinary storm," observed Dave. "But I don't want to be wrecked." "No danger of that, lad. The _Stormy Petrel_ can outride any storm likely to blow in these parts. She is one of the best vessels I ever sailed in--a man couldn't ask for a better." "How much of a crew have you, Captain Marshall?" asked Phil. "I have sixteen men, all told, besides the tar you brought along." The brow of the shipmaster wrinkled slightly. "They are all pretty fair men, too, excepting four, and those four Mr. Van Blott brought in." "What's the trouble with the four?" "They drink, and they don't mind as they should." Captain Marshall turned to Phil. "After breakfast, I'd like to talk to you on business in the cabin," he added. This was a hint that Dave and Roger were not desired, and, accordingly, after the meal they left Phil and the captain alone. "I've been studying your father's instructions to me," said Captain Marshall to Phil. "As I view it, you are to be a sort of assistant to Mr. Van Blott." "If he will allow it." "And if he won't?" The captain gazed at Phil sharply. "Then, perhaps, I'll do something on my own account." "Are you going to keep your eye on him?" "Yes, but you need not tell him so." "Don't worry--I shan't open my mouth, Philip. I am glad to hear of this, for, I tell you privately, Van Blott needs watching. He is a sly dog, and I am satisfied in my own mind that he has something up his sleeve." "Do you know a man named Bangor in San Francisco? He was with Mr. Van Blott just before we sailed." "Ah! I thought so! Yes, I know him, and his reputation among shippers is none of the best. He used to be a supercargo for the Donaldson-Munroe Company, but they discharged him for some crooked work. What were he and Van Blott doing?" Phil told of what he had overheard. "That confirms my idea exactly!" cried the captain of the _Stormy Petrel_. "There is something in the wind. You must watch out, by all means, and I'll do the same. This man must not be allowed to do anything wrong, if we can possibly prevent it." CHAPTER XIX DAYS ON THE OCEAN The weather remained fine for a full week, and with favoring winds the _Stormy Petrel_ bowled along merrily on her course. The ocean rolled lazily in the warm sunshine, a few birds circled about the ship, and once they passed a steamer coming from the Hawaiian Islands, and a schooner from Manila, and that was all. "Shall we stop at Honolulu?" asked Roger, of the captain. "No. I thought of doing so at first, but now I shall make no stops until we get to Christmas Island, and from there we will go direct to Cavasa and then to Sobago. What we do after that will depend largely on what is done about a cargo." So far none of the boys had experienced any seasickness, and they congratulated themselves on their escape, but Billy Dill put a little damper on their ardor. "This ain't no weather to judge by," was his comment. "Wait till we get some cross-winds and the ships starts to roll. Maybe then ye won't be so settled in the stomach." The few days on the ocean had done the old tar a world of good. His eyes were brighter and he was physically in the best of health once more. His mind, too, was clearer, and one day he announced to Dave that he had something to tell. "I ain't quite sure as I have the exact straight on 't," he began. "A little on 't is still like a dream. But I know enough to make a putty straight story," and then he told his tale. A good portion of it was not unlike the story of many sailors. When very young, he had had a strong desire to go to sea, and at his first opportunity had shipped as a cabin boy. From cabin boy he had become a foremast hand, and had been in such service more years than he could count. He had visited nearly every portion of the globe, and had been wrecked twice, once off the coast of Africa and once while trying to round Cape Horn. Three years before had found him at Sydney, Australia, looking for a chance to ship. While down among the wharves, he had discovered a tramp vessel, the _Mary Sacord_, bound for Cavasa and other islands in the South Seas, and had signed articles for a year's cruise. The captain proved to be a brute, and there was fighting on the vessel from the time she left Sydney until Cavasa was reached. There, at the main seaport, Billy Dill went ashore and refused to go aboard again. The captain of the _Mary Sacord_ was very angry over the refusal of the seaman to continue on the trip, and threatened Dill with imprisonment, and even had the old tar arrested. But, at this juncture, two men came forward and aided the sailor in his trouble, and, as a consequence, Billy Dill was set free and the vessel went on her way without him. One of the men who had helped Billy Dill was Dunston Porter and the other was Samuel Lemington. They were both Americans and fairly well-to-do. At first, they did not tell the old sailor much about their business, but they asked him if he wished to work for them, and he said he was willing, and they offered him thirty dollars a month and all his expenses. The two Americans, so the tar discovered later, were after a treasure of precious stones, said upon good authority to have been hidden years before in the mountains by a former cannibal king of Cavasa and some other South Sea islands. The three journeyed into the interior of the island and spent months in looking for the treasure, but without success. Then came an earthquake and the volcano in the center of the island began to grow active, and all three had to flee to the coast in order to escape destruction. It was on this treasure hunt that Billy Dill heard, through Dunston Porter, about the lost child that had been carried off by a nurse who was not mentally sound, although usually good-hearted. Dunston Porter had not said very much about the matter, for it seemed to hurt him a great deal--so much, in fact, that the old sailor did not think it best to ask for the particulars. But he knew one thing, that, try his best, Dunston Porter could not learn what had become of the woman and the little one, and he was half inclined to believe that both were dead. "Well, did he say that the child was his son?" asked Dave, with deep interest. "No, it was some relative of his, I think. I don't believe Dunston Porter was married." "When you came back to the coast, what did this Mr. Porter do?" "He and Mr. Lemington stayed in the town, trying to make up their minds as to what they'd do next. I got a chance to ship, and, as they didn't seem to want me any more, I sailed away, and then I did as I've told you before." This was practically all the information Billy Dill could give concerning Dunston Porter and the missing child, although he told much more concerning the treasure hunt, and of several fights with the natives of the interior. He said the natives were a bad lot, and he wanted no more to do with them than was absolutely necessary. "How old should you judge this Dunston Porter to be?" asked Dave. "Forty to forty-five years old, my lad." "Did he ever tell you where he came from?" "Not exactly. But he was an American, and he knew a good bit about San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, and I remember he once told about hunting in the Maine woods and in the Adirondacks." "He didn't say a word about coming back to the United States?" "Not that I can remember." With this information Dave had to be content. The story had been a strain on Billy Dill, and afterward he complained of a headache and of feeling dizzy. But a good night's rest restored him completely. The sailor was at all times delighted to instruct the boys in the art of seamanship, and under his tutelage they learned rapidly, so that any of them could go aloft and make or take in sail whenever required. He also taught them how to make knots of various kinds, and many other things useful on board a ship. In the meantime Captain Marshall allowed them to read his works on navigation, and gave them a few lessons in steering, and in the use of the compass, sextant, and other nautical instruments. "We'll be full-fledged sailors before this voyage is over," remarked Roger to his chums. "I declare, I almost feel as if I could handle a small ship already." "Maybe you could, on the Leming River," rejoined Phil. "But when it came to a big storm on the Pacific, I rather believe you'd find it a different story." So far, Phil had had but little to do with the supercargo, but now he asked the man if he could look over the books. Jasper Van Blott agreed, but the scowl on his face showed plainly that the move was not to his liking. Phil went over the accounts at his leisure, but could find nothing wrong in them. There were a few entries that looked odd, but the supercargo was ready with explanations concerning them. "Well, have you found anything wrong?" questioned Dave, after Phil had spent three days over the books. "Nothing much, Dave," was the answer from the shipowner's son. "The supercargo isn't very friendly, I notice." "Oh, he hates it, that I am going on this trip," answered Phil. There seemed to be but one man on the ship with whom the supercargo was thoroughly friendly, and that was Paul Shepley, the first mate. The pair were together a large part of the time, and their conversation was frequently an animated one. "I can't get it out of my head that those two are working together over something," said Dave. "Why, they are as thick as bees in a sugar barrel." "I've noticed that, too," came from Roger. "Perhaps they are hatching up some mischief." On the following day the weather became more unsettled, and occasionally the clouds showed themselves above the horizon. Captain Marshall gave orders to his mate that a strict watch should be kept for a blow. "I guess we are in for it, now!" cried Dave, that afternoon. "It is much rougher than it has yet been." "I know I am in for it," answered Roger. His face was white, and wore a troubled look. "What's the matter, seasick?" "I--I fancy so. My head spins like a top and my stomach is starting to do the same." "Better go below, lad," said Captain Marshall, coming up. "It won't do you any good to remain on deck." Roger shuffled off to the companionway, and Dave went after him. The senator's son was growing worse every minute, and it was not long before Phil announced that he also felt sick. Both went to their staterooms, and Dave did what he could to relieve their distress. "If the old tub would only stop for a minute--just one minute!" groaned Roger. "That's what I say," responded Phil. "Oh, dear! I'd give a hundred dollars to be on shore again!" "I think I'd make it a thousand," groaned the senator's son. "Why, Dave, don't you feel it at all?" "Well, I feel a little strange," answered the country boy, but he did not add that it was because he had to stand by and assist his friends. He made them as comfortable as possible, and then rushed to the deck, to get some fresh air and to get the matter off his mind. A storm was certainly brewing, and Dave wondered how soon it would strike the _Stormy Petrel_ and how long it would last. The black clouds were piling up in the sky and the wind came in unsteady puffs. Below, the clear, blue water had turned to a dark green. The first mate was in charge of the deck and, so far, he had given no orders to shorten sail. Ever and anon a sail would crack in the wind and the bark would give a plunge in the sea. Dave walked forward to where Billy Dill stood by the rail, watching the sky anxiously. "This looks stormy, doesn't it?" questioned the youth. "Stormy? Great dogfish! I should allow as how it did, lad. We're in for a blow, an' a big one, too." "Then isn't it about time to take in sail?" "I should say it was." "Then why doesn't the mate do so?" At this question the old tar shrugged his shoulders. "Reckon he wants to take the benefit o' all the breeze he can," he answered. "But it ain't the best thing to do--not to my way o' reasonin'. If he ain't keerful, we may lose a topmast, or more." "I suppose you don't dare to say anything to him?" "No. He's in charge, an' thet's all there is to it." The storm continued to approach, and now several of the sailors looked anxiously at the first mate. He was evidently in a savage mood, and paid no attention to them. "Unless he does sumthin' soon, we'll lose a stick, sure," said Billy Dill to Dave, in a low tone. "I never saw sech a contrary mate in my life!" "Perhaps I had better speak to Captain Marshall," suggested the country youth. "I wish ye would--it would be safer. But don't let Shepley know it--or he'll be as mad as a hornet at ye," added the old tar. Leaving the bow, Dave hurried to the stern and toward the companionway. Here he almost ran headlong into the first mate. "Hi! look where you are going!" ejaculated the man, roughly. "Have you no manners?" "Excuse me," returned Dave. "Don't you think we are having a pretty big blow, sir?" he added. "Oh, this won't amount to much," grumbled Paul Shepley. "Nothing to get scared about." Dave said nothing to this. He hurried below, and a moment later stood in front of Captain Marshall's stateroom door. The master of the _Stormy Petrel_ was taking a nap, but at the boy's knock roused up instantly. CHAPTER XX CAUGHT IN A STORM "Who is there?" "Captain Marshall, can I speak to you a moment?" "Oh, so it is you, Porter! What do you want?" "There seems to be a big storm coming up, and I thought I had better tell you about it." "Why--er--isn't Mr. Shepley on deck?" "Yes, sir--but I thought I had better tell you, anyway," went on Dave. "Mr. Shepley knows what to do," answered the captain, rather shortly. He did not fancy having his much-needed nap disturbed. "I suppose that is true, sir--but some of the sailors are getting very anxious. I don't care to mention their names, but they think some sail ought to be taken in." The master of the _Stormy Petrel_ arose and stretched himself. Then he put on the shoes he had dropped on lying down, and came out into the cabin. He gave one look at the barometer and his sleepiness vanished. "I should say there was a storm coming!" he exclaimed, and ran for the companionway. He was soon on deck, and cast an anxious eye around. "Mr. Shepley, why haven't you shortened sail?" he demanded, in a low but sharp voice. "I didn't think it necessary, just yet," was the cool response. "I don't agree with you," returned the master of the bark, shortly, and then, without delay, gave orders to take in fully half the sails, while the crew were ordered to remain in readiness to stow away still more of the canvas at a moment's notice. The sailors, for the most part, worked with a will, although there were several laggards, for laziness among certain classes of men is not confined to the land alone. Captain Marshall was angry, and he did not hesitate to let the first mate know it. "There is no sense in taking too many risks," he remarked, after his orders had been obeyed. "That storm is coming, as sure as fate." "I wanted to make as much headway as possible before it struck us," grumbled Shepley. "We haven't suffered any." "No, but we might have lost a topmast or a topsail. After this, you will please be a little more careful." There was no time to argue the matter, for a little later the storm began in earnest. All of the sails were taken in but the fore sheet, and this was reefed down, allowing just enough canvas to fly to keep the bark before the wind. The breeze was turning to half a gale, and from a distance came the rumble of thunder. Then the sky grew still blacker and a flash of lightning illuminated the angry waters. Dave had followed Captain Marshall on deck, but now he went below once more, to learn how Phil and Roger were faring. He found them both out in the cabin, having come from their staterooms in alarm. "Is it very bad outside?" questioned the senator's son. "Not yet, but I am afraid it is going to be," was Dave's reply. "Phew, that certainly means business!" burst out Roger, as another flash of lightning was followed by a heavy peal of thunder. "I hope the ship weathers it all right." "Captain Marshall is on deck, and he knows what he is doing," answered Dave. "I am glad I called him up," he added. "Oh, so you called him up, did you?" came in a voice from the cabin doorway, and, turning, Dave beheld Paul Shepley there. The mate had come below to get his raincoat. "Yes, I did," answered the country boy, boldly. Now that the truth was out, he did not mean to mince matters. "Thought you knew more about running a ship than I did, eh?" "I thought it was time to take in sail--and so did the captain." "Humph! This blow isn't going to kill anybody, and we want to take all the advantage of the wind that we can. We are expected to make a quick trip, but we can't do it if we are going to haul down sail all the time." "I am sure Captain Marshall will do what is right," said Phil. "Really?" sneered the mate. "I didn't ask you to put in your oar." "I know you didn't--but my father owns the vessel, and I shall stand by Captain Marshall and by my friend, Dave Porter." "Oh, so it's something of a plot against me, eh?" snorted the mate, more angry than ever. "Well, don't let it go too far." And he turned into his own room, banging the door after him. A minute later he came out, wearing his raincoat, and hurried out on deck once more. "He's a real nice man, I don't think," was Roger's comment. "My, how he would lord it over us, if he dared!" "He is certainly sore," said Phil. "I must say, in a way, he and the supercargo are a team. When I get a chance, I am going to write to father and let him know exactly the sort of fellows they are." The boys felt little like discussing the subject further just then, for the storm had now burst over the vessel in all of its mad fury. The wind was whistling through the rigging, making the masts and yards creak and groan, and the rain came down in sheets, sweeping the decks by the bucketful. It was with difficulty that the _Stormy Petrel_ could be kept before the wind. The waves were running like so many big hills, with the bark first on a crest and then down in a valley between. The sky was almost black, lit up occasionally by flashes of lightning that were blinding. "We'll go to the bottom, sure!" groaned Roger, for at least the tenth time. "I'd rather be at Oak Hall any day than in such a storm as this." He was still seasick, but the storm made him forget the ailment for the time being; and what was true of the senator's son in this regard was likewise true of Phil. "I think I'll take another look on deck," said Dave, as the bark gave a pitch that sent them all against a partition. "Take care that you don't fall overboard," returned Phil. "I'll be on my guard, never fear." Putting on his raincoat, the country boy made his way cautiously up the companionway. The moment he stuck his head into the open he realized that it was blowing "great guns," and more. The rain dashed violently into his face, drenching him completely. "This is no place for you, lad!" bellowed Captain Marshall, trying to make himself heard above the wind. "Better go below again." "I'll be careful," pleaded Dave. "I love to watch a storm--I always did, when I was on the farm. I never thought of hiding, no matter how hard it thundered or lightened." The master of the bark gazed for a second at him in admiration. "Well, I was the same," he said. "But be careful, and don't go close to the rail." [Illustration: Another flash lit up the scene.--_Page 179._] Dave remained in the vicinity of the cabin. When another flash lit up the scene, he saw Billy Dill near the bow, stowing away some rope in the most unconcerned fashion possible. The old tar was in his element, and said afterward that the storm had done him more good than gallons of medicine would have accomplished. "Saterated me with salt brine, an' thet's wot I needed," were his words. "How do you like it, now?" asked Captain Marshall, coming up a little later, while there was something of a lull. "I don't mind it," answered Dave, smiling. "It's a little excitement, and that is what I like." "I am thankful that you called me when you did." "I did what I thought was best, sir. But I reckon it has put me into a hole with your first mate." "Why, did you tell him anything?" "No, but he overheard me telling the other boys that I had called you. He didn't say much, but he showed that he was angry." "Humph! Well, don't you mind, Porter. It was the right thing to do. Shepley is a good sailor, but once in a while he takes risks that I don't like. If he troubles you about this, let me know, do you hear?" "Yes, sir; but I am willing to fight my own battles." "I don't doubt it, for you are gritty, I can see that. Nevertheless, you let me know." "How long do you suppose this storm will last?" "There is no telling, perhaps twenty-four hours and maybe two or three days. We are paying up for that nice weather we had," concluded the captain. Finding he could do nothing on deck, and that he was getting wet through, Dave went below and to his stateroom. He found Roger and Phil lying down as before, and as miserable as ever. A little later supper was announced, but Dave had to eat alone, for neither the captain nor the mate came to join in the repast. It was a meal under difficulties, and Dave did not remain at the table long. He asked Roger and Phil if they wanted anything, but both declined. "Why, the very idea of anything to eat makes me sicker than ever," declared the senator's son. The storm did not abate during the evening, and the three boys spent rather a dismal time of it in the cabin and the staterooms. As night came on, none of them felt like going to bed, although advised to do so by Captain Marshall. "We have seen the worst of the blow," said the master of the _Stormy Petrel_, coming down about ten o'clock. It was not until morning that Dave fell into a troubled doze, from which he did not awaken until Roger shook him. "Hello! I went to sleep, after all!" cried the country boy. "What time is it?" "About seven o'clock, Dave. There is something unusual going on on deck," continued the senator's son. "What is it?" "I don't know, but I am going up to see, and so is Phil." The three were soon ready, and crawled up the companionway and out on the rain-drenched and slippery deck. "We must man the pumps," they heard Captain Marshall cry. "And, Scader, report as soon as you can." "Aye, aye, sir!" came from Scader, who was the ship's carpenter. "But I am afraid, sir, it's a bad leak to get at," he added. "Have we sprung a leak?" cried Phil. "We have," answered the captain. His face wore a serious look, and the boys saw that he was much troubled. The sailors were at the pumps, and worked away with a will. Roger and Phil still felt too weak to take part, but Dave leaped to Billy Dill's side and worked as hard as any of the foremast hands. Leaving the ship in charge of the first mate, Captain Marshall went below, to learn what the ship's carpenter might have to say about the condition of affairs. "We are bringing up a good deal of water, are we not?" asked Dave of Billy Dill. "You have it right, lad; more water nor I care to see," answered the old tar. "That means the leak is a bad one, eh?" "Yes, some of the ship's seams must be wide open." "Will it sink us?" "I can't tell anything more about that than you, Dave. We must hope for the best," replied Billy Dill. CHAPTER XXI CAVASA ISLAND AT LAST Phil and Roger heard the conversation between Dave and the old sailor, and it worried them so much that they hurried below, to learn what might be going on. "We must shift that part of the cargo first," came from the ship's carpenter. "Then, I think, I can do something, but I am not sure." Captain Marshall at once ordered the cargo shifted as desired. This did not please the supercargo, but the master of the vessel paid no attention to Van Blott's objections. "It is a question of keeping the ship afloat, Mr. Van Blott," said he, coldly. "If necessary, I'll have the whole cargo heaved overboard." "But, sir----" commenced the supercargo. "I can't talk about it now. My duty is to save the ship. Do you want to go to the bottom of the ocean?" And Captain Marshall spoke in such a decided way that Jasper Van Blott sneaked off and said no more for the time being. A portion of the crew came below, and not without difficulty a number of heavy boxes and casks were shifted. Then the ship's carpenter and an assistant went to work to tighten up the seams, through which the water of the ocean was spurting furiously. It was a difficult and dangerous task, and it lasted the best part of three hours. But, at last, the workers got the better of the elements, and then the water went down steadily in the ship's well, as the men at the pumps continued their labors. "Will the ship pull through?" asked Phil, of the captain. "Yes, my lad, I think we are safe now--unless the blow makes us open some more seams." After the repairs below had been made and the alarm had passed, Captain Marshall called the first mate to his side. "I thought you said those seams were all right when we were at the dock at San Francisco," he began. "They looked all right," mumbled Paul Shepley. "You couldn't have examined them very closely." "I did." "Humph! After this I had better look to things myself," was the captain's comment, and he moved away. A little later the supercargo and the first mate met in the waist. The storm was now dying down rapidly, and it looked as if the sun would soon break through the clouds. "Well, I see you had another run-in with the old man," remarked Van Blott. "So did you." "You mean about the cargo?" "Of course." "Well, I didn't want him to nose around too much," and the supercargo grinned. "Afraid he might run across some of that private stuff?" "Hush! Somebody might hear you, Shepley. What was your row about?" "He laid the opening of the seams on my shoulders--said I didn't inspect things properly at San Francisco." "He seems to be getting harder than ever on us." "That's it, and I am done, after this trip," growled the first mate. "So am I--if I can make my little pile." "That's what I mean. Van Blott, we must do it, too." "I expect to, but it isn't going to be so easy as we thought. The owner of the ship has sent his son to watch me, and he and those other lads are rather clever." "Pooh! you are not afraid of those boys, are you?" "It isn't that. I'm afraid they'll discover something and take the news to the old man." Here the talk had to come to an end, and the two men separated, promising to meet in the evening. That they had some scheme they wished to work, there could not be the slightest doubt. By nightfall the storm was at an end, and the sun set in a perfect blaze of glory. Of the gale only a stiff breeze remained, and Captain Marshall lost no time in setting his sails as before. All the loose seams had been mended and the _Stormy Petrel_ now took in no more water than was usual with her, and is usual with ordinary sea-going craft. "I am glad that is over," remarked Phil, the next day, after a fair night's sleep. "So am I, and I never want to experience another such storm," came from Roger. "How do you both feel?" asked Dave. "My seasickness is gone, thank goodness," answered Phil. "Ditto here," said the senator's son. "Dave, you are a lucky dog, to keep so well," he added, a bit enviously. "Perhaps it will be my turn next time, Roger." After that the _Stormy Petrel_ continued on her course for many days with but little out of the ordinary happening. Once or twice the boys had some sharp words with the first mate, and Phil had a "tiff" with the supercargo, but nothing like an open quarrel ensued. Yet the flames were smoldering, ready to break out at the first opportunity. "Those two men hate us worse than poison," said Dave, one day. "I can see it plainly." "That supercargo has it in for me," replied Phil. "I wish I could let my father know just how he is acting. He'd soon lose his situation." They were now near the equator, and the weather was very warm, and would have been unendurably hot, had it not been for the constant breeze that was blowing. Nobody cared to do much in such an atmosphere, and the three boys were content to sit around or loll in hammocks suspended in shady portions of the deck. The broiling sun started the tar from the seams, and the odor therefrom was almost overpowering. "I wish we had an ice-making machine on board," said Roger, as he fanned himself. They had taken ice along, but the supply was running low, and he could not get quite as much as he desired. "Never mind, we'll have a run ashore soon," said Dave. "That will be something of a change." He had in mind the stop at Christmas Island, a small body of land belonging to England and lying in the Pacific, close to the equator. The island was sighted the next day, and they made a landing and roamed around for three hours, while some fresh water and other things were taken on board. Then, by nightfall, the bow of the _Stormy Petrel_ was once more headed for the southwestward. "Now we are in southern seas," cried Dave, one day, after the equator had been left behind. "I suppose we'll begin to sight some of the numerous islands before long." "I shan't mind sighting the islands, but I don't want to run on some hidden reef," returned Roger. "The charts show a great number of reefs in this portion of the ocean." Once more the days slipped by. It was fearfully hot, and the boys did not move, excepting when it was absolutely necessary. Occasionally they would sit at the bow and Billy Dill would tell them stories of the sea and of sights in foreign lands. He now said that he felt as of old. "I was born for the sea," he observed. "It was a mistake for me to travel all the way across land to Oakdale, an' I reckon I got punished fer it." "I am sorry you suffered, but I am glad I had the chance to meet you," answered Dave. "It may mean a great deal to me, you know." "Thet's true, Dave. But take my advice an' don't depend upon it too much. I'd hate awfully to see ye disapp'inted." "Yes--but I wish we were at Cavasa Island," said the country boy, wistfully. The nearer the ship drew to the island mentioned, the more anxious did he become, although he did his best to conceal his feelings. But Phil and Roger understood. "I sincerely hope Dave isn't disappointed," said the senator's son, when he and Phil chanced to be alone. "Think of coming such a distance as this on a wild-goose chase!" "Well, it was the only thing to do," answered the son of the bark owner. "You and I would have done the same." "I don't doubt it. But, look at it from every point of view, it is an odd situation. I only hope this Dunston Porter is still at Cavasa Island, or in that vicinity." At last came the day when Captain Marshall called the boys to him and said they might sight Cavasa Island inside of the next twenty-four hours. "You'll know the island at a glance," said he. "Approaching it from this side, it looks exactly like a long loaf of bread with a hump in the middle. The hump is the old volcano. The town at which we are to stop is located at the western extremity of the island. There is where the real shipping is done. There is a town at the eastern end, but the harbor is poor, and most of the inhabitants are natives." "And what of the people where we are to stop?" asked Dave. "About one-half are natives and the others a mixture of Americans and Europeans. The harbor there is a very good one indeed, and that is why it is so popular." As they neared Cavasa Island, both the supercargo and the first mate appeared to grow more than ordinarily anxious, and talked together by the half-hour. Dave noticed this and so did the others. "They have something in mind," said the country boy to Phil. "You'll surely have to be on guard when the cargo for Tolao is taken ashore." The next day the boys kept on the lookout, having borrowed Captain Marshall's best glass. About noon Roger uttered a loud cry: "I see something! It must be the island!" "Let me look!" exclaimed Dave, and took the glass. "Yes, it is Cavasa Island!" he went on, "for it looks exactly as the captain said." Inside of an hour they could see Cavasa Island quite plainly, and by nightfall they were ready to enter the harbor. But this was not to be accomplished in the dark, and so they had to remain outside until daybreak, impatient as Dave was to get ashore. "What an odd collection of ships!" said Phil, as the _Stormy Petrel_ made her way into the harbor. "They must have come from all parts of the world!" And this remark was largely true. It had been arranged that Dave and Billy Dill should go ashore at the first opportunity, and Roger was to go with them. "I am sorry I can't go," said Phil, to Dave. "But, you understand how it is," and he jerked his thumb in the direction of the supercargo, who was writing in one of his books. "Yes, I understand, Phil," answered Dave. "I hope you don't have any trouble." The shipping of Tolao was very much huddled together, and the boys had to depend upon Billy Dill to pilot them to the main thoroughfare of the town. The old sailor declared that the place had changed but little since his last visit, and said he would take them directly to the hotel at which Dunston Porter had been in the habit of stopping. "All right," said Dave. "You can't get there any too quick for me," and they walked on, with the heart of the country boy beating as it had seldom beat before. To him, his whole future seemed to rest upon what he might learn in the next few hours. CHAPTER XXII ABOUT SOME MISSING MEN The hotel proved to be a one-story building of Spanish architecture, with numerous small windows and a rather low door. It was presided over by a round-faced Englishman, who stared at Billy Dill curiously when the old tar presented himself. "Do you remember me, Mr. Chadsey?" asked the sailor. "I do," was the answer. "You were here some years ago. But I cannot recall your name." "Billy Dill." "Oh, yes, yes; you were with Mr. Porter and Mr. Lemington," returned the hotel-keeper. "That's it. I am looking for Mr. Porter now." "Sorry, but he isn't here." "Isn't here?" cried Dave, and his heart sank. "Isn't he in town at all?" "No, he left the island a couple of months ago." "And where did he go to?" "I don't know. He said something about going to Sobago Island and something about going to Australia, but where he really did go to, I have not learned." "This young man is very much interested in meeting Mr. Porter," explained Billy Dill. "His name is Porter, too, and I reckon they are related. Have you any idea where we can find out where Dunston Porter went?" "Might find out at the shipping offices." "Why, of course!" exclaimed Dave. "Let us go to the different offices at once." Billy Dill was willing, and without loss of time led the way to the street upon which the majority of the shipping of Cavasa Island was booked. The offices were mostly small and rather dirty, and around them hung sailors and other men, of various nationalities, and some of them far from prepossessing in their general appearance. They visited two offices without success, and then came to a place located on a corner, with doors on both streets. "Hello!" cried Roger. "There is Mr. Van Blott just ahead of us! Is this the shipping firm with which Mr. Lawrence does business?" "I don't think it is," answered Billy Dill. "Then what is he doing here?" "Must have a little business of his own," said Dave. "But I don't care. Come along." Just then he was thinking only of his personal affairs. They entered the office, which reeked of tobacco smoke and the smell of rum. In the rear was another office, and they were just in time to see the supercargo go into this, shutting a partition door behind him. Looking around, Dave saw a clerk at a corner desk looking over some papers with an elderly German. "I will be at liberty in a few minutes," said the clerk, in broken English. "Please to take seats," and he pointed to a couple of low benches set against the wall and the partition. Billy Dill sat down on the bench along the wall and Dave and Roger upon that next to the partition, which was not over seven feet in height. Save for the rattling of the papers at the corner desk the office was very quiet, and the boys readily heard the talk going on behind the partition. "So you really have some goots on board?" came in a somewhat German voice. "I vos afraid you vould not bring any." "Didn't I say I'd bring them, Baumann?" returned Jasper Van Blott. "I've got them, and the only question is, how am I to get them here, and when are you going to pay me?" "I pay so soon as de goots is here," said the German shipping agent. "I not pay a dollar before." "But you will send your men down to the dock?" "Oh, yes, I do dot. Vot dime you vonts dem, hey?" "To-morrow morning at eight o'clock, sharp. Tell them to watch me, and when I wave my handkerchief they can come forward and get the goods." "How many poxes vos dere?" "Sixteen, all told. You want to be careful and caution your men. I don't want Captain Marshall to learn what I am----" The boys heard no more, for at this juncture the clerk came forward, having finished his work at the corner desk. "What can I do for you?" he asked, blandly. "I am looking for a man who is supposed to have left Cavasa Island by steamer, or sailboat, about two months ago," said Dave. "His name is Dunston Porter. Can you tell me if he shipped from here?" The clerk looked over a book he drew from a desk. "I see nothing of the name," he said, after a pause. "You would have the name, if he had taken passage from here?" questioned Roger. The clerk nodded. Then, when he found that he could do nothing more for them, he dropped into an easy chair, lit a black-looking cigar and took up a newspaper. "There is one more shipping office," said Billy Dill, as he led the way to the street. "We'll go there." "Dave, did you hear that talk in the back room?" questioned the senator's son, as they were hurrying down the street. "I did." "What do you think of it?" "I think the supercargo is up to some game, and we must tell Phil and Captain Marshall." "That's just my idea, too, Dave. Let me see, the name of the firm was Baumann & Feltmuller, wasn't it?" "Yes." They were soon at the last of the shipping offices. Here the clerk could scarcely talk English, and they had to call in the services of a gentleman who chanced to be present and who could speak the native tongue. A booking list was consulted, and it was announced that Dunston Porter had taken passage for Nanpi, on Sobago Island, just six weeks before. "Six weeks!" cried Dave. "I hope he is there still. Now, how can I communicate with him, Roger?" "You can send him a letter," answered Roger. "But you must remember that the _Stormy Petrel_ is going to Nanpi as soon as her cargo for this town is unloaded." From the shipping clerk they learned that Dunston Porter had gone to Sobago alone--that is, without his partner, Mr. Lemington. A further searching into the shipping lists revealed the fact that the partner had sailed for Australia seven weeks past. "I reckon they dissolved partnership," observed Billy Dill, "an' one went his way, an' tudder the other way. An' I likewise guess they didn't git thet treasure." There was now nothing to do but to return to the bark, and this they did without delay. The boys found that Captain Marshall had gone ashore on business, and so called Phil aside and related to him what had been heard in the office of Baumann & Feltmuller. "You are right--there is something in the wind," said the shipowner's son. "I wish the captain was here, so I could consult with him." "He'll be back soon, won't he?" questioned Roger. "He said he might not be back until late this evening." Phil was interested in what Dave had to tell about Dunston Porter, and said he would urge the captain of the _Stormy Petrel_ to set sail for Nanpi at the earliest possible moment. It was not until ten o'clock that Jasper Van Blott came back to the bark. He immediately walked up to the first mate and the pair engaged in conversation for some time. Then the supercargo went to bed, and Roger and Dave did the same. Phil sat up, reading and awaiting the captain's return. It was almost seven o'clock when the country boy sprang up and awakened the senator's son. Both hurried into their clothes and then into the cabin, where they met Phil, whose face was full of worry. "What's the matter?" asked both. "Captain Marshall hasn't come back yet." "Hasn't come back?" ejaculated Dave. "Do you mean to say he stayed away all night?" "Exactly; and I don't know what to make of it." "Did he say he might remain away?" came from Roger. "No." "Where did he go?" "I don't know, and neither does Mr. Shepley." "What will you do about----" began Dave, and cut himself short, as Jasper Van Blott came into the cabin. "Mr. Van Blott, do you know anything about the captain?" questioned Phil. "I do not," was the short reply. "It is queer that he should stay away all night." "Oh, captains like to have good times occasionally," continued the supercargo, with a sickly grin. "If you mean by that, that Captain Marshall went off to have a good time, as you put it, I do not think so," returned Phil, coldly. "He is not that sort." "Perhaps you know him better than I do," flared up the supercargo. "I know that he is a man who sticks to his duty, Mr. Van Blott. Something has gone wrong, or he would be back." "As you please." The supercargo paused. "Well, it doesn't matter much," he continued. "I know what to do, and I am going ahead without waiting for him." "You mean about unloading?" "Yes." "Would it not be better to wait until Captain Marshall returns?" "No, it would only be a waste of time." No more was said just then, and a few minutes later breakfast was announced. As soon as it was over, Phil called his chums aside. "I wish you'd do me a favor," he whispered. "Go ashore and try to hunt up the captain. He must be around somewhere. I will try to hold the supercargo back as much as I can." Dave and the senator's son were willing, and in less than ten minutes were on the dock and moving for the streets beyond. "Where are those boys going?" asked Jasper Van Blott, coming up to Phil. "They are going to look for Captain Marshall." "Humph!" muttered the supercargo, and said no more. "I think we had better wait until the captain returns," went on Phil. "I am not going to wait," snapped Van Blott. "I am going to get that cargo ashore as quickly as it can be done." And fifteen minutes later the hatches were opened and the work of getting out the boxes, barrels, and casks began. CHAPTER XXIII IN WHICH THE SUPERCARGO IS CORNERED From one street corner Dave and Roger hurried to another, looking in every direction for some sign of Captain Marshall. This hunt they kept up for the best part of half an hour, but without success. "He is certainly nowhere in this vicinity," said the senator's son. "I wonder where he can be keeping himself." They walked on more slowly, and at the entrance to a lane came to another halt. Then, chancing to look into the lane, Dave uttered a short cry: "There he is!" Coming along the lane was Captain Marshall. His step was an uncertain one, and he pitched from side to side. As the two boys ran forward, the master of the _Stormy Petrel_ gave a lurch and landed on some old boxes with a crash. "Oh, Dave, can this be possible!" murmured Roger. "I did not think the captain would do it." "Let us help him to the ship," answered Dave. He was as much shocked as his companion, and he could not help but think of what the supercargo had said. "Oh, is it you, boys?" mumbled the captain, as he espied them. "I want to--to get back to the ship." "We'll help you," said Dave. "I've had an awful night--my mind is in a perfect whirl," went on the master of the _Stormy Petrel_. "We'll soon have you safe on the bark," put in Roger. The two assisted the captain to his feet. His eyes had a peculiar stare in them. Suddenly he clapped his hand to his pocket. "Funny!" he muttered. "Very funny! I've got my watch! And I've got my money, too!" "Did you think they were gone?" queried Dave. "Well, I shouldn't be--be surprised. I thought they did it to rob me. What time is it? Oh, but I am weak in the legs, boys!" "It is about eight o'clock." "In the morning?" "Yes." "Then I must get back to the _Stormy Petrel_ by all means. I--how did you come to find me?" "We were out looking for you," answered Roger. "We were alarmed, and so was Phil, because you didn't come back last night." "I--I meant to come back. Oh, how my head spins! I wish I had a drink of water! That coffee they dosed me with was vile." "Coffee they dosed you with?" queried Dave. "Were you drugged?" "I must have been, lad. I met some men, and they wanted me to drink with them. I refused. Then they offered me some coffee and native cakes, and, to be sociable, I took the stuff. Directly afterward I began to grow sleepy, and then I didn't know a thing until I woke up at the end of that lane awhile ago." "Did you know the men?" asked Roger. "I did not, but they pretended to know me. It's queer they didn't rob me. I wonder why they drugged me?" "I don't know," answered Dave, "unless----" "Unless what?" "I shouldn't like to say, Captain Marshall. But I'll tell you one thing, you are wanted on board of the _Stormy Petrel_ at once." "Who wants me?" "Phil Lawrence. We have learned something about Mr. Van Blott which we think you ought to know. But you must get your head cleared up, first of all." They walked the captain back to the bark, and, by accident more than design, managed to get the skipper on board without the supercargo seeing the party. Then they called Phil into the cabin, and in the meantime got the captain some fresh water and some other things they fancied might do him good. They were glad to note that his dizziness was fast leaving him. "This looks suspicious to me," said Captain Marshall, after he had heard what the boys had to relate. "But I cannot accuse Van Blott of having me drugged, as I have no proof of it. I do not know who those men were, and, more than likely, they will keep themselves out of sight." "That is true," returned Phil. "But you can help me regarding this stuff to be taken away by Baumann & Feltmuller, can't you?" "Certainly, Phil. I want to know all about that stuff before it leaves this ship. Have you the records of the goods?" "No, sir; Mr. Van Blott has locked the books in the safe." "Then, if I were you, as your father's representative, I should demand to see the records. I will back you up." "If you will back me up, I'll go to him at once. He is already getting the goods out of the hold." "I'll put a stop to that," answered the captain. He was still feeble in the legs, but managed to climb to the deck, and walked to where the supercargo and the first mate were directing the unloading of a portion of the cargo. "Hello, so you are back!" exclaimed the supercargo, and his face paled a little. "I am," returned the captain, coldly. "Mr. Shepley, did you give orders to unload?" he went on, turning to the mate. "I--I--er--did," stammered the mate. "You said yesterday we were to start first thing this morning." "I did--but I expected to be here when we began. Mr. Van Blott, Philip Lawrence wishes to see you in your office." "I haven't time to bother with him now," growled the supercargo. "Go ahead with those cases!" he shouted to some stevedores who were nearby, and pulling out his handkerchief he gave it a flourish toward the dock. "Drop those cases!" roared Captain Marshall, his face growing red. "Drop them, I say!" And the natives who were carrying the cases stopped short. "Captain Marshall----" began Jasper Van Blott. "I--what do you mean by this--er--by this----" "I told you that Philip Lawrence wanted to see you in your office. You had better see him before we move any more of this cargo." "Yes, but----" "I won't argue the matter, Mr. Van Blott. I was drugged last night. Do you understand? Drugged! But my mind is clear now, and I want everything on this bark to run smoothly. You had better go to your office, and I'll go with you." The supercargo glared at the captain, and the latter glared in return. Then Van Blott shrugged his shoulders. "As you please," he said. "But it is a strange proceeding." And he walked to that part of the ship where was located his little office. As he passed the first mate, he gave the man a wink and turned his eyes toward the cases on the deck. Paul Shepley nodded slightly. In the office they found Phil awaiting them. Roger followed the pair, but Dave had seen the wink that was passed, and remained on deck, and a moment later seated himself on one of the very cases the stevedores had been in the act of removing from the ship. "Ain't you going with them?" asked the first mate, coming up with a dark frown on his face. "No, I think I'll stay here until they come back," answered Dave, lightly. "Then please get off of that box." "I am not hurting the box, Mr. Shepley." "Get off, I say!" The boy from the country did so. "I believe Captain Marshall wanted nothing moved until he came back," said Dave, gazing boldly into the mate's angry face. "Perhaps I had better call him, if you are going to work again." "Who said I was going to move anything?" growled Paul Shepley, his manner showing that that was just what he had had in mind to do. "Don't you get too fresh around me, or there will be trouble!" "Well, if there is trouble, I'll do my best to stand up against it." "Aw! you make me tired!" grumbled the first mate, and strode away in deep disgust, leaving Dave master of the field. In the meantime a stormy meeting was being held in the supercargo's office. At first Van Blott flatly refused to allow Phil to look at his books, but at last brought forth several, which the shipowner's son knew were of little importance. "I want the books that relate to the goods to be landed here," said Phil. "I want to know all about each piece before it is put ashore." "Humph! You are getting very particular, young man!" observed the supercargo. "I do not deny it." "Did your father send you on this trip to spy on me?" "You may put it that way, if you wish, Mr. Van Blott. I am here simply to learn this business and to see that everything is O. K." "If everything is all right, what have you to fear from an inspection like this?" came suggestively from Captain Marshall. "I am not going to work here and be watched like a criminal!" stormed Jasper Van Blott. "If old man Lawrence can't trust me, it is time we parted company!" "I agree with you," returned the captain. "Do you?" came with a sneer. "Very well. I'll close up my accounts and quit." "You'll not do it just yet," put in Phil. He was pale, but determined. "I won't?" "No. Before you quit you must make an accounting to me of goods and money, and satisfy me, and also Captain Marshall, that everything is O. K. in every particular." "Bah! Boy, who gave you authority to talk to me in this fashion?" "My father." "I don't believe it. Why, you are a mere boy--you don't know what you are saying. I'll close up this business to suit myself and leave my keys with Captain Marshall, and that will end it." "Mr. Van Blott, you must remember that Philip Lawrence is the shipowner's son," said the captain, sternly. "I don't care if he is. He has no legal authority, and I don't propose to let him drive me." "Just wait a minute, until I come back," said Phil, starting for the door. "Where are you going?" asked Roger. "To my stateroom. I'll be back in a few minutes." "What is he going to do?" questioned the supercargo, uneasily. "I don't know," answered Captain Marshall, shortly. "But, if I were you, Mr. Van Blott, I should listen to him. In a certain sense, he represents his father on this vessel." "He doesn't represent him with me!" muttered the supercargo. His anger had made him lose a good portion of his common sense. There was a minute of silence, during which Jasper Van Blott strode up and down the narrow office. Then a step was heard outside, and Phil reappeared, carrying a large envelope in his hand. "My father said I was not to use this unless it was necessary," he said, drawing a paper from the envelope. At the appearance of a legal-looking document the supercargo started back. "What's that?" he demanded, hoarsely. "This is a document authorizing Captain Marshall to take charge of your affairs, Mr. Van Blott. He is to investigate everything, under my supervision, and is to hold you strictly accountable for everything you have done since starting on this voyage." CHAPTER XXIV THE CARGO MYSTERY EXPLAINED There was a death-like silence for several seconds after Phil made his announcement. Even Captain Marshall was astonished, for he had not anticipated such a turn of affairs. "Let me see that paper!" demanded Jasper Van Blott, wildly. "I will not believe a word of what you have said until I read that paper." "Then read it," answered the shipowner's son, and passed it over. With compressed lips, the supercargo perused the document. Then he gritted his teeth. "So this is the game you have been playing on me, eh?" he snarled. "Well, it doesn't work." "Doesn't work?" came from Roger, who was as much interested as any one. "No, it doesn't work. That paper isn't worth the ink it's written with. It was drawn up in the United States, and we are not in the United States now." "Perhaps not, but we are sailing under the United States flag, Mr. Van Blott," said Captain Marshall, quickly. "Besides that, I think the authorities here will respect a legal document drawn up in Uncle Sam's country." "It's not worth a pinch of snuff!" roared the supercargo, and would have torn the paper to bits, had not Phil and Roger leaped forward and prevented him. "None of that!" cried Phil. "Let that alone, or I'll have Captain Marshall place you under arrest." "Arrest? Me under arrest? I'd like to see you do it!" fumed the supercargo. "I'll do it, unless you do what is right," said the master of the _Stormy Petrel_, quickly. "Mr. Van Blott, your actions do you no credit. Trying to destroy that document proves to me beyond a doubt that you have something to conceal. I shall begin an investigation at once, and the boys shall aid me." "I don't care!" roared Jasper Van Blott. "But I am done with the ship and the whole crowd." "Please hand over the keys to your safe boxes." With bad grace, the supercargo did so. "Now you will please sit down and let us go through the accounts," continued the captain. The supercargo squirmed and argued, and did his best to get away, but it was all to no purpose, and, in the end, he had to remain in the office until the captain, Phil, and Roger had examined all the shipping accounts. Some of the entries were mixed up, and they could not obtain any satisfactory explanation regarding them. "Now we will go on deck and examine that stuff that was to go ashore," said Captain Marshall. "Especially the goods for Baumann & Feltmuller," put in the senator's son. "Ha! What do you know about that firm?" gasped Jasper Van Blott. "Not much." "You--you have been spying on me--you must have followed me on shore," gasped the supercargo. "But you are mistaken, you will find nothing wrong," he added, suddenly, and then appeared to calm down. They went on deck, where they found Dave still on guard. The first mate was sulking near the rail. As soon as the captain appeared Dave walked up to him. "I am glad you are here," he whispered. "Mr. Shepley wanted to send the goods ashore, but I told him that, if he did so, I would call you." "Is that so? Thank you, Dave, I am glad you went on watch," replied the master of the _Stormy Petrel_. The inspection of the goods began, and in the midst of the work Jasper Van Blott gave an exclamation. "Did anybody bring that brown book up?" he queried. Nobody knew anything about a brown book, and all looked puzzled. "That has this transaction in it in full," went on the supercargo. "I remember now, I put the book in my stateroom. I will go below and get it. That will prove everything is as straight as a string. Then I am going to sue somebody for heavy damages," he added. He walked to the companionway and disappeared. Captain Marshall continued to inspect the goods to go ashore, and the boys aided him. That something was wrong they did not doubt, and they waited impatiently for the supercargo to reappear with his brown book. "The first mate has gone below, too," announced Roger, presently. "Maybe the pair are talking it over between them. They are certainly hand-in-glove with each other, according to what Dave says." "Go below and tell Mr. Van Blott I want him to come up at once," returned Captain Marshall. The senator's son disappeared down the companionway and was gone for several minutes. He came up with a worried look on his face. "I can't find Mr. Van Blott anywhere!" he cried. "What!" roared the master of the _Stormy Petrel_. "He must be down there." "Unless he has sneaked ashore!" came quickly from Dave. "Could he do that?" questioned Phil. "He might." "I will go below and look around," went on Captain Marshall. "You boys scatter on the deck and watch for him. He must not be allowed to get away!" The boys did as requested, and the captain went below, to be gone quarter of an hour and more. When he came up, his face was much downcast. "He has certainly gotten away," he declared. "His valise and some of his clothing are gone, and his money box is wide open and empty." "Where is the mate?" asked Phil. "There he is!" exclaimed Dave, pointing to the bow. The captain ran forward. "Mr. Shepley, have you seen Mr. Van Blott?" "When?" inquired the mate, slowly. "Within the last ten or twenty minutes." "Why, yes." "Where is he?" "I think he walked ashore. I didn't notice, particularly." "Humph! Did he have his valise?" "I don't know but what he did. I wasn't paying any particular attention. Are we to unload, or not?" went on the first mate. "We are to do nothing until Mr. Van Blott is found," answered the captain, shortly. "All right; in that case, you'll wait a long time," murmured the mate to himself. After that a regular hunt was instituted, and the boys went ashore, along with Billy Dill. They even visited the offices of Baumann & Feltmuller, but not a trace of the missing supercargo could be found anywhere. When the boys got back to the bark, they found that Captain Marshall had begun on an examination of the goods taken from the hold. He found a number of cases mismarked--those which were to have been sent to Baumann & Feltmuller. "This stuff seems to have been meant for some firm in Australia--Featherstone & Harmsworth," said the captain. "How it came on my ship is a mystery to me." "Wait!" shouted Dave. "I know something about that. Just before we left San Francisco I heard some dock officials speaking about some costly cases of goods which had disappeared from a neighboring dock. The goods were for the firm of Featherstone & Harmsworth, I remember the name well. The stuff was to go to Sydney. They said they had tried their best, but could get no trace of the stolen cases." "That explains it!" exclaimed Phil. "Van Blott took the cases and had them stowed away in the hold of this ship. He was going to sell the stuff to Baumann & Feltmuller, in part or in whole." "I believe you have struck the truth," returned Captain Marshall. "And now, fearing exposure, he has fled." "What can you do with the goods?" questioned Roger. "I don't know, yet. Either return them to their owners, or sell them and forward the money. I'll have to think the matter over." "What a rascal Van Blott has proved himself to be!" was Phil's comment. "Yes, and I reckon that man in San Francisco, Bangor, was in with him," said Dave, and he was correct in his surmise. It may be added here, though, that Bangor never suffered for this crime, for he was caught, shortly after the sailing of the _Stormy Petrel_, and tried for something equally unlawful, and sentenced to prison for several years. The stolen goods were placed in another part of the ship, and then the work of unloading a part of the regular cargo began. Paul Shepley had to superintend this work, and did so in a thoughtful mood. "I wish I knew the truth about the mate," said Phil to Dave. "I am going to watch him pretty closely after this." "He certainly had something in common with the supercargo," replied the country boy. From Baumann & Feltmuller, Captain Marshall could learn but little. The merchants said that the supercargo had offered to sell them some goods which, he declared, had not been accepted by other parties because of delay in shipment. They had agreed to take the same and pay on delivery, and when convinced that all was fair and above board. "They are a tricky firm," said the captain to the boys. "But, as I have no proof against them, I'll have to let them go." In spite of the excitement over the exposure of the supercargo, Dave was anxious to sail from Cavasa Island and be on the way to Sobago. It was with great satisfaction that he heard Captain Marshall say they would set sail on the following Monday morning. "And how long will it take us to reach Nanpi?" he asked of the master of the _Stormy Petrel_. "That will depend upon the wind, lad. If we have luck, we ought to get there in four or five days. But sometimes the wind is mighty contrary around these parts." While at Cavasa the boys spent one whole day ashore, and went out riding in the direction of the volcano in company with Billy Dill. The old tar showed them where he and Dunston Porter and Mr. Lemington had camped out, and where they had hunted for the treasure. "I'd like to feel an earthquake once, just for fun," remarked Roger. "It must be a queer sensation." "It is," answered Billy Dill. "An' one ye ain't apt to forgit in a hurry." "If it was bad, I think I'd be scared out of my wits," said Phil. "What do you think about it, Dave?" "I don't want any in mine." "Oh, what's a little earthquake!" cried the senator's son. "It would be an experience worth talking about, that's all." "Well, maybe you'll have your wish gratified before we leave this region of the globe," said Dave. "I understand that earthquakes are common for thousands of miles around. Sometimes the quakes make new islands, while other islands sink out of sight." "Excuse me from being on an island when it sinks out of sight," cried Phil. "I'd rather be on solid ground any time." And in this statement the others agreed with him. CHAPTER XXV SWEPT ONWARD BY A TIDAL WAVE "Off at last, and I am glad of it!" "I suppose you are anxious to get to Nanpi, Dave?" "I am, Roger. Can you blame me?" "Not at all. In fact, if I were in your place, I think I'd be even more anxious. Meeting this Dunston Porter means so much to you," went on the senator's son. The two chums were on the forward deck of the _Stormy Petrel_ and the bark was just leaving the harbor of Tolao. It was a clear day, with a bright sun high overhead, and the boys felt in excellent spirits. Nothing had been seen or heard of Jasper Van Blott, and, with the sailing of the bark, he was practically forgotten by Dave and Roger. But Phil and the captain remembered him and were sorry that they had not been able to bring the wicked supercargo to justice. Although he was in nominal authority, Captain Marshall turned over the cargo books to Phil, and the shipowner's son did very well when it came to straightening out the tangle left by Van Blott. Phil wished to make a clean report to his father and worked with a will, until he "knew where he was at," as he declared. "I rather think it will open my father's eyes," said Phil. "He has suspected Van Blott for some time, but he didn't think of anything like this." On the second day out the wind died down utterly, and this state of affairs continued for several days. The sails flapped idly against the masts, and scarcely any progress was made. "We are not going to make such a quick passage, after all," remarked Roger. "My! but this is slow work, I must declare!" "And haven't you noticed the heat?" added Phil. "It seems to me to be unusually hot." "It is," said Dave, who had been consulting a thermometer. "This is our warmest day, by four degrees. If it gets much warmer, we'll certainly melt." That afternoon the sea appeared to be strangely agitated, and toward night the sailors noticed a large number of dead fish rising to the surface. Dave discovered a large shark, and this proved to be dead, also. "There has been some disturbance under the ocean's surface," said Captain Marshall. "More than likely an earthquake." "An earthquake! And we never knew it!" ejaculated Roger, and his tone showed his disappointment. In the morning the sea was more agitated than ever. One minute it would appear to flatten out, the next, two waves would come together with a clash that sent the spray flying upward for many feet. More dead fish were in evidence on every hand. "I have never witnessed anything like this," commented Captain Marshall. "I trust it gets no worse." When the breeze sprang up, it came from the wrong direction, and the _Stormy Petrel_ had to tack as best she could. The breeze kept growing stiffer and stiffer, until it was little short of a gale. Then a thick mist settled down on the ocean, shutting out the view upon all sides. "I must say I don't like this," observed the senator's son. "Supposing we should run into something?" "There isn't much to run into," replied Dave. "I just asked the captain, and he told me we were a good many miles from land of any sort." "We might run into some other ship." "There seem to be very few ships in this locality." Morning found the _Stormy Petrel_ still surrounded by the mist, and there was now little or no wind. The barometer had gone down, and the captain ordered some sail taken in, in anticipation of a storm. At noon the mist appeared to lift a little, and once more the wind sprang up. This continued for several hours, when, of a sudden, a strange humming filled the air. "What can that be?" cried Dave, who was on the forward deck. "It's wind!" cried Billy Dill. "A reg'lar tornado, too." Captain Marshall was on deck, no longer disposed to trust his first mate. He at once ordered all of the sails taken in and stowed away securely. This was just accomplished, when the hurricane--for it was nothing less--struck the _Stormy Petrel_, almost sending the bark on her beam ends. "Better go below!" shrieked the captain to the three boys. "It's not safe for you on deck." "I'll be careful," answered Phil, but the master of the bark shook his head, and then the three lads started for the companionway, holding on to first one thing and then another as they moved along. Phil had just reached the bottom of the steps, Roger was half-way down, and Dave still at the top, when a wild cry from the bow reached their ears. "Hold tight, all of ye!" came in the voice of Billy Dill. "Hold on, or ye'll be swept overboard, sure!" Everybody on board the _Stormy Petrel_ realized that this could be no idle warning, and all held on like grim death to anything that was handy. The next moment there was a strange hissing and pounding of the ocean, and, in a twinkling, the _Stormy Petrel_ was caught on what seemed to be the top of a giant wave and carried along as if in the grip of a demon of the deep! The upward and forward movement came with such a force that nearly everybody was taken clean and clear off his feet, and had not each one clung fast, as directed by Billy Dill, somebody must surely have been flung overboard. The bark turned around and around on the top of the wave, and then lurched forward and went on and on, the spray flying so thickly that scarcely a thing of what was beyond could be seen. "My gracious!" gasped Roger, who had been flung down on top of Phil. "What is this?" "Don't ask me!" returned Dave, who was sitting on the upper step with his arms entwined around the companionway rail. "I guess it's an earthquake and a hurricane rolled into one." "Has anybody gone overboard?" asked Phil, as he tried to stand up. "I don't know. Billy Dill gave the warning." The door to the cabin was open, and the three lads fairly tumbled into the compartment. The bark was rocking to such an extent that to stand upright was out of the question. Everything that was loose was on the floor, shifting from one side to the other. The boys waited with bated breath, and a few minutes later heard a crash on the deck, which told that a topmast, or one of the yards, had come down. Then came a yell of alarm from one of the sailors. "We are going to sink! We are going to sink!" "Did you hear that?" ejaculated Roger. "He said the _Stormy Petrel_ was going to sink!" "What shall we do?" put in Phil. "I don't want to drown!" Phil had scarcely spoken when a side door to one of the staterooms burst open and a man came forth, wild with terror, his face scratched and bleeding. Much to their amazement, they saw it was Jasper Van Blott. "Is the ship really going down?" cried the former supercargo, in a trembling voice. "Where did you come from?" cried Dave. "I--er--I've been in hiding. But, tell me, are we going down?" "I don't know." "I--er--I must go on deck and see. It nearly killed me, the bark bounced around so," went on Van Blott. He started for the companionway, but had not yet reached the top when a big wave hit the _Stormy Petrel_ broadside, sweeping the deck from end to end and sending some of the water into the cabin. The former supercargo was washed off the steps and came down flat on his back, screaming with terror. [Illustration: The former supercargo was washed off the steps and came down flat on his back.--_Page 225._] The boys were nearly as much alarmed, and, as soon as it was possible to do so, all three crawled up to where they could get a view of the deck and the sea beyond. The outlook was truly startling. The ocean was whipped up into a milk-white foam and was dashing and churning in all directions. One tremendous wave was rolling straight to the southward, and on this the bark was riding, like a monkey on a runaway race horse. The wind was whistling through the rigging, and the sky was filled with dark clouds and a strange, whitish dust. "What is this?" called Dave to the captain, as the latter passed. "It's a tidal wave!" yelled back Captain Marshall. "There has been another earthquake, and, most likely, some of the volcanoes in this vicinity have become active." "Are we going down, as that sailor said?" "Not yet. I will warn you, if there is any danger of our sinking." "You can't put out any small boats, can you?" asked Phil. "No, a small boat would not live a minute in such a sea as is now running." "Has anybody been washed overboard?" asked Roger. "I believe not--but I am not sure. It came on so sudden, we had no time to prepare for it," said Captain Marshall. "Mr. Van Blott is below," said Dave. "Van Blott! You must be dreaming!" "No. He had been in hiding, and the alarm scared him." "Humph! Well, we'll take care of him later--if we get out of this with a whole skin." The boys could do nothing on deck, and so went below again, to find that the former supercargo had disappeared. "It doesn't matter," observed Phil. "We know he is on board, and he can't get away until we land, and I guess we can root him out before that time." The _Stormy Petrel_ was still being carried forward, but now the motion was a bit more steady than before. It was true that she had encountered a tidal wave, due to a submarine earthquake, and also true that a volcano on the island of Cholomu had become active. The fine volcanic dust floated for miles over the ocean, covering the bark from stem to stern as with flour. Half an hour later came another alarm. Somebody roared out: "Breakers ahead!" and in a moment more the _Stormy Petrel_ was in the midst of a choppy sea, and staggered from side to side, as if ready to go over. Then came a scraping at the bottom. "We have struck a reef!" cried the first mate. "We are done for now!" But, even as he spoke, the bark went on, over the reef and into what seemed to be a large harbor. Far in the distance could be seen a palm-fringed shore, with the waves dashing high up on the sands. It took Captain Marshall but an instant to consider the situation, and he immediately gave orders to cast an anchor. The _Stormy Petrel_ continued to rush onward, but quarter of a mile from the shore the forward progress was checked. Then another anchor was dropped, and it was seen that this had secured a good hold. In the meantime the waters of the tidal wave began to recede, and by sunset the ocean was almost as calm as ever. "Thank fortune, that peril is a thing of the past!" said Dave, fervently; and the other boys and Captain Marshall echoed his sentiments. CHAPTER XXVI EXPLORING A TROPICAL ISLAND The night to follow was an anxious one for all on board the _Stormy Petrel_. The sea was still too rough to think of venturing ashore, and so it was impossible to learn to what harbor they had floated and what was the prospect of continuing their voyage to Sobago Island. "We must be at least two hundred miles out of our reckoning," said Captain Marshall, in reply to a question from Phil. "This may be Tapley Island, but I am not sure." "Is Tapley Island inhabited?" "I am not sure about that, either. There was once a colony there, but I think it died out. The natives on the other islands around here are very fierce." "Then I hope we haven't landed on one of the other islands," remarked Dave. "If we came over a reef, how are we to get out of this harbor?" questioned Roger. "That remains to be learned, Roger," answered the master of the _Stormy Petrel_, gravely. During the night the sea went down a great deal, and in the morning the harbor could be plainly distinguished. A boat was lowered, and Captain Marshall went ashore, taking Dave and Phil with him. It was an easy matter to beach the rowboat on the sands, and the boys leaped ashore quickly and ran up to the nearest of the palm trees. A look around showed all how the gigantic tidal wave had torn and twisted everything growing near the water's edge. In some spots the sand lay a foot thick on beds of grass and moss and small brushwood. "We can be thankful that our ship was not cast up high and dry on the shore," remarked Captain Marshall, as he gazed around. "That wave must have done the shipping for hundreds of miles around great damage." The party walked up and down the beach for almost a mile, but without seeing the first sign of inhabitants of any sort. The shore was full of dead fish and overturned turtles, and the sailors took some back to the ship with them for eating purposes. It was nearly midday when they returned to the ship, and the boys were so hungry that a mess of fried fish was particularly appetizing to them. At noon the captain made some observations and got out his charts, and finally announced that they must be at a small island, one hundred and sixty miles to the southward of Sobago. "The island is not of great importance," said he. "It is shaped a good deal like the letter B, and this harbor is formed by the double curve on one side. The interior of each of the two portions is mostly marsh land--a good place for tropical fevers. The reef outside of the harbor is well defined on the chart, and extends in a semicircle for many miles." "Isn't there any opening at all?" queried Dave. "For small vessels, yes." "But not for a bark the size of ours?" "That remains to be found out. I shall go this afternoon and make some soundings." "If there isn't any opening in the reef, what are we to do?" asked Phil, blankly. "Why, the _Stormy Petrel_ will have to remain here forever!" "Which puts me in mind of a story, as Shadow Hamilton would say," came from Dave. "I once heard of a fellow who built a rowboat in the garret of his house. After the boat was done, it was so large he couldn't get it out of the door or window, and he had to take the boat apart again." "If the boys at Oak Hall could see us now!" cried Roger. "But about our ship. We didn't build it here--the tidal wave sent it in, over yonder reef. Now the question arises, how are we to get over the reef again?" "If there is no opening in the reef, maybe we can blow one out with dynamite," suggested Phil. After dinner Captain Marshall went out in the largest of the rowboats, taking with him his pick of the sailors. They took a lead line along, and remained away until dark, taking as many soundings as they possibly could. It was dangerous work, and those on the bark were glad when the rowboat returned. "Well, did you find a channel?" asked the first mate. "No," was the short answer. "There are several openings, but none, that I discovered, wide enough for the _Stormy Petrel_." "Of course, you didn't cover the whole reef?" "By no means. I will go out again to-morrow--or you may do so." The news the captain brought was very disheartening, and it was a gloomy party that assembled in the cabin of the bark that evening. "We shall be perfectly safe in this harbor, so long as the weather remains fair," said Captain Marshall. "But a heavy blow might cause us to drag our anchors and either run ashore or on the reef. We must get away in the near future, if it can possibly be accomplished." "You can't get away and to Sobago any too quick for me," replied Dave. That evening Jasper Van Blott came out of hiding and attempted to take his place at the cabin table. But Captain Marshall would have none of this and sent the former supercargo forward, where the sailors made room for him in the forecastle. This angered Van Blott intensely, and he gritted his teeth with rage. "Wait until I get the chance," he said to himself. "I'll get square for this insult!" "He can't run away for the present," the captain explained to the boys. "When we get to a regular stopping place, I'll put him in irons." On the following morning it was so fair all the boys begged to be allowed to go ashore and do a little exploring. The captain was willing, but told them to be careful. Billy Dill was to go with them, and they took along a pistol, a shotgun, and some provisions. "If you get into trouble, fire two shots in quick succession," said Captain Marshall. "If I want you to return, I'll fire two shots." The boys got into the boat, and Billy Dill took one pair of oars and Dave the others. They were soon at the beach and landed in true nautical style. Then the rowboat was drawn up out of the water and into the shade of some palms, that the sun might not crack open the seams. "We must be extremely careful," observed Phil. "Remember, we do not know what is on this island." "Sure, there might be lions," suggested Roger, with a wink and a glance at Billy Dill. "You boys know better nor thet," rejoined the old tar. "None o' these South Sea islands have much in the way o' wild beasts. But you may strike a big snake." "Excuse me, but I don't want to be introduced to his snakeship," cried the senator's son. After a little look around, they determined to start up the shore, and did so, with their provisions on their backs and Dave carrying the shotgun and Phil the pistol. Roger and the old tar armed themselves with big sticks. A half-mile was covered, when they came to a hollow, in which were basking a number of turtles, all of great size. Phil gave a shout, and on the instant the turtles all headed for the ocean with clumsy, but swift, strides. Billy Dill made after them and managed to catch the last one and turn him over. [Illustration: Billy Dill managed to catch the last one and turn him over. _Page 233._] "He will make fine turtle soup," said the tar. "So he will!" cried Dave. "I suppose I might have shot at them." "Not worth while, lad; one is enough." They soon came to a portion of the shore where the undergrowth was exceedingly close, and they had to journey a short distance inland. The palms were thick, and they saw numerous cocoanuts and great varieties of beautiful ferns and gigantic creeping vines. Billy Dill also pointed out three varieties of bread-fruit trees. "Well, a fellow wouldn't starve here, in spite of the scarcity of meat," observed Dave. "And meat isn't especially good in hot weather," added Roger. "Natives down here eat very little meat," said the old tar. "They use lots of yams and such stuff, besides bananas and plantains. Everything grows of itself, and they have a lazy man's life of it." "Excepting when they fight each other," observed Phil. An hour later they came out on the shore again. They were now away from the harbor and could look straight out on the ocean. "Look! look!" cried Roger, pointing seaward. "Am I mistaken, or do I see a long canoe filled with men?" "It certainly is a canoe," declared Dave, after a look. "And it is filled with natives," added Phil. "What do you make of this?" he added, turning to Billy Dill. "Are they coming here?" "I don't think they are, Phil. They seem to be headed away from this island." The canoe was certainly a large one, and they counted at least twelve natives at the paddles, or sweeps. Other natives were in the bow and stern of the craft. In quarter of an hour the canoe was but a speck in the distance, and then it was lost to sight altogether. "We'll have to tell the captain about this," declared Dave. "If there are natives around, he will want to know it." "Perhaps they can tell us of a way out of the harbor," suggested Roger. "Like as not, if there is a way out," spoke up Billy Dill. "They generally know the coasts putty well--bein' out so much in their canoes." The little party continued on its exploring tour, but soon came to a portion of the marsh land the captain had mentioned. Not wishing to get stuck, they began to retrace their steps, until they were in the midst of the thickets again. Then a strange rushing sound through the trees broke upon their ears. "Wait!" whispered Billy Dill, "I know what that is. Don't make any noise." "Is there any danger?" queried Roger. The old tar shook his head. Then he pointed upward, and the boys saw a large flock of beautiful tropical birds settling down on all sides of them. "What a sight!" murmured Dave. "How pretty they are!" "They get birds for ladies' hats from places like this," whispered Billy Dill. "I know it. What a shame to shoot them down, too!" "It is a shame, lad; and ladies ought to stop wearin' sech finery," said the old tar, soberly. They watched the beautiful birds for some time. Then the creatures discovered the strangers, and off they went in a mad flight, and were lost to sight. An hour later found the party passing down the shore once more. Here they walked on the sand until they came to something of a cove, surrounded by stately palms. "Might as well rest a bit----" began Roger, when Dave uttered a cry: "See, the remains of a campfire!" "Yes, and the remains of a feast, too!" added Phil. "Those natives must have been here!" CHAPTER XXVII A MAP AND A PLOT The boys and Billy Dill viewed the surroundings with interest. Some bones lay on the ground, and they kicked them over. "These can't be human bones, can they?" whispered the senator's son to Dave. "No, Roger, they are nothing but the bones of some small animal." "I was afraid the natives might be cannibals!" To one side of the camp lay a fantastically carved stick, evidently cut by somebody during his leisure. Dave picked this up and saw that it contained a heart, an anchor, a cross, several links of a chain, and some stars. At the big end of the stick was an American flag. "Hello, look here!" exclaimed the country boy. "This is strange, to say the least. I don't believe any native would cut a stick in this fashion." "Neither do I," declared Phil. "That must have been carved by an American, and with his jack-knife. Perhaps some sailors were camping out here." "To me this campfire, or what's left o' it, looks to be about a week old," said Billy Dill. "The question is, where did the crowd go to from here?" "Maybe there were some Americans with those natives in that canoe," suggested Roger. "In that case, the natives must be friendly," returned Phil. They walked around the locality and down the shore half a mile further, but could find nothing more of interest. Then they sat down to enjoy the lunch they had brought, washing the meal down at a spring, close by where the campfire had been. "It is wonderful that fresh water should be so close to the salt," observed the senator's son. "You'd think it would all get salt." "Nature knew man wanted fresh water, and so it was placed there," replied Billy Dill. "Trust a kind Providence to take care on us every time." After the meal the party set off for the opposite shore of the island, over a small hill which divided one end from the other. Here the jungle was so thick they had to literally force their way through, and each of the boys got his clothing torn more or less. Once the old tar became so completely fastened that the lads had to go to his assistance and cut him loose with their pocket-knives. "I'm jest about anchored!" remarked Billy Dill. "This is worse nor the Sargasso Sea, ain't it?" By the middle of the afternoon they gained the opposite shore of the island. Here the ground was very rough, but at one spot they found the remains of a village--two houses of logs and half a dozen thatched huts. The houses and huts were bare, and nothing of interest was to be found around the remains of half a dozen campfires. "This shows that somebody lived here once upon a time," observed Phil. "But it couldn't have been much of a population." "Can't tell as to thet," came from the old sailor. "These natives live pretty thick sometimes, ten or a dozen in one hut--and a good many live right out under the trees." Dave and Roger had passed into one of the deserted log houses, and the country youth struck a match, that they might see around a little better. Somewhat to their astonishment, they saw pinned up on a wall a sheet of water-stained brown wrapping paper, upon which was drawn something of a map, with a heavy cross where two lines met. "Here's a discovery!" cried Dave. "Wonder what this map was for?" The others came in, and a minute later a torch was lit, and all examined the map with care. Then Roger uttered a cry: "Dave, look there!" and the senator's son pointed to one corner of the map. In faint letters was the written name: _Dunston A. Porter._ "The very man I am looking for!" ejaculated Dave, and his heart gave a bound. "Oh, boys, what can it mean?" "It means that Mr. Porter has been here," answered Roger. "He must have been hunting for that treasure," said Phil. "This may be one of his maps." "That's a fact," said Billy Dill. "He was always drawing jest such things when I was with him. He said he was bound to find that treasure some day." "This map looks to be quite old," went on Dave, in disappointed tones. "I wish it was fresh and he was here." "He must have come here after sailing to Sobago Island," said the senator's son, "and that can't be so very long ago." After that they made a closer hunt than before in and around the camp, but found nothing, outside of two buttons, a bit of lead pencil, and the broken handle of a spade. "That spade proves there was some digging done," said Phil. "Undoubtedly he came here looking for that treasure." "Did you ever get any of the particulars of that treasure?" asked Dave, of the old sailor. "Not much, exceptin' that it was a treasure of pearls and precious stones once hidden by some native king. Mr. Porter didn't want to tell much about it, and I didn't feel as I had the right to ask him." It was now growing late, and all felt that it was time to return to the ship. Before leaving the hut, Dave pinned a slip of paper over the map, writing upon it as follows: "TO DUNSTON A. PORTER: "I am very anxious to meet you. I am on board the bark _Stormy Petrel_, in the harbor of this island, and bound for Sobago Island. Please see me, by all means. DAVID PORTER." To this the youth added the date, and also his home address, in case he should fail to meet Dunston Porter and the man should wish to write to him. "That certainly ought to interest him--especially if he is interested in a lost boy," was Roger's comment. Dave was in a sober mood when he returned to the ship and did not feel much like talking. He allowed the others to relate the day's experience, to which Captain Marshall listened closely. "It is certainly a pity we didn't get a chance to talk to those natives," said the master of the _Stormy Petrel_. "They might have shown me some way out of this harbor." "Then you haven't found any passage through the reef?" "Not yet. The first mate was out with four of the crew, but they could find nothing wide enough," answered Captain Marshall. The master of the bark thought he spoke the truth, but he was mistaken. Unknown to the captain, the first mate had found a passage, rather twisting in shape, but perfectly safe. It was near the northern end of the reef--a locality Captain Marshall had not visited. One of the sailors who had been out with the mate also knew of the passage, but Paul Shepley had pledged him to secrecy for the time being. While the boys and Billy Dill were in the cabin of the _Stormy Petrel_ relating their experiences, an interesting conversation was going on in another part of the ship, between the first mate and Jasper Van Blott. "I have made an important discovery," said Shepley, in a low tone, so that no others might hear. "I have found a safe passageway out of this harbor." "Did you tell the old man?" demanded the former supercargo, quickly. "No; I told him that there wasn't any opening wide enough for the bark." "Good! Now, if we can only arrange this other matter, Shepley, we'll make a fine thing of this," went on Jasper Van Blott. "I don't know about this other thing, as you call it," grumbled the first mate. "I'll be running a tremendous risk." "Oh, it will be perfectly safe." "Don't you know that mutiny on the high seas is punishable by death?" "I do--if you get caught. But you won't get caught. Besides that, please to remember that I am not going to suffer for this cargo affair alone. If I have to stand trial, you'll have to do the same." "Then you really mean to drag me into it, eh?" said the first mate, sourly. "Unless you consent to my plan. Why, man, it's dead easy," continued the former supercargo, earnestly. "I know that at least four of the sailors will stand in with us from the start, and we can easily win over the others by the promise of a big reward. All we have got to do is to get Captain Marshall, Billy Dill, and those three boys ashore, and then sail away for some distant port. On the way we can change the name of the bark and I'll fix up the clearance papers, and there you are. You and I can become equal owners, and we can go into the regular Australian-New Zealand trade and make a barrel of money in a few years." "But supposing some of the men raise a row?" "We won't give them a chance, until we are out on the ocean. We can tell them--after the captain's crowd is gone--that you have orders to try to clear the reef. When we are on the ocean, I don't think it will be so hard to manage things. We can arm ourselves and lock up all the other weapons, and tell the men they shall have big money if they ask no questions and stick to their duty," added Jasper Van Blott. "Well, how do you propose to get that crowd ashore? They may not happen to go of their own free will." "I think I can manage that, sooner or later. The main thing is, we must watch our chances and strike as soon as the right moment arrives. Now then, what do you say, Shepley?" The first mate hesitated, and an argument lasting a full hour ensued, during which the former supercargo's plot was discussed from every possible point of view. At last the first mate agreed to do as Jasper Van Blott wanted, and then the two separated, to await the time for making their first move. CHAPTER XXVIII MAROONED On the following morning Captain Marshall went out once more to look for a passageway through the reef. Dave accompanied him, and so did Billy Dill. In the meantime Roger and Phil rowed ashore, to see if they could find any more traces of the natives. The captain and Dave had been out about an hour, when they noticed a small boat coming toward them, containing two sailors and the first mate. "Captain Marshall, you are wanted on shore at once!" cried Paul Shepley, when within hearing distance. "Those two boys just sent word to the ship by a native. They said to bring young Porter and Dill along." "They must have discovered something!" cried Dave, quickly. "Oh, let us go, by all means!" "I will," answered the master of the _Stormy Petrel_. "Did they say where they were?" "Near the interior of the island, I believe," answered the mate. No more was said, and, winding up his lead line, the captain had the rowboat turned around and headed for the island. In the meantime the first mate returned to the bark. Once on the deck of the ship he was quickly joined by the former supercargo. "What did he say?" asked Jasper Van Blott, anxiously. "Said he'd go." "Then we must lose no time in getting up the anchors. Luckily the breeze is just right." "Wait until they are ashore and have disappeared," answered the first mate, nervously. He was really a coward at heart, and now fairly under the thumb of Van Blott. It took but a few minutes for the captain, Dave, and Billy Dill to gain the stretch of sand. Then those on the _Stormy Petrel_ saw them draw the small craft up to a safe place and disappear in among the trees. "Now then, act as quickly as you can," said Jasper Van Blott. An order was issued for the sailors to come on deck, and all did so, and the second mate, a young man named Bob Sanders, also appeared. Then Paul Shepley issued orders to hoist the anchors and raise some of the sails. "What does this mean, Mr. Shepley?" asked the second mate, in surprise. "The captain has found a passageway and wants me to take the ship out and around to the other side of the island," replied the first mate. "He wants us to be lively, too." Bob Sanders was mystified, but, as he was not on particularly good terms with the first mate, he asked no more questions. Soon the sails were up, and Paul Shepley himself steered the bark toward the passageway he had discovered. "You are sure of what you are doing?" asked Jasper Van Blott, coming to the wheel. "We don't want to strike and go to the bottom." "I wish I was as sure of the future as I am of the passageway," answered the first mate, somewhat grimly. "Oh, don't worry about the future," answered the former supercargo, lightly. "In a few days we'll have everything in apple-pie order." There was a good breeze, and the bark cleared the reef with but little difficulty. Then Paul Shepley had all the sails set, and soon the _Stormy Petrel_ was leaving the island far behind. In the meantime Captain Marshall, Dave, and the old tar were looking everywhere for Phil and Roger. They dove straight into the jungle and called out as loudly as they could. But no answer came back. "It is queer that we can't locate them," was Dave's comment. "If they wanted us, I should think they would be watching out, wouldn't you?" "Perhaps they are in trouble," answered the captain, gravely. He fired his pistol as a signal, and at last came an answering shot from the lower end of the island. At once they hurried in that direction, only to find themselves cut off by a stretch of impassable marsh land. "Reckon as how we'll have to go around," observed Billy Dill. "If we try to go through thet we'll git stuck, fer sartin!" Going around was not so easy, and it took them nearly half an hour to cover a mile. Then the captain discharged his pistol once more, and a minute later came an answering shot but a short distance away. "I see them--at the top of the hill!" cried Dave, and, looking ahead, the others discovered Phil and Roger at the top of the slight rise of ground, waving their handkerchiefs to attract attention. Soon the two parties were together. "What's the news?" cried Captain Marshall, looking around to see if anybody else was present. "No news," answered Phil. He gazed at them curiously. "What's up? You look rather excited!" "Didn't you send for us?" gasped Dave. "Send for you? What do you mean?" queried Roger. "The first mate said you sent a native to the bark, asking us to come to you," said Captain Marshall. "We sent nobody--we have seen no natives to-day." There was a pause, during which each looked blankly at the others. "I can't understand this," said Dave, slowly. "Mr. Shepley certainly delivered that message." "It is a trick of some sort!" burst out Captain Marshall. "The very best thing we can do is to get back to the vessel without delay." The others thought so, too, and in a moment more all were on their way to the shore, hurrying through the undergrowth as rapidly as the bushes and vines would permit. Phil and Roger had managed to shoot two small animals that looked like hares, but that was all. At last they came out on the sands, and a shout of dismay went up. "The ship is gone!" "The _Stormy Petrel_ has sailed away and left us!" The boys and the old sailor turned to Captain Marshall, whose face had turned white. Now it grew dark and stern. "How could they get out of the harbor?" questioned Dave. "Shepley must have found a passageway," answered the captain. "But where has the ship gone to?" queried Phil. "I can't see her anywhere." Instead of replying, the captain of the _Stormy Petrel_ clenched his hands and compressed his lips. He was doing some deep thinking. "I must say, this looks to me as if somebody had run off with the ship!" declared the senator's son. "And that is just what they have done!" cried the captain. "Oh, the rascals! the scoundrels! If I ever catch them----" He could not finish, so great was his rage. "Run off with the ship!" burst out Dave. "How could they do that? Do you think there was a regular mutiny?" "There may have been--anyway, the bark is gone--and we are left to shift for ourselves." "I think I see through it," said Phil. "The first mate and Van Blott have hatched this up between them. I know they were as thick as peas--in fact, I suspect Shepley helped the supercargo to hide away on board. They must have bought over the crew and Mr. Sanders." "I don't think they could buy over Bob Sanders," declared the captain. "I know him too well. He is very quiet, but I'd trust him with almost anything. But I can't say as much for all the crew. Shepley got some of the men to ship, and he most likely knew whom he was getting." "What are you going to do about it?" asked Roger. "I don't exactly know what to do, yet, lad. We are marooned, that is all there is to it. And it doesn't look as if they had left us anything to live on, either," added the captain, casting his eyes along the shore. "Do you mean to say they have deserted us?" cried Dave. "Doesn't it look like it?" "And stolen the bark?" "Yes." Dave drew a long breath. Here was another set-back, of which he had not dreamed. If the _Stormy Petrel_ had really sailed away, not to return, what were they to do, and when would they get a chance to leave the lonely island? "This is positively the worst yet!" groaned Roger. "The fellows who would do such a thing ought to be--be hanged! And they haven't left us a thing!" "Let us separate and see if we can sight the bark," said the captain, and this was done, one party going to the upper end of the island and the other to the lower. But not a trace of the missing vessel was to be seen. It was a decidedly sober party that gathered on the sands two hours later to discuss the situation and decide upon what was to be done. Here they were, marooned on a deserted island, with no food and but little shelter, and with only two pistols and a shotgun between them. It was certainly not a situation to be envied. "I used to think, when I was a small boy, that I'd like to play Robinson Crusoe," remarked Roger. "But I've changed my mind, and I'd much rather be back on the ship." "Humph! If you are going to talk that way, what will you say if we have to stay here weeks, or months, or maybe years?" asked Phil. "Gracious!" burst out Dave. "You don't think we'll have to stay here years, do you?" "We'll have to stay until we can git away," was the sage remark of Billy Dill. "Captain, are we in the track o' any ships?" Captain Marshall shook his head slowly. "I don't think we are. That storm blew us far out of our course. I doubt if a ship comes this way once in three months." "There, what did I tell you!" cried Phil. "But don't think I want to stay," he added, quickly. "I am just as anxious to get away as any one, and anxious to regain my father's ship, too. Why, to lose her would mean a serious loss to my father!" They talked the matter over until nightfall, but without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. Not one of the party could bring himself to think that he would really have to stay on the island for any great length of time. "If we do have to stay, we'll have to rassle around fer somethin' to eat," remarked Billy Dill. "The mean sharks! They might at least have left us a barrel o' salt horse an' some canned goods--an' a little tobacco," he added, dolefully. His pipe was empty and so was his pouch, and this added the last drop to his misery. As night came on they gathered some driftwood and lit a campfire, not because they were cold, but because it looked more cheerful, and because it also helped to keep away some obnoxious insects that had appeared. Over the fire they cooked the game Roger and Phil had shot, and made a supper of this and some crackers the boys had been carrying in their pockets. Then they sat down to talk the matter over once more. As the night advanced, the bright stars bespangled the heavens and all became perfectly calm and quiet. Tired out by what had passed, one after another sought a comfortable resting-place, and soon all were sound asleep. CHAPTER XXIX THE COMING OF THE NATIVES When Dave awoke, it was with a start. The wind was blowing half a gale and the rain was falling. "What a change since last night," he murmured to himself, as he sat up. "Hello, are you up already?" "I am," answered Billy Dill. "Thought as how I'd better keep the fire a-goin', if it's goin' to storm. This ain't so nice, is it?" "I should say not, indeed. My, now the wind is rising!" The others soon roused up, and all gathered under the shelter of some dense tropical trees and vines. Soon the rain was pouring down in torrents, shutting out the landscape on all sides. "Well, in one way, it's a good thing the _Stormy Petrel_ got out of the harbor," remarked Captain Marshall. "This wind might make her shift, and either throw her up on the island or on to the reef." They could do nothing with the fire, and so allowed it to die out, and crawled still further into the jungle in an endeavor to keep dry. But the rain followed them, until each one of the party was about soaked. "This is another one of the comforts of a Robinson Crusoe life," remarked Phil. "Soaking wet, and nothing to eat. Oh, don't I wish I was on the bark again and had hold of those mutineers!" The rain and wind kept up for the best part of that day. There was but little thunder and lightning, and at nightfall the storm died away, although the wind still kept up at a lively rate. During the afternoon they managed to find a turtle in a hollow, and, after turning the creature over, killed it and cooked it in its own shell. The meal was not particularly appetizing, but all were exceedingly hungry and partook of it without a murmur. "To-morrow we must gather some yams and some plantains, and also do some fishing," said the captain. "We might go hunting, too, but I would rather save our ammunition for emergencies." To keep from taking cold in their wet clothing, all slept close to the campfire that night, and early in the morning they hung most of their garments out in the bright sunshine to dry. Fishing proved good, and the boys and Billy Dill caught over a score of good-sized fish, and also discovered a bed of oysters, which, as Roger declared, "were not half bad, even if they weren't particularly good." In the meantime the captain, who knew not a little about tropical life, tramped around and found some bread-fruit and some luscious berries, which he declared were perfectly good to eat. "This solves the question of food, at least for the present," said Dave. "Not a very extensive list of things to eat, but much better than nothing at all." "What would the boys of Oak Hall say if they could see us?" asked Roger. "We'll certainly have a tale to tell--if we ever get back to tell it," returned Phil. Having nothing in particular to do, they took their time about preparing the next meal, and, when it was done, it proved to be a regular spread. Some of the fish made particularly good eating, and the berries topped the repast off in good style. "I do not believe that the _Stormy Petrel_ will come back to this harbor," said Captain Marshall. "And that being so, I think we had best take ourselves to the other side of the island, to those log huts and shacks you mentioned. That is, most likely, the spot where the natives land and where ships may stop. We can put up a flag of distress, and, after that, there will be nothing to do but to wait and make the best of it." "Shall you leave the rowboats here?" asked Dave. "We can leave one boat here and row around the island in the other. We can carry the craft to some point beyond the reef." This advice was followed, and beyond the reef line the ocean was found to be comparatively quiet, despite the storm of the day before. All entered the rowboat, and the captain and Billy Dill took the oars, and the voyage to the other side of the island was begun. By the end of the day they had reached the log houses, and they cleaned out the larger of the two and gave to it as much of a homelike appearance as possible. Then they set to work to gather all the driftwood possible, for they had nothing with which to cut firewood. The boys fell to fishing once more, and Phil began to manufacture a snare, with which he hoped to trap some small animals that had been discovered at a distance. Another whole day passed by slowly, and they began to feel a little more settled, when, in the middle of the afternoon, Billy Dill, who was out in the rowboat trying to catch some big fish, set up a loud shout. "What is it?" demanded Captain Marshall, who was busily at work breaking up some of the driftwood. "I see a big canoe comin', loaded with niggers!" announced the old sailor. This news brought all to the shore immediately, and they watched the approach of the canoe with much interest. It was all of twenty-five feet in length and manned by twelve dark-colored men, six on each side. The natives in the craft numbered, all told, nineteen, and some of them had guns, while others had bows and arrows and long spears. Each man had also a long and sharp knife stuck in his girdle. "Do you think they will be friendly?" asked Dave, in a low tone. "I hope so," answered the captain. "They have nothing to gain by being otherwise." When the natives discovered the whites, they stopped rowing and set up an animated jabbering among themselves. They looked around, thinking a ship must be close by, and, finding none, were much astonished. "Hello!" called out Captain Marshall, waving a welcome. "Glad to see you!" To this the natives did not answer. But the canoe was sent closer and finally beached, and the majority of the black men leaped ashore, each carrying his weapons with him. "How do you do?" went on the captain, extending his hand and smiling. "Glad to see you. Can anybody speak English?" At the question, one of the natives, a short, thickset fellow with a peculiarly flat nose, came to the front and shook hands. "Soko speak Inglees," he said, and grinned. "Soko once on Inglees ship." "I am glad to know you, Soko," replied the captain. "I am Captain Marshall, of the ship _Stormy Petrel_. What island is this?" "Dis Yam-kolo Island," answered Soko, still grinning. "How you come dis way? Where he ship?" "Some rascals have stolen my ship. She is a fine-looking bark. She was here a few days ago. Have you seen her?" "No see ship, no--no ship, so many days," and the native held up four fingers, all stumpy and not overly clean. "Steal ship on you? Big thief, yes!" "You are right. Where do you come from?" "Come from Waponu. Dat on Sobago Island." "Yes, I have heard of the place." The captain turned to the others. "It is a native village some ten miles from the town for which the _Stormy Petrel_ was bound," he explained. "Then perhaps they can take us to Sobago," said Dave, eagerly. "Perhaps they can," answered the captain. "But it must be a long trip in such a canoe as that." "Tell me," said Dave, to the native. "Do you come here often?" "Sometime, not many time," answered Soko, still grinning. He was evidently of a sunny disposition. "Did you ever come here with a man named Dunston Porter?" At this question the native shrugged his shoulders and looked perplexed. "I mean this man," went on the youth, and, taking the native by the hand, led him into the hut and up to the map on the wall. Instantly the face of Soko brightened. "Yes, Soko know," he said. "Dat man come, so many time here----" He held up three fingers. "Look in ground, dig, not can find much, no. Go back to Sobago, so." And he made a dejected face, at which Roger and Phil had to laugh. "He means Mr. Porter didn't locate the treasure," said the senator's son. "Is that man in Sobago now?" went on Dave, paying no attention to his chum's remark. "Yes, him at big town, Nanpi!" "Good I Then I would like to get to Nanpi just as soon as I can," cried Dave, enthusiastically. "Will you take me there? I can pay you well," he added, for he still had his money belt and cash with him. "Yes, can take to Nanpi," answered the native. After that he explained that he and his companions had come to the island to hunt for some rare birds and for turtles. They were quite willing to return to Sobago Island immediately, if paid for so doing. A bargain was struck, and it was decided that the voyage should be begun in the morning. In the meantime all hands were to catch some fish and cook them, and also gather in a supply of other eatables. The natives had a number of hollow reeds with them, and these were filled with fresh water, just previous to setting out. It was calculated that, weather permitting, the distance would be covered in three days. "These fellows know how to handle their big canoes very well," explained Captain Marshall. "They go out hundreds of miles, and sometimes weather the worst of storms. Occasionally, of course, they get swept away, but not often. They sail altogether by the sun and stars, and can strike almost as straight a course as if they were using a compass." Dave questioned Soko further about Dunston Porter, but could learn little, outside of the fact that the man was a treasure hunter and had paid very well for what was done for him. Soko added, however, that he thought the man expected to remain at Sobago for some time. The boys could sleep but little that night, so anxious were they concerning the trip before them. They were up at dawn, but, early as it was, found the natives ahead of them. A hasty breakfast was had by all, the things to be taken along were packed in the bow and stern of the canoe, and shortly after sunrise the craft was pushed from the shore, whites and natives scrambled in, and the start from the lonely island was made. CHAPTER XXX THE RETAKING OF THE "STORMY PETREL" For the whole of that day the natives kept at the sweeps of the long canoe, one set of rowers relieving the other. The whites were willing to assist, but Soko said the natives could get along best alone, they having their own peculiar manner of handling the craft. The weather remained fair, with only a bit of a breeze blowing, and the bosom of the ocean was as calm as they could wish. They were soon out of sight of the island, and then all they could behold was the sky above and the sparkling waters on every side. "It must be terrible to be lost on the ocean," remarked Phil, as he gazed around. "I don't wonder that men go mad, after they have been out days and days." "And think of having nothing to eat or to drink," said Dave. "Ugh! it gives a fellow the shivers to think of it!" At noon the whole party partook of a lunch, and toward nightfall had supper. Then the whites went to sleep, and so did half of the natives, the remaining blacks keeping at the sweeps, guiding themselves by the stars, now that the sun had gone down. When the boys awoke they were dismayed to see that a mist covered the sea. "Hello! I didn't expect this!" cried the senator's son. "Why, a fellow can't see a hundred feet in any direction." "What are the natives going to do now?" asked Dave of Captain Marshall, who had been awake for some time. "Soko says they must rest and wait," answered the captain. "He cannot go ahead, for he knows not in what direction to steer." "I've got a pocket compass!" cried Phil, bringing it forth. "How odd that I didn't think of it before." The captain took the compass and showed it to the native who could speak English. He had seen such things before, and, after a short talk with the master of the _Stormy Petrel_, set the others to using the sweeps as before. It was about ten o'clock of the forenoon that one of the natives, who was watching in the bow, uttered a short cry. At once those at the sweeps stopped pulling. "What is it?" asked Captain Marshall, quickly. "Big ship over dare!" announced Soko, a moment later. All of the whites looked in the direction pointed out, and through the mist saw a large vessel drifting along, the sails flapping idly against the masts. The wheel was lashed fast, and nobody was in sight on the deck. "The _Stormy Petrel_!" ejaculated Captain Marshall. "Are you sure?" asked Dave and Phil, in a breath. "Sure it's the bark," cried Billy Dill. "Say, but this is great luck, ain't it?" and his face brightened up. "Now we can teach them dirty mutineers a lesson." "Dat you ship?" asked Soko. "It is," answered Captain Marshall. "See here, Soko," he went on, "can I depend upon your helping me? I will pay you and your men for whatever you do." The native shugged his ebony shoulders and then consulted with his fellow-tribesmen. All decided that they would aid the captain, providing he would give them each a piece of silver "so big," pointing out the size of a trade dollar. Captain Marshall agreed on the spot, and preparations were made for boarding the bark. "It is queer that nobody is in sight!" remarked Phil, as the canoe drew closer. "Somebody is coming on deck now!" cried Dave, in a low tone, and Paul Shepley appeared, followed by Jasper Van Blott and, close behind him, one of the sailors. "Hello! what's this?" sang out the first mate, on catching sight of the canoe. "Captain Marshall and the others!" muttered the former supercargo. "Hi! keep away from here!" he roared. "Surrender, you villains!" called out the captain. "What do you mean by running off with my ship in this fashion?" "You keep off!" warned Paul Shepley, without answering the question. "Keep off, I tell you!" "We'll fire on you, if you don't keep off," called the former supercargo, and he brought forth a big pistol. "Be careful, cap'n, or somebody will git shot!" whispered Billy Dill. "Those fellers look like they was des'prit!" "Don't you dare to shoot!" called out Captain Marshall. "The first man who fires shall swing from the yardarm!" The loud talking had brought several sailors to the deck, and they were followed by the second mate, who stared at the canoe and its occupants as if he could not believe his eyes. "Hello, Captain Marshall!" sang out Bob Sanders. "I am mighty glad you have come." "Then you are not in this mutiny, Sanders?" "Not by a jugful! They tried to buy me up, but I wouldn't consent. Podders, Diski, and McNabb are not in it, either." "I am glad to hear it. Sanders, take control of the ship until I get aboard." "He will do nothing of the kind!" yelled Jasper Van Blott, and was about to turn on the second mate, when the latter hit him a blow in the ear, sending him headlong to the deck. "McNabb! Podders!" called the second mate. "Grab Mr. Shepley!" The sailors called upon understood, and before the first mate could turn, one tar had him from behind, so that he could not raise his arms. Then the other seized a pistol and, turning, faced the crew with the weapon. The turn of affairs had been so sudden that Shepley and Van Blott were taken completely by surprise, as were likewise the sailors who had sided with the rascals, and, for the moment, none of them knew exactly what to do. In the meantime the canoe bumped alongside of the _Stormy Petrel_, and, catching hold of a trailing rope thrown overboard by the sailor named Diski, Captain Marshall hauled himself to the deck, followed by Billy Dill and the boys. "Do you surrender?" demanded the captain, striding up to the first mate, revolver in hand. "Ye-yes!" burst out Shepley. "It's--it's all a mistake, Captain Marshall--all a mistake!" "I reckon it was!" answered the captain, grimly. "What about you, Van Blott?" And he turned on the former supercargo, who was struggling to his feet. "I suppose I've got to give in," muttered Jasper Van Blott. "And what about you men?" demanded Captain Marshall, turning his stern eyes on the portion of the crew that had mutinied. "We're with you, cap'n," said one, humbly. "Mr. Shepley led us into this, without us knowin' what we was a-doin'. Ain't that so, mates?" "That's so," said the others, humbly. "Are you willing to obey me, after this?" "Yes! yes!" came in an eager chorus. After this a long talk took place, and Jasper Van Blott and Paul Shepley were placed in irons and conducted to a closet in the bow of the ship, used for the storage of oil and lanterns. The place was given a rough cleaning, and then the pair were locked inside, Captain Marshall putting the key in his pocket. Both of the prisoners wanted to protest, but the master of the _Stormy Petrel_ would not listen. "You can do your talking later, when I have time to listen," said he. "Just now I have other matters to attend to." From Bob Sanders and the three loyal sailors Captain Marshall got a fairly accurate account of the mutiny. He was told that Jasper Van Blott had done his best to get all hands to join in the plot. The former supercargo was the prime mover in the affair, and the first mate was a coward and had been little more than his tool. The sailors who had gone in had done so rather unwillingly, and, after thinking the matter over, Captain Marshall decided to read them a stern lecture and then forgive them. It was now no longer necessary for the natives to take the whites to Sobago Island, and, after a brief consultation, Soko and his men were paid off and given some presents, and then, the mists rising, the canoe was headed back for Yam-kolo Island. It was the last that Dave and his friends saw of these black men, who had proven so friendly. With the first mate in irons, Bob Sanders was advanced to fill his place. This left the position of second mate vacant, and, after a consultation with the boys, the master of the _Stormy Petrel_ offered Billy Dill the position, and he accepted gladly. "I always kind o' wanted to be a mate," said the old tar. "I'm tickled to death!" And his face showed it. With the lifting of the mist a stiff breeze came up, and preparations were made for continuing the voyage to Nanpi. It was found that the last storm had slightly disabled the rudder, which accounted for the fact that the bark had not made greater headway on her trip. But additional parts were on board, and by nightfall the damage was made good, and then the _Stormy Petrel_ answered her helm as well as ever. "And now for Sobago Island!" cried Dave, to his chums. "I hope I have no more trouble in finding Mr. Dunston Porter!" CHAPTER XXXI LIFTING THE CURTAIN The second mate told the truth when he said Paul Shepley was a coward and under the thumb of the former supercargo. That very evening Shepley begged to see Captain Marshall alone, and, when given the opportunity, actually fell on his knees before the master of the _Stormy Petrel_. "I am willing to do anything, captain!" he groaned. "Only don't--don't swing me from the--the yardarm!" He had it firmly fixed in his mind that he was to be executed. "You deserve to be hanged!" answered the captain. "I don't see why I should spare you." "It was all Van Blott's fault--he fixed the whole thing from beginning to end. He got the stolen cases on board and made me promise to help in getting rid of them. And he got up the plan to run away with the ship." After that Paul Shepley told his story in detail, and the captain became convinced that the first mate was more of a sneak than a villain. "I will let you off, upon two conditions," said Captain Marshall, at last. "The first is, that you serve as a common sailor for the rest of this trip. Will you do it?" "Yes, but it's pretty hard on me," whined Shepley. "The second condition is, that you promise to appear against Van Blott, whenever called upon to do so." "Yes, I'll do that." "Then go forward and take Billy Dill's place in the forecastle." "Where is Dill to go?" "I have made him second mate and Sanders first mate." "Oh!" murmured Paul Shepley, and said no more. It cut him deeply to take up quarters in the forecastle, where the men treated him any way but kindly, yet he was glad to get off so cheaply. The next day was an anxious one for Dave, who was on the constant lookout for land. Toward nightfall a speck was seen in the distance, and in the morning, when he came on deck, the country youth saw before him Sobago in all of its tropical beauty, with its cozy harbor, its long stretch of white sand, and its waving palms. In the harbor were ships of several nationalities, and also numerous native canoes, and the scene was an animated one. The boys had no difficulty in getting ashore, but once on the streets of Nanpi, they scarcely knew how to turn. They walked along slowly until they came to a shipping office, in the window of which was a sign: _English Spoken Here._ "I am going in here to ask a few questions," said Dave, and entered, followed by Phil and Roger. They found in the office a very stout and very bald old gentleman, wearing big spectacles. "You speak English, I believe," said Dave, politely. "I speak English, and a dozen other languages, too," said the bald-headed gentleman, peering at them curiously. "Why--er--how's this?" he added, to Dave. "Is this some joke? Why did you shave so clean?" "Shave?" repeated Dave. His heart gave a sudden bound. "Why do you ask that question?" "Why, I--er--this is most extraordinary!" ejaculated the man, still staring at the country youth. "I don't understand it." "Don't understand what?" "You look so much like a man I know--a Mr. Dunston Porter. Maybe he is some relative of yours?" "The very man I am looking for!" cried Dave. "Can you tell me where I can find him?" His heart was almost in his throat as he asked the question. Supposing Mr. Dunston Porter had left Sobago Island for parts unknown? "Find him? I think so. He was here yesterday and said he was going out to the ruins of the old temple on the Pokali Road. He expected to be gone all day on the trip. He'll be back to town by night." "Then you'll have to wait, Dave," came from Phil. "Oh, I can't wait!" burst out Dave. "How far is that old temple from here?" "About three miles." "Can I hire somebody to take me there? I want to see Mr. Porter as soon as possible." "Certainly; you can get a boy for a few pennies," answered the bald-headed man. "There is a boy now who wants a job." And he beckoned to an urchin who sat on an empty box, eating a banana. When the lad came up the man explained in the native tongue, and soon the party set off, Dave first thanking the bald-headed man for his kindness. To Phil and Roger the walk on the tropical road was long, hot, and dusty. But Dave was so busy with his thoughts that he did not notice he was walking at all. How much the next hour or two might reveal! Presently they came in sight of a ruined pile, which the native boy pointed out as the old temple. Dave forged ahead and hurried into the ruins, and then around to the back. Here, from under some palms, could be had a fine view of the surrounding country. A hasty glance around revealed to Dave the form of a man, lying on the grass half asleep. The country youth hurried forward, gave a good look, and uttered a little cry, at which the man sat up suddenly. "Who are you?" asked the man, and then he began to stare at Dave very hard. "Is this Mr. Dunston Porter?" asked Dave, in a voice he tried in vain to steady. "Yes, that's my name. But you----" The man paused expectantly. "I am Dave Porter. I have come about seven thousand miles to see you." [Illustration: "I have come about seven thousand miles to see you."--_Page 274._] "Dave Porter! Seven thousand miles to see me! I must be dreaming!" The man leaped to his feet and came up to Dave. "How is this? Won't you explain?" "I will try, Mr. Porter." "They do look exactly alike!" said Phil to Roger, in a whisper. "What an extraordinary likeness!" "No wonder Billy Dill was startled when he first met Dave," added the senator's son. Dunston Porter heard the talk and looked at the others. At this Phil took a step forward. "We are Dave Porter's school chums," he explained. "My name is Phil Lawrence, and this is Roger Morr." "Glad to know you. Did you travel seven thousand miles to see me, too?" went on the man. "Hardly that, but we took the trip with Dave," answered Roger. "He wanted to find the man who looked like him," continued Phil, for he saw Dave could hardly speak for his emotion. "And he has found him. You two look exactly alike--that is, you would, if your mustache was shaved off." "Yes?" Dunston Porter paused. "Is that all?" "No! no!" cried Dave, struggling to keep calm. "I came to--to find out something about myself, if I could. It's a long story, and I'll have to start at the beginning. When I was a youngster about three years old, I was picked up alongside a railroad track by some farming people. They supposed I had been put off a train by somebody who wanted to get rid of me. They asked me my name, and I said something that sounded to them like Davy and Dun-Dun and Porter, and so they called me Dave Porter." "Ah!" cried Dunston Porter, and he was all attention. "Go on." "I was taken to the poorhouse, and then went to live with some other folks who were very kind to me, and one rich gentleman sent me to a boarding school. While there I helped an old sailor named Billy Dill----" "Billy Dill! Well, I never! Go on, please." "He was struck when he saw me--said I was somebody else with my mustache shaved off, and a lot more. He finally told me about you, and said you had told him about a crazy nurse and a lost child, and so I made up my mind to find you, if I could, and see if you knew anything about my past." Dave's lips began to quiver again. "Can you tell me anything?" "I--I--perhaps so." Dunston Porter's voice was also quivering. "Can you prove this story about being found near a railroad?" "Yes." "About thirteen years ago?" "Yes." "In the eastern part of the United States?" "Yes, near a village called Crumville. They say I said something about a bad man who wouldn't buy some candy for me. It may be that that man put me off the train." "He did!" almost shouted Dunston Porter. "It was Sandy Margot, the worthless husband of the crazy nurse, Polly Margot, you just mentioned. She took the child and turned the boy over to her husband. Margot wanted to make money out of the abduction, but, during his travels with the little one, he learned that detectives were after him, and, when the train stopped one day, he put the child off and promised it some candy to keep it from crying. He got away, and we never heard of him for about six years. Then he was rounded up in a burglary and badly wounded. He confessed at the hospital, but he could not tell the name of the place where the child had been dropped. We made a search, but could discover nothing. Margot died, and so did his crazy wife; and there the whole matter has been resting." "But who am I?" cried Dave, unable to restrain the question any longer. "Oh, you don't know that? I thought Billy Dill knew. If what you have told me is true, you are the son of my twin brother, David Breslow Porter." CHAPTER XXXII HOMEWARD BOUND--CONCLUSION "I am the son of your twin brother?" repeated Dave, while Roger and Phil listened with intense interest. "Yes," answered Dunston Porter. "He lost his son exactly as described, and the baby was said to resemble me very strongly." "And where is your brother now?" "He is traveling for his health. The last I heard of him he was in Europe, at one of the well-known watering places." "Is his wife alive?" "No, she died years ago. But he has a daughter with him, Laura--about a year younger than you." Dunston Porter took Dave's hand. "This is simply marvelous! I can hardly believe it! My nephew Dave! Why, it sounds like a fairy tale." "It is marvelous, Mr. Por----" "Hold on! If we are relatives, you'll have to call me Uncle Dunston," and the man smiled pleasantly. "Well, then, Uncle Dunston, are my father and my sister alone in the world?" "They are, excepting for me. We used to have other brothers, and a sister, but all of them are dead. I am alone here--an old bachelor." "But you used to live with my father, is that it?" "Yes, we were once in business together--owned a chemical works in New York and another in Chicago, and we also had some patents for manufacturing gas by a new process. But both of us liked to travel around, and so we sold out, and since that time we have been roaming around the world, sometimes together, and then again alone, although he always takes Laura with him, no matter where he goes. He is afraid to leave her behind, for fear she will be lost to him just as you were." "Do you know his exact address now?" "No; but I think a letter sent to a certain address in Paris will be forwarded to him. To tell the truth, I have been out here so long I have partly lost track of him. He will be amazed to hear from you, I am sure, and Laura will be surprised, too." "I shall write to him as soon as possible," answered Dave. "Of course! of course! And I will write too," rejoined Dunston Porter. After that, sitting in the shade of the old temple and the palm trees, Dave and his chums told their story from beginning to end, and then Dunston Porter related some of his own experiences and told much more concerning Dave's father and sister Laura. He said that he and his twin brother looked somewhat alike, which accounted for Dave's resemblance to himself. He was glad to add that both he and his brother were well-to-do, so they could come and go as they pleased. "As you know, I am hunting for a treasure of pearls and precious stones," said Dunston Porter. "So far, I have been unsuccessful, but I feel sure that I shall find them some day. And, even if I don't, the task of looking for the treasure pleases me and gives me the chance to visit many of these beautiful islands of the South Seas." The boy who had brought Dave and his chums to the old temple had been dismissed, and Dunston Porter took them back to Nanpi, where he had accommodations in the best public house the place afforded. Here Billy Dill visited him. "Does my heart good to see ye again!" cried the old tar. "An' ain't it jest wonderful about Dave? Now stand up, side by side, an' look into thet glass. As like as two beans, say I!" And Dunston Porter agreed with him. Of course the old sailor had to tell all he knew, and Dave brought out pictures of Caspar Potts and the Wadsworths which he had brought along. In return, Dunston Porter gave Dave pictures of his father and his sister Laura. The boy gazed at the photographs a long while, and the tears filled his eyes as he did so. "Well, there is one thing sure!" he murmured to Roger. "At any rate, I am no longer a poorhouse nobody!" "That's right, Dave," returned the senator's son, warmly. "Let me congratulate you. By that picture, your father must be a nice man, and your sister is handsome." "And to think that they are rich," added Phil. "That's the best of all." "No, the best of all is to find that I belong somewhere in this world--that I am not a nobody," answered Dave, earnestly. "Won't Nat Poole and Gus Plum stare when they hear of this!" went on Roger. "I believe it will really make them feel sore." "Ben and Sam and the others will be glad," said Phil. "And I am sure Doctor Clay will want to congratulate you. Dave, it paid to take this trip to the South Seas, after all, didn't it?" "I should say it did!" cried Dave. "I shouldn't have wanted to miss it for the world!" For several days Dave felt as if he was dreaming and walking on air, his heart was so light. The more the boy saw of his uncle Dunston the more he liked the man, and Dunston Porter was equally pleased. Both had long talks regarding the past and the future, and it was agreed that the man should return to the United States for the time being and, instead of hunting for the treasure, trace up the present address of David Porter, senior, and Dave's sister Laura. "I wish to meet this Caspar Potts, and also the Wadsworths," said Dunston Porter. "If I can, I wish to repay them for all they have done for you." "I am sure they will not take any money," answered the boy. "But they will be glad to meet you." Later on Dave took his uncle on board the _Stormy Petrel_, where Captain Marshall gave the newly found relative a very enthusiastic welcome. The captain of the bark had thought to bring Jasper Van Blott before the authorities at Nanpi, but was prevented by an accident, which came close to terminating fatally and sending the bark up into smoke and flames. Jasper Van Blott attempted to break out of the oil closet in the bow of the _Stormy Petrel_, and, in so doing, lit a match. This fell on some oily waste in a corner and, before an alarm could be given, the former supercargo was seriously burned, and the whole bow of the bark was on fire. Jasper Van Blott had to be taken to a hospital, where it was said he would lose the sight of one eye and be disfigured for life. Under such circumstances, it was decided to let the case against him drop. The damage to the _Stormy Petrel_ was so serious that the bark had to be laid up for repairs, and, in such an out-of-the-way place, it was said these would take a month or six weeks. "This has certainly proved to be a strange voyage," said Roger. "I must say, I don't like the idea of staying here six weeks. I'd like to get back home." "Just what I say," answered Dave. In the port was what is known as a "tramp" steamer, that is, one picking up any cargo to be found, from one port to the next. This steamer had secured a cargo for San Francisco, and was to sail on the following Saturday. "We might secure passage on her," suggested Dunston Porter, and inside of twenty-four hours it was arranged that he, with Dave and Roger, should sail on the steamer. Phil was to remain with Captain Marshall, to straighten out the mess left by Jasper Van Blott. "But never mind," said the shipowner's son, when the chums came to separate, "I'll see you again, sooner or later--and then we'll talk over all the many adventures we have had." Dave and Roger found the accommodations on the steamer fully as good as those on the bark, and the voyage to San Francisco passed pleasantly enough. As soon as the boys went ashore, they hurried to the post-office, where they found half a dozen letters awaiting them. One, from Ben Basswood to Dave, interested them greatly: "You will be glad to learn that Shadow Hamilton is cleared of the trouble that was laid at his door," so ran the communication. "Doctor Clay had somebody set a watch, and, as a consequence, it has been proved beyond a doubt that Gus Plum took the stamps from where Shadow placed them in his sleep. When Plum was accused, he said he didn't know they were the doctor's stamps. It seems he needed money, as his father is down in the world and has cut off Gus' spending allowance. There was a big row, but the Plum family is hushing the matter up, and I understand Doctor Clay has agreed to give Gus one more chance at Oak Hall." "It is just like Doctor Clay to give him another chance," was Roger's comment. "He is as kind-hearted as any man in the world." "If I ever go back to school, I hope I have no more trouble with Gus Plum," said Dave. But he did have trouble, of a most peculiar kind, and what it was will be told in another volume of this series, to be entitled: "Dave Porter's Return to School; Or, Winning the Medal of Honor." In this new volume we shall meet all our old friends once more, and learn something further of Dave's father and sister Laura. Dave did not depend on the mails, but, as soon as he could, had telegrams flashed to Crumville and to Doctor Clay, stating he had found an uncle and soon expected to meet his father and sister. Then the party of three took a Pullman train for the East. "I can tell you it feels good to get back to the United States once more," said the senator's son, as the boys sat by the car window, looking at the scenery as it glided by. "Do you know, it seems an age to me since we went away," declared Dave. "And yet, it is only a little over two months!" "That is because so much has happened in the meantime, Dave. It was certainly a remarkable trip!" "And the trip brought remarkable results," said Dunston Porter, with a quiet smile. When Dave arrived at Crumville there was quite a gathering to receive him and the others. All the Wadsworths were there, including Jessie, who rushed straight into his arms, and Caspar Potts and Ben Basswood. "Oh, I am so glad you are back!" cried Jessie. "We are all glad," added Ben. "We cannot bear to think of losing you, Dave," said Mrs. Wadsworth, anxiously. "You have become very dear to us all." "You are not going to lose me; that is, not altogether," answered the boy. "No matter what happens, I shall never forget all my old friends!" And all shook hands warmly. And here, kind reader, let us take our departure. THE END DAVE PORTER SERIES By EDWARD STRATEMEYER 12mo Cloth Illustrated $1.50 Net, each "Mr. Stratemeyer has seldom introduced a more popular hero than Dave Porter. He is a typical boy, manly, brave, always ready for a good time if it can be obtained in an honorable way."--_Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wis._ "Edward Stratemeyer's 'Dave Porter' has become exceedingly popular."--_Boston Globe._ "Dave and his friends are nice, manly chaps."--_Times-Democrat, New Orleans._ DAVE PORTER AT OAK HALL Or The School Days of an American Boy DAVE PORTER IN THE SOUTH SEAS Or The Strange Cruise of the _Stormy Petrel_ DAVE PORTER'S RETURN TO SCHOOL Or Winning the Medal of Honor DAVE PORTER IN THE FAR NORTH Or The Pluck of an American Schoolboy DAVE PORTER AND HIS CLASSMATES Or For the Honor of Oak Hall DAVE PORTER AT STAR RANCH Or The Cowboy's Secret DAVE PORTER AND HIS RIVALS Or The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall DAVE PORTER ON CAVE ISLAND Or A Schoolboy's Mysterious Mission DAVE PORTER AND THE RUNAWAYS Or Last Days at Oak Hall DAVE PORTER IN THE GOLD FIELDS Or The Search for the Landslide Mine DAVE PORTER AT BEAR CAMP Or The Wild Man of Mirror Lake DAVE PORTER AND HIS DOUBLE Or The Disappearance of the Basswood Fortune DAVE PORTER'S GREAT SEARCH Or The Perils of a Young Civil Engineer DAVE PORTER UNDER FIRE Or A Young Army Engineer in France DAVE PORTER'S WAR HONORS Or At the Front with the Fighting Engineers For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Boston THE LAKEPORT SERIES By EDWARD STRATEMEYER 12mo Cloth Illustrated $1.50 Net, each "The author of the Lakeport Series, Mr. Edward Stratemeyer, is well known for his delightful boys' stories."--_Philadelphia Ledger._ "The Lakeport Series, by Edward Stratemeyer, is the lineal descendant of the better class of boys' books of a generation ago."--_Christian Advocate, New York._ "The Lakeport Series will be fully as popular as the author's Dave Porter Series."--_San Francisco Call._ THE GUN CLUB BOYS OF LAKEPORT Or The Island Camp THE BASEBALL BOYS OF LAKEPORT Or The Winning Run THE BOAT CLUB BOYS OF LAKEPORT Or The Water Champions THE FOOTBALL BOYS OF LAKEPORT Or More Goals Than One THE AUTOMOBILE BOYS OF LAKEPORT Or A Run for Fun and Fame THE AIRCRAFT BOYS OF LAKEPORT Or Rivals of the Clouds LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., Publishers, Boston * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Table of Contents, "278" changed to "288" Page 193, "preposessing" changed to "prepossessing" (far from prepossessing) Page 271, "forcastle" changed to "forecastle" (place in the forecastle) 9990 ---- BRAVE AND BOLD Or THE FORTUNES OF ROBERT RUSHTON By HORATIO ALGER JR. CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG RIVALS. The main schoolroom in the Millville Academy was brilliantly lighted, and the various desks were occupied by boys and girls of different ages from ten to eighteen, all busily writing under the general direction of Professor George W. Granville, Instructor in Plain and Ornamental Penmanship. Professor Granville, as he styled himself, was a traveling teacher, and generally had two or three evening schools in progress in different places at the same time. He was really a very good penman, and in a course of twelve lessons, for which he charged the very moderate price of a dollar, not, of course, including stationery, he contrived to impart considerable instruction, and such pupils as chose to learn were likely to profit by his instructions. His venture in Millville had been unusually successful. There were a hundred pupils on his list, and there had been no disturbance during the course of lessons. At nine precisely, Professor Granville struck a small bell, and said, in rather a nasal voice: "You will now stop writing." There was a little confusion as the books were closed and the pens were wiped. "Ladies and gentlemen," said the professor, placing one arm under his coat tails and extending the other in an oratorical attitude, "this evening completes the course of lessons which I have had the honor and pleasure of giving you. I have endeavored to impart to you an easy and graceful penmanship, such as may be a recommendation to you in after life. It gives me pleasure to state that many of you have made great proficiency, and equaled my highest expectations. There are others, perhaps, who have not been fully sensible of the privileges which they enjoyed. I would say to you all that perfection is not yet attained. You will need practice to reap the full benefit of my instructions. Should my life be spared, I shall hope next winter to give another course of writing lessons in this place, and I hope I may then have the pleasure of meeting you again as pupils. Let me say, in conclusion, that I thank you for your patronage and for your good behavior during this course of lessons, and at the same time I bid you good-by." With the closing words, Professor Granville made a low bow, and placed his hand on his heart, as he had done probably fifty times before, on delivering the same speech, which was the stereotyped form in which he closed his evening schools. There was a thumping of feet, mingled with a clapping of hands, as the professor closed his speech, and a moment later a boy of sixteen, occupying one of the front seats, rose, and, advancing with easy self-possession, drew from his pocket a gold pencil case, containing a pencil and pen, and spoke as follows: "Professor Granville, the members of your writing class, desirous of testifying their appreciation of your services as teacher, have contributed to buy this gold pencil case, which, in their name, I have great pleasure in presenting to you. Will you receive it with our best wishes for your continued success as a teacher of penmanship?" With these words, he handed the pencil to the professor and returned to his seat. The applause that ensued was terrific, causing the dust to rise from the floor where it had lain undisturbed till the violent attack of two hundred feet raised it in clouds, through which the figure of the professor was still visible, with his right arm again extended. "Ladies and gentlemen," he commenced, "I cannot give fitting utterance to the emotions that fill my heart at this most unexpected tribute of regard and mark of appreciation of my humble services. Believe me, I shall always cherish it as a most valued possession, and the sight of it will recall the pleasant, and, I hope, profitable hours which we have passed together this winter. To you, in particular, Mr. Rushton, I express my thanks for the touching and eloquent manner in which you have made the presentation, and, in parting with you all, I echo your own good wishes, and shall hope that you may be favored with an abundant measure of health and prosperity." This speech was also vociferously applauded. It was generally considered impromptu, but was, in truth, as stereotyped as the other. Professor Granville had on previous occasions been the recipient of similar testimonials, and he had found it convenient to have a set form of acknowledgment. He was wise in this, for it is a hard thing on the spur of the moment suitably to offer thanks for an unexpected gift. "The professor made a bully speech," said more than one after the exercises were over. "So did Bob Rushton," said Edward Kent. "I didn't see anything extraordinary in what he said," sneered Halbert Davis. "It seemed to me very commonplace." "Perhaps you could do better yourself, Halbert," said Kent. "Probably I could," said Halbert, haughtily. "Why didn't you volunteer, then?" "I didn't care to have anything to do with it," returned Halbert, scornfully. "That's lucky," remarked Edward, "as there was no chance of your getting appointed." "Do you mean to insult me?" demanded Halbert, angrily. "No, I was only telling the truth." Halbert turned away, too disgusted to make any reply. He was a boy of sixteen, of slender form and sallow complexion, dressed with more pretension than taste. Probably there was no boy present whose suit was of such fine material as his. But something more than fine clothes is needed to give a fine appearance, and Halbert's mean and insignificant features were far from rendering him attractive, and despite the testimony of his glass, Halbert considered himself a young man of distinguished appearance, and was utterly blind to his personal defects. What contributed to feed his vanity was his position as the son of the richest man in Millville. Indeed, his father was superintendent, and part owner, of the great brick factory on the banks of the river, in which hundreds found employment. Halbert found plenty to fawn upon him, and was in the habit of strutting about the village, swinging a light cane, neither a useful nor an ornamental member of the community. After his brief altercation with Edward Kent, he drew on a pair of kid gloves, and looked about the room for Hester Paine, the lawyer's daughter, the reigning belle among the girls of her age in Millville. The fact was, that Halbert was rather smitten with Hester, and had made up his mind to escort her home on this particular evening, never doubting that his escort would be thankfully accepted. But he was not quick enough, Robert Rushton had already approached Hester, and said, "Miss Hester, will you allow me to see you home?" "I shall be very glad to have your company, Robert," said Hester. Robert was a general favorite. He had a bright, attractive face, strong and resolute, when there was occasion, frank and earnest at all times. His clothes were neat and clean, but of a coarse, mixed cloth, evidently of low price, suiting his circumstances, for he was poor, and his mother and himself depended mainly upon his earnings in the factory for the necessaries of life. Hester Paine, being the daughter of a well-to-do lawyer, belonged to the village aristocracy, and so far as worldly wealth was concerned, was far above Robert Rushton. But such considerations never entered her mind, as she frankly, and with real pleasure, accepted the escort of the poor factory boy. Scarcely had she done so when Halbert Davis approached, smoothing his kid gloves, and pulling at his necktie. "Miss Hester," he said, consequentially, "I shall have great pleasure in escorting you home." "Thank you," said Hester, "but I am engaged." "Engaged!" repeated Halbert, "and to whom?" "Robert Rushton has kindly offered to take me home." "Robert Rushton!" said Halbert, disdainfully. "Never mind. I will relieve him of his duty." "Thank you, Halbert," said Robert, who was standing by, "I won't trouble you. I will see Miss Paine home." "Your escort was accepted because you were the first to offer it," said Halbert. "Miss Hester," said Robert, "I will resign in favor of Halbert, if you desire it." "I don't desire it," said the young girl, promptly. "Come, Robert, I am ready if you are." With a careless nod to Halbert, she took Robert's arm, and left the schoolhouse. Mortified and angry, Halbert looked after them, muttering, "I'll teach the factory boy a lesson. He'll be sorry for his impudence yet." CHAPTER II. PUNISHING A COWARD Mrs. Rushton and her son occupied a little cottage, not far from the factory. Behind it were a few square rods of garden, in which Robert raised a few vegetables, working generally before or after his labor in the factory. They lived in a very plain way, but Mrs. Rushton was an excellent manager, and they had never lacked the common comforts of life. The husband and father had followed the sea. Two years before, he left the port of Boston as captain of the ship _Norman_, bound for Calcutta. Not a word had reached his wife and son since then, and it was generally believed that it had gone to the bottom of the sea. Mrs. Rushton regarded herself as a widow, and Robert, entering the factory, took upon himself the support of the family. He was now able to earn six dollars a week, and this, with his mother's earnings in braiding straw for a hat manufacturer in a neighboring town, supported them, though they were unable to lay up anything. The price of a term at the writing school was so small that Robert thought he could indulge himself in it, feeling that a good handwriting was a valuable acquisition, and might hereafter procure him employment in some business house. For the present, he could not do better than to retain his place in the factory. Robert was up at six the next morning. He spent half an hour in sawing and splitting wood enough to last his mother through the day, and then entered the kitchen, where breakfast was ready. "I am a little late this morning, mother," he said. "I must hurry down my breakfast, or I shall be late at the factory, and that will bring twenty-five cents fine." "It would be a pity to get fined, but you mustn't eat too fast. It is not healthful." "I've got a pretty good digestion, mother," said Robert, laughing. "Nothing troubles me." "Still, you mustn't trifle with it. Do you remember, Robert," added his mother, soberly, "it is just two years to-day since your poor father left us for Boston to take command of his ship?" "So it is, mother; I had forgotten it." "I little thought then that I should never see him again!" and Mrs. Rushton sighed. "It is strange we have never heard anything of the ship." "Not so strange, Robert. It must have gone down when no other vessel was in sight." "I wish we knew the particulars, mother. Sometimes I think father may have escaped from the ship in a boat, and may be still alive." "I used to think it possible, Robert; but I have given up all hopes of it. Two years have passed, and if your father were alive, we should have seen him or heard from him ere this." "I am afraid you are right. There's one thing I can't help thinking of, mother," said Robert, thoughtfully. "How is it that father left no property? He received a good salary, did he not?" "Yes; he had received a good salary for several years." "He did not spend the whole of it, did he?" "No, I am sure he did not. Your father was never extravagant." "Didn't he ever speak to you on the subject?" "He was not in the habit of speaking of his business; but just before he went away, I remember him telling me that he had some money invested, and hoped to add more to it during the voyage which proved so fatal to him." "He didn't tell you how much it was, nor how it was invested?" "No; that was all he said. Since his death, I have looked everywhere in the house for some papers which would throw light upon it; but I have been able to find nothing. I do not care so much for myself, but I should be glad if you did not have to work so hard." "Never mind me, mother; I'm young and strong, I can stand work--but it's hard on you." "I am rich in having a good son, Robert." "And I in a good mother," said Robert, affectionately. "And, now, to change the subject. I suspect I have incurred the enmity of Halbert Davis." "How is that?" asked Mrs. Rushton. "I went home with Hester Paine, last evening, from writing school. Just as she had accepted my escort, Halbert came up, and in a condescending way, informed her that he would see her home." "What did she say?" "She told him she was engaged to me. He said, coolly, that he would relieve me of the duty, but I declined his obliging offer. He looked mad enough, I can tell you. He's full of self-conceit, and I suppose he wondered how any one could prefer me to him." "I am sorry you have incurred his enmity." "I didn't lose any sleep by it." "You know his father is the superintendent of the factory." "Halbert isn't." "But he may prejudice his father against you, and get you discharged." "I don't think he would be quite so mean as that. We won't borrow trouble, mother. But time's up, and I must go." Robert seized his hat and hurried to the mill. He was in his place when the great factory bell stopped ringing on the stroke of seven, and so escaped the fine, which would have cut off one-quarter of a day's pay. Meanwhile, Halbert Davis had passed an uncomfortable and restless night. He had taken a fancy to Hester Paine, and he had fully determined to escort her home on the previous evening. As she was much sought after among her young companions, it would have gratified his pride to have it known that she had accepted his company. But he had been cut out, and by Robert Rushton--one of his father's factory hands. This made his jealousy more intolerable, and humiliated his pride, and set him to work devising schemes for punishing Robert's presumption. He felt that it was Robert's duty, even though he had been accepted, to retire from the field as soon as his, Halbert's, desire was known. This Robert had expressly declined to do, and Halbert felt very indignant. He made up his mind that he would give Robert a chance to apologize, and if he declined to do so he would do what he could to get him turned out of the factory. At twelve o'clock the factory bell pealed forth a welcome sound to the hundreds who were busily at work within the great building. It was the dinner hour, and a throng of men, women and children poured out of the great portals and hastened to their homes or boarding houses to dine. Among them was Robert Rushton. As he was walking homeward with his usual quick, alert step, he came upon Halbert Davis, at the corner of the street. Halbert was dressed carefully, and, as usual, was swinging his cane in his gloved hand. Robert would have passed him with a nod, but Halbert, who was waiting for him, called out: "I say, you fellow, stop a minute. I want to speak to you." "Are you addressing me?" asked Robert, with a pride as great as his own. "Yes." "Then you had better mend your manners." "What do you mean?" demanded Halbert, his sallow face slightly flushing. "My name is Robert Rushton. Call me by either of these names when you speak to me, and don't say 'you fellow.'" "It seems to me," sneered Halbert, "that you are putting on airs for a factory boy." "I am a factory boy, I acknowledge, and am not ashamed to acknowledge it. Is this all you have to say to me? If so, I will pass on, as I am in haste." "I have something else to say to you. You were impudent to me last evening." "Was I? Tell me how." "Did you not insist on going home with Hester Paine, when I had offered my escort?" "What of that?" "You forget your place." "My place was at Hester Paine's side, since she had accepted my escort." "It was very presumptuous in a factory boy like you offering your escort to a young lady like Miss Paine." "I don't see it," said Robert, independently; "and I don't think it struck Hester in that light. We had a very agreeable walk." Halbert was provoked and inflamed with jealousy, and the look with which he regarded our hero was by no means friendly. "You mustn't regard yourself as Miss Paine's equal because she condescended to walk with you," he said. "You had better associate with those of your own class hereafter, and not push yourself in where your company is not agreeable." "Keep your advice to yourself, Halbert Davis," said Robert, hotly, for he felt the insult conveyed in these words. "If I am a factory boy I don't intend to submit to your impertinence; and I advise you to be careful what you say. As to Miss Hester Paine, I shall not ask your permission to walk with her, but shall do so whenever she chooses to accept my escort. Has she authorized you to speak for her?" "No; but----" "Then wait till she does." Halbert was so incensed that, forgetting Robert's superior strength, evident enough to any one who saw the two, one with his well-knit, vigorous figure, the other slender and small of frame, he raised his cane and struck our hero smartly upon the arm. In a moment the cane was wrested from his grasp and applied to his own person with a sharp, stinging blow which broke the fragile stick in two. Casting the pieces upon the ground at his feet, Robert said, coolly: "Two can play at that game, Halbert Davis. When you want another lesson come to me." He passed his discomfited antagonist and hastened to the little cottage, where his mother was wondering what made him so much behind time. CHAPTER III. THE SPECIAL DEPOSIT. Stung with mortification and more incensed against Robert than ever, Halbert hastened home. The house in which he lived was the largest and most pretentious in Millville--a large, square house, built in modern style, and with modern improvements, accessible from the street by a semi-circular driveway terminating in two gates, one at each end of the spacious lawn that lay in front. The house had been built only three years, and was the show-place of the village. Halbert entered the house, and throwing his hat down on a chair in the hall, entered the dining-room, his face still betraying his angry feelings. "What's the matter, Halbert?" asked his mother, looking up as he entered. "Do you see this?" said Halbert, displaying the pieces of his cane. "How did you break it?" "I didn't break it." "How came it broken, then?" "Robert Rushton broke it." "The widow Rushton's son?" "Yes; he's a low scoundrel," said Halbert bitterly. "What made him break it?" "He struck me with it hard enough to break it, and then threw the pieces on the ground. I wouldn't mind it so much if he were not a low factory boy, unworthy of a gentleman's attention." "How dared he touch you?" asked Mrs. Davis, angrily. "Oh, he's impudent enough for anything. He walked home with Hester Paine last evening from the writing school. I suppose she didn't know how to refuse him. I met him just now and told him he ought to know his place better than to offer his escort to a young lady like Hester. He got mad and struck me." "It was very proper advice," said Mrs. Davis, who resembled her son in character and disposition, and usually sided with him in his quarrels. "I should think Hester would have more sense than to encourage a boy in his position." "I have no doubt she was bored by his company," said Halbert, who feared on the contrary that Hester was only too well pleased with his rival, and hated him accordingly; "only she was too good-natured to say so." "The boy must be a young brute to turn upon you so violently." "That's just what he is." "He ought to be punished for it." "I'll tell you how it can be done," said Halbert. "Just you speak to father about it, and get him dismissed from the factory." "Then he is employed in the factory?" "Yes. He and his mother are as poor as poverty, and that's about all they have to live upon; yet he goes round with his head up as if he were a prince, and thinks himself good enough to walk home with Hester Paine." "I never heard of anything so ridiculous." "Then you'll speak to father about it, won't you?" "Yes; I'll speak to him to-night. He's gone away for the day." "That'll pay me for my broken cane," said Halbert, adding, in a tone of satisfaction: "I shall be glad to see him walking round the streets in rags. Perhaps he'll be a little more respectful then." Meanwhile Robert decided not to mention to his mother his encounter with the young aristocrat. He knew that it would do no good, and would only make her feel troubled. He caught the malignant glance of Halbert on parting, and he knew him well enough to suspect that he would do what he could to have him turned out of the factory. This would certainly be a serious misfortune. Probably the entire income upon which his mother and himself had to depend did not exceed eight dollars a week, and of this he himself earned six. They had not more than ten dollars laid by for contingencies, and if he were deprived of work, that would soon melt away. The factory furnished about the only avenue of employment open in Millville, and if he were discharged it would be hard to find any other remunerative labor. At one o'clock Robert went back to the factory rather thoughtful. He thought it possible that he might hear something before evening of the dismission which probably awaited him, but the afternoon passed and he heard nothing. On leaving the factory, he chanced to see Halbert again on the sidewalk a little distance in front and advancing toward him. This time, however, the young aristocrat did not desire a meeting, for, with a dark scowl, he crossed the street in time to avoid it. "Is he going to pass it over, I wonder?" thought Robert. "Well, I won't borrow trouble. If I am discharged I think I can manage to pick up a living somehow. I've got two strong arms, and if I don't find something to do, it won't be for the want of trying." Two years before, Captain Rushton, on the eve of sailing upon what proved to be his last voyage, called in the evening at the house of Mr. Davis, the superintendent of the Millville factory. He found the superintendent alone, his wife and Halbert having gone out for the evening. He was seated at a table with a variety of papers spread out before him. These papers gave him considerable annoyance. He was preparing his semi-annual statement of account, and found himself indebted to the corporation in a sum three thousand dollars in excess of the funds at his command. He had been drawn into the whirlpool of speculation, and, through a New York broker, had invested considerable amounts in stocks, which had depreciated in value. In doing this he had made use, to some extent, of the funds of the corporation, which he was now at a loss how to replace. He was considering where he could apply for a temporary loan of three thousand dollars when the captain entered. Under the circumstances he was sorry for the intrusion. "Good-evening, Captain Rushton," he said, with a forced smile. "Sit down. I am glad to see you." "Thank you, Mr. Davis. It will be the last call I shall make upon you for a considerable time." "Indeed--how is that?" "I sail to-morrow for Calcutta." "Indeed--that is a long voyage." "Yes, it takes considerable time. I don't like to leave my wife and boy for so long, but we sailors have to suffer a good many privations." "True; I hardly think I should enjoy such a life." "Still," said the captain, "it has its compensations. I like the free, wild life of the sea. The ocean, even in its stormiest aspects, has a charm for me." "It hasn't much for me," said the superintendent, shrugging his shoulders. "Seasickness takes away all the romance that poets have invested it with." Captain Rushton laughed. "Seasickness!" he repeated. "Yes, that is truly a disagreeable malady. I remember once having a lady of rank as passenger on board my ship--a Lady Alice Graham. She was prostrated by seasickness, which is no respecter of persons, and a more forlorn, unhappy mortal I never expect to see. She would have been glad, I am convinced, to exchange places with her maid, who seemed to thrive upon the sea air." "I wish you a prosperous voyage, captain." "Thank you. If things go well, I expect to come home with quite an addition to my little savings. And that brings me to the object of my visit this evening. You must know, Mr. Davis, I have saved up in the last ten years a matter of five thousand dollars." "Five thousand dollars!" repeated the superintendent, pricking up his ears. "Yes, it has been saved by economy and self-denial. Wouldn't my wife be surprised if she knew her husband were so rich?" "Your wife doesn't know of it?" asked the superintendent, surprised. "Not at all. I have told her I have something, and she may suppose I have a few hundred dollars, but I have never told her how much. I want to surprise her some day." "Just so." "Now, Mr. Davis, for the object of my errand. I am no financier, and know nothing of investments. I suppose you do. I want you to take this money, and take care of it, while I am gone on my present voyage. I meant to make inquiries myself for a suitable investment, but I have been summoned by my owners to leave at a day's notice, and have no time for it. Can you oblige me by taking care of the money?" "Certainly, captain," said the superintendent, briskly. "I shall have great pleasure in obliging an old friend." "I am much obliged to you." "Don't mention it. I have large sums of my own to invest, and it is no extra trouble to look after your money. Am I to pay the interest to your wife?" "No. I have left a separate fund in a savings bank for her to draw upon. As I told you, I want to surprise her by and by. So not a word, if you please, about this deposit." "Your wishes shall be regarded," said the superintendent. "Have you brought the money with you?" "Yes," said the captain, drawing from his pocket a large wallet. "I have got the whole amount here in large bills. Count it, if you please, and see that it is all right." The superintendent took the roll of bills from the hands of his neighbor, and counted them over twice. "It is quite right," he said. "Here are five thousand dollars. Now let me write you a receipt for them." He drew before him a sheet of paper, and dipping his pen in the inkstand, wrote a receipt in the usual form, which he handed back to the captain, who received it and put it back in his wallet. "Now," said the captain, in a tone of satisfaction, "my most important business is transacted. You will keep this money, investing it according to your best judgment. If anything should happen to me," he added, his voice faltering a little, "you will pay it over to my wife and child." "Assuredly," said the superintendent; "but don't let us think of such a sad contingency. I fully expect to pay it back into your own hands with handsome interest." "Let us hope so," said the captain, recovering his cheerfulness. "Our destinies are in the hands of a kind Providence. And now good-by! I leave early to-morrow morning, and I must pass the rest of the evening with my own family." "Good-night, captain," said the superintendent, accompanying him to the door. "I renew my wish that you have a prosperous and profitable voyage, and be restored in good time to your family and friends." "Amen!" said the captain. The superintendent went back to his study, his heart lightened of its anxiety. "Could anything be more fortunate?" he ejaculated, "This help comes to me just when it is most needed. Thanks to my special deposit, I can make my semi-annual settlement, and have two thousand dollars over. It's lucky the captain knows nothing of my Wall Street speculations. He might not have been quite so ready to leave his money in my hands. It's not a bad thing to be a banker," and he rubbed his hands together with hilarity. CHAPTER IV. THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE. When the superintendent accepted Captain Rushton's money, he did not intend to act dishonestly. He hailed it as a present relief, though he supposed he should have to repay it some time. His accounts being found correct, he went on with his speculations. In these he met with varying success. But on the whole he found himself no richer, while he was kept in a constant fever of anxiety. After some months, he met Mrs. Rushton in the street one day. "Have you heard from your husband, Mrs. Rushton?" he inquired. "No, Mr. Davis, not yet. I am beginning to feel anxious." "How long has he been gone?" "Between seven and eight months." "The voyage is a long one. There are many ways of accounting for his silence." "He would send by some passing ship. He has been to Calcutta before, but I have never had to wait so long for a letter." The superintendent uttered some commonplace phrases of assurance, but in his own heart there sprang up a wicked hope that the _Norman_ would never reach port, and that he might never set eyes on Captain Rushton again. For in that case, he reflected, it would be perfectly safe for him to retain possession of the money with which he had been intrusted. The captain had assured him that neither his wife nor son knew aught of his savings. Who then could detect his crime? However, it was not yet certain that the _Norman_ was lost. He might yet have to repay the money. Six months more passed, and still no tidings of the ship or its commander. Even the most sanguine now gave her up for lost, including the owners. The superintendent called upon them, ostensibly in behalf of Mrs. Rushton, and learned that they had but slender hopes of her safety. It was a wicked thing to rejoice over such a calamity, but his affairs were now so entangled that a sudden demand for the five thousand dollars would have ruined him. He made up his mind to say nothing of the special deposit, though he knew the loss of it would leave the captain's family in the deepest poverty. To soothe his conscience--for he was wholly destitute of one--he received Robert into the factory, and the boy's wages, as we already know, constituted their main support. Such was the state of things at the commencement of our story. When the superintendent reached home in the evening, he was at once assailed by his wife and son, who gave a highly colored account of the insult which Halbert had received from Robert Rushton. "Did he have any reason for striking you, Halbert?" asked the superintendent. "No," answered Halbert, unblushingly. "He's an impudent young scoundrel, and puts on as many airs as if he were a prince instead of a beggar." "He is not a beggar." "He is a low factory boy, and that is about the same." "By no means. He earns his living by honest industry." "It appears to me," put in Mrs. Davis, "that you are taking the part of this boy who has insulted your son in such an outrageous manner." "How am I doing it? I am only saying he is not a beggar." "He is far below Halbert in position, and that is the principal thing." It occurred to the superintendent that should he make restitution Robert Rushton would be quite as well off as his own son, but of course he could not venture to breathe a hint of this to his wife. It was the secret knowledge of the deep wrong which he had done to the Rushtons that now made him unwilling to oppress him further. "It seems to me," he said, "you are making too much of this matter. It is only a boyish quarrel." "A boyish quarrel!" retorted Mrs. Davis, indignantly. "You have a singular way of standing by your son, Mr. Davis. A low fellow insults and abuses him, and you exert yourself to mate excuses for him." "You misapprehend me, my dear." "Don't 'my dear' me," said the exasperated lady. "I thought you would be as angry as I am, but you seem to take the whole thing very coolly, upon my word!" Mrs. Davis had a sharp temper and a sharp tongue, and her husband stood considerably in awe of both. He had more than once been compelled to yield to them, and he saw that he must make some concession to order to keep the peace. "Well, what do you want me to do?" he asked. "Want you to do! I should think that was plain enough." "I will send for the boy and reprimand him." "Reprimand him!" repeated the lady, contemptuously. "And what do you think he will care for that?" "More than you think, perhaps." "Stuff and nonsense! He'll be insulting Halbert again to-morrow." "I am not so sure that Halbert is not in fault in some way." "Of course, you are ready to side with a stranger against your own son." "What do you want me to do?" asked the superintendent, submissively. "Discharge the boy from your employment," said his wife, promptly. "But how can he and his mother live?--they depend on his wages." "That is their affair. He ought to have thought of that before he raised his hand against Halbert." "I cannot do what you wish," said the superintendent, with some firmness, for he felt that it would indeed be a piece of meanness to eject from the factory the boy whom he had already so deeply wronged; "but I will send for young Rushton and require him to apologize to Halbert." "And if he won't do it?" demanded Halbert. "Then I will send him away." "Will you promise that, father?" asked Halbert, eagerly. "Yes," said Mr. Davis, rather reluctantly. "All right!" thought Halbert; "I am satisfied; for I know he never will consent to apologize." Halbert had good reason for this opinion, knowing, as he did, that he had struck the first blow, a circumstance he had carefully concealed from his father. Under the circumstances he knew very well that his father would be called upon to redeem his promise. The next morning, at the regular hour, our hero went to the factory, and taking his usual place, set to work. An hour passed, and nothing was said to him. He began to think that Halbert, feeling that he was the aggressor, had resolved to let the matter drop. But he was speedily undeceived. At a quarter after eight the superintendent made his appearance, and after a brief inspection of the work, retired to his private office. Ten minutes later, the foreman of the room in which he was employed came up to Robert and touched him on the shoulder. "Mr. Davis wishes to see you in his office," he said. "Now for it!" thought Robert, as he left his work and made his way, through the deafening clamor of the machinery, to the superintendent's room. CHAPTER V. DISCHARGED. The superintendent sat at an office table writing a letter. He did not at first look up, but kept on with his employment. He had some remnants of conscience left, and he shrank from the task his wife had thrust upon him. "Mr. Baker tells me you wish to see me, Mr. Davis," said Robert, who had advanced into the office, by way of calling his attention. "Yes," said the superintendent, laying down his pen, and turning half round; "I hear a bad account of you, Rushton." "In what way, sir?" asked our hero, returning his look fearlessly. "I hear that you have been behaving like a young ruffian," said Mr. Davis, who felt that he must make out a strong case to justify him in dismissing Robert from the factory. "This is a serious charge, Mr. Davis," said Robert, gravely, "and I hope you will be kind enough to let me know what I have done, and the name of my accuser." "I mean to do so. Probably it will be enough to say that your accuser is my son, Halbert." "I supposed so. I had a difficulty with Halbert yesterday, but I consider he was in fault." "He says you insulted and struck him." "I did not insult him. The insult came from him." "Did you strike him?" "Yes, but not until he had struck me first." "He didn't mention this, but even if he had you should not have struck him back." "Why not?" asked Robert. "You should have reported the affair to me." "And allowed him to keep on striking me?" "You must have said something to provoke him," continued the superintendent, finding it a little difficult to answer this question, "or he would not have done it." "If you will allow me," said Robert, "I will give you an account of the whole affair." "Go on," said the superintendent, rather unwillingly, for he strongly suspected that our hero would be able to justify himself, and so render dismissal more difficult. "Halbert took offense because I accompanied Hester Paine home from the writing school, evening before last, though I did with the young lady's permission, as he knew. He met me yesterday at twelve o'clock, as I was going home to dinner, and undertook to lecture me on my presumption in offering my escort to one so much above me. He also taunted me with being a factory boy. I told him to keep his advice to himself, as I should not ask his permission when I wanted to walk, with Hester Paine. Then he became enraged, and struck me with his cane. I took it from him and returned the blow, breaking the cane in doing it." "Ahem!" said the superintendent, clearing his throat; "you must have been very violent." "I don't think I was, sir. I struck him a smart blow, but the cane was very light and easily broken." "You were certainly very violent," continued Mr. Davis, resolved to make a point of this. "Halbert did not break the cane when he struck you." "He struck the first blow." "That does not alter the question of the amount of violence, which was evidently without justification. You must have been in a great passion." "I don't think I was in any greater passion than Halbert." "In view of the violence you made use of, I consider that you owe my son an apology." "An apology!" repeated Robert, whose astonishment was apparent in his tone. "I believe I spoke plainly," said the superintendent, irritably. "If any apology is to be made," said our hero, firmly, "it ought to come from Halbert to me." "How do you make that out?" "He gave me some impertinent advice, and, because I did not care to take it, he struck me." "And you seized his cane in a fury, and broke it in returning the blow." "I acknowledge that I broke the cane," said Robert; "and I suppose it is only right that I should pay for it. I am willing to do that, but not to apologize." "That will not be sufficient," said the superintendent, who knew that payment for the cane would fall far short of satisfying his wife or Halbert. "The cost of the cane was a trifle, and I am willing to buy him another, but I cannot consent that my son should be subjected to such rude violence, without an apology from the offender. If I passed this over, you might attack him again to-morrow." "I am not in the habit of attacking others without cause," said Robert, proudly. "If Halbert will let me alone, or treat me with civility, he may be sure that I shall not trouble him." "You are evading the main point, Rushton," said the superintendent. "I have required you to apologize to my son, and I ask you for the last time whether you propose to comply with my wishes." "No, sir," said Robert, boldly. "Do you know to whom you are speaking, boy?" "Yes, sir." "I am not only the father of the boy you have assaulted, but I am also the superintendent of this factory, and your employer.". "I am aware of that, sir." "I can discharge you from the factory." "I know you can," said Robert. "Of course, I should be sorry to resort to such an extreme measure, but, if you defy my authority, I may be compelled to do so." So the crisis had come. Robert saw that he must choose between losing his place and a humiliating apology. Between the two he did not for a moment hesitate. "Mr. Davis," he said, boldly and firmly, "it will be a serious thing for me if I lose my place here, for my mother and I are poor, and my wages make the greatest part of our income. But I cannot make this apology you require. I will sooner lose my place." The bold and manly bearing of our hero, and his resolute tone, impressed the superintendent with an involuntary admiration. He felt that Robert was a boy to be proud of, but none the less he meant to carry out his purpose. "Is this your final decision?" he asked. "Yes, sir." "Then you are discharged from the factory. You will report your discharge to Mr. Baker, and he will pay you what you have earned this week." "Very well, sir." Robert left the office, with a bold bearing, but a heart full of trouble. If only himself had been involved in the calamity, he could have borne it better, but he knew that his loss of place meant privation and want for his mother, unless he could find something to do that would bring in an equal income, and this he did not expect. "Mr. Baker," he said, addressing the foreman of his room, on his return from the superintendent's office, "I am discharged." "Discharged?" repeated the foreman, in surprise. "There must be some mistake about this. You are one of our best hands--for your age, I mean." "There is no dissatisfaction with my work that I know of, but I got into a quarrel with Halbert Davis yesterday, and his father wants me to apologize to him." "Which you won't do?" "I would if I felt that I were in fault. I am not too proud for that. But the fact is, Halbert ought to apologize to me." "Halbert is a mean boy. I don't blame you in the least." "So I am to report my discharge to you, and ask you for my wages." This account was soon settled, and Robert left the factory his own master. But it is poor consolation to be one's own master under such circumstances. He dreaded to break the news to his mother, for he knew that it would distress her. He was slowly walking along, when he once more encountered Halbert Davis. Halbert was out for the express purpose of meeting and exulting over him, for he rightly concluded that Robert would decline to apologize to him. Robert saw his enemy, and guessed his object, but resolved to say nothing to him, unless actually obliged to do so. "Where are you going?" demanded Halbert. "Home." "I thought you worked in the factory?" "Did you?" asked Robert, looking full in his face, and reading the exultation he did not attempt to conceal. "Perhaps you have got turned out?" suggested Halbert, with a malicious smile. "You would be glad of that, I suppose," said our hero. "I don't think I should cry much," said Halbert. "It's true then, is it?" "Yes; it's true." "You won't put on so many airs when you go round begging for cold victuals. It'll be some time before you walk with Hester Paine again." "I shall probably walk with her sooner than you will." "She won't notice a beggar." "There is not much chance of my becoming a beggar, Halbert Davis; but I would rather be one than be as mean as you. I will drop you a slight hint, which you had better bear in mind. It won't be any safer to insult me now than it was yesterday. I can't lose my place a second time." Halbert instinctively moved aside, while our hero passed on, without taking farther notice of him. "I hate him!" he muttered to himself. "I hope he won't find anything to do. If he wasn't so strong, I'd give him a thrashing." CHAPTER VI. HALBERT'S DISCOMFITURE. Great was the dismay of Mrs. Rushton when she heard from Robert that he was discharged from the factory. She was a timid woman, and rather apt to take desponding views of the future. "Oh, Robert, what is going to become of us?" she exclaimed, nervously. "We have only ten dollars in the house, and you know how little I can earn by braiding straw. I really think you were too hasty and impetuous." "Don't be alarmed, my dear mother," said Robert, soothingly. "I am sorry I have lost my place, but there are other things I can do besides working in the factory. We are not going to starve yet." "But, suppose you can't find any work?" said his mother. "Then I'll help you braid straw," said Robert, laughing. "Don't you think I might learn after a while?" "I don't know but you might," said Mrs. Rushton, dubiously; "but the pay is very poor." "That's so, mother. I shan't, take to braiding straw except as a last resort." "Wouldn't Mr. Davis take you back into the factory if I went to him and told him how much we needed the money?" "Don't think of such a thing, mother," said Robert, hastily, his brown cheek flushing. "I am too proud to beg to be taken back." "But it wouldn't be you." "I would sooner ask myself than have you do it, mother. No; the superintendent sent me away for no good reason, and he must come and ask me to return before I'll do it." "I am afraid you are proud, Robert." "So I am, mother; but it is an honest pride. Have faith in me for a week, mother, and see if I don't earn something in that time. I don't expect to make as much as I earned at the factory; but I'll earn something, you may depend upon that. Now, how would you like to have some fish for supper?" "I think I should like it. It is a good while since we had any." "Then, I'll tell you what--I'll borrow Will Paine's boat, if he'll let me have it, and see if I can't catch something." "When will you be home, Robert?" "It will depend on my success in fishing. It'll be half-past nine, very likely, before I get fairly started, so I think I'd better take my dinner with me. I'll be home some time in the afternoon." "I hope you'll be careful, Robert. You might get upset." "I'll take care of that, mother. Besides, I can swim like a duck." Robert went out into the garden, and dug some worms for bait. Meanwhile, his mother made a couple of sandwiches, and wrapped them in a paper for his lunch. Provided thus, he walked quickly to the house of Squire Paine, and rang the bell. "Is Will home?" he asked. "Here I am, old fellow!" was heard from the head of the stairs; and William Paine, a boy of our hero's size and age, appeared. "Come right up." "How did you happen to be at leisure?" he asked. "I supposed you were at the factory." "I'm turned off." "Turned off! How's that?" "Through the influence of Halbert Davis." "Halbert is a disgusting sneak. I always despised him, and, if he's done such a mean thing, I'll never speak to him again. Tell me all about it." This Robert did, necessarily bringing in Hester's name. "He needn't think my sister will walk with him," said Will. "If she does, I'll cut her off with a shilling. She'd rather walk with you, any day." Robert blushed a little; for, though he was too young to be in love, he thought his friend's sister the most attractive girl he had even seen, and, knowing how she was regarded in the village, he naturally felt proud of her preference for himself over a boy who was much richer. "What are you going to do now?" asked Will, with interest. "The first thing I am going to do is to catch some fish, if you'll lend me your boat." "Lend you my boat? Of course I will! I'll lend it to you for the next three months." "But you want it yourself?" "No. Haven't you heard the news? I'm going to boarding school." "You are?" "It's a fact. I'm packing my trunk now. Come upstairs, and superintend the operation." "I can't stay long. But, Will, are you in earnest about the boat?" "To be sure I am. I was meaning to ask you if you'd take care of it for me. You see, I can't carry it with me, and you are the only fellow I am willing to lend it to." "I shall be very glad of the chance, Will. I've been wanting a boat for a long time, but there wasn't much chance of my getting one. Now I shall feel rich. But isn't this a sudden idea, your going to school?" "Rather. There was a college classmate of father's here last week, who's at the head of such a school, and he made father promise to send me. So I'm to start to-morrow morning. If it wasn't for that, and being up to my ears in getting ready, I'd go out fishing with you." "I wish you could." "I must wait till vacation. Here is the boat key." Robert took the key with satisfaction. The boat owned by his friend was a stanch, round-bottomed boat, of considerable size, bought only two months before, quite the best boat on the river. It was to be at his free disposal, and this was nearly the same thing as owning it. He might find it very useful, for it occurred to him that, if he could find nothing better to do, he could catch fish every day, and sell at the village store such as his mother could not use. In this way he would be earning something, and it would be better than being idle. He knew where the boat was usually kept, just at the foot of a large tree, whose branches drooped over the river. He made his way thither, and, fitting the key in the padlock which confined the boat, soon set it free. The oars he had brought with him from his friend's house. Throwing in the oars, he jumped in, and began to push off, when he heard himself called, and, looking up, saw Halbert Davis standing on the bank. "Get out of that boat!" said Halbert. "What do you mean?" demanded Robert. "You have no business in that boat! It doesn't belong to you!" "You'd better mind your own business, Halbert Davis. You have nothing to do with the boat." "It's William Paine's boat." "Thank you for the information. I supposed it was yours, from the interest you seem to take in it." "It will be. He's going to let me have it while he's away at school." "Indeed! Did he tell you so?" "I haven't asked Ma yet; but I know he will let me have it." "I don't think he will." "Why not?" "If you ever want to borrow this boat, you'll have to apply to me." "You haven't bought it?" asked Halbert, in surprise. "You're too poor." "I'm to have charge of the boat while Will Paine is away." "Did he say you might?" asked Halbert, in a tone of disappointment and mortification. "Of course he did." "I don't believe it," said Halbert, suspiciously. "I don't care what you believe. Go and ask him yourself, if you are not satisfied; and don't meddle with what is none of your business;" "You're an impudent rascal." "Have you got another cane you'd like to have broken?" asked Robert, significantly. Halbert looked after him, enviously, as he rowed the boat out into the stream. He had asked his father to buy him a boat, but the superintendent's speculations had not turned out very well of late, and he had been deaf to his son's persuasions, backed, though they were, by his mother's influence. When Halbert heard that William Paine was going to boarding school, he decided to ask him for the loan of his boat during his absence, as the next best thing. Now, it seemed that he had been forestalled, and by the boy he hated. He resolved to see young Paine himself, and offer him two dollars for the use of his boat during the coming term. Then he would have the double satisfaction of using the boat and disappointing Robert. He made his way to the house of Squire Paine, and, after a brief pause, was admitted. He was shown into the parlor, and Will Paine came down to see him. "How are you, Davis?" he said, nodding, coolly, but not offering his hand. "I hear you are going to boarding school?" "Yes; I go to-morrow." "I suppose you won't take your boat with you?" "No." "I'll give you two dollars for the use of it; the next three months?" "I can't accept your offer. Robert Rushton is to have it." "But he doesn't pay you anything for it. I'll give you three dollars, if you say so?" "You can't have it for three dollars, or ten. I have promised it to my friend, Robert Rushton, and I shall not take it back." "You may not know," said Halbert, maliciously, "that your friend was discharged from the factory this morning for misconduct." "I know very well that he was discharged, and through whose influence, Halbert Davis," said Will, pointedly. "I like him all the better for his misfortune, and so I am sure will my sister." Halbert's face betrayed the anger and jealousy he felt, but he didn't dare to speak to the lawyer's son as he had to the factory boy. "Good-morning!" he said, rising to go. "Good-morning!" said young Paine, formally. Halbert felt, as he walked homeward, that his triumph over Robert was by no means complete. CHAPTER VII. THE STRANGE PASSENGER. Robert, though not a professional fisherman, was not wholly inexperienced. This morning he was quite lucky, catching quite a fine lot of fish--as much, indeed, as his mother and himself would require a week to dispose of. However, he did not intend to carry them all home. It occurred to him that he could sell them at a market store in the village. Otherwise, he would not have cared to go on destroying life for no useful end. Accordingly, on reaching the shore, he strung the fish and walked homeward, by way of the market. It was rather a heavy tug, for the fish he had caught weighed at least fifty pounds. Stepping into the store, he attracted the attention of the proprietor. "That's a fine lot of fish you have there, Robert. What are you going to do with them?" "I'm going to sell most of them to you, if I can." "Are they just out of the water?" "Yes; I have just brought them in." "What do you want for them?" "I don't know what is a fair price?" "I'll give you two cents a pound for as many as you want to sell." "All right," said our hero, with satisfaction. "I'll carry this one home, and you can weigh the rest." The rest proved to weigh forty-five pounds. The marketman handed Robert ninety cents, which he pocketed with satisfaction. "Shall you want some more to-morrow?" he asked. "Yes, if you can let me have them earlier. But how is it you are not at the factory?" "I've lost my place." "That's a pity." "So I have plenty of time to work for you." "I may be able to take considerable from you. I'm thinking of running a cart to Brampton every morning, but I must have the fish by eight o'clock, or it'll be too late." "I'll go out early in the morning, then." "Very well; bring me what you have at that hour, and we'll strike a trade." "I've got something to do pretty quick," thought Robert, with satisfaction. "It was a lucky thought asking Will Paine for his boat. I'm sorry he's going away, but it happens just right for me." Mrs. Rushton was sitting at her work, in rather a disconsolate frame of mind. The more she thought of Robert's losing his place, the more unfortunate it seemed. She could not be expected to be as sanguine and hopeful as our hero, who was blessed with strong hands and a fund of energy and self-reliance which he inherited from his father. His mother, on the other hand, was delicate and nervous, and apt to look on the dark side of things. But, notwithstanding this, she was a good mother, and Robert loved her. Nothing had been heard for some time but the drowsy ticking of the clock, when a noise was heard at the door, and Robert entered the room, bringing the fish he had reserved. "You see, mother, we are not likely to starve," he said. "That's a fine, large fish," said his mother. "Yes; it'll be enough for two meals. Didn't I tell you, mother, I would find something to do?" "True, Robert," said his mother, dubiously; "but we shall get tired of fish if we have it every day." Robert laughed. "Six days in the week will do for fish, mother," he said. "I think we shall be able to afford something else Sunday." "Of course, fish is better than nothing," said his mother, who understood him literally; "and I suppose we ought to be thankful to get that." "You don't look very much pleased at the prospect of fish six times a week," said Robert, laughing again. "On the whole, I think it will be better to say twice." "But what will we do other days, Robert?" "What we have always done, mother--eat something else. But I won't keep you longer in suspense. Did you think this was the only fish I caught?" "Yes, I thought so." "I sold forty-five pounds on the way to Minturn, at his market store--forty-five pounds, at two cents a pound. What do you think of that?" "Do you mean that you have earned ninety cents to-day, Robert?" "Yes; and here's the money." "That's much better than I expected," said Mrs. Rushton, looking several degrees more I cheerful. "I don't expect to do as well as that every day, mother, but I don't believe we'll starve. Minturn has engaged me to supply him with fish every day, only some days the fishes won't feel like coming out of the water. Then, I forgot to tell you, I'm to have Will Paine's boat for nothing. He's going to boarding school, and has asked me to take care of it for him." "You are fortunate, Robert." "I am hungry, too, mother. Those two sandwiches didn't go a great ways. So, if you can just as well as not have supper earlier, it would suit me." "I'll put on the teakettle at once, Robert," said his mother, rising. "Would you like some of the fish for supper?" "If it wouldn't be too much trouble." "Surely not, Robert." The usual supper hour was at five in this country household, but a little after four the table was set, and mother and son sat down to a meal which both enjoyed. The fish proved to be excellent, and Robert enjoyed it the more, first, because he had caught it himself, and next because he felt that his independent stand at the factory, though it had lost him his place, was not likely to subject his mother to the privations he had feared. "I'll take another piece of fish, mother," said Robert, passing his plate. "I think, on the whole, I shan't be obliged to learn to braid straw." "No; you can do better at fishing." "Only," added Robert, with mock seriousness, "we might change work sometimes, mother; I will stay at home and braid straw, and you can go out fishing." "I am afraid I should make a poor hand at it," said Mrs. Rushton, smiling. "If Halbert Davis could look in upon us just now, he would be disappointed to find us so cheerful after my losing my place at factory. However, I've disappointed him in another way." "How is that?" "He expected Will Paine would lend him his boat while he was gone, but, instead of that, he finds it promised to me." "I am afraid he is not a very kind-hearted boy." "That's drawing it altogether too mild, mother. He's the meanest fellow I ever met. However, I won't talk about him any more, or it'll spoil my appetite." On the next two mornings Robert went out at five o'clock, in order to get home in time for the market-wagon. He met with fair luck, but not as good as on the first day. Taking the two mornings together, he captured and sold seventy pounds of fish, which, as the price remained the same, brought him in a dollar and forty cents. This was not equal to his wages at the factory; still, he had the greater part of the day to himself, only, unfortunately, he had no way of turning his time profitably to account, or, at least, none had thus far occurred to him. On the morning succeeding he was out of luck. He caught but two fish, and they were so small that he decided not to offer them for sale. "If I don't do better than this," he reflected, "I shan't make very good wages. The fish seem to be getting afraid of me." He paddled about, idly, a few rods from the shore, having drawn up his line and hook. All at once, he heard a voice hailing him from the river bank: "Boat ahoy!" "Hallo!" answered Robert, lifting his eyes, and seeing who called him. "Can you set me across the river?" "Yes, sir." "Bring in your boat, then, and I'll jump aboard. I'll pay you for your trouble." Robert did as requested, with alacrity. He was very glad to earn money in this way, since it seemed he was to have no fish to dispose of. He quickly turned the boat to the shore, and the stranger jumped on board. He was a man of rather more than the average height, with a slight limp in his gait, in a rough suit of clothes, his head being surmounted by a felt hat considerably the worse for wear. There was a scar on one cheek, and, altogether, he was not very prepossessing in his appearance. Robert noted all this in a rapid glance, but it made no particular impression upon him at the moment. He cared very little how the stranger looked, as long as he had money enough to pay his fare. "It's about a mile across the river, isn't it?" asked the stranger. "About that here. Where do you want to go?" "Straight across. There's an old man named Nichols lives on the other side, isn't there?" "Yes; he lives by himself." "Somebody told me so. He's rich, isn't he?" asked the stranger, carelessly. "So people say; but he doesn't show it in his dress or way of living." "A miser, I suppose?" "Yes." "What does he do with his money?" "I only know what people say." "And what do they say?" "That he is afraid to trust banks, and hides his money in the earth." "That kind of bank don't pay very good interest," said the stranger, laughing. "No; but it isn't likely to break." "Here? boy, give me one of the oars. I'm used to rowing, and I'll help you a little." Robert yielded one of the oars to his companion, who evidently understood rowing quite as well as he professed to. Our hero, though strong-armed, had hard work to keep up with him. "Look out, boy, or I'll turn you round," he said. "You are stronger than I am." "And more used to rowing; but I'll suit myself to you." A few minutes brought them to the other shore. The passenger jumped ashore, first handing a silver half-dollar to our hero, who was well satisfied with his fee. Robert sat idly in his boat, and watched his late fare as with rapid steps he left the river bank behind him. "He's going to the old man's house," decided Robert. "I wonder whether he has any business with him?" CHAPTER VIII. THE OLD FARMHOUSE. The stranger walked, with hasty strides, in the direction of an old farmhouse, which could be seen a quarter of a mile away. Whether it had ever been painted, was a question not easily solved. At present it was dark and weather-beaten, and in a general state of neglect. The owner, Paul Nichols, was a man advanced in years, living quite alone, and himself providing for his simple wants. Robert was right in calling him a miser, but he had not always deserved the name. The time was when he had been happily married to a good wife, and was blessed with two young children. But they were all taken from him in one week by an epidemic, and his life was made solitary and cheerless. This bereavement completely revolutionized his life. Up to this time he had been a good and respected citizen, with an interest in public affairs. Now he became morose and misanthropic, and his heart, bereaved of its legitimate objects of affection, henceforth was fixed upon gold, which he began to love with a passionate energy. He repulsed the advances of neighbors, and became what Robert called him--a miser. How much he was worth, no one knew. The town assessors sought in vain for stocks and bonds. He did not appear to possess any. Probably popular opinion was correct in asserting that he secreted his money in one or many out-of-the-way places, which, from time to time, he was wont to visit and gloat over his treasures. There was reason also to believe that it was mostly in gold, for he had a habit of asking specie payments from those indebted to him, or, if he could not obtain specie, he used to go to a neighboring town with his bank notes and get the change effected. Such was the man about whom Robert's unknown passenger exhibited so much curiosity, and whom it seemed that he was intending to visit. "I wonder whether the old man is at home!" he said to himself, as he entered the front yard through a gateway, from which the gate had long since disappeared. "He don't keep things looking very neat and trim, that's a fact," he continued, noticing the rank weeds and indiscriminate litter which filled the yard. "Just give me this place, and his money to keep it, and I'd make a change in the looks of things pretty quick." He stepped up to the front door, and, lifting the old-fashioned knocker, sounded a loud summons. "He'll hear that, if he isn't very deaf," he thought. But the summons appeared to be without effect. At all events, he was left standing on the doorstone, and no one came to bid him enter. "He can't be at home, or else he won't come," thought the visitor. "I'll try him again," and another knock, still louder than before, sounded through the farmhouse. But still no one came to the door. The fact was, that the old farmer had gone away early, with a load of hay, which he had sold; to a stable-keeper living some five miles distant. "I'll reconnoiter a little," said the stranger. He stepped to the front window, and looked in. All that met his gaze was a bare, dismantled room. "Not very cheerful, that's a fact," commented the outsider. "Well, he don't appear to be here; I'll go round to the back part of the house." He went round to the back door, where he thought it best, in the first place, to knock. No answer coming, he peered through the window, but saw no one. "The coast is clear," he concluded. "So much the better, if I can get in." The door proved to be locked, but the windows were easily raised. Through one of these he clambered into the kitchen, which was the only room occupied by the old farmer, with the exception of a room above, which he used as a bedchamber. Here he cooked and ate his meals, and here he spent his solitary evenings. Jumping over the window sill, the visitor found himself in this room. He looked around him, with some curiosity. "It is eighteen years since I was last in this room," he said. "Time hasn't improved it, nor me, either, very likely," he added, with a short laugh. "I've roamed pretty much all over the world in that time, and I've come back as poor as I went away. What's that copy I used to write?--'A rolling stone gathers no moss.' Well, I'm the rolling stone. In all that time my Uncle Paul has been moored fast to his hearthstone, and been piling up gold, which he don't seem to have much use for. As far as I know, I'm his nearest relation, there's no reason why he shouldn't launch out a little for the benefit of the family." It will be gathered from the foregoing soliloquy that the newcomer was a nephew of Paul Nichols. After a not very creditable youth, he had gone to sea, and for eighteen years this was his first reappearance in his native town. He sat down in a chair, and stretched out his legs, with an air of being at home. "I wonder what the old man will say when he sees me," he soliloquized. "Ten to one he won't know me. When we saw each other last I was a smooth-faced youth. Now I've got hair enough on my face, and the years have made, their mark upon me, I suspect. Where is he, I wonder, and how long have I got to wait for him? While I'm waiting, I'll take the liberty of looking in the closet, and seeing if he hasn't something to refresh the inner man. I didn't make much of a breakfast, and something hearty wouldn't come amiss." He rose from his chair, and opened the closet door. A small collection of crockery was visible, most of it cracked, but there was nothing eatable to be seen, except half a loaf of bread. This was from the baker, for the old man, after ineffectual efforts to make his own bread, had been compelled to abandon the attempt, and patronize the baker. "Nothing but a half loaf, and that's dry enough," muttered the stranger. "That isn't very tempting. I can't say much for my uncle's fare, unless he has got something more attractive somewhere." But, search as carefully as he might, nothing better could be found, and his appetite was not sufficiently great to encourage an attack upon the stale loaf. He sat down, rather discontented, and resumed the current of his reflections. "My uncle must be more of a miser than I thought, if he stints himself to such fare as this. It's rather a bad lookout for me. He won't be very apt to look with favor on my application for a small loan from his treasure. What's that the boy said? He don't trust any banks, but keeps his money concealed in the earth. By Jove! It would be a stroke of luck if I could stumble on one of his hiding places! If I could do that while he was away, I would forego the pleasure of seeing him, and make off with what I could find. I'll look about me, and see if I can't find some of his hidden hoards." No sooner did the thought occur to him than he acted upon it. "Let me see," he reflected, "where is he most likely to hide his treasure? Old stockings are the favorites with old maids and widows, but I don't believe Uncle Paul has got any without holes in them. He's more likely to hide his gold under the hearth. That's a good idea, I'll try the hearth first." He kneeled down, and began to examine the bricks, critically, with a view of ascertaining whether any bore the marks of having been removed recently, for he judged correctly that a miser would wish, from time to time, to unearth his treasure for the pleasure of looking at it. But there was no indication of disturbance. The hearth bore a uniform appearance, and did not seem to have been tampered with. "That isn't the right spot," reflected the visitor. "Perhaps there's a plank in the floor that raises, or, still more likely, the gold is buried in the cellar. I've a great mind to go down there." He lit a candle, and went cautiously down the rickety staircase. But he had hardly reached the bottom of the stairs, when he caught the sound of a wagon entering the yard. "That must be my uncle," he said. "I'd better go up, and not let him catch me down here." He ascended the stairs, and re-entered the room just as the farmer opened the door and entered. On seeing a tall, bearded stranger, whom he did not recognize, standing before him in his own kitchen, with a lighted candle in his hand, Paul Nichols uttered a shrill cry of alarm, and ejaculated: "Thieves! Murder! Robbers!" in a quavering voice. CHAPTER IX. THE UNWELCOME GUEST. The stranger was in rather an awkward predicament. However, he betrayed neither embarrassment nor alarm. Blowing out the candle, he advanced to the table and set it down. This movement brought him nearer Paul Nichols, who, with the timidity natural to an old man, anticipated an immediate attack. "Don't kill me! Spare my life!" he exclaimed, hastily stepping back. "I see you don't know me, Uncle Paul?" said the intruder, familiarly. "Who are you that call me Uncle Paul?" asked the old man, somewhat reassured. "Benjamin Haley, your sister's son. Do you know me now?" "You Ben Haley!" exclaimed the old man, betraying surprise. "Why, you are old enough to be his father." "Remember, Uncle Paul, I am eighteen years older than when you saw me last. Time brings changes, you know. When I saw you last, you were a man in the prime of life, now you are a feeble old man." "Are you really Ben Haley?" asked the old man, doubtfully. "To be sure I am. I suppose I look to you more like a bearded savage. Well, I'm not responsible for my looks. Not finding you at home, I took the liberty of coming in on the score of relationship." "What, were you doing with that candle?" asked Paul, suspiciously. "I went down cellar with it." "Down cellar!" repeated his uncle, with a look of alarm which didn't escape his nephew. "What for?" "In search of something to eat. All I could find in the closet was a dry loaf, which doesn't look very appetizing." "There's nothing down cellar. Don't go there again," said the old man, still uneasy. His nephew looked at him shrewdly. "Ha, Uncle Paul! I've guessed your secret so quick," he said to himself. "Some of your money is hidden away in the cellar, I'm thinking." "Where do you keep your provisions, then?" he said aloud. "The loaf is all I have." "Come, Uncle Paul, you don't mean that. That's a scurvy welcome to give a nephew you haven't seen for eighteen years. I'm going to stay to dinner with you, and you must give me something better than that. Haven't you got any meat in the house?" "No." Just then Ben Haley, looking from the window, saw some chickens in the yard. His eye lighted up at the discovery. "Ah, there is a nice fat chicken," he said. "We'll have a chicken dinner. Shall it be roast or boiled?" "No, no," said the old farmer, hastily. "I can't spare them. They'll bring a good price in the market by and by." "Can't help it, Uncle Paul. Charity begins at home. Excuse me a minute, I'll be back directly." He strode to the door and out into the yard. Then, after a little maneuvering, he caught a chicken, and going to the block, seized the ax, and soon decapitated it. "What have you done?" said Paul, ruefully, for the old man had followed his nephew, and was looking on in a very uncomfortable frame of mind. "Taken the first step toward a good dinner," said the other, coolly. "I am not sure but we shall want two." "No, no!" said Paul, hastily. "I haven't got much appetite." "Then perhaps we can make it do. I'll just get it ready, and cook it myself. I've knocked about in all sorts of places, and it won't be the first time I've served as cook. I've traveled some since I saw you last." "Have you?" said the old man, who seemed more interested in the untimely death of the pullet than in his nephew's adventures. "Yes, I've been everywhere. I spent a year in Australia at the gold diggings." "Did you find any?" asked his uncle, for the first time betraying interest. "Some, but I didn't bring away any." Ben Haley meanwhile was rapidly stripping the chicken of its feathers. When he finished, he said, "Now tell me where you keep your vegetables, Uncle Paul?" "They're in the corn barn. You can't get in. It's locked." "Where's the key?" "Lost." "I'll get in, never fear," said the intruder, and he led the way to the corn barn, his uncle unwillingly following and protesting that it would be quite impossible to enter. Reaching the building, he stepped back and was about to kick open the door, when old Paul hurriedly interposed, saying, "No, no, I've found the key." His nephew took it from his hand, and unlocking the door, brought out a liberal supply of potatoes, beets and squashes. "We'll have a good dinner, after all," he said. "You don't half know how to live, Uncle Paul. You need me here. You've got plenty around you, but you don't know how to use it." The free and easy manner in which his nephew conducted himself was peculiarly annoying and exasperating to the old man, but as often as he was impelled to speak, the sight of his nephew's resolute face and vigorous frame, which he found it difficult to connect with his recollections of young Ben, terrified him into silence, and he contented himself with following his nephew around uneasily with looks of suspicion. When the dinner was prepared both sat down to partake of it, but Ben quietly, and, as a matter of course, assumed the place of host and carved the fowl. Notwithstanding the shock which his economical notions had received, the farmer ate with appetite the best meal of which he had partaken for a long time. Ben had not vaunted too highly his skill as a cook. Wherever he had acquired it, he evidently understood the preparation of such a dinner as now lay before them. "Now, Uncle Paul, if we only had a mug of cider to wash down the dinner. Haven't you got some somewhere?" "Not a drop." "Don't you think I might find some stored away in the cellar, for instance?" asked Ben, fixing his glance upon his uncle's face. "No, no; didn't I tell you I hadn't got any?" returned Paul Nichols, with petulance and alarm. "I mean to see what else you have in the cellar," said Ben, to himself, "before I leave this place. There's a reason for that pale face of yours." But he only said aloud, "Well, if you haven't got any we must do without it. There's a little more of the chicken left. As you don't want it I'll appropriate it. Nothing like clearing up things. Come, this is rather better than dry bread, isn't it?" "It's very expensive," said the miser, ruefully. "Well, you can afford it, Uncle Paul--there's a comfort in that. I suppose you are pretty rich, eh?" "Rich!" repeated Paul, in dismay. "What put such a thing into your head?" "Not your style of living, you may be sure of that." "I am poor, Benjamin. You mustn't think otherwise. I live as well as I can afford." "Then what have you been doing with your savings all these years?" "My savings! It has taken all I had to live. There isn't any money to be made in farming. It's hard work and poor pay." "You used to support your family comfortably when you had one." "Don't--don't speak of them. I can't bear it," said Paul, his countenance changing. "When I had them I was happy." "And now you're not. Well, I don't wonder at it. It must be dismal enough living alone. You need somebody with you. I am your nephew and nearest relation. I feel that it is my duty to stay with you." The expression of dismay which overspread the old man's face at this declaration was ludicrous. "You stay with me?" he repeated, in a tone of alarm. "Yes, for a time at least. We'll be company for each other, won't we, Uncle Paul?" "No, no; there's no room." "No room? You don't mean to say that you need the whole house?" "I mean I cannot afford to have you here. Besides I'm used to being alone. I prefer it." "That's complimentary, at any rate. You prefer to be alone rather than to have me with you?" "Don't be offended, Benjamin. I've been alone so many years. Besides you'd feel dull here. You wouldn't like it." "I'll try it and see. What room are you going to give me?" "You'd better go away." "Well, uncle, we'll talk about that to-morrow. You're very considerate in fearing it will be dull for me, but I've roamed about the world so much that I shall be glad of a little dullness. So it's all settled. And now, Uncle Paul, if you don't object I'll take out my pipe and have a smoke. I always smoke after dinner." He lit his pipe, and throwing himself back in a chair, began to puff away leisurely, his uncle surveying him with fear and embarrassment. Why should his graceless nephew turn up, after so many years, in the form of this big, broad-shouldered, heavy-bearded stranger, only to annoy him, and thrust his unwelcome company upon him? CHAPTER X. UNCLE AND NEPHEW. Paul Nichols looked forward with dismay to the prospect of having his nephew remain with him as a guest. Like all misers, he had a distrust of every one, and the present appearance of his nephew only confirmed the impressions he still retained of his earlier bad conduct. He had all the will to turn him out of his house, but Ben was vastly his superior in size and strength, and he did not dare to attempt it. "He wants to rob, perhaps to murder me," thought Paul, surveying his big nephew with a troubled gaze. His apprehensions were such that he even meditated offering to pay the intruder's board for a week at the tavern, if he would leave him in peace by himself. But the reluctance to part with his money finally prevented such a proposal being made. In the afternoon the old man stayed around home. He did not dare to leave it lest Ben should take a fancy to search the house, and come upon some of his secret hoards, for people were right in reporting that he hid his money. At last evening came. With visible discomposure the old man showed Ben to a room. "You can sleep there," he said, pointing to a cot bed in the corner of the room. "All right, uncle. Good-night!" "Good-night!" said Paul Nichols. He went out and closed the door behind him. He not only closed it, but locked it, having secretly hidden the key in his pocket. He chuckled softly to himself as he went downstairs. His nephew was securely disposed of for the night, being fastened in his chamber. But if he expected Ben Haley quietly to submit to this incarceration he was entirely mistaken in that individual. The latter heard the key turn in the lock, and comprehended at once his uncle's stratagem. Instead of being angry, he was amused. "So my simple-minded uncle thinks he has drawn my teeth, does he? I'll give him a scare." He began to jump up and down on the chamber floor in his heavy boots, which, as the floor was uncarpeted, made a terrible noise. The old man in the room below, just congratulating himself on his cunning move, grew pale as he listened. He supposed his nephew to be in a furious passion, and apprehensions of personal violence disturbed him. Still he reflected that he would be unable to get out, and in the morning he could go for the constable. But he was interrupted by a different noise. Ben had drawn off his boots, and was firing them one after the other at the door. The noise became so intolerable, that Paul was compelled to ascend the stairs, trembling with fear. "What's the matter?" he inquired at the door, in a quavering voice. "Open the door," returned Ben. His uncle reluctantly inserted the key in the lock and opening it presented a pale, scared face in the doorway. His nephew, with his coat stripped off, was sitting on the side of the bed. "What's the matter?" asked Paul. "Nothing, only you locked the door by mistake," said Ben, coolly. "What made you make such a noise?" demanded Paul. "To call you up. There was no bell in the room, so that was the only way I had of doing it. What made you lock me in?" "I didn't think," stammered the old man. "Just what I supposed. To guard against your making that mistake again, let me have the key." "I'd rather keep it, if it's the same to you," said Paul, in alarm. "But it isn't the same to me. You see, Uncle Paul, you are growing old and forgetful, and might lock me in again. That would not be pleasant, you know, especially if the house should catch fire in the night." "What!" exclaimed Paul, terror-stricken, half suspecting his nephew contemplated turning incendiary. "I don't think it will, mind, but it's best to be prepared, so give me the key." The old man feebly protested, but ended in giving up the key to his nephew. "There, that's all right. Now I'll turn in. Good-night." "Good-night," responded Paul Nichols, and left the chamber, feeling more alarmed than ever. He was beginning to be more afraid and more distrustful of his nephew than ever. What if the latter should light on some of his various hiding places for money? Why, in that very chamber he had a hundred dollars in gold hidden behind the plastering. He groaned in spirit as he thought of it, and determined to tell his nephew the next morning that he must find another home, as he couldn't and wouldn't consent to his remaining longer. But when the morning came he found the task a difficult one to enter upon. Finally, after breakfast, which consisted of eggs and toast, Ben Haley having ransacked the premises for eggs, which the old man intended for the market, Paul said, "Benjamin, you must not be offended, but I have lived alone for years, and I cannot invite you to stay longer." "Where shall I go, uncle?" demanded Ben, taking out his pipe coolly, and lighting it. "There's a tavern in the village." "Is there? That won't do me any good." "You'll be better off there than here. They set a very good table, and----" "You don't," said Ben, finishing the sentence. "I know that, but then, uncle, I have two reasons for preferring to stay here. The first is, that I may enjoy the society of my only living relation; the second is, that I have not money enough to pay my board at the hotel." He leaned back, and began to puff leisurely at his pipe, as if this settled the matter. "If you have no money, why do you come to me?" demanded Paul, angrily. "Do you expect me to support you?" "You wouldn't turn out your sister's son, would you, Uncle Paul?" "You must earn your own living. I can't support you in idleness." "You needn't; I'll work for you. Let me see, I'll do the cooking." "I don't want you here," said the old man, desperately. "Why do you come to disturb me, after so many years?" "I'll go away on one condition," said Ben Haley. "What's that?" "Give me, or lend me--I don't care which--a hundred dollars." "Do you think I'm made of money?" asked Paul, fear and anger struggling for the mastery. "I think you can spare me a hundred dollars." "Go away! You are a bad man. You were a wild, bad boy, and you are no better now." "Now, Uncle Paul, I think you're rather too hard upon me. Just consider that I am your nephew. What will people say if you turn me out of doors?" "I don't care what they say. I can't have you here." "I'm sorry I can't oblige you by going, Uncle Paul, but I've got a headache this morning, and don't feel like stirring. Let me stay with you a day or two, and then I may go." Vain were all the old man's expostulations. His nephew sat obstinately smoking, and refused to move. "Come out to the barn with me while I milk," said Paul, at length, not daring to leave his nephew by himself. "Thank you, but I'm well off as I am. I've got a headache, and I'd rather stay here." Milking couldn't longer be deferred. But for the stranger's presence it would have been attended to two hours earlier. Groaning in spirit, and with many forebodings, Paul went out to the barn, and in due time returned with his foaming pails. There sat his nephew in the old place, apparently not having stirred. Possibly he didn't mean mischief after all, Paul reflected. At any rate, he must leave him again, while he released the cows from their stalls, and drove them to pasture. He tried to obtain his nephew's companionship, but in vain. "I'm not interested in cows, uncle," he said. "I'll be here when you come back." With a sigh his uncle left the house, only half reassured. That he had reason for his distrust was proved by Ben Haley's movements. He lighted a candle, and going down to the cellar, first securing a pickax, struck into the earthen flooring, and began to work energetically. "I am sure some of the old man's money is here," he said to himself. "I must work fast, or he'll catch me at it." Half an hour later Paul Nichols re-entered the house. He looked for his nephew, but his seat was vacant. He thought he heard a dull thud in the cellar beneath. He hurried to the staircase, and tottered down. Ben had come upon a tin quart-measure partly filled with gold coins, and was stooping over, transferring them to his pocket. With a hoarse cry like that of an animal deprived of its young, his uncle sprang upon him, and fastened his claw-like nails in the face of his burly nephew. CHAPTER XI. ROBERT COMES TO THE RESCUE. The attack was so sudden, and the old man's desperation so reinforced his feeble strength, that Ben Haley was thrown forward, and the measure of gold coins fell from his hand. But he quickly recovered himself. "Let me alone," he said, sternly, forcibly removing his uncle's hands from his face, but not before the claw-like nails had drawn blood. "Let me alone, if you know what is best for yourself." "You're a thief!" screamed Paul. "You shall go to jail for this." "Shall I?" asked Ben, his face darkening and his tone full of menace. "Who is going to send me there?" "I am," answered Paul. "I'll have you arrested." "Look here, Uncle Paul," said Ben, confining the old man's arms to his side, "it's time we had a little talk together. You'd better not do as you say." "You're a thief! The jail is the place for thieves." "It isn't the place for me, and I'm not going there. Now let us come to an understanding. You are rich and I am poor." "Rich!" repeated Paul. "Yes; at any rate, you have got this farm, and more money hidden away than you will ever use. I am poor. You can spare me this money here as well as not." "It is all I have." "I know better than that. You have plenty more, but I will be satisfied with this. Remember, I am your sister's son." "I don't care if you are," said the old man, doggedly. "And you owe me some help. You'll never miss it. Now make up your mind to give me this money, and I'll go away and leave you in peace." "Never!" exclaimed Paul, struggling hard to free himself. "You won't!" His uncle repeated the emphatic refusal. "Then I shall have to put it out of your power to carry out your threat." He took his uncle up in his strong arms, and moved toward the stairs. "Are you going to murder me?" asked Paul, in mortal fear. "You will find out what I am going to do," said Ben, grimly. He carried his uncle upstairs, and, possessing himself of a clothesline in one corner of the kitchen, proceeded to tie him hand and foot, despite his feeble opposition. "There," said he, when his uncle lay before him utterly helpless, "I think that disposes of you for a while. Now for the gold." Leaving him on the floor, he again descended the cellar stairs, and began to gather up the gold coins, which had been scattered about the floor at the time of Paul's unexpected attack. The old man groaned in spirit as he found himself about to be robbed, and utterly helpless to resist the outrage. But help was near at hand, though he knew it not. Robert Rushton had thought more than once of his unknown passenger of the day before, and the particular inquiries he made concerning Paul Nichols and his money. Ben Haley had impressed him far from favorably, and the more he called to mind his appearance, the more he feared that he meditated some dishonest designs upon Paul. So the next morning, in order to satisfy his mind that all was right, he rowed across to the same place where he had landed Ben, and fastening his boat, went up to the farmhouse. He reached it just as Ben, having secured the old man, had gone back into the cellar to gather up the gold. Robert looked into the window, and, to his surprise, saw the old farmer lying bound hand and foot. He quickly leaped in, and asked: "What is the matter? Who has done this?" "Hush!" said the old man, "he'll hear you." "Who do you mean?" "My nephew." "Where is he?" "Down cellar. He's tied me here, and is stealing all my gold." "What shall I do? Can I help you?" "Cut the ropes first." Robert drew a jackknife from his pocket, and did as he was bidden. "Now," said Paul, rising with a sigh of relief from his constrained position, "while I bolt the cellar door, you go upstairs, and in the closet of the room over this you will find a gun. It is loaded. Bring it down." Robert hurried upstairs, and quickly returned with the weapon. "Do you know how to fire a gun?" asked Paul. "Yes," said Robert. "Then keep it. For I am nervous, and my hand trembles. If he breaks through the door, fire." Ben Haley would have been up before this, but it occurred to him to explore other parts of the cellar, that he might carry away as much booty as possible. He had rendered himself amenable to the law already, and he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, so he argued. He was so busily occupied that he did not hear the noise of Robert's entrance into the room above, or he would at once have gone upstairs. In consequence of the delay his uncle and Robert had time to concert measures for opposing him. Finally, not succeeding in finding more gold, he pocketed what he had found, and went up the cellar stairs. He attempted to open the door, when, to his great surprise, he found that it resisted his efforts. "What makes the door stick so?" he muttered, not suspecting the true state of the case. But he was quickly enlightened. "You can't come up!" exclaimed the old man, in triumph. "I've bolted the door." "How did he get free? He must have untied the knots," thought Ben. "Does the old fool think he is going to keep me down here?" "Unlock the door," he shouted, in a loud, stern voice, "or it will be the worse for you." "Have you got the gold with you?" "Yes." "Then go down and leave it where you found it, and I will let you come up." "You're a fool," was the reply. "Do you think I am a child? Open the door, or I will burst it open with my foot." "You'd better not," said Paul, whose courage had returned with the presence of Robert and the possession of the gun. "Why not? What are you going to do about it?" asked Ben, derisively. "I've got help. You have more than one to contend with." "I wonder if he has any one with him?" thought Ben. "I believe the old fool is only trying to deceive me. At any rate, help or no help, it is time I were out of this hole." "If you don't open the door before I count three," he said, aloud, "I'll burst it open." "What shall I do," asked Robert, in a low voice, "if he comes out?" "If he tries to get away with the gold, fire!" said the old man. Robert determined only to inflict a wound. The idea of taking a human life, even under such circumstances, was one that made him shudder. He felt that gold was not to be set against life. "One--two--three!" counted Ben, deliberately. The door remaining locked, he drew back and kicked the door powerfully. Had he been on even ground, it would have yielded to the blow, but kicking from the stair beneath, placed him at a disadvantage. Nevertheless the door shook and trembled beneath the force of the attack made upon it. "Well, will you unlock it now?" he demanded, pausing. "No," said the old man, "not unless you carry back the gold." "I won't do that. I have had too much trouble to get it. But if you don't unlock the door at once I may be tempted to forget that you are my uncle." "I should like to forget that you are my nephew," said the old man. "The old fool has mustered up some courage," thought Ben. "I'll soon have him whining for mercy." He made a fresh attack upon the door. This time he did not desist until he had broken through the panel. Then with the whole force he could command he threw himself against the upper part of the door, and it came crashing into the kitchen. Ben Haley leaped through the opening and confronted his uncle, who receded in alarm. The sight of the burly form of his nephew, and his stern and menacing countenance, once more made him quail. Ben Haley looked around him, and his eyes lighted upon Robert Rushton standing beside the door with the gun in his hand. He burst into a derisive laugh, and turning to his uncle, said: "So this is the help you were talking about. He's only a baby. I could twist him around my finger. Just lay down that gun, boy! It isn't meant for children like you." CHAPTER XII. ESCAPE. Though he had a weapon in his hand, many boys in Robert's situation would have been unnerved. He was a mere boy, though strong of his age. Opposed to him was a tall, strong man, of desperate character, fully resolved to carry out his dishonest purpose, and not likely to shrink from violence, to which he was probably only too well accustomed. From the old man he was not likely to obtain assistance, for already Paul's courage had begun to dwindle, and he regarded his nephew with a scared look. "Lay down that gun, boy!" repeated Ben Haley. "I know you. You're the boy that rowed me across the river. You can row pretty well, but you're not quite a match for me even at that." "This gun makes me even with you," said Robert, returning his look unflinchingly. "Does it? Then all I can say is, that when you lose it you'll be in a bad pickle. Lay it down instantly." "Then lay down the gold you have in your pockets," said our hero, still pointing his gun at Haley. "Good boy! Brave boy!" said the old man, approvingly. "Look here, boy," said Haley, in quick, stern tones, "I've had enough of this nonsense. If you don't put down that gun in double quick time, you'll repent it. One word--yes or no!" "No," said Robert, resolutely. No sooner had he uttered the monosyllable than Haley sprang toward him with the design of wresting the gun from him. But Robert had his finger upon the trigger, and fired. The bullet entered the shoulder of the ruffian, but in the excitement of the moment he only knew that he was hit, but this incensed him. In spite of the wound he seized the musket and forcibly wrested it from our hero. He raised it in both hands and would probably in his blind fury have killed him on the spot, but for the sudden opening of the outer door, and entrance of a neighboring farmer, who felt sufficiently intimate to enter without knocking. This changed Haley's intention. Feeling that the odds were against him, he sprang through the window, gun in hand, and ran with rapid strides towards the river. "What's the matter?" demanded the new arrival, surveying the scene before him in astonishment. "He's gone off with my gold," exclaimed Paul Nichols, recovering from his stupefaction. "Run after him, catch him!" "Who is it?" "Ben Haley." "What, your nephew! I thought he was dead long ago." "I wish he had been," said Paul, wringing his hands. "He's taken all my money--I shall die in the poorhouse." "I can't understand how it all happened," said the neighbor, looking to Robert for an explanation. "Who fired the gun?" "I did," said our hero. "Did you hit him?" "I think so. I saw blood on his shirt. I must have hit him in the shoulder." "Don't stop to talk," said Paul, impatiently. "Go after him and get back the gold." "We can't do much," said the neighbor, evidently not very anxious to come into conflict with such a bold ruffian. "He has the gun with him." "What made you let him have it?" asked Paul. "I couldn't help it," said Robert. "But he can't fire it. It is unloaded, and I don't think he has any ammunition with him." "To be sure," said Paul, eagerly. "You see there's no danger. Go after him, both of you, He can't hurt ye." Somewhat reassured the neighbor followed Robert, who at once started in pursuit of the escaped burglar. He was still in sight, though he had improved the time consumed in the foregoing colloquy, and was already near the river bank. On he sped, bent on making good his escape with the money he had dishonestly acquired. One doubt was in his mind. Should he find a boat? If not, the river would prove an insuperable obstacle, and he would be compelled to turn and change the direction of his flight. Looking over his shoulder he saw Robert and the farmer on his track, and he clutched his gun the more firmly. "They'd better not touch me," he said to himself. "If I can't fire the gun I can brain either or both with it." Thoughts of crossing the stream by swimming occurred to him. A sailor by profession, he was an expert swimmer, and the river was not wide enough to daunt him. But his pockets were filled with the gold he had stolen, and gold is well known to be the heaviest of all the metals. But nevertheless he could not leave it behind since it was for this he had incurred his present peril. In this uncertainty he reached the bank of the river, when to his surprise and joy his eye rested upon Robert's boat. "The boy's boat!" he exclaimed, in exultation, "by all that's lucky! I will take the liberty of borrowing it without leave." He sprang in, and seizing one of the oars, pushed out into the stream, first drawing up the anchor. When Robert and his companion reached the shore he was already floating at a safe distance. "He's got my boat!" exclaimed our hero, in disappointment. "So he has!" ejaculated the other. "You're a little too late!" shouted Ben Haley, with a sneer. "Just carry back my compliments to the old fool yonder and tell him I left in too great a hurry to give him my note for the gold he kindly lent me. I'll attend to it when I get ready." He had hitherto sculled the boat. Now he took the other oar and commenced rowing. But here the wound, of which he had at first been scarcely conscious, began to be felt, and the first vigorous stroke brought a sharp twinge, besides increasing the flow of blood. His natural ferocity was stimulated by his unpleasant discovery, and he shook his fist menacingly at Robert, from whom he had received the wound. "There's a reckoning coming betwixt you and me, young one!" he cried, "and it'll be a heavy one. Ben Haley don't forget that sort of debt. The time'll come when he'll pay it back with interest. It mayn't come for years, but it'll come at last, you may be sure of that." Finding that he could not row on account of his wound, he rose to his feet, and sculled the boat across as well as he could with one hand. "I wish I had another boat," said Robert. "We could soon overtake him." "Better let him go," said the neighbor. "He was always a bad one, that Ben Haley. I couldn't begin to tell you all the bad things he did when he was a boy. He was a regular dare-devil. You must look out for him, or he'll do you a mischief some time, to pay for that wound." "He brought it on himself," said Robert "I gave him warning." He went back to the farmhouse to tell Paul of his nephew's escape. He was brave and bold, but the malignant glance with which Ben Haley uttered his menace, gave him a vague sense of discomfort. CHAPTER XIII. REVENGE. In spite of his wounded arm Ben Haley succeeded in propelling the boat to the opposite shore. The blood was steadily, though slowly, flowing from his wound, and had already stained his shirt red for a considerable space. In the excitement of first receiving it he had not felt the pain; now, however, the wound began to pain him, and, as might be expected, his feeling of animosity toward our hero was not diminished. "That cursed boy!" he muttered, between his teeth. "I wish I had had time to give him one blow--he wouldn't have wanted another. I hope the wound isn't serious--if it is, I may have paid dear for the gold." Still, the thought of the gold in his pockets afforded some satisfaction. He had been penniless; now he was the possessor of--as near as he could estimate, for he had not had time to count--five hundred dollars in gold. That was more than he had ever possessed before at one time, and would enable him to live at ease for a while. On reaching the shore he was about to leave the boat to its fate, when he espied a boy standing at a little distance, with a hatchet in his hand. This gave him an idea. "Come here, boy," he said. The boy came forward, and examined the stranger with curiosity. "Is that your hatchet?" he asked. "No, sir. It belongs to my father." "Would you mind selling it to me if I will give you money enough to buy a new one?" "This is an old hatchet." "It will suit me just as well, and I haven't time to buy another. Would your father sell it?" "Yes, sir; I guess so." "Very well. What will a new one cost you?" The boy named the price. "Here is the money, and twenty-five cents more to pay you for your trouble in going to the store." The boy pocketed the money with satisfaction. He was a farmer's son, and seldom had any money in his possession. He already had twenty-five cents saved up toward the purchase of a junior ball, and the stranger's gratuity would just make up the sum necessary to secure it. He was in a hurry to make the purchase, and, accordingly, no sooner had he received the money than he started at once for the village store. His departure was satisfactory to Ben Haley, who now had nothing to prevent his carrying out his plans. "I wanted to be revenged on the boy, and now I know how," he said. "I'll make some trouble for him with this hatchet." He drew the boat up and fastened it. Then he deliberately proceeded to cut away at the bottom with his newly-acquired hatchet. He had a strong arm, and his blows were made more effective by triumphant malice. The boat he supposed to belong to Robert, and he was determined to spoil it. He hacked away with such energy that soon there was a large hole in the bottom of the boat. Not content with inflicting this damage, he cut it in various other places, until it presented an appearance very different from the neat, stanch boat of which Will Paine had been so proud. At length Ben stopped, and contemplated the ruin he had wrought with malicious satisfaction. "That's the first instalment in my revenge," he said. "I should like to see my young ferryman's face when he sees his boat again. It'll cost him more than he'll ever get from my miserly uncle to repair it. It serves him right for meddling with matters that don't concern him. And now I must be getting away, for my affectionate uncle will soon be raising a hue and cry after me if I'm not very much mistaken." He would like to have gone at once to obtain medical assistance for his wound, but to go to the village doctor would be dangerous. He must wait till he had got out of the town limits, and the farther away the better. He knew when the train would start, and made his way across the fields to the station, arriving just in time to catch it. First, however, he bound a handkerchief round his shoulder to arrest the flow of blood. When he reached the station, and was purchasing his ticket, the station-master noticed the blood upon his shirt. "Are you hurt, sir?" he asked. "Yes, a little," said Ben Haley. "How did it happen?" inquired the other, with Yankee inquisitiveness. "I was out hunting," said Ben, carelessly, "with a friend who wasn't much used to firearms. In swinging his gun round, it accidentally went off, and I got shot through the shoulder." "That's bad," said the station-master, in a tone of sympathy. "You'd better go round to the doctor's, and have it attended to." "I would," said Ben, "but I am called away by business of the greatest importance. I can get along for a few hours, and then I'll have a doctor look at it. How soon will the train be here?" "It's coming now. Don't you hear it?" "That's the train I must take. You see I couldn't wait long enough for the doctor," added Ben, anxious to account satisfactorily for his inattention to the medical assistance of which he stood in need. When he was fairly on board the cars, and the train was under way, he felt considerably relieved. He was speeding fast away from the man he had robbed, and who was interested in his capture, and in a few days he might be at sea, able to snap his fingers at his miserly uncle and the boy whom he determined some day to meet and settle scores with. From one enemy of Robert the transition is brief and natural to another. At this very moment Halbert Davis was sauntering idly and discontentedly through the streets of the village. He was the son of a rich man, or of one whom most persons, his own family included, supposed to be rich; but this consciousness, though it made him proud, by no means made him happy. He had that morning at the breakfast table asked his father to give him a boat like Will Paine's, but Mr. Davis had answered by a decided refusal. "You don't need any boat," he said, sharply. "It wouldn't cost very much," pleaded Halbert. "How much do you suppose?" "Will Paine told me his father paid fifty dollars for his." "Why don't you borrow it sometimes?" "I can't borrow it. Will started a day or two since for boarding school." "Better still. I will hire it for you while he is away." "I thought of it myself," said Halbert, "but just before he went away Will lent it to the factory boy," sneering as he uttered the last two words. "Do you mean Robert Rushton?" "Yes." "That's only a boy's arrangement. I will see Mr. Paine, and propose to pay him for the use of the boat, and I presume he will be willing to accede to my terms." "When will you see him?" asked Halbert, hopefully. "I will try to see him in the course of the day." It turned out, however, that there was no need of calling on Mr. Paine, for five minutes later, having some business with Mr. Davis, he rang the bell, and was ushered into the breakfast-room. "Excuse my calling early," he said, "but I wished to see you about----" and here he stated his business, in which my readers will feel no interest. When that was over, Mr. Davis introduced the subject of the boat, and made the offer referred to. "I am sorry to refuse," said Mr. Paine, "but my son, before going away, passed his promise to Robert Rushton that he should have it during his absence." "Do you hold yourself bound by such a promise?" inquired Mrs. Davis, with a disagreeable smile. "Certainly," said the lawyer, gravely. "Robert is a valued friend of my son's, and I respect boyish friendship. I remember very well my own boyhood, and I had some strong friendships at that time." "I don't see what your son can find to like in Robert Rushton," said Mrs. Davis, with something of Halbert's manner. "I think him a very disagreeable and impertinent boy." Mr. Paine did not admire Mrs. Davis, and was not likely to be influenced by her prejudices. Without inquiry, therefore, into the cause of her unfavorable opinion, he said, "I have formed quite a different opinion of Robert. I am persuaded that you do him injustice." "He attacked Halbert ferociously the other day," said Mrs. Davis, determined to impart the information whether asked or not. "He has an ungovernable temper." Mr. Paine glanced shrewdly at Halbert, of whose arrogant and quarrelsome disposition he had heard from his own son, and replied, "I make it a point not to interfere in boys' quarrels. William speaks very highly of Robert, and it affords him great satisfaction, I know, to leave the boat in his charge." Mrs. Davis saw that there was no use in pursuing the subject, and it dropped. After the lawyer had gone Halbert made his petition anew, but without satisfactory results. The fact was, Mr. Davis had heard unfavorable reports from New York the day previous respecting a stock in which he had an interest, and it was not a favorable moment to prefer a request involving the outlay of money. It was this refusal which made Halbert discontented and unhappy. The factory boy, as he sneeringly called him, could have a boat, while he, a gentleman's son, was forced to go without one. Of course, he would not stoop to ask the loan of the boat, however much he wanted it, from a boy he disliked so much as Robert. He wondered whether Robert were out this morning. So, unconsciously, his steps led him to the shore of the river, where he knew the boat was generally kept. He cast his eye toward it, when what was his surprise to find the object of his desire half full of water, with a large hole in the bottom and defaced in other respects. CHAPTER XIV. TWO UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEWS. Halbert's first emotion was surprise, his second was gratification. His rival could no longer enjoy the boat which he had envied him. Not only that, but he would get into trouble with Mr. Paine on account of the damage which it had received. Being under his care, it was his duty to keep it in good condition. "I wonder how it happened?" thought Halbert. "Won't the young beggar be in a precious scrape when it's found out? Most likely he won't let Mr. Paine know." In this thought he judged Robert by himself. Straightway the plan suggested itself of going to the lawyer himself and informing him of Robert's delinquency. It would be a very agreeable way of taking revenge him. The plan so pleased him that he at once directed his steps toward Mr. Paine's office. On the way he overtook Hester Paine, the young lady on whose account he was chiefly incensed against Robert. Being as desirous as ever of standing in the young lady's good graces, he hurriedly advanced to her side, and lifting his hat with an air of ceremonious politeness, he said: "Good-morning, Hester." Hester Paine was not particularly well pleased with the meeting. She had been made acquainted by her brother with the quarrel between Halbert and Robert, and the mean revenge which the former had taken in procuring the dismissal of the latter from the factory. Having a partiality for Robert, this was not likely to recommend his enemy in her eyes. "Good-morning, Mr. Davis," she said, with cool politeness. "You are very ceremonious this morning, Miss Hester," said Halbert, who liked well enough to be called "Mr." by others, but not by Hester. "Am I?" asked Hester, indifferently. "How so?" "You called me Mr. Davis." "That's your name, isn't it?" "I am not called so by my intimate friends." "No, I suppose not," said Hester, thus disclaiming the title. Halbert bit his lips. He was not in love, not because he was too young, but because he was too selfish to be in love with anybody except himself. But he admired Hester, and the more she slighted him the more he was determined to force her to like him. He did, however, feel a little piqued at her behavior, and that influenced his next words. "Perhaps you'd rather have the factory boy walking beside you," he said, with not very good judgment, if he wanted to recommend himself to her. "There are a good many factory boys in town," she said. "I can't tell unless you tell me whom you mean." "I mean Robert Rushton." "Perhaps I might," said Hester. "He's a low fellow," said Halbert, bitterly. "No one thinks so but you," retorted Hester, indignantly. "My father was obliged to dismiss him from the factory." "I know all about that, and who was the means of having him sent away." "I suppose you mean me." "Yes, Halbert Davis, I mean you, and I consider it a very mean thing to do," said Hester, her cheeks flushed with the indignation she felt. "He attacked me like the low ruffian that he is," pleaded Halbert, in extenuation. "If he hadn't insulted me, he wouldn't have got into trouble." "You struck him first, you know you did. My brother told me all about it. You were angry because he walked home with me. I would rather go home alone any time than have your escort." "You're very polite, Miss Hester," said Halbert, angrily. "I can tell you some news about your favorite." "If it's anything bad, I won't believe it." "You'll have to believe it." "Well, what is it?" demanded Hester, who was not altogether unlike girls in general, and so felt curious to learn what it was that Halbert had to reveal. "Your brother was foolish enough to leave his boat in Rushton's care." "That is no news. Will was very glad to do Robert a favor." "He'll be sorry enough now." "Why will he?" "Because the boat is completely ruined." "I don't believe it," said Hester, hastily. "It's true, though. I was down at the river just now, and saw it with my own eyes. There is a great hole in the bottom, and it is hacked with a hatchet, so that it wouldn't bring half price." "Do you know who did it?" asked Hester, with the momentary thought that Halbert himself might have been tempted by his hatred into the commission of the outrage. "No, I don't. It was only accidentally I saw it." "Was Robert at the boat?" "No." "Have you asked him about it?" "No, I have not seen him." "Then I am sure some enemy has done it. I am sure it is no fault of his." "If your brother had let me have the boat, it wouldn't have happened. I offered him a fair price for its use." "He won't be sorry he refused, whatever has happened. But I must bid you good-morning, Mr. Davis," and the young lady, who was now at her own gate, opened it, and entered. "She might have been polite enough to invite me in," said Halbert, with chagrin. "I don't see how she can be so taken up with that low fellow." He waited till Hester had entered the house, and then bent his steps to Mr. Paine's office, which was a small one-story building in one corner of the yard. The lawyer was sitting at a table covered with papers, from which he looked up as Halbert entered the office. "Sit down, Halbert," he said. "Any message from your father?" "No, sir." "No legal business of your own?" he inquired, with a smile. "No, sir, no legal business." "Well, if you have any business, you may state it at once, as I am quite busy." "It is about the boat which your son lent to Robert Rushton." "I shall not interfere with that arrangement," said the lawyer, misunderstanding his object. "I told your father that this morning," and he resumed his writing. "I did not come to say anything about that. The boat wouldn't be of any use to me now." "Why not?" asked the lawyer, detecting something significant in the boy's tone. "Because," said Halbert, in a tone which he could not divest of the satisfaction he felt at his rival's misfortune, "the boat's completely ruined." Mr. Paine laid down his pen in genuine surprise. "Explain yourself," he said. So Halbert told the story once more, taking good care to make the damage quite as great as it was. "That is very strange," said the lawyer, thoughtfully. "I can't conceive how such damage could have happened to the boat." "Robert Rushton don't know how to manage a boat." "You are mistaken. He understands it very well. I am sure the injury you speak of could not have happened when he was in charge. You say there was not only a hole in the bottom, but it was otherwise defaced and injured?" "Yes, sir, it looked as if it had been hacked by a hatchet." "Then it is quite clear that Robert could have had nothing to do with it. It must have been done by some malicious person or persons." Knowing something of Halbert, Mr. Paine looked hard at him, his suspicions taking the same direction as his daughter's. But, as we know, Halbert was entirely innocent, and bore the gaze without confusion. "I don't see why Robert hasn't been and let me know of this," said Mr. Paine, musing. "He was probably afraid to tell you," said Halbert, with a slight sneer. "I know him better than that. You can testify," added the lawyer, significantly, "that he is not deficient in bravery." "I thought I would come and tell you," said Halbert, coloring a little. "I thought you would like to know." "You are very kind to take so much trouble," said Mr. Paine, but there was neither gratitude nor cordiality in his tone. Halbert thought it was time to be going, and accordingly got up and took his leave. As he opened the office door to go out, he found himself face to face with Robert Rushton, who passed him with a slight nod, and with an air of trouble entered the presence of his friend's father. CHAPTER XV. HALBERT'S MALICE. Robert was forced, by Ben Haley's, taking possession of his boat to give up for the present his design of recrossing the river. He felt bound to go back and inform Paul of Ben's escape. "He has carried off my gold," exclaimed Paul, in anguish. "Why didn't you catch him?" "He had too much start of us," said Robert's companion. "But even if we had come up with him, I am afraid he would have proved more than a match for us. He is a desperate man. How much money did he take away with him?" "More than five hundred dollars," wailed the old man. "I am completely ruined!" "Not quite so bad as that, Mr. Nichols. You have your farm left." But the old man was not to be comforted. He had become so wedded to his gold that to lose it was like losing his heart's blood. But was these no hope of recovery? "Why don't you go after him?" he exclaimed, suddenly. "Raise the neighbors. It isn't too late yet." "He's across the river before this," said Robert. "Get a boat and go after him." "I am willing," said our hero, promptly. "Where can we find a boat, Mr. Dunham?" "There's one about a quarter of a mile down the stream--Stetson's boat." "Let's go, then." "Very well, Robert. I've no idea we can do anything, but we will try." "Go, go. Don't waste a moment," implored the old man, in feverish impatience. Robert and Mr. Dunham started, and were soon rowing across the river in Stetson's boat. "Whereabout would he be likely to land?" asked the farmer. "There's my boat now," said Robert, pointing it out. "He has left it where I usually keep it." Quickly they rowed alongside. Then to his great sorrow Robert perceived the malicious injury which his enemy had wrought. "Oh, Mr. Dunham, look at that!" he said, struck with grief. "The boat is spoiled!" "Not so bad as that. It can be mended." "What will Will Paine say? What will his father say?" "Then it isn't your boat?" "No, that is the worst of it. It was lent me by Will Paine, and I promised to take such good care of it." "It isn't your fault, Robert?" "No, I couldn't help it, but still it wouldn't have happened if it had not been in my charge." "You can get it repaired, so that it will look almost as well as new." If Robert had had plenty of money, this suggestion would have comforted him, but it will be remembered that he was almost penniless, dependent on the fish he caught for the means of supporting his mother and himself. Now this resource was cut off. The boat couldn't be used until it was repaired. He felt morally bound to get it repaired, though he was guiltless of the damage. But how could he even do this? One thing was clear--Mr. Paine must at once be informed of the injury suffered by the boat. Robert shrank from informing him, but he knew it to be his duty, and he was too brave to put it off. But first he must try to find some clew to Ben Haley. He had now a personal interest in bringing to justice the man who had made him so much trouble. He had scarcely got on shore than the boy who had sold Ben Haley the hatchet, strolled up. "Who was that man who came across in your boat?" he asked. "Did you see him?" asked Robert, eagerly. "To be sure I did," said Tom Green, with satisfaction. "I sold him my old hatchet for money enough to buy a new one, and he give me a quarter besides for my trouble." "I wish you hadn't done it, Tom," said Robert, gravely. "See what he's done with it." Tom Green opened his eyes wide with astonishment. "What did he do that for?" he asked. "To be revenged on me. I'll tell you what for another time. Now I want to find him. Can you tell me where he went?" "No; I left him here, while I went to the store for a new hatchet." The old hatchet was found under a clump of bushes. Robert took possession of it, feeling that he had a right to it, as part compensation for the mischief it had done. "We'd better go to the railroad depot, Mr. Dunham," he said. "He'd be most likely to go there." "You're right. We'll go." They walked rapidly to the station, but too late, of course, for the train. The station-master was standing on the platform, superintending the removal of a trunk. "Mr. Cross," said Robert, "I want to find out if a particular man left by the last train. I'll describe him." "Yes," said the station-master, "that's the man I was wondering about. He had a wound in the shoulder." "He got that from me," said Robert. "Sho! you don't say so," returned the station-master, in surprise. "He said he was out hunting with a friend, and his friend's gun went off accidentally." "I don't believe he feels very friendly to me," said Robert, smiling. "He's stolen five or six hundred dollars in gold from old Paul Nichols." "It'll about kill the old man, won't it?" "He feels pretty bad about it. For what place did he buy a ticket?" "For Cranston; but that ain't no guide. When he gets there, he'll buy a ticket for further on." Had there been a telegraph station, Robert would have telegraphed on to have Ben Haley stopped, but there was none nearer than the next town. He determined to give information to a justice of the peace, and leave the matter in his hands. But Justice in a country town is slow, and it may as well be stated here, before anything was done Ben Haley was out of danger. But Robert was destined to fall in with him at a future day. This business attended to, Robert bent his steps to Mr. Paine's office. This brings us to his meeting with Halbert Davis at the door. He was slightly surprised at the encounter, but was far from guessing the object of Halbert's call. Mr. Paine looked up as he entered, and had no difficulty in guessing his errand. "What can I do for you, Robert?" he asked, kindly. "I bring bad news, Mr. Paine," said our hero, boldly plunging into the subject which had brought him to the office. "It's about the boat, isn't it?" said the lawyer. "What, do you know about it?" asked Robert, in surprise. "Yes; a disinterested friend brought the news." "Halbert Davis?" "The same. He takes a strong interest in your affairs," added the lawyer, dryly. "Now tell me how it happened." Robert gave a full explanation, the lawyer occasionally asking a question. "It seems, then," he said, "that you incurred this man's enmity by your defense of Mr. Nichols' money." "Yes, sir." "It was incurred in a good cause. I can't blame you, nor will my son. I will get Mr. Plane, the carpenter, to look at the boat and see what he can do to repair it." "Some time I will pay you the cost of the repairs, Mr. Paine. I would now if I had any money; but you know how I am situated." "I shall not call upon you to do that," said the lawyer, kindly. "It was not your fault." "But the damage would not have happened if Will had not lent the boat to me." "That is true; but in undertaking the defense of Mr. Nichols you showed a pluck and courage which most boys would not have exhibited. I am interested, like all good citizens, in the prevention of theft, and in this instance I am willing to assume the cost." "You are very kind, Mr. Paine. I was afraid you would blame me." "No, my boy; I am not so unreasonable. It will save me some trouble if you will yourself see Mr. Plane and obtain from him an estimate of the probable expense of putting the boat in order." Robert left the office, feeling quite relieved by the manner in which his communication had been received. A little way up the road he overtook Halbert Davis. In fact, Halbert was waiting for him, expressly to get an opportunity of enjoying his discomfiture at the ruin of the boat. "Hallo, Rushton!" he said. "Good-morning, Halbert!" "Are you going out in your boat this afternoon?" asked Halbert, maliciously. "You know why I can't." "I wonder what Will Paine will say when he sees the good care you take of it." "I don't believe he will blame me when he knows the circumstances." "You ain't fit to have the charge of a boat. I suppose you ran it on a rock." "Then you suppose wrong." "You won't be able to go out fishing any more. How will you make a living?" "Without your help," said Robert, coldly. "You will probably see me out again in a few days, if you take the trouble to look." "How can you go?" "Mr. Paine has asked me to see Mr. Plane about repairing the boat." "Is he going to pay the expenses?" "Yes." "Then he's a fool." "You'd better not tell him so, or he might give you a lesson in politeness." "You're a low fellow," said Halbert, angrily. "You are welcome to your opinion," returned Robert, indifferently. CHAPTER XVI. ON THE RAILROAD TRACK. Robert saw the carpenter, according to Mr. Paine's instructions, but found him so busy that he would not engage to give his attention to the boat under a week. The delay was regretted by our hero, since it cut him off from the employment by which he hoped to provide for his mother. Again Mrs. Rushton was in low spirits. "I am sorry you couldn't agree with Halbert Davis, Robert," she said, with a sigh. "Then you could have stayed in the factory, and got your wages regularly every week." "I know that, mother, but I am not willing to have Halbert 'boss me round,' even for a place in the factory." "Then, Robert, you quarreled with the man you took across the river." "I think I did right, mother," said Robert. "Don't get out of spirits. I don't expect to succeed always. But I think I shall come out right in the end." "I am sure I hope so." Mrs. Rushton was one of those who look on the dark side. She was distrustful of the future, and apt to anticipate bad fortune. Robert was very different. He inherited from his father an unusual amount of courage and self-reliance, and if one avenue was closed to him, he at once set out to find another. It is of this class that successful men are made, and we have hopes that Robert will develop into a prosperous and successful man. "I am sure I don't see what you can do," said Mrs. Rushton, "and we can't live on what I make by braiding straw." "I'll tell you what I'll do," said Robert, "I'll go on Sligo Hill and pick blueberries; I was passing a day or two ago, and saw the bushes quite covered. Just give me a couple of tin pails, and I'll see what I can do." The pails were provided, and Robert started on his expedition. The hill was not very high, nor was its soil very good. The lower part was used only to pasture a few cows. But this part was thickly covered with blueberry bushes, which this season were fuller than usual of large-sized berries. Robert soon settled to work, and picked steadily and rapidly. At the end of three hours he had filled both pails, containing, as near as he could estimate, eight quarts. "That's a pretty good afternoon's work," he said to himself. "Now I suppose I must turn peddler, and dispose of them." He decided to ask ten cents a quart. Later in the season the price would be reduced, but at that time the berries ought to command that price. The first house at which he called was Mr. Paine's. He was about to pass, when he saw Hester at the window. Pride suggested, "She may despise me for being a berry peddler," but Robert had no false shame. "At any rate, I won't be coward enough to try to hide it from her." Accordingly he walked up boldly to the door, and rang the bell. Hester had seen him from the window, and she answered the bell herself. "I am glad to see you, Robert," she said, frankly. "Won't you come in?" "Thank you," said our hero, "but I called on business." "You will find my father in his office," she said, looking a little disappointed. Robert smiled. "My business is not of a legal character," he said. "I've turned peddler, and would like to sell you some blueberries." "Oh, what nice berries! Where did you pick them?" "On Sligo." "I am sure mother will buy some. Will you wait a minute while I go and ask her?" "I will wait as long as you like." Hester soon returned with authority to buy four quarts. I suspect that she was the means of influencing so large a purchase. "They are ten cents a quart," said Robert, "but I don't think I ought to charge your father anything." "Why not?" "Because I shall owe him, or rather Will, a good deal of money." "I know what you mean--it's about the boat." "Did your father tell you?" "Yes, but I knew it before. Halbert Davis told me." "He takes a great interest in my affairs." "He's a mean boy. You mustn't mind what he says against you." Robert laughed. "I don't care what he thinks or says of me, unless he persuades others to think ill of me." "I shall never think ill of you, Robert," said Hester, warmly. "Thank you, Hester," said Robert, looking up into her glowing face with more gratification than he could express. "I hope I shall deserve your good opinion." "I am sure you will, Robert, But won't you come in?" "No, thank you. I must sell the rest of my berries." Robert left the house with forty cents in his pocket, the first fruits of his afternoon's work. Besides, he had four quarts left, for which he expected to find a ready sale. He had not gone far when he met Halbert. The latter was dressed with his usual care, with carefully polished shoes, neatly fitting gloves, and swinging a light cane, the successor of that which had been broken in his conflict with Robert. Our hero, on the other hand, I am obliged to confess, was by no means fashionably attired. His shoes were dusty, and his bare hands were stained with berry juice. He wore a coarse straw hat with a broad brim to shield him from the hot sun. Those of my readers who judge by dress alone would certainly have preferred Halbert Davis, who looked as if he had just stepped out of a band-box. But those who compared the two faces, the one bright, frank and resolute, the other supercilious and insincere, could hardly fail to prefer Robert in spite of his coarse attire and unfashionable air. Halbert scanned his rival with scornful eyes. He would have taken no notice of him, but concluded to speak in the hope of saying something disagreeable. "You have found a new business, I see," he said, with a sneer. "Yes," said Robert, quietly. "When one business gives out, I try another." "You've made a good choice," said Halbert. "It's what you are adapted for." "Thank you for the compliment, but I don't expect to stick to it all my life." "How do you sell your berries?" "Ten cents a quart." "You'd better call on your friend, Miss Hester Paine, and see if she won't buy some." "Thank you for the advice, but it comes too late. She bought four quarts of me." "She did!" returned Halbert, surprised. "I didn't think you'd go there." "Why not?" "She won't think much of a boy that has to pick berries for a living." "I don't think that will change her opinion of me. Why should it?" "It's a low business." "I don't see it." "Excuse my delaying you. I am afraid I may have interfered with your business. I say," he called out, as Robert was going on, "if you will call at our house, perhaps my mother may patronize you." "Very well," said Robert, "if I don't sell elsewhere, I'll call there. It makes no difference to me who buys my berries." "He's the proudest beggar I ever met," thought Halbert, looking after him. "Hester Paine must be hard up for an escort if she walks with a boy who peddles berries for a living. If I were her father, I would put a stop to it." The same evening there was a concert in the Town Hall. A free ticket was given to Robert in return for some slight service. Mr. Paine and his daughter were present, and Halbert Davis also. To the disgust of the latter, Robert actually had the presumption to walk home with Hester. Hester laughed and chatted gayly, and appeared to be quite unconscious that she was lowering herself by accepting the escort of a boy "who picked berries for a living." The next day Robert again repaired to Sligo. He had realized eighty cents from his sales the previous day, and he felt that picking berries was much better than remaining idle. Halbert's sneers did not for a moment discompose him. He had pride, but it was an honorable pride, and not of a kind that would prevent his engaging in any respectable employment necessary for the support of his mother and himself. Returning home with well-filled pails, he walked a part of the way on the railroad, as this shortened the distance. He had not walked far when he discovered on the track a huge rock, large enough to throw the train off the track. How it got there was a mystery. Just in front there was a steep descent on either side, the road crossing a valley, so that an accident would probably cause the entire train to be thrown down the embankment. Robert saw the danger at a glance, and it flashed upon him at the same moment that the train was nearly due. He sprang to the rock, and exerted his utmost strength to dislodge it. He could move it slightly, but it was too heavy to remove. He was still exerting his strength to the utmost when the whistle of the locomotive was heard. Robert was filled with horror, as he realized the peril of the approaching train, and his powerlessness to avert it. CHAPTER XVII. THE YOUNG CAPITALIST. The cars swept on at the rate of twenty miles an hour, the engineer wholly unconscious of the peril in front. Robert saw the fated train with its freight of human lives, and his heart grew sick within him as he thought of the terrible tragedy which was about to be enacted. Was there any possibility of his averting it? He threw himself against the rock and pushed with all the strength he could command. But, nerved as he was by desperation, he found the task greater than he could compass. And still the train came thundering on. He must withdraw to a place of safety, or he would himself be involved in the destruction which threatened the train. There was one thing more he could do, and he did it. He took his station on the rock which was just in the path of the advancing train, and waved his handkerchief frantically. It was a position to test the courage of the bravest. Robert was fully aware that he was exposing himself to a horrible death. Should he not be seen by the engineer it would be doubtful whether he could get out of the way in time to escape death--and that of the most frightful nature. But unless he did something a hundred lives perhaps might be lost. So he resolutely took his stand, waving, as we have said, his handkerchief and shouting, though the last was not likely to be of any avail. At first he was not seen. When the engineer at last caught sight of him it was with a feeling of anger at what he regarded as the foolhardiness of the boy. He slackened his speed, thinking he would leave his place, but Robert still maintained his position, his nerves strung to their highest tension, not alone at his own danger, but at the peril which he began to fear he could not avert. Reluctantly the engineer gave the signal to stop the train. He was only just in time. When it came to a stop there was an interval of only thirty-five feet between it and Robert Rushton, who, now that he had accomplished his object, withdrew to one side, a little paler than usual, but resolute and manly in his bearing. "What is the meaning of this foolery?" the engineer demanded, angrily. Robert pointed in silence to the huge rock which lay on the track. "How came that rock there?" asked the engineer, in a startled tone, as he took in the extent of the peril from which they had been saved. "I don't know," said Robert. "I tried to move it, but I couldn't." "You are a brave boy," said the engineer. "You have in all probability saved the train from destruction. But you ran a narrow risk yourself." "I know it," was the reply; "but it was the only thing I could do to catch your attention." "I will speak to you about it again. The first to be done is to move the rock." He left the engine and advanced toward the rock. By this time many of the passengers had got out, and were inquiring why the train was stopped at this point. The sight of the rock made a sensation. Though the peril was over, the thought that the train might have been precipitated down the embankment, and the majority of the passengers killed or seriously injured, impressed them not a little. They pressed forward, and several lending a hand, the rock was ousted from its its position, and rolled crashing over the bank. Among the passengers was a stout, good-looking man, a New York merchant. He had a large family at home waiting his return from a Western journey. He shuddered as he thought how near he had been to never meeting them again on earth. "It was providential, your seeing the rock," he said to the engineer. "We owe our lives to you." "You do me more than justice," replied the engineer. "It was not I who saved the train, but that boy." All eyes were turned upon Robert, who, unused to being the center of so many glances, blushed and seemed disposed to withdraw. "How is that?" inquired the merchant. "He saw the obstruction, and tried to remove it, but, not being able to do so, took his station on the rock, and, at the risk of his own life, drew my attention, and saved the train." "It was a noble act, my boy; what is your name?" "Robert Rushton." "It is a name that we shall all have cause to remember. Gentlemen," continued the merchant, turning to the group around him, "you see before you the preserver of your lives. Shall his act go unrewarded?" "No, no!" was the general exclamation. "I don't want any reward," said Robert, modestly. "Any boy would have done as much." "I don't know about that, my young friend. There are not many boys, or men, I think, that would have had the courage to act as you did. You may not ask or want any reward, but we should be forever disgraced if we failed to acknowledge our great indebtedness to you. I contribute one hundred dollars as my share of the testimonial to our young friend." "I follow with fifty!" said his next neighbor, "and shall ask for the privilege of taking him by the hand." Robert had won honors at school, but he had never before been in a position so trying to his modesty. The passengers, following the example of the last speaker, crowded around him, and took him by the hand, expressing their individual acknowledgments for the service he had rendered them. Our hero, whom we now designate thus appropriately, bore the ordeal with a self-possession which won the favor of all. While this was going on, the collection was rapidly being made by the merchant who had proposed it. The amounts contributed varied widely, but no one refused to give. In ten minutes the fund had reached over six hundred dollars. "Master Robert Rushton," said the merchant, "I have great pleasure in handing you this money, freely contributed by the passengers on this train, as a slight acknowledgment of the great service which you have rendered them at the risk of your own life. It does not often fall to the lot of a boy to perform a deed so heroic. We are all your debtors, and if the time ever comes that you need a friend, I for one shall be glad to show my sense of indebtedness." "All aboard!" shouted the conductor. The passengers hurried into the cars, leaving our hero standing by the track, with one hand full of bank notes and in the other the card of the New York merchant. It was only about fifteen minutes since Robert had first signaled the train, yet how in this brief time had his fortunes changed! From the cars now rapidly receding he looked to the roll of bills, and he could hardly realize that all this money was his own. He sat down and counted it over. "Six hundred and thirty-five dollars!" he exclaimed. "I must have made a mistake." But a second count turned out precisely the same. "How happy mother will be!" he thought, joyfully. "I must go and tell her the good news." He was so occupied with the thoughts of his wonderful good fortune that he nearly forgot to take the berries which he had picked. "I shan't need to sell them now," he said. "We'll use a part of them ourselves, and what we can't use I will give away." He carefully stored away the money in his coat pocket, and for the sake of security buttoned it tight. It was a new thing for him to be the custodian of so much treasure. As Halbert Davis usually spent the latter part of the afternoon in promenading the streets, sporting his kids and swinging his jaunty cane, it was not surprising that Robert encountered him again. "So, you've been berrying again?" he said, stopping short. "Yes," said Robert, briefly. "You haven't got the boat repaired, I suppose." "Not yet." "It's lucky for you this is berrying season." "Why?" "Because you'd probably have to go to the poorhouse," said Halbert, insolently. "I don't know about that," said Robert, coolly. "I rather think I could buy you out, Halbert Davis, watch, gloves, cane and all." "What do you mean?" demanded Halbert, haughtily. "You seem to forget that you are a beggar, or next to it." Robert set down his pails, and, opening his coat, drew out a handful of bills. "Does that look like going to the almshouse?" he said. "They're not yours," returned Halbert, considerably astonished, for, though he did not know the denomination of the bills, it was evident that there was a considerable amount of money. "It belongs to me, every dollar of it," returned Robert. "I don't believe it. Where did you get it? Picking berries, I suppose," he added, with a sneer. "It makes no difference to you where I got it," said our hero, returning the money to his pocket. "I shan't go to the almshouse till this I is all gone." "He must have stolen it," muttered Halbert, looking after Robert with disappointment and chagrin. It was certainly very vexatious that, in spite of all his attempts to humble and ruin our hero, he seemed more prosperous than ever. CHAPTER XVIII. A VISIT TO THE LAWYER. Mrs. Rushton was braiding straw when Robert entered with his berries. "Couldn't you sell your berries, Robert?" she asked. "I haven't tried yet, mother." "The berrying season won't last much longer," said his mother, despondently. "Don't borrow trouble, mother. I am sure we shall get along well." "You feel more confidence than I do." "I just met Halbert Davis in the street." "Have you made up with him?" "It is for him to make up with me." "I am afraid you are too high-spirited, Robert. Did Halbert speak to you?" "Oh, yes," said Robert, laughing. "He takes a great interest in my affairs. He predicts that we shall come to the poorhouse yet." "He may be right." "Now, mother, don't be so desponding. We've got enough money to pay our expenses for more than a year, even if we both stop work." "What can you mean, Robert?" said his mother, looking up in surprise. "You must be crazy." "Does that look like going to the poorhouse?" asked Robert, drawing out his money. Mrs. Rushton uttered an exclamation of surprise. "Whose money is that, Robert?" "Mine!" "You haven't done anything wrong?" "No, mother; I thought you knew me too well for that. I see you are anxious to hear how I obtained it, so I'll tell you all about it." He sat down, and in brief words told his mother the story of the train and its peril, how he had rescued it, and, lastly, of the generous gift which he had so unexpectedly received. The mother's heart was touched, and she forgot all her forebodings. "My son, I am proud of you," she said, her eyes moist. "You have done a noble deed, and you deserve the reward. But what a risk you ran!" "I know it, mother, but we won't think of that, now that it is over. How much, money do you think I have here?" "Two or three hundred dollars." "Six hundred and thirty-five! So you see, mother, we needn't go to the poorhouse just yet. Now, how much better off should I have been if I had kept my place in the factory? It would have taken me more than two years to earn as much money as this. But that isn't all. I have been the means of saving a great many lives, for the train was sure to be thrown down the embankment. I shall remember that all my life." "We have reason to be grateful to Heaven that you have been the means of doing so much good, Robert, while, at the same time, you have benefited yourself." "That is true, mother." "I shall be afraid to have so much money in the house. If it were known, we might be robbed." "I will leave it with Mr. Paine until I get a chance to put it in a savings bank. He has a safe in his office. At the same time I will carry him some berries as a present. It won't be much, but I should like to do it on account of his kindness about the boat. I will offer now to bear the expense of its repair." After washing his hands and adjusting his clothes a little, for Robert, though no fop like Halbert, was not regardless of appearances, especially as he thought Hester might see him, he set out for the lawyer's office. "Excuse my bringing in my berries," said Robert, as he entered the office, "but I want to ask your acceptance of them." Many persons, under the supposition that Robert was too poor to afford a gift, would have declined it, or offered to pay for it, thinking they were acting kindly and considerately. But Mr. Paine knew that Robert would be mortified by such an offer, and he answered: "Thank you, Robert; I will accept your gift with thanks on one condition." "What is it, Mr. Paine?" inquired our hero, a little puzzled. "That you will take tea with us to-morrow evening, and help us do justice to them." "Thank you," said Robert, not a little pleased at the invitation, "but I shouldn't like to leave my mother at home alone." "Oh, we must have your mother, too. Hester will call this evening, and invite her." "Then," said Robert, "I can answer for myself, and I think for her, that we should both be very happy to come." The lawyer's social position made such an invitation particularly gratifying to Robert. Besides, he was led to value it more on account of the persistent efforts of Halbert to injure him in the general estimation. Then, too, it was pleasant to think that he was to sit down to the same table with Hester, as her father's guest, and to receive a call from her at his own house. Nothing that Mr. Paine could have done would have afforded him an equal amount of gratification. "There is one other matter I wanted to speak to you about, Mr. Paine," he said. "Will you take care of some money for me until I get a chance to deposit it in the savings bank?" "Certainly, Robert," was the reply, but the lawyer's manner showed some surprise. He knew the circumstances of the Rushtons, and he had not supposed they had any money on hand. "How much is it?" "Six hundred and thirty-five dollars," answered Robert, producing it. "Will you count it, and see if it is all right?" "Is this your money?" asked the lawyer, laying down his pen and gazing at Robert in astonishment. "Yes, sir," said Robert, enjoying his surprise. "I will tell you how I got it." So the story was told, with a modest reserve as to his own courage, but still showing, without his intending it, how nobly he had behaved. "Give me your hand, Robert," said Mr. Paine, cordially. "You have shown yourself a hero. We shall be proud of your company to tea to-morrow evening." Robert flushed with gratification at the high compliment conveyed in these words. What did he care then for Halbert Davis and his petty malice! He had the approval of his own conscience, the good opinion of those whom he most respected and a provision against want sufficient to avert all present anxiety. "There is one thing more, Mr. Paine," he added. "It's about the boat Will was kind enough to lend me." "Have you seen the carpenter about repairing it?" "Yes, sir, and he will attend to it as soon as he can spare the time. But that was not what I wanted to say. I think I ought to bear the expense of repairing it. I would have spoken about it at first, but then I had no money, and didn't know when I should have any. Will you be kind enough to take as much of my money as will be needed to pay Mr. Plane's bill when it comes in?" "Certainly not, Robert. It was not your fault that the boat was injured." "It wouldn't have happened if I had not borrowed it. It isn't right that the expense should fall on you." "Don't trouble yourself about that, Robert. I am able and willing to pay it. It is very honorable in you to make the offer, and I like you the better for having made it. Won't you need any of this money for present expenses?" "Perhaps I had better take the thirty-five dollars. Mother may be in want of something." Robert received back the sum named, and returned home, much pleased with his interview. About seven o'clock, sitting at the window of the little cottage, he saw Hester Paine opening the front gate. He sprang to his feet and opened the door. "Good-evening, Robert," she said. "Is your mother at home?" "Yes, Hester. Won't you come in?" "Thank you, Robert. Father has been telling me what a hero you were, and it made me feel proud that you were a friend of mine." Robert's face lighted with pleasure. "You compliment me more than I deserve," he answered, modestly; "but it gives me great pleasure to know that you think well of me." "I am sure that there is no boy in Millville that would have dared to do such a thing. Good-evening, Mrs. Rushton. Are you not proud of your son?" "He is a good son to me," said Mrs. Rushton, with a glance of affection. "It is such a splendid thing he did. He will be quite a hero. Indeed, he is one already. I've got a New York paper giving an account of the whole thing. I brought it over, thinking you might like to read it." She displayed a copy of a great city daily, in which full justice was done to Robert's bravery. Our hero listened with modest pleasure while it was being read. "I don't deserve all that," he said. "You must let us judge of that," said Hester. "But I have come this evening, Mrs. Rushton, to ask you to take tea with us to-morrow evening, you and Robert. You will come, won't you?" Mrs. Rushton was pleased with this mark of attention, and after a slight demur, accepted. I do not intend to give an account of the next evening, and how Robert, in particular, enjoyed it. That can be imagined, as well as Halbert's chagrin when he heard of the attention his rival was receiving in a quarter where he himself so earnestly desired to stand well. I must pass on to a communication received by Mrs. Rushton, a communication of a very unexpected character, which had an important effect upon the fortunes of our hero. CHAPTER XIX. THE MESSAGE FROM THE SEA. It was not often that Mrs. Rushton received a letter. Neither she nor her husband had possessed many relatives, and such as either had were occupied with their own families, and little communication passed between them and Captain Rushton's family. Robert, therefore, seldom called at the post office. One day, however, as he stepped in by a neighbor's request to inquire for letters for the latter, the postmaster said, "There's a letter for your mother, Robert." "Is there?" said our hero, surprised, "When did it come?" "Yesterday. I was going to ask some one to carry it round to her, as you don't often call here." He handed the letter to Robert, who surveyed it with curiosity. It was postmarked "Boston," and addressed in a bold business hand to "Mrs. Captain Rushton, Millville." "Who can be writing to mother from Boston?" thought Robert. The size of the letter also excited his curiosity. There were two stamps upon it, and it appeared bulky. Robert hurried home, and rushed into the kitchen where his mother was at work. "Here's a letter for you, mother," he said. "A letter for me!" repeated Mrs. Rushton. "From Boston." "I don't know who would be likely to write me from there. Open it for me, Robert." He tore open the envelope. It contained two inclosures--one a letter in the same handwriting as the address; the other a large sheet of foolscap rumpled up, and appearing once to have been rolled up, was written in pencil. Mrs. Rushton had no sooner looked at the latter than she exclaimed, in agitation: "Robert, it is your father's handwriting. Read it to me, I am too agitated to make it out." Robert was equally excited. Was his father still alive, or was this letter a communication from the dead? "First let me read the other," he said. "It will explain about this." His mother sank back into a chair too weak with agitation to stand, while her son rapidly read the following letter: "BOSTON, August 15, 1853. MRS. RUSHTON, DEAR MADAM: The fate of our ship _Norman_, which left this port now more than two years since, under the command of your husband, has until now been veiled in uncertainty. We had given up all hopes of obtaining any light upon the circumstances of its loss, when by a singular chance information was brought us yesterday. The ship _Argo_, while in the South Pacific, picked up a bottle floating upon the surface of the water. On opening it, it was found to contain two communications, one addressed to us, the other to you, the latter to be forwarded to you by us. Ours contains the particulars of the loss of the _Norman_, and doubtless your own letter also contains the same particulars. There is a bare possibility that your husband is still alive, but as so long a period has passed since the letters were written it would not be well to place too much confidence in such a hope. But even if Captain Rushton is dead, it will be a sad satisfaction to you to receive from him this last communication, and learn the particulars of his loss. We lose no time in forwarding to you the letter referred to, and remain, with much sympathy, yours respectfully, WINSLOW & CO." Mrs. Rushton listened to this letter with eager and painful interest, her hands clasped, and her eyes fixed upon Robert. "Now read your father's letter," she said, in a low tone. Robert unfolded the sheet, and his eyes filled with tears as he gazed upon the well-known handwriting of the father whose loss he had so long lamented. This letter, too, we transcribe: "November 7, 1851. MY DEAR WIFE AND SON: Whether these lines will ever meet your eyes I know not. Whether I will be permitted again to look upon your dear faces, I also am ignorant. The good ship _Norman_, in which I sailed from Boston not quite three months ago, is burned to the water's edge, and I find myself, with five of the sailors, afloat on the vast sea at the mercy of the elements, and with a limited supply of food. The chances are against our ever seeing land. Hundreds of miles away from any known shores, our only hope of safety is in attracting the attention of some vessel. In the broad pathways of the ocean such a chance is doubtful. Fortunately I have a few sheets of paper and a pencil with me, and I write these lines, knowing well how improbable it is that you will ever read them. Yet it is a satisfaction to do what I can to let you know the position in which I stand. But for the revengeful and malignant disposition of one man I should still be walking the deck of the _Norman_ as its captain. But to my story: My first mate was a man named Haley--Benjamin Haley--whose name you will perhaps remember. He was born in our neighborhood, or, at all events, once lived there, being the nephew of old Paul Nichols. He was a wild young man, and bore a bad reputation. Finally he disappeared, and, as it seems, embraced the profession of a sailor. I was not prepossessed in his favor, and was not very well pleased to find him my second in command. However, he was regularly engaged, and it was of no use for me to say anything against him. I think, however, that he suspected the state of my feelings, as, while studiously polite, I did not make an effort to be cordial. At any rate, he must have taken a dislike to me early in the voyage, though whether at that time he meditated evil, I cannot say. After a time I found that he was disposed to encroach upon my prerogatives as captain of the vessel, and issue commands which he knew to be in defiance of my wishes. You can imagine that I would not pass over such conduct unnoticed. I summoned him to an interview, and informed him in decided terms that I must be master in my own ship. He said little, but I saw from his expression that there could thereafter be no amicable relations between us. I pass over the days that succeeded--days in which Haley went to the furthest verge of insolence that he felt would be safe. At length, carried away by impatience, I reprimanded him publicly. He grew pale with passion, turned on his heel, and strode away. That night I was roused from my sleep by the cry of 'Fire!' I sprang to my feet and took immediate measures to extinguish the flames. But the incendiary had taken care to do his work so well that it was already impossible. I did not at first miss Haley, until, inquiring for him, I learned that he was missing, and one of the ship's boats. It was evident that he had deliberately fired the ship in order to revenge himself upon me. His hatred must have been extreme, or he would not have been willing to incur so great a risk. Though he escaped from the ship, his position in an open boat must be extremely perilous. When all hope of saving the ship was abandoned, we manned the remaining boats hastily, putting in each such a stock of provisions as we could carry without overloading the boats. Twenty-four hours have now passed, and we are still tossing about on the ocean. A storm would be our destruction. At this solemn time, my dear wife, my thoughts turn to you and my dear son, whom I am likely never to see again. There is one thing most of all which I wish you to know, but can hardly hope that these few lines will reach you. Just before I left home, on my present voyage, I deposited five thousand dollars with Mr. Davis, the superintendent of the factory, in trust for you, in case I should not return. You will be surprised to learn that I have so much money. It has been the accumulation of years, and was intended as a provision for you and Robert. I have no reason to doubt the integrity of Mr. Davis, yet I wish I had acquainted you with the fact of this deposit, and placed his written acknowledgment in your hands. My reason for concealment was, that I might surprise you at the end of this voyage. When this letter comes to hand (if it ever should come to hand), in case the superintendent has not accounted to you for the money placed in his hands, let Robert go to him and claim the money in my name. But I can hardly believe this to be necessary. Should I never return, I am persuaded that Mr. Davis will be true to the trust I have reposed in him, and come forward like an honest man to your relief. And now, my dear wife and son, farewell! My hope is weak that I shall ever again see you, yet it is possible. May Heaven bless you, and permit us to meet again in another world, if not in this! I shall inclose this letter, and one to my owners, in a bottle, which I have by me, and commit it to the sea, trusting that the merciful waves may waft it to the shore." Here Captain Rushton signed his name. The feelings with which Robert read and his mother listened to this letter, were varied. Love and pity for the husband and father, now doubtless long dead, were blended with surprise at the revelation of the deposit made in the hands of the superintendent of the mill. "Mother," said Robert, "did you know anything of this money father speaks of?" "No," said Mrs. Rushton, "he never told me. It is strange that Mr. Davis has never informed us of it. Two years have passed, and we have long given him up as lost." "Mother," said Robert, "it is my opinion that he never intends to let us know." "I cannot believe he would be so dishonorable." "But why should he keep back the knowledge? He knows that we are poor and need the money." "But he has the reputation of an honorable man." "Many have had that reputation who do not deserve it," said Robert. "The temptation must have proved too strong for him." "What shall we do?" "I know what I am going to do," said Robert, resolutely. "I am going to his house, and shall claim restitution of the money which father intrusted to him. He has had it two years, and, with the interest, it will amount to nearer six than five thousand dollars. It will be a fortune, mother." "Don't be hasty or impetuous, Robert," said his mother. "Speak to him respectfully." "I shall be civil if he is," said Robert. He took his cap, and putting it on, left the cottage and walked with a quick pace to the house of the superintendent. CHAPTER XX. A DISAGREEABLE SURPRISE. Mr. Davis was seated in his office, but it was his own personal affairs rather than the business of the factory that engaged his attention. He was just in receipt of a letter from his broker in New York, stating that there were but slender chances of a rise in the price of some securities in which he had invested heavily. He was advised to sell out at once, in order to guard against a probable further depreciation. This was far from satisfactory, since an immediate sale would involve a loss of nearly a thousand dollars. Mr. Davis felt despondent, and, in consequence, irritable. It was at this moment that one of the factory hands came in and told him that Robert Rushton wished to see him. The superintendent would have refused an interview but for one consideration. He thought that our hero was about to beg to be taken back into his employ. This request he intended to refuse, and enjoyed in advance the humiliation of young Rushton. "Good-morning, sir," said Robert, removing his hat on entering. "I suppose you want to be taken back," said the superintendent, abruptly. "No, sir," said Robert. "I have come on quite a different errand." Mr. Davis was disappointed. He was cheated of his expected triumph. Moreover, looking into our young hero's face, he saw that he was entirely self-possessed, and had by no means the air of one about to ask a favor. "Then state your business at once," he said, roughly. "My time is too valuable to be taken up by trifles." "My business is important to both of us," said Robert. "We have just received a letter from my father." The superintendent started and turned pale. This was the most unwelcome intelligence he could have received. He supposed, of course, that Captain Rushton was alive, and likely to reclaim the sum, which he was in no position to surrender. "Your father!" he stammered. "Where is he? I thought he was dead." "I am afraid he is," said Robert, soberly. "Then how can you just have received a letter from him?" demanded Mr. Davis, recovering from his momentary dismay. "The letter was inclosed in a bottle, which was picked up in the South Pacific, and brought to the owners of the vessel. My father's ship was burned to the water's edge, and at the time of writing the letter he was afloat on the ocean with five of his sailors in a small boat." "How long ago was this? I mean when was the letter dated." "Nearly two years ago--in the November after he sailed." "Then, of course, he must have perished," said the superintendent, with a feeling of satisfaction. "However, I suppose your mother is glad to have heard from him. Is that all you have to tell me?" "No, sir," said Robert, looking boldly in the face of his former employer. "My father added in his letter, that just before sailing he deposited with you the sum of five thousand dollars, to be given to my mother in case he never returned." So the worst had come! The dead had revealed the secret which the superintendent hoped would never be known. He was threatened with ruin. He had no means of paying the deposit unless by sacrificing all his property, and it was doubtful whether even then he would be able wholly to make it up. If Robert possessed his acknowledgment he would have no defense to make. This he must ascertain before committing himself. "Supposing this story to be true," he said, in a half-sneering tone, "you are, of course, prepared to show me my receipt for the money?" "That my father carried away with him. He did not send it with the letter." All the superintendent's confidence returned. He no longer felt afraid, since all evidence of the deposit was doubtless at the bottom of the sea with the ill-fated captain. He resolved to deny the trust altogether. "Rushton," he said, "I have listened patiently to what you had to say, and in return I answer that in the whole course of my life I have never known of a more barefaced attempt at fraud. In this case you have selected the wrong customer." "What!" exclaimed Robert, hardly crediting the testimony of his ears; "do you mean to deny that my father deposited five thousand dollars with you just before sailing on his last voyage?" "I certainly do, and in the most unqualified terms. Had such been the case, do you think I would have kept the knowledge of it from your mother so long after your father's supposed death?" "There might be reasons for that," said Robert, significantly. "None of your impertinent insinuations, you young rascal," said Mr. Davis, hotly. "The best advice I can give you is, to say nothing to any one about this extraordinary claim. It will only injure you, and I shall be compelled to resort to legal measures to punish you for circulating stories calculated to injure my reputation." If the superintendent expected to intimidate Robert by this menace he was entirely mistaken in the character of our young hero. He bore the angry words and threatening glances of his enemy without quailing, as resolute and determined as ever. "Mr. Davis," he said, "if there is no truth in this story, do you think my father, with death before his eyes, would have written it to my mother?" "I have no evidence, except your word, that any such letter has been received." "I can show it to you, if you desire it, in my father's handwriting." "We will suppose, then, for a moment, that such a letter has been received, and was written by your father. I can understand how, being about to die, and feeling that his family were without provision, he should have written such a letter with the intention of giving you a claim upon me, whom he no doubt selected supposing me to be a rich man. It was not justifiable, but something can be excused to a man finding himself in such a position." Robert was filled with indignation as he listened to this aspersion upon his father's memory. He would not have cared half so much for any insult to himself. "Mr. Davis," he said, boldly, "it is enough for you to cheat my mother out of the money which my father left her, but when you accuse my father of fraud you go too far. You know better than any one that everything which he wrote is true." The superintendent flushed under the boy's honest scorn, and, unable to defend himself truthfully, he worked himself into a rage. "What! do you dare insult me in my own office?" he exclaimed, half rising from his desk, and glaring at our hero. "Out of my sight at once, or I may be tempted to strike you!" "Before I leave you, Mr. Davis," said Robert, undauntedly, "I wish you to tell me finally whether you deny the deposit referred to in my father's letter?" "And I tell you, once for all," exclaimed the superintendent, angrily, "if you don't get out of my office I will kick you out." "I will leave you now," said our hero, not intimidated; "but you have not heard the last of me. I will not rest until I see justice done to my mother." So saying, he walked deliberately from the office, leaving Mr. Davis in a state of mind no means comfortable. True, the receipt had doubtless gone to the bottom of the sea with the ill-fated captain, and, as no one was cognizant of the transaction, probably no claim could be enforced against his denial. But if the letter should be shown, as Robert would doubtless be inclined to do, he was aware that, however the law might decide, popular opinion would be against him, and his reputation would be ruined. This was an unpleasant prospect, as the superintendent valued his character. Besides, the five thousand dollars were gone and not likely to be recovered. Had they still been in his possession, that would have been some compensation. CHAPTER XXI. A DENIAL. Robert left the superintendent's office in deep thought. He understood very well that it would be impossible to enforce his claim without more satisfactory testimony than his father's letter. If any one had been cognizant of the transaction between Mr. Davis and his father it would have helped matters, but no one, so far as he knew, was even aware that his father had possessed so large a sum as five thousand dollars. Had Captain Rushton inclosed the receipt, that would have been sufficient, but it had probably gone to the bottom with him. But, after all, was it certain that his father was dead? It was not certain, but our hero was forced to admit that the chances of his father's being alive were extremely slender. Finding himself utterly at a loss, he resolved to call upon his firm friend, Squire Paine, the lawyer. Going to his office, he was fortunate enough to find him in, and unengaged. "Good-morning, Robert," said the lawyer, pleasantly. "Good-morning, sir. You find me a frequent visitor." "Always welcome," was the pleasant reply. "You know I am your banker, and it is only natural for you to call upon me." "Yes, sir," said Robert, smiling; "but it is on different business that I have come to consult you this morning." "Go on. I will give you the best advice in my power." The lawyer listened with surprise to the story Robert had to tell. "This is certainly a strange tale," he said, after a pause. "But a true one," said Robert, hastily. "I do not question that. It affords another illustration of the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction. That a letter committed to the deep so many thousand miles away should have finally reached its destination is very remarkable, I may say Providential." "Do you think there is any chance of my father being yet alive?" "There is a bare chance, but I cannot encourage you to place much reliance upon it." "If he had been picked up by any vessel I suppose he would have written." "You would doubtless have seen him at home before this time in that case. Still there might be circumstances," added the lawyer, slowly, "that would prevent his communicating with friends at home. For instance, his boat might have drifted to some uninhabited island out of the course of ordinary navigation. I don't say it is at all probable, but there is such a probability." "Is there any chance of making Mr. Davis return the money my father deposited with him?" "There again there are difficulties. He may demand the return of his receipt, or he may continue to deny the trust altogether." "Won't the letter prove anything?" "It may produce a general conviction that such a deposit was made, since, admitting the letter to be genuine, no one, considering especially the character of your father, can readily believe that in the immediate presence of death he would make any such statement unless thoroughly reliable. But moral conviction and legal proof are quite different things. Unless that receipt is produced I don't see that anything can be done." "Perhaps my father might have put that in a bottle also at a later date." "He might have done so when he became satisfied that there was no chance of a rescue. But even supposing him to have done it, the chances are ten to one that it will never find its way to your mother. The reception of the first letter was almost a miracle." "I have no doubt you are right, Mr. Paine," said Robert; "but it seems very hard that my poor father's hard earnings should go to such an unprincipled man, and my mother be left destitute." "That is true, Robert, but I am obliged to say that your only hope is in awakening Mr. Davis to a sense of justice." "There isn't much chance of that," said Robert, shaking his head. "If you will leave the matter in my hands, I will call upon him to-night, and see what I can do." "I shall feel very glad if you will do so, Squire Paine. I don't want to leave anything undone." "Then I will do so. I don't imagine it will do any good, but we can but try." Robert left the office, making up his mind to await the report of the lawyer's visit before moving further. That evening, the lawyer called at the house of the superintendent. Mrs. Davis and Halbert were in the room. After a little unimportant conversation, he said: "Mr. Davis, may I ask the favor of a few minutes' conversation with you in private?" "Certainly," said the superintendent, quite in the dark as to the business which had called his guest to the house. He led the way into another room, and both took seats. "I may as well say to begin with," commenced the lawyer, "that I call in behalf of the family of the late Captain Rushton." The superintendent started nervously. "That boy has lost no time," he muttered to himself. "I suppose you understand what I have to say?" "I presume I can guess," said the superintendent, coldly. "The boy came into my office this morning, and made a most extraordinary claim, which I treated with contempt. Finding him persistent I ordered him out of my office. I need not say that no sane man would for a moment put confidence in such an incredible story or claim." "I can't quite agree with you there," said the lawyer, quietly. "There is nothing incredible about the story. It is remarkable, I grant, but such things have happened before, and will again." "I suppose you refer to the picking up of the bottle at sea." "Yes; I fail to see what there is incredible about it. If the handwriting can be identified as that of the late Captain Rushton, and Robert says both his mother and himself recognized it, the story becomes credible and will meet with general belief." "I thought you were too sensible and practical a man," said the superintendent, sneering, "to be taken in by so palpable a humbug. Why, it reads like a romance." "In spite of all that, it may be true enough," returned the lawyer, composedly. "You may believe it, if you please. It seems to me quite unworthy of belief." "Waiving that point, Robert, doubtless, acquainted you with the statement made in the letter that Captain Rushton, just before sailing on his last voyage, deposited with you five thousand dollars. What have you to say to that?" "What have I to say?" returned the superintendent. "That Captain Rushton never possessed five thousand dollars in his life. I don't believe he possessed one quarter of the sum." "What authority have you for saying that? Did he make you his confidant?" asked the lawyer, keenly. "Yes," said the superintendent, promptly. "When last at home, he called at my house one day, and in the course of conversation remarked that sailors seldom saved any money. 'For instance,' said he, 'I have followed the sea for many years, and have many times resolved to accumulate a provision for my wife and child, but as yet I have scarcely done more than to begin.' He then told me that he had little more than a thousand dollars, but meant to increase that, if possible, during his coming voyage." To this statement Squire Paine listened attentively, fully believing it to be an impromptu fabrication, as it really was. "Did he say anything about what he had done with this thousand dollars or more?" he asked. "A part he left for his wife to draw from time to time for expenses; the rest, I suppose, he took with him." Mr. Paine sat silent for a moment. Things looked unpromising, he couldn't but acknowledge, for his young client. In the absence of legal proof, and with an adroit and unscrupulous antagonist, whose interests were so strongly enlisted in defeating justice, it was difficult to see what was to be done. "I understand then, Mr. Davis," he said, finally, "that you deny the justice of this claim?" "Certainly I do," said the superintendent. "It is a palpable fraud. This boy is a precocious young swindler, and will come to a bad end." "I have a different opinion of him." "You are deceived in him, then. I have no doubt he got up the letter himself." "I don't agree with you. I have seen the letter; it is in Captain Rushton's handwriting. Moreover, I have seen the letter of the owners, which accompanied it." The superintendent was in a tight place, and he knew it. But there was nothing to do but to persist in his denial. "Then I can only say that Captain Rushton was a party to the fraud," he said. "You must be aware, Mr. Davis, that when the public learns the facts in the case, the general belief will be the other way." "I can't help that," said the other, doggedly. "Whatever the public chooses to think, I won't admit the justice of this outrageous claim." "Then I have only to bid you good-evening," said the lawyer, coldly, affecting not to see the hand which the superintendent extended. The latter felt the slight, and foresaw that from others he must expect similar coldness, but there was no help for it. To restore the money would be ruin. He had entered into the path of dishonesty, and he was forced to keep on in it. CHAPTER XXII. ROBERT'S NEW PROJECT. Mr. Paine called at Mrs. Rushton's cottage, and communicated the particulars of his interview with the superintendent. "It is evident," he said, "that Mr. Davis is swayed by his interests, and feeling legally secure, prefers to defraud you rather than to surrender the five thousand dollars." "I wouldn't have believed it of Mr. Davis," said Mrs. Rushton; "he is considered such a respectable man." "I have heard rumors that he is dabbling in speculations, and I suspect he may find it inconvenient to pay away so large a sum of money." "He had no right to speculate with my mother's money," said Robert, indignantly. "You are right there. He should have invested it securely." "Mr. Paine," said Robert, after a pause, "I have an idea that father is still living, and that some day I shall find him." The lawyer shook his head. "There is not one chance in ten that he is living," he said. "It is only a fancy of yours." "It may be, but I can't get it out of my head." "I hope you will prove correct, but I need not tell you of the many arguments against such a theory." "I know them all, but still I believe he is living. Mr. Paine," continued Robert, earnestly, "I feel so strongly on the subject that, with my mother's permission, I, mean to go out into the world in search of him." "I must say, Robert," said Mr. Paine, "I did not expect such a visionary scheme from a boy of your good sense. You must see yourself how wild it is." "I know it," said our hero; "but I want to take a year, at any rate, to see the world. If, at the end of that time, I discover no trace of my father, I will come home content." "But what will become of your mother during that time?" "I will leave four hundred dollars in your hands for her. The rest I will draw for my own uses." "But you don't expect to travel round the world on two hundred dollars, surely?" said the lawyer. "I shall work my way as far as I can," said Robert. "I can't afford to travel as a gentleman." "Suppose you find yourself without money in a foreign land?" "I am not afraid. I am willing to work, and I can make my way." "Surely, Mrs. Rushton, you do not approve Robert's scheme?" said Mr. Paine. But to his surprise he found that Mrs. Rushton was inclined to regard it favorably. She seemed to share Robert's belief that her husband was still living, and that Robert could find him. She was not a woman in the habit of reasoning, and had no conception of the difficulties in his way. The money left behind in the hands of Mr. Paine, supplemented by her own earnings, would be enough to maintain her for two years, and this thought made her easy, for she had a great dread of poverty and destitution. When the lawyer found how Mrs. Rushton felt on the subject, he ceased his objections to the plan; for, though he had no confidence in our young hero's success in the object he had in view, he thought that a year's tour might benefit him by extending his knowledge of the world and increasing his self-reliance. "How soon do you wish to start, Robert?" he asked. "It will take me a week to get your clothes ready," said Mrs. Rushton. "Then by a week from Monday I will start," said Robert. "Have you formed any definite plans about the manner of going?" "I will go to New York first, and call on the gentleman who got up the subscription for me. I will tell him my story, and ask his advice." "The most sensible thing you could do. As to the money, I will have that ready for you. Of course, you will call on me before you go." The superintendent had made up his mind that Robert would spread the report of the deposit, and nervously awaited the result. But to his relief he observed no change in the demeanor of his fellow-townsmen. He could only conclude that, for reasons of his own, the boy he had wronged had concluded to defer the exposure. Next he heard with a feeling of satisfaction that Robert had decided to go abroad in quest of his father. He had no doubt that Captain Rushton was dead, and regarded the plan as utterly quixotic and foolish, but still he felt glad that it had been undertaken. "If the boy never comes back, I shan't mourn much," he said to himself. "His mother is a weak woman, who will never give me any trouble, but this young rascal has a strong and resolute will, and I shall feel more comfortable to have him out of the way." When Robert got ready to leave he made a farewell call on the lawyer, and drew two hundred dollars of his money. "I don't know but one hundred will do," he said. "Perhaps I ought to leave five hundred for my mother." "You carry little enough, Robert. Don't have any anxiety about your mother. I will not see her suffer." Robert grasped his hand in earnest gratitude. "How can I thank you?" he said. "You need not thank me. I had a warm regard for your father, and shall be glad to help your mother if there is any occasion. Not only this, but if in your wanderings you find yourself in a tight place, and in want of help, write to me, and I will help you." "You are a true friend," said Robert, gratefully. "I wish my father had intrusted his money to you instead of to the superintendent." "I wish he had as matters have turned out, I should have taken care that your interests did not suffer." "Oh," exclaimed Robert, fervently, "if I could only find my father, and bring him home to confront this false friend, and convict him of his base fraud, I believe I would willingly give ten years of my life." "That question can only be solved by time. I, too, should earnestly rejoice if such an event could be brought about. And now, Robert, good-by, and Heaven bless you. Don't forget that you can count always on my friendship and assistance." On the way home Robert fell in with Halbert Davis. Halbert, of course, knew nothing of the claim made upon his father, but he had heard that Robert proposed to leave home. He was both sorry and glad on account of this--sorry because he had hoped to see our hero fall into poverty and destitution, and enjoy the spectacle of his humiliation. Now he was afraid Robert would succeed and deprive him of the enjoyment he had counted upon. On the other hand, Robert's departure would leave the field free so far as concerned Hester Paine, and he hoped to win the favor of that young lady in the absence of any competitor. Of this there was not the slightest chance, but Halbert was blinded by his own vanity to the obvious dislike which Hester entertained for him. Now when he saw Robert approaching he couldn't forego the pleasure of a final taunt. "So you're going to leave town, Rushton?'" he commenced. "Yes, Davis," answered Robert, in the same tone. "Shall you miss me much?" "I guess I shall live through it," said Halbert. "I suppose you are going because you can't make a living here!" "Not exactly. However, I hope to do better elsewhere." "If you're going to try for a place, you'd better not mention that you got turned out of the factory. You needn't apply to my father for a recommendation." "I shan't need any recommendation from your father," said Robert. "He is about the last man that I would apply to." "That's where you are right," said Halbert. "What sort of a place are you going to try for?" He knew nothing of Robert's intention to seek his father, but supposed he meant to obtain a situation in New York. "You seem particularly interested in my movements, Davis." "Call me Mr. Davis, if you please," said Halbert, haughtily. "When you call me Mr. Rushton, I will return the compliment." "You are impertinent." "Not more so than you are." "You don't seem to realize the difference in our positions." "No, I don't, except that I prefer my own." Disgusted with Robert's evident determination to withhold the respect which he considered his due, Halbert tried him on another tack. "Have you bidden farewell to Hester Paine?" he asked, with a sneer. "Yes," said Robert. "I suppose she was very much affected!" continued Halbert. "She said she was very sorry to part with me." "I admire her taste." "You would admire it more if she had a higher appreciation of you." "I shall be good friends with her, when you are no longer here to slander me to her." "I am not quite so mean as that," said Robert. "If she chooses to like you, I shan't try to prevent it." "I ought to be very much obliged to you, I am sure." "You needn't trouble yourself to be grateful," returned Robert, coolly. "But I must bid you good-by, as I have considerable to do." "Don't let me detain you," said Halbert, with an elaborate share of politeness. "I wonder why Halbert hates me so much!" he thought. "I don't like him, but I don't wish him any harm." He looked with satisfaction upon a little cornelian ring which he wore upon one of his fingers. It was of very trifling value, but it was a parting gift from Hester, and as such he valued it far above its cost. CHAPTER XXIII. A DISHONEST BAGGAGE-SMASHER. On the next Monday morning Robert started for the city. At the moment of parting he began to realize that he had undertaken a difficult task. His life hitherto had been quiet and free from excitement. Now he was about to go out into the great world, and fight his own way. With only two hundred dollars in his pocket he was going in search of a father, who, when last heard from was floating in an open boat on the South Pacific. The probabilities were all against that father's being still alive. If he were, he had no clew to his present whereabouts. All this Robert thought over as he was riding in the cars to the city. He acknowledged that the chances were all against his success, but in spite of all, he had a feeling, for which he could not account, that his father was still living, and that he should find him some day. At any rate, there was something attractive in the idea of going out to unknown lands to meet unknown adventures, and so his momentary depression was succeeded by a return of his old confidence. Arrived in the city, he took his carpetbag in his hand, and crossing the street, walked at random, not being familiar with the streets, as he had not been in New York but twice before, and that some time since. "I don't know where to go," thought Robert. "I wish I knew where to find some cheap hotel." Just then a boy, in well-ventilated garments and a rimless straw hat, with a blacking box over his shoulder, approached. "Shine your boots, mister?" he asked. Robert glanced at his shoes, which were rather deficient in polish, and finding that the expense would be only five cents, told him to go ahead. "I'll give you the bulliest shine you ever had," said the ragamuffin. "That's right! Go ahead!" said Robert. When the boy got through, he cast a speculative glance at the carpetbag. "Smash yer baggage?" he asked. "What's that?" "Carry yer bag." "Do you know of any good, cheap hotel where I can put up?" asked Robert. "Eu-ro-pean hotel?" said the urchin, accenting the second syllable. "What kind of a hotel is that?" "You take a room, and get your grub where you like." "Yes, that will suit me." "I'll show you one and take yer bag along for two shillings." "All right," said our hero. "Go ahead." The boy shouldered the carpetbag and started in advance, Robert following. He found a considerable difference between the crowded streets of New York and the quiet roads of Millville. His spirits rose, and he felt that life was just beginning for him. Brave and bold by temperament, he did not shrink from trying his luck on a broader arena than was afforded by the little village whence he came. Such confidence is felt by many who eventually fail, but Robert was one who combined ability and willingness to work with confidence, and the chances were in favor of his succeeding. Unused to the city streets, Robert was a little more cautious about crossing than the young Arab who carried his bag. So, at one broad thoroughfare, the latter got safely across, while Robert was still on the other side waiting for a good opportunity to cross in turn. The bootblack, seeing that communication was for the present cut off by a long line of vehicles, was assailed by a sudden temptation. For his services as porter he would receive but twenty-five cents, while here was an opportunity to appropriate the entire bag, which must be far more valuable. He was not naturally a bad boy, but his street education had given him rather loose ideas on the subject of property. Obeying his impulse, then, he started rapidly, bag in hand, up a side street. "Hold on, there! Where are you going?" called out Robert. He received no answer, but saw the baggage-smasher quickening his pace and dodging round the corner. He attempted to dash across the street, but was compelled to turn back, after being nearly run over. "I wish I could get hold of the young rascal!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Who do you mane, Johnny?" asked a boy at his side. "A boy has run off with my carpetbag," said Robert. "I know him. It's Jim Malone." "Do you know where I can find him?" asked Robert, eagerly. "If you'll help me get back my bag, I'll give you a dollar." "I'll do it then. Come along of me. Here's a chance to cross." Following his new guide, Robert dashed across the street at some risk, and found himself safe on the other side. "Now where do you think he's gone?" demanded Robert. "It's likely he'll go home." "Do you know where he lives?" "No.--Mulberry street." "Has he got any father and mother?" "He's got a mother, but the ould woman's drunk most all the time." "Then she won't care about his stealing?" "No, she'll think he's smart." "Then we'll go there. Is it far?" "Not more than twenty minutes." The boy was right. Jim steered for home, not being able to open the bag in the street without suspicion. His intention was to appropriate a part of the clothing to his own use, and dispose of the rest to a pawnbroker or second-hand dealer, who, as long as he got a good bargain, would not be too particular about inquiring into the customer's right to the property. He did not, however, wholly escape suspicion. He was stopped by a policeman, who demanded, "Whose bag is that, Johnny?" "It belongs to a gentleman that wants it carried to the St. Nicholas," answered Jim, promptly. "Where is the gentleman?" "He's took a car to Wall street on business." "How came he to trust you with the bag? Wasn't he afraid you'd steal it?" "Oh, he knows me. I've smashed baggage for him more'n once." This might be true. At any rate, it was plausible, and the policeman, having no ground of detention, suffered him to go on. Congratulating himself on getting off so well, Jim sped on his way, and arrived in quick time at the miserable room in Mulberry street, which he called home. His mother lay on a wretched bed in the corner, half stupefied with drink. She lifted up her head as her son entered. "What have you there, Jimmy?" she asked. "It's a bag, mother." "Whose is it?" "It's mine now." "And where did ye get it?" "A boy gave it to me to carry to a chape hotel, so I brought it home. This is a chape hotel, isn't it?" "You're a smart boy, an' I always said it, Jimmy. Let me open it," and the old woman, with considerable alacrity, rose to her feet and came to Jim's side. "I'll open it myself, mother, that is, I if I had a kay. Haven't you got one?" "I have that same. I picked up a bunch of kays in the strate last week." She fumbled in her pocket, and drew out half a dozen keys of different sizes, attached to a steel ring. "Bully for you, old woman!" said Jim. "Give 'em here." "Let me open the bag," said Mrs. Malone, persuasively. "No, you don't," said her dutiful son. "'Tain't none of yours. It's mine." "The kays is mine," said his mother, "and I'll kape 'em." "Give 'em here," said Jim, finding a compromise necessary, "and I'll give you fifty cents out of what I get." "That's the way to talk, darlint," said his mother, approvingly. "You wouldn't have the heart to chate your ould mother out of her share?" "It's better I did," said Jim; "you'll only get drunk on the money." "Shure a little drink will do me no harm," said Mrs. Malone. Meanwhile the young Arab had tried key after key until he found one that fitted--the bag flew open, and Robert's humble stock of clothing lay exposed to view. There was a woolen suit, four shirts, half a dozen collars, some stockings and handkerchiefs. Besides these there was the little Bible which Robert had had given him by his father just before he went on his last voyage. It was the only book our hero had room for, but in the adventurous career upon which he had entered, exposed to perils of the sea and land, he felt that he would need this as his constant guide. "Them shirts'll fit me," said Jim. "I guess I'll kape 'em, and the close besides." "Then where'll you git the money for me?" asked his mother. "I'll sell the handkerchiefs and stockings. I don't nade them," said Jim, whose ideas of full dress fell considerably short of the ordinary standard. "I won't nade the collars either." "You don't nade all the shirts," said his mother. "I'll kape two," said Jim. "It'll make me look respectable. Maybe I'll kape two collars, so I can sit up for a gentleman of fashion." "You'll be too proud to walk with your ould mother," said Mrs. Malone. "Maybe I will," said Jim, surveying his mother critically. "You aint much of a beauty, ould woman." "I was a purty gal, once," said Mrs. Malone, "but hard work and bad luck has wore on me." "The whisky's had something to do with it," said Jim. "Hard work didn't make your face so red." "Is it my own boy talks to me like that?" said the old woman, wiping her eyes on her dress. But her sorrow was quickly succeeded by a different emotion, as the door opened suddenly, and Robert Rushton entered the room. CHAPTER XXIV. A GOOD BEGINNING. Jim started to his feet at the sight of the equally unwelcome and unexpected visitor. His mother, ignorant that she saw before her the owner of the bag, supposed it might be a customer wanting some washing done. "Good-morning, sir," said she, "And have yez business with me?" "No," said Robert, "I have business with your son, if that's he." "Shure he's my son, and a smart bye he is too." "He's a little too smart sometimes," returned our hero. "I gave him my carpetbag to carry this morning, and he ran away with it." Mrs. Malone's face fell at this unexpected intelligence. "Shur an' it was a mistake of his," she said. "He's too honest entirely to stale the value of a pin, let alone a carpetbag." Meanwhile Jim was rapidly reviewing the situation. He was not naturally bad, but he had fallen a victim to sudden temptation. He was ashamed, and determined to make amends by a frank confession. "My mother is wrong," he said; "I meant to kape it, and I'm sorry. Here's the bag, wid nothing taken out of it." "That's right, to own up," said Robert, favorably impressed with his frank confession. "Give me the bag and it'll be all right. I suppose you were poor, and that tempted you. I am poor, too, and couldn't afford to lose it. But I'd rather starve than steal, and I hope you will not be dishonest again." "I won't!" said Jim, stoutly. "I'll go with you now to a chape hotel, and won't charge you nothin'." "I've got a boy downstairs who will take it. Don't forget what you said just now." "No, I won't," said Jim. "Shure if I'd known what a bully young gentleman you was, I wouldn't have took it on no account." So Robert descended the stairs, having by his forbearance probably effected a moral reformation in Jim, and confirmed in him the good principles, which, in spite of his mother's bad example, had already taken root in his heart. If the community, while keeping vigilant watch over the young outcasts that throng our streets, plying their petty avocations, would not always condemn, but encourage them sometimes to a better life, the results would soon appear in the diminution of the offenses for which they are most frequently arrested. His new guide shouldered Robert's carpetbag, and conducted him to a hotel of good standing, managed on the European system. Dismissing the boy with the promised reward, Robert went up to his room on the fifth floor, and after attending to his toilet, sallied out into the street and made his way to the warehouse of the merchant who had been instrumental in raising the fund for him. "Mr. Morgan is engaged," said a clerk to whom he spoke. "I will wait for him, if you please," said Robert. "Is it any business that I can attend to?" asked the clerk. "No, I wish to see Mr. Morgan himself." Mr. Morgan was engaged with two gentlemen, and our hero was obliged to wait nearly half an hour. At the end of that time, the merchant consented to see him. He did not at first recognize him, but said, inquiringly, "Well, my young friend, from whom do you come?" "I come from no one, sir." "Have you business with me?" "You do not remember me, Mr. Morgan. Do you remember when the cars came so near running off the track a short time since at Millville?" "Certainly I do," said Mr. Morgan, heartily; "and I now remember you as the brave boy who saved all our lives." "You gave me your card and told me I might call on you." "To be sure, I did, and I am very glad to see you. You must go home and dine with me to-day." "Thank you, sir, for your kind invitation." "This is my address," said the merchant, writing it in pencil, and handing it to Robert. "We dine at half-past six. You had better be at the door at six. We will then talk over your plans, for I suppose you have some, and I will do what I can to promote them. At present I am busy, and am afraid I must ask you to excuse me." "Thank you, sir," said Robert, gratefully. He left the office, not a little elated at his favorable reception. Mr. Morgan, judging from his place of business, must be a man of great wealth, and could no doubt be of essential service to him. What was quite as important, he seemed disposed to help him. "That's a good beginning," thought Robert. "I wish mother knew how well I have succeeded so far. I'll just write and let her know that I have arrived safe. To-morrow perhaps I shall have better news to tell." He went back to his hotel, and feeling hungry, made a substantial meal. He found the restaurants moderate in price, and within his means. Six o'clock found him ringing the bell of a handsome brownstone house on Fifth avenue. Though not disposed to be shy, he felt a little embarrassed as the door opened and a servant in livery stood before him. "Is Mr. Morgan at home?" inquired Robert. "Yes, sir," said the servant, glancing speculatively at the neat but coarse garments of our hero. "He invited me to dine with him," said Robert. "Won't you walk in, sir?" said the servant, with another glance of mild surprise at the dress of the dinner guest. "If you'll walk in here," opening the door of a sumptuously furnished parlor, "I will announce you. What name shall I say?" "Robert Rushton." Robert entered the parlor, and sat down on a sofa. He looked around him with a little, pardonable curiosity, for he had never before been in an elegant city mansion. "I wonder whether I shall ever be rich enough to live like this!" he thought. The room, though elegant, was dark, and to our hero, who was used to bright, sunny rooms, it seemed a little gloomy. He mentally decided that he would prefer a plain country house; not so plain, indeed, as the little cottage where his mother lived, but as nice, perhaps, as the superintendent's house, which was the finest in the village, and the most magnificent he had until this time known. Its glories were wholly eclipsed by the house he was in, but Robert thought he would prefer it. While he was looking about him, Mr. Morgan entered, and his warm and cordial manner made his boy guest feel quite at his ease. "I must make you acquainted with my wife and children," he said. "They have heard of you, and are anxious to see you." Mrs. Morgan gave Robert a reception as warm as her husband had done. "So this is the young hero of whom I have heard!" she said. "I am afraid you give me too much credit," said Robert, modestly. This modest disclaimer produced a still more favorable impression upon both Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. I do not propose to speak in detail of the dinner that followed. The merchant and his wife succeeded in making Robert feel entirely at home, and he displayed an ease and self-possession wholly free from boldness that won their good opinion. When the dinner was over, Mr. Morgan commenced: "Now, Robert, dinner being over, let us come to business. Tell me your plans, and I will consider how I can promote them." In reply, Robert communicated the particulars, already known to the reader, of his father's letter, his own conviction of his still living, and his desire to go in search of him. "I am afraid you will be disappointed," said the merchant, "in the object of your expedition. It may, however, be pleasant for you to see something of the world, and luckily it is in my power to help you. I have a vessel which sails for Calcutta early next week. You shall go as a passenger." "Couldn't I go as cabin-boy?" asked Robert. "I am afraid the price of a ticket will be beyond my means." "I think not," said the merchant, smiling, "since you will go free. As you do not propose to follow the sea, it will not be worth while to go as cabin-boy. Besides, it would interfere with your liberty to leave the vessel whenever you deemed it desirable in order to carry on your search for your father." "You are very kind, Mr. Morgan," said Robert, gratefully. "So I ought to be and mean to be," said the merchant. "You know I am in your debt." We pass over the few and simple preparations which Robert made for his long voyage. In these he was aided by Mrs. Morgan, who sent on board, without his knowledge, a trunk containing a complete outfit, considerably better than the contents of the humble carpetbag he had brought from home. He didn't go on board till the morning on which the ship was to sail. He went down into the cabin, and did not come up until the ship had actually started. Coming on deck, he saw a figure which seemed familiar to him. From his dress, and the commands he appeared to be issuing, Robert judged that it was the mate. He tried to think where he could have met him, when the mate turned full around, and, alike to his surprise and dismay, he recognized Ben Haley, whom he had wounded in his successful attempt to rob his uncle. CHAPTER XXV. A DECLARATION OF WAR. If Robert was surprised, Ben Haley had even more reason for astonishment. He had supposed his young enemy, as he chose to consider him, quietly living at home in the small village of Millville. He was far from expecting to meet him on shipboard bound to India. There was one difference, however, between the surprise felt by the two. Robert was disagreeably surprised, but a flash of satisfaction lit up the face of the mate, as he realized that the boy who had wounded him was on the same ship, and consequently, as he supposed, in his power. "How came you here?" he exclaimed, hastily advancing toward Robert. Resenting the tone of authority in which these words were spoken, Robert answered, composedly: "I walked on board." "You'd better not be impudent, young one," said Ben, roughly. "When you tell me what right you have to question me in that style," said Robert, coolly, "I will apologize." "I am the mate of this vessel, as you will soon find out." "So I supposed," said Robert. "And you, I suppose, are the cabin-boy. Change your clothes at once, and report for duty." Robert felt sincerely thankful at that moment that he was not the cabin-boy, for he foresaw that in that case he would be subjected to brutal treatment from the mate--treatment which his subordinate position would make him powerless to resent. Now, as a passenger, he felt independent, and though it was disagreeable to have the mate for an enemy, he did not feel afraid. "You've made a mistake, Mr. Haley," said our hero. "I am not the cabin-boy." "What are you, then?" "I am a passenger." "You are telling a lie. We don't take passengers," said Ben Haley, determined not to believe that the boy was out of his power. "If you will consult the captain, you may learn your mistake," said Robert. Ben Haley couldn't help crediting this statement, since it would have done Robert no good to misrepresent the facts of the case. He resolved, however, to ask the captain about it, and inquire how it happened that he had been received as a passenger, contrary to the usual custom. "You will hear from me again," he said, in a tone of menace. Robert turned away indifferently, so far as appearance went, but he couldn't help feeling a degree of apprehension as he thought of the long voyage he was to take in company with his enemy, who doubtless would have it in his power to annoy him, even if he abstained from positive injury. "He is a bad man, and will injure me if he can," he reflected; "but I think I can take care of myself. If I can't I will appeal to the captain." Meanwhile the mate went up to the captain. "Captain Evans," said he, "is that boy a passenger?" "Yes, Mr. Haley." "It is something unusual to take passengers, is it not?" "Yes; but this lad is a friend of the owner; and Mr. Morgan has given me directions to treat him with particular consideration." Ben Haley was puzzled. How did it happen that Mr. Morgan, one of the merchant princes of New York, had become interested in an obscure country boy? "I don't understand it," he said, perplexed. "I suppose the boy is a relation of Mr. Morgan." "Nothing of the kind. He is of poor family, from a small country town." "Then you know him?" "I know something of him and his family. He is one of the most impudent young rascals I ever met." "Indeed!" returned the captain, surprised. "From what I have seen of him, I have come to quite a different conclusion. He has been very gentlemanly and polite to me." "He can appear so, but you will find out, sooner or later. He has not the slightest regard for truth, and will tell the most unblushing falsehoods with the coolest and most matter-of-fact air." "I shouldn't have supposed it," said Captain Evans, looking over at our hero, at the other extremity of the deck. "Appearances are deceitful, certainly." "They are in this case." This terminated the colloquy for the time. The mate had done what he could to prejudice the captain against the boy he hated. Not, however, with entire success. Captain Evans had a mind of his own, and did not choose to adopt any man's judgment or prejudices blindly. He resolved to watch Robert a little more closely than he had done, in order to see whether his own observation confirmed the opinion expressed by the mate. Of the latter he did not know much, since this was the first voyage on which they had sailed together; but Captain Evans was obliged to confess that he did not wholly like his first officer. He appeared to be a capable seaman, and, doubtless, understood his duties, but there was a bold and reckless expression which impressed him unfavorably. Ben Haley, on his part, had learned something, but not much. He had ascertained that Robert was a _protege_ of the owner, and was recommended to the special care of the captain; but what could be his object in undertaking the present voyage, he did not understand. He was a little afraid that Robert would divulge the not very creditable part he had played at Millville; and that he might not be believed in that case, he had represented him to the captain as an habitual liar. After some consideration, he decided to change his tactics, and induce our hero to believe he was his friend, or, at least, not hostile to him. To this he was impelled by two motives. First, to secure his silence respecting the robbery; and, next, to so far get into his confidence as to draw out of him the object of his present expedition. Thus, he would lull his suspicions to sleep, and might thereafter gratify his malice the more securely. He accordingly approached our hero, and tapped him on the shoulder. Robert drew away slightly. Haley saw the movement, and hated the boy the more for it. "Well, my lad," he said, "I find your story is correct." "Those who know me don't generally doubt my word," said Robert, coldly. "Well, I don't know you, or, at least, not intimately," said Haley, "and you must confess that I haven't the best reasons to like you." "Did you suffer much inconvenience from your wound?" asked Robert. "Not much. It proved to be slight. You were a bold boy to wing me. I could have crushed you easily." "I suppose you could, but you know how I was situated. I couldn't run away, and desert your uncle." "I don't know about that. You don't understand that little affair. I suppose you think I had no right to the gold I took." "I certainly do think so." "Then you are mistaken. My uncle got his money from my grandfather. A part should have gone to my mother, and, consequently, to me, but he didn't choose to act honestly. My object in calling upon him was to induce him to do me justice at last. But you know the old man has become a miser, and makes money his idol. The long and short of it was, that, as he wouldn't listen to reason, I determined to take the law into my own hands, and carry off what I thought ought to come to me." Robert listened to this explanation without putting much faith in it. It was not at all according to the story given by Mr. Nichols, and he knew, moreover, that the man before him had passed a wild and dissolute youth. "I suppose what I did was not strictly legal," continued Ben Haley, lightly; "but we sailors are not much versed in the quips of the law. To my thinking, law defeats justice about as often as it aids it." "I don't know very much about law," said Robert, perceiving that some reply was expected. "That's just my case," said Ben, "and the less I have to do with it the better it will suit me. I suppose my uncle made a great fuss about the money I carried off." "Yes," said Robert. "It was quite a blow to him, and he has been nervous ever since for fear you would come back again." Ben Haley shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "He needn't be afraid. I don't want to trouble him, but I was bound he shouldn't keep from me what was rightly my due. I haven't got all I ought to have, but I am not a lover of money, and I shall let it go." "I hope you won't go near him again, for he got a severe shock the last time." "When you get back, if you get a chance to see him privately, you may tell him there is no danger of that." "I shall be glad to do so," said Robert. "I thought I would explain the matter to you," continued the mate, in an off-hand manner, "for I didn't want you to remain under a false impression. So you are going to see a little of the world?" "Yes, sir." "I suppose that is your only object?" "No. I have another object in view." The mate waited to learn what this object was, but Robert stopped, and did not seem inclined to go on. "Well," said Haley, after a slight pause, "as we are to be together on a long voyage, we may as well be friends. Here's my hand." To his surprise, Robert made no motion to take it. "Mr. Haley," said he, "I don't like to refuse your hand, but when I tell you that I am the son of Captain Rushton, of the ship, _Norman_, you will understand why I cannot accept your hand." Ben Haley started back in dismay. How could Robert have learned anything of his treachery to his father? Had the dead come back from the bottom of the sea to expose him? Was Captain Rushton still alive? He did not venture to ask, but he felt his hatred for Robert growing more intense. "Boy," he said, in a tone of concentrated passion, "you have done a bold thing in rejecting my hand. I might have been your friend. Think of me henceforth as your relentless enemy." He walked away, his face dark with the evil passions which Robert's slight had aroused in his breast. CHAPTER XXVI. OUT ON THE OCEAN. We must now go back nearly two years. Five men were floating about in a boat in the Southern ocean. They looked gaunt and famished. For a week they had lived on short allowance, and now for two days they had been entirely without food. There was in their faces that look, well-nigh hopeless, which their wretched situation naturally produced. For one day, also, they had been without water, and the torments of thirst were worse than the cravings of hunger. These men were Captain Rushton and four sailors of the ship _Norman_, whose burning has already been described. One of the sailors, Bunsby, was better educated and more intelligent than the rest, and the captain spoke to him as a friend and an equal, for all the distinctions of rank were broken down by the immediate prospect of a terrible death. "How is all this going to end, Bunsby?" said the captain, in a low voice, turning from a vain search for some sail; in sight, and addressing his subordinate. "I am afraid there is only one way," answered Bunsby. "There is not much prospect of our meeting a ship." "And, if we do, it is doubtful if we can attract their attention." "I should like the chance to try." "I never knew before how much worse thirst is than hunger." "Do you know, captain, if this lasts much longer, I shall be tempted to swallow some of this sea water." "It will only make matters worse." "I know it, but, at least, it will moisten my throat." The other sailors sat stupid and silent, apparently incapable of motion, "I wish I had a plug of tobacco," said one, at last. "If there were any use in wishing, I'd wish myself on shore," said the second. "We'll never see land again," said the third, gloomily. "We're bound for Davy Jones' locker." "I'd like to see my old mother before I go down," said the first. "I've got a mother, too," said the third. "If I could only have a drop of the warm tea such as she used to make! She's sitting down to dinner now, most likely, little thinking that her Jack is dying of hunger out here." There was a pause, and the captain spoke again. "I wish I knew whether that bottle will ever reach shore. When was it we launched it?" "Four days since." "I've got something here I wish I could get to my wife." He drew from his pocketbook a small, folded paper. "What is that, captain?" asked Bunsby. "It is my wife's fortune." "How is that, captain?" "That paper is good for five thousand dollars." "Five thousand dollars wouldn't do us much good here. It wouldn't buy a pound of bread, or a pint of water." "No; but it would--I hope it will--save my wife and son from suffering. Just before I sailed on this voyage I took five thousand dollars--nearly all my savings--to a man in our village to keep till I returned, or, if I did not return, to keep in trust for my wife and child. This is the paper he gave me in acknowledgment." "Is he a man you can trust, captain?" "I think so. It is the superintendent of the factory in our village--a man rich, or, at any rate, well-to-do. He has a good reputation for integrity." "Your wife knew you had left the money in his hands?" "No; I meant it as a surprise to her." "It is a pity you did not leave that paper in her hands." "What do you mean, Bunsby?" asked the captain, nervously. "You don't think this man will betray his trust?" "I can't say, captain, for I don't know the man; but I don't like to trust any man too far." Captain Rushton was silent for a moment. There was a look of trouble on his face. "You make me feel anxious, Bunsby. It is hard enough to feel that I shall probably never again see my wife and child--on earth, I mean--but to think that they may possibly suffer want makes it more bitter." "The man may be honest, captain: Don't trouble yourself too much." "I see that I made a mistake. I should have left this paper with my wife. Davis can keep this money, and no one will be the wiser. It is a terrible temptation." "Particularly if the man is pressed for money." "I don't think that. He is considered a rich man. He ought to be one, and my money would be only a trifle to him." "Let us hope it is so, captain," said Bunsby, who felt that further discussion would do no good, and only embitter the last moments of his commander. But anxiety did not so readily leave the captain. Added to the pangs of hunger and the cravings of thirst was the haunting fear that by his imprudence his wife and child would suffer. "Do you think it would do any good, Bunsby," he said, after a pause, "to put this receipt in a bottle, as I did the letter?" "No, captain, it is too great a risk. There is not more than one chance in a hundred of its reaching its destination. Besides, suppose you should be picked up, and go home without the receipt; he might refuse to pay you." "He would do so at the peril of his life, then," said the captain, fiercely. "Do you think, if I were alive, I would let any man rob me of the savings of my life?" "Other men have done so." "It would not be safe to try it on me, Bunsby." "Well, captain?" "It is possible that I may perish, but you may be saved." "Not much chance of it." "Yet it is possible. Now, if that happens, I have a favor to ask of you." "Name it, captain." "I want you, if I die first, to take this paper, and guard it carefully; and, if you live to get back, to take it to Millville, and see that justice is done to my wife and child." "I promise that, captain; but I think we shall die together." Twenty-four hours passed. The little boat still rocked hither and thither on the ocean billows. The five faces looked more haggard, and there was a wild, eager look upon them, as they scanned the horizon, hoping to see a ship. Their lips and throats were dry and parched. "I can't stand it no longer," said one--it was the sailor I have called Jack--"I shall drink some of the sea water." "Don't do it, Jack," said Bunsby. "You'll suffer more than ever." "I can't," said Jack, desperately; and, scooping up some water in the hollow of his hand, he drank it eagerly. Again and again he drank with feverish eagerness. "How is it?" said the second sailor, "I feel better," said Jack; "my throat so dry." "Then I'll take some, too." The other two sailors, unheeding the remonstrances of Bunsby and the captain, followed the example of Jack. They felt relief for the moment, but soon their torments became unendurable. With parched throats, gasping for breath, they lay back in agony. Suffering themselves, Captain Rushton and Bunsby regarded with pity the greater sufferings of their wretched companions. "This is horrible," said the captain. "Yes," said Bunsby, sadly. "It can't last much longer now." His words were truer than he thought. Unable to endure his suffering, the sailor named Jack suddenly staggered to his feet. "I can't stand it any longer," he said, wildly; "good-by, boys," and before his companions well knew what he intended to do, he had leaped over the side of the boat, and sunk in the ocean waves. There was a thrilling silence, as the waters closed over his body. Then the second sailor also rose to his feet. "I'm going after Jack," he said, and he, too, plunged into the waves. The captain rose as if to hinder him, but Bunsby placed his hand upon his arm. "It's just as well, captain. We must all come to that, and the sooner, the more suffering is saved." "That's so," said the other sailor, tormented like the other two by thirst, aggravated by his draughts of seawater. "Good-by, Bunsby! Good-by, captain! I'm going!" He, too, plunged into the sea, and Bunsby and the captain were left alone. "You won't desert me, Bunsby?" said the captain. "No, captain. I haven't swallowed seawater like those poor fellows. I can stand it better." "There is no hope of life," said the captain, quietly; "but I don't like to go unbidden into my Maker's presence." "Nor I. I'll stand by you, captain." "This is a fearful thing, Bunsby. If it would only rain." "That would be some relief." As if in answer to his wish, the drops began to fall--slowly at first, then more copiously, till at last their clothing was saturated, and the boat partly filled with water. Eagerly they squeezed out the welcome dregs from their clothing, and felt a blessed relief. They filled two bottles they had remaining with the precious fluid. "If those poor fellows had only waited," said the captain. "They are out of suffering now," said Bunsby. The relief was only temporary, and they felt it to be so. They were without food, and the two bottles of water would not last them long. Still, there was a slight return of hope, which survives under the most discouraging circumstances. CHAPTER XXVII. FRANK PRICE. The ship _Argonaut_, bound for Calcutta, was speeding along with a fair wind, when the man at the lookout called: "Boat in sight!" "Where away?" The sailor pointed, out a small boat a mile distant, nearly in the ship's track, rising and falling with the billows. "Is there any one in it?" "I see two men lying in the bottom. They are motionless. They may be dead." The boat was soon overtaken. It was the boat from the ill-fated _Norman_, Captain Rushton and Bunsby were lying stretched out in the bottom, both motionless and apparently without life. Bunsby was really dead. But there was still some life left in the captain, which, under the care of the surgeon of the ship, was carefully husbanded until he was out of immediate danger. But his system, from the long privation of food, had received such a shock, that his mind, sympathizing with it, he fell into a kind of stupor, mental and physical, and though strength and vigor came slowly back, Captain Rushton was in mind a child. Oblivion of the past seemed to have come over him. He did not remember who he was, or that he had a wife and child. "Poor man!" said the surgeon; "I greatly fear his mind has completely given way." "It is a pity some of his friends were not here," said the captain of the ship that had rescued him. "The sight of a familiar face might restore him." "It is possible, but I am not sure of even that." "Is there any clew to his identity?" "I have found none." It will at once occur to the reader that the receipt would have supplied the necessary information, since it was dated Millville, and contained the captain's name. But this was concealed in an inner pocket in Captain Rushton's vest, and escaped the attention of the surgeon. So, nameless and unknown, he was carried to Calcutta, which he reached without any perceptible improvement in his mental condition. Arrived at Calcutta, the question arose: "What shall we do with him?" It was a perplexing question, since if carried back to New York, it might be difficult to identify him there, or send him back to his friends. Besides, the care of a man in his condition would be a greater responsibility than most shipmasters would care to undertake. It was at this crisis that a large-hearted and princely American merchant, resident in Calcutta, who had learned the particulars of the captain's condition, came forward, saying: "Leave him here. I will find him a home in some suitable boarding-house, and defray such expenses as may be required. God has blessed me with abundant means. It is only right that I should employ a portion in His service. I hope, under good treatment, he may recover wholly, and be able to tell me who he is, and where is his home. When that is ascertained, if his health is sufficiently good, I will send him home at my own expense." The offer was thankfully accepted, and the generous merchant was as good as his word. A home was found for Captain Rushton in the boarding-house of Mrs. Start, a widow, who, thrown upon her own exertions for support, had, by the help of the merchant already referred to, opened a boarding-house, which was now quite remunerative. "He will require considerable care, Mrs. Start," said Mr. Perkins, the merchant, "but I am ready and willing to compensate you for all the trouble to which you are put. Will you take him?" "Certainly I will," said the warm-hearted widow, "if only because you ask it. But for you, I should not be earning a comfortable living, with a little money laid up in the bank, besides." "Thank you, Mrs. Start," said the merchant. "I know the poor man could be in no better hands. But you mustn't let any considerations of gratitude interfere with your charging a fair price for your trouble. I am able and willing to pay whatever is suitable." "I don't believe we shall quarrel on that point," said the widow, smiling. "I will do all I can for your friend. What is his name?" "That I don't know." "We shall have to call him something." "Call him Smith, then. That will answer till we find out his real name, as we may some day, when his mind comes back, as I hope it may." From that time, therefore, Captain Rushton was known as Mr. Smith. He recovered in a considerable degree his bodily health, but mentally he remained in the same condition. Sometimes he fixed his eyes upon Mrs. Start, and seemed struggling to remember something of the past; but after a few moments his face would assume a baffled look, and he would give up the attempt as fruitless. One day when Mrs. Start addressed him as Mr. Smith, he asked: "Why do you call me by that name?" "Is not that your name?" she asked. "No." "What, then, is it?" He put his hand to his brow, and seemed to be thinking. At length he turned to the widow, and said, abruptly: "Do you not know my name?" "No." "Nor do I," he answered, and left the room hastily. She continued, therefore, to address him as Mr. Smith, and he gradually became accustomed to it, and answered to it. Leaving Captain Rushton at Calcutta, with the assurance that, though separated from home and family, he will receive all the care that his condition requires, we will return to our hero, shut up on shipboard with his worst enemy. I say this advisedly, for though Halbert Davis disliked him, it was only the feeling of a boy, and was free from the intensity of Ben Haley's hatred. No doubt, it was imprudent for him to reject the mate's hand, but Robert felt that he could not grasp in friendship the hand which had deprived him of a father. He was bold enough to brave the consequences of this act, which he foresaw clearly. Ben Haley, however, was in no hurry to take the vengeance which he was fully resolved sooner or later to wreak upon our young hero. He was content to bide his time. Had Robert been less watchful, indeed, he might have supposed that the mate's feelings toward him had changed. When they met, as in the narrow limits of the ship they must do every day, the forms of courtesy passed between them. Robert always saluted the mate, and Haley responded by a nod, or a cool good-morning, but did not indulge in any conversation. Sometimes, however, turning suddenly, Robert would catch a malignant glance from the mate, but Haley's expression immediately changed, when thus surprised, and he assumed an air of indifference. With Captain Evans, on the other hand, Robert was on excellent terms. The captain liked the bold, manly boy, and talked much with him of the different countries he had visited, and seemed glad to answer the questions which our hero asked. "Robert," said the captain, one day, "how is it that you and Mr. Haley seem to have nothing to say to each other?" "I don't think he likes me, Captain Evans," said Robert. "Is there any reason for it, or is it merely a prejudice?" "There is a reason for it, but I don't care to mention it. Not that it is anything I have reason to regret, or to be ashamed of," he added, hastily. "It is on Mr. Haley's account that I prefer to keep it secret." "Is there no chance of your being on better terms?" asked the captain, good-naturedly, desirous of effecting a reconciliation. Robert shook his head. "I don't wish to be reconciled, captain," he said. "I will tell you this much, that Mr. Haley has done me and my family an injury which, perhaps, can never be repaired. I cannot forget it, and though I am willing to be civil to him, since we are thrown together, I do not want his friendship, even if he desired mine, as I am sure he does not." Captain Evans was puzzled by this explanation, which threw very little light upon the subject, and made no further efforts to bring the two together. Time passed, and whatever might be Ben Haley's feelings, he abstained from any attempt to injure him. Robert's suspicions were lulled to sleep, and he ceased to be as vigilant and watchful as he had been. His frank, familiar manner made him a favorite on shipboard. He had a friendly word for all the sailors, which was appreciated, for it was known that he was the _protege_ of the owner. He was supposed by some to be a relation, or, at any rate, a near connection, and so was treated with unusual respect. All the sailors had a kind word for him, and many were the praises which he received in the forecastle. Among those most devoted to him was a boy of fourteen, Frank Price, who had sailed in the capacity of cabin-boy. The poor boy was very seasick at first, and Captain Evans had been indulgent, and excused him from duty until he got better. He was not sturdy enough for the life upon which he had entered, and would gladly have found himself again in the comfortable home which a mistaken impulse had led him to exchange for the sea. With this boy, Robert, who was of about the same age, struck up a friendship, which was returned twofold by Frank, whose heart, naturally warm, was easily won by kindness. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE NEW CAPTAIN. The voyage was more than half completed, and nothing of importance had occurred to mark it. But at this time, Captain Evans fell sick. His sickness proved to be a fever, and was very severe. The surgeon was in constant attendance, but the malady baffled all his skill. At the end of seven days, it terminated fatally, to the great grief of all on board, with whom the good-natured captain was very popular. There was one exception, however, to the general grief. It is an ill wind that blows good to no one, and Ben Haley did not lament much for an event which promoted him to the command of the vessel. Of course, he did not show this feeling publicly, but in secret his heart bounded with exultation at the thought that he was, for the time, master of the ship and all on board. He was not slow in asserting his new position. Five minutes after the captain breathed his last, one of the sailors approached him, and asked for orders, addressing him as "Mr. Haley." "Captain Haley!" roared the new commander. "If you don't know my position on board this ship, it's time you found it out!" "Ay, ay, sir," stammered the sailor, taken aback at his unexpected violence. Robert mourned sincerely at the death of Captain Evans, by whom he had always been treated with the utmost kindness. Even had he not been influenced by such a feeling, he would have regarded with apprehension the elevation to the command of one whom he well knew to be actuated by a feeling of enmity to himself. He resolved to be as prudent as possible, and avoid, as far as he could, any altercation with Haley. But the latter was determined, now that he had reached the command, to pick a quarrel with our hero, and began to cast about for a fitting occasion. Now that Captain Evans was dead, Robert spent as much time as the latter's duties would permit with Frank Price. The boys held long and confidential conversations together, imparting to each other their respective hopes and wishes. Haley observed their intimacy and mutual attachment, and, unable to assert his authority over Robert, who was a passenger, determined to strike at him through his friend. His determination was strengthened by a conversation which he overheard between the boys when they supposed him beyond earshot. "I wish Captain Evans were alive," said Frank. "I liked him, and I don't like Captain Haley." "Captain Evans was an excellent man," said Robert. "He knew how to treat a fellow," said Frank. "As long as he saw us doing our best, he was easy with us. Captain Haley is a tyrant." "Be careful what you say, Frank," said Robert. "It isn't safe to say much about the officers." "I wouldn't say anything, except to you. You are my friend." "I am your true friend, Frank, and I don't want you to get into any trouble." "I am sure you don't like the captain any better than I do." "I don't like the captain, for more reasons than I can tell you; but I shall keep quiet, as long as I am on board this ship." "Are you going back with us?" "I don't know. It will depend upon circumstances. I don't think I shall, though I might have done so had Captain Evans remained in command." "I wish I could leave it, and stay with you." "I wish you could, Frank. Perhaps you can." "I will try." Haley overheard the last part of this conversation. He took particular notice of Robert's remark that he would keep quiet as long as he remained on board the ship, and inferred that on arrival at the destined port our hero would expose all he knew about him. This made him uneasy, for it would injure, if not destroy, his prospect of remaining in command of the _Argonaut_. He resented also the dislike which Robert had cautiously expressed, and the similar feeling cherished by the cabin-boy. He had half a mind to break in upon their conversation on the spot; but, after a moment's thought, walked away, his neighborhood unsuspected by the two boys. "They shall both rue their impudence," he muttered. "They shall find out that they cannot insult me with impunity." The next day, when both boys were on deck, Captain Haley harshly ordered Frank to attend to a certain duty which he had already performed. "I have done so, sir," said Frank, in a respectful tone. "None of your impudence, you young rascal!" roared the captain, lashing himself into a rage. Frank looked up into his face in astonishment, unable to account for so violent an outbreak. "What do you mean by looking me in the face in that impudent manner?" demanded Captain Haley, furiously. "I didn't mean to be impudent, Captain Haley," said Frank. "What have I done?" "What have you done? You, a cabin-boy, have dared to insult your captain, and, by heavens, you shall rue it! Strip off your jacket." Frank turned pale. He knew what this order meant. Public floggings were sometimes administered on shipboard, but, under the command of Captain Evans, nothing of the kind had taken place. Robert, who had heard the whole, listened, with unmeasured indignation, to this wanton abuse on the part of Captain Haley. His eyes flashed, and his youthful form dilated with righteous indignation. Robert was not the only one who witnessed with indignation the captain's brutality. Such of the sailors as happened to be on deck shared his feelings. Haley, looking about him, caught the look with which Robert regarded him, and triumphed inwardly that he had found a way to chafe him. "What have you got to say about it?" he demanded, addressing our hero, with a sneer. "Since you have asked my opinion," said Robert, boldly, "I will express it. Frank Price has not been guilty of any impudence, and deserves no punishment." This was a bold speech to be made by a boy to a captain on his own deck, and the sailors who heard it inwardly applauded the pluck of the boy who uttered it. "What do you mean by that, sir?" exclaimed Haley, his eyes lighting up fiercely, as he strode to the spot where Robert stood, and frowned upon him, menacingly. "You asked my opinion, and I gave it," said Robert, not flinching. "I have a great mind to have you flogged, too!" said Haley. "I am not one of your crew, Captain Haley," said Robert, coolly; "and you have no right to lay a hand on me." "What is to prevent me, I should like to know?" "I am here as a passenger, and a friend of the owner of this vessel. If I receive any ill-treatment, it shall be reported to him." If the sailors had dared, they would have applauded the stripling who, undaunted by the menacing attitude of the captain, faced him boldly and fearlessly. Haley would gladly have knocked him down, but there was something in the resolute mien of his young passenger that made him pause. He knew that he would keep his word, and that, with such representations as he might make, he would stand no further chance of being employed by Mr. Morgan. "I have an account to settle with you, boy," he said; "and the settlement will not long be delayed. When a passenger tries to incite mutiny, he forfeits his privileges as a passenger." "Who has done this, Captain Haley?" "You have done it." "I deny it," said Robert. "Your denial is worth nothing. I have a right to throw you into irons, and may yet do it. At present I have other business in hand." He left Robert, and walked back to Frank Price, who, not having Robert's courage, had been a terrified listener to the colloquy between him and the captain. "Now, boy," he said, harshly, "I will give you a lesson that you shall remember to the latest day of your life. Bring me the cat." The barbarous cat, as it was called, once in use on our ships, was brought, and Captain Haley signaled to one of the sailors to approach. "Bates," he said, in a tone of authority, "give that boy a dozen lashes." Bates was a stout sailor, rough in appearance, but with a warm and kindly heart. He had a boy of his own at home, about the age of Frank Price, and his heart had warmed to the boy whose position he felt to be far from an enviable one. The task now imposed upon him was a most distasteful and unwelcome one. He was a good sailor, and aimed on all occasions to show proper obedience to the commands of his officers, but now he could not. "Captain Haley," he said, not stirring from his position, "I hope you will excuse me." "Is this mutiny?" roared the captain. "No, Captain Haley. I always mean to do my duty on board ship." "I have told you to flog this boy!" "I can't do it, Captain Haley. I have a boy of my own about the size of that lad there, and, if I struck him, I'd think it was my own boy that stood in his place." This unexpected opposition excited the fierce resentment of the captain. He felt that a crisis had come, and he was determined to be obeyed. "Unless you do as I bid you, I will keep you in irons for the rest of the voyage!" "You are the captain of this ship, and can throw me in irons, if you like," said Bates, with an air of dignity despite his tarred hands and sailor jacket. "I have refused to do no duty that belongs to me. When I signed my name to the ship's papers, I did not agree to flog boys." "Put him in irons!" roared the captain, incensed. "We will see who is captain of this ship!" The mandate was obeyed, and Bates was lodged in the forecastle, securely ironed. The captain himself seized the cat, and was about to apply it to the luckless cabin-boy, when a terrible blast, springing up in an instant, as it were, struck the ship, almost throwing it upon its side. There was no time for punishment now. The safety of the ship required instant action, and Frank Price was permitted to replace his jacket without having received a blow. CHAPTER XXIX. THE CAPTAIN'S REVENGE. The storm which commenced so suddenly was one of great violence. It required all the captain's seamanship, and the efforts of all the crew, to withstand it. However reluctant to do it, Captain Haley was forced to release Bates from his irons, and order him to duty. The latter worked energetically, and showed that he did not intend to shirk any part of his duties as seaman. But the result of the storm was that the vessel was driven out of her course, and her rigging suffered considerable injury. The wind blew all night. Toward morning it abated, and, as the morning light broke, the lookout described a small island distant about a league. The captain looked at it through his glass, and then examined the chart. "I can't make out what island that is," he said. "It is not large enough," suggested the mate, "to find a place on the map." "Perhaps it is as you say," said Captain Haley, thoughtfully. "I have a mind to go on shore and explore it. There may be some fresh fruits that will vary our diet." This plan was carried out. A boat was got ready, and the captain got in, with four sailors to row. Just as he was about to descend into the boat, he turned to Robert, who was looking curiously toward land, and said: "Rushton, would you like to go with us?" It was precisely what Robert wanted. He had a boy's love of adventure, and the thought of exploring an island, perhaps hitherto unknown, struck his fancy, and he eagerly accepted the invitation. "Jump in, then," said Haley, striving to appear indifferent; but there was a gleam of exultation in his eye, which he took care to conceal from the unsuspecting boy. Swiftly the boat sped through the waters, pulled by the strong arms of four stout sailors, and, reaching the island, was drawn into a little cove, which seemed made for it. "Now for an exploring expedition," said the captain. "Boys," addressing the sailors, "remain near the boat. I will soon be back. Rushton," he said, turning to our hero, "go where you like, but be back in an hour." "Yes, sir," answered Robert. Had it been Captain Evans, instead of Captain Haley, he would have proposed to join him; but, knowing what he did of the latter, he preferred his own company. The island was about five miles in circumference. Near the shore, it was bare of vegetation, but further inland there were numerous trees, some producing fruit. After some weeks of the monotonous life on shipboard, Robert enjoyed pressing the solid earth once more. Besides, this was the first foreign shore his foot had ever trodden. The thought that he was thousands of miles away from home, and that, possibly, the land upon which he now walked had never before been trodden by a civilized foot, filled him with a sense of excitement and exhilaration. "What would mother say if she should see me now?" he thought. "What a wonderful chance it would be if my father had been wafted in his boat to this island, and I should come upon him unexpectedly!" It was very improbable, but Robert thought enough of it to look about him carefully. But everywhere the land seemed to be virgin, without other inhabitants than the birds of strange plumage and note, which sang in the branches of the trees. "I don't believe any one ever lived here," thought Robert. It struck him that he should like to live upon the island a week, if he could be sure of being taken off at the end of that time. The cool breezes from the ocean swept over the little island, and made it delightfully cool at morning and evening, though hot in the middle of the day. Robert sauntered along till he came to a little valley. He descended the slope, and sat down in the shade of a broad-leaved tree. The grass beneath him made a soft couch, and he felt that he should enjoy lying there the rest of the day. But his time was limited. The captain had told him to be back in an hour, and he felt that it was time for him to be stirring. "I shall not have time to go any further," he reflected. "I must be getting back to the boat." As this occurred to him, he rose to his feet, and, looking up, he started a little at seeing the captain himself descending the slope. "Well, Robert," said Captain Haley, "how do you like the island?" "Very much, indeed," said our hero. "It seems pleasant to be on land after being on shipboard so many weeks." "Quite true. This is a beautiful place you have found." "I was resting under this tree, listening to the birds, but I felt afraid I should not be back to the boat in time, and was just starting to return." "I think we can overstay our time a little," said Haley. "They won't go back without me, I reckon," he added, with a laugh. Robert was nothing loth to stay, and resumed his place on the grass. The captain threw himself on the grass beside him. "I suppose you have read 'Robinson Crusoe?'" he said. "Oh, yes; more than once." "I wonder how it would seem to live on such an island as this?" "I should like it very well," said Robert; "that is, if I could go off at any time. I was just thinking of it when you come up." "Were you?" asked the captain, showing his teeth in an unpleasant smile, which, however, Robert did not see. "You think you would like it?" "Yes, sir." "I am glad of that." "Why?" asked Robert, turning round and looking his companion in the face. "Because," said Haley, changing his tone, "I am going to give you a chance to try it." Robert sprang to his feet in instant alarm, but too late. Haley had grasped him by the shoulder, and in his grasp the boy's strength was nothing. "What are you going to do?" asked Robert, with fearful foreboding. "Wait a minute and you will see!" The captain had drawn a stout cord, brought for the purpose, from his pocket, and, dragging Robert to a tree, tied him securely to the trunk. The terrible fate destined for him was presented vividly to the imagination of our hero; and, brave as he was, it almost unmanned him. Finding his struggles useless, he resorted to expostulation. "I am sure you cannot mean this, Captain Haley!" he said. "You won't leave me to perish miserably on this island?" "Won't I?" returned the captain, with an evil light in his eyes. "Why won't I?" "Surely, you will not be so inhuman?" "Look here, boy," said the captain, "you needn't try to come any of your high-flown notions about humanity over me. I owe you a debt, and, by Heaven! I'm going to pay it! You didn't think much of humanity when you wounded me." "I couldn't help it," said Robert. "I didn't want to hurt you. I only wanted to protect your uncle." "That's all very well; but, when you interfered in a family quarrel, you meddled with what did not concern you. Besides, you have been inciting my crew to mutiny." "I have not done so," said Robert. "I overheard you the other night giving some of your precious advice to my cabin-boy. Besides, you had the impudence to interfere with me in a matter of discipline." "Frank Price deserved no punishment." "That is for me to decide. When you dared to be impudent to me on my own deck, I swore to be revenged, and the time has come sooner than I anticipated." "Captain Haley," said Robert, "in all that I have done I have tried to do right. If I have done wrong, it was because I erred in judgment. If you will let me go, I will promise to say nothing of the attempt you make to keep me here." "You are very kind," sneered the captain; "but I mean to take care of that myself. You may make all the complaints you like after I have left you here." "There is One who will hear me," said Robert. "I shall not be wholly without friends." "Who do you mean?" "God!" said Robert, solemnly. "Rubbish!" retorted Haley, contemptuously. "I shall not despair while I have Him to appeal to." "Just as you like," said the captain, shrugging his shoulders. "You are welcome to all the comfort you can find in your present situation." By this time, Robert was bound to the trunk of the tree by a cord, which passed around his waist. In addition to this Haley tied his wrists together, fearing that otherwise he might be able to unfasten the knot. He now rose to his feet, and looked down upon the young captive, with an air of triumph. "Have you any messages to send by me, Rushton?" he said, with a sneer. "Are you quite determined to leave me here?" asked Robert, in anguish. "Quite so." "What will the sailors say when I do not return?" "Don't trouble yourself about them. I will take care of that. If you have got anything to say, say it quick, for I must be going." "Captain Haley," said Robert, his courage rising, and looking the captain firmly in the face, "I may die here, and so gratify your enmity; but the time will come when you will repent what you are doing." "I'll risk that," said Haley, coolly. "Good-by." He walked up the slope, and disappeared from view, leaving Robert bound to the tree, a helpless prisoner. CHAPTER XXX. A FRIEND IN NEED. Captain Haley kept on his way to the shore. The four sailors were all within hail, and on the captain's approach got the boat in readiness to return. "Where is the boy?" asked Haley. "Hasn't he got back?" "No, sir." "That is strange. I told him to be back in an hour, and it is already past that time." "Perhaps he hasn't a watch," suggested one of the sailors. "I will wait ten minutes for him," said Haley, taking out his watch. "If he is not back in that time, I must go without him." The sailors did not reply, but looked anxiously inland, hoping to catch sight of Robert returning. But, bound as he was, we can understand why they looked in vain. "Shall I go and look for him?" asked one. "No," said Haley, decidedly; "I cannot spare you." The ten minutes were soon up. "Into the boat with you," commanded the captain. "I shall wait no longer." Slowly and reluctantly, the sailors took their places, for Robert was a favorite with them. "Now, men, give way," said Haley. "If the boy is lost, it is his own fault." They reached the vessel in due time. There was a murmur among the crew, when it was found that Robert had been left behind; but, knowing the captain's disposition, no one except Bates dared to expostulate. "Captain Haley," said he, approaching and touching his hat, "will you give me leave to go on shore for the young gentleman that was left?" "No," said the captain. "He had fair warning to be back in time, and chose to disregard it. My duty to the owners will not permit me to delay the ship on his account." "He was a relation of the owner," suggested Bates. "No, he was not; and, if he said so, he lied. Go about your duty, and take care I have no more fault to find with you, or you go back in irons!" Bates ventured upon no further expostulation. He saw through the captain's subterfuge, and felt persuaded that it had been his deliberate intention from the first to abandon Robert to his fate. He began to think busily, and finally resolved to go to the island and search for him. For this purpose, a boat would be needful, since the distance, nearly a league, was too far to swim. Now, to appropriate one of the ship's boats when the captain was on deck would be impossible, but Haley, within five minutes, went below. Bates now proceeded to carry out his plan. "What are you going to do?" demanded one of the sailors. "I'm going after the boy." "You'll be left along with him." "I'll take the risk. He shan't say he didn't have one friend." By the connivance of his fellow-sailors, Bates got safely off with the boat, and began to pull toward shore. He was already a mile distant from the vessel when Captain Haley came on deck. "Who is that in the boat?" he demanded, abruptly. "I don't know, sir." He pointed the glass toward the boat, and, though he could not fairly distinguish the stout sailor who was pulling the boat through the water, he suspected that it was Bates. "Where is Bates?" he asked. No one had seen him. "The fool has gone to destruction," said Captain Haley. "I shall not go after him. He is welcome to live on the island if he chooses." His reason for not pursuing the fugitive may be readily understood. He feared that Robert would be found bound to the tree, and the story the boy would tell would go heavily against him. He hurried preparation for the vessel's departure, and in a short time it was speeding away from the island with two less on board. I must now go back to Robert, whom we left bound to a tree. After the captain left him, he struggled hard to unloose the cords which bound him. The love of life was strong within him, and the thought of dying under such circumstances was appalling. He struggled manfully, but, though he was strong for a boy, the cord was strong, also, and the captain knew how to tie a knot. Robert ceased at last, tired with his efforts. A feeling of despair came over him, and the tears started, unbidden, to his eyes, as he thought how his mother would watch and wait for him in vain--how lonely she would feel, with husband and son both taken from her. Could it be that he was to die, when life had only just commenced, thousands of miles away from home, in utter solitude? Had he come so far for this? Then, again, he feared that his mother would suffer want and privation when the money which he had left behind was exhausted. In his pocket there were nearly two hundred dollars, not likely to be of any service to him. He wished that they were in her possession. "If only he had left me free and unbound," thought Robert, "I might pick up a living on the island, and perhaps some day attract the attention of some vessel." With this thought, and the hope it brought, he made renewed efforts to release himself, striving to untie the cord which fastened his wrists with his teeth. He made some progress, and felt encouraged, but it was hard work, and he was compelled to stop, from time to time, to rest. It was in one of these intervals that he heard his name called. Feeling sure that there was no one on the island but himself, he thought he was deceived. But the sound came nearer, and he distinctly heard "Robert!" "Here I am!" he shouted, in return, his heart filled with sudden thanksgiving. "Captain Haley only meant to frighten me," he thought. "He has sent some men back for me." In his gratitude, he thanked Heaven fervently for so changing the heart of his enemy, and once more life looked bright. "Robert!" he heard again. "Here!" he shouted, with all the strength of his lungs. This time the sound reached Bates, who, running up his boat on shore, and securing it, was exploring the island in search of our hero. Looking around him, he at length, from the edge of the valley, descried Robert. "Is that you, lad?" he asked. "Yes, Bates; come and untie me!" Bates saw his situation with surprise and indignation. "That's some of the captain's work!" he at once decided. "He must be a cursed scoundrel to leave that poor lad there to die!" He quickened his steps, and was soon at the side of our hero. "Who tied you to the tree, lad?" he asked. "Did Captain Haley send you for me?" asked Robert first, for he had made up his mind in that case not to expose him. "No; I stole one of the ship's boats, and came for you without leave." "The captain didn't know of your coming?" "No; I asked his leave, and he wouldn't give it." "It was Captain Haley that tied me here," said Robert, his scruples removed. "What did he do that for, lad?" "It's a long story, Bates. It's because he hates me, and wishes me harm. Untie these cords, and I'll tell you all about it." "That I'll do in a jiffy, my lad. I'm an old sailor and I can untie knots as well as tie them." In five minutes Robert was free. He stretched his limbs, with a feeling of great relief, and then turned to Bates, whose hand he grasped. "I owe my life to you, Bates!" he said. "Maybe not, lad. We're in a tight place yet." "Has the ship gone?" "Most likely. The captain won't send back for either of us in a hurry." "And you have made yourself a prisoner here for my sake?" asked Robert, moved by the noble conduct of the rough sailor. "I couldn't abide to leave you alone. There's more chance for two than for one." "Heaven bless you, Bates! I won't soon forget what you have done for me. Do you think there is any chance for us?" "Of course there is, lad. We've got a boat, and we can live here till some vessel comes within sight." "Let us go down to the shore, and see if we can see anything of the ship." The two bent their steps to the shore, and looked out to sea. They could still see the ship, but it was already becoming a speck in the distant waters. "They have left us," said Robert, turning to his companion. "Ay, lad, the false-hearted villain has done his worst!" "I didn't think any man would be so inhuman." "You're young, lad, and you don't know what a sight of villainy there is in the world. We've got to live here a while, likely. Have you seen anything in the line of grub here-abouts?" "There is fruit on some of the trees." "That's something. Maybe we shall find some roots, besides. We'll draw the boat farther upon shore, and go on an exploring expedition." The boat was drawn completely up, and placed, bottom upward, at a safe distance from the sea. Then Robert and his companion started to explore the island which had so unexpectedly become their home. CHAPTER XXXI. THE ISLAND REALM. But for the knowledge that he was a prisoner, Robert would have enjoyed his present situation. The island, though small, was covered with a luxuriant vegetation, and was swept by cooling breezes, which tempered the ardor of the sun's rays. And, of this island realm, he and his companion were the undisputed sovereigns. There was no one to dispute their sway. All that it yielded was at their absolute disposal. "I wonder what is the name of this island?" said Robert. "Perhaps it has no name. Mayhap we are the first that ever visited it." "I have a great mind to declare myself the king," said our young hero, smiling, "unless you want the office." "You shall be captain, and I will be mate," said Bates, to whom the distinctions of sea life were more familiar than those of courts. "How long do you think we shall have to stay here?" asked Robert, anxiously. "There's no telling, lad. We'll have to stick up a pole on the seashore, and run up a flag when any vessel comes near." "We have no flag." "Have you a handkerchief?" "Only one," said Robert. "That's one more than I have. We'll rig that up when it's wanted." "Where shall we sleep?" "That's what I have been thinking. We must build a house." "A brownstone front?" said Robert. "The governor ought to live in a good house." "So he shall," said Bates. "He shall have the first on the island." "I wonder if it rains often?" "Not much at this season. In the winter a good deal of rain falls, but I hope we won't be here then." "Where shall we build our house?" "It would be pleasanter inland, but we must be near the shore, so as to be in sight of ships." "That's true, Bates. That is the most important consideration." They set to work at once, and built a hut, something like an Indian's wigwam, about a hundred yards from the shore. It was composed, for the most part, of branches of trees and inclosed an inner space of about fifteen feet in diameter. They gathered large quantities of leaves, which were spread upon the ground for beds. "That's softer than our bunks aboard ship," said Bates. "Yes," said Robert. "I wouldn't wish any better bed. It is easy to build and furnish a house of your own here." "The next thing is dinner," said his companion. "Shall we go to market?" asked Robert, with a smile. "We'll find a market just outside." "You mean the trees?" "Yes; we'll find our dinner already cooked on them." The fruit of which they partook freely was quite sweet and palatable. Still, one kind of food cloys after a time, and so our new settlers found it. Besides, it was not very substantial, and failed to keep up their wonted strength. This set them to looking up some other article which might impart variety to their fare. At last they succeeded in finding an esculent root, which they partook of at first with some caution, fearing that it might be unwholesome. Finding, however, that eating it produced no unpleasant effects, they continued the use of it. Even this, however, failed to afford them as much variety as they wished. "I feel as if I should like some fish for breakfast," said Robert one morning, on waking up. "So should I, lad," returned Bates. "Why shouldn't we have some?" "You mean that we shall go fishing?" "Yes; we've got a boat, and I have some cord. We'll rig up fishing lines, and go out on a fishing cruise." Robert adopted the idea with alacrity. It promised variety and excitement. "I wonder we hadn't thought of it before. I used to be a fisherman, Bates." "Did you?" "Yes; I supplied the market at home for a short time, till Captain Haley smashed my boat." "The mean lubber! I wish we had him here." "I don't; I prefer his room to his company." "I'd try how he'd like being tied to a tree." "I don't think you'd untie him again in a hurry." "You may bet high on that, lad." They rigged their fishing lines--cutting poles from the trees--and armed them with hooks, of which, by good luck, Bates happened to have a supply with him. Then they launched the ship's boat, in which Bates had come to the island, and put out to sea. Robert enjoyed the row in the early morning, and wondered they had not thought of taking out the boat before. At last they came to the business which brought them out, and in about half an hour had succeeded in catching four fishes, weighing perhaps fifteen pounds altogether. "That'll be enough for us, unless you are very hungry," said Robert. "Now, suppose we land and cook them." "Ay, ay, lad!" Of course, their cooking arrangements were very primitive. In the first place, they were compelled to make a fire by the method in use among the savages, of rubbing two sticks smartly together, and catching the flame in a little prepared tinder. The fish were baked over the fire thus kindled. Though the outside was smoked, the inside was sweet and palatable, and neither was disposed to be fastidious. The preparation of the meal took considerable time, but they had abundance of that, and occupation prevented their brooding over their solitary situation. "I wish I had 'Robinson Crusoe' here," said Robert--"we might get some hints from his adventures. I didn't imagine, when I used to read them, that I should ever be in a similar position." "I've heard about him," said Bates; "but I never was much of a reader, and I never read his yarn. You might maybe tell me something of it." "I will tell you all I can remember, but that isn't very much," said Robert. He rehearsed to the attentive sailor such portions as he could call to mind of the wonderful story which for centuries to come is destined to enchain the attention of adventurous boys. "That's a pretty good yarn," said Bates, approvingly. "Did he ever get off the island?" "Yes, he got off, and became quite rich before he died." "Maybe it'll be so with us, lad." "I hope so. I don't know what I should do if I were alone as he was. It's selfish in me, Bates, to be glad that you are shut up here with me, but I cannot help it." "You needn't try, lad. It would be mighty dull being alone here, 'specially if you was tied to a tree." "But suppose we should never get off!" "We won't suppose that, lad. We are sure to get off some time." This confident assurance always cheered up Robert, and for the time inspired him with equal confidence. But when day after day passed away and the promised ship did not come in sight, he used to ponder thoughtfully over his situation, and the possibility that he might have to spend years at least on this lonely island. What in the meantime would become of his mother? She might die, and if he ever returned it would be to realize the loss he had sustained. The island, pleasant as it was, began to lose its charm. If his sailor companion ever shared his feelings, he never manifested them, unwilling to let the boy see that he was becoming discouraged. At length--about six weeks after their arrival upon the island--they were returning from an excursion to the other side of the island, when, on arriving in sight of the shore, an unexpected sight greeted their eyes. A pole had been planted in the sand, and from it waved the familiar flag, dear to the heart of every American--the star-spangled banner. They no sooner caught sight of it, than, in joyful excitement, they ran to the shore with all the speed they could muster. CHAPTER XXXII. A SUCCESSFUL MISSION. There was no one in sight, but it was evident that a party from an American ship had visited the island. Had they departed? That was a momentous question. Instinctively the eyes of both sought the sea. They saw an American ship riding at anchor a mile or more from shore. "Give me your handkerchief, Robert," said Bates; "I'll signal them." "It isn't very clean," said our hero. "It'll do. See, they are looking at us." "Your eyes must be good." "I'm used to looking out to sea, lad." He waved the handkerchief aloft, and felt sure that he had attracted the attention of those on board. But there was no motion to put off a boat. "Do they see it?" asked Robert, eagerly. "I think so." "Do you think they will come for us? If not, we can put off in our boat." "I think the party that planted that flagstaff hasn't got back. It is exploring the island, and will be back soon." "Of course it is," said Robert, suddenly. "Don't you see their boat?" "Ay, ay, lad; it's all right. All we've got to do is to stay here till they come." They had not long to wait. A party of sailors, headed by an officer, came out of the woods, and headed for the shore. They stopped short in surprise at the sight of Robert and Bates. "Who are you?" asked the leader, approaching. Bates touched his hat, for he judged this was the captain of the vessel he had seen. "I am a sailor from the ship _Argonaut_, bound from New York to Calcutta, and this young gentleman is Robert Rushton, passenger aboard the same ship." "Where is your ship?" "I don't know, captain." "How came you here?" "We were left here. The vessel went without us." "How long have you been here?" "Six weeks." "There is something about this which I do not understand. Are you here of your own accord?" "We are anxious to get away, captain," said Robert. "Will you take us?" "To be sure I will. There's room enough on my ship for both of you. But I can't understand how you were left here." "It's a long yarn, captain," said Bates. "If you haven't time to hear it now, I will tell you aboard ship." "You look like a good seaman," said the captain, addressing Bates. "I'm short-handed just now. If you will engage with me, I will enroll you among my crew." "That I'll do," said Bates, with satisfaction. "I wasn't made for a passenger." "My ship is the _Superior_, bound from Boston to Calcutta; so your destination will be the same. My name is Smith. Do you know the name of this island?" "I never heard of it before." "I have taken possession of it in the name of the United States, supposing myself the first discoverer." "That's all right. To my mind, the Star-Spangled Banner is the best that can wave over it." "We might offer the captain our boat," suggested Robert. The offer was made and accepted; and, while the captain and his party returned in one boat, Robert and Bates rowed to the ship in their own, and were soon on the deck of the _Superior_ to their unbounded satisfaction. "This is something like," said Bates. "The island is well enough, but there's nothing like the deck of a good ship." "I don't think I wholly agree with you," said Robert, smiling; "but just at present I do. I am glad enough to be here. We may meet Captain Haley at Calcutta," he added, after a pause. "Likely he'll have got away before we get there." "I hope not. I should like to meet him face to face, and charge him with his treachery. I don't think he'll be over glad to see me." "That's so, lad. He don't expect ever to set eyes on you again." Robert soon felt at home on the new vessel. Captain Smith he found to be a very different man from Captain Haley. When he heard the story told him by our hero, he said: "I like your pluck, Robert. You've had contrary winds so far, but you've borne up against them. The wind's changed now, and you are likely to have a prosperous voyage. This Captain Haley is a disgrace to the service. He'll be overhauled some time." "When I get back to New York I shall tell Mr. Morgan how he treated me." "That will put a spoke in his wheel." "There's one thing I want to speak to you about, Captain Smith. How much will my passage be?" "Nothing at all." "But I have some money with me. I am willing to pay." "Keep your money, my lad. You will need it all before you get through. I was once a poor boy myself, obliged to struggle for my living. I haven't forgotten that time, and it makes me willing to lend a helping hand to others in the same position." "You are very kind, Captain Smith," said Robert, gratefully. "I ought to be. How long do you want to stay in Calcutta?" "Only long enough to look about for my father." "Then you can return to New York in my ship. It shall cost you nothing." This offer was gratefully accepted--the more so that our hero had begun to realize that two hundred dollars was a small sum to carry on a journey of such length. At last they reached Calcutta. Robert surveyed with much interest the great city of India, so different in its external appearance from New York, the only great city besides that he knew anything about. "Well, Robert," said Captain Smith, on their arrival, "what are your plans? Will you make your home on board the ship, or board in the city, during our stay in port?" "I think," said Robert, "I should prefer to live in the city, if you would recommend me to a good boarding place." "That I can do. I am in the habit of boarding at a quiet house kept by a widow. Her terms are reasonable, and you can do no better than go there with me." "Thank you, Captain Smith. I shall be glad to follow your advice." So it happened that Captain Smith and Robert engaged board at the house of Mrs. Start, where, it will be remembered, that Captain Rushton was also a boarder, passing still under the name of Smith. Physically he had considerably improved, but mentally he was not yet recovered. His mind had received a shock, which, as it proved, a shock equally great was needed to bring it back to its proper balance. "By the way," said Mrs. Start to Captain Smith, "we have another gentleman of your name here." "Indeed?" "You will see him at dinner. Poor gentleman, his mind is affected, and we only gave him this name because we didn't know his real name." Robert little dreamed who it was of whom Mrs. Start was speaking, nor did he look forward with any particular curiosity to seeing the other Mr. Smith. When dinner was announced, Robert and the captain were early in their seats, and were introduced to the other boarders as they came in. Finally Captain Rushton entered, and moved forward to a seat beside the landlady. Robert chanced to look up as he entered, and his heart made a mighty bound when in the new Mr. Smith he recognized his father. "Father!" he exclaimed, eagerly, springing from his seat, and overturning his chair in his haste. Captain Rushton looked at him for a moment in bewilderment. Then all at once the mists that had obscured his faculties were dispelled, and he cried, "Robert! my dear son, how came you here?" "I came in search of you, father. Thank Heaven I have found you alive and well." "I think I have been in a dream, Robert. They call me Smith. That surely is not my name." "Rushton, father! You have not forgotten?" "Yes, that is it. Often it has been on the tip of my tongue, and then it slipped away from me. But, tell me, how came you here?" "I am indebted to the kindness of this gentleman--Captain Smith, father--who rescued me from great peril." This scene, of course, excited great astonishment among the boarders, and the worthy landlady who had been uniformly kind to Captain Rushton, was rejoiced at his sudden recovery. Feeling that mutual explanations in public would be unpleasant, she proposed to send dinner for both to Captain Rushton's room, and this offer was gladly accepted. "And how did you leave your mother, Robert?" asked the captain. "She was well, father, but mourning for your loss." "I wish I could fly to her." "You shall go back with me in Captain Smith's vessel. I am sure he will take us as passengers." "So we will. You are sure your mother is well provided for? But Mr. Davis has, no doubt, supplied her with money?" "Not a cent, father." "Not a cent! I deposited five thousand dollars with him for her benefit, just before sailing!" "So you wrote in the letter which you sent in the bottle." "Was that letter received?" "Yes; it was that which led me to come in search of you." "And did you go to Mr. Davis?" "He denied the deposit, and demanded to see the receipt." "The villain! He thought I was at the bottom of the sea, and the receipt with me. He shall find his mistake!" "Then you have the receipt still, father?" "To be sure I have," and Captain Rushton drew it from the pocket where it had laid concealed for two years and more. Robert regarded it with satisfaction. "He won't dare to deny it after this. I wish we were going back at once." "Now, Robert, tell me all that has happened in my absence, and how you raised money enough to come out here." So father and son exchanged narrations. Captain Rushton was astonished to find that the same man, Ben Haley, who had been the cause of his misfortunes, had also come so near compassing the destruction of his son. "Thanks to a kind Providence," he said, "his wicked machinations have failed, and we are alive to defeat his evil schemes." CHAPTER XXXIII. DEFEATED. In due time the _Superior_ cleared for New York, and among the passengers were Robert and his father. Since the meeting with his son Captain Rushton's mental malady had completely disappeared, and his mental recovery affected his physical health favorably. His step became firm and elastic, his eye was bright, and Robert thought he had never looked better. Leaving the two to pursue their voyage home, we return to Captain Haley. After leaving Robert to his fate, he kept on his way, rejoicing with a wicked satisfaction that he had got rid of an enemy who had it in his power to do him harm, for what Robert might suffer in his island prison, he cared little. He took it for granted that he would never get away, but would pass his life, be it longer or shorter, in dreary exile. Though the crew did not know all, they knew that the captain had heartlessly left Robert to his fate, and all were animated by a common feeling of dislike to their commander, who never under any circumstances would have been popular. But there was no one among them bold enough to come forward and charge Haley with his crime, even when they reached Calcutta. The captain moved among them, and his orders were obeyed, but not with alacrity. This satisfied him, for he cared nothing for the attachment of those under his command. One day in Calcutta he had a surprise. He met Captain Rushton one day when out walking. It seemed like one risen from the dead, for he supposed him lying at the bottom of the sea. Could his eyes deceive him, or was this really the man whom he had so grossly injured? Captain Rushton did not see Haley, for he was partly turned away from him, and was busily conversing with a gentleman of his acquaintance. Haley drew near, and heard Captain Rushton addressed as Mr. Smith. He at once decided that, in spite of the wonderful resemblance, it was not the man he supposed, and breathed more freely in consequence. But he could not help looking back to wonder at the surprising likeness. "They are as near alike as if they were brothers," he said to himself. He did not again catch sight of Captain Rushton while in Calcutta. Before Robert arrived, Captain Haley had sailed for home. But he met with storms, and his vessel received injuries that delayed her, so that his ship only reached New York on the same day with the _Superior_, bearing as passengers Robert and his father. Our hero lost no time in calling upon his friend, Mr. Morgan, and actually reached the office an hour before Haley, the _Superior_ having reached her pier a little in advance of the other vessel. When Robert walked into the office, Mr. Morgan, who was at his desk, looked up, and recognized him at once. "Welcome back, my young friend," he said, cordially, rising to meet him. "I am glad to see you, but I didn't expect you quite so soon. How did you happen to come in advance of the captain?" "Then you have not heard what happened at sea?" said Robert. "Yes," said the merchant. "I heard, much to my regret, of Captain Evans' death. He was a worthy man, and I am truly sorry to lose him. What do you think of his successor, Captain Haley? He has never before sailed for me." "After I have told my story, you can judge of him for yourself. I did not return on your vessel, Mr. Morgan, but on the _Superior_, Captain Smith." "How is that?" asked the merchant, surprised. "Because Captain Haley left me on an island in the Southern Ocean, bound to a tree, and probably supposes that I am dead." "Your story seems incredible, Robert. Give me a full account of all that led to this action on the part of the captain." My readers shall not be wearied with a repetition of details with which they are already familiar. Robert related what had happened to him in a straightforward manner, and Mr. Morgan never thought of doubting his statements. "This Haley must be a villain," he said. "You are, indeed, fortunate in having escaped from the snare he laid for you." "I have been fortunate in another way also," said Robert. "I have succeeded in the object of my voyage." "You have not found your father?" "I found him in Calcutta, and I have brought him home with me." "You must have been born under a lucky star, Robert," said the merchant. "Were your father's adventures as remarkable as yours?" "It was the same man who nearly succeeded in accomplishing the ruin of both--Captain Haley was my father's mate, and was he who, in revenge for some fancied slight, set fire to the vessel in mid-ocean, and then escaped." Scarcely had this revelation been made, when a clerk entered, and approaching Mr. Morgan, said, "Captain Haley would like to see you." Mr. Morgan glanced at Robert significantly. "I wish to know what explanation Mr. Haley has to give of your disappearance. There is a closet. Go in, and close the door partially, so that you may hear what passes without yourself being seen." Robert was hardly established in his place of concealment when Haley entered the office. "Good-morning, Mr. Morgan," he said, deferentially, for he wished to keep in his employer's good graces. "Good-morning, sir," said the merchant, formally. "Captain Haley, I believe?" "Yes, sir I succeeded to the command of the _Argonaut_ upon the lamented death of my friend, Captain Evans. His death happened on our passage out. I proceeded at once to Calcutta, and after disposing of the cargo sailed for home." "Your voyage has been a long one." "Yes, we have had stress of weather, which has delayed us materially. I regret this, but did the best I could under the circumstances. I hope to have discharged my duties in a manner satisfactory to you." "I cannot, of course, blame you for delay, since the weather was quite beyond your control," said the merchant, but his tone was marked by coldness, for which Haley found it difficult to account. He was anxious to remain in command of the _Argonaut_, but the want of cordiality evinced by his employer made him doubtful of his success. He was not timid, however, and resolved to broach the subject. "I hope, Mr. Morgan," he said, "that you have sufficient confidence in me to intrust me I with the command of the _Argonaut_ on her next voyage?" "He certainly is not lacking in audacity," thought Mr. Morgan. "We will speak of that matter hereafter," he said. "Did my young friend, Robert Rushton, return with you?" Now was the critical moment. In spite of his audacity, Haley felt embarrassed. "No, sir," he replied. "Indeed! I expected that you would bring him back." "May I ask if the boy is a relative of yours?" "No, he is not." "So much the better." "Why do you say that? I am particularly interested in him." "Then, sir, my task becomes more painful and embarrassing." "You speak in enigmas, Captain Haley." "I hesitate to speak plainly. I know you will be pained by what I have to tell you." "Don't consider my feelings, Captain Haley, but say what you have to say." "Then I regret to say that the boy, Robert Rushton, is unworthy of your friendship." "This is a grievous charge. Of course, I expect you to substantiate it." "I will do so. Shortly after the death of Captain Evans and my accession to the command I found that this boy was trying to undermine my influence with the men, from what motives I cannot guess. I remonstrated with him mildly but firmly, but only received insolence in return. Nevertheless I continued to treat him well on account of the interest you felt in him. So things went on till we reached Calcutta. He left me at that time, and to my surprise did not return to the ship. I was able to account for his disappearance, however, when I missed one hundred and fifty dollars, of which I have not the slightest doubt that he robbed me. I should have taken measures to have him arrested, but since you felt an interest in him I preferred to suffer the loss in silence. I fear, Mr. Morgan, that you have been greatly deceived in him." "I suspect that I have been deceived," said Mr. Morgan, gravely. "It is only fair, however, Captain Haley, to hear both sides, and I will therefore summon the boy himself to answer your charge. Robert!" At the summons, to Captain Haley's equal surprise and dismay, Robert stepped from the closet in which he had been concealed. "What have you to say, Robert?" asked the merchant. "Captain Haley knows very well the falsehood of what he says," said our hero, calmly. "It was not at Calcutta I left the _Argonaut_, nor was it of my own accord. Captain Haley, with his own hands, tied me to a tree on a small island in the Southern Ocean, and there left me, as he supposed, to a solitary death. But Heaven did not forsake me, and sent first a brave sailor and afterward a ship to my assistance. The charge that I stole money from him I shall not answer, for I know Mr. Morgan will not believe it." Captain Haley was not a fool, and he knew that it would be useless to press the charge further. He rose from his seat; his face was dark with anger and smarting under a sense of defeat. "You have not done with me yet," he said to Robert, and without another word left the office. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CUP AND THE LIP. Affairs in Millville had gone on much as usual. Mrs. Rushton had not yet exhausted the supply of money left by Robert in the hands of his friend the lawyer. Her expenses were small, and were eked out by her earnings; for she continued to braid straw, and was able in this way to earn two dollars a week. Indeed, she made it a point to be as economical as possible, for she thought it likely Robert would spend all his money, and return penniless. She had received no letter from him since the one announcing his being about to sail for Calcutta, and this made her naturally anxious. But Mr. Paine assured her that letters were likely to be irregular, and there was no ground for alarm. So she waited with what patience she could till Robert should return, hoping that by some strange chance he might succeed in his quest, and bring his father back with him. Meanwhile, fortune had improved with Mr. Davis, the superintendent of the factory. He had lost largely by speculation, but had blundered at last into the purchase of a stock in which some interested parties had effected a corner. It went up rapidly, and on the morning when we introduce him again to the reader he was in high good spirits, having just received intelligence from his broker that he had cleared seven thousand dollars by selling at the top of the market. "Another cup of coffee, Mrs. Davis," he said, passing his cup across the table. Seeing that his father appeared in good humor, Halbert ventured to prefer a request, which, however, he had little hope of having granted. "Have you seen Will Paine's pony?" he said, paving the way for the request. "Yes," said his father; "I saw him on it yesterday." "It's a regular beauty--I wish I had one." "How much did it cost?" "Two hundred dollars." "That is rather a high price." "But it will increase in value every year. I wish you would buy me one, father." "I think I will," said the superintendent, helping himself to a fresh slice of toast. "Do you mean it?" asked Halbert, in the utmost astonishment. "Certainly I do. I can afford you a pony as well as Mr. Paine can afford to buy William one." "Thank you!" said Halbert, his selfish nature more nearly affected by gratitude than ever before. "You are very kind. When will you see about it?" "I am busy. You may go yourself and ask Mr. Paine where he got William's pony, and if he knows of any other equally good." "That I will," said Halbert, leaving the table in haste. "Halbert, you have eaten scarcely anything," said his mother. "I am not hungry," said the excited boy, seizing his hat, and dashing off in the direction of Mr. Paine's office. "By the way, Mrs. Davis," said the husband, "I think you mentioned last week that the parlor needed a new carpet." "So it does. The old one is looking very shabby." "How much will a new one cost?" "I can get a nice Brussels for a hundred dollars." "Well, you may order one." It was the wife's turn to be astonished, for on broaching the subject the week previous, her husband had given her a lecture on extravagance, and absolutely refused to consider her request. This was before the tidings of his good fortune. She was not slow to accept the present concession, and assumed an unusually affectionate manner, in the excess of her delight. Meanwhile, Halbert, in opening the front door, came in collision with a boy taller and stouter than himself, brown and sunburned. But, changed as he was, he was not slow in recognizing his old enemy, Robert Rushton. "What, are you back again?" he said, ungraciously. "So it appears. Is your father at home?" "Yes; but he is at breakfast. I don't think you can see him." "I'll make the attempt, at any rate," said Robert. "Where have you been all this time?" asked Halbert, more from curiosity than interest. "I went to Calcutta." "Common sailor, I suppose," said Halbert, contemptuously. "No, I was a passenger." "Where did you get your money to pay the passage?" "I'm sorry that I can't stop to gratify your curiosity just at present, but I have important business with your father." "You're getting mighty important," sneered Halbert. "Am I?" "I wouldn't advise you to put on so many airs, just because you've been to Calcutta." "I never thought of putting on any. I see you haven't changed much since I went away. You have the same agreeable, gentlemanly manners." "Do you mean to say that I am not a gentleman?" blustered Halbert. "Not at all. You may be one, but you don't show it." "I have a great mind to put you out of the yard." Robert glanced at Halbert's figure, slight compared with his own, and laughed. "I think you would find it a difficult undertaking," he said. Halbert privately came to the same conclusion, and decided to war only with words. "I have got something better to do than to stand here listening to your impudence. I won't soil my fingers by touching you." "That's a sensible conclusion. Good-morning." Halbert did not deign to respond, but walked off, holding his nose very high in the air. Then, as he thought of the pony, he quickened his pace, and bent his steps to Mr. Paine's office. "A young man to see you, Mr. Davis," said Bridget, entering the breakfast-room. "Who is it?" "I think it's young Robert Rushton, but he's much grown entirely." "That boy home again!" exclaimed the superintendent, in displeased surprise. "Well, you may ask him into the next room." "Good-morning, Mr. Davis," said Robert, as the superintendent entered. "Good-morning. When did you get home?" was the cold reply. "Last evening." "Where have you been?" "To Calcutta." "On a fool's errand." "I felt it my duty to search for my father." "I could have told you beforehand you would not succeed. Did you go as a sailor?" "No." "Where did you raise money to pay your expenses?" "I found friends who helped me." "It is a poor policy for a boy to live on charity." "I never intend to do it," said Robert, firmly. "But I would rather do it than live on money that did not belong to me." "What do you mean by that, sir?" said the superintendent, suspiciously. "It was a general remark," said Robert. "May I ask what is your motive in calling upon me?" asked Mr. Davis. "I suppose you have some object." "I have, and I think you can guess it." "I am not good at guessing," said Davis, haughtily. "Then I will not put you to that trouble. You remember, before I sailed for Calcutta, I called here and asked you to restore the sum of five thousand dollars deposited with you by my father?" "I remember it, and at the time I stigmatized the claim as a fraudulent one. No such sum was ever deposited with me by your father." "How can you say that, when my father expressly stated it in the letter, written by him, from the boat in which he was drifting about on the ocean?" "I have no proof that the letter was genuine, and even if it were, I deny the claim. I am not responsible for money I never received." "I understand you then refuse to pay the money?" "You would have understood it long ago, if you had not been uncommonly thick-headed," sneered the superintendent. "Let this be the end of it. When you present my note of acknowledgment for the amount, I will pay it and not before." "That is all I ask," said Robert. "What?" demanded the superintendent. "I mean that this assurance is all I want. The note shall be presented to you in the course of the day." "What do you mean?" asked Davis, startled. "I mean this, Mr. Davis: that I found my father in Calcutta. He came home with me, and, far from having perished at sea, is now alive and well. He has with him your note for five thousand dollars, and will present it in person." "You are deceiving me!" exclaimed Davis, in consternation. "You will soon learn whether I am deceiving you or not," said Robert. "I will now bid you good-morning. My father will call upon you in the course of the day." He rose to go, leaving the superintendent thunderstruck at the intelligence of Captain Rushton's return. The five thousand dollars, with arrears of interest, would take the greater part of the money whose sudden acquisition had so elated him. While he was considering the situation, his wife entered. "I think, Mr. Davis," she said, "I will go to New York to-day to buy carpeting, if you can spare the money." "Neither now nor at any other time," he roared, savagely; "the old carpet must do." "Why, then, did you tell me fifteen minutes since that I might buy one? What do you mean by such trifling, Mr. Davis?" said his wife, her eyes flashing. "I mean what I say. I've changed my mind. I can't afford to buy a new carpet." There was a stormy scene between man and wife, which may be passed over in silence. It ended with a fit of hysterics on the part of Mrs. Davis, while her husband put on his hat and walked gloomily over to the factory. Here he soon received a call from Halbert, who informed him, with great elation, that Mr. Paine knew of a desirable pony which could be had on the same terms as his son's. "I've changed my mind," said his father. "A pony will cost too much money." All Halbert's entreaties were unavailing, and he finally left his father's presence in a very unfilial frame of mind. CHAPTER XXXV. CONCLUSION. The arrival of Captain Rushton, confidently supposed to be dead, produced a great sensation in Millville, and many were the congratulatory visits received at the little cottage. Mrs. Rushton was doubly happy at the unexpected return of her husband and son, and felt for the first time in her life perfectly happy. She cared little for poverty or riches, as long as she had regained her chief treasures. When Captain Rushton called upon the superintendent, the latter received him with embarrassment, knowing that the captain was aware of his intended dishonesty. He tried to evade immediate payment, but on this point his creditor was peremptory. He had no further confidence in Mr. Davis, and felt that the sooner he got his money back into his hands the better. It was fortunate for him that the superintendent had been at last successful in speculation, or restitution would have been impossible. As is was, he received his money in full, nearly six thousand dollars, which he at once invested in bank stock of reliable city banks, yielding a good annual income. Only the day after the payment of this sum, a committee of investigation appointed by the directors, whose suspicions had been excited, visited the factory, and subjected the superintendent's books to a thorough scrutiny. The result showed that Mr. Davis, in whom hitherto perfect confidence had been felt, had for years pursued a system of embezzlement, which he had covered up by false entries in his books, and had appropriated to his own use from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars belonging to the corporation. While this investigation was pending, the superintendent disappeared, leaving his wife and son unprovided for. His estate was seized in part satisfaction of the amounts he had appropriated, and Halbert's pride was brought low. The wealth and position upon which he had based his aristocratic pretensions vanished, and in bitter mortification he found himself reduced to poverty. He could no longer flaunt his cane and promenade the streets in kid gloves, but was glad to accept a position in the factory store, where he was compelled to dress according to his work. In fact, he had exchanged positions with Robert, who was now, owing to a circumstance which will at once be mentioned, possessed of a considerable inheritance. The old farmer, Paul Nichols, whom Robert tried to defend from his unprincipled nephew, Ben Haley, died suddenly of heart disease. Speculation was rife as to who would inherit the estate which he left behind him. He had no near relation except Ben Haley, and so great was the dislike he entertained toward him that no one anticipated that the estate would go to him, unless through Paul's dying intestate. But shortly after Haley's visit, his uncle made a will, which he deposited in the hands of Lawyer Paine. On the day after the funeral, the latter met Captain Rushton and Robert, and said: "Will you come to my office this afternoon at three o'clock?" "Certainly," said the captain. "I suppose you don't want me, Mr. Paine?" said Robert. "I do want you, particularly," said the lawyer. Our hero wondered a little why his presence was required, but dismissed the matter from his mind, until three o'clock found him in the lawyer's office. "Gentlemen," said the lawyer, "I am about to read the last will and testament of our neighbor, Paul Nichols, recently deceased." This preamble created surprise, for this was the first intimation that such a will was in existence. The document was brief, and the substance of it was contained in the following paragraph: "Having no near relatives, except Benjamin Haley, for whom I have neither regard nor affection, and who, moreover, has recently stolen a considerable sum of money from me, I leave all of which I may die possessed, whether in land or money, to my brave young friend, Robert Rushton, who courageously defended me from my said nephew, at his own bodily risk, and I hope he may live long to enjoy the property I bequeath him." No one was more surprised than Robert at the unexpected inheritance. He could hardly realize that he was now possessed of a considerable property in his own right. It may be said here that, including the value of the farm, and the gold concealed, his inheritance amounted to quite ten thousand dollars. Paul had considerately supplied the lawyer with a list of the hiding places where he had secreted his money on the strictest injunctions of secrecy, and this made the task of finding it quite easy. Congratulations poured in upon our hero, who received them with modest satisfaction. "It is a good thing to have a rich son," said Captain Rushton, humorously. "Robert, I hope you won't look down upon me on account of my comparative poverty." "Father," said Robert, "I wish you would take this money--I don't want it." "I shall do nothing of the kind, Robert. It is fairly and deservedly yours, though I confess you may attribute it partly to good luck, for virtue is not always so well rewarded in this world. I will take care of it for you, and if you choose to pay your own expenses out of your income, I shall allow you to do so, since you are now rich and prosperous." "You must take all the income, father. Then it will not be necessary for you to go to sea again." "I have already made up my mind to stay on land hereafter," said Captain Rushton. "My cruise in an open boat without provisions has cured me of my love for the sea. With the little money I have saved, and the help of a rich son, I think I can afford to stay on shore." The cottage was enlarged by the erection of another story, as well as by the addition of a wing and the throwing out of two bay windows, and was otherwise refitted and so metamorphosed by fresh paint and new furniture, that it became one of the most attractive houses in Millville. Captain Rushton, who knew something of agriculture, decided to carry on Robert's farm himself, and found the employment both pleasant and profitable. "My only trouble," he used to say, jocosely, "is that I have a very exacting landlord. Unless the rent were punctually paid, he would be sure to resort to legal means to recover it." When Ben Haley heard that his uncle's estate had been bequeathed to the boy whom he had persecuted, and whom for that reason he hated, his rage and disappointment were unbounded. If he had not been within two hours of sailing in command of a ship bound to South America, he would at once have gone down to Millville, and in his fury he might have done serious injury to the boy who had superseded him. But he could not delay the day of sailing, and so, much against his will, he was forced to forego his vengeance until his return. But this was destined to be his last voyage. While at Rio Janeiro he became engaged in a fracas with the keeper of a low grogshop, when the latter, who was a desperate ruffian, snatched a knife from his girdle, and drove it into the heart of the unhappy captain, who fell back on the floor and expired without a groan. Thus terminated a misguided and ill-spent life. I should have been glad to report Ben Haley's reformation instead of his death, but for the sake of Robert, whom he hated so intensely, I am relieved that thin source of peril is closed. Robert, being now in easy circumstances, decided to pursue his studies for two years longer, and accordingly placed himself in a school of high reputation, where he made rapid improvement. He then entered upon a business life under the auspices of his friend, Mr. Morgan, and promises in time to become a prominent and wealthy merchant. He passes every Sunday at home in the little cottage occupied by his father, who, however, has ceased to be a farmer, having been promoted to the post of superintendent of the factory, formerly occupied by Mr. Davis. For the first twelve months the post was filled by a new man, who proved to be incompetent, and then was offered to Captain Rushton, whose excellent executive talents were well known. He soon made himself familiar with his duties, and the post is likely to be his as long as he cares to hold it. Hester Paine, as a young lady, fulfills the promise of her girlhood. The mutual attachment which existed between her and Robert, when boy and girl, still continues, and there is some ground for the report which comes from Millville--that they are engaged. The alliance will be in the highest degree pleasing to both families, for if Hester is fair and attractive, Robert is energetic and of excellent principles, and possessed of precisely those qualities which, with fair good fortune will, under the favor of Providence, insure his success in life. THE END. 55950 ---- A MADCAP CRUISE BY ORIC BATES [Illustration: Logo] _Boston and New York_ HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1905 COPYRIGHT 1905 BY ORIC BATES ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published March 1905_ TO MY FATHER [Illustration: Decoration] Contents _Chapter_ _Page_ I. The Cardinal Points 1 II. The Fog comes in 19 III. It blows Southeast 36 IV. It blows Northwest 50 V. Land Ho! 64 VI. Dinner Ashore 81 VII. Luncheon Aboard 104 VIII. A Change of Tactics 129 IX. The Doldrums 147 X. Mr. Wrenmarsh, the Extraordinary 163 XI. A Lone-Hand Game 199 XII. At Vergil's Tomb 228 XIII. A Bid for the Odd Trick 240 XIV. Clearing the Decks 250 XV. In the Cattewater 263 XVI. Storm! 288 XVII. Facing the Music 310 XVIII. Epilude 327 [Illustration: Decoration] A MADCAP CRUISE Chapter One THE CARDINAL POINTS "It strikes me," said Jerrold Taberman, "that we are booked for everlasting fame, win or lose. We'll either sail down the ages as a brace of heroes, or as the most egregious pair of donkeys that ever botched a job." "Well, Jerry," returned his companion, smiling, "you've as much to do with making the thing a success as I have. I hope you realize the responsibility." The young men chuckled in concert at the thought of all that was involved in this remark, although they looked, not at each other, but out over the sea. It was early twilight in the last week of the month of May. The two speakers were standing on a little jetty that ran out into a small and all but landlocked harbor of an island in East Penobscot Bay. Both were evidently in the earlier twenties, both were dressed in such canvas working-suits as are worn by the sailors in our navy, and both were, at half a glance, gentlemen. The second speaker, John Castleport, was tall and dark. His face, with its prominent features and keen brown eyes, was rather striking than handsome. He stood looking southward to where, in the fading light, the Atlantic shouldered away to the west as if with a hidden purpose of its own. In his hand he held a pair of powerful binoculars, and despite his smile he had the air of being pretty seriously in earnest. Taberman contrasted curiously with his host. He was short and thickset, with blue eyes and fair hair which showed a tendency to curl. As he stood with shoulders turned to the wind, the square collar of his canvas jumper was blown against his round pate, and made a background for his tanned face. He held a briar drop-pipe between his teeth, and his hands were thrust deep into his trousers pockets. Working his pipe into the corner of his mouth, he spoke again. "Hope this breeze won't trouble the old gentleman," he remarked, casting a glance at the billowing double-headers that were driving by aloft. The wind shrilled by the watchers on the jetty, clear, strong, and salt. "Guess not," replied Castleport; "anything short of a hurricane's a sailing-wind for him. He's a mettlesome old chap." "That's right enough. Can't have him spoiling our game by being late, you know. Let's go up; it's getting beastly chilly." They turned and walked along the pier. At the point where it met the shore stood a small boathouse. Thence the ground, covered with a stunted growth of spruce and fir, and the inevitable New England boulders, rose abruptly. Directly in the line of the jetty the shingled roof of a small house showed above the trees. To the westward, in the dimming afterglow of the sunset, the Camden Hills stood out luminous, purple, yet rimmed with a thread of golden fire. Away to the east, clad in soberer colors, rose Mt. Desert, a mass of shadowy greens and blues. The steepness of the path they were ascending soon cut off from the view of the young men these beauties and grandeurs, which, however, they were probably not in a mood to dwell upon; and a minute's walking brought them to the door of the house, a small affair with high-pitched roof and broad veranda. Its shingles were almost the color of the dark evergreens that encircled the clearing in which it stood; its windows reflected with a vacant and glassy stare the fast-fading light. Castleport opened the door for his guest, and followed him into the living-room. The darkness seemed the greater from its contrast with what light yet remained outside, and not until Taberman had put a match to the pile of old shingles and light driftwood in the wide fireplace could they see fairly. The crimson glow showed a room some twenty feet square, with windows on two sides,--the south and east. The joists and sheathing were of planed spruce, left unpainted. The big Mexican fireplace of brick occupied the northwestern corner; in the middle of the room stood conspicuously a round deal table, covered with a litter of pipes, tobacco, magazines, and nautical hardware; between the two eastern windows, below a box-like cabinet which was attached to the wall, was a smaller table with a square top, piled with books and charts. Beneath the southern windows was placed a heavy desk with a faded baize top, the cloth ink-stained and full of holes due to moths and carelessly handled cigars. Of the happy-go-lucky assortment of chairs which completed the furniture of the room, no large portion was in an entirely unbroken condition, but all evidently were meant for service and ease. The walls of the room were decorated with devices in scallop-shells and a few unframed water-colors of the impressionist type. A large chart of Penobscot Bay was tacked to the inside of the door, and a venerable flintlock musket hung below a battered quadrant over the chimneypiece. Everything was simple almost to rudeness, yet the place gave at once and most strongly the impression of comfort and good-fellowship. Castleport laid his binoculars on the desk, and, stepping to a door on his right, opened it and called out:-- "Oh, Gonzague?" "Sair?" promptly replied some one from beyond the short passage into which he looked. "Dinner when you're ready, Gonzague." "A' right, sair." Taberman had seated himself by the fire, and here Castleport joined him. Each filled and lighted a pipe, and together they stared at the flames roaring up the wide chimney. The smaller sticks already began to fall apart, pitching outward or dropping between the dogs, and for some moments the young men watched them in silence. At length, as Taberman flung a fresh stick into the flames, Castleport spoke, half to himself. "What a lesson it'll be to the old chap! My aunt! He'll grind his teeth to powder!" "Tooth-powder, eh?" queried the other with a grin. "But we must be sure we have the laugh on the right side. It isn't merely the getting away with the Merle that's the joke; it's the hanging on to her and bringing her back safe." "That's true enough," assented Castleport; "but with pluck and luck and an eye to the three L's, we ought to manage." "You'd better go over the whole plan for me, Jack; you haven't given me half the details, and I'd like to know the latest version. It's certainly important to have everything perfectly understood beforehand." "All right; I'll go over the whole business after dinner, old man. We will act the conspirators rehearsing their villainy; but let's wait for food. I hate discussions on an empty stomach." "Correct; here's Gonzague now." A tall, gray-haired man, with a much-bronzed face, came in and began to clear away the litter on the round table. He had a rugged, weather-beaten countenance, with prominent features and luminous black eyes. Beneath his big, hooked nose a large white mustache, stiff and curled like that of a walrus, half hid a firm, full-lipped mouth. A native of Provence,--soldier, sailor, cook, and deck-hand,--old Gonzague Mairecalde had led sixty-odd years of exciting and polyglot existence, the last three of which had been spent in Castleport's service. Dressed in blue flannel trousers and an immaculate white jacket, the old man moved noiselessly about, swiftly disposing of the things on the table. He seemed to have a place for everything, and the lightest tread and deftest hands imaginable. Having cleared away, he went out, and soon reappeared with linen and service. In a short time the table was ready for the bringing in of the food. "A' ready, sair?" asked Gonzague, tugging at his mustache with his bony fingers. "Two minutes," answered Jack. "Come on, Jerry; let's scrub up." In ten minutes they were seated before a dinner plain but hearty, well cooked and appetizingly served. They were apparently not at all troubled by any incongruity between their rough and not over-fresh sailor clothes and the snowy napery and the silver on which the fire threw dancing and wavering lights. On the walls opposite the fireplace mute, shadowy grotesques helped each other to huge supplies from dishes of vague outline and uncertain size, plied dark forks and spoons with ogre-like gusto, or with heads thrown back and crooked elbows drank like trolls from enormous tankards. After dinner the table was cleared, a jug of ale was placed upon it, with a plate of ship-biscuit and a supply of tobacco. It was the theory of Castleport that the climate of the Island was English enough to warrant this nightly attack upon the October, of which his uncle, who owned the Island, kept always a butt in the cellar. In truth, the fresh coolness of the air at night, the pleasant blaze of the fire, the agreeable scent of burning tobacco, made a tankard or two of ale seem hardly to need an excuse of any sort. With the table pulled forward so that its edge came between them, their pipes lit, their feet stretched out comfortably toward the hearth, the pair of friends smoked for a time in silence, until at last Jack, after refilling and relighting his pipe with great deliberation, broke into speech. "Before I go into the details of this job," he observed, "there's one thing I have to say. It's a waste of breath for me to talk until I know you're with me. I haven't done anything more than to ask you off-hand, old man; now I'd like you to say seriously whether you'll come on this cruise with me or not. I hate to be so horribly businesslike, Jerry, especially in the matter of a lark; but in--er--larking on this scale, things have got to be put on a definite basis,--be perfectly understood, as you said before dinner." Taberman gave his companion a sidelong glance, and began to smile. The smile grew into an audible chuckle; and this in its turn developed into a laugh increasing to a jovial roar. "You solemn old pirate," he cried, "what sort of a quitter do you take me for? I'll give you any kind of a promise you like, provided--_semper more equitis_, you know--Can't bind myself to cut throats, scuttle ships, fly the jolly roger, et cetera. What's your form of oath, eh? Do we drink each other's blood out of a skull, or what?" There was a boyish exuberance about Jerrold Taberman, a debonair abandon, which he never could outgrow. It accorded well with his youthful face and careless mien, which made him so marked a contrast to his friend. Castleport, although impulsive and disposed to jollity as only a hale and hearty young man of twenty-two can be, was, on the whole, of a temperament the reverse of boisterous. He responded frankly to Jerry's outburst. "Well, old man," said he, "there's nothing more needed than your word that you'll go, and stick it out to the end. I knew you would, Jerry. Confound it, give us your flipper!" In his enthusiasm he caught Taberman's hand and wrung it heartily, being evidently moved more by some inner consciousness of the weighty nature of the scheme he was about to outline than by anything that had actually been said between them. Jerry laughed, and returned the grip with interest. "And now," continued Castleport, "I'll let you have particulars galore. I'll tell you the beginning of it first: how the idea came to me. About three weeks ago I decided I'd go abroad,--I wrote you, you remember. Well, I went to Uncle Randolph, and asked him for a letter of credit. That's what comes of the pleasant arrangement by which all my property's in trust till I'm twenty-five! Beastly nuisance!" "Of course it is," assented his companion. "It's queer your father made such a will. However," he added, as if with the feeling that he was perhaps touching upon delicate ground, "that's neither here nor there. Heave ahead." "You know why I wanted to go," Jack went on, "and so"-- "Slow up a bit," interrupted the other, mischief shining in his eyes; "why should you want to go particularly?" "Confound you!" retorted Castleport. "You know perfectly well! Do you think it's any fun to be here when--when"-- "When Miss Marchfield's on the other side," finished Jerry, with the air of enjoying a huge joke. Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat, leaned forward to rap the ashes out of his pipe on the firedog, and then looked at his friend seriously. "I won't be roughed, Jerry," he said. "You know perfectly well I'm dead in earnest about her, and I'll thank you to let up." "All right, Jack; I beg your pardon; but I would like to ask one thing. It's not exactly my business, of course, but really it's something I'd like to know in connection with this scheme." "Fire away," Castleport said rather grimly. "Well, then, what I want to know is why the President's so set against your marrying Katrine Marchfield?" "It isn't time to talk of marrying," Jack returned somewhat stiffly. "She may have something to say to that." "Of course, old fellow; but you know what I mean. What's his objection to your trying?" "I don't see how that affects the cruise, exactly, but I don't mind telling you; only of course I shouldn't want it talked about. It's so unreasonable, and honestly I should hate to seem to be giving Uncle Randolph any sort of a black eye." "I shouldn't repeat it, Jack; but you needn't say anything if you'd rather not." "It's only that it looks as if Uncle Randolph was infernally obstinate and cranky, and he really isn't. He hadn't any reason to give me, that amounted to anything. He talked about Katrine's not having any money; but of course that's all poppy-cock. I've got a good bit myself when I come into it, and he's always told me I should have all his. Of course Katrine hasn't much, though she'll have something, I suppose, from her aunt." "Aunt?" "Why, Mrs. Fairhew. Katrine's traveling with her now. She's the only near relative Katrine has." "But if it isn't money"-- "No, it isn't that. The truth is--I heard it from Mrs. Fairhew once; I wasn't sure then, and I'm not now, whether she knew quite how much she was telling me, and meant it for a warning, or not. I'm half inclined to think she did." "But what was it?" inquired Jerry, as Jack paused to meditate, with his eyes fixed earnestly on the fire. "Oh, Uncle Randolph had some sort of a row with Katrine's father when they were young men. I fancy it was about a girl, for I know there was one somewhere along about that time. I've heard father speak of it, and say it altered Uncle Randolph's whole life. Anyway, there was some sort of a scrap, and Uncle Randolph never forgave it." "Humph!" was Taberman's comment. "It's rather crotchety of him to vent his spite on Miss Marchfield." "Of course it is," Castleport answered, "but he's not so bad as it looks. He's been awfully good to me all my life." A brief pause followed, in which both were probably reflecting upon the character of Randolph Drake, one of Boston's prominent men, president of one of the largest banks, and trustee of a dozen important corporations; a man whose chief aim in life was, apparently, making money, whose amusement was yachting. It was in connection with this sport that he had a few years before bought the island and put up the house in which his motives were now being discussed. The place served as a shooting-box or as a base of supplies, and was provided with a trig little harbor exactly adapted for the accommodation of the President's yacht, the Merle. "After all," Jack said at length, "Uncle Randolph really cares more for me than he does for anything else in the world." "And so when he suspected that you were going abroad to try to marry the daughter of his old enemy, he wouldn't supply the funds." "He can't seem to get it into his head that I am grown up, anyhow," grumbled Jack. "I've made up my mind now that I'll convince him that I am." "Why in the world didn't you borrow the money, Jack? That would have been easy enough." "Well, when I came of age I made Uncle Randolph a sort of a promise that I wouldn't borrow. He put it that it would be evading the intent of my father's will; and of course it would. Anyway, Uncle Randolph himself put a bigger idea into my head. It took me one day and two nights, mostly without sleep, to think it out, and then I got hold of you." "How did he suggest it?" "He was really sorry for me; I could see that. Only he had the air of feeling I was so young that any other cake would do as well as the one I wanted. The very day that he refused to let me go abroad, he suggested that I come down here with Gonzague and some friend or other. He thought that if I fooled round the bay until he came to pick me up on the Merle, I should get over my wish to go abroad. He said I was run down, needed change, and so on. He's coming June 5, and plans to go on down to the Provinces. Then he said that after he had had his cruise on the Merle I might perhaps like to have her a week or two myself. It was a mighty great concession, let me tell you. When I think of taking the boat, I'm half ashamed of myself, the old gentleman's so rum fond of her." "And that put the notion into your head?" "Yes, only not at the moment. I said to myself that if I was going to cruise in the Merle I'd like to go across in her; but it wasn't till that night, just as I was turning in, that the idea of getting her now and running off came to me. It fairly bowled me over!" "I should think it might!" laughed Taberman. "At first it seemed the easiest thing in the world. Then I began to think of objections, and as fast as I got one out of the way another popped up. I've worked at it like a prize puzzle. I've got my crew picked out, I've planned how to get possession of the yacht and to get rid of her old crew; and then--Hurrah for the Mediterranean!" "Oh, Jacko, you devil!" cried Taberman. "I wouldn't have believed you had it in you! Do you really think we can do it?" "Do it! Of course we'll do it. Didn't I tell you I'd got my crew already? Ten strappers, not counting Gonzague." "Did Gonzague kick?" "Gonzague? Did you ever consider, Tab, those eyes of his, with that nose and mouth?" "No," Jerry responded, "I've never given his features any especial critical overhauling." "_Saracen!_" Jack said, lowering his voice. "When you see that combination in a Spaniard or a Provençalese, it spells Moorish marauder every time. He doesn't know it, I fancy; but there's good old ripe Moorish pirate blood in him, and it came sizzling to the top the moment I broached the scheme. Besides, Gonzague would have his throat cut for me any time." "That's so, but he's as honest an old soul as there is above ground." "Of course I told him, and I told the crew, that it was a lark. You know I've knocked about Penobscot Bay ever since I got out of the nursery. Everybody knows me, and at Isle au Haut I've been so much that I'm almost like one of their own pals to the natives. I got hold of my men pretty easily. Of course they look on me as the same as the President's son; and they were willing enough to leave the fishing for better wages than they could earn anywhere else. They all like me, and so of course they all take advantage of me in the way of wages." "I confess I don't see where your economy comes in, Jacky," observed Taberman, giving a poke to the wasting fire. "I don't know much about expenses, but I should think it would cost as much to hire a crew as to go without one." Castleport grew grave and moved a little impatiently. "There's a question for a casuist," he said. "I'm taking these men off on the trust that Uncle Randolph will let me pay them when I get home. It's a deuced sight more like borrowing than I wish it were, though of course my allowance comes in; but I'm bound that he shall get it into his head that I'm no longer in leading-strings, and"-- Taberman looked at him affectionately and comprehendingly. "That'll be all right, old man," he said consolingly. "We'll get out of that somehow. I'd like to see the President's face when he finds he's left high and dry down here and the Merle has flitted across the Atlantic without him." "Oh, he won't be here. We'll capture the yacht at North Haven. I'll show you the whole scheme to-morrow on the chart. I've brought down more than a thousand for this coast and the Mediterranean! Now let's get to bed. It's only a week or so that we have left to sleep with a clear conscience." Taberman rose from his seat, then without warning suddenly slapped his knees with his hands and burst into a roar of laughter. "Oh, by George," he cried, "what a jolt it'll be for Uncle Randolph!" "That's the cream of the whole thing," responded Jack, joining in the laugh. "He'll be so surprised to find out that I'm grown up." [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Two THE FOG COMES IN The Casino at North Haven is a curious little box, known locally--possibly from its situation at the end of a fairly long wharf--as the "Fo'c'sle." It has but one room, paneled with imitation Japanese carvings, and having an attractive divan-like seat in a wide bay-window, where one may lounge and watch the vessels passing through the Thoroughfare. Outwardly the building is very plain, its two prominent features being the bay-window, which looks south, and a flight of outside stairs on the west which lead to a little nest of a balcony half hidden under the gable-end of the roof above this window. The balcony is so covered by the peak of the roof that its interior is not visible from the wharf, and a person sitting on the settle at the back of it can be seen only from a boat some distance out on the water. The Casino is little used, and although the caretaker unlocks the door each morning, the place is more generally deserted than not. The subscribers who come down to the wharf to start for rowing or sailing sometimes step in, wait for friends, or use the place as a storage for extra wraps; sometimes a riotous group of children holds brief but noisy possession; but after sunset the solitude is generally unbroken until ten o'clock, when the caretaker comes to lock up for the night. If the weather be bad, it is not unusual for the Casino to remain unvisited for the entire day. It affords a convenient shelter when it is needed, however, and its wharf, with a float on either side, makes a good landing-place; and it is, in a word, one of the numerous class of things which in this world are not constantly in demand, but which, when they are wanted at all, are wanted badly. Here, on the evening of the fourth of June, Jerrold Taberman, wrapped in a shapeless ulster,--for a thick fog was driving in from the southeast,--sat awaiting his friend. Half an hour earlier Jack had gone to get something to eat, and Jerry had agreed to meet him here. Taberman was somewhat tired to-night, and beginning to feel the strain of three crowded and exciting days in which he had had little time for anything but action and sleep. The young men had completed their arrangements at the Island, had left Gonzague in charge there, had notified the future crew to report to the Provençalese on the evening of the third, and to hold themselves in readiness to sail immediately on the arrival of the Merle. The pair had then taken the big market-boat, a whitehall used for bringing supplies from Isle au Haut, and with a couple of the most able of the Isle au Haut men, selected beforehand, had sailed over to an unfrequented cove in Vinal Haven, on the south side of the Thoroughfare. There they encamped in hiding. They had reached their place of concealment by night, and next afternoon had the satisfaction of seeing the Merle come in from the westward and drop anchor just inside the channel, off the "Fo'c'sle." "By Jove, isn't she a fine sight!" Castleport exclaimed enthusiastically; and Jerry assented no less warmly. The Merle ran in under full sail, with a quartering breeze. Her clean white hull, eighty-four feet on the water-line, her shining brasses, her broad spread of snowy canvas, the easy run of her long counter, combined to make a picture which, even personal interest aside, could not fail to stir such enthusiasts as Jack and Tab. On the evening of the arrival of the Merle two gentlemen and three ladies had gone on board, evidently to dine, as they did not leave until nearly ten o'clock. Castleport and Taberman, lying concealed among the bushes overgrowing a tiny promontory on Vinal Haven, had watched all this through their night-glasses. Jack, whose eyes were as keen as a hawk's, had even thought that he could distinguish who the visitors were. With guests on board there was evidently nothing that the conspirators could do but to watch, and when this was over they smoked a good-night pipe together over their campfire, and for the hundredth time fell to considering their chances of success. Behind them in the shadow lay the two sailors, wrapped in their blankets and sleeping the sleep which only the genuine mariner knows; Jack glanced at them as if he felt that somehow he was personally responsible for carrying through the enterprise for which they had been enlisted. "What the deuce shall we do if the President takes it into his head to get under weigh for the island to-morrow?" Jerry demanded in a subdued voice. "Oh, that's all right," Jack answered in the same key. "He won't. He's fond of North Haven; it's an old stamping-ground of his, and he'll never go on without having had at least one night's bridge here. That's part of the cruise. Besides, it's going to be thick, or I'm a duffer." Thick it certainly was next day. The brisk southeasterly breeze that blew through the Thoroughfare all day seemed to roll in white billows of fog far more rapidly than it could take them out at the other end. The strait acted as a sort of condenser, in which the mist became almost tangibly more solid, until at nightfall it was, as one of Castleport's men put it, "blacker 'n a tar-bucket." Under cover of the obscurity Jack had had the market-boat reloaded with such necessities as they had brought over for their camp, and rowed silently over to one of the Casino floats. Here he and Taberman got out, and then the men, by his orders, worked the boat into concealment between the spiles of the wharf, there to await further orders, utterly invisible in the fog. The two arch-conspirators mounted the wharf, and for some time kept watch to see if any one came ashore from the Merle; but as the time wore on to half-past seven they concluded that the President must be dining on board. Assured of this, Jack left Jerry to keep watch, and went up to the village bakery for food, dinner for himself and his friend having been forgotten in the midst of more important things. Tab, left alone in the wet darkness, had mounted to the balcony, and there sat in gloomy state, wondering if Jack were never coming back. He had no light by which to see his watch, but since he had heard seven bells from the Merle he felt sure that eight o'clock must be close at hand, when his attention was caught by the sound through the fog of the quick _thud-thud_, _thud-thud_ of oars against thole-pins. In an instant he was thoroughly alert, his senses primitively acute, and his growing sensation of vague depression utterly dispelled. He heard some one pull hastily to the "Fo'c'sle;" the muffled chugging of the oar-blades as the rower held water; the gentle slapping of the boat's wash against the float; and then the clatter of the oars on the thwarts. Then by the dim light of the lantern at the end of the pier he saw a man spring on to the east float and secure his boat; give a quick, nervous tug at the painter to be sure that it was fast, and disappear from the field of vision which was bounded by the edge of the sloping roof. He fancied he heard a murmur as if the newcomer spoke a word of encouragement to the sailors in damp concealment under the wharf, and then had hardly time to wonder where Jack had been in a boat, before Castleport had run lightly up the plank from the float to the pier, and thence up the steps to Tab's place of concealment. "Sit tight!" whispered Castleport breathlessly. "What's--" began Jerry. "Sh! We've the chance of a lifetime! I--I"--He gasped for breath, but caught it with a great gulp, and hurried on. "I've been aboard, Tab! Come in, man! Get back, get back!" He forced his friend into a seat in the farthest corner of the little balcony, caught his breath again, and began to chuckle. The sound of oars was again audible,--this time the steady, measured stroke of a heavy boat well pulled. "Here's Uncle Randolph," cried Jack with a sort of whispered shout. "Here's Uncle Randolph!" And seizing his friend by the shoulders, he shook him and banged his head noiselessly against the wall for sheer glee. "Stop, Jacko, stop it! Hold up, or by Jumbo I'll yell! Look there! Here they are." As the pair hurried cautiously to look out over the edge of the balcony, a large cutter, pulled by six men, came out of the fog into the dim illumination of the pier-light. Three gentlemen in light overcoats were visible in the stern-sheets, the one in the middle steering. A little removed from the President and the two men who were evidently his guests, sat one of the officers of the Merle. "Way enough," called the steersman in a sharp voice. "Oh, my aunt!" whispered Tab, giving Jack a nudge. "The President has very little idea that he's made all the way in the Merle he's likely to for one while." The cutter ran smoothly along beside the float. "In bows! Fend off, there!" At the word the oars were unshipped, and a couple of sailors caught the rope which edged the staging. The cutter came to a stop. A seaman leaped out and held the boat, the officer sprang to the float and presented an arm for the President and his guests as they stepped to land. "We'll be down at eleven," the President said to the officer. "If you want an hour or two ashore, there's some sort of a shindy going on opposite the post office, I believe--dance or something. Mind you're sharp on time for me, though." "All right, sir. Eleven o'clock it is, sir," returned the officer, touching his cap deferentially as the three gentlemen turned away. "Great Scott!" cried Jack into Tab's ear in an excited whisper. "Do you suppose the President's going to get rid of all those men for me himself? Was ever such luck!" The boat still lay at the landing. The men began to discuss going ashore, and every word was easily audible to the two watchers in the balcony. "I vote we go," quoth he with the boat-hook. "It ain't every day the old hunks gives us a chance to stretch a leg ashore." "It'll be dry, Tom," spoke up one in the boat. "Ye won't get so much as a swig o' cider-water this side o' Bar Harbor." "Well, boys, let's try it, anyhow," advised the officer. "If it's dry there, it's wet enough here." "That's right," responded another. "Damn yer slops, Bill, ye dude; the' 're's good as mine, an' any togs is good enough for po'r Jack. Let's go ashore an' take a look at these Thoryfare bewties." This seemed to settle it. The boat was made fast, and the men straggled up the pier, talking and laughing as they went. Tab and Jack fairly hugged each other in delight at this development, and then Jerry opened fire. "You said you'd been aboard," he began, "what"-- "When I left the bakery," Jack answered, without waiting for the question to be finished, "I said to myself that the fog was so thick it would be perfectly safe to take a boat and row out, on the chances that I might find out something. I meant to get astern of the Merle and give the wind a chance to bring me some of the talk aboard. I borrowed a little pea-pod from the pier behind Staples', and out I went. When I got to the yacht, I found I could lay alongside, for there wasn't a soul on deck. I hauled off my jacket and hung it over the boat's side for a fender, so she wouldn't make any noise, and took the painter in my fist. Then I stood on the thwart and jumped for the rail on the port side." "You'd have made the devil of a mess if you'd missed it," commented Jerry. "But I didn't. I got hold, but, Gad, I came near going overboard!" He stopped to laugh, this time fearlessly aloud, while Jerry chuckled. "I lay flat along the bulwark," Jack went on, "by the main rigging. The skylight-covers were on, of course, but the frames were half up, and I could get scraps of the talk in the cabin. The men Uncle Randolph's got along with him are old Melford and Tom Bardale. I thought I'd die to hear them go on. Old Melford was grumbling away,--he's always an awful croaker, you know. He piped up once, and said it was just his luck to have to suffer both fog and bridge when he came for solid cruising. Uncle Randolph and Bardale both poo-poohed him, and asked him if he'd rather play slap-Jack. The old boys are going to play bridge somewhere,--I didn't find out where, but it doesn't matter; they're settled, anyway. I didn't hear anything else, for I'd hardly time to drop into the pea-pod and get out of the way of the men from the fo'c'sle that came out to haul in the cutter on the boat-boom. I rushed ashore as tight as I could pelt, and you saw the rest. This dance business, too! Luck's with us!" He stopped, all but breathless. With one accord the pair started for the stairs, and took their way to the pier, where the lantern made a dim and watery illumination in the midst of the fog. Castleport seized Jerry by the arm and led him to the edge of the pier. "With this wind," he said with great earnestness, "we'd best run out to the westward, and beat along the south of Vinal Haven. We'll have more sea-room, and with the weather as thick as this, I don't deny that even that's risky enough." "It is a nasty night," Taberman assented with emphasis. "Are you for going outside Wooden Ball Island?" "Tell that when we've got by Dogfish and the rest of 'em," replied Jack briefly. "I mean to leave that to Dave, anyhow." "You're dead sure you want to do it, old man?" queried Tab with the air of one who would not have asked the question had he not been confident that the answer would be in the affirmative. "I'd do it ten times over just for the lark!" snorted Jack. "Now then--business!" They descended the ladder to the eastern float, and Castleport called out guardedly to the men who had all this time been lying concealed in the market-boat under the wharf. A slight bumping, a muttered oath, the rattle of an oar on the thwart, and then the nose of the boat emerged from beneath the pier. A vigorous thrust with the boat-hook against one of the outer stringers shot her up alongside the float. "All right?" inquired Jack. A stoutly built man of short stature standing in the bow of the boat answered. "Right enough, sir; but a mite holler." "Well, Dave, we'll fix that in a spell," said Jack. "We've got a bit to do first, though. Let's have your watch, Tab." He pulled out his own as he spoke, and took Jerry's with it in one hand. Then with the other hand he struck a match, which he craftily sheltered from the wind. "You're a minute fast of me, Jerry," he commented, throwing away the match and returning the watch. "I say eight seventeen, and you say eight eighteen. You and Jim take the market-boat and go over to the other float. Take the Merle's cutter and tow her out to one of the moorings off the club here. At eight forty-eight sharp,--just half an hour,--you hail the Merle. Sing out like the deuce, and tell 'em to send a boat ashore. I'll see that they send one, and that when they've left there'll be nobody aboard but me. In about fifteen minutes from now a boat'll come ashore, but you needn't mind her. Dave'll look out for that business. Just you pick out some mooring a bit to windward of the direct line between the yacht and the Casino, so they shan't spot you. When you hear a boat coming in answer to your hail, you come out yourselves, and tow the cutter. That you're to make fast astern the Merle. Got it all clear?" "I guess so," Jerry answered. "I don't notice a boat till eight forty-eight; then I hail, and when I hear a boat coming in answer I cut out to the Merle. Give me some matches to see the time with. Well, good luck, old man; be sharp, or you'll dish the whole game." With this parting caution Taberman stepped into the market-boat, while Dave got out. Oars were not needed, but Jerry and the sailor easily pulled the market-boat around by the spiles to the other float, where they lay concealed in the rolling fog. "Now then, Dave," Jack said as they disappeared, "you and I are the ones that are going to open this ball. You take me out, set me aboard just as if you did that sort of thing regularly,--do you see? As if I'd paid you a quarter for setting me aboard, you know. Then you row back. Here's a boat that'll do," he broke off, pointing to a small whitehall boat made fast to the staging. "Get in, and pull me out." The pair stepped into the little craft, and when Dave began rowing Jack continued his instructions. "When you get back to the float," he said, "you just make this boat fast, and hide under the shadow of those stairs on the outside of the Casino--you know?" "Yes, sir." "Wait for a boat from the yacht with three or four men in it.--Pull on your port oar a bit; that's good.--When they get ashore and go up the wharf, you take their tender and rush her out to a mooring same as Mr. Taberman's done. Do you see?" "Guess so, sir," was Dave's response. "Do you want me to catch the same one?" "Any one'll do, provided it won't be seen by a boat pulling ashore from the Merle. You won't have to go far to hide in this fog.--Little stronger on your port oar again; tide's cutting you down.--When you hear Mr. Taberman hailing, you stand by, and as soon as a boat goes by in answer, you pull out to the yacht and make fast astern. Give her plenty of painter; all she's got. Do you see now?" "I guess I do, sir. You're going to have a boat on every davit that way, ain't you, sir?" "If it works," Jack answered in a low voice, for they were now under the yacht's port quarter. Dave pulled around in silence to the steps on the starboard side. "Here we are, sir," he said in an even tone as he caught at the ladder grating. The Merle, dimly visible by the foggy glow of her riding-light, was pitching slightly in the chop, and the small dinghy bobbed up and down beside her like a cork beside a floating spar. The waves slapped against the yacht's sheer, wetting her top-sides with spray and poppling away merrily under her counter. In the thick dimness her masts loomed up almost supernaturally tall. "Hello aboard the Merle," shouted Castleport. "Hello?" answered a voice from forward, and in a moment a tall, burly figure appeared on deck by the ladder. "What is it?" asked the tall man. "What d' you want?" "Hello, Camper," cried Jack, recognizing the voice as that of his uncle's sailing-master. "Hello, Camper, don't you know me?" He sprang up the steps and gained the deck. "Why, Mr. Castleport," the skipper cried in a hearty tone, "whatever are you doin' here? Thought you was over to the Island. How are you, sir?" "Cold," Jack answered with a laugh. "How's yourself? Fit as usual, I suppose. President aboard?" "No, sir. He's gone ashore to some sort of a gatherin'. I never thought to see you here, sir." "Oh, I came over to join the yacht here. I got tired of waiting. I shan't want you any longer," he called down to the figure in the dinghy below. "Much obliged." The dinghy and Dave melted into the blackness of the night. "Come below, Mr. Castleport, sir. You'll have a bracer?" the genial sailing-master asked. "Nasty night, ain't it?" "It is that," Jack agreed, "but I'm in hopes there'll be a change soon." And smiling at the thought how truly the words expressed his secret intent, he followed the worthy Camper below. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Three IT BLOWS SOUTHEAST The saloon of the Merle was a spacious cabin, paneled in Cuban cedar. Along both sides ran transoms cushioned in dark green corduroy, which contrasted pleasantly with the red of the woodwork. On either side of the companion-way were big closets, the doors of which, framing large mirrors, opened forward against the after ends of the transoms. Both to port and to starboard the cabin was lined with lockers for flags, charts, and bottles, except where the recessed bookcases came in the middle. Large nickeled Argand lamps to port and starboard on the for'ard bulkhead illuminated the interior. Sheathed in cedar, the butt of the schooner's mainmast stood in the fore part of the saloon; and aft from it ran a mahogany table around which were placed some comfortable-looking chairs. All in all, the impression of power and grace which one received from regarding the outside of the Merle was equaled by the feeling of comfort, and, indeed, almost of luxury, one had upon viewing her below decks. It was in this pleasant retreat that Jack had settled himself in less than a minute after his arrival on the yacht. The good skipper, who had kept an almost fatherly eye on the youth ever since he was old enough to "fist a rope," sat uneasily on the edge of the divan on the port side. Jack, sprawled out on the opposite transom, lit a cigarette, and looked up at the skylight. "My aunt! But I'm glad to be aboard again," he declared. "How is everything? What sort of a run down did you have?" "Pretty fair, sir," returned the master. "We went to Marblehead, and then to Portsmouth. Mr. Drake, he spent the time in seeing his friends. Then we run to Portland, and then to Boothbay. We run in here yesterday. Nothin' much to tell of on the cruise." "You've made schedule time," Jack commented. "You are here just when you were due." "Yes, we got here," Camper assented, "though 't one time, when I see the stores that had to come aboard, I doubted if we should get started for a week." "More stores than usual?" queried Jack, with a little spark of interest in his eye. "Well, Mr. Drake, he 'lowed that last year when we got becalmed down the coast some of the provisions fell short, and he vowed he'd never get caught in that shape again; so this time he's stocked up fit to do the Nor'west Passage. He's got every kind of a thing to eat that man ever put into tins, you may bet your life." "Trust him to have an eye to the galley," laughed Jack, reflecting how satisfactory a complement to the plain provisions waiting at the Island would be this extensive assortment of choice eatables. "Well, I'm for sleeping aboard. Can you give me a lift with my luggage?" Everything he had said since he came on board had been preliminary to this. His one chance of getting the sailing-master to a safe distance lay in inducing Camper to go ashore on an errand. To this question the skipper replied, Yankee fashion, with another. "Where is it, sir?" "Go to Mullin's and tell 'em you're from me;--you'd better do it yourself, Camper;--and get them to give you a steamer-trunk and two bags. Do you know the place? It's the only boarding-house there is in the village. Anybody can tell you." "I know it, sir. 'Bout a cable's length up the road." "Yes; that's it. I don't think you'll find the trunk heavy," Jack went on, with a secret inclination to speak very fast and a consciousness that he must appear cool and deliberate. "Of course you'll take a couple of men to tote it, but I don't like to send an ordinary seaman up there." He wondered what he should reply if asked why not; but Camper, who had long been trained under President Drake to habits of unquestioning obedience, replied with perfect simplicity:-- "All right, sir, I'll have it aboard in half an hour. Your old stateroom's all ready, I believe. You just ring for the steward if you want anything, sir." "Thanks," responded Jack, taking a book from its place as he spoke, as if with the intention of settling himself to read. Camper withdrew, and Jack listened eagerly till he heard footsteps on the deck, the rattle of the davit-tackle, the splash of the boat alongside, and then the rhythm of receding oars. The moment he was sure of not being seen by the skipper he closed his book with a bang, flung it on the table, looked at his watch, and went hurriedly on deck. In the lee of the mainmast he paused to light a fresh cigarette, and then began untying the cover of the mainsail, loosening the points and pulling them through the grommets. As he worked his way aft, he suddenly thought he heard the sound of oars. He stopped to make sure: there could be no doubt of it; some one was pulling toward the Merle. In a flash Jack saw his scheme ruined in any one of a thousand ways. He set his teeth and ran over rapidly in his head the possibilities, but without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. Then he walked aft, and putting his hands on the rail, bent over the yacht's port quarter and peered into the fog. With a feeling of relief he realized from the sound and time of the strokes that the approaching boat was a small one, and was pulled by one pair of oars only. He had hardly decided this when he discerned the cause of his alarm, and almost laughed to see nothing more formidable than a small pea-pod, pulled by a boy. The rower came alongside and rested on his oars, while Jack watched him curiously. "Is that Mr. Drake's vessel?" inquired the boy. "Yes," Jack returned. "What's wanted?" "The postmaster said 'f I'd bring ye these letters ye'd give me a quarter," replied the youthful oarsman. "Mr. Drake isn't aboard now," said Jack. "Well, ye c'n give me my quarter jes' the same," the boy rejoined. "I'll let ye hev the letters, 'n' he'll make it right with ye later. He lef' word this evenin' for his mail to be brung him every time it come, an' 't was that foggy the Sylvy got in late from Rocklan', 'n' I couldn't get roun' to bring it out before. 'Twan't sorted till after Mr. Staples hed his supper." "All right," Jack said hastily. "Come alongside." He feared to create suspicion, and felt that the only thing to do at the moment was to get rid of the boy. He gave the youth a quarter, and took the letters in exchange, mentally saying to himself that he hoped they were not of importance. The boy went pulling away as if in most unusual elation, and Castleport, thrusting the letters into the breast pocket of his coat, returned to his work. He had not quite finished untying the points when he heard Jerry's hail from the mooring. "Merle, ahoy! Ho-ro aboard the Merle!" came booming through the fog in Taberman's most stentorian tones. Jack placed himself in the companion-way as if just emerging from the cabin, and waited for another hail. "Merle ahoy! Aho-o-o-y aboard the Merle!" again rang through the thick night above the sound of the wind, the water, and the cordage. "Hallo-o-o!" bawled back Castleport. "Send ... boat ... ashore!" came the voice. Jerry was apparently able to outroar all the bulls of Bashan, and was doing his worst. "Aye--oh!" Jack yelled in reply, and walked quickly forward. The steward had heard the rumpus, and was standing in the forecastle companion. Capless, and wearing his white jacket, he gaped about like a quizzical seal. "Some one hailing from the shore," said Jack shortly; "want a boat. Don't know what you'll take unless you go in the longboat. Tell the men." "Beg pardon, sir; there's only me and the cook and two hands aboard. It'll take us all to pull the longboat." The steward had a slow, exasperating whine which always irritated Jack. "Then you'll have to take an oar," Jack responded roughly. "There's some one ashore waiting, and I said I'd send a boat. Get a move on. I'll watch ship." The steward went below grumbling, but soon reappeared with the cook and the two hands. With some delay they got off in the longboat, pulling wretchedly toward the shore and nagging at each other. As he stepped to the foot of the mainmast to take the halyards off the pins, Jack fervently thanked his stars for the heaviness of the boat and the evident fact that both cook and steward were hopeless duffers with an oar. He cleared the halyards with nervous fingers, stripped off the cover of the mainsail, and undid the canvas stops with which it was furled. Then he turned to the headsails, and had all clear before his ear again caught the sound of oars. He ran aft, and called out guardedly. Dave's voice answered him, and then he heard Taberman urging his companion to quicken his stroke. In the mist Castleport could dimly distinguish the heavy boats slowly nearing the yacht. It was all the men could do to get them alongside and make them fast astern. Once this was accomplished, all hands turned eagerly to the still harder labor of getting the Merle under weigh. "Jim," ordered Castleport, "skip along for'ard and take down that riding-light. Set it on deck so it won't show out-board. Dave, you get up the boat-boom. Haul it right up, 'thout minding the guys! Lively, now!" As Dave and Jim hurried forward to execute these orders, Jack himself stepped aft, took off the binnacle-cover, and got the lamps lit and in their places. "All hands for'ard on the anchor!" he sang out, rapping his shins on the cockpit combings as he scrambled out and ran along the deck. "We'll make sail when we get out the mudhook. 'F we try to get her mains'l up, they'll hear us all over the place. We'll drop down under heads'ls. Catch ahold there!" The Merle was riding at her port bower in some six fathoms of water. She had out a good bit of scope, however, and between the eight hands which gripped the quarter-inch chain and the anchor to which it was bent were some ten fathoms to be "handed over." In the light of the big Fresnel anchor-lantern upon the deck, the men, silent, rigid, braced back, strained steadily. For a full half-minute there was no gain whatever, but then one link of the chain came to the brazen lip of the hawse-hole with a sharp rap. The men grunted and hissed, bringing every muscle into play. Taberman was foremost on the chain. He faced the hawse-hole squarely, his legs wide apart, and his head thrown back. His face, even as seen by the white light of the Fresnel, was a dark brick-red, and out of the left corner of his mouth his tongue protruded. Dave was behind him, his left knee bent, and his right leg straight from toe to hip. He hung on savagely, his face unnaturally blank; his hair, damp with fog and sweat, clung to his brown forehead and temples. The third man was Jim, lying back in a strange posture, as though the small of his back were invisibly supported. His cheeks were white; his breathing was inaudible. With a little salvo of metallic snaps a scant dozen links more came in. Jack was last on the chain, and was separated from the man next him by a space greater than that between any other pair, so that he could when necessary take a turn of the slack about one of the brass-capped bollards at his side. His body was tense and rigid, his face and forehead full of odd puckers and lines. He was white at the lips, and the corners of his mouth were drawn down. His nose moved nervously with almost the suggestion of a rabbit's. One more link came in. "Better take it on the winch," gasped Jerry. "Damn it,--pull!" cried Jack. Jim grunted and Dave drew a breath through his closed teeth with a sharp whistling sound. Suddenly the chain rattled in so quickly that they could almost over-hand it. The Merle was moving at last. "Smartly!" Jack cried. "Smartly, and we'll make her trip it out herself." The four hauled lustily. "Nigh up and down," called Jerry. Jack threw a couple of bights of the chain over the bollard, and held it. The big yacht forged ahead slowly into the eye of the wind, carried along by the impetus given her by the handing of the chain. The bits creaked a little, the chain grew very taut and vibrant. The Merle checked up and began to drift back. "Now then!" cried Jack. "Lay along!" Each one of them grasped the chain with a fierce vigor, as a man might seize the throat of his enemy, while Jerry burst into an explosive whaling chantey, and the men fell into time with its rhythm. "Haul the bowline, the bowline, the bowline; Haul the bowline, the bowline,--_Haul!_" "Here she comes!" he shouted in the midst of a stave, as, all at once, the anchor was broken out. Jack dropped his end of the chain and ran aft to mind the wheel, leaving the men to take in the rest of the slack. The headsails were up in stops, but before breaking them out it was necessary to lay the yacht round on the port tack. As she was under sternway, Jack whirled the spokes over to port, and so--for her steering-gear was "balanced"--brought her head around to the southward. When he felt the wind on his left cheek, he put his hand to his mouth and shouted. "Break out fore-staysail!" he bellowed. "Trim it a-weather!--Hang on to the weather-sheet till she falls well off!" With a great slatting and booming of canvas the schooner payed off rapidly. "Catch on to that port sheet there!" shouted Jack. "Port, I say, port! Make fast! Not too flat! Give her all she'll use!" The Merle was now moving slowly before the wind. "Break out the jibs," ordered Jack, "both jibs! That's good. Make fast!" The wind had so freshened that the yacht began to move in earnest. At this juncture voices, faint but frantic, were heard hailing from astern. "Merle ahoy! Ahoy-oy-oy! Show--light! A-hoy-oy-oy--'board the Merle!" "Hear the steward?" called Jack to Jerry, who was at work with the head-sheet cleats. "Hear him!" laughed Jerry. "His music's a merry send-off." "Ahoy-oy-oy!" came the voice again, fainter and full of a dismayed distress that made them both break out afresh into derisive laughter. "Ahoy! Anchor! An-chor--Anch"-- The despairing wail died away on the freshening wind. "Hope they won't poke round in the fog all night looking for the Merle," Jack said gayly. "I never did like that steward, though." A moment or two later, as the yacht was nearing the entrance of the Thoroughfare, Jack called for Dave. The man came aft. "See here, Dave," Castleport asked, suddenly grown grave; "we've got more weather than we counted on. Can you pilot this yacht round Vinal Haven in this fog?" "Reck'n I kin, sir," Dave replied with pleasing assurance. "Man and boy I've worked round these shores twelve years." "Very well, then,--come down here and take her. Her gear's balanced: put the wheel over same way you want to swing her head. She's quick as a flash. If you want the chart"-- But Dave shook his head with a grin. "Well, anyhow," said Jack, turning to leave him, "there's your compass." "That don't bother me none," replied the intrepid Dave, with a glance at once scornful and defiant at the smart binnacle. "I go mos' gin'rally by the smell," he added by way of explanation. "All right," laughed Jack. "Handle her carefully." "One thing, sir,--how much does she draw?" "Twelve feet," returned Jack. Then he stepped up on to the deck, and the Merle sped on into the black night. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Four IT BLOWS NORTHWEST With Dave as her Palinurus the Merle ran down the wind until she was well outside the western entrance to the Thoroughfare. The headsails were then dropped, the yacht was put into the wind, and the mainsail was hoisted. The foresail was left furled, as the wind had freshened considerably, and the schooner started on a southerly course on the port tack. How Dave knew where he was or by what subtle instinct he was moved to give the Merle now a spoke or two to starboard or again to port, were mysteries as insoluble as complex. Taberman was lost in wonder at Dave's cool assurance; but to Jack, who knew of old the marvelous way in which the local fishermen handle their craft in the fog, the helmsman's skill, if wonderful, was yet no new thing. The beat to the Island was not, however, without incident. Twice, as they were tacking about in the thick fog, they ran close to wicked ledges over which the slow seas just rolled without breaking. At another point they came about just in time to avoid going ashore against a precipitous cliff which loomed high in the mist. Near the end of the run they worked into some shoal water where the uneasy heave and thrust of the sea made the schooner reel and stagger madly, while all about them was the thunder of unseen breakers. But in each and every peril Dave kept his head completely and brought the Merle through in safety. The passage was a busy one. Three times they luffed up in open water, and each time took a boat aboard. It was a difficult--almost a perilous--operation, but the night was flying and the boats dragged heavily. The foresail was made ready for hoisting, a reef being tucked into it without its being raised. The port bower was taken aboard; lanterns were got ready against the work which was to be done at the Island; a careful survey was made of the places available for stowage. Jack and Taberman made a list of the men, assigned watches and berths. They agreed that Gonzague, as cook, steward, and general major-domo, should have to himself the little cabin formerly occupied by the steward. To the men they gave the berths of the old crew; and in general arranged everything for the ocean voyage which had been left for adjustment until they should be actually on board. The personal effects of the President, his guests, the officers and the crew, they made ready to leave at the Island. "How about clothes for the men?" Taberman asked. "I never thought of that; and we should look like the deuce with a crew in fishermen's rigs. The police of any harbor in the world would be after us." "The uniforms belong to the yacht," Jack answered. "They are cut for the crew, but the men never own them." "Do you suppose those poor devils' traps will be safe at the Island?" "Safe as in a church." "But how'll they get 'em?" "Oh, by nine o'clock to-morrow morning the President will be on his way to the Island if he has to buy the Sylvia to go on. Camper'll tell him I ran away with the Merle, and he'll start to the Island to find me or get track." So they talked until, about two in the morning, the yacht ran past Hardwood Island, hauled her wind, and worked along to the southeast. Suddenly through the fog a dull red gleam showed on the weather bow. "There's Gonzague's bonfire," Jack cried. "You've brought us through, Dave, about as slick as anything ever was done in this world. 'Twas a tough job, too." The main-peak was dropped to lessen the yacht's way, and as the red flare became more distinct, the outer jibs were doused. Keeping the shore close aboard on the port side, the Merle ran along toward the ruddy blur of the fire, which was now seen to be burning at the end of a point. As the boat neared this point, Jack seized the megaphone, and putting the big cone to his lips, faced the fire, which was now abeam. "Hallo!" he roared. "Hallo, there! Gonzague!" A sudden and confused shouting out of the fog answered him. Then black figures, silhouetted against the red brightness of the fire and waving burning brands, ran to and fro with odd antics and caperings. "'Bout ship!" cried Dave. "'Ware boom! Douse the heads'ls!" The Merle came over on the other tack, and the staysail and jibs were run down. The main-sheet was then so started as to spill the wind out of the sail, and the yacht's way was quickly lessened. Having rounded the point, the schooner moved ahead sluggishly, again passing the bonfire on the port hand. "Stand by the anchor!" sang out Dave, as they ran by the end of the jetty. "Hooray!" yelled a chorus of voices from the pier. "Hooray, Dave!" Dave twirled the wheel to starboard, and the Merle came slowly into the eye of the wind, where he kept her until she seemed to be making sternway. "Well enough!" he shouted. "Let her go!" And the anchor-chain rattled down in three and a half fathoms. It was after two o'clock, and still thick. The wind, however, was hauling around to the southward, and the fog was beginning to thin a little. The main-sheet had hardly been hauled aft when some of the men were alongside in a boat. Jack stood by the steps, which had not been taken aboard during the run, while Tab, standing by his side, held a lantern. The first man aboard was Gonzague. Agile as an ape, for all his years, the old Provençal ran up the steps and touched his cap smartly, man-o'-war fashion. "I see you leaf in a great hoory, cap'n," he chuckled to Jack. "You 'av' loosed de matting of de step-grating, eh?" "Yes, rather," laughed Jack. "Pile aboard there," he added, addressing the men in the two boats now alongside. The new crew made their boats fast to the grating and came on board. "Now, then, all hands aft here for a minute," Jack ordered, when every one was assembled on deck. He knew that with such men as he had been able to collect for this expedition it was essential to bind them in some way. He had therefore prepared a paper in which were five articles for them to sign, and he was firmly resolved that unless they agreed to bind themselves, he would not trust the President's schooner to their care. The men were resolute in the face of danger, yet were unused to discipline; they were imbued with a crude sense of loyalty, but were unruly and quick to take offense; and unless they should consent at the outset to submit to his authority, Jack knew that little dependence could be put upon them. He instinctively assumed an arbitrary air,--almost dropping half consciously into the latent bully which lies hid in all strong characters. Had he reasoned it out, he would have adopted much the same tone as that which he took by instinct. These men, wild followers of the sea, would scorn to be led, and were to be mastered only by one who could browbeat and domineer,--who could, in their own word, "man-handle" them. They responded to the primitive necessity of seeing force in the man who is to command; and in showing his determination at the outset Jack was displaying at least one characteristic of a proper leader of men. He took from his pocket the list of names, and telling the men to answer to the roll he read it off by the light of Tab's lantern. "Elihu Coombs?" he read. "Here," answered a thickset lad with a rugged and weather-beaten face. "Here, SIR!" said Jack sharply, as he check'd off the name. "Edward Turner?" "Here, sir," answered a quiet voice on the outer ring of the men. "Haskell Dwight?" "Here, sir." They were all aboard: ten men, exclusive of Jack, Jerry, and Gonzague. When he had finished the list, Jack handed it to Jerry, and taking from his pocket a second paper,--the simple articles he had written,--he knocked the creases out of it with a back-handed rap, and then made a short speech. "My men," he began, "I don't want to haul you into any game with your eyes shut, so I've drafted articles for you to sign. Of course this whole business is only a joke, but it's got a serious side to it too. You can all see that plain enough; and it's my interest--and yours--to see to it that we don't have to laugh out of the wrong side of our mouths. "If you come on this cruise you'll sweat for your wages, now let me tell you! I'm not for grinding any man,--most of you know what I am, for you've seen me growing up from a kid,--but the yacht's got to be kept up, and that means that every man-jack aboard has got to keep as neat as a pin and not slight his job. "On the other hand, you men'll get a lot of experience in handling a larger vessel than you've been used to; you'll have good grub; and you'll see foreign ports. Top o' that, you draw good pay, and keep what clothes you can save. "Now then, these are the articles that every man who sails with me has got to put his name to." He read the whole paper, as distinctly and as impressively as he could. "Now," he concluded, "if any man here lacks the heart for this business, let him clear out. The rest of you, step up and sign." Jack laid the paper on the companion-hatch, and produced a fountain-pen, which he put beside it. Jerry was the first, in virtue of his position as mate, to put down his name. He set down his lantern and scrawled his signature at the foot of the articles in a hand that would have dwarfed that of John Hancock. He passed the pen to Gonzague, who, laboriously fisting it, wrote his name in a small, cramped hand, absurdly unlike the characters above it. For an instant--an appreciable instant--the rest hung back. Jack's brown eyes challenged theirs, and every one was very silent. That Castleport was seconded by those who were obviously attached to him gave the men, rather than confidence, an uneasy feeling of being another party, and this prompted an instinctive caution almost like antagonism. Had things been allowed to rest for a moment, the day might easily have been lost. Discussion might have arisen to beget argument and discord, explanations have been demanded, and the men have asked to be satisfied as to the real grounds on which Castleport was to be justified in appropriating his uncle's yacht and making off with it, a question which could hardly have been answered so as to satisfy everybody. At this unrealized crisis, old Gonzague quietly stepped among the men, passed a jest with one of them in an undertone, and so equilibrium was restored. He at once became one of them, and the vague idea of parties and opposition vanished into thin air before the men had had time even to recognize it. Dave stepped forward and signed, Jim followed him, and the rest of the men came after. Jack had sounded all of them separately before unfolding his plans, and the result was that not one of them drew back now. As the last one laid down the pen, Castleport spoke. "Before we fall to work I don't think anybody'd mind a good glass of grog; and while Gonzague's getting it, I just want to add one word to my say. I know this gentleman, Mr. Jerrold Taberman, to be a good navigator, and I've chosen him as my mate. Gonzague'll be cook and steward, and A1 you'll find him. I'm bound to make things go as easy as may be, and I will. I'm sure you'll do your duties, and you may bank on my doing mine." The grog being brought, Tab proposed the captain's health, and the crew drank it with enthusiasm. Jack emptied his glass to the "crew and a good cruise;" and then the entire company went to work, loading and stowing. Under Jerry's orders part of the crew began to carry provisions from the boathouse to the yacht, while under Jack's surveillance Gonzague and two of the crew stored what the others brought out. Gun-tackle purchases were rigged by the foremast to take the heavier cases aboard. The men worked feverishly, and almost without sound, as if subdued by the fear of being heard. At the end of a couple of hours the Merle had only to fill her water-tanks and she would be ready for sea. The fog was by this time so thin that in the dim light of the yet unrisen sun Jack, as he stood in the rigging, could discern vaguely the form of the house on the Island. As he was considering the weather, Gonzague, his face red with exertion and his usually immaculate clothes stained and torn, came up hastily. "Mistair Castleport, sair," he said, "I don' fin' any beeg funnel for de watter-tank. Dey mus' always feel dem from de watter-boat 'ose,--stick de en' into de deck-plate, I t'ink." "How's that?" exclaimed Jack. "No funnel?" The tender containing the first installments of the water-supply had already left the jetty, and Jack fell hastily to considering how the water was to be got out of the big unheaded casks into the tanks without its being dribbled in by the dipperful. "Did you look everywhere?" he demanded. "I look in de peak and go all de way aft to de run," replied the steward, "and all I find was de funnel in de kerosene-barrel. It ees too small, and it do fair reek wid de pairfume of de oil, sair." "Is there any piping aboard? any hose?" Jack asked. "We might siphon it." Gonzague shook his head, and at that moment the boat laden with water came alongside. Jack leaned over the rail. "I say, Jerry," he called out, "there's no funnel to fill the tanks with. How the deuce can we make water-stowage?" "Search me," returned Jerry with cheerful inelegance. "How should I know? Might use the megaphone." "You're a genius!" roared Jack. "It'll do to a T!" The keys were found, the caps unscrewed from the deck-plates, and the large papier-maché cone of the megaphone was set big-end-up over the orifice. Two men held it by the rim, while others kept it brimming with buckets of water bailed out of the casks. At the end of another hour both tanks were filled and the caps screwed down. The Merle was ready for her long cruise. Jack was well satisfied with the sufficiency of her stores, as in addition to the plain provisions which he and Taberman had provided, the yacht had been most abundantly victualed by the President for her summer's cruising. "Think of anything we've left, Jerry?" Jack asked. "The President?" Tab suggested. Jack's official seriousness went entirely to pieces at this suggestion, but he turned to the steward with an air of business. "Have you got everything, Gonzague?" "Yes, sair. I t'ink de leest is feel," the old man responded, closely regarding the dirty paper on which he had made his inventory and checked off each article as it came on board. Each item in the list had a black scratch beside it. "Well, then," the captain said, with a spark in his eye, "we're off!" He gave the word to clear the decks and to get under weigh. The wind had come around to the west, and was blowing fresh. They made all sail, however, chancing the gusty squalls which they were likely to meet off the high land of Isle au Haut, which they meant to leave on the starboard. The fog had gone entirely, except for long ghostly wreaths clinging to the dark green gullies of the Haut or encircling the distant mountain-tops of Mt. Desert; and when the sun rose clear and fair, all auspices seemed most cheeringly propitious. Jack took his departure from the Eastern Ear of the Haut, when it bore west-northwest three miles. At four that afternoon, when he and Jerry came on deck for time-sights, no land was to be seen. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Five LAND HO! Some three weeks after the morning when the Merle left the Island, Jack and Tab were sitting in the saloon, working out the sights they had just taken for longitude. It was shortly after eight o'clock in the morning; the air was warm, and had in it a suggestion of the south. Through the open skylight came a shaft of light which cast a brilliant patch on the green cushions on the port side of the cabin. As the yacht rolled or pitched easily over the long seas, the patch of light moved about,--up, down, fore, aft; now it glanced on the rich red sheathing, now on the transom, and again on the big table. On the leeward side of this table the two men, dressed in canvas trousers and blue flannel shirts, were seated with their work lying before them. Between them lay several sheets of paper, parallel-rulers, the log-book in its brown duck cover, a copy of Norie open at the tables, and the American "Ephemeris." A large sheet-chart of the North Atlantic, weighted with a pair of binoculars, was spread in front of Jack. A heavy line, full of zigzags and acute angles, and running nearly across this chart, represented the Merle's track. Presently Jack laid down the pencil with which he had been figuring, and reaching out for the "Epitome," turned to the table of functions. "Through?" asked Tab, without looking up. "'Most," returned Jack, running one finger down a column of figures as he glanced first at his paper and then at the book. "I have it now," he added, and after jotting down a number he pushed the volume over to Tab, went to a cupboard on the port side, and brought back a case of instruments. He took out a pair of long-legged dividers, and with these and the parallel rulers he bent over the chart a minute or two, until the silence was again broken by Jerry. "What d' you get?" he asked. "Nine-eighteen-fifteen," replied Jack. "What's yours?" "Nine-sixteen-nought," answered Tab. "Wait a shake, I'll average them;" and he fell to figuring rapidly. "Mean is nine-seventeen-seven plus. Prick it off, and let's see where we're at--the D. R. latitude's thirty-six forty-eight." They bent together over the chart. Jack carefully manipulated rulers and dividers, found the point, and marked it in red ink. "She's making just over six knots now," he said. "We ought to make old Cape St. Vincent shortly. Let's put up these traps and go on deck." They stowed the things in their several lockers, and went out together. The Merle was running along with a quartering breeze, under all lower sails, sliding easily over the long swell on the port tack. "How about putting a lookout up aloft, Jack?" asked Tab. "We'll be raising the land pretty soon--if we're anywhere right in our reckoning, that is." "All right," agreed Jack. "Step down and get a pair of glasses; I fancy Hunter has the best eyes of any of the men. I'll get hold of him." Jerry disappeared below, and Jack walked along the windward side. The sea, rolling eastward in long, measured swells, reflected the sun from a myriad of glancing ripples that gleamed and glittered in the morning light. The sky, light blue and cloudless, looked like pale fire. On board the schooner the brass-work, as she rose and dipped in the troughs of the long seas, flashed and shone like burnished gold. The white canvas caught the sunshine, while on the decks, still undried from their recent scrubbing, the putty in the curving seams showed sharply white. The four boats were inboard, turned bottom up and cross-lashed to the rail. Castleport found the four men of the watch gathered in the peak, looking over the bows. He came up and saw that they were watching a school of dolphins that were keeping ahead of the yacht. The big fish seemed to vibrate. They sounded and leaped clear of the water, flashing and dripping with sparkling drops. A thousand colors rippled along their backs, as they turned and swayed, and they swung ahead like the very incarnation of frolic. The captain saw the man he wanted standing on the port side, and called him to him. "Hunter," he said, "go aft to Mr. Taberman; he'll give you a pair of glasses. Go aloft and keep a sharp lookout for land. We ought to raise it on the port bow." The effect produced by this order was electrical. The four men whipped around and stared at Jack and at each other. "Land!" exclaimed one with a foolish grin. "Land!" Hunter touched his duck hat and flew aft; Jack followed more leisurely. In a couple of minutes Hunter was ensconced in the foretop, eagerly scanning the eastern horizon. Castleport settled himself in the sun on the leeward side of the cockpit, and filled his pipe. He had hardly lighted it and taken half a dozen whiffs, when from aloft rang out the magical cry, "Land!" "Where away?" shouted the captain, leaping to his feet just as Tab appeared in the companion-way. "Have we raised it, Jack? Have we raised it?" Tab demanded excitedly. "Not yet, Tab. Just been sighted," returned Jack, peering up at the fore-crosstrees, and awaiting the lookout's answer to his hail. "'Bout two points off the weather-bow," sang out Hunter from aloft. "Just a low bank. Looks like cliffs through glasses!" "Come along, Tab!" cried Jack. "Let's go aloft and have a look at it." They made their way quickly along the deck, gained the weather-shrouds, and ran up. The watch below had turned out, just as they were, half-dressed and bareheaded. Two of the men had run out to the bowsprit's end, and holding on to the topmast stay were looking over the luff of the flying-jib. Old Gonzague, venerable as Vanderdecken, his white hair stirred by the wind,--for he was as usual without a cap,--had already gained the main-trees, where he stood shading his eyes with one hand while he gripped the shrouds with the other. "Where is it?" demanded Jerry, when he and Jack had reached the trees. "There away, sir," Hunter answered, pointing as he passed the glasses to the captain. With the unaided eye Jack and Jerry could discern, lying low on the eastern rim of the horizon, a faint brownish streak. With one arm about the topmast for support, Jack looked at the land through the glasses. At first, owing to the oscillation of the mast, he could not keep the brown streak in the field of vision, but in a moment he overcame this difficulty, and was able to make out a length of cliff of nearly uniform height, although split by numerous fjord-like bays. By its varied color--for he could see that the ribbon of shore was splashed with reds and blues--he decided that the land-fall was in the neighborhood of Cape St. Vincent. "Have a look?" he asked, passing the glasses to Tab. "It's the Painted Cape, fast enough,--or close to it." "What country is that, please, sir?" asked Hunter, in a tone almost of awe. "Portugal," the captain answered. "Sou'-western point of the land. We'll have Spain aboard before eight bells this afternoon." "By Grab, sir! Beg pardon, sir, but do them Portigee fishermen ye see to Boothbay an' Boston, do they come from hereaway?" "Here or from the islands,--Cape Verde, the Canaries, or the Azores; here for the most part. You may go below, if you want, Hunter." The man went, frequently pausing to look over his shoulder at the coast, glimpses of which could now be caught from the deck between the rolls. After a brief consultation, the captain and the mate followed Hunter, and went aft to consult the chart. As they passed along the deck, they noted that all hands were much excited. These men, used as they were to the sea, had been fishermen of the purely local sort, and it was doubtful if any one of them save Gonzague had ever before been out of sight of the high land of his native place; and here they were, in view of a strange country where the people spoke outlandish jabber, and, for all they knew to the contrary, went about in toggery as ridiculous as that of the Chinese laundrymen at Green's Landing. Discussion became all the more heated when Hunter came down and told them that the land was one of the countless possessions belonging to the "Portigee king." Frequent appeals were made to Gonzague, who had descended, and was the centre of an excited group. As Tab remarked, it was a sight worth remembering to see these self-contained New Englanders in such a state. Down below, Jack and Tab held a brief colloquy over the chart. They calculated, if the wind held, to make the Straits at nightfall, and run through by the aid of the lights on Cape Spartel and Tariffa. Having settled this point, they went on deck and had the course changed slightly. "By Jumbo!" cried Jerry, banging his fist on the deck as he stood in the cockpit, "by Jumbo, I can't sleep a wink with this land in sight. Portugal, too! By Jove, it's all very fine," he ran on, "for a _blasé_ old globe-trotter like you to keep cool, but I'm fair dry with it all." Jack laughed, and reminded his friend of having lived in England and France, and of having traveled not a little in northern Europe. "Pooh!" sniffed Tab. "That's not really doing anything; everybody does that. And to think," he burst out, "that we brought ourselves! God bless me, Jacko, I little thought when you crammed me with navigation in vacation days aboard the old Luna that I'd ever use it all; really, that is, as we have used it these three weeks past." "Well, I hope you're duly grateful," laughed Jack. "It may prove a source of bread and butter if you're ever stranded." All that day the Merle ran along gallantly over the bright seas, occasionally passing ships of different nationalities bound in or out of the Straits. At sundown, although the bold coast of Morocco was not yet in sight, a lookout was sent aloft to watch for the light on Cape Spartel. At a little before nine o'clock in the evening, the breeze had so died down that the yacht hardly had steerage-way. Jack was asleep below; Tab had charge of the deck. What air there was was soft and warm. It had hauled around a couple of points against the sun, and was now fragrant with a faint tellurian odor, which would have been imperceptible to a landsman, but which was full of meaning to those who follow the sea. Overhead the great stars blazed in lustrous serenity. Their images kept appearing and vanishing on the now smooth and oily surface of the restless sea. The only sounds were those of the water and the cordage,--the sudden spanking of a big wave under the counter as the yacht flung her nose starward; the occasional crashing of the great booms and traveler-blocks as she righted suddenly after a heavy roll to port or a lurch to starboard; the pattering of the reef-points against the canvas; and the sharp reports made by the slatting of the lazy-jacks against the sails. In the west, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, the receding stern-light of an Italian steamship glimmered faintly. Taberman watched it long after it kept sinking out of sight and again rising in the weltering seas, and until it at last vanished as if quenched. He was following out certain grim speculations as to the feelings of a forsaken swimmer who should watch this star of his hope moving relentlessly away into the west, grower fainter each time it emerged from the waves, when-- "Light ho!" shouted the lookout from the darkness aloft. "There's--light; 'bout--point--off--starb'd--bow!" "What kind?" hailed Jerry from the deck, straining his eyes to where, a dim blot against the stars, the figure of the lookout could be discerned standing by the rigging on the cross-trees. "Fixed white, red flash," called the man. "All right," shouted Jerry; and added in his ordinary tone of command to the hands on deck: "Lay along, now! Trim in main-sheet a bit--well enough. Now then, fore and head sheets. Good. That'll do.--We want to get what air there is," he added to himself. Although the wind was slight, yet about the Straits is always a strongish set of current. The surface current flows into the Mediterranean continuously, and it kept setting the Merle steadily ahead. When Taberman judged the light to be no more than five or six knots away, he sent below to rouse the captain, who was asleep. When Castleport came on deck, the bearing of the light was taken, the chart consulted, and a slight change made in the course. It was now calm, and the yacht, no longer steadied by the wind, rolled heavily. "We ought to see it air up before long," remarked Jack, after a short silence. "It's so beastly calm now. When it's calm on one side of the Straits, it's always blowing on the other. An Italian sea captain told me there is always just so much air about here, and however much or little is on one side, the balance is always kicking about on the other." "Then we'll take the sticks out of her, once we're through the Straits," Jerry responded with conviction. As the schooner entered the Straits, the blue-black sky to the eastward became dimly albescent, and shortly a blood-red moon rose slowly behind the inky mass of Monkey Mountain. The huge pile of rock, the more impressive though the less famous of the Pillars of Hercules, loomed vast, mysterious, and perdurable in the soft darkness. The waves, as the face of the moon cleared, were lit with a gray light. Suddenly, as a long, smooth swell shouldered the yacht past the edge of a small promontory, they opened out the lights of Tangiers on the starboard beam. The moon as yet illuminated only the western half of the scarped bowl in which lie the little villas which surround the town. The scattered lights on the east side of the valley were accentuated by the surrounding gloom. "There's Tangiers," cried Jack. "There's old Tangiers." "Those lights?" asked Jerry. "What sort of a place is it?" "Jolly little hole. All white and pink in the daytime, with red tile roofs. Hot as Tophet, though. There's Tariffa, boy! That's Tariffa over there." They excitedly discussed the points along their way. To Jerry it was all new, but Jack had traveled a good deal about the Mediterranean, and was well able to play the mentor. For an hour they talked, and the Merle drifted with the current; but they had not passed out of the shadow of Monkey Mountain before a faint breath of air stirred the headsails. It came stealing down out of the upper canvas, hot and dry. "By Jove!" cried Jack, "we'll have all the wind we want in a bit. You can tell how hard it is blowing outside the Straits by the distances it reaches in." Then he raised his voice, and called to the watch,-- "Hello there! Clew up the topsails! Pass gaskets on them!" The men, who had a dog-like trust in the captain, obeyed quickly, though from the remarks they interchanged _sotto voce_ it was easy to see that the order puzzled them. When everything was made snug aloft, Jack had a reef tucked in the main and foresails, and the outer headsails stowed. Still no wind. The schooner slowly moved along the edge of the great shadow of the mountain, only her topmast trucks and the peak of her mainsail silvered by the moonlight. A dull, hoarse whisper, faint and continuous, was now audible ahead. It grew louder by very slow degrees, and Jerry, unused as he was to Mediterranean weather, knew it for the roar of a mighty wind. In the moonlight ahead the waters appeared troubled, the hard-heaving seas being strangely and almost weirdly demarked from the calm in which the Merle rolled forward languidly. All at once, as the yacht emerged from the obscurity of the mountain's shadow, a sudden gust of warm air struck her without warning, and heeled her lee-rail under. "Hard down!" roared Jack. Jerry leaped to the wheel, and it took all the force of himself and the helmsman to put the helm hard-a-lee. The Merle righted, and being unusually quick, flew into the eye of the wind. From the threshing sails came a thunderous volley of heavy boomings. The sheet-blocks were whipped to and fro with such violence that twice Jack saw red sparks struck from the fore-traveler guard. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind left, and it was only by the way she had gathered that the helmsman could pay the yacht off. "We are going to catch it for fair," Jack said. "Best dowse the foresail entirely, I fancy. Pass the word along to Gonzague to make all snug below. Jerry, step into the cabin and make sure of the course from off Ceuta to Port Mahon." "Right-o," answered Jerry briskly, diving down. "Get down the fores'l!" shouted the captain to the men. "Helm up a bit there--steady! That's the talk! Get all the stops on.--Now then--make fast that sheet there." The Merle was hardly on her course again when a second squall struck her. Her canvas having been reduced, however, the helmsman kept her broadside to it. The yacht's strongest point was the quickness with which she gathered way, and on this occasion, when nine tenths of her class would simply have lain over and quivered, she rushed ahead with the fury of an avenging goddess. When the hot flaw left her, she was at the very last verge of the calm water. "Stand by the main-sheet to square off when she meets it!" shouted Jack. The men had hardly time to get to their stations before a third squall caught the Merle and sent her tearing over the line into the full strength of the wind. The air, hot from the desert, and laden with fine, parching dust, sang in the shrouds and the running-rigging. It slashed the salt spindrift in the smarting faces of the men. The seas grew suddenly confounding in size; huge weltering masses--tons--of greenly black water wallowed without rhythm all about the yacht, up as high as the light-boards. To a landsman it would have seemed impossible that thus scourged by the sirocco across these maddened seas the schooner should escape destruction. The sheets were started, the yacht was paid off before the wind, and began the last stretch of her run. Tab came on deck with the course, staggering and holding on, and shouted it into Jack's ear. Jack nodded, and gave orders for setting it, a fresh departure being taken from the light on the mole at Ceuta. The Merle ran close in on the eastern side of Gibraltar. The great rock, sheer and silver-gray in the moonlight, rose out of the raging seas which ringed it about with a zone of roaring breakers. Grimly self-reliant, it stood grand, silent, stupendous, unassailable in the midst of the turmoil and uproar. As the yacht raced by, staggering under her reefed canvas, Taberman regarded the rock, in face of which their craft seemed a mere mote on the blast, with a feeling as near awe as it is possible for buoyant youth to feel. He did not speak until the Merle had swept past the rock-hewn fortress. Then he drew a deep breath and bent over so that Jack could hear him amid the hissing of the sirocco. "That's immense, Jack, isn't it?" he said. Without taking his eyes from the throat of the mainsail he was watching as a physician at a crisis watches the pulse of a patient, Jack nodded a deep assent. At times the Merle seemed fairly to leap like a flying fish from one wave-crest to the next in her northeasterly flight. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Six DINNER ASHORE On a Thursday afternoon in the middle of July, the Merle dropped anchor behind the inner mole of Nice. In her course northward from the Straits, she had passed to the eastward of the Baleares, crossed the Gulf of Lyons, and run smoothly into harbor before the same powerful wind that had greeted her so boisterously on her entrance into the Middle Sea. The moment when the port officer came aboard had been a nervous one, but the dapper little official had merely glanced at the yacht's papers, complimented the captain on his seamanship, and then gone ashore without a sign of suspicion. The yacht had no sooner been made trig and ship-shape, her sails stopped with "harbor furl," the canvas covers on, the boats unlashed and swung on the davits, the running-rigging coiled down, and the details proper to coming into port attended to, than Jack, unable to put off going ashore until the morrow, gave orders for the crew to turn out in their best attire. Then with Taberman he went below to array himself for the land. In Castleport's mind the idea of calling on Mrs. Fairhew and Miss Marchfield, who he knew should now be in Nice, was paramount to all else. He would see Mrs. Fairhew, he would see Katrine, and then--well, then it would be time to consider. Once below, Jack and Jerry began the overhauling of their wardrobes, doing their dressing half in their staterooms and half in the cabin, that they might go on with afternoon tea at the same time. During the voyage they had gone about most of the time in flannel shirts and duck trousers, the only two rules in regard to toilet having been that they should shave regularly, and that they should not come to dinner in oilers, no matter what the weather. The first rule had been framed by Jack; and Tab, as author of the second, had declared that he would rather eat hardtack in his pajamas, than a six-course dinner in his oilers. Now, as they stood in the doors of their staterooms examining their shore clothing,--each holding, like the Hatter at the trial of the Knave of Hearts, a teacup in his hand,--they had the air of being almost surprised at finding themselves in possession of so many garments, or of not knowing exactly what to do with them. "Got any extra duck trow-trows, Jack?" asked Jerry. "We made a great mistake not shipping a laundress along with the other stores." "Hanging them up on the rigging to dry doesn't give them an extra fine polish," Jack returned. "I have two pairs I've been saving for shore, and I suppose I can sacrifice one of them on the altar of friendship." "That's truly noble of you," Tab said, coming over to Jack's cabin after the clean ducks; "but it's all right. When we go ashore we'll take Gonzague and a bag of things, and have some real washing done on land. What's that official-looking envelope?" From the pocket of a coat which Castleport had thrown aside in his search for the desired garment, a long blue envelope, still sealed, had fallen to the floor. Jack pounced upon it, with an exclamation of dismay. "Great guns!" he exclaimed. "It's Uncle Randolph's mail!" "It's what?" "Why," the captain explained, rummaging in the pocket from which the letter had fallen and producing a couple of others, "I told you about the boy's bringing out the letters to the Merle while she was changing crews at North Haven." "You mean the letters the boy brought out for the President?" "Yes, damn it!" responded the other, regarding the letters with a troubled brow. "This is a pretty kettle of fish. Uncle Randolph's letters are apt to be important, and this one has a beastly official look. It's sure to be something that couldn't wait. It's probably the thing he was looking for when he gave orders to have his mail brought out to him." "'If not delivered in five days return to R. B. Tillington, 57 State Street, Boston,'" read Jerry over his shoulder. "Tillington's the zinc-mine man, isn't he?" "Zinc, copper, gold,--any old thing that you can make a mining speculation out of. I think he's a slippery old fraud, but he's hand in glove with Uncle Randolph; or rather they have a lot of business together. Uncle Randolph thinks Tillington wouldn't dare to play him false, but he's an eely old beggar. Anyhow, this letter may mean the making or the losing of a fortune for all I know. Gad! Running away with his yacht is nothing to going off with his letters!" "I don't suppose it would do to mail them here?" suggested Jerry. "That would dish us all right," Jack answered. "It would give us away by the postmark. Uncle Randolph isn't likely to think of our coming across. He can't know we were provisioned, and he very likely thinks we are still knocking about on the other side of the Atlantic." "He might find out about the stores by asking at the express offices and that sort of thing." "Why should he, unless something puts the idea into his head?" "I suppose he wouldn't," Jerry assented thoughtfully. "How would it do to return this letter to Tillington?" "Just as bad as to send it direct to Uncle Randolph. Once let them know at home where we are, and we are done for fast enough." "Well," Taberman said, after a brief pause in which he had apparently been summing up the situation in his mind, "the harm's done by this time, anyway; and I don't see that there's anything for us but to stick to our guns, blow high, blow low. We'll mail 'em when we get ready to go back." Castleport regarded the letters in his hand gravely. "I suppose there's nothing else to do," he said slowly. "The Merle is of course registered at Lloyd's, and he'd only have to cable over to have us nabbed anywhere along the whole coast." "He may see the arrival in the shipping-lists as it is, I should think," Jerry observed rather gloomily. "Of course; but we've got to run our chances on that. He's not very much in the habit of studying the sailing-lists as far as I know, but he may do it now. Anyway we've got to run for luck." "The luck has been pretty good so far," was Jerry's consoling observation; "and I won't begin to distrust it now." The result of the conversation was that the letters were put carefully away, and the two adventurers resolved not to worry about them. Castleport admitted that the matter troubled him not a little, but he was under the circumstances disposed to accept his comrade's very sensible observation that after all the letters might be of no especial importance. "You see," Jerry said, with a laugh, as he gulped down the last of his tea, which had had time to become thoroughly cold, "we are really pirates, and here you go bringing the conscience of a gentleman into the business. None of that." Castleport laughed, and once more their attention was given to dressing for the shore. No one aboard understood the care and manipulation of the small steam-launch which the President used on state occasions, so they went ashore in the big cutter, with six men to pull and old Gonzague in charge. They landed at the quays, and left Gonzague to act as interpreter and mentor to the men, while they took their way across the Quay Rosaglio and along the narrow Rue Paglione. They came out soon upon the Promenade des Anglais, thronged, in spite of the time of year, with foreigners of many nationalities. Delicate French ladies in the latest fashions from Paris, were here escorted by anæmic gentlemen looking absurdly out of place in evening dress; vulgar Teutons in baggy trousers with impossibly dowdy wives, legitimate evolutions from generations of sauerkraut and beer; now and then an unmistakable "remittance man" from England, with puffy eye-sockets and brutal face, accompanied by the companion paid by some noble family to take charge of the prodigal till he drank himself into a dishonored grave; the British cleric, too, with the inevitable string of hopelessly dull daughters tagging after him like bobs on a kite; swarthy Roumanians or Swabians; Russians deep-eyed and surrounded by an almost palpable atmosphere of haughtiness; in a word, the cosmopolitan crowd of a fashionable promenade of Southern Europe. Through such a throng Jack and Jerry made their way toward the centre of the foreign element of the better sort, the Hôtel des Anglais. As they reached their destination, Jack became visibly excited, and made his way to the office with an air of determination vastly amusing to his companion. He was on the point of asking for Mrs. Fairhew when he was startled by a voice behind him. "Why, Mr. Castleport!" Her voice! Jack spun around like a teetotum. "Katrine--Miss Marchfield!" he cried. "How do you do? I--I-- You know, I came here--this minute--I was just going to ask if you were here." "Well," laughed the lady, whose heightened color and shining eyes were evidences of a pleasant excitement, "you see I am.--Oh, Mr. Taberman, how do you do? I'm delighted to see you." "How are you?" responded Jerry, taking her slim hand in his own hard paw. "It's awfully jolly to see you here. How's Mrs. Fairhew? Well, I hope." "Yes, thank you," answered Katrine. "She's never better than when she's traveling, you know." Miss Katrine Marchfield was one of those girls who, though not beautiful, are more than pretty. She was too attractive to be fairly disposed of by being credited with mere prettiness; yet she had not fully that quality, august and indefinable, which confers upon the fortunate possessor real beauty. She was slightly above medium height, and could now, having been out for a couple of winters, carry herself exquisitely. A beautiful figure could not have been denied her by the most envious rival; and her fairly broad shoulders, always drawn well back, gave her a charming air of delicately athletic power. Her face, at first merely piquant,--perhaps from the slight arching of her eyebrows and the wholly delightful way in which she carried her head,--showed at a second glance, by the height of the forehead, the clear chiseling of the features, and the intelligent sympathy of the gray eyes, a true and sensitive nobility of nature which gave to her countenance a charm at once fine and abiding. Her eyes Jack--and for that matter a score of adoring youths--considered her greatest beauty. They were at times thoughtful, at others sparkling with vivacity. Now and then they might be surprised in a quickly vanishing expression wistful or even almost sad, as if some deeper self looked out but did not will to be seen. A mouth small, the upper lip a trifle fuller than the under; a nose almost Greek; and above the high forehead a cloud of dusky brown hair,--these physical attributes, with a sympathetic temperament and a mind sensible yet deliciously feminine, a pleasant voice and a delightful laugh, had won for Katrine Marchfield more conquests than could be boasted by many an older woman of really marked beauty. Her relations with Jack Castleport, whether she had admitted it to herself or not, had for some time been greatly different from those she held with any one else. They had met at a dinner shortly after Katrine, for two years doubly orphaned, had come from Philadelphia to live with her widowed aunt, Mrs. Fairhew, in Boston. After meeting Katrine, Castleport had taken to calling at Mrs. Fairhew's, at first nominally to see the aunt and later frankly to see the niece. He was at this time a Junior at Harvard, and a popular man on both sides of the river; the acquaintance during his Senior year had ripened into friendship, and the most important feature of Class Day for Jack was the presence of Miss Marchfield; he had thought more of her in the audience than of the dignitaries on the platform when on Commencement Day he had taken his degree; and what with dancing with Katrine, driving with Katrine, and dreaming of Katrine for the winter which lay between Harvard and this summer, he had come to measure the uses of life chiefly as they might help to make her care for him or to reveal to him what were her feelings toward him. For a moment or two the three Americans stood talking near the desk of the hotel. Then Miss Marchfield stepped forward and dropped into the mail-box some letters she was carrying. "If you'll excuse me one minute," she said, "I'll send for Aunt Anne, and see about dinner. Of course you'll stay to dine?" "Delighted," Jack said. "That is," he added, "if it's all right for us in these clothes. You see, we stupidly came off without evening togs." "That's all right," Katrine returned; and went away smiling. Jack looked after her with an expression which made Jerry smile. "Gad! She's looking ten times better than when she left home," Tab said in an undertone. "She always does," the captain responded with fervent fatuousness. "She can't help it, you know. God bless me," he added with equal fervor and absurdity, "it's worth coming over steerage just to hear her voice!" "Well, you _are_ hit!" commented his friend; and then, seeing a shade come over Jack's face, he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder, and added: "Don't mind my chaff, old man. I really wish you all kinds of luck." Jack gave him a flash of sympathy and understanding, and then turned his head aside. "Pity we haven't got evening slops," Jerry remarked, by way of changing the conversation; "but I suppose we'll do, seeing the way we came over, and all that." "I'm not worrying about clothes," returned the captain of the Merle. "Men wear all sorts of things traveling. I'm thinking what Mrs. Fairhew'll say about our being here in the yacht without Uncle Randolph." "What's your game if we're quizzed about the President?" "I'm hanged if I really know," Jack returned; "but I've got to pull it through somehow, and you'll have to follow my lead." He had time to say no more, for Katrine came forward to rejoin them, and before she had reached the friends, Mrs. Fairhew appeared. Mrs. Fairhew was a striking woman of some forty years, of medium height, with quick and alert bearing, with the unmistakable air of a well-bred woman of the world. A widow of some six years, she still, except upon occasions of particular state, wore black,--from devotional feeling, according to her friends, and, according to the captious, because it so well became her. Between her and her niece existed a subtle and baffling likeness, but in what it consisted one would have found it well-nigh impossible to say. Of good birth, perfect breeding, and a wide social experience, she possessed also an intellect naturally good and improved by careful training; while for her rare good taste she was perhaps equally indebted to nature and to a somewhat old-fashioned training in whatever is best in the English classics. With these good gifts and graces and a perfect poise, she combined whatever is most admirable in the best type of American gentlewoman. "Mr. Castleport," she said, giving that gentleman her hand with gracious cordiality, "this is an unexpected pleasure! How do you do, Mr. Taberman. I am very glad to see you both." Greetings were exchanged, and then, after a moment's chatting, the men gave over their hats to an attendant, and the party went into the dining-room. On account of the season, the number of people at the hotel was comparatively small, and the huge _salle à manger_, with its slim pilasters and its long French windows, its tubs of palmetto and oleander, might have impressed Jack and Jerry as rather barn-like and forsaken had either been in the mood to find anything in their surroundings unsatisfactory. The four made their way to a small square table in an alcove, behind which stood a tall, round-shouldered waiter in an antediluvian dress-suit. Jack put Katrine into her chair and was placed next her, and with much pleasant talk the party began dinner. The fish was served before any mention was made of the President. Then Jack suddenly found himself in dangerous waters, owing to a random remark from Mrs. Fairhew. "And Mr. Drake?" she asked. "What a pity he didn't come too. I suppose he couldn't get away." "Not on the Merle," responded Jack. "It takes a long time to cross on such a small boat." Jerry watched his friend closely to detect signs of embarrassment, but was able to perceive nothing more than a faint flush in the brown cheeks. He recalled the captain's words about following his lead, and at this point, in his own picturesque phraseology, "shoved in his oar." "Besides," he said glibly, with a secret mischievous glee at feeling Jack's anxious eye upon him, "it's so hard to get the President away from his everlasting bridge,--_Pons Asinorum_, I call it. When we left North Haven he was so absorbed in his game that he didn't even see us off." "I didn't know he was so attached to cards," Mrs. Fairhew commented, with a smile. "As you have the yacht, Mr. Taberman, you should at least speak well of the bridge that has brought you over." "Did Mr. Drake put you two in charge of his sailing-master, Mr. Taberman?" asked Katrine, with a suspicion of a glance at Jack, as if she meant to tease him. "No," returned Jerrold. "Jack and I did the navigating; he's a past master, I assure you." "Yes," rejoined Katrine, "but I should have fancied he would have had some one that was--Well, some one with a professional experience, you know." "If the idea struck him he didn't mention it," put in Jack. "If it occurred to him after we left, I can't tell, as I haven't heard from him." "Haven't heard from him!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairhew in mild surprise. "Haven't you been to your bankers?" "Haven't been anywhere except at this hotel," Jack returned sturdily; and then added: "It was after bank hours when we came ashore." "Of course you cabled him your arrival?" "Mercy! I might have done that, mightn't I? Upon my word, it never occurred to me." "Thoughtful of you," Katrine commented demurely. "Well, I did get some letters ready to send to him," Jack protested, while Jerry grinned broadly. "Got them ready! How like a man!" laughed Mrs. Fairhew. "A woman would have had them ready before she saw land, and had them mailed by the time the anchor was down." "So did Jack have them ready," put in Jerry imperturbably. "Then it's doubly dreadful that they are not posted," retorted Mrs. Fairhew. Jack leaned forward and settled a pink candle-shade that threatened a conflagration, and by a comment on the inflammability of these table ornaments managed to bring the conversation into safer channels. In the course of the talk it transpired that the ladies had no very definite plans, except that Mrs. Fairhew had determined, despite the heat of the Italian summer, to visit an old school friend, whose husband was vice-consul at Naples. "I fancy," she said, "that we shall go straight to Genoa. I'm going to make Katrine work, and to see that she does her duty by the galleries and things,--Florence and all the Tuscan cities, you know. Then Rome and the Campagna. It will be dreadfully hard on us both, I dare say, but we shall be upheld by the proud consciousness of doing our best." She made a little gesture of comical despair, and her niece laughed. "It would doubtless be intolerable to either of you without the other," said Jerry in one of his boyishly elaborate attempts to be gallant. Mrs. Fairhew regarded him with a glance well-bred though quizzical, but evidently perceived that he was completely sincere in his desire to say something agreeable, and smiled, although less broadly than Katrine, who showed in her amusement a row of beautiful teeth. "Won't it be pretty hot in the south?" asked Jack. "I've never been in Naples in summer, nor south of Rome, in fact; but I've always been told that it is too torrid for foreigners." "Oh, we are used to it," Mrs. Fairhew returned. "Besides, it is after all the English that have spread the stories about Italy's being so hot. They've been kept at so low a temperature all their lives by their horrid fogs that they're the greatest babies imaginable about climate." "I fancy you're right," assented Jack. "At all events, as you are used to all climates, and as Miss Marchfield comes from Philadelphia"-- "Oh, but I've never been there in summer," Katrine broke in. "And, besides, I've lived in Boston so long that"-- "That you can stand anything?" interrupted Jerry in turn. "I think I can," laughed Katrine. Mrs. Fairhew toyed with her coffee-spoon thoughtfully a moment; then she looked up at Jack. "Where are you bound, Mr. Castleport?" she asked. "I don't know," Jack answered quite frankly. "I think we shall probably coast along--Monaco, Bordighera, and Mentone, you know; and then go to Genoa. Then perhaps we'll see Elba and Naples and Capri. After that we must start for home. Nothing is settled with us." "I detest Monaco," Mrs. Fairhew said, with some irrelevance. "Why?" inquired Jack, with a smile. "Does the gambling offend the Puritan that is in every Bostonian?" "It certainly does," was the reply, "though my aversion isn't entirely a matter of conscience. I bought it on the spot for a thousand francs." "That was awfully dear," remarked Jerry. "It would have been much cheaper to be born with it." "As in your case?" asked the lady, raising her eyebrows a little and smiling. "Oh, one can't inherit all the virtues!" responded Taberman with the greatest seriousness. "Most certainly not," laughed Mrs. Fairhew. "At least I had not that good fortune." "Nature left you one to get for yourself, because she knew you'd do it so easily," Tab said gallantly. "Really," cried the lady, "you are evidently determined to overwhelm me, Mr. Taberman. Compliments drop from your lips like the traditional showers of pearls." "There are frogs too in that fairy story," suggested Jack. "Oh, Mr. Castleport," declared Katrine, coming to the rescue of Jerry, "that is simply brutal." "Of course it's brutal," retorted Jack, willfully twisting her meaning, "but he keeps it up all the same." Jerry tried to defend himself by charging Jack with never being able to appreciate a compliment unless he were himself the subject, and so they drifted lightly from one bit of good-natured raillery to another. Now and then a more serious note was struck, and through it all the spirit of the party was more kindly and friendly than could be pictured by any words in which they might have tried to express it. When dinner was over, they went for a short stroll on the promenade. It naturally happened that Mrs. Fairhew walked with Taberman, and that Jack and Katrine strolled on together some little distance behind. "You don't know," said Jack, for the fourth or fifth time that evening, but with an evident sincerity which might have excused even further repetition, "how good it is to see you again." "Yes," Katrine responded with a carelessness too complete to be entirely genuine, "I suppose that it must be pleasant for you to see any one after being cooped up in a boat for five or six weeks." "That's not at all what I meant," he returned pointedly, and with a little vexation. "Perhaps not; but it's practically what you said." "I said it gave me pleasure to see you," Jack insisted, with a daring emphasis on the final pronoun. "Oh, a compliment!" she exclaimed, as if the thought had just struck her. "You may take it as such," he replied rather grumpily. "It's the feminine attitude toward everything." Katrine was silent a moment, examining with an appearance of the greatest interest the ground at her feet. "How queer you are this evening," she said at length. "Am I?" he retorted. "Well, I suppose if I'm only amusing into the bargain that's all that's necessary." Another brief interval of silence intervened, and then he remarked blunderingly:-- "I suppose it makes very little difference to you whether you see any one while you're here." "What an atrocious reflection on my efforts to be entertaining," she laughed. "Oh," he said savagely, "that's a nice meaning to twist out of my words! You know I don't mean that." "You seem to have some difficulty in saying what you do mean this evening," Katrine commented mockingly. Jack laughed uneasily, with that absurdly tragic air possible only to a young man much in love. "See here," he asked explosively, "why do you think I came over here?" "I'm sure I can't say, Mr. Castleport," she replied, with a touch of coolness. "I never was good at riddles. Don't you think we had better catch up with Aunt Anne and Mr. Taberman?" And greatly to his own disgust, and perhaps, could he but have known the truth, to the secret disappointment of Katrine, Jack acted upon her suggestion without a word more. As they were taking leave of the ladies at the hotel a little later, Jerry broke out with a clumsily worded invitation that they should on the morrow go for a sail on the Merle. "You are really very good, Mr. Taberman," Mrs. Fairhew said, "but I 'm afraid it's only half an invitation, for Mr. Castleport doesn't second it." "I certainly do," Jack responded. "I was hesitating only because I didn't think the yacht, just in from an ocean voyage, was exactly in trim. I wasn't sure it was fair to invite you." "I think we can put up with anything that is amiss in that line," Mrs. Fairhew answered, smiling. "What do you say, Katrine? Would you like to go?" "Very much, Aunt Anne," her niece said, with a quick little glance at Jack, a sort of bird-twinkle of the eyes, "if we shall not be too intrusive." "Capital!" cried Jack, whose good nature had returned, and who was anxious to make amends for his fit of pique. "I'll call for you in the morning at about noon, if that will suit you. We shall want a little time to get the yacht in trim." "Any time after ten will do for us," Mrs. Fairhew answered. "Don't, I beg, bother too much about making things neat. I know how necessary disorder is to the real happiness of you men." [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Seven LUNCHEON ABOARD Noon. The famous promenade was deserted, and all the foreigners who were able were safe in the coolest retirement of their little pink and white villas. A warm off-shore breeze wandered through the silent streets of Nice, came to the water-front, and there, as if alarmed by the noise and bustle of the few sailors and fishermen whom the heat had not driven from the quays, grew brisker and fled away southward over the sea. Down one of the smaller streets between the Hôtel des Anglais and the Porta Vecchia, Mrs. Fairhew and her niece, escorted by Jack, were making their way. Miss Marchfield, dressed in a simple gown of white, looked deliciously rosy under her red sunshade. Mrs. Fairhew walked in the narrow strip of shadow next the wall; Katrine was between her and Jack, who, owing to the straitness of the sidewalk, picked his way--to the evident amusement of Miss Marchfield--along the kennel. As Katrine was fond of him, she paradoxically took unfailing delight in seeing him humiliated, always provided, of course, that no one other than herself was the author of the discomfort. The three were nearing the water-front when the elder lady broke a silence of some minutes' duration. "I hope the yacht is not very much farther, Mr. Castleport," she ventured. "No," Jack answered, "she's at the foot of the next street. 'Twas awfully stupid of me not to have got hold of a fiacre, but it seems so short a distance for me to walk that I didn't think." "I wonder why a yacht is always _she_ and _her_," observed Katrine. "Why not _it_?" "Oh, the reason's plain enough," was Jack's answer. "Yachts have two characteristics that are thoroughly feminine,--caprice and beauty." "It is good of you to temper the aspersion on my sex with a compliment," Katrine returned. "It is obliging in me," Jack assented; "but politeness requires that I should stretch a point, since you are my guest." "I am sorry to put you to the inconvenience," she said. "Of being polite? Thank you!" "Do you know, I'm sorry that your uncle is not here, Mr. Castleport," said Mrs. Fairhew, as they turned the corner. "It is all very well to have an old woman for a chaperon, but it is rather hard on you and Mr. Taberman not to have some older man to talk to me." "Oh, you mustn't depreciate your charm at the expense of your age," Jack cried. "Very pretty," laughed Mrs. Fairhew; "but your uncle"-- "Ouch!" exclaimed Jack, making a fine show of stubbing the toe of his rubber-soled shoe against a projecting paving-stone. "What did you say?" inquired Katrine, with an air of mild interest. "Nothing. I stubbed my toe on that beastly stone," answered Jack, with a feeling of satisfaction that the President was once more shelved. "Now," he added, "the boat is just here." A small but motley crowd was scattered along the water-front: bronzed fishermen, with close-cropped hair and long earrings, carrying osier baskets of shining sardines from their boats to their little carts; fat, raucous-voiced women, with red or yellow scarves pinned across their bosoms; lean-shanked 'longshoremen, too old for the sea this many a day; brown sailors, picking their way among the piles of iridescent fish,--liver-colored squid and flabby octopi; half-naked boys, outrageous and beautiful; with a miscellaneous sprinkling of human flotsam and jetsam, as if the sea had cast them up battered and damaged. Over all floated a distracting hubbub, made up of the rattling of cart-wheels on the flags, the shrill cries of the venders, the calls of the lads, the songs of the fishermen, and a medley of oaths, jests, curses, directions, questions, and all sorts of vociferous shoutings. Both the ladies drew closer to Jack, who, masterfully making his way through the press, piloted them across the quay. At the landing-steps they found Jerry and the Merle's cutter, the object of the staring curiosity and admiration of the wharf-rats and the loungers of the docks. "Good-morning, Mr. Taberman. Have we kept you waiting long?" asked Mrs. Fairhew. Tab had been broiling for half an hour, but was too courteous to say so. He responded cheerily, then helped the ladies aboard, and established them in the sheets. Jack took the tiller-lines, word was given, and the men fell to pulling. The breeze was fresher and cooler on the water; it made the ripples dance and glitter in the sunshine, and kept playfully curling the ensign at the stern of the cutter about Jack's head. According to previous instructions, the watch on the Merle got up anchor on seeing the cutter leave the quay, and were now holding the yacht in the wind's eye. When the boat came alongside, the ladies were handed aboard, the guest-salute was fired, the cutter was hoisted to the davits, and the yacht was paid off. They ran out past the old battery and the lighthouse on the outer mole, and coasted along to the westward. In the bright sunlight the numerous dwellings--villas, hotels, and _pensions_--showing among the green foliage of the trees looked very gay and attractive. The sea was dimpled with laughter. The breeze, although it gave promise of freshening, was now only strong enough to make the schooner, which was carrying all sail, heel gracefully as she slipped along. The day was perfect for light sailing. At one o'clock old Gonzague, his linen jacket dazzling in its whiteness and his snowy hair brushed back from his high forehead, served luncheon. Jack sat by Mrs. Fairhew on the starboard side, with Katrine and Jerry opposite. Gonzague had outdone himself for the occasion. A Provençal by birth, he knew the culinary value of all the wares--to foreign eyes so puzzlingly useless and hopelessly inedible--displayed in Mediterranean markets. The dishes which appeared on the table made Jack and Tab stare: fresh sardines broiled and served with some mysterious sauce of which they tried in vain to guess the ingredients; something which Katrine pronounced delicious until she discovered it to be cuttlefish, and then could not be prevailed upon to taste further; a salad which had lettuce as its obvious foundation, but which was fragrant with a dozen strange and piquant herbs; ripe citrons and limes; figs and bullaces; and a wonderful fruity sherbet for dessert. "Do you generally fare like this on board the Merle?" Mrs. Fairhew inquired. "If you do, I should like to come here to board while you are in harbor." "Not much," returned Jerry bluntly. "This is all Gonzague's gallantry to you ladies. As a rule he gives us only pork and beans." "Dear me," she commented. "That's pretty hard fare." "Do you really have to live on pork and beans on a cruise?" asked Katrine. "Jerry was only speaking figuratively," explained Jack, with a laugh. "Of course we do better than that. The only time we really suffered was in a bit of a shake-up we had on the way over. The second week out we had a blow, and had to live on hardtack and coffee for three days." "And Gonzague must have stood on his head to make the coffee, too," put in Tab. "Was it really so bad as that?" asked Katrine. "I mean," she explained as the others laughed, "did it really blow so hard he couldn't cook things?" "Well," responded Taberman, "for forty hours we had it so hard we jolly well thought we'd have to cut." "Cut?" queried Mrs. Fairhew. "Yes, the sticks, you know," Jack explained. From the expression on her face it was abundantly evident that the lady did not know, but she said nothing. She had but the most casual acquaintance with nautical affairs, and made no pretense of understanding the speech of mariners; and she was always willing to let a matter of this sort go, rather than to submit to a lengthy exposition. Katrine, on the other hand, while of course not proficient in the art of handling yachts, knew enough to appreciate that when cutting away the masts had been contemplated, things must have been at a pass really dangerous. Now she made no comment, but she gave a swift glance at Jack, that had in it much of the admiration which Desdemona felt at the recital of the perils through which Othello had borne himself bravely. Jack happened to catch her eye; she flushed and turned to Jerry. "Don't you tire of it all?" she asked. "I should think that to have the monotony broken only by danger in which you can't have any rest or comfort would be dreadfully wearisome." "Oh, it's great sport!" cried Tab heartily. "Besides, you know, there are no end of things to do." "Such as what?" inquired Mrs. Fairhew. "I've always found the ocean voyage the most boresome thing about traveling, although I'm a perfectly good sailor." "Oh," said Jerry, with a flourish of his cigarette,--for coffee had been served and the ladies had permitted smoking,--"there are rope-ends to be attended to, and gear changed, and all that sort of thing, besides seeing that the men go over the brasswork properly every day; and there is taking sights, and making reckonings, and all sorts of things." "But I thought the men did all the work on the ropes and things." "So they do," Jack said, with a smile; "but it is our business to tell them what to do and to see that they do it. You must remember that we are the ship's officers." "We have to look things over all the time," Jerry added. "Just before we went ashore to-day I saw a thing that'll have to be attended to as soon as we get back at anchor. The fore-peak halyards are 'most chafed through where they reeve through the block on the cap." "Dear me!" said Mrs. Fairhew. "Is it dangerous?" "Not in the least dangerous," Jack returned reassuringly. "Is it really bad, Tab?" "Oh, well, I fancy it'll hold; leastways if there's no sudden strain on it. The rope's new enough; but it jammed there the other day, you remember." "Well, let's go on deck," suggested the captain. "It's such a gorgeous day, it's a shame to miss any of it." On coming up they found that the wind had so freshened that the fore-topsail and staysail had been struck, as well as the outer jib. "We can run on till about four o'clock," Castleport said, "and have plenty of time to run back with this wind." They still held to the westward, keeping about a mile off shore, now and then passing fishing craft, headed for Nice, their big lateen sails shining in the sunlight. Jack, watching Katrine keenly, read her delight and enjoyment in her eyes, and could see how she responded to the beauty of the day, the picturesqueness of the shore, the exhilaration of the wind, and the sparkling sea. At eight bells they had tea _au Russe_ on deck, and before they had finished drinking it the Merle was put about and headed for the harbor. They had hardly gone a knot before they fell in with a large black yawl flying the English colors and the burgee of the Royal Yacht Squadron. She was sailing easily along under all lower canvas, her black hull lifting gracefully over the sloping seas at about two cable-lengths ahead. She was in cruising rig, with no boom to her mainsail, yet was so large that her spread of canvas was at half a glance much greater than that of the Merle. She crossed the schooner's bows, and then, luffing occasionally, waited until the American yacht was on her beam. "Looks's though she wanted something of us," remarked Jerry. "Will you take another look at her, Miss Marchfield?" And he handed her the glasses. "She is a beauty!" exclaimed Katrine, regarding the yawl through the binoculars. "I can see her name now. I-s-i-s Isis, of--of Plymouth. Don't you want to look at her, Aunt Anne?" Mrs. Fairhew took the glasses with the air of a person doing a favor, and stared at the yawl in a perfunctory manner. "What an absurd bobtail of a sail that is set 'way back," she observed. "It looks quite like a deformity." "That's for balance in heavy weather," said Jerry, with gusto. "Hadn't we better salute, Jack?" "I suppose so," was the answer. "See; he's fallen off. Means to give us a run for it, I fancy." The Merle dipped her ensign, and the Englishman returned the salute in kind. "I say," cried Jerry, "they're setting their topsail. They want a race in earnest." "They've an able boat, to carry all sail when it's breezed up like this," commented Jack, giving the black yawl a critical look. "Come!" urged Tab. "Let's take a brace and give 'em a run for their money. We can beat 'em all right enough, both sides of the Atlantic." Jack looked first at Katrine and then at her aunt. "Would you mind?" he asked. "Mind?" cried Mrs. Fairhew, "I shouldn't mind it the least in the world--especially if we beat them." "All right," shouted Tab, leaping boyishly out of his wicker chair. "We'll show 'em! Watch along!" he roared to the crew. "Sway up on the main-peak halyards there," sang out Jack, who had also started up quickly. "That's good! Fore-peak now--that'll do! Set fore-topsail there--haul away! Good enough! All hands up to windward!" Then he turned to the helmsman. "I'll take her," he said. "You get up to windward with the rest." The man handed the helm over to him, and the race began. The yawl was on the windward beam, and both she and the schooner were carrying so much sail as now and again to be heeled lee rail under. At the end of twenty minutes the American boat seemed to be drawing ahead, although the Englishman, his red flag blowing out from his maintop, was still to windward. Katrine and her aunt had abandoned their chairs for the weather transom of the cockpit. Katrine was thoroughly alive to the excitement of this impromptu contest, while Mrs. Fairhew's well-bred face wore a smile which might be taken to signify either her superiority to such a youthful means of enjoyment or confidence in the power of the Merle to outstrip her rival. Jack, his strong, shapely hands grasping the spokes of the wheel, glanced only from the sails aloft to the yawl and back again. Katrine watched him furtively. His keen, eager pose, wholly free from self-consciousness and suggestive of power and vigilant activity, his masterful management of his craft,--she noted them all, and felt a certain pleasure in them, as if in some way she were responsible for them. "Think we'll come 'round, Jerrold," said the captain. He gave a rapid succession of orders as he twirled the spokes to port. The Merle came about on the other tack, the men got to stations on the weather side, and the ladies changed their places. "Now we'll see how much we've gained on them," said Jerry, half to the guests and half to himself. They drove toward the shore in the roughening sea, the port runway being now covered with a thin sheet of hissing green water. Up forward an occasional wave would come slap against the yacht's shoulder with a sound like a rifle-shot. The Isis crossed their bows at a distance so little ahead of them that her name and hail could be read easily without the aid of a glass. "We're outfooting them, Jack. We'll have 'em cold in twenty minutes!" cried Tab enthusiastically. "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," laughed Katrine. "Oh, but we can't help doing 'em," he responded. "We'll have 'em so walloped that they'll go into dry-dock for a month." "You'd better rap on wood, Mr. Taberman," cautioned Mrs. Fairhew, with a smile. "I don't wish to be a croaking raven, but surely they're ahead now." Mrs. Fairhew had, as the race went on, grown more and more alert. Her eyes had in them the spark of a genuine lover of sport, and all the womanly love of contest and conquest showed in the eagerness of her pose and air. "Of course they're ahead," Jerry answered; "but we have the wind of them by a good deal." "I hope that means something," the lady commented, with a movement of the head half eager, half humorous, "but I confess that it is all Greek to me." Jerry began to explain, but before he could make things clear to the lady's unnautical mind, the yacht came about again to the port tack. The Merle was then so far to weather of the yawl that Jack ordered the sheets to be started a trifle. "Now then, Jerry, here's where we overhaul them," Jack cried exultingly. "Just set the balloon-jib outside the headsails. I think she'll stand it." "Want the staysail?" asked the mate. "No--'twould spoil her helm," returned the captain. "Jump along, old man." The change was effected as quickly as might be, and the yacht's speed was visibly increased. "That yawl's better on the wind than off," the captain commented. "We're picking up on 'em now like smoke." After an hour's chase and half an hour's jockeying off the mouth of the port, the Merle was about to run in when the English yacht luffed up and crossed the schooner's bows. Both boats were close-hauled, but the American was on the starboard tack and had the right of way. The helmsman of the Isis gave Jack his choice of running the yawl down or luffing himself. Jack chose the latter alternative; although naturally angry at such an unsportsmanlike trick, he could not take risks with his uncle's yacht, least of all with the ladies on board. The Englishman did not spare him, but first blanketed him, and then, putting his helm up and leaving the Merle with a small ledge frothing to leeward, forced the schooner about. Under his tan Jack grew white with indignant anger. He was not the man to lose his temper in his pastimes, but he had a strong sense of justice, a thorough contempt for trickery, and he was quick to resent a deliberate outrage of this sort. The performance was so evidently premeditated on the part of the Isis that it amounted to a most flagrant insult, a cold-blooded piece of sporting caddishness. The only remedy possible under the circumstances was a desperate one, but in his state of mind he did not hesitate. "Stand by to jibe!" he roared. "Cast off the topsail halyards! Now aft on the sheets!" It was blowing too hard for jibing with safety even under reduced cloth, and barring staysail and topsails, the Merle was under full canvas. "My God!" exclaimed Jerry to the winds, as he tumbled aft to help on the sheet, "he'll pull the sticks out of her! Something's bound to go!" Jack held the wheel hard up, and the schooner swung steadily off. The booms rushed over the decks, fetched up with a crash, and then swung out as the men payed off the sheets. The lee rail went clean under, and for a second or two unpleasant and portentous creakings and groanings filled the air. The men flew about with wonderful dexterity, while the two ladies held on to each other to avoid being pitched headlong. "Are any of your teeth shaken out, Katrine?" Mrs. Fairhew inquired, when they were able once more to sit up. "All mine were loosened by that awful jerk." "They are all safe, Aunt Anne," Katrine cried, her voice vibrant with delighted excitement. "Isn't it splendid?" Her hair was blowing about her face, her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed; and Jack, though his swift glance merely caught a view of her as it flashed up to the sails, carried the alluring picture in his mind for many a day. The thought of it was for the time being instantly crowded out of his mind as he caught sight of the rigging. As the Merle had leaped ahead, the fore-peak halyards, which had not been started before the yacht was jibed, had parted. The gaff hung nearly at right angles to the boom, and the sail was being strained out of shape. The captain was so upset that in his rage he was guilty of swearing before ladies. "What shall we do?" sang out Jerry. Jack's cry had called his attention to the mishap, and he had run forward. "Really this grows exciting," remarked Mrs. Fairhew, as if she were at the theatre. "Oh, what a shame! what a shame!" wailed Katrine, looking despairingly up at the drooping gaff. "Get some half-inch on it!" shouted Jack, almost beside himself at having been bullied into this predicament. "Take it out as far as you can! Reeve it through the cap-block first. Move along there! Smartly!" "All right!" cried Tab; and in the same moment, with a coil of new rope over his shoulder, and followed by one of the men, he ran up the weather rigging. On reaching the cross-trees, Tab passed the end of his rope through the block on the masthead cap and fastened it to his belt. Then he swung himself down to the jaws of the gaff and lay out along the spar. The big stick threshed about wildly, threatening to snap him into the sea at every fling. Slowly and painfully he worked his way out. He clung on desperately, so that it seemed like a conscious fight between himself and the plunging spar whether he should be shaken off. It was like a man's trying to tame a bucking horse, only a hundred times more exciting, and Katrine grew pale as she watched, while even Mrs. Fairhew set her lips closely. The three minutes it took Jerry to reach the peak-halyard block seemed to every person on the Merle all but interminable. Twice he nearly fell,--once at the outset when he slipped, and again when he had to crawl around the throat halyards between rolls. The second time he was actually thrown off the spar, but fortunately he held his grip on the halyards. The next lurch of the yacht playfully tossed him into the air, and he was lucky enough to regain his position on the spar. Getting to the peak-block, he unknotted the rope from his belt, passed it about the spar, and took a "timber-hitch." He then slowly worked his way back, and eventually reached the cross-trees in safety. The nervous tension had been so strong that when the men saw him coming down the ratlines they fell to cheering lustily, Gonzague, his white hair ruffled by the wind, waving his arms and out-shouting the whole of them. They speedily got hold of the jury halyard, and even before Jerry had reached the deck, the gaff was again well raised, and the topsail set. In the mean time the Isis had in her turn got into difficulties. It is poor business jockeying among reefs, and the yawl had been forced to come about, luff up, and drift sternwards until her chances of beating the Merle were utterly gone. The fact seemed to be that the English captain had counted upon the Merle's not daring to jibe, and so had been too clever by half. Jerry came aft, very red in the face, and with the customary twinkle in his eye. The ladies were evidently greatly impressed by his feat, and Jack, who of course understood more clearly than they how dangerous the task had been, took one hand off the wheel and wrung Jerry's. "Awfully sorry, old man," he said. "But I was so hot at that Englishman I lost my head for a minute." "Oh, go 'long!" returned Jerry, grinning. "Don't you suppose I was hot myself?" He dropped on to a seat beside Mrs. Fairhew, to recover his breath. "Mr. Taberman," said that lady, "I'm an old woman,"--it was one of Mrs. Fairhew's idiosyncrasies to call attention thus whimsically to the fact that she looked hardly more than thirty,--"I'm an old woman, and consequently I disapprove of rashness; but I don't mind saying that I like your pluck." She looked at him in a curious way, as if he were an amusing case of arrested development, but her glance was full of kindliness. "Thank you," Tab answered, with a smile which was too confused not to be almost a grin. "It's more a sound wind than pluck, I assure you." "It was perfectly magnificent!" Katrine cried. "You're a perfect hero!" They all laughed, more perhaps from the nervous reaction after the strain than from any especial amusement, and Jerry blushed more than ever. "I'm afraid you're inclined to make a mountain out of a molehill," he said. "We don't allow heroics aboard here, you know. Jack did the only"-- "That'll do, Jerry," called Jack from the wheel. "All right, captain," Tab returned, laughing. "Under orders." "Oh, but that's not fair," cried Katrine. "If Mr. Castleport played the hero too, we want to know all about it." "I'll masthead that mate if he goes on talking about his superior officer," Jack threatened. "See, the Isis has given the whole thing up." "She'd better," commented Jerry, "though I don't see that she had anything left to give." The yawl was well astern now. Her sailing-master had for a little time, in a vain endeavor to overtake his rival, pinched his boat unmercifully, so that with her nose in the wind's eye her sails were every now and then a-shiver. Now she had evidently accepted the inevitable, and was making quietly for an anchorage. "Tell us about Mr. Castleport," Katrine said to Jerry in an undertone. "Oh," returned Tab, "he stuck to the wheel over forty-eight hours when we had that blow we were talking about. It was a magnificent thing to do, and I think he saved us from everlasting smash. Of course he pooh-poohs the idea, but Jack's never willing to have anybody say he's done anything big. He's as modest as he is stunning," he ended warmly, throwing at the captain a glance of admiration and affection. Katrine made no audible comment, but her glance followed his, and had Jack intercepted her look at that moment, he might have felt his heart beat more briskly. The superior speed of the Merle, aided by the poor tactics of the skipper of the Isis, who seemed to lose his head when he found he was beaten, gave the American so much the lead that the schooner had dropped her anchor a minute or two before the yawl rounded the inner mole. "I never had so splendid a sail in my life," Katrine said. "I was sure you would beat that other boat, Mr. Castleport," Mrs. Fairhew told him, "and I confess I enjoyed seeing you do it." "I couldn't be so rude as to let you ladies be beaten in a race," the captain responded, laughing. "Of course not," put in Jerry; "no gentleman would let a lady be beaten." "What an atrocious pun!" cried Katrine; "and Mr. Taberman looks actually wistful for fear we shouldn't see it." "Well," her aunt said, moving toward the ladder, where the cutter was in waiting, "it has been a delightful day, and we are greatly obliged." While the ladies were being pulled ashore, and before Jack and Jerry had returned, everything on the Merle was put in order. Just as they went below to dress for going ashore for dinner, a boat from the yawl came alongside with a note for the "Captain of the Merle; sch. Y't." Gonzague brought it to Castleport, who looked at it, and then read it aloud to Jerry. YAWL YACHT ISIS. Y. S. Lord Merryfield presents his compliments to the gentleman who handled the Merle in such a masterly fashion this afternoon, and requests the honor of his presence at dinner on board the Isis this evening at six bells, A. T. It will be an additional pleasure to Lord Merryfield if the gentleman who so pluckily rose to the occasion in the matter of a parted halyard will accompany the captain of the Merle. R. S. V. P. NICE, July 17, 1902. "Rot!" said Jerry inelegantly. "Let me answer it." "Get out!" responded Jack. "I think I can settle him." He got out the President's most elaborate stationery, and after some meditation and the destruction of one or two epistles which would not go quite to suit him, he handed to Jerry the following:-- SCH. YT. MERLE, E. Y. C. Captain John Castleport and Mr. Jerrold Taberman present their compliments to Lord Merryfield and regret that, owing to a previous engagement, it is impossible for them to accept the invitation so kindly tendered to them. Captain Castleport further desires earnestly to express his opinion in regard to having been forced about by the Y. Yt. Isis this afternoon when he had the right of way; and to say that he considers such a manoeuvre so unsportsmanlike and insulting that it should be impossible in a gentleman's race. As the injured party, he ventures to remind Lord Merryfield that the only reparation that can be made is the severest reprimanding of the sailing-master, or whoever was responsible for this inexcusable expedient. NICE, July 17, 1902. "You see," Jack explained, "we let him know what we think of that caddish trick without being in the least rude ourselves. Of course the chances are that he was responsible for the thing himself, and there we have him on the hip." "I suppose it's all right," grumbled Jerry. "You know best; but if I 'd written it, I should have told him straight out that I thought him a damned cad!" [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Eight A CHANGE OF TACTICS As they sat that evening in the garden of the hotel drinking their after-dinner coffee, which the gentlemen accompanied with cigarettes, they discussed the news from home contained in a batch of letters Mrs. Fairhew and her niece had found awaiting them on their return from the yacht. The announcement of an engagement, rumors of flirtations which might end in others, the latest gossip about people they all knew, were mingled with chat about an extraordinary yacht race at Northeast Harbor, a Russian princess at Nahant, an automobile accident at Lenox, and a fresh divorce at Newport. "Everything else," Mrs. Fairhew said at length, "is simply nothing at all in comparison to a piece of business news I received. Have you heard of the Tillington failure?" "What!" cried Jack. "R. B. Tillington?" "Yes. Their own notice was with the other mail this afternoon," she responded. "Liabilities something like a third of a million and their assets nothing." "How in the world did it happen?" asked Tab. "I knew they had a lot to do with mines, and of course those are always risky; but Tillington always had the name of being awfully clever." "Perhaps he was too clever," Jack suggested. "Clever or not," Mrs. Fairhew said, "he has come to grief, and, I am ashamed to confess, he has lost some money for me." "I am very sorry for that," Jack responded. "I'll wager you'll have plenty of distinguished company. I'm awfully afraid Uncle Randolph got his fingers burned. He's had dealings with Tillington for ever so long. I never took kindly to the man myself, but Uncle Randolph had a great opinion of his business sagacity." "I'll wager Mrs. Fairhew's bound to be in good company even in misfortune," Jerry declared with his usual somewhat clumsy gallantry. Mrs. Fairhew smiled, and made a little sweeping gesture with her fan as if the subject were a disagreeable one and should be waved aside. "Even that," she said, "doesn't soothe my wounded vanity. The money I've lost is fortunately not very much, but I pride myself on my business head, and I made this investment in spite of the advice of my banker. Think how he will chuckle! I'd rather have lost three times as much on an investment he selected." "How thoroughly feminine!" Jack laughed. "Of course you can't understand," Katrine struck in. "I agree with Aunt Anne entirely. Of course one would rather lose money than to give a man a chance to crow over her." The talk was thus drawn into the inexhaustible discussion of feminine and masculine characteristics, that topic about which revolves two thirds of all the small talk of the world. Then it drifted back to the personal news of the letters. "I don't think Billy Rafton's to be congratulated," announced Tab emphatically, in reference to a recent wedding. "Edna Leighton has plenty of money of course, and is a stunning girl and all that; but she's so horribly ambitious that she won't give poor Billy a minute's peace." "And Billy is one of the most quiet men alive," put in Jack. "Ambitious?" queried Katrine. "How? I've known her pretty well, and to me she always seemed nice. Certainly she's clever." "So she is clever," Jerry assented; "but of course that'll make it harder for Billy to stand out against her." "She naturally would have the instinct to get ahead in the world," commented Castleport. "Her mother was a Farquhar." "Mr. Castleport," remonstrated Mrs. Fairhew, "that remark is too feminine to be worthy of you." "Do you regret that I didn't leave it for you to say?" he asked saucily. "I know you entirely agree with me." "Her father, Stephen Leighton," Mrs. Fairhew continued, making no answer but a hardly perceptible smile to his statement, "was a thoroughly charming man and of very good family. You can't deny that, Mr. Castleport." "I haven't any wish to. I'm not trying to run down Edna Leighton--Rafton, that is." "I always thought," began Katrine. Then she stopped, with an involuntary movement of the eyes in the direction of Taberman. "Oh, I was hit there once," Tab said jovially, "if that's what you mean. I got over it at a boat race." They all laughed, and the topic seemed exhausted, when the elder lady said:-- "We shall have sight of them at Florence, I suppose. They are to be at the Villa Foscagni for the summer. It belongs to the Raftons." "When do you expect to get there?" Tab inquired carelessly. "Florence? In five or six days." "Five or six days!" cried Jack. "Why, when do you leave here?" "To-morrow afternoon," answered Katrine in a tone of which the indifference might have struck Jack as a little overdone had he not been too perturbed to notice. "Why--but--" Jack began; "I had no idea"-- "Did you fancy we were here for the summer?" queried Katrine with demure interest. The hint of teasing in her tone brought Castleport to himself. Half his social success lay in the fact that he was not easily disconcerted. "As Mrs. Fairhew was good enough to tell me her plans," he returned coolly, "I naturally understood that you were to leave here before long, but I admit I hadn't thought you would go so soon." "You see," Mrs. Fairhew explained, "we really must get on. Katrine has to do museums and things, as I told you. When I was a girl it wouldn't have been thought respectable for a girl to come out before she'd seen the Pitti and Uffizzi; but it's all different now." "What nonsense, Aunt Anne! I don't believe you'd seen the galleries yourself when you came out." "Indeed I had. I'll make you read all the finest print in the guide-books if you are impertinent. We take," she added, turning to Castleport, "the 3.08 for Genoa." Jack was by nature quick and resolute; and before Mrs. Fairhew had got to this remark he had conceived a plan, and resolved to follow it out. Gravely regarding the thicket of oleanders behind Miss Marchfield, yet with the tail of his eye on the face of Jerry, which was alternately lighted and obscured as his cigarette glowed or waned, the captain remarked coolly:-- "That's a curious coincidence." "Coincidence?" repeated Mrs. Fairhew questioningly. "It would seem so," Jack almost drawled. "You said the 3.08, didn't you? How far do you go? All the way to Genoa?" "Yes. What is there extraordinary about that?" "Why, nothing much," returned Jack in a brisker tone, throwing away the butt of his cigarette; "only--yes--that's the very train I go on myself. Same destination, too, unless I decide to stop at Bordighera." There naturally was a sensation at this unexpected announcement. Katrine drew in her breath audibly; in the very nick of time Jerry caught himself in the act of saying profanely what he would be; Mrs. Fairhew closed her fan quickly, but she was too much mistress of herself to give any indication of her feelings beyond a little quick laugh. "I had not remembered that you spoke of going," she said. "No?" Jack said politely. "But," gasped Jerry, "I say--you know, I say"-- Evidently his feelings were too much for him, and he collapsed. So sudden a move on the part of Jack was sure to disconcert his slower-witted comrade, and the captain had fortunately been prepared by previous experiences for some mental confusion on the part of the mate. "Yes, Jerry?" he asked. "Nothing--I--I don't remember what I was going to say," murmured the bewildered Tab. "Really," observed Mrs. Fairhew, "it hadn't occurred to me that you could or would leave the yacht. What becomes of her?" "Oh, you don't doubt Jerry, do you? He's going to take her in charge." Once determined upon his plan, Jack felt it best to carry matters off with a high hand. He did not in the least care whether Mrs. Fairhew and Katrine suspected that his resolution to go on by land had been taken on the spot or not; but he liked to play the game well, and to put a good face on things. He spoke as though his mind had been made up long before, although all the time his brain was working with furious energy, as he tried to shape the scheme thoroughly and to foresee all possible contingencies. To give over to Jerry the care of the President's yacht was a bold stroke, but he said to himself that he was confident his friend was entirely competent to manage her for the comparatively short run to Naples; and his thought nimbly disposed of objection after objection as they rose in his mind. Rapid as had been his decision, it was less wild than it might seem; and by the time he spoke again Jack had all the details pretty well mastered. "Do you leave the Merle here?" inquired Mrs. Fairhew. Katrine, Jack noted, had said nothing, but he had heard that quick, indrawn breath, and he did not believe that her silence arose from indifference. "Oh, no; Jerry's going to take her to Naples," was Castleport's cool reply. It was to Tab's credit that at this astounding piece of intelligence he did not make a violent demonstration; but he was not unaccustomed to the rapidity with which Jack came to a decision, and he had before been trained in accepting what his captain said. Now he only dropped his cigarette, and on picking it up put the lighted end between his lips, spluttered and smothered a profane comment, and hurled the offending butt as far as he could. "Have another?" asked Jack, unruffled, as he pushed his case across the little table by which they were sitting. "Thank you, no!" replied Tab with quite unnecessary emphasis. "You've no need to touch your lips with fire, Mr. Taberman," Mrs. Fairhew observed, opening and closing her fan in a way which she had when amused; "you have been sufficiently eloquent in compliments ever since you arrived. May we hope, then," she went on, turning to Castleport, "for the pleasure of your company on the journey?" "If you and Miss Marchfield do not object, I shall be delighted." "It will be a great pleasure to me. Of course I can't speak for Katrine." Jack turned to look at Katrine. On her face the soft light of a Japanese lantern fell between a couple of trees, but she at once moved so that the shadows hid her expression. "Nothing could please me more, Aunt Anne, than that you should be pleased," she responded. "Then you had better bring Mr. Taberman and your luggage ashore, and come to luncheon to-morrow," the aunt said, rising. "In that way we can take our time and be comfortable. Does that suit your plans, Mr. Castleport?" Jack detected the suspicion of mirth in her voice, but he felt that if she had disapproved she would not only have shown no amusement but that she was clever enough to have thwarted his scheme. "I don't want to abuse your hospitality," he said. "Oh, we shall make you useful as an escort, and get enough service out of you on the journey to pay that," spoke Katrine, with the air of feeling that she had been too noticeably silent. "We're only too delighted to come, of course," Jerry said with boyish enthusiasm. "Anybody'd be glad of a chance to lunch with you, Mrs. Fairhew." "Your compliments are rather direct, Mr. Taberman," that lady answered with a laugh. "We'll say 1.30, then. That will give us plenty of time. I hate to be hurried; it is so undignified." As Mrs. Fairhew had risen the others were of course on their feet, and as Jack stood aside for Katrine to pass him, the elder lady took his arm. By this she detained him an instant, until her niece and Jerry were a few yards away. When they approached the door of the hotel and it was light enough for him to see her clearly, she dropped his arm; and as he turned his face toward her at the movement, she regarded him through her lorgnette with a look quizzical though kindly. "You are a clever boy," she said after a little, and with a peculiar faint stress on the adjective. "Do you want to marry my niece?" Jack of course recognized that the question would never have been asked had there been any doubt of the answer, and even in the confusion of the moment he had a dim perception that Mrs. Fairhew was, with kindly whim, helping him to ask her sanction to his wooing. He felt his cheeks grow hot, but he faced his inquisitor frankly, and he spoke with a manner which though instinctively subdued was full of energy and feeling. "You know I do," he said. "You know I'd die the worst of deaths for her. I--As God's above me," he burst out, breaking off and feeling himself strangle with his emotion, "I'll win her or die trying! I--I-- Of course I want to marry her! What do you suppose I came to Europe for?" Mrs. Fairhew's face softened, for no true woman could have heard the passion of his voice unmoved; but she laughed at the sudden change with which he ended. "I hope you may succeed," she said softly. "I think you will." Then she took his arm again, and spoke in her ordinary voice: "Come, we must go in." "Now, then, Jack, in the name of heaven," demanded Jerry, as soon as he and the captain were out of hearing of the ladies, "what is this awful josh of yours about leaving the yacht?" "I'll tell you when we get aboard," his friend answered. "Don't bother me now; I'm thinking." Tab snorted contemptuously, and in silence the pair held on until they reached the quay. The cutter awaited them, and still in silence they were pulled out to the Merle. There was not a breath of wind now; the stars blazed brilliantly above them, and not a cloud-blot was to be seen. In a stillness broken only by the rhythmical oar-strokes the pair watched the myriad star-points which dotted the heavens as they had adorned it centuries before when old Nice was new Nicæa, and some brown Sicilian pilot may have gazed up at them and made haven by their faithful guidance. No sooner were they aboard than Gonzague came to ask if they would have supper. "Oh, I don't know," Jack answered, still in a dream from the spell of Mrs. Fairhew's words. "Well, I do," put in Jerry. "We'll have some caviare sandwiches, Gonzague, and a glass of sherry." The supper was eaten almost in silence, and it was not until Gonzague had taken away the things and left them with pipes lighted that the inevitable explanation was reached. "Now then?" said Tab impatiently. His face wore a sober expression, full of expectancy, but not without a hint of annoyance and reproach. Jack blew a large smoke-ring at him, and laughed to see how in dodging it Jerry kept his solemnity unchanged. "Well, Tab," he began, "I don't suppose it's necessary to say that the idea of leaving the yacht never came into my head till I knew Mrs. Fairhew and Katr--Miss Marchfield were off to-morrow." "Heave ahead," grumpily retorted Jerry. "Don't mind me. Of course I shall be delighted to be left alone on the yacht." "Come, cheer up, old man," Jack exhorted. "Don't be grouchy. I'm awfully sorry to leave you; but of course it's only for a little while, and we shall both have compensations. I hope I shall be coming nearer to--to--well, to something definite, you know; and you'll have the Merle to do what you jolly well please with." "That's all very well, of course," Tab responded, his face relaxing a little; "but what's your game? We've beastly little money, you know; and this shore cruise of yours is bound to sop up a lot of tin." "We've money enough to carry us through," Jack declared. "I'll go to Genoa, of course. I know Italy pretty well, and I can make myself useful,--sort of 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' and courier all in one. When they go on to Naples,--well, from something Mrs. Fairhew said to-night, I think I shan't have any difficulty going on to Naples with them. A man's a handy article in traveling, you see, especially if he knows the language." Jerry regarded the captain as if his slower wits found it somewhat hard to follow the swift flights of his friend's mind. "But the Merle?" he objected. "It's bad enough for you to be skylarking about the world with the President's yacht, but when it comes to turning it over to me--Why, the old gentleman would throw five hundred fits at the bare idea." "Oh, I'll trust you there," Jack said lightly, consciously trying to make his confidence as flattering as possible. "You can manage, and do as you please for the next month. Who ever heard of a mate that didn't jump at the chance of taking command for a while. I'd advise you to stop, say, at Elba, if you're for doing the sights. Then, if you like, while you're on the Napoleonic tack, you might run 'round to Ajaccio. It's an out-of-the-way place, rather, but it's jolly when you get there. As for Elba, I've never been ashore there, though I've passed it and know the chap that owns it. I'll give you a letter in case you want to go ashore." "But, Jack--Damn it!" broke out Jerry, as if exasperated by the very feasibility of his friend's sudden change of tactics, "I can't speak a word of their blessed lingo!" "Pooh! Your French will carry you about well enough, and if worst comes to worst, you can fall back on Gonzague. At Naples you'll find them speaking English all over the lot." "Jack Castleport, you're certainly the damnedest man to handle I ever came across," Jerry said in despairing tones. "A fellow might as well try to bully-rag a sea-cow as to argue you out of any of your confounded schemes." "That's because they're so good," laughed Jack. "You see their profound wisdom carries me away so completely that objections can't touch me." Then he stretched his hand across the table corner, and caught hold of Jerry's. "I'm deuced sorry to give you the slip like this," he said, "but you know the reason." The good-natured Tab melted at once. He returned the pressure of his friend's hand and tried to quote "But when a woman's in the case, All other things, you know, give place;" but made so hopeless a mess of it that he could only break out into one of his boisterously jovial guffaws. "Well, by George," he cried, "if she only knew how devoted you are, Jack, she'd let you wait a dog's age, just to try you." They spent an hour or so in arranging details, going over charts, dividing their funds, and so on. Jack gave Tab addresses at Genoa, Florence, and Rome by which he might be reached, and told him that at Naples he should go to the Hôtel du Vesuve. On the twentieth of August Jerry was to inquire for him there. These and other affairs having been arranged, the pair smoked a final pipe, and turned in. Jack was very wakeful. He lay thinking of this and of that, restlessly tossing about in his berth. Just as at last he was dropping off to sleep, he was aroused by the voice of Jerry, who called softly across the passage:-- "I say, Jack,--are you awake?" "Almost," replied Jack; "but I shouldn't have been, if you'd let me alone." "I say, Jacko, do you fancy the President came a cropper in that Tillington smashup?" "Don't know," Jack answered. "He's pretty shrewd, and Mrs. Fairhew would have been likely to hear of it, I should think, if he had come seriously to grief." "Well, you know, it struck me that perhaps that beastly letter from Tillington might have been something important, and"-- "Oh, take a liver-pill!" interrupted Jack. "You've got an attack of _Conscientia Novanglicana_." "What's that?" "Forerunner of nervous pros.," replied the captain with a chuckle. "Go to sleep or you'll get it." "Well, good-night." "Good-night, boy." Silence again reigned, but Jack, once more aroused, threshed about uneasily until far into the night. Resolutely as he might determine not to think of the possible consequences of the carrying off of that big blue letter, he could not prevent doubt from recurring constantly to his mind, and something not so far removed from remorse mingled with his thoughts of Katrine and of the delight of traveling in her company. He was so long awake that on the next afternoon Mrs. Fairhew, when he had installed her and her niece comfortably in a first-class compartment on the 3.08 train, and they were beginning to see the olive groves and the villas slip picturesquely past the windows, noted the shadows beneath his eyes, and smiled to herself discreetly and unseen. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Nine THE DOLDRUMS For two weeks the Merle had been lying at anchor at Naples. From Nice she had run first to Elba; thence she had doubled north again and rounded Corsica; she had touched at Calvi and Ajaccio; and lastly, running through the Straits of Bonifacio, she had held on east-southeasterly to her present anchorage off the Castle. Despite the novel pleasures of command, Taberman felt Jack's absence so much as at times to be almost unhappy, even at times a little inclined to be resentful. He was still too boyish not to feel that to leave a yacht for a girl was the height of madness, if not of idiocy; and while he was too loyal to Jack to confess this feeling even to himself, it would at times rise in his mind, especially when he felt more than usually lonely. On his arrival at any port Jerry experienced to the full the excitement which even the oldest traveler feels in some degree at entering a new town. Whenever the port officer appeared in his official dignity, another sensation was added in the fear of detection and apprehension. A reaction would set in with the departure of the easily satisfied official, and Jerry would go mooning about with his hands in his pockets, whistling some spiritless tune until the time came to get up anchor and sail anew. At Naples, however, things went somewhat better with Jerry than at any of his previous ports. In the first place even Jerry, unæsthetic as he was, could not escape the magic of the beautiful bay and the surroundings which opened up before him in the morning light as he approached the city. He said to himself, half as if in excuse for being so much pleased by mere scenery, that it looked as it should. It had, as it were, kept faith with him; and its beauty was to him an honest fulfillment of its fame. The gray cone of Vesuvius, palpably and gratifyingly like the pictures, stood at the head of the bay, crowned with an inky cloud of smoke. Away from it to the south stretched the cliffs of blue Sorrento and bluer Capri, melting magically into a background of hills or of the azure sky. On the north of the smoking cone a stretch of shadow-wrought shore, and then Naples itself, from the old Spanish fort on the water-front to the Castle of St. Elmo, long and gray, crowning the summit of the ridge behind, and the stone-pines silhouetted like palms against the sapphire sky. Naples, with its great four-square houses of pink, and white, and yellow, heaped, as it were, one above another; its red-tiled roofs, its terraces tricked out with vines or fig-trees; Naples, with its church roofs of variegated tiles, its long quays yellowish gray about the shore--Jerry could well have believed himself in some enchanted picture city, a city which might almost be expected to vanish suddenly if one should close the book it graced. Behind the Government Mole were lying five Italian battleships, their big red, white, and green flags floating over their sterns, and everywhere over the liquid blue of the bay sailed fisher-craft and small boats, gilded with the morning light. Scarcely was the Merle's anchor down than the yacht was surrounded by a gay flotilla of boats, all laden with piles of fruit or vegetables, and manned by crews as noisy as they were picturesque. Baskets heaped with figs, great piles of green melons, lemons, citrons, plums, fresh vegetables of all sorts, were there; and each ware was extolled by the vendors with vociferous volubility, until the ears of Jerry fairly sang with the din. From the crowding boats screamed blowsy, dark-eyed women with brown oval faces and raiment of reds and yellows; boys with Greek faces and slim bare arms yelled with shrill voices; doddering old men, sitting in the stern-sheets of skiffs pulled by impish youngsters, waved impotent hands and moved toothless mouths whose sounds were lost in the feverish uproar; stalwart market-men, with brown, wrinkled faces and hairy bosoms exposed, fought their way through the press, disregarding age, sex, and condition in their effort to be nearest the possible purchasers on the Merle; all around the yacht the piratical water-peddlers made a floating Pandemonium, at which the Yankee crew stared not only in surprise but with some appearance of not unnatural alarm. As an opposing bulwark to this flood of southern vivacity, old Gonzague alone stood as the spokesman of the yacht. Requested by Jerry to make the vendors "stow their jaw," he laid about him right and left with a profane volubility which outdid even that of the assailants. The old man had not spoken Italian for so long that he might well be supposed to have forgotten it, but the occasion found him splendidly adequate to all the requirements of the situation. The Neapolitans raved and pleaded, execrated and lowered their prices, with appeals to the Madonna and all the saints to witness their honesty and their liberality; but once the floodgates of Gonzague's Italian were opened, he dealt with them so eloquently and so roundly, his objurgations were so much more picturesque and more emphatic than any they could compass, that one by one they drew away baffled, calling on high Heaven and the blessed Virgin to protect them when Vesuvius should belch forth a torrent of fire to overwhelm this blasphemous and impious _vecchiastro_. Gonzague was perhaps sustained under the volleys of curses which the defeated bumboat men and women threw back at him, by the admiration with which he was regarded by the crew of the Merle. They had come to idolize the old man, and to look upon him with roughly affectionate wonder. The beauty of the scenes through which they had been passing in the Mediterranean had of course impressed them very little æsthetically, and Naples with its matchless bay they saw only with the eyes of Isle au Haut fishermen. They were, however, never tired of wonders. The childlike sailor nature is always easily touched by the marvelous, and a real volcano was something worth seeing. As long as the Merle was in sight of Vesuvius they would hang over the rail and watch it for hours. If the smoke ceased they would cluster together and discuss the probable causes; they would talk of the mountain as if it were a conscious monster, lying in wait for prey, whose every movement was to be watched with a view to detecting the sinister design that must lie behind it. When a great dun cloud would suddenly puff up from the cone, the men would greet it with deep exclamations half of awe and half of applause. Continually they beset Gonzague with questions, as if he were the keeper or the high priest of this fiery monster. They apparently had complete confidence that Gonzague could explain it all if he would. His knowledge of the language and such use of it as he made in dispersing the voluble rabble of vendors were exactly in the line of their understanding, and they followed his every movement with an admiration amusingly tinged with something not unlike uncouth reverence. On the afternoon of his arrival at Naples Taberman had gone ashore. He had landed at the steamship quay, and passed half the night in an aimless ramble. There is something about Naples at night which goes to the head like wine; especially if the head is young and set on the shoulders of one who has never before known the life of southern cities. Jerry walked from the railroad station to the Public Gardens, and from the Mola to the Hôtel Britannique upon the heights. He attempted no systematic exploration, but simply wandered with no other object than the simple delight of rambling. By daylight the picturesque streets; the variegated rabble, ragged, dirty, beautiful, impudent, at once repulsive and enchanting; the crooked, crowded ways that climb the hill; the awnings, the heaps of fruit, the strange wares, the familiar air of the family life which made of the streets a home, and seemed to turn all the inhabitants of the town into one huge family; the unconsciously artistic groups, the tumbling _bambini_, the women, bold, piquant, handsome, or ugly with a hideousness of which Jerry had never conceived,--all these things passed before him like the whirling shows of an opium dream. As night fell, and the lights appeared, the scenes through which he went half dazed and wholly delighted took on a new quality of the weird and fantastic. The flaring lamps, the mysterious shadows, the blazing colors which not even the night could subdue, the theatrical effects seen down the narrow streets as on a stage set for opera, the inexhaustible vivacity, which seemed not to diminish with the lateness of the hour, all blended in an intoxicating experience such as Taberman had never known, and indeed such as had never come into his liveliest fancy. The next day Jerry went ashore in the morning, and set himself to more regular sight-seeing under the care of a professional guide. He went over the famous Museum, saw Vergil's Tomb, Posilipo, Sanazar's house, and Marti's _pozzo_. After a capital luncheon in one of the cafés in the Arcade, he rejoined his guide, who took him to the Aquarium. On the way they stopped at the Royal Palace and the Morro, Tab being duly impressed by the grandeur of royalty and the majesty of the law. Continually he wished that Jack were with him, for he had so fallen into the habit of depending on Jack for opinions that without his friend his impressions seemed to lack the clearness of sanction. When it came to the Aquarium, however, not only did the things he had seen in his day's explorations fade from his mind, but he was too delighted not to know exactly what he felt. The Aquarium of Naples is by far the most wonderful in the world. It is smaller and less elaborate than others, as, for instance, that of the Trocadero, but it outranks all in interest and impressiveness. The virtue of the place lies in its simplicity of construction and in the rarity of its exhibits. A sense of restful shadow and coolness succeeding to outside glare and heat; a dim greenish light in broad, glass-faced tanks of sea-water; an odd feeling of being fathoms deep in a tropical sea,--these are the sensations the visitor has first in this wonderful home of strange fish in exile. Tab made the rounds half a dozen times before he could bring himself to leave. Quite unscientific, but as enthusiastic as a boy, he stood in front of each tank, and tried vainly to determine which was most fascinating. Here were spiny lobster-like crustacea, spotted with a dozen colors; there were beautiful fish with shining iridescent sides and waving filmy, vaporous tails; one tank was inhabited by repulsive, warty octopi, splotched with dull browns and plague-spots of ugly red, which melted and slimed about, so disgusting that they seemed almost obscene; from another a huge sea python, with body as large as the thigh of a man and a head like that of a bald wolf, seemed to grin with sinister, snarling face at Jerry, while all about the monster bloated globe-fish and distorted marine shapes swam and circled; in a corner tank a brood of asp-like fish, with skins that seemed of richest velvet, dusky and wonderful in hue, lay heaped like incarnate poison; and near by the angel-fish went waving and trailing their way about the sand. Jerry was perhaps most impressed, however, by the mysterious life which went on in a tank to which he came among the last. Thin, slow-waving filaments of colorless jelly, crowned with diaphanous cups, not differing greatly from the poppy-flower in shape; and near them other forms, transparent, hardly more than condensed sea-water in appearance, yet with slow pulsations, continuous and wonderful, of phosphoric sparks,--as if one saw life itself throbbing rhythmically in the pellucid hairs of jelly. Jerry had not been so completely happy since he parted from Jack. He reveled in a boyish delight, and let no wonder of the place escape him. He tipped the keeper to feed the octopi with young crabs, lowered on a string; he took a smart electric shock from a morose torpedo which lay sulkily in a small open tub with a pebbly bottom; he had the big anemones and the coral-polyps "put to sleep," in the words of his guide,--an operation consisting simply of the moving in the water of a small stick which caused them to close in alarm; he did, in a word, everything his guide could think of for him to do, and went away in the end only half content to leave. After the Aquarium, Jerry turned a deaf ear to the alluring speeches of the guide, the burden of whose song was all of curiosities unseen and of pleasures untasted. He paid the importunate manikin, and made his way back to the Merle. The truth was that he had seen something which thoroughly pleased him, and after that it was impossible to return to the perfunctory seeing of regulation sights which really did not take hold of him in the least. Before the first week was ended, Jerry had visited Pompeii and Baiæ, and what was to be seen of Herculaneum. He had made some purchases; and then he began to wait about, ashore or aboard, for Jack. That gentleman had written no response to Tab's letter announcing the arrival of the Merle at Naples, and Jerry could only think of him as so absorbed in his wooing as to have forgotten all about his friend. Some not unnatural jealousy began to ferment in his mind, and did not add to his comfort. By the advice of Gonzague he took the market-boat, and setting out early one morning he sailed with a couple of the men across the bay to Capri, where he passed the day. The only thing which cheered him on his lonely expedition was a tarantella, which was danced for his diversion by a romantic-looking _raggaza_, with black eyes and short petticoats. The moonlight sail back would have pleased him more had it not been necessary to keep the men rowing for two thirds of the way. On the whole, Jerry could find nothing to please him on land or sea. The major part of the next week he had spent stretched out in a cane _chaise longue_ in the cockpit, drinking iced sangaree and reading Didron's _Artémise_. He had a fly stretched over the awning for increased coolness, and the "dusters" put up to shut out the glare from the water; there, like some melancholy monarch beneath his canopy, he read, dozed, and grumbled--without even the satisfaction of any fit audience--from morning to sundown. In the cool of the evening he usually went ashore, and one night he was strolling along the water-front, stick in hand and his Panama set well back on his head. As he passed the Hôtel du Vesuve, wondering when Jack would arrive, a small figure moved quickly in front of him and bowed. At first he was startled, but almost instantly he saw that it was the valet de place who had gone about with him in the early days of his stay at Naples. "Hello," said Jerry in surprise, yet not without a feeling of satisfaction at finding even this apology for a companion. "_Buon' sera, signor_," responded the little man vivaciously. "How do? You tek-a de night air? _� verament' un' bellissima notte._ It mek-a cool, eh?" And he waved his arms expressively. He might have been thirty or thirty-five, and had coarse black hair, with fiery eyes. He was not ill-looking, but his clothes were hopelessly threadbare and his face pinched. He bore dark circles under his eyes, and was in no way markedly different from others of his numerous and futile class, who, with a smattering of French, German, or English, struggle desperately for a livelihood by acting, not always very virtuously, as guides for traveling _forestieri_. "You busy?" Jerry asked, a sudden thought striking him. "No--no," replied the Neapolitan, his face as eager as his tone. "What-a you like see? Eh? Some of dose oder curiosities _forse_?" he asked with a suggestive smile. "Thanks, no," Jerry returned dryly; "but if you aren't busy, I wish you'd walk along with me. I'm bored--tired--'most to death, and I fancy you might tell me how I may best kill time for the next few days." The little guide was delighted. He suggested a multitude of things which might be done,--visits to Castellmare and Sorrento or Amalfi; wonders the signor had neglected in the museum; the _pasta_ shops; and so on for a variety of possible and impossible diversions. But still Taberman shook his head. He wanted to be amused, but he was lonely and rather homesick, so that while he regretted being so difficult, nothing appealed to him. Finally, the guide, quite at his wit's end but still bland, smiling, patient, obsequious, and apparently unruffled by the careless way in which the American rejected all his suggestions one after the other, mentioned Pesto. "Pesto?" queried Tab carelessly. "What is that?" "_Si!_ Pesto. It ees dere dey hav-a de gret-a temple; t'ree gret-a temple, all put een de row-a,--_uno, due, tre_." And he held up three fingers to make his statement at once clearer and more emphatic. "Temples? Real ones?" asked Jerry. "I mean are they old--Roman, that is--or just churches?" "_Ma verament'_," laughed the valet de place, "_ci son' tre templi_; bot-a dey not-a Roman; dey Gre'k. Fin-a, big-a temple; big-a like Hôtel du Vesuve!" He waved his spread arms as if he would embrace the universe. Jerry laughed at the little man's enthusiasm, but his interest was excited. "Greek, eh?" he said. "How far is it? How do you get there?" The guide explained volubly, told the time of trains to Pæstum, declared that the trip was easily made in a day, and proffered his services as escort. This Jerry declined, quite as much from motives of economy as from any other reason; but he invited the little guide to sit down at one of the small tables on the sidewalk before Zinfoni's, where he furnished him with refreshments and made him repeat his account of the temples, the details of the journey, and whatever information he could furnish. Jerry was really lonely enough to be amused by the company of the Neapolitan, and as he sat listening and watching the people drifting past, he was soothed with the feeling of being not so entirely alone. From Zinfoni's the pair sauntered down to the quay, where they parted. The Italian was profuse in his thanks and protestations, and Jerry was considerate enough to act in such a manner as to make the little man think him the most affable of _Inglesi_. When he was aboard again, Jerry got out a chart, and after some searching located Pæstum. As it was not too far from Naples to be possible in a day, he determined upon the expedition. Jack was not due for two or three days yet, and the time must be killed somehow. He summoned Gonzague, ordered an early breakfast, told him he should be absent all the next day, and that he should leave him in charge. He had a sort of mild exhilaration at his boldness in thus venturing off into the midst of a land whose language he could not speak, and he went to bed that night with a great feeling of relief. The doldrums were over; he had something to do to bridge the time until Jack came. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Ten MR. WRENMARSH, THE EXTRAORDINARY On the following morning, as, a few minutes after nine, the southbound train from Naples to Tarento drew out of the station, Taberman, winking a little at the sudden glare of the sun, began to look about him. The morning promised a hot day, and his comfort in traveling was likely to be lessened by the fact that in the second-class compartment with him were five Italians. They had already settled themselves back against the cushions, turning upward sunburnt, perspiring faces, and allowing themselves to be jolted by the train like so many dead-weights. Their ugly straw hats, high-crowned and narrow-brimmed, were set on their knees or wedged beside them on the seat; two of the travelers had gay bandannas tucked into their collars about their throats. One man--a pursy old codger in the corner--had lighted, after a mumbled "con permesso," a long Virginia, which filled the compartment with a thin blue haze and an acrid smell as of burning leather. The train rumbled along over a dubious roadbed, flanked by its cinder-strewn berms; and Tab, looking through the window on his right, recognized the line as that by which he had gone to Pompeii. At times the train went close to where the curling ripples of the sapphirine bay were breaking gently on the shore; sometimes it ran through small hamlets, and again passed country places where the busy peasants were at work in the rich vineyards, the orchards, or the tilled fields. At the end of half an hour, they stopped at Pompeii for a moment, and Jerry, through the opposite window, recognized the station and the paltry inn beyond. As the train drew out again, he caught brief glimpses of the ancient city, dull red-brown walls among the silver-gray of the olive-trees. The train sped on southward. It dipped into little vales, and wound its way up and into the hills that ring themselves around the plain of Pæstum. In an hour's time they pulled up at a small town on the left of the track. Jerry made out the name of the station, enameled in big white letters on a blue field, Battapaglia. The guard came by, unlocking the compartment doors, and as the men in his compartment got out and left their luggage behind them, Jerry concluded that here was to be a wait of some minutes. He therefore followed the example of his fellow travelers, and stepped down upon the sunny platform. It was very hot. Tab mopped his face with his handkerchief and turned down the brim of his Panama all around. "_Graniti, signor? Citron? Orang'?_" A small boy had singled him out, probably because he was the only _forestiere_ on the platform, and was offering him syrupy drinks cooled with cracked ice. For a soldo Tab secured a glass of sherbet, fruit-juice and water half frozen and very delicious. It was so refreshing that he bestowed an extra soldo on the vender in sheer gratitude. The lad rewarded him with a curt "grazie," and a look half grateful and half suspicious, and then hastened on to urge his wares on other travelers. Jerry looked after him in amusement at the fringe made by the tatters of his trousers, and in lazy admiration of the sinewy brown arms left bare by the sleeveless cotton shirt and of the jaunty poise of the curly head. The train still waited. Jerry lighted a cigarette and got into the shadow of the cars. Presently a big express came thundering out of the pass in the hills with a roar, and rushed away to southward on the main track. "_Pronto! Partenza! Partenza!_" cried the guard, with a blast of his horn. The road was again clear, the express-mail having passed. The passengers clambered aboard, and settled themselves in their former places. The old man with the Virginia had purchased a copy of "Il Papagallo," though it was a mystery how he could have got hold of it in such a place. He clucked oilily as he read, occasionally calling the attention of his nearest neighbor to some gaudy cartoon or some political pasquinade. Jerry speculated in regard to what it might all be about, and was filled with that vague sense of baffled irritation which comes from seeing others enjoying jokes in a language one cannot understand. Mile after mile of level track, flanked by the interminable cinder-covered berms. Once in a while the level was broken by clumps of dusty cactus, ugly and forbiddingly aggressive in the sun. To the right, beyond a flat, gorse-grown waste, relieved only by an occasional palm or oleaster, Tab could discern the blue shimmer of the sea. To the left, he could see only the same dull plain, bounded by bluish hills, which rose about it like the seats of some titanic amphitheatre. Now and again two or three buffaloes, their black hides caked with patches of yellow mud, lay in their wallows or stood contemptuously indifferent to the noisy train, which beside them seemed so impertinently modern. At last the train, with a screaming of gritty brakes on the wheels, and the inevitable clanking and banging of cars and couplings, drew up beside a tiny station on the right of the track. "Pesto! Pesto!" The guard unlocked the compartment door, and Jerry stepped out. The station was smaller than any they had passed, and Tab smilingly reflected that the lodge at the entrance of his father's place at Dedham was bigger. He was the only passenger to alight, and no sooner was he out than the guard, like an overgrown mechanical toy, called out his "_Pronto! Partenza!_" blew his toy horn, and swung himself aboard again. The long train, with bitter metallic complaint at being obliged to go farther, drew past the little station, and rolled away toward a gap in the southern hills, far beyond which lies Tarento. Taberman turned to the station master, a discouraged-looking individual who stood on the platform with his truncheon tucked under his arm, examining a batch of dispatches as if this were the first time such papers had ever come under his notice. Jerry's Italian vocabulary was limited to some score of words, with a few expressions, such as _dolce far niente_ and the like, more ornamental than useful. As, however, he could perceive no sign of any temples,--or town either, for the matter of that,--he determined to question the _capo_. "_Bonn giorno_," he began with a painful sense of effort, but with a mild self-congratulatory thrill at having said something in Italian. "_Buon' giorno_," responded the station master, turning a pair of dull eyes and an emaciated face from the dispatches to Taberman. Jerry spoke French moderately well, and resolved to address the official in that tongue, in the hope that the Italian might understand. "Peut-être vous parlez Français?" he began. "_Cosa?_" asked the Italian, obviously puzzled, as he stepped out of the sun into the shadow of the little station. "What?" demanded Jerry in English, and with much the same puzzled air. "_Non capisco_," said the man, with a sort of dull finality. Conversation languished. Jerry felt himself pretty well baffled, yet he had no choice but to go on with the unpromising attempt to elicit information here, as no other human being was in sight. He considered a moment, and then in an explosive tone, demanded:-- "_Templi?_" "_Bruto Inglise!_" murmured the _capo_ under his breath. "_Che volete?_" he added aloud. "What?" asked Jerry, again scared over the dubious boundary of his Italian into English. "_Non capisco_," repeated the Italian morosely, wetting his dingy forefinger, and going over his papers for at least the third time. "Damn it!" cried Jerry, in complete exasperation, "if you say that again I'll punch your head!" The other started back in such obvious terror that Tab hastened to propitiate him by putting on quickly his most ingratiating smile, and nodding as if he had made a merry joke. The other seemed reassured, although he edged away a little, as if he were doubtful of the sanity of this foreign brute; and Tab fell again to the effort to rally all the words in his Italian vocabulary about one idea. "_Dove_," he began in one grand final attempt to wring information out of this sullen and taciturn official, "_dove_"-- He was so pleased with himself for having remembered the word that he came near forgetting all the rest, but with a desperate rally, he went blundering on. "_Dove_, I say, is--is--_la via per i templi_?" The _capo_ looked at him, apparently in mingled curiosity and disgust. Then he beckoned him to the edge of the platform on the other side of the station, whence stretched westward a ribbon of dust-heaped road. "_Ecco-la_" he ejaculated, waving his truncheon vaguely toward the distance. "Ah," said Jerry, "_grazie_." As the _capo_ responded to this speech not at all, Tab set out on the dusty road without more ado. The way was inches deep in loose, gray dust, and spiny cacti bristled on either hand. Jerry had not gone far before, turning a bend, he saw at no great distance ahead of him an arched gateway through which the road passed. The arch, broken and crumbled, was set in a ruined wall, which trailed away on either hand, now rising to the height of something like a dozen feet, now razed to the very ground. "That's a forlorn-looking piece o' work," commented Tab aloud. Had Jerry been blessed with the education of his forefathers, instead of having brought out of school and college a hodgepodge smattering of physics and economics, he might have known and reflected that the wall he thus carelessly characterized had been standing some two thousand years, and gloriously attested the puissance of old Rome. With no such thought, however, he passed beneath the crumbling gateway and continued his march. At some distance ahead he now perceived signs of life in the shape of a few dwellings. As he looked at them he became aware of two horsemen, who were cantering toward him on the crest of the little slope made by the road just inside the old gateway. Their horses' hoofs stirred up light clouds of yellow dust. Even at first glance the riders showed themselves to be ruggedly dressed, and with something of a thrill Jerry noticed instantly that slung across their shoulders they carried carbines. Wild tales of brigands flashed confusedly through his brain, and especially a tale the Neapolitan guide had related of the capture and murder at this very place of an English gentleman and his wife. The guide had said that that was sixteen years ago, but the place seemed so lonely, so remote, Tab's ideas of rural Italy were so vague, the effect of the landscape and of these wild figures was so startling as, riding toward him, they stood out against the sky, that it was no wonder Jerry involuntarily cast a quick glance around to note the lay of the land and to see if any possible help were in sight in case of need. The horsemen rode down to him on a lazy lope. They were big, bronzed fellows, smoking cigarettes, and riding with their feet out of the stirrups. They nodded to him pleasantly and smiled, showing large white teeth. They had about them, these big fellows, a look so engaging that Tab was won at once, and the vague mist of his suspicions vanished like smoke in air. He grinned to himself at the idea of brigands. "_Dove templi?_" he asked, returning their salutation. The big men smiled more broadly, and one of them replied in French. "Vous ne parlez pas beaucoup d'italien?" he asked in a pleasant voice. "Ne pas de tout!" responded Jerry heartily, with a laugh. Having found some one with whom he could talk, he at once began a lively conversation. He found the two men to be the custodians appointed by the government to look after the temples and to collect the fees of travelers. They explained that at this season it was extremely rare for a visitor to appear, and that they were therefore not particular about being exactly at their posts. They had heard some rumor of the discovery of antiques by peasants, and were setting out to investigate. They explained, however, that the chances of finding out anything were very small; the peasants all held together, and would all lie for one another. Jerry inferred, moreover, that they were by no means anxious to make discoveries. It was part of their duty to investigate such a rumor, for the government claimed the right to have a hand in the disposal of any treasure-trove; but the custodians seemed to have a good deal of sympathy with the wretched peasants, who tried to conceal anything they might find, in order to sell it for a fraction of its value to any stray _forestiere_ who might appear. Now that a visitor had come, one of the men went alone on this errand, and the custode who spoke French returned toward the temples, which were near at hand, that he might formally take Tab's lira at the gate. The Italian walked his horse beside Taberman past the two or three ruinous and apparently deserted houses, and in a few minutes the pair came to where their road ended in a broad turnpike which ran at right angles to it. On the other side of this turnpike, a little distance to his left, Jerry saw the ruins of a couple of temples, and beyond them the sea. His guide disregarded them, and led him to the right hand, where, a hundred yards or so along the highway, they came to a square two-story building of gray rubble. On its dingy front was painted in black letters the word "Osteria." "V'là l'auberge," announced the jovial custodian. "If Michu is fatigued, he can get eggs and polenta within. The wine is rough, but not so bad as the water. This way, Michu." And leaving his horse to crop the rank grass by the doorway, he strode into the building, Tab following. The inn was a poor place, even for southern Italy. The floor was of trampled clay; the walls were unfinished within as without, but like the ceiling, from which hung bunches of garlic and black and dusty herbs, they were garnished with abundant cobwebs and a generous coating of soot and dirt. At the back of the room was a counter, above which a grimy sign announced the right of the proprietor to sell salt and tobacco. In the left-hand corner of the back of the place was one of the altar-like ranges of Italy, upon which glowed a minute heap of charcoal. Tab smiled to find himself recognizing its use from its resemblance to the cooking-places he had seen in the ruins of Pompeii, and reflected, with the superiority of a youth born in a young land, upon the conservatism which keeps its kitchen arrangements practically the same as they were two thousand years ago. The room was lighted simply by the door through which the visitors had entered. Another doorway at the left simply yawned blackly like the mouth of a cavern. The furniture consisted of a small square table and three stools. Over the entire place was spread an appearance of squalor and neglect, depressing, but in key with the air of poverty and of deadness which had been more evident to Tab with every step he had taken in Pæstum. The room was empty when they entered it, but after the custode had bellowed lustily once or twice for "Angelo," the innkeeper appeared suddenly. He was a little man doubled up as if with rheumatism, and with a face as yellow as a dried lemon. On seeing Taberman he croaked something to the custode, and bowed to his guest again and again, rubbing his hands and all but losing his crooked balance with each genuflection. With the air of an archduke ordering a banquet for his retainers, Jerry's companion gave some rapid instructions to the innkeeper, told the Michu to make the place his own, and then departed to attend to his horse and other trifles, saying that he would be back in half an hour. Tab seated himself on a stool to await his luncheon. His host puttered about the altar, occasionally mumbling to himself, like the devotee of some Stygian power making sacrifice. Jerry was watching him with amusement, and wondering what would be the outcome of his incantations in the way of food, when on a sudden the doorway was darkened, and a man entered the room. At a glance Jerry saw that the newcomer was, like himself, a traveler. The stranger was of medium height, rather inclined, hardly to stoutness, but certainly to plumpness; he was well proportioned, with broad shoulders, but had a carriage curiously shuffling and insignificant. He held a stiff-brimmed straw hat in his hand, and Tab could see, where the outer light fell upon his crown, that his hair was slightly touched with gray. His face, Jerry decided, would have been handsome, had it not been marred by two deep lines from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth, which gave an appearance of sinister suspicion not without a hint of selfish cruelty. Except for a very silky mustache, he was clean-shaven. The traveler threw Taberman a quick, almost furtive glance, and then, turning to the innkeeper, addressed that individual sharply in Italian. The crooked host bowed furiously, made apologetic and deprecatory gestures with the rapidity of a mountebank, skipped about in feverish excitement, and jerked his head more and more frantically. The gentleman--for he seemed one--continued his objurgations unappeased by all these demonstrations, and ended by swearing roundly in English. "Oh!" exclaimed Taberman involuntarily. The stranger turned to him. "I beg your pardon," he said in a curious sing-song voice with a markedly rising inflection, "but this brute has not prepared my luncheon. Do you mind sharing the table with me?" "Not the least in the world," replied Jerry. "I'm sure it will give me great pleasure." "Good," said the stranger. "I see you are an American," he flung out as an addition. "I am," returned Taberman, feeling a simple pride in the fact. "Thank God I'm not," remarked the stranger. His voice showed no trace of truculence; it was murmured as if to himself. Before Jerry had time to explode the gentleman continued: "I'm English. What does that mean? Celt, Angle, Saxon, and ages of tradition--ages of it. By the bye, you mustn't mind the things I say, you know; your pernicious self-respect would force you to resent them if you did. May I ask your name?" "My name is Taberman," Jerry replied, struggling with a mingling of indignation, amazement, and amusement, "Jerrold Taberman. I live in Boston." "Dedham rather," returned the other easily. "I knew a Taberman when I was in college. Curious chap. I-- My name's Wrenmarsh, Gordon Wrenmarsh. Fact is, I was an American, but I couldn't stand the place. Bostonians have good manners; but New York is a vile spot. So is Boston; that is-- Well, perhaps you see the difference." The tricks this extraordinary man played with his voice were astonishing, and as he went on talking he quite dizzied Tab by the cryptic, baffling nature of his nervous speeches. He had, too, a curious and disconcerting habit of displaying great emotional intensity--opening his eyes to their greatest extent and distending his nostrils--in dealing with trifles of the slightest consequence; while whenever, as happened once or twice in the course of the luncheon, they touched even remotely on subjects of really vital importance, the extraordinary Mr. Wrenmarsh fairly oozed indifference. His conduct was so thoroughly strange that once or twice Jerry felt a puzzled doubt whether the man were entirely sane. "I'll tell you," said Mr. Wrenmarsh, when their slight repast was over, "we'll do the temples together. I've been camping in this abominable hole of an _osteria_ for over a week, so that I know them pretty well. One of them is in my period, moreover." Jerry looked at him as if to ask if the stranger claimed to be a contemporary of the ruins. "Your period?" he echoed confusedly. "Yes; you see, I'm an archæologist--collector, in fact. Hello; here's the custode." The custodian entered as Mr. Wrenmarsh spoke, and Taberman had somehow the idea that the look he gave the Englishman was not very friendly. "Ah, Michu, have you found a friend?" he asked in his queer French. "I don't know," Jerry returned, with a half laugh. "Well," responded the Italian, "if Michu is ready to see the temples, I am waiting." "Bien," responded Jerry; and then turning to the archæologist, he asked, "Are you coming?" "Of course," the Englishman answered. "Never mind this custode; he's only an ignorant pig." Jerry secretly felt that, ignorant or not, the big Italian, with his merry face and open smile, would be a much more companionable guide than the eccentric collector; but without comment he paid the reckoning, and they set out. They went down the road to a gate, paid a lira each to the custode, and entered upon a field of ploughed land, planted with maize. The Italian, who had more and more the air of not liking the Englishman, made some remarks to the effect that Michu l'Anglaise was a very learned man, and one much better fitted to explain the marvels of ancient architecture than he, a plain man who had had to pick up his education in the army. On these grounds he excused himself and went into a little lodge, while the others walked on to the temples which stood before them, ideal in their beauty. The two pushed their way across the field and entered the nearest temple. Jerry's was not an impressionable nature, and in one way to him these august colonnades meant little; yet despite a certain sophomoric exuberance which he had never outgrown, his nature was fundamentally too refined to fail to respond to the silent grandeur of this solemn harmony in stone. The roofless enclosure, after all the indignities a score of centuries had been able to inflict upon it, possessed still a nobility and a beauty which seemed almost personal and conscious. One feels in seeing the ruins at Pæstum as if a certain inherent and indestructible loveliness would pervade the very stones were they thrown down to the last one; and while the columns stand, the place is one to make the visitor catch his breath with admiration and almost with awe. Taberman did not analyze, and indeed he was instinctively so occupied in concealing from his companion how profoundly he was impressed as to have little attention left for introspection; but he was more deeply stirred than he could have conceived possible. He walked about with Mr. Wrenmarsh, who talked along in his curious voice, expatiating upon styles and orders, influence and epochs, with all sorts of things of which Jerry understood at best not more than a quarter; until at last, instead of going on to the neighboring temple, the strangely assorted pair sat down on the western steps of the ruin through which they had come. Taberman looked away westward, where the rim of the sea shone like a fillet of molten silver. For some time neither spoke; but at length Mr. Wrenmarsh broke in upon Tab's train of thought with a question. "Are you traveling alone?" he asked quite suddenly. Taberman explained that he had come over from America in a yacht. It is to be feared that it was vanity which led him to make the unlucky addition that he was in command of her until his friend should rejoin him at Naples. "Ah," commented the archæologist, with a new appearance of interest; "you're cruising." "Yes," said Jerry. The spell of the temple was upon him, and he had no inclination to talk. He was conscious of a half-defined desire to have this stranger take himself off, and not bother him further with questions. "And what do you suppose I am doing here?" queried the collector in a tone of almost fierce intensity. "Why," Jerry responded rather absently, "I supposed you were studying or something." "Why, yes, to be sure I am; haven't I told the custode so?" chuckled Mr. Wrenmarsh. His laughter was as extraordinary as his speech and manner. He would double up as if with a sort of a spasm and snigger gastrically. "But that's not all," he went on, as Jerry turned to look at him questioningly; "that's not all. I'm doing something else. I'm waiting." "What for?" asked Taberman, seeing that he was expected to speak. "Help," replied Wrenmarsh laconically. "Help?" repeated Jerry blankly. "Yes, help; waiting. Collecting is nothing but waiting anyway,--waiting for news, waiting for funds, waiting for auctions, waiting for old countesses to die, waiting for some fool of a peasant to discover something; waiting, waiting, waiting all along the line. It's the man who waits with his ears and eyes open and his mouth shut that gets what he wants. He's the man." "But--but what sort of help do you want now?" Tab inquired. He was sympathetic by nature, and this extraordinary individual had aroused not only his curiosity, but in some mysterious manner stimulated him to a desire to be of service. He had come to Pæstum for amusement. He felt that in meeting the collector he had been amply repaid. The unwonted emotion which had been stirred by the temple melted in his boyish heart before the warmer human interest which the collector aroused, and it was perhaps with some unrealized relief at getting back to more familiar levels of feeling that he now began to enter into the affairs of his companion. It came over him that he was being appealed to, and he was ready to take the position that if any aid of his could bring relief to Mr. Wrenmarsh, that eccentric gentleman should no longer need to go on waiting for help. "I'll tell you the whole business," said the archæologist, in a sudden burst of frankness. "You look trustworthy. I've been here ten days--waiting. I've written, of course, for help; but it doesn't seem to come. Three weeks ago I was in Naples, and heard--no matter how--that somewhere down here a lot of good stuff had turned up. I kept coming down here daily until, by dint of discreet questions--discretion's the backbone of the game--I found out what had happened. A peasant here had been spading over some ground. One day the earth sunk suddenly under him, and down he went into a hole. He found, as soon as he could get his wits together, that he had broken through the roof of an ancient _cella_ of some sort. He got out without much trouble, pulled himself together, and did what any peasant would know enough to do,--covered the place with brush and dirt so that no news of the thing should get to the custodi. Then he went on with his spading." "Without investigating?" asked Jerry, full of interest. Mr. Wrenmarsh looked at him curiously. "Of course," he responded. "If he had let his curiosity get the better of him, or his tongue wag, he'd be a good deal poorer than he is at present. They are stupid louts, these peasants, but they do learn enough not to take the government into their confidence when they find anything. They know that they'd get nothing out of it if they did. Besides, they are as stolid as buffaloes. They can wait well enough." "But what did he find?" demanded Taberman, his interest thoroughly aroused by this tale of treasure-trove, which appealed to every boyish and every adventurous fibre in him. "He went by night with a lantern and a couple of panniers. He filled his baskets twice, filled them with priceless things in a perfect condition--beautiful kylixes and glass bowls. There's one that measures at least half a metre across the top. Think of that! Why, it's the finest glass I've ever seen or heard of! It's the finest glass there is!" "Great Scott!" cried Jerry, alive with excitement. "It must be awfully old!" "Old!" retorted Wrenmarsh with scorn; "do you know where you are?" Jerry twisted his head to look up at the tall columns and broken pediment above him, on the pinkish-gray stones of which the afternoon sun fell with loving warmth. "Yes, of course," he said. "But what did he do with the things?" "I kept at him till I wormed the whole business out of him," the collector answered, "and I bought his things--damn him!" He brought out the objurgation with amazing vigor; then stopped and stared gloomily before him. "Well?" said Jerry. "What are you waiting for? More?" "More!" exploded the collector, disgust and indignation in his face. "Man, I've got hold of a collection that is all but unique! More! Don't you see--I can't get away with it! Piece by piece I could run it out of the country, but I don't dare to leave anything behind me. If only my men were at hand--but they're not, they're not. One's off the track in the T road, and the other's in America." He passed his hand before his eyes with a gesture so expressive that it was even more impassioned than his tone. Taberman was moved, both by the enthusiasm of this man for his work and by the exciting romance of the finding of this treasure. He knew vaguely of the laws that forbade the taking of works of art out of Italy and Greece, but he had no conception that they were strictly enforced. It gave him a new sensation to be thus brought in contact with the actual working of a statute which was aimed to prevent a man from removing his own possessions from one country to another. He had been too well brought up under a high protective tariff to have any moral scruples about smuggling anything. A Mugwump atmosphere had acted upon the natural inclination of youth to defy authority, and had bred in Jerry the feeling that smuggling, however little its true nature was appreciated in high places, was really in its essence a maligned virtue. In the present instance, moreover, the boyish feeling that what one owns is his to do what he chooses with despite all fiats of principalities, potentates, and powers, helped to make the idea of this especial case of an attempt to defy the laws one of particular merit. He gave himself eagerly to considering how it could be done. "Can't you take your traps to Naples, and ship 'em from there?" he at last demanded of the archæologist. "You don't understand, I'm afraid," replied the other. "My reputation in itself compels me to lie close. Besides that, there's the awkward problem of the octroi and the export examinations. I couldn't take the things into Naples without running into the one, or out of it without getting afoul of the other. They'd be no end sharp in examining anything I tried to pass. I'm hideously notorious in Italy." His pride in this last statement was entirely evident, but Jerry was impressed by the deeds of archæological daring which were implied in such a reputation. "I simply can't get these things away without help," he continued. "I've written and telegraphed to every mortal I can count on,--there are only five or six of them,--and not one of them can help me out just now. Meanwhile I starve on eggs and polenta, under the suspicious eyes of the custodi--damn 'em! They'd have got me a week ago if they'd had any brains." "Upon my word," cried Jerry, the idea suddenly striking him for the first time, "it's extraordinary you should tell me all this, and I a stranger." "I count on your helping me," responded Mr. Wrenmarsh in keenly incisive tones. "My helping you!" ejaculated Tab in amazement. "What in the world have I to do with the business?" "You practically said so," returned the collector. "At least your face did." He looked at Jerry, and then turned away to the brown expanse of plain in a manner so stricken and so reproachful that Taberman could not help feeling convicted of consummate wickedness. "I counted on you," he added, in a tone of profoundest pathos. Jerry was completely nonplussed. He felt that he was being played with; he was angrily conscious that the whole affair was no concern of his, and that he had no business to be dragged into it. Yet he felt no less but rather more keenly that he could not endure the imputation of having encouraged a man in difficulties with a hope of assistance and of having then refused to fulfill them. His youthful blood, moreover, was stirred by the flavor of adventure which came alluringly to his inner sense. For a moment there was a strained silence, and then it was broken by Tab. "You've mistaken my interest for something else, I'm afraid," he said, trying to speak lightly, and feeling that he was making a mess of it. "It never even occurred to me that I could help you out of this blessed muss; and I don't see that there's anything I can do anyway, except to keep mum about it. Of course that I'd do anyway." "No use," retorted the archæologist. "If you can help me and won't, after my taking you into my confidence, you--you ruin me." "Hmm," Jerry observed rather coldly, "that's too subtle for me. I fail to see it in that light. You're no worse off than you were before." "I'm sure, Mr. Tableman"-- "Taberman," Jerry corrected. "Pardon me, Mr. Taberman; but you don't see the _catena logica_ by which I arrive at my conclusions!" Mr. Wrenmarsh, both in speech and gestures, was momentarily growing more and more theatrical. "Suppose you should, knowing my story and the law against taking works of art out of the country, tell my case to the police. What then?" "It would be the trick of a blackguard, of course," Jerry replied promptly, "but"-- "_Momento!_" interrupted the other, holding up his hand. "Now suppose things to be as they are, and you learn that the custodi are on my track"-- "They've heard something of the find," interposed Jerry; "they told me that." "There! You see!" Wrenmarsh said, with a gesture which seemed to appeal to all humanity to bear witness that in whatever he had said he had been completely right. "Suppose, now, that you have--with perfect security to yourself, mind--a chance to give me a friendly word of warning, and don't do it. What then?" "Why," Tab answered, feeling every moment more and more as if he were being snarled up in a web, "it would be, in such a case as you suppose, a pretty shabby trick, of course. At the same time"-- "Wait a bit," cried Mr. Wrenmarsh, again interrupting him, and growing visibly more excited still; "wait a bit. I want you to consider the present case. You say yourself the secret is leaking out, and of course every moment makes my danger greater. With practically no bother and with absolute safety you can help me out of the whole tangle. If you don't, I shall be caught; I shall lose this incomparable treasure and all the money I paid for it,--and that's no small sum, let me tell you,--and all because you, my forlorn hope that I've confided in _in rebus angustis_, won't devote twenty-four hours of your time to saving your own self-respect. By Jove!" he cried, starting to his feet, "if you don't help me you betray me as much as if you went straight to the custodi with my story." "Sit tight!" cried Jerry, startled by the violence of the other's demonstration. "Sit tight!" "Will you help me?" demanded Mr. Wrenmarsh, his brown eyes blazing. "Will you help--help me to dodge these Italian robbers and get my things--my antiquities that I have paid for with hard cash--out of this rotten country? Will you help, or will you desert me, and take sides with those that are waiting to rob me?" "By George, I've a mind to try!" incautiously ejaculated Jerry, for the moment carried off his balance by the enthusiasm and the persuasive personality of the other. "Good man!" cried the antiquarian in a rapture; "good man! I knew you would. We'll beat 'em! I"-- "Hold your horses a bit!" put in Tab hastily, taken aback by the force Wrenmarsh gave to his unconsidered words. "Go slow, please. I may have"-- "Oh, that's all right," returned the collector impetuously. "We'll take a turn down the road, and plan it all out. I can think better when I'm walking--sort of peripatetic, you see. Ha, ha!--and it'll look queer if you don't go down to see the other temple. Come on." Mr. Wrenmarsh made his way toward the road, trampling impetuously over the wild thyme and the acanthus, while Taberman followed in a mixture of amused amazement and indignation, but with a full determination to expostulate. He found, however, that he was not allowed any opportunity for remonstrance. Every sentence he began was choked off with some fresh exclamation of gratitude from the collector, or by some burst of delight that out of the skies, as it were, he had fallen to be the savior of the perplexed archæologist. By the time they had walked around the third temple, which stands at some distance from the other two, Taberman had given up protesting. He merely listened to his companion's bewildering flow of talk, and felt as if he were being drawn into a whirlpool. He was helped by his own secret delight at the thought of having a share in a real adventure, and perhaps pushed on by a boyish shame at the idea of seeming to draw back and to fail another in an extremity. He had not much chance to speak,--but he soon found that what he did say was in the line of his having accepted the position into which Mr. Wrenmarsh had been endeavoring to force him. As they returned from the third temple they found the custode beside the fountain which stood across the road from the inn. He was trying to teach his horse to shake hands. "Ah, Michu," the Italian said as they came up to him; "I hope you were pleased with the temples." "Much," Taberman assured him. "They are magnificent." Seeing his companion fee the man, he in turn slipped a coin into the brown hand. His conscience gave him a little twinge at the thought of plotting to outwit this frank, big creature; but he reflected instantly that the matter was entirely impersonal, and it was not in a tariff-hating youth like Jerry to have any scruples over tricking the Italian government in a matter of this sort. "How long would it take you to sail down here from Naples?" asked Wrenmarsh, as they took the road toward the station. Tab considered. "Five or six hours with a good breeze," was his conclusion. Mr. Wrenmarsh wrinkled his brows and quickened his pace. Those uncomfortable lines from the nostrils to the corners of his mouth deepened, and he half shut his eyes. After a little meditation he spoke again. "Very good," he said decisively. "This is the way we'll put the thing through. You go back to Naples now. Be off the shore here by eleven o'clock, and send a boat ashore for me and my boxes. They're rather big, and fairly heavy; and they've got to be handled tenderly. I couldn't get proper means of packing the things, and I've had to take what there was. Once we get the stuff on board, we must run back so as to be in Naples by sunrise. Does that suit you?" "You seem to be running this cruise," laughed Jerry. "I suppose it's all right; but there's one thing I must know. There's no chance of getting the yacht into a scrape, is there?" "Oh, no danger whatever." "You're sure?" Tab insisted. "It wouldn't be exactly pleasant to get my friend's boat confiscated, you know, or into any sort of a mess of that kind." "Bosh!" retorted Mr. Wrenmarsh brusquely. "You may make your mind easy. The worst that could happen is that I might lose my things. But we must walk a bit faster, if you're to get your train." "It's better to say to-morrow night," Tab remarked, as they took their way down the road and beneath the old Roman arch. "You see I might be late in getting back, and"-- "Of course, of course," interrupted the collector. "You can't count on getting here to-night. To-morrow night, of course." At the station the _capo_ was standing almost where Jerry had left him, looking at the hills. When the two came up, he merely turned his head and nodded. "The _facchino_ must be doing ticket-duty," the collector remarked. "We'll go in and get your ticket." A tall, yellow, broken-looking man was behind the little wicket in the ticket-office, puttering with some sort of repair work on a shelf. Mr. Wrenmarsh addressed him in Italian. The man took a blue and green ticket from a pigeon-hole on the wall, placed it under the stamp, on the knob of which he then brought down his fist with a nervous bang. Instantly he broke out into a violent exclamation. "_Sacro sangue della Madonna!_" he shouted, and began to rave hysterically. "What's the matter?" asked Taberman. "What is he saying?" "He is cursing quite well," returned the archæologist coolly. "His hand was unsteady, and he's broken the stamp. He wants to know what will become of him when the _capo_ finds the punch is broken." "Is he tight?" inquired Jerry inelegantly. "Oh, he's only bally-rotten with malaria. Look at his face." "Tell him he ought to take some quinine," suggested Taberman, genuinely sorry for the wretched-looking fellow. Mr. Wrenmarsh interpreted, but the Italian replied in a tone of mingled despair and contempt, and went out to show the broken punch to his superior. "What does he say?" asked Jerry. "Says he took twenty-four grains this noon," answered Wrenmarsh, chuckling as if it were funny. "Gad!" exclaimed Tab. "No wonder his hand shook. What a country!" "You say that?" returned the other. "You may remember that I'm tied to it till I can get my things out." They went out to the platform, and at the moment the train came in. Jerry took his seat in an empty compartment, and the collector stood outside the window. "You'll surely come?" asked Mr. Wrenmarsh, in a voice almost threatening. "I can't see that I should," Taberman returned; "but wind and weather permitting, I suppose I shall." "I can't attempt to argue with you here," the other said; "but mind--you'll come." "_Pronto! Pronto!_" called the guard in his hoarse sing-song. "I shall come," Jerry said reassuringly. "You may bet on it." "_Partenza! Partenza!_" the guard bawled, blowing his horn. "Good-by. Don't miss it!" cried Wrenmarsh, giving Jerry's hand a farewell grip. "To-morrow night," returned Taberman. "I show a light," the collector vociferated, running along the platform beside the now moving train, and repeating the details he had already arranged. "A white light." "Right-o!" shouted Taberman, as the train bore him beyond the reach of further communication. He threw himself back into the corner of the compartment, and all the way to Naples he kept wondering over and over what there was about Mr. Wrenmarsh that had induced him to promise to have a share in a scheme so mad. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Eleven A LONE-HAND GAME On the morning after his return Jerry rose at an hour comfortably late, took a swim, shaved, and having finished his breakfast, sat down to write a short note to Jack. As the captain might put in an appearance at any moment now, Taberman did not wish to go away from Naples without leaving some explanation and a hint as to his whereabouts. He found the letter somewhat difficult to write, since to give Jack a satisfactory reason for his errand to Pæstum, especially in brief space, was no easy task. He had been more or less troubled ever since his preposterous promise to Mr. Wrenmarsh; but now that he was confronted with the difficulty of making his course appear rational to Jack, he felt himself so completely a fool that he groaned as he wrote, and then tore up the note, with a curse. On the whole, he decided to say no more than that he had gone to take a short run down the coast, as he was bored at Naples. He went ashore with the note himself, and leaving the cutter at the quay to wait for him, he set out on foot for the Hôtel du Vesuve, where Jack was to report on his arrival. The morning was already well advanced, and the heat was becoming fervent; but Jerry, freshened by his recent swim, went blithely on his way. At the hotel he said to the porter that he wished to leave a letter for a gentleman who was soon to arrive, and produced his note. The official glanced at the superscription, and observed that the traveler was already there. Jerry stared at him dumfounded. "Arrived?" he gasped. "When?" "He came on the night train from Rome," replied the porter, whose English was almost as good as that of Taberman. "He came on the train that gets in at half-past eight in the morning. He is escorting two ladies. They are now at breakfast." Tab stood for a moment plunged in perplexity. This unexpected arrival of Jack made his scheme of aiding Wrenmarsh dreadfully difficult, and perhaps even impossible. He felt himself pledged, however, and he reflected that whatever were Jack's plans the captain would hardly hinder him from keeping a promise which he had made on the strength of the supposition that the Merle was to be in his hands a full month. Jack had come back before his time, but Tab said to himself that this would surely make no difference in his fulfilling his obligations to the archæologist. He asked for the breakfast party, and was shown into the carefully shaded dining-room where they were seated. Hearty greetings followed, and he sat and talked with them while they finished their repast. All three looked a bit fagged. Even Mrs. Fairhew, accustomed as she was to European travel of all sorts, had dark circles under her keen eyes. She was dressed, not according to her wont in black, but in a soft gray which well set off her brilliant complexion, so that in spite of the look of fatigue she appeared much as she had when the travelers had met at Nice. Jack was clad in a suit of white linen, with a collarless jacket such as is worn by naval officers in hot climates. His hair had been recently cut, and in such a manner as to cause each separate spike along the parting to stand up in stiff defiance. Jerry politely told him he looked more like a criminal than usual, but Miss Marchfield protested rather indignantly. In Katrine Jerry seemed to detect more alteration than in the others. Her air had grown more sedate, as if the widening of her mental horizon had, even in these few weeks, given her a new maturity and self-poise. The heat had perhaps told on her more than on the others, but in spite of some appearance of fatigue she had an air of joyous alertness which showed her buoyant and happy. "How is it that you are here so soon?" Taberman asked, after a minute of general talk. "I thought you'd be late, if anything." "There was a good deal of sickness at Rome," Jack answered, "and when a man died of typhoid fever in the very hotel we were at, it seemed time to move on." Mrs. Fairhew gave a little shudder. "Only fancy," she said,--"we knew nothing about it until he had been dead an hour. They told us after breakfast yesterday morning. It was rather unpleasant, you'll grant." "It must have been ghastly," agreed Tab, "but I hope you'll do better in Naples. It has at least the advantage of being on the sea." "And of being one of the dirtiest places in Italy," she responded grimly. "However, I'm not one to borrow trouble, and we'll trust in the sea air." "You're really becoming amphibious, Mr. Taberman," Katrine observed, with a smile. "I half fancy that if you were blindfolded you could smell your way to the water like a turtle." "The man that piloted the Merle from North Haven to the Island said he went by smell," responded Jerry. He caught Jack's eye as he spoke, and cast down his glance in confusion. Mrs. Fairhew regarded him curiously. "How did Mr. Drake like that sort of a pilot?" she asked. "He didn't hear the remark," Jack put in hastily. "Uncle Randolph wouldn't have approved of that sort of work, I rather fancy." Jerry made a grimace, and echoed the sentiment, but he added that Dave was really an excellent sailor, and that personally he'd trust the fellow's sense of smell sooner than he would the skill of most pilots. The dangerous moment passed without further allusion to the President, and the talk turned to other matters. "Is there any one here we know?" inquired Mrs. Fairhew. "I suppose it is hardly possible at this time of year." "I don't believe there is," answered Tab, "unless," he added, a sudden thought striking him, "you know where Pæstum is?" "Certainly. I've been looking forward with dread to dragging Katrine down there to see the temples, though really the time of year ought to excuse us." "Well, there's a sort of Anglo-American lunatic archæologist down there, named Wrenmarsh. Have you ever heard of him? He has relatives in Boston, I understood him." Mrs. Fairhew set down the coffee-cup she was just raising to her lips, and looked at Jerry with a keen glance in which amusement and surprise seemed to be mingled. "What is his Christian name?" she asked. "Gordon." "Gordon Wrenmarsh at Pæstum! Well, the world is small, and he might be anywhere,--at least anywhere where he was not expected to be. Did you never hear of him? But no, you wouldn't; you're too young. He is one of my contemporaries, and he has been on this side of the water for ever so long." "Is it possible?" Jerry cried gallantly. "I shouldn't have suspected that he was so young!" "Nobody can mistake you when you wish to pay a compliment," she said, with a smile that had in it a tinge of satire. "But did you really see Gordon Wrenmarsh? I haven't heard of him for years. What is he doing? At one time he was a friend of Mr. Fairhew; they were in the same class at Harvard." She showed a genuine interest, Jerry thought; and at any rate this seemed to him a good time to prepare Jack for the plan evolved between him and the archæologist, so he launched forth on the narrative of his visit to Pæstum. He did not particularize, but he did not hesitate to say that the archæologist had chanced upon a rich find which he was guarding in the hope of running it safely out of the country. "Why shouldn't he take it out of the country if he's bought it?" Katrine asked, with an air of interest. "The Italian law says he shan't," Jack answered, with a smile. "Why, if it's his, he has a right to do what he pleases, I should think," she responded. "But there's a law against carrying works of art out of the country." "What a horrid, unjust law!" she protested. "If they were mine, I'd take them out; you may be sure of that." "I'd help you," Jack assured her lightly. Jerry was secretly so pleased at this passage that he endeavored to keep the conversation in the same line by inquiring of Mrs. Fairhew further particulars about the strange creature with whom he had made tryst. "Was Mr. Wrenmarsh always as peculiar as he is now?" he asked. "I'm not able to tell you that," she returned, "as I have no means of knowing how much he has changed; but when I knew him he was the most extraordinary creature. He was always offended if people didn't notice his eccentricities, and if they did he jibed at their provincialism. He said he had to become an Englishman because our civilization was so crude, and he never forgave Bostonians for being so little concerned by his change of nationality." "You seem to have picked up rather a choice acquaintance, Jerry," observed Jack good-naturedly. "Oh, Mr. Wrenmarsh became utterly impossible," Mrs. Fairhew continued. "He really had a lot of ability, and I'm told that now he's done some remarkable things in getting antiques for the British Museum. His own people couldn't get on with him at all." "What an extraordinary creature he must be!" commented Katrine. "Did you take him for a wild man, Mr. Taberman, when you found him wandering about among the ruins of Pæstum?" "No," Jerry returned, rather regretting that he had continued the talk about Mr. Wrenmarsh. "He came into the little hovel of an inn there while I was trying to get something to eat." "Well, anyway I hope he'll get his things safe," she added. "They're his, and the government has no right to interfere with him." "I hope he may," Tab responded rather dispiritedly. Breakfast being ended, the ladies betook themselves to their rooms to rest after the fatigues of their night of travel. "If I were a billionaire," Mrs. Fairhew observed, "I would never go anywhere by night except on my own private car. All sleepers are an abomination, and I hate the thought of who may have been in the compartment when I have to sleep in it. I hope we shall see you at dinner, Mr. Taberman?" "Thank you," Jerry answered, "but I have business to-night. I assure you I regret it tremendously." "Well," the lady returned over her shoulder as she departed, "at least we shall expect to see you to-morrow; and I hope you'll leave us Mr. Castleport. "Glad to," laughed Jerry, with a nod; and the men were left to themselves. Jerry turned quickly to Jack the moment they were alone, with a look of earnestness and concern in his face. "Cap'n," he said urgently, "come somewhere where we can talk, will you? We've got heaps to say, and my time's precious." "Jerry," cried the other, catching him by the arm, "something has happened to the Merle!" "Not a thing, Jacko. She is as right as a trivet, but I'm in a hurry. Come on!" "Hurry?" echoed Jack, following him in evident disquiet; "what in the world's up? It can't be mutiny, and if the yacht's all right, I don't see"-- "I'll explain," Taberman responded. "I know a jolly little place just round the corner. Come on." Jack suffered himself to be led to a small café which bore the rather incongruously ambitious name _Albergo del Sole_, and which displayed on the yellowish wall above its entrance a rising sun, blood-red and most magnificent as to its rays. At one of the little tables which covered the sidewalk before this establishment, the pair took their places. Tab produced his cigarette-case and ordered a glass of vermouth as he offered his friend a smoke. Jack, with a hardly perceptible compression of the lips which showed that he was controlling his impatience and waiting for Tab to speak, rolled his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger to loosen it, tapped it on the table-top, and lighted it with great deliberation. Jerry did the same, but with evident nervousness. "Jack," said he, "I have been, and gone, and done it, for fair!" "What?" inquired Jack in a tone mildly incisive. "Well, you see--it's this way," Tab answered. "Of course I haven't really done anything yet, but I think I'm bound to, and if you don't think so--Well, you can see it'll be devilish hard on me as well as him." Jack blew a smoke-ring, and looked at Jerry with a queer smile. "It must be something pretty bad, Jerry," he said, "if you don't dare tell me what it is." Jerry looked at him a minute, and then broke into a grin. "Why," he said, more at his ease, "it's that damned archæologist, that bedlamite Wrenmarsh I was talking about at the hotel. Well, not having anything else to do, I went down to Pæstum to see the temples and kill time, and I fell into his clutches. I had a lot of talk with him, or he did with me. He knows a pile about the temples, and he did the showman in great shape. Incidentally he told me all about his own affairs. I didn't ask him, mind you. He just did it off his own bat. I couldn't help that, now could I?" "I don't see how you could," Jack assented; "and no more do I see why you should want to." "Why, a chap down there--a Dago peasant, you know--has turned up a dreadful mess of stuff Wrenmarsh has bought. I told you all that at breakfast." "Yes," Jack said imperturbably. "You see, Wrenmarsh turned to and bought the whole slithering lot of it, and he's just crazy over it; but as I said at the hotel, he's up against the government, and he doesn't know how under the heavens he's going to get the loot out of Italy." "Great Scott, Tab, did you undertake to run his things out of the country for him? In the Merle, too?" cried Jack, at last showing some consternation. "It's not quite so bad as that," Jerry protested; "but I did tell him I'd help him out of Pæstum and up here. Naples is all I agreed to. That's all he asked." Castleport smoked in silence a moment, looking decidedly grave. "Jack, old man," Jerry said pleadingly, "I've been an awful ass, but the way that beastly Wrenmarsh snarled me up with his talk was perfectly inconceivable. He'd have talked the tail off a brass monkey. He kept appealing to my sense of honor and heaven knows what, until I felt that I'd be a perfect cad not to help him." "That's all right, Tab," Jack answered thoughtfully. "It's only the Merle--I should hate awfully to get her into a mess." "He assured me that nothing could happen to her, and I don't think he'd lie." "Well, if that's so, there's no great harm done, old man. What are you worrying over?" "I'm not worrying at all, Jacko, if you don't object to my keeping my word. Just continue my letters of marque until to-morrow. I promised him I'd go down this afternoon. You will be in command, of course, now you're here; but I'd hate to think of the poor wretch waiting down there in the marshes for me--it's an awful place for malaria!--and I not coming at all." "Oh, I shan't interfere," Jack said quickly. "I had made up my mind to stay on shore one night more anyway, and I really gave you the yacht till the twentieth. You shall run this thing yourself; but, by Jove, to think of Uncle Randolph's Merle in business like that!" "We started out to be pirates anyway," laughed Jerry, "and we haven't lived up to our reputation so far. Well, I'll try it. I shall be rid of the beggar by ten o'clock to-morrow, wind and weather permitting. It's awful good of you, old man. I thought you'd think I was a bally-ass to let myself be bamboozled that way; but when he was talking to me I felt as if he was being awfully bully-ragged, and I ought to help him out." "Of course," was Jack's response. "Didn't you notice how Katrine had exactly the same feeling, just from your telling about it?" Tab felt like winking to himself, but he preserved a grave countenance, and only asked,-- "What will you tell Mrs. Fairhew about the Merle's being away?" "Oh, that 's simple enough. I'll tell her you wanted to visit Pæstum again, and you can say afterward that you ran across Wrenmarsh and brought him up to Naples. Twig it?" "Clear as a bell. Come down and see me off." He sprang from his chair with animation, greatly relieved that the captain had not prevented him from carrying out his plan. As Jack rose also, Jerry laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder. "It's awfully good of you, old man," he said. "Nonsense. It's a mighty little thing to do for you, when you came across the Atlantic for me." "Oh, rats!" Tab rejoined inelegantly. "I came for the fun of it." They paid the reckoning, and made their way to the quay, where for an hour and a half the boat had been waiting for Jerry. The men were lolling about in the stray corners of shade available, smoking and sleepily exchanging occasional remarks; but at the sight of the captain they woke up at once. "Here's the skipper," cried one, jumping to his feet and saluting. The others followed his example with alacrity, and Jack could not but be gratified by the unmistakable pleasure they showed at seeing him again. "How are you, boys?" he said cheerily. "Glad to see you all. You seem to be in fighting trim, the whole lot of you." "We're bang up, sir," responded Dave, with a grin. "'Tain't the kind o' weather we left home in, sir." "Not exactly," Jack responded laughingly, as he took his place in the stern-sheets; "but I hope you don't miss the fog too much. Oars!" Jack stayed on the Merle for an hour and a half, reading the log and exchanging with Jerry all the news that either could rake up. Gonzague made errands into the cabin evidently for the purpose of feasting his eyes on his master, and beamed with delight at every word Castleport spoke to him. When the old man found that the captain had not come to remain, he looked so doleful that Castleport rallied him about not liking Tab as a skipper. "Eet ees not dat," Gonzague responded, with eloquent hands and shoulders; "he ees fine as de seelk, but--but Mistaire Taberman he ees not zee capataine you." Jerry was anxious to make an early start for Pæstum, as the wind was light, so Jack took his leave with hearty wishes for a prosperous run. Jerry went with him to the steps. "By the way, Jack," he asked in an undertone, as the captain was about to descend to take his place in the cutter, "are congratulations in order?" Castleport looked away from his friend toward where, across the bay, in a dim haze of purple, stood Capri. Then he glanced quickly into Jerry's eyes. "I--I haven't said anything to her," he answered simply. He ran down the steps to the cutter. Gonzague himself had taken the boat-hook to hold the craft steady. Castleport put his hand kindly on the old man's shoulder. "Good-by, Gonzague," he said. "I'm coming aboard for keeps to-morrow. Good-by, Jerry." "Good-by, and--good luck," called Tab in reply, as the cutter started away. It lacked a quarter of an hour to twelve that night when the Merle hove to a cable's length off Pæstum. The wind had freshened at sundown, and was blowing a smart breeze from the west. Jerry had the cutter lowered, and, leaving Gonzague in charge, with stringent orders to keep the yacht lying where she was, had himself pulled toward the shore. The men had no notion what was going on, but they obeyed orders with a prompt alacrity which showed that they felt that something of unusual import was in this business. When the cutter was within about a hundred feet of the shore, Tab ordered the men to lie on their oars, and keep watch for a light. In silence and utter darkness, for though the stars were shining there was no moon, they tossed about in the black troughs of the sea for twenty minutes. Then Dave uttered a guarded exclamation. "There's a light, sir," he said. "See, there it is again." "Lay her head for it, and pull!" commanded Jerry, feeling as if he were in a pirate novel. "No noise, mind!" The light had appeared for an instant some two or three hundred feet up the shore from the point off which the cutter lay rolling. They pulled quietly for the spot, the oars sounding softly, the water lapping the bows of the boat, and the wind bringing to their ears the muffled rote as of a sand beach. "Let her run," ordered Tab in an undertone. "Can you see the light?" For a minute they rolled in darkness as before, and then again sighted the signal, this time straight in shore. Jerry felt his heart beat as he gave the order to run in, and a consciousness of romantic adventure, lawless and wild, was like a sweet and exhilarating flavor in his mouth. Such a deed on his native shores would have had an atmosphere of secret villany about it, but here, in alien waters, on a foreign coast, under the darkness of night, the romantic side was intensified a thousand-fold. A whimsical feeling flitted through the back of his head that he ought to be dressed differently for such an occasion; that he should have had a shaggy black beard, a red sash stuck full of pistols, and half a dozen cutlasses disposed promiscuously about his person. He was not without a fleeting consciousness that some time he might at home, to the old crowd of college boys, find a keen joy in telling of this night, and--But the light flashed out again, this time so near that the cutter lay full in the middle of the dark, fire-sprinkled path it illumined; and Jerry's entire mind was called back to the business in hand. He could in the light see the cheeks of the men in front of him as they swayed with their rowing, the brass rowlocks of the cutter, and the dripping blades of the oars. He strained his eyes toward the land, but was blinded by the glare into which he looked; and on the instant a voice, eager but subdued, hailed from the shore some twenty feet away. "Hallo! Are you there, Mr. Taberman?" "Here all right," answered Jerry. "Eyes in the boat!" he added sharply to the men, every one of whom except Dave had turned to look ashore. "Three good strokes now: Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!... Let her run!" The nose of the cutter ground on a sand-beach; the bowsman sprang ashore with the painter and held her, while Jerry clambered forward, steadying himself with a hand on the shoulder of the rowers. On leaping to the land, he was confronted by Mr. Wrenmarsh. That gentleman shifted the lantern he held from his right hand to his left, and shook hands with Taberman fervently. "You're just in time," he said hurriedly. "We haven't a second to lose. The boxes are right here on the edge of the grass. Come on with your men. It'll take four of them for that biggest box." Jerry called the four men who were nearest, and telling the rest to stand by, he hurried up the beach. In the sand, by the light of the lantern with which the archæologist came after him, he saw the print of wheels leading up to a pile of rude wooden cases. Three of them were of moderate size, but the fourth looked to Tab huge in the semi-darkness. "How big is that thing?" he asked, touching it with his foot. "Don't kick it!" Wrenmarsh responded quickly and sharply. "It's only about a metre square and half as deep. I couldn't make it any smaller." Jerry whistled with dismay. "We may lose it overboard on the way to the Merle," he remarked cruelly. Then without heeding the dismayed exclamation of the collector, he ordered the men to take that first. "Put it as far astern as you can," he said. "I'm afraid you'll have to wade in with it." "For God's sake hurry," cried Wrenmarsh. "I know that beastly carter has put the custodi up to the job by this time. Only don't drop that case!" he added, running along by the side of the bearers with the lantern swinging wildly to and fro and bumping against his legs. The case was evidently pretty heavy, and the men breathed deep as they carried it across the loose sand. By dint of the men's wading in beside the cutter the big box was safely deposited in the stern-sheets, and the sailors went back for a new load. A second box was stowed without trouble, but as the two others, which were fortunately the smallest, were being lifted by two men each, Wrenmarsh clutched Taberman by the arm. "Look there!" he cried. "Look there! Quick, men! For God's sake, quick!" Not more than a hundred yards away on the beach to the southward was an advancing lantern. Suddenly it stopped. "What is it?" asked Tab. The men, spurred on by Wrenmarsh, were fairly running across the sand, and Tab skurried along with them toward the boat. "Hurry! Hurry!" was the breathless response of Wrenmarsh. "It's the custodi and the police--those cursed _carabinieri_! I told you the carter'd sell me out." It was only a minute before the men had reached the boat, and hurriedly stowed the boxes they carried. Taberman and Wrenmarsh scrambled in, and Jerry, sitting in a distorted and cramped position behind the big box, got hold of the lines. The men pushed off, and got into their places anyhow. Just as Tab opened his lips to order the men to give way, a peremptory voice came to them from the shore to the south. The light had not advanced from where they had seen it stop, but it had gone waving wildly up and down the beach as if the bearers had encountered some impassable obstacle and sought in vain for a place which would allow a passage. "_Aspetta!_" bawled the voice. "_Aspetta nel nomme del Re!_" "What's that?" asked Jerry. "They're calling us to stand--in the king's name," Mr. Wrenmarsh returned with sullen nervousness. "Head the boat 'round," cried Tab. "Why the devil don't they come down if they want us?" "I can't imagine," the collector answered. "Perhaps they're afraid of us; but I don't think that can be it." "_Aspetta!_" thundered the voice on shore more savagely. "_Aspetta o tiriamo!_" "By Jove! The sands!" cried Wrenmarsh. "There's a brook there--the bottom's quicksand. They daren't try to cross." "Quicksand?" echoed Tab. "How'd they come there, then?" "They must have thought we were on the other side of the stream. They've come up on the wrong bank, and now they can't get over." Bang! There was a quick, loud report, and Jerry heard the _wht_ of a carbine ball close astern. "Great Scott!" he shouted. "Douse that glim! Pull! Pull!" Wrenmarsh seized the lantern and dipped it overboard, an effective if irregular way of quenching it. Bang! Bang! Two more shots. One of the men, Hunter, pulling on the third thwart, afterward swore that he felt the wind of the second bullet. Bang! "Pull hard, men! Steady!" cried Jerry. A man of race and training, while in a crisis of this sort he feels more excitement than his thicker-skinned fellows, displays more outward coolness. Social development means the power of self-control, especially when any sense of responsibility is involved. Taberman was inwardly wild with the stirring emotions of an experience such as he not only had never encountered but of which he had heard in a hundred ways which lent associations to heighten the effect; yet he did not lose for a moment his sense of having the men to care for. He kept his head, and called the stroke for the rowers. They showed by their tendency to pull wildly how near they were to demoralization, and Jerry urged them to steadiness with language of the most picturesque emphasis. Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots. At the third there was a sharp rap, as if the cutter had been hit by a pebble, and a queer little squeak of splintering wood. Tab started up, but instantly sat down again, catching at the yoke-line he had half let fall. "Close call," Wrenmarsh said nervously. "Yes," Jerry answered laconically. "Stroke! Stroke! Steady!" At the instant he had heard the sound of the ball on the wood of the boat, he had felt a sharp twinge in his left arm, as if the muscle had been suddenly tweaked off the bone by a pair of white-hot pincers. The pain was exquisite, but he forced himself to keep calm, and beyond the first involuntary spring he gave no indication that he had been hit. In a sort of double consciousness he kept saying to himself that he wondered how severe the hurt was, and at the same time he seemed to be lifted by sheer will and excitement above even the physical feeling of the moment. "Steady!" he said, and was queerly conscious of a sort of exultation that his voice was so strong and natural. "We're 'most out of range." Other shots followed, but they splashed harmlessly astern. The darkness was a shelter, and although the carbines flashed again and again from the shore, no more damage was done on board the cutter. Ahead of them Tab, holding himself together grimly, saw the red and green sailing-lights of the Merle, and realized that at the sound of the firing Gonzague must have run the yacht in shore. "Ahoy!" Jerry called. Tears of pain suffused his eyes in spite of him, and made the colored lights big and blurry, as if they were the glaring orbs of some huge dragon. "Hollá!" came Gonzague's voice. "A'right, sair!" and with a deafening boom of canvas the schooner luffed up. Jerry put his right arm behind him, his left hanging limply, and getting hold of the rudder-yoke he laid the cutter alongside the yacht. He and Wrenmarsh got up to the deck, a davit was turned out-board as a crane and the boxes hoisted, and then the boat slung up. Faint and savage with pain, Jerry still fought with himself to keep up, and to fulfill his duties as commander. He remembered that his order for the Merle to lie to where she was had been disregarded; and though he was inwardly glad that the yacht had been brought to meet the cutter, he felt that discipline was discipline, and he was in no mood to let any infringement of orders go unnoted. He called Gonzague. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded fiercely. "Didn't I give orders to keep the yacht hove to till I came out?" "Yes, sair," Gonzague answered contritely, stroking his stiff white mustache with nervous fingers, "bot I heer de shotin' ashore, an'"-- "That made no difference. I'm ashamed that an old seaman like you should disobey orders simply because he heard a row ashore. Go forward. I shall mark you in the log." The old man took himself off without a word. However much he was likely to feel the sting of this reproof, he was not the man to fail to respect the mate for it, and of this Tab might be assured when he had the calmness to think things over. Jerry gave the helmsman the course for Naples, and the Merle swung off on her return. Then he started to go below, but now that the need of immediate action was over he suddenly turned sick and dizzy. He put out his uninjured arm with a quick clutch at Mr. Wrenmarsh. "Give me--your arm," he said weakly. "I'm--I'm hit, you know, and things go round." "Hit!" echoed the collector. "Where? Is it serious?" "Arm," answered Jerry. "Help me get below." The archæologist supported Jerry to the companion, and then almost carried him down the steps. He tried to place him on the transom, but Taberman stubbornly walked half the length of the cabin, and sank into a chair by the table. His lips seemed to him queerly stiff as he twisted them into a wry smile. "Mustn't bleed on the cushions, y' know," he said feebly. "Call Gonzague." Wrenmarsh shouted the name explosively, hovering solicitously over Jerry, and in a moment the Provençal appeared. Jerry made a mighty effort to pull himself together. "Here, Gonzague," he said, "get the medicine-chest, and strip my coat off. I've got to be fixed. I want some hot water and a b. and s. Beg your--pardon," he added, turning slowly to Mr. Wrenmarsh, and confusedly wishing that the cabin would not turn so much faster than he could. "I'm forgetting. This gentleman's to have Jack's--the captain's stateroom. Will you have anything to drink? 'Fraid I'm poor host, but"-- "No, no," cried the archæologist. "That's all right. The brandy, Gonzague, quick!" A brandy and soda put fresh life into Jerry, who still tried to be polite, and protested that the collector should not bother. "You'll find me a first-class chirurgeon," responded the other. "Where's the medicine-chest, Gonzague?" He proved remarkably ready and efficient and kindly withal. He stripped off Jerry's jacket and cut away the shirt-sleeve, to discover a two-inch sliver of African oak from the gunwale of the cutter stabbed into a jagged hole in the forearm. He probed and cut and trimmed with the skill of a trained surgeon, while Jerry, pale and with set teeth, bore it all with Spartan firmness until everything was over, and then, as he tried to rise when the last bandage was in place, fainted dead away. When the plucky mate had been brought round and stowed away in his berth, Gonzague again took charge of the Merle, and dropped her anchor once more in the harbor of Naples at about eight o'clock in the morning. Just before Mr. Wrenmarsh turned in for the night, he put his head into the door of Jerry's stateroom to ask if he could do anything for him. "No, thank you," Jerry returned. "Much obliged; but the man by my door will hear if I want anything. I'm all right now. I'm jolly much obliged to you for fixing me up." "'Pon my word, Table--Taberman, you're the most extraordinary man for a Bostonian I ever saw. Good-night." "Good-night," Jerry responded. Then he chuckled, and added, "But Boston's full of better men than I am, if you'd only stayed there to see 'em." [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Twelve AT VERGIL'S TOMB "I never could touch it," Katrine said, with an emphatic shake of her head. "I should think a baby brought up on goat's milk would run round and bleat. Why, I think the idea of it is horrid!" Her eyes sparkled and her whole air was full of a delicious animation, so that it was no wonder Jack threw back his head and laughed, as much in sheer admiration as from amusement. He was in high spirits this morning, the excitement of a mighty resolve stirring in his blood. "How do you know that you haven't been having goat's milk at the hotel?" he demanded. "Aren't you afraid you'll begin to break out in a baa yourself all of a sudden?" "Why, how rude you are!" she cried, her dimples deepening and shoaling. "Of course they wouldn't dare to give it to us, and we should know it if they did!" The young people were being driven in a Neapolitan _vettura_ to the tomb of Vergil. Jack had mentioned the spot that morning at breakfast as being well worth a visit, if only for the view, and said that the ladies ought to see it. Mrs. Fairhew had, for reasons perhaps not wholly unconnected with remembrances of her own youth and the late Mr. Fairhew, declined to make the jaunt, on the score that it was too hot and that she had a thousand trifles to attend to. She had refused her niece's prompt offer of assistance, and so left that young woman free to accept Jack's invitation that she take the drive with him. Their talk was light enough, the lighter because Jack at least hardly dared to venture to be serious lest he betray how terribly in earnest he was. The sight of a little flock of goats, which had scattered at the pistol-like crack of their driver's whip, had given them a theme for a moment. The agile brown animals skipped along the gutters, assailed by the effervescent profanity of their conductor, a half-naked, slim-limbed lad browner than the beasts themselves; and with more detonations of the whiplash the carriage whirled up the hill with hardly diminished speed as the grade grew steeper. Through picturesque, squalid streets, braver in their poverty than many a splendid thoroughfare, through nooks that seemed to be private courtyards with entire families disposed about them, the carriage took its way noisily; it turned now to the left, now to the right, continually ascending; it brought them to the top of narrow ways down which they looked as through a kaleidoscope gleaming with a confusion of gay colors; it seemed about to land them on the roof of some building which lay directly before them, and then at the last moment whisked around some unseen corner and carried them still higher. "Isn't it wonderful," Katrine said. "I never saw such a city. I feel almost as if we were in a flying-machine,--we keep going up so and see such wonderful sights all the time. Oh, do look down that street! Did you ever see such colors?" "It is stunning," Castleport answered, his eyes on her face. "You didn't look at it at all," she said half pouting, as the carriage whirled them past. "Oh, I could see it all in your eyes," he returned. "You don't know what excellent mirrors they are." "What nonsense! How silly you are this morning!" Her color deepened, however, and Jack did not feel that his remark had missed fire. He smiled to himself, and just then the carriage brought up with a jerk on the left side of the way, in front of a small green door in a gray retaining-wall. Over the door was printed in black letters: _Tomba di Virgilio_. "Here we are," Jack said. He got out with the field-glasses he had brought, and extended his hand to assist Katrine. She hardly touched his arm with her finger-tips, but the air was electric, and he felt the thrill like a pulse of warm blood from head to foot. He did not speak to the driver, but with a manner that made that piratical Neapolitan regard him with a new respect simply ordered him in the sign-language of the town to remain in waiting. A soldier came slouching out of a shop near by wherein he was evidently lounging, took the prescribed gate-fees, and then opened the narrow door. This disclosed a staircase, strait and steep, cut from the living rock, which led upward and to the right. They climbed the stone stairs without speaking, but at the top the wonderful beauty of the view which burst upon them called from Katrine an involuntary exclamation of surprise and delight. Below them, red-roofed and multi-colored, Naples lay bathed in the strong white light of the southern sun; beyond, marvelously blue and ruffled by a gentle breeze, the waters of the bay flashed and sparkled; and beyond again, farther yet, stood purple Capri and the piled-up southern shore, luminous and mistily azure. To the eastward, brooding and tragic, yet with a thrilling beauty of its own in softly flowing curves and wavering outline, showed Vesuvius, and stupendous as it was, seemed crouching sinister and awful, the incarnation of pitiless power. Jack focused the glasses, and handed them to Katrine. Then he began to point here and there, showing her the different things of interest visible from the spur of the hill on which they were standing. As she was looking toward the Mole and the New Harbor, suddenly she uttered a little cry of surprise. "There's the Merle," she said. "I'm sure it is. At least she's flying the American flag." "Yes," Jack responded. "That's she, fast enough." "Doesn't it seem like a bit of home to see her down there?" Katrine went on. "I think it was perfectly wonderful that Mr. Drake let you take her this summer." Jack gave a quick movement of the shoulders, and then set his lips together more firmly. "I shall have to tell her the whole thing," he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "I shouldn't have been here when you were if it hadn't been for having the Merle." "I suppose not," she answered, and the change in her tone showed most clearly that she understood in the words more than met the ear. After they had stood for a time in admiration of the magnificent view before them, they turned to go to the tomb, twenty yards away. The uneven path, bordered by beautiful wild poppies and violets, was shaded by gnarled fig and plum trees. A splendid stone-pine rose superb on the left, crowned by its dome-shaped cluster of branches. "Oh," Katrine cried, "it's perfectly beautiful, isn't it? It makes you feel solemn, it's so lovely." "Yes," he assented, and unwonted emotion left him with no word to add. "Just look at those flowers," she went on. "What a pity it is that we don't have them like that at home." "It's a fitting place for Vergil to be buried in, isn't it?" Jack said. "I thought you would like it." "It is a place I shall remember all my life," she replied. Her eyes met his as she spoke, and her glance fell with quick consciousness. Before he could speak, she added hurriedly, "Is this the tomb?" "Yes," he answered, entirely undisturbed by any chilling scholastic doubts on the subject, "this is the tomb." Before them was a lowly structure of old rubble, four square, and a narrow door, at which the path, with a sudden dip, came to an end. "Will you go in?" he said, standing aside. Katrine entered, and he followed. The place was as simple within as without. The floor seemed to be of beaten earth; the single room, or _cella_, was lighted by a small window, and it contained only two or three cinerary urns of dark red clay, which leaned against the wall opposite the door. Above these, in brown letters on a tablet of white marble, was an inscription set there by the Academy of France. The pair stood silent for a minute, Katrine reading the tablet, and Jack, his head bared, standing beside her. As she turned her head she caught for a second time his glance. She colored, and moved quickly to the small window. "Isn't the view wonderful!" she said, as if she had caught at the first words that came into her mind. "Yes," he returned absently. "Fine, isn't it?" She looked a moment out of the window, and then, avoiding his eyes, she turned back to the Latin distich cut in the tablet, and by tradition assigned to Vergil himself:-- Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces. "You'll think I am unspeakably stupid," she said, "but I confess I cannot make it out. 'Mantua gave me birth,' I can read that." "'The Calabrian winds carried me away,'" Jack went on. "Oh, yes; but I don't understand the Parthenope." "That's Naples," he answered. "'Naples holds me.'" "Oh, is that it? I know the rest. 'I sang pastures, fields, leaders.'" "Good! You shall have an A in the examination in spite of Parthenope," he assured her. "Perhaps 'heroes' is a better word for _duces_, though." "I'm afraid I don't deserve an A," she laughed, "but I am satisfied if I pass at all." As they came out of the tomb Jack picked a spray from the beautiful laurel growing beside the entrance, and held it out to her. She took it with a murmured word of thanks, and put it in her gown. Not far away on the right of the path was a rude seat or bench, shaded by fig and olive trees, and partially screened from the path by dwarf plums. It was slightly higher than the way by which they had come. "Here," Jack said, "let's go up and rest a bit. The view is worth seeing." They turned to the seat and took their places in silence. The view was not perceptibly different from that which they had on the path, but as Jack looked at Katrine and Katrine cast down her eyes, this was not a matter which they were likely to notice. "Katrine," the captain began,--for they had come, almost by insensible degrees, to call each other by their Christian names,--"I've got to tell you something. It isn't altogether pleasant for me, but it's only fair that you should know." She looked up at him in evident surprise and with some disquiet. "Why, what is it?" she asked. "I hope it isn't anything really terrible." He hesitated, and began to scrape the ground with his foot nervously. "I--er--Well, to be honest, I don't know exactly how to tell you so you won't be too hard on me," he answered frankly. "Is it so bad?" she queried in a tone which showed some concern under its assumed lightness. "What in the world have you been doing? You haven't been murdering anybody, I hope." "What would you say," asked Jack, "what would you think of a man that acted like this? Suppose a case. Suppose the chap was, in the first place, in America. Suppose he had a friend, a friend he cared a lot about, one he thought more of than anybody else in the world, and that friend was on this side. Suppose the man's property was all tied up,--in trust, you know,--and he'd promised not to borrow, so he couldn't honorably raise the money to come over unless his trustee would let him. The trustee, we'll say, is a nice old fellow,--really nice, you know, only rather crotchety,--who wouldn't hear a word of the chap's going." He stopped as if for encouragement, and Katrine, with evident appreciation of this, murmured, "Yes, I understand." "And suppose," Castleport went on, a new hesitancy coming into his voice, "that this trustee--of course the chap is his nearest relative, you know--has an able schooner yacht. Now if the chap simply couldn't stand it, but captured that yacht--not violently, of course, but by stratagem,--and came over to see his friend, and to ask her"-- "Why, Jack Castleport!" cried Katrine, with eyes open to their widest. "You don't mean that you ran away with the Merle! I never can believe it!" "It's true, though," he responded. "Do you blame me so very much?" Her glance dropped before his, and her manner instantly lost its boldness. "I--Why, of course that depends," she murmured. "Depends on what?" "On--how--how necessary it was for him to see his friend." "Oh," Jack cried. "I had to see her! You know I had to come, Katrine! I had to tell you I love you, and I stole Uncle Randolph's yacht because he wouldn't let me come any other way. I had to come." He sprang up in his excitement, and stood before her, his hands twisting each other in a way odd enough for one of so much self-control. "You must have known how I cared for you, Katrine. I couldn't tell you without making a clean breast of this, but don't be too hard on me. I had to come." She flashed up at him the merest hair's-breadth of a glance, and with her hands pressed to her bosom, said softly, "I never could have forgiven you if you hadn't come." He simply stooped over and took her unceremoniously in his arms, and it was several moments before she had breath and presence of mind to protest. "Heavens!" she cried with mock terror. "Am I in the arms of a pirate? Jack, I never knew anything so shocking in my life! How could you do it?" "I had to get across the Atlantic to you," he answered, as if that were an excuse all-sufficient. And the sun shone down on the sea and on Vesuvius and on Vergil's tomb, and on that which is more enduring than all these,--the sweetness of young love. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Thirteen A BID FOR THE ODD TRICK While the captain was looking with Katrine down on the Merle, as the yacht lay quietly at anchor in the harbor, a notable conversation was taking place on board. At no very early hour Tab had risen, tubbed with difficulty, and, with some aid, got into his clothes. His left arm was stiff and very sore, but beyond that he felt no discomfort. His magnificent physique, improved by the hardy life he had been leading, saved him from any consequences more serious; so that the archæologist, who was in capital spirits, rallied him on the prodigious appetite he displayed at breakfast. "I have to eat double to make up for the blood I lost last night," Jerry said, with a grin. "I find there's nothing for the appetite like a regular brush with the police. I've found it so before, when I was in college." After breakfast the two went on deck, and seated under the awning, with the beautiful bay before them and a soft air to bring a delicious coolness, they talked over the adventure of the previous night. Then from this they branched off to more general matters. Mr. Wrenmarsh was a man of wide experience and of good observation, and was well informed on almost every topic the talk touched upon. His tricks and eccentricities had been for the time being laid aside, or showed only as a flavor of personality piquant and attractive. Jerry found himself soothed and entertained, although, remembering his previous experience with the collector, he was not without a feeling that Wrenmarsh had a propensity to use speech as a squid does his ink, to conceal his course, and so wondered what the collector had still to gain. Wrenmarsh suddenly took to intricate and unintelligible sentences without warning and equally without apparent excuse, when Jerry brought him back to earth with a question what he intended to do next. "Do?" exclaimed Wrenmarsh, as if shocked and astonished by such an inquiry. "Of course I shan't think of setting foot on shore again till I get to England." Jerry hardly suppressed an instinctive whistle, and for a brief instant he had nothing to say; but after all he was not without a shrewdness of his own. He was still chagrined to remember that the archæologist had played upon him once for his own purposes, and he had at least learned that in dealing with this man it was necessary to be cautious. "To England?" he repeated in a voice so casual as to rouse Wrenmarsh and to tickle himself inwardly. "How do you go?" "Go?" once more echoed the other. "With you, of course." "Oh, are we going to England?" Jerry asked more carelessly than before. "Surely you are," Wrenmarsh retorted with some sharpness. "Are we really?" was Jerry's comment. A refrain from a song in a Pudding play popped into his head, and he hummed it in derision hardly disguised,-- "You surprise me!" "Will you--er--say that again?" asked the collector most courteously. "Oh, quite unnecessary," Tab returned, not to be trapped into an apology. "It was only a bit of a song." He was filled with a pleasant feeling that he was bothering the collector, astute as that person was, and he determined, as the circumstances certainly were in his favor, to hold his own with him this time at least. "I don't think you have a very clear view of the case," Wrenmarsh said, after a moment of silent musing with contracted brow. "If you had, you'd see that it isn't possible for me to go ashore now, after that beastly business of last night. I assure you, I'm awfully sorry for that mess. There's another thing,--I couldn't get those boxes ashore from the yacht without their being examined, and then there'd be the devil of a row." "That must have occurred to you before you left Pæstum," Jerry remarked with coolness. Mr. Wrenmarsh did not move a muscle. "So it did," he said blandly; "but of course I knew it must have been evident to you also." Jerry laughed in spite of himself at the cool impudence of this. "I confess that it wasn't," he responded. "Even if it wasn't," the other went on, as smoothly as ever, "I never for an instant supposed that when once you'd started out to help me, you'd funk. That is a contingency, I confess, never occurred to my mind. I thought you were made of different stuff. You were clear game last night." Jerry looked at his guest and burst into deep-throated laughter. "Well, for clean cheek!" he cried. "Do you think I'm going to tote you about in a yacht I don't own for the rest of my life?" "Would you like to?" asked the collector, with a fresh aspect of interest. "Because in the Ã�gean Sea I've a"-- "Whatever it is, please keep it to yourself, or you'll insist that I promised to help you with it," interrupted Tab grimly. "As for going to England in the present case, that's quite out of the question. What are you going to do? If you stay on board, you'll land in Boston." Mr. Wrenmarsh's face took on for an instant a look distinctly ugly. It suddenly occurred to Taberman that the collector was in rather an evil plight,--worse, indeed, than that from which the Merle had rescued him. "Surely you're not serious?" Wrenmarsh asked slowly. "I think I am," Jerry responded pleasantly. "What are you going to do?" "Damn!" the other broke out explosively, lying back in his chair and running his fingers through his gray-sprinkled locks. Jerry was too soft-hearted not to be touched by the other's perplexity, but an involuntary movement of sympathy which he made happened to give him a painful twinge in the arm, and he hardened his heart. There was a silence of some minutes, during which he tried to make out from the face of his companion what thoughts were passing behind that mask. Suddenly the cloud lifted from the face of Wrenmarsh, and he flashed a bright glance on Jerry. "Bless me," he cried gayly. "I might have thought! Plutus--Mammon--filthy lucre! But how extraordinary in an American--not to ask for it, you know! What'll you take for it?" "For what?" responded Tab, not catching his drift. He had a dreadful feeling that by becoming incomprehensible, the other might be getting the better of him. "What's to pay for a passage of myself and my boxes to--let us say Plymouth?" Indignation for the instant flared up in Jerry. "This is not a passenger ship," he responded brusquely. "Oh, of course not, my dear fellow; but as every man has his price, I suppose a yacht has too." Common-sense and indignation worked together now to keep Taberman from an angry retort. It flashed upon him that here was a chance, one in a thousand, to pay off the hands of the Merle without troubling the President; it was a chance, too, to score off this cheeky archæologist. Taberman had already noted that Wrenmarsh was a penurious soul who hated to part with money, and he felt something of the godly joy of the departing Israelites when Moses announced the project for the spoiling of the Egyptians. England was not such an impossible distance off. They might take the Great Circle track home. Surely if Jack-- "Don't you see my position, Mr. Wrenmarsh?" he asked. "I haven't the power to dispose of the Merle. I'm simply in charge of her while the captain's ashore, don't you see? Still"-- He paused dramatically. "Well?" ejaculated Wrenmarsh, apparently keeping his gaze fixed in the closest interest on the red sails of a big felucca that was standing in toward the Mole. "Well, I think I might be right in making a sort of conditional--a purely conditional"--he repeated the word for caution, wondering if he ought to make it any stronger--"arrangement. It wouldn't be valid without the sanction of the captain. You see that, of course." "Well?" repeated the other. "Do you see--merely conditional?" insisted Taberman. "Yes, I suppose so," assented the other grudgingly. "I might make a sort of conditional arrangement, then, to go to Plymouth, or perhaps to any other English port not too much out of the way, for a consideration of"--He paused again. "Ten pounds," suggested the archæologist. "Two hundred," said Jerry coolly. He could have hugged himself with joy at the sound of his own voice naming the sum in such a matter-of-fact fashion. He knew well enough that but for the enormous handicap which circumstances had put upon the archæologist he would have had no chance whatever to outmanoeuvre him, but this he did not bother to reflect on at the moment and might have had scruples about if he had. He gave himself up to the delight of feeling that he had distinctly the better of the man who had so carried him off his feet at Pæstum, and who had involved him in an affair of the seriousness of which Jerry had had good reason to meditate in the times in the night when his arm kept him awake. It was certainly something to have the upper hand now; and two hundred pounds, which he had named almost at random, multiplied itself in his head into a most satisfactory number of dollars. "Two hundred pounds!" cried out the archæologist, nearly jumping out of his chair. His affected surprise was dramatic, but unfortunately for its effect it was overdone, so that even Jerry felt it to be theatrical. "Shall we call it two hundred and fifty?" the mate asked, enjoying himself more every minute. "Two hundred and fifty devils!" shouted Wrenmarsh, who appeared more irritated, it seemed to Jerry, on account of being outmanoeuvred than because the price was so high. "Not devils--pounds," Tab responded, smiling at his own wit. "Leave off the two hundred," begged the collector. "The agreement is only conditional anyway," Jerry said, with something of an air, "but if it seems to you fairer, we'll leave off the fifty, and call it an even two hundred--one for you and one for those precious boxes, to be paid on arrival. I'm not a Neapolitan. Will you go ashore here or wait for the captain?" "I'll wait for the captain, Mr. Taberman," Wrenmarsh replied. He glowered across the bay for a moment, and then added, "He may not be so infernally exorbitant as you are." Jerry smiled secretly to himself, and resolved that at least Jack should be persuaded to make no easier terms. Then he went to write a note to summon the captain to come aboard to consider this proposition of taking a passenger. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Fourteen CLEARING THE DECKS When Jack appeared on the Merle, rather late that afternoon, Jerry met him by the steps, his arm in a sling. "Good heavens, Tab," cried the captain, "what's the matter? What have you done to your arm, boy?" "Nothing much," Jerry answered. "Just got a little piece of the cutter in it in a night engagement. What the deuce kept you so long?" "But was it last night?" Jack insisted. "Did you get into trouble?" "We were under fire," Jerry laughed; "but I had the only casualty." "The devil you did! What sort of a trap did your infernal Englishman lead you into?" "That's just what I want to tell you before you see him. What in the world made you so late? I've been waiting all the afternoon." The captain's face grew radiant. "Well, you see," he returned, with a little laugh in his throat, "time passed so quickly, and Katrine and I had so much to talk about"-- "Jacko! You've done it!" shouted Tab, loud enough to be heard from one end of the yacht to the other. The captain grinned warmly, and nodded with sparkling eyes. "Oh, good man!" cried Tab, wringing his hand. "Good old Jack! Long life and all happiness to you, you dear old pirate!" His words tumbled out helter-skelter, and his honest blue eyes were moist with pure joy at his friend's happiness. He admired Miss Marchfield from the bottom of his heart, and Jack was the dearest friend he could ever have. He rejoiced as sincerely and as warmly as if the good fortune of the captain had been his own. "Thank you, old man," laughed Jack, bubbling over with good spirits; "but if it hadn't been for you, I--I'd never have done it." "Tush!" flouted Jerry. "Don't talk bosh! It was only a matter of time anyway. But I'm glad it's all right." They had been standing at the head of the steps, and now the captain moved along the deck. "What did you send for me to come out in such a hurry for?" he inquired. "Hurry!" ejaculated Jerry. "Do you call this coming out in a hurry? If it hadn't been that you left a born diplomat in charge, you might have lost two hundred pounds by being so slow." "Two hundred pounds?" the other echoed. "What on earth are you talking about?" "Come into the cabin before you go aft," was Jerry's answer. "I want to tell you about that." "And about your arm, old man. What is the matter with you?" "That's part of it," Tab returned, as they went below together. "I'm trying among other things to recover damages." When some little time later the two friends came on deck and went aft to where the guest was sitting, Jack was in full possession of the whole situation. "Jack, Mr. Gordon Wrenmarsh; Mr. Wrenmarsh, Captain John Castleport," Jerry said. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wrenmarsh," Jack said, extending his hand. He was evidently in the best of humor. His spirits on that day could hardly be other than at their highest, and he had been vastly amused by Jerry's plan of raising funds to pay off the men. "Thanks," responded the archæologist. "I was afraid the pleasure was largely mine. I've been expecting you all day." "Well," Jack said, seating himself comfortably, "I am here at last. I am sorry if I kept you waiting. You might have arranged anything with Mr. Taberman, though." "I tried to," Mr. Wrenmarsh responded dryly, "but he seemed to me so unpractical in his ideas that I thought it better to wait for you." "I hope you won't find me unsatisfactory in the same way," Jack returned. "At least I am practical enough to know that in this weather it will be more comfortable if we have something." He summoned Gonzague, and the trio were soon furnished with tall glasses of sangaree, which they sipped with relish. "Mr. Taberman has suggested,--though I fancy he's half in jest," began the collector, when these preliminaries had been attended to, "that two hundred pounds is a fair price for such a trivial service as running up to England and landing me and my boxes." "I am glad you think the matter trivial," observed Jack, with a smile; "it makes it so much easier for me to say that I do not find it convenient to go to England at all." "Oh, I say now," Wrenmarsh responded, with a sudden keen glance at Jack as if he were surprised at the quickness with which his remark had been met and turned against him; "of course you'll go to England. That was settled long ago, you know." "Was it? I supposed that I, as captain of the Merle, had some voice in such a matter." "Of course nothing was settled," broke in Jerry. "I made a conditional arrangement--entirely conditional, mind you--with Mr. Wrenmarsh that you would take him to England." "Yes; that is what I said," the collector asserted imperturbably. "Only the price that you named"-- "Seems to me a very reasonable one," interpolated Jack. "Not seriously?" Wrenmarsh said, evidently determined not to show that he was at all ruffled. "Only consider, if I go ashore here, I may get--I might become a national complication. And you wouldn't want to be mixed up in that sort of a thing," he added, with a chuckle. "An international complication," he murmured to himself, as if the idea appealed so strongly to his vanity that he was half tempted to be put on land at once to take up the part. Then he recalled his wandering thoughts, and looked Captain Castleport in the eye. "If you land me in any country except England, I am quite done for, as you Americans would say. It stands to reason if there is any paying to be done, you should pay me for keeping you out of a scrape; for of course if I go ashore it will be known that the Merle ran away from the _carabinieri_ at Pæstum, and"-- "Rubbish!" interrupted Jack brusquely. "Don't talk that kind of poppy-cock! Even if there were any truth in it, it wouldn't be decent for you to say so after getting the Merle into the scrape." "And giving me your word that the yacht was in no possible danger," put in Jerry indignantly. "Oh, no real danger, of course," Wrenmarsh said hurriedly, "only it might be unpleasant for you, and you might not like to be detained." "Why must you go to England?" asked Castleport. "Why not to Malta or Cyprus or Korfu even? They're protectorates and English ground." "The sun never sets, you know," responded Wrenmarsh, with his extraordinary ventral chuckle. "The truth is they won't do. Korfu and Cyprus would be as bad for me as Naples, on account of my reputation. I'm known to have run out a lot of things, you see. Gibraltar or Malta would suit me well enough--if it weren't for the same reason. There isn't a hotel on the entire shores of the Mediterranean that I could put up at with those boxes in safety." "I hardly suppose I'm expected to take that too literally," Jack said, with a smile. He reflected a moment. He could see that the collector certainly had good reason for wishing to remain on the yacht, and that it could not but be of very great convenience to him to be taken to England. He was no less convinced from what Jerry had told him that the antiquities which the archæologist had on board must be worth thousands of pounds, and that their possessor could afford to pay well for their safety. He was thoroughly stirred up, moreover, by the thought of the episode of the night before. That Jerry should have been put in actual peril of his life by Wrenmarsh for his own purposes was to Jack so outrageous that he was half tempted to order the collector and his boxes off the Merle at once to take his chances with the officials on the quays of Naples. As Jerry had planned reprisals along another line, however, and as after all Jack could not have brought himself to desert a man in extremity, the captain determined to go on as they had begun. "Two hundred pounds strikes me as fair enough," he said. "Too much--too much! Make it fifty," responded Wrenmarsh. "Two hundred!" repeated Jack. "I'm sorry; I can't do that," the collector said, with a great show of decision. "You'll have to take me to Malta. What'll you do that for?" "Three hundred," Jack returned quietly, although he could not refrain from a secret exchange of glances with Jerry. "What!" the other cried, in an exaggerated shriek. "A run like that? Three hundred pounds! It's not a twentieth the distance to England." "That's so," was the captain's answer, "but you see we should have a good deal less value in your company. Besides, you'd get your boxes _ex territorio_ a great deal quicker." He had by this time become so interested in the game he was playing that the beating of the collector seemed in itself a thing worth straining every nerve to gain. "They're _ex territorio_ now," Mr. Wrenmarsh said, "as they're on a foreign yacht. But no matter about that. What'll you take to set me over to Gibraltar?" "Oh, that would cost you three hundred and fifty, because there you're so much nearer England than you'd be at Malta." He glanced again at Jerry, with an inward chuckle at the utter balderdash he was talking and a consciousness how closely it resembled the nature of the arguments with which Wrenmarsh had beguiled Tab. For a minute there was silence, and then the archæologist spoke angrily. "You're too commercial," he said, with an unconcealed sneer. "I see no way in which we can come to an agreement. I never was equal to trading with a dollar-getting Yankee." Tab started and looked to hear Jack break out at an insult so gross, but the captain merely smiled. "As you are our guest," he said, "there's no chance for me to answer you properly, but you must remember we're not looking for a job. Shall I send you ashore now, or would it suit you to take a boat with me in half an hour? Or perhaps," he added, his manner most elaborately courteous, "on account of your boxes, it would suit you better to be set ashore after dark." "Give you one hundred pounds," the collector said, still fighting, and ignoring the captain's words entirely. "We need not go on with the wrangle," Jack said, rising. "I'm not bargaining with you. If it's worth two hundred pounds to you, all right. If it isn't, we'll part here, and hope you have the gratitude to appreciate what has already been done for you at the risk of Mr. Taberman's life. Come, we've wasted too much time over this already." "Do you think my time isn't worth anything?" cried the other,--apparently losing all control of his temper. "I've wasted too much already. Get up your damned anchor, you mercenary Yankee"-- "Come, sir!" broke in Jack sharply, "apologize at once! At once! You have been insulting us this half hour like an utter cad, and I've made all the allowances I'm equal to." The collector regarded him with furious eyes, but seemed struggling with himself until he could command his manner and his voice. "I--I beg your pardon," he said in a hard tone. Then he added, in a voice softer and more grave, "Indeed, I beg your pardon most sincerely. My cursed temper got the better of me. Does your offer still hold?" "If you wish," Jack answered stiffly. "Then--two hundred pounds--I accept it. Two hundred pounds sterling, to be paid on our safe arrival in port at Plymouth." He sighed, and put out his hand to the captain. "Will you pardon my tongue?" he asked. There was more ingenuousness in this trifling act than in anything Tab or Jack had yet seen in him. The real man seemed for a moment to show; and as Jack accepted the collector's apology and took his hand, Jerry had a fleeting glimpse--short as a flash of changing light--of another and franker Wrenmarsh, accustomed to hide under a veil of shams and mockeries made necessary by his difficult vocation. Wrenmarsh then asked if he might have some letters mailed ashore, and Jack offered to take them himself in half an hour's time. While the collector was below writing these, the captain and the mate talked things over on deck. Tab had to congratulate Jack again, and over and over, fairly beaming with delight whenever he thought of the happy stage to which affairs had been brought. When he discovered that the captain had confessed the lifting of the Merle, he was for a moment disconcerted. "Oh, Jacko, how could you give that away?" he cried. "I had to be honest," Jack replied, and added, with a little shade of unconscious patronage, "You'll see how it is yourself, old man, when it comes your turn. You have to make a square deal, of course." "Yes, I s'pose so," assented the mate humbly. "I hope she won't tell Mrs. Fairhew." "Oh, we told her together," Jack stated cheerfully. "Katrine thought we'd better. I'm glad I did, too; for she's written home about meeting us, and it's sure to get round to Uncle Randolph sooner or later." "How did she take it?" "Oh, do you know," returned Jack, laughing at the remembrance of his talk with Mrs. Fairhew, "I think she was more bothered that she hadn't guessed it than she was shocked at us. She couldn't help letting me see that she thought it an awfully good joke on Uncle Randolph. She said she should write to him to-day and remind him that she'd often told him he tried to keep me in leading strings. She said she did have a suspicion from your jocoseness when we first came over that there was some joke about our coming, but we parried her questions so well she forgot all about it. She said nobody could have dreamed of anything so preposterous, so of course she didn't guess it." "Didn't she say it was on account of her age she didn't see through us?" queried Jerry, with a grin. "By Jove, she did; and then turned it off by saying she never supposed a Marchfield would be engaged to a pirate. She says, though, that I've got to cut back at once. She won't have me going about with Katrine in a stolen yacht." "It's time to start anyway. It'll be getting late by the time we're across, and if she's written home, the sooner the Merle is in Boston harbor the better. I suppose we can get off in a week?" "We go to-morrow," Jack answered calmly. "To-morrow! Great Scott! What are we sitting here for? There are oceans of things to be done." "Of course we can get stores at Plymouth if we need to, and I've already ordered a lot of things to come out to-night. We have to get Wrenmarsh safe, of course, and that'll take some time." "He's a windfall," commented Jerry. "And like most windfalls, not entirely sound? Tell Gonzague to fix up the stateroom Bardale had, the one next mine. I must get ashore now; she'll be waiting. You're to come to dinner." "I'll come fast enough. Oh, you bully old pirate, I'm awfully glad for you!" [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Fifteen IN THE CATTEWATER The Merle was at anchor off Plymouth. By the round brass ship's clock placed over the passageway door, in the saloon, Jerry could see that it was a little after ten o'clock. The yacht had come to anchor in the small hours, and the gentlemen had in consequence slept late. The dull light of an English morning in September came through the big skylight, and showed the captain, the mate, and Mr. Wrenmarsh lingering over their breakfast. "On my word, Mr. Wrenmarsh," said Tab, "we'll be sorry to lose you. You've been aboard so long and your"--he almost blurted out "eccentricities," but fortunately had the unusual luck to stop in time to substitute a better word--"your--er--conversation has such--er--has been so very entertaining, that is, that we're sure to miss you." "Ah, well," said the collector, "I'm in hopes that you've improved so much by contact with me that you'll be able to entertain each other." "Wouldn't you like to take passage across?" suggested Jack. "Your rates are too high," the other rejoined grimly. "Gonzague, _'n' altro bicchier' d' aqua fresca_." The old steward, who had come in while Jerry was speaking, served the archæologist with the ready alacrity which marked all he did, and then departed with a handful of dishes. "Why do you always speak to Gonzague in Italian?" inquired Jerry. "You said yesterday that you always had a reason for everything you do." "Oh," the guest returned, fixing his eyes not on the questioner but on the ceiling above him, "I speak to him in Italian because he understands it." "But he isn't an Italian," Tab objected. "No, but then I'm not either." "But he understands English, French, and Spanish, for the matter of that," Jerry persisted. Whenever Wrenmarsh began to talk in this whimsical fashion, Taberman had always a teasing desire to push him into a corner. "Ah, but, my dear fellow," Wrenmarsh replied, unaccountably addressing Jack, and making his words seem more distraught by one of his most earnest, almost burning glances, "I do not speak Spanish, you see." "Then why not French or English?" "Because they're so different," returned the collector. "Why, what rot!" Jerry burst out rudely; then as usual he added apologetically, "I beg your pardon, but I'm afraid I don't follow you." "Oh, no; I suppose not," Mr. Wrenmarsh rejoined with much sweetness. He rose, and with an entire change of manner, added briskly, "Well, I'm ready. As I wish to catch the eleven thirty-four for London, we must make haste; otherwise I shouldn't have time to take Mr. Castleport to the bank, and settle my financial obligations. Can we get ashore?" "Yes," answered Jack, rising also. "The cutter's ready, and your boxes are on board. By the by, you said you'd tell me how you dodge--pardon the word, we use it on the other side--the customs." "Simplest thing in the world," returned Wrenmarsh, lighting a cigarette. "Address my boxes to a good friend of mine in the British Museum. They go through the customhouse as things for the museum, you know." "Does your friend do that sort of thing as a business?" inquired Jerry with a laugh. "I wish you'd give me his name, so I could come that game." "His name is Gordon Wrenmarsh," said the collector quietly; "but his charges are high. Shall we go?" "Yes," Jack responded. "It is high time we were off. I'm not anxious to speed the parting guest, but a good send-off means an early start." Jerry left his place, and the three went on deck. The cutter, already manned, was by the steps. The bleak English air struck chill and raw to these men fresh from the warm sunshine of the Mediterranean. The harbor and sound, crowded with shipping as they were, seemed flat and dull; the Citadel, the Battery, the various docks and buildings were depressing. A great volume of dun coal-smoke overhanging the "Three Towns," from the Hamoaze to Sutton Pool, added to the general air of gloom. To cap all this, the fog was coming in from seaward, and already its ghostly echelons had floated past the north end of Drake Island. As the three men came on deck the cutter was bobbing up and down in the wash of the ferry which plies to and fro across the Cattewater, and which had just gone heavily past. "Dear England!" ejaculated Mr. Wrenmarsh fervently under his breath in the face of all this. Then turning to Taberman, "You're not coming ashore with us?" Jerry shook his bare head, and gave an exaggerated shiver for reply. "No?" the collector said. "Well, we'll say good-by here, then. Lucky we met, wasn't it? Those combinations--they make the world go round; stop it sometimes. Good-by. Pity, great pity, you weren't at Oxford, Mr. Taberman. It would have done you good, made a man of you." "Not if Harvard's failed to," retorted Jerry loyally. "Good-by, and good luck. Hope we'll meet again some day." They shook hands, and Mr. Wrenmarsh and Jack descended to the waiting cutter. "_Adio, Signor'_," called out old Gonzague, who was standing by the main-rigging. "_A riverderla forse_" returned the collector from the stern-sheets of the cutter. "_Il mondo è piccolo, Signor'. Spero_," answered the Provençal. "Oars!" cried Jack. "Bear away,--let fall,--ready,--pull." And the cutter bore away the strange collector toward the shore of his adopted country. Jerry watched the boat for a moment, his big heart not untouched by a sympathetic friendliness for the lonely man, whose life seemed to him so warped and melancholy. He half expected Wrenmarsh to look back to nod or to wave his hand, but the collector's eyes were turned steadily to the shore. It was chill on deck, and Tab went below. Gonzague was just taking away the last of the breakfast things. He set his tray on the table, and approached the mate deferentially. "Mistaire Taberman, sair," he said, putting his hand in his pocket, and drawing out a small square blue box and a note, "Mistaire Wrainmairsh he geeve me de box and de lettair--also a crown in extrair dat I geeve dem to you when he have leef." "Eh? what?" asked Jerry. "Oh, I see. Thank you." He sat down on the port transom, and opened the box. It contained a small object carefully wrapped in tissue paper. He unfolded the paper, and between his fingers a gold finger-ring slipped on to the green corduroy cushion of the transom. "Great Scott!" he ejaculated. Then he picked it up and examined it carefully. In a thin band of red gold was set a carnelian of beautiful tone, the color of a red hyacinth blossom. The stone was oval, cut with an exquisite design in intaglio. It represented a god holding a trident in his left hand, and on his right a small winged figure. His right foot rested on a stone, and he was gazing at the figure he held. The gem was inscribed with the Greek letters [Greek: LIL]. Jerry tore open the note. It read as follows:-- Really, my dear fellow, had you viewed me more as a friend and less as a curiosity, you might have found it to your advantage. But to the point. I hope you will wear the ring in memory of our little escapade. The figure represents Poseidon, holding a victoriole in his hand; and is, as the letters signify, designed to commemorate the naval victory of Lilybæum (Capo Boao), in which some of the original wearer's ancestors (more likely pretended than real) were evidently supposed to have taken part. Of course the wearer, though not the cutter, was a Roman; but you won't mind that. Not a bit. So no one gets hurt--your arm, you know--in my behalf without cause to remember the fact--pleasantly. The stone is by no means the best that I obtained, but it seemed appropriate. Poseidon with a victoriole--usually an attribute of Zeus Soter (see your Furtwängler's A. G.)--is rare enough to give the thing value. With merriment, WRENMARSH. "By Jove!" cried Jerry to himself, gloating over the ring, "what a calf I was to that--that white man! By Gad, though, he was a stunner, and no mistake!" He slipped the gold band on his finger. After a time of admiration he took a book from the shelf, and tried to read; but every minute or two he stopped to look again at the jewel. He had not turned many pages when he heard a boat alongside, and a strange voice hailing. "Hallo," he thought. "I wonder what that is. It can't be the port officer; we satisfied him at daybreak." He tossed aside his book, and went on deck. A shabby jolly-boat was lying alongside. Jerry noted instantly and with consternation that she was manned by six men in uniform, in charge of a burly old fellow liberally adorned with brass buttons and gold braid, who looked to be every inch a sea-dog. At a second glance Tab decided that these men were not government employees, such as coast-guards, but belonged to some sort of a company. With one stunning blow, sudden as the bursting of a waterspout, the truth flashed over him; at the last, at the very last, when they had escaped so long that they had practically ceased to think of the danger, the agent of Lloyd's was upon them. "Hello there, what d'ye want?" called out the man doing anchor-watch. "Captain aboard?" demanded the burly officer in charge. "No," answered the hand suspiciously. "What will you have?" "I want to see the officer in charge, my spruce little sea-cook," returned the big man genially; and the grating of the steps being handy, without further ceremony he came aboard. The sailor keeping the deck, although of a slow and plodding disposition, might have resented the coolness of the stranger, had Jerry given him time; but with a commendable promptness and a sinking heart the mate advanced. He told Jack afterward that he felt as if he were leading a forlorn hope, and had not the remotest idea of what he had better do or say. "I am in charge here," he said in a perfectly neutral voice. "What do you want?" "You are Captain Castleport?" inquired the big man, giving Jerry a keen glance not without a suspicion of kindly humor. He was a fine, strapping creature of perhaps forty-five or fifty, with fair hair, and a large bushy beard tawny as a lion's mane. "Captain Castleport is ashore, sir. I am the mate." "Mr. Taberman, eh?" asked the other. "May I see you in private for a minute or two, sir? I'm Lloyd's deputy inspector for Plymouth. I've been hunting about in the fog for you these thirty minutes past. I thought you were nigh out o' the Cattewater, over toward the Hoe." "Will you come below?" said Jerry grimly. Inwardly he groaned for the arrival of Jack. This was a task he felt himself unable to deal with. Had the emergency called simply for physical powers or for manual dexterity, the chances were large that he could rise to the occasion; but in a pass where the demand was for mental adroitness and nimble wits, Jerry knew the captain to be infinitely his superior. He determined to devote himself to gaining time, and to refrain from committing himself until his comrade should come aboard. Jerry escorted the burly guest to the cabin without further speech, and turned to ask him to be seated. The visitor at once drew over his jovial face like a veil a serious expression, and regarded Taberman with the greatest gravity. Unbuttoning the top of his serge jacket, he thrust his hand into an inner pocket as if it were a dip-net, and brought it up again full of dismally official-looking documents. "This is bad business, sir," he remarked, eyeing the mate as if to be sure he was producing a proper impression. "Eh?" ejaculated Jerry, trying to look like consolidated innocence. "P'haps you'll be so good's to look these through, sir," the Englishman went on, proffering his batch of papers. "Are they for me or the captain?" asked Taberman, fencing to gain time. "Why, as to that," the official replied, "I expect what they contain's ekally to your int'rest and 'is." "Sit down, please," Jerry said, with a confused wave of the hand, which seemed to invite the visitor to occupy all the seats in the cabin at once. "You may be right, but I shouldn't want to look any important papers over until the captain'd seen them." "Oh, that don't matter," the other said easily, as he settled himself in a chair. "I don't think you 'ave any cause to mind, sir. You represent 'im aboard." "Yes," Jerry returned, obstinately determined that nothing should make him go through the papers without Jack; "but if you're not too much pressed for time, I'd much rather wait for the captain. He'll be here presently." "Why, sir, for the matter o' that, I dunno's I've much to 'urry me this mornin'; an' I must say I'd rather like a look at 'im. 'E must be a rare one." "Then," Jerry said, with infinite relief, "we'll wait till he gets aboard." He rang, and Gonzague appeared. The old Provençal stood stroking his mustache and watching the Englishman furtively out of the corners of his eyes, as if he appreciated the situation and hoped to have orders to assist in throwing him overboard. The glance of the bluff Briton at the same time lighted up in evident anticipation that the appearance of the steward meant refreshments. "Gonzague, I'll have a little Scotch and soda. Will you take a glass of anything, sir?" "Why, sir, seein' 's I 'ave to wait a bit, I'm not strong agin a finger or two." "What will you have?" asked Jerry, enormously relieved to get on ground so safe as that of playing the host. "I like red rum 's well 's most, sir," replied the other, his jolly eyes twinkling. "It's sort o' oilin' to the in'ards." They were soon served, and Gonzague, on leaving the cabin, placed the spirits and a siphon in most engaging proximity to the guest. Time passed in the exchange of more or less nautical chit-chat for half an hour or so; when, to the great comfort of Jerry, who had been listening with one ear to the talk of his companion and with the other for the coming of the captain, Jack's hail sounded outside. Jerry, listening acutely, heard Castleport pause on deck, and at the companion-way caught a syllable or two in the unmistakable tones of Gonzague, so that he apprehended that the captain would come to the interview forewarned. The captain came briskly into the cabin, his blue pea-jacket beaded with little globules of moisture from the fog, his hair damp and clinging to his temples. "Hallo, Tab," he said. "The fog's as thick as it was the night we started. Ah!" The exclamation cleverly conveyed the impression that he perceived the guest for the first time, and apologized for not being prepared to meet him. "Jack, this is Lloyd's deputy inspector, Mr. ----?" Jerry began, and stopped with an interrogative inflection. "My name, sir, 's Tom Mainbrace." "Mr. Thomas Mainbrace," Jerry concluded his presentation. "Mr. Mainbrace, Captain Castleport." "Pleased to know ye, cap'n," the Englishman said cheerfully, as Jack bowed. "Yes, sir; I'm Lloyd's deputy inspector." "I saw your boat alongside," Jack returned pleasantly. "We haven't any deputies aboard that need inspecting, though." "'Aven't ye?" the visitor asked, his eyes twinkling so that the laugh with which he followed his words seemed a sort of overflow of their merriment. "I kind o' thought there might be a deputy owner or som'thin' o' the sort 'ere." Jack apparently tried to look grave, but ended by grinning in spite of himself. He put out his hand and laid his fingers on the papers. "You have business with us?" he asked. "Yes, sir. The mate 'ere, 'e said 'e 'd rather not begin on it till you come aboard, sir." "Quite right," Jack responded quietly. "Shall I read these papers?" "Yes, if ye'll be so good, sir," Mr. Mainbrace said seriously, and not without a trace of regret in his jovial, weather-beaten face. The captain seated himself with deliberation, and began to read; the Englishman applied himself afresh to his glass, and Taberman watched closely for a lead. Jerry was not clear what line was to be taken in this difficult situation, and was keenly anxious to back up the captain in any way possible. To his surprise Jack began first to smile, then to grin; from that to chuckle gleefully, and at last he broke out into full-throated laughter. "By Jove!" he cried, striking his knee with the hand that held the papers. "But that is one on Uncle Randolph, and no mistake!" The deputy inspector looked up with an expression of bewilderment, and Jerry felt that he was no more enlightened as to what Jack had in mind than was the guest. "What is it?" Tab asked. "Oh, we're run down at last! Think of our being nabbed at the last moment, when we've done all we wanted to with the yacht!" And he fell to laughing again, as if being caught red-handed in a pirated yacht were the merriest jest in the world. Taberman was still completely bewildered, but he at least perceived that Jack was bound to carry off the matter with laughter; and by way of assisting as well as he could, he began also to laugh. He took the papers, and glanced at them enough to see that one was a letter from Lloyd's, containing a notification of the Merle's disappearance, with a description of the yacht and a specification of her captors; the other a warrant for search and apprehension. He followed Jack's lead, and if his efforts did not ring as true, he at least made more noise. "That's rich!" he roared. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" He thrust the papers back to the captain, who tossed them on the table, and both together they broke out afresh. "Excuse our laughing," Jack said, turning to the inspector, who gazed from one to the other as if he thought they had gone mad; "but really it's too ripping!" "Ain't ye the parties?" demanded the official sternly. "Oh, we're the parties all fast enough; but--Well, now, look here. This yacht belongs to my uncle, you see." "Yes, sir," replied the honest Mainbrace, evidently puzzled, as he would have put it, to make out the other's numbers, but still Britannically deferential to the nephew of a man who was able to own a yacht such as the Merle. "Well, you see, I ran away with her because he wouldn't let me come across, and he's had no good of her the whole summer. From your papers I judge he looked for me on the other side six weeks before he notified you at all. You see how much of the summer that leaves him; and now, just as I'm starting to carry her back as fast as the wind will take her, you step in and stop us." "Why, ye see, sir," began the inspector, evidently endeavoring to accommodate himself to the new light thrown by the captain on the situation, "the fact is 'e says 'e wants 'er in a 'urry." "He won't get her, then," Jack said with a grin. "By the time you've red-taped her, and charged for her, and negotiated her, and sent her over with a hired crew, it'll be December at the very earliest--to say nothing of the twenty or thirty pounds he'll have to pay you and the cost of the crew you send her over by. It is hard lines for Uncle Randolph." "It is so," Jerry agreed, fervently glad to be at last in possession of the way Jack meant to work. "I'm really sorry for Uncle Randolph," Jack continued, sobering down. "But then, he might have trusted me to bring the Merle back." "Ye ain't takin' it too much to 'eart, are ye, sir?" queried the big Englishman, with a look so humorous and quizzical that Jerry was seized by a dreadful suspicion that the twinkling eyes saw through the whole scheme of bluff. "Not I," Jack assented blithely; "though of course I'd rather have taken the yacht home myself. What's the next move? Do you put us in irons, or hang us to the crosstree-ends?" "Why, they sent word from Lloyd's," replied Mainbrace, with the unmistakable grin of a man who regards himself as a humorist, "that the owner said not to be too 'ard on ye. I expect 't'll be no worse nor transportation for life." Then he put on a graver and more professional look, and added, "I'm afraid we'll 'ave to be more serious, sir. Will ye kindly show me your papers and the log? I suppose you 'ave 'em 'andy." "Certainly," the captain said, also assuming an official air. "Jerry, will you give the inspector the papers? I'll get the log." The examination of the papers was a short matter, and then they took up the log. It was at once evident that the Englishman had a keen curiosity to discover what the young men had been doing with the Merle, and that he was no less eager in his interest in all things nautical. Jerry sat by in almost open-mouthed admiration to see how the captain took advantage of both these characteristics. Jack could be most attractive, and from the start it was evident that he was doing his best to please Mr. Mainbrace. He explained all the manoeuvres of that memorable night when the Merle had been spirited away in the fog, while the jolly face of the deputy inspector became more and more radiant with each new development of the story. The charts were produced, each detail of seamanship carefully brought out, and the whole episode lived over again. Jack warmed to his subject as he went on; Jerry threw in a word now and then when the captain in his eagerness seemed in danger of forgetting to mention some detail; the Englishman listened with chuckles and with laughter which soon came to be devoid of the slightest pretense of official dignity; and, in a word, the three became as merry and companionable over the log as if they were all pirates together. Mainbrace had been a sailor and a mate in his day, and showed the keenest zest for every nautical experience. There is no surer bond of comradeship than mutual love of the sea; and despite differences of race, age, and social position, Jack, Jerry, and the deputy inspector fraternized over the Merle's log as only sailors can. The log-book was read to the last entry. Over the account of the gale the yacht had encountered on her way across the Atlantic Mainbrace became as excited as if he had had a personal stake in the safety of the Merle. His ejaculations became more and more emphatic and more and more picturesque, and his rejoicing over the safe weathering of the storm almost as fervid as if he had been in it himself. The race at Nice Jack told of with as little reflection on the unsportsmanlike conduct of Lord Merryfield as was possible; but the jovial countenance of Mainbrace darkened, and he expressed an opinion of the absent nobleman which was sufficiently tonic to satisfy even Taberman. Jack said afterward that by the time they got through the log a quotation from "Horatius" popped into his head, and he came very near breaking out with it:-- With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told. To which Jerry replied that he couldn't think of quotations, he was so carried away by the enthusiastic delight of the jolly old inspector and the quaint ways in which it was expressed. When at last the record was closed, the conversation still at first ran on the cruise, but soon it began to take a turn which made Jerry prick up his ears anew. The inspector remarked, with an exceedingly droll twinkle of his eyes, that duty was duty, but that he would be summarily dealt with if he wouldn't feel bad to have to bear on hard on a couple of fellows that had played the biggest joke he ever heard of in his life, and had carried the whole thing through with so much cleverness and grit. To this Jack responded that he was most appreciative of the kindness of Mr. Mainbrace, but that of course duty was duty--although it would really have been luck for the owner of the Merle, quite as much as for himself and his mate, if the yacht could have gone on her way uninterrupted. To this in turn Mainbrace gave his assent, and went on to say that he must, of course, carry out instructions, and that he was legally empowered to leave a keeper on board until he could come out again to-morrow with directions he expected to receive from London. "Though I dunno," he added drolly, "'s it's safe to trust a man with ye. Ye're cap'ble o' runnin' off with 'im." "We might," Jack responded brightly. "I wouldn't be responsible." "Or we might throw him overboard," suggested Jerry, with the broadest possible grin. "Most o' my men kin swim some," Mainbrace retorted. "I should 'ave to tell 'im 'f 'e got overboard to tow the yacht in shore." The jest was not of the first water, but they had got to a merry mood, and it was properly laughed over. Then Mainbrace, in high good humor, went on to say that he'd been so well treated, and he had so enjoyed the log, that he thought on the whole he would not put a man in charge. He added that it was late, and he must be on his way ashore now, but that they might expect him out again to-morrow. "I'm sorry I 'ave to bother ye, gentlemen," he added, as they went on deck. "I've been to sea myself too many years not to 'ate this bloody red-tape business,--an' they do reel it off by the cable-length when they 'ave 'arf a chance." The inspector's jolly-boat, the most appropriate of conveyances for the jovial sea-dog, was still alongside. The fog had lightened somewhat, and watery beams of the sun leaked through it overhead. As Mr. Mainbrace was about to descend the steps to the boat, he paused a moment and pulled at his thick beard as if meditating profoundly. "I'm 'most afraid if you gentlemen took it into your 'eads to give us the slip we shouldn't know it on shore in this 'ere fog," he observed, casting a queer, sidling glance at Jack. "It is trusting somewhat to luck to leave us," the captain responded coolly, "and I want to say now that I appreciate your kindness in not forcing a keeper on us." "Well, cap'n," continued the inspector, gazing out over the water with the look of one who has no personal interest in the matter under discussion, "I was goin' to say, if you get a good chance, you'd better shift your berth. You'll find it kind o' snugger ridin' some ways along to the west'ard, I expect. But you know best, o' course. All is, you're in a tightish place here. I alers liked more sea-room myself. Good-day, sir." "Good-day. Maybe you'll find we've shifted by to-morrow. If we have, it'll be to westward." "I'll come out to-morrow," said the old sailor in his most official manner. Then he looked from one to the other with his merriest twinkle and an emphatic nod. "Duty is duty," he remarked. "Good-day, sirs." He turned to descend, but suddenly Jack arrested him. "Oh, you've forgotten your pipe," he said. "My pipe?" echoed Mainbrace, stopping short. "Yes, I'll get it." The captain dashed into the cabin, and reappeared with a silver-mounted briarwood, colored just enough to suggest a comfortable chimney-corner and a mind at ease. "You left it on the table," he said, presenting it to the big inspector. The other took it with an expression queerly compounded of surprise, awkwardness, amusement, and delight. "Thank ye, sir," he said. "It's 'ansome of you to fetch it up ye'self,--most 'ansome. I'm mortal fond o' that pipe." He regarded it affectionately a moment, and then stowed it away inside his jacket. Then he turned again to go down to the waiting jolly-boat. "I'll come out to-morrow," he called up to them. "Duty is duty. Good-day, sirs." "Good-day," they called in concert; and off went the deputy inspector toward the hardly perceptible shore through the fog. "By George, he's a brick!" Jack cried. "Right-o," assented Jerry, "but it took you to cement him." "Atrocious! If you're going to pun like that you must be taken home to your family at once. 'Duty is duty'! Did you see the solemn wink the old fellow tipped me when he spoke of shifting to westward? I thought I should burst out laughing on the spot, and give the whole thing away. How's the water?" "Tanks chock-a-block. Gonzague had them filled from the water-boat this morning. Did you get your money?" "Every pound of it. Wrenmarsh took me to the bank and identified me, and was mighty nice about the whole thing. Provisions are O.K. Off we go. Call the watch." "Yes, but see my ring first," Tab said, holding it out. In half an hour the Merle was changing her berth to the westward. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Sixteen STORM! A gray sea, a gray sky, and the Mid-Atlantic Ocean in September. Over the heaving waters the Merle, under reduced canvas, was staggering westward on the port-tack with a stiff southerly breeze. Jack, clad in his yellow oil-skins like the rest of the hands, was standing just outside the cockpit on the windward side of the yacht. Jerry was asleep below. Having had the early morning watch, he had turned in directly after breakfast. The captain glanced aloft uneasily, and wondered if they were going to encounter on their return such a gale as they had weathered while going over. He reluctantly admitted to himself that there was every appearance of dirty weather, and thought he had better step below to take a look at the glass. He pushed back the companion, and descended. The cabin was stuffy and no warmer than the air without. The racks were on the table, and the lamps swung in erratic circles in their gimbals. The barometer, a beautifully finished instrument of the columnar type, was placed against the after-bulkhead of the saloon on the starboard beside a closet door, its slender length enclosed in bronze. It gyrated wildly, in unison with the Thom's list-indicator above it. Jack steadied the tube with his hand, and looked anxiously to see if the mercury had fallen. "Good God!" he burst out. At eight bells that morning the vernier of the glass had been set at 29.32. With staring eyes, Jack saw that now, little more than two hours later, the mercury had sunk to 27.09,--a drop portentous of a furious gale. For one brief moment, in the face of approaching danger, and filled with a quick sense of his great responsibility, he stood appalled. He put his hand to his forehead as if he were dizzy and found it hard to think. "How's the glass, Jack?" asked a voice beside him. He turned with troubled eyes to see Tab in his pajamas, a freshly lighted cigarette between his fingers. "What's the trouble?" the mate demanded instantly, seeming bewildered at the captain's appearance. "What brought you out here?" the captain retorted, though why he should have asked he could not have told. "Heard you exclaiming. What's the trouble?" "Look!" Jack answered, pointing to the glass. "All that!" gasped Jerry. "Get your togs on," was the only reply Jack offered. "Be quick, and come on deck." Jerrold left him without a word, and padded off to his cabin. Jack reset the vernier, and went out. To his disturbed mind it seemed as if in the brief interval during which he had been below the whole appearance of nature had grown more ominous. In five minutes Jerry was with him. "Well, Jack?" "I've made up my mind what to do," the captain announced. "It's going to blow fit to take your hair out by the roots: that much is sure." Jerry nodded soberly, and looked his friend straight in the eye. "We'll have to lay-to before we see the end of this, and I'd rather do so at sea-anchor 'n any other way. What do you think?" "That's right enough. I suppose we'd better make ready now?" "We sha'n't have much time when it does come. We must get a mess of things together up for'ard fit to hold a liner. We'll need it." Jack got the hands together around the winch forward, and set them at once, under his direction, to the making of the "sea-anchor." The spinnaker-boom and the two shorter boat-booms were first lashed firmly together with inch rope in a rough isosceles triangle. "Now," Jack ordered, "fetch the old staysail, and bend it on in the frame." "How are you going to ballast the thing?" asked Tab. "It'll float flat if you don't give it a sinker." "I fancy the market-boat's killock would be about the right thing if we could get at it," Jack answered. "Do you know where"-- "Yes, yes," interrupted Jerry hastily. "It's with the rest of her gear. I'll get it." And he went aft. Although the wind had not as yet increased in violence, Jack, standing as he did almost at the peak of the vessel, felt the motion much more than he had farther aft. The great gray-green seas heaved hard about the plunging yacht, and every now and then she ran bowsprit under. She was a rather dry boat, fortunately, of the "hollow bow" model, and in the fifteen or twenty minutes that the men had been working on the anchor, she had not taken any waves aboard. The spindrift, it is true, flew across her by the bucketful, but the men, dressed in their oilers, blinked the cold water out of their eyes and went on with their work. Before Jerry returned, however, as the crew were bending the old staysail to the triangular frame, the captain, to his consternation, saw that the Merle was just working her way up the breast of a mighty hill of water with all likelihood of burying herself in the rising wall of a wave ahead. "'Ware water!" he shouted. The men dropped their work and caught at whatever was nearest at hand. Some threw an arm about the bollard by the knighthead; some jumped for the winch; two men got a tight grip on the large ring-bolts by the port cat-heads; Jack himself leaped for the winch and put his right arm around the drum. The Merle labored to the crest of the hill of water. It sank away beneath her instantly, and she shot down the slope of the wave into the trough of the sea with a headlong, staggering rush. Towering above her was the roughened, foam-blotched face of the succeeding wave. She tried bravely to climb it, but she was too near, the angle was too sharp; she could not so quickly recover from the impetus of her downward plunge. She seemed to tremble--to hesitate--for an instant, and then as if in the courage of despair, to leap forward with a jerk into the very midst of the flood as if she would force her way through its tons of swinging sea-water. Jack went to the deck under the tremendous blow of the on-rushing wave as if he had been struck down by a thunderbolt. He felt the shock, the biting cold of the water, and then it seemed as if a giant had gripped him with hands of ice and were trying to wrench him from his hold. He clung on, drenched, bewildered, desperate, until he wondered if his arm would be pulled out of its socket. He had a stifling sensation of having been for hours without air; he felt as if he were being dragged by some terrible power swiftly through the sea miles below the surface. On a sudden he again felt the deck under him, and opened his eyes. The Merle had forced her way through the wave, and they were again free. He gasped, spluttered, and rose to his feet, the water streaming from him. Inside the bulwarks to starboard the green, foam-mixed brine washed about knee-deep, and was pouring with a hoarse gurgling out of the scuppers forward. The "anchor" had been swept bodily aft as far as the foremast, and there was jammed between the mast itself and the weather-shrouds. Drenched and cursing, the men squelched their way aft, dislodged the structure, and dragged it forward again. Luckily the mishap, really a slight one of twenty seconds' duration, had wrought no damage which could not be easily repaired, and so the crew took up their work where they had left it. Jerry reappeared with the killock of the market-boat just as they got into place once more. "Did you get wet?" he asked cheerily, with a broad grin which showed that he saw what had happened. "What do you think?" burst out the captain hotly. "No; I got dry, damn it!" "Did you really, though! Well, I thought you looked damp." Jack paid this boyish jest with a word that was sharp and a look that was too near a grin not to take the sting from it. He took the killock that Jerry had brought, and had the men make it fast to the lower point of the kite-like frame where the short boat-booms met. To the ends of the long spinnaker-boom he fastened lengths of strong inch Manilla, and a piece somewhat shorter to the point where the killock was attached. The captain meant that the "sea-anchor," when in the water, should ride not exactly vertical, but that by the shorter line the weighted point should be lifted a little toward the yacht as the Merle dragged back on it. In the end of each of these lines a bow-line was bent, and through the bights of them he had the rode bent and made fast. The whole contrivance was then like a triangular kite weighted at the point made by the shorter sides, and held by lines from the three corners joined on the rode, which corresponded to the string. When the work was finished Jack inspected it all carefully, and examined the fastenings. "It's a rough enough concern," he said to Jerry; "but it's stanch, and if we have to use it, it'll do good service. Make it fast," he added to the men. "Put on a couple of strong gaskets for stoppers. Come on, Tab; I don't want another ducking." They went aft to the cockpit, and the captain started to go below. "I'll just take another look at that glass," he said. "It's well to keep a"-- "Look!" cried Jerry suddenly, seizing him by the arm, and pointing away to the southward. Jack's eyes followed the mate's arm. Afar off on the gloomy horizon, the black sea below and the gray sky above were in one place welded together by a wall of impenetrable haze. It was not much more than a spot, but Jack at a glance took in its full significance, and knew that before the Merle was a struggle that would try her strength and his seamanship to the very utmost. He opened his mouth to speak, and closed his lips firmly without a word. He looked a moment at the inky mist, and then dashed below. In a couple of minutes he reappeared with a grim look on his usually genial face. "Jerry," he said hurriedly, "I've been down and tried the storm-card on the chart. If we keep on as she's going, we'll fetch up plumb in the centre of this mess. The Merle wouldn't live there half an hour." "Well?" questioned Jerry. His face was sober, and had about it a suggestion of a big, serious dog that watches its troubled master. "What can we do?" "There is only one thing to do," Jack responded quickly, but with absolute decision. "The centre bears southwesterly,--that's why our wind's hauled 'round. We've got to put about and run into the heart of that greasy streak yonder. It'll be a tough job, but not so bad as if we were farther westward. When we get the wind westerly, we'll lay to. If we do anything else, we'll be swept into the centre, sure's fate." "Can't we run it out?" Jerry asked desperately. "It'll be tremendous! That blow we had coming over'll be pale beside it. Think, man!" "I have," Jack said shortly. "Ready 'bout ship!" he shouted. The men sprang to their places, although Jack could see that they threw swift glances of surprise at him as they did so. The evidence, slight as it was, that he was acting alone, and that he must see farther and more wisely than the men under him, accustomed as they were to the sea, imparted a new ring of command to his voice as he gave the necessary orders. With some difficulty and with much uproar of booming canvas and slatting ropes, the schooner came about, and Jack had her headed straight for the black spot on the horizon. Jack hurried on preparations for the storm before them. He had sail taken in and double-reefed; the "spitfire" jib set in place of the larger forestaysail, and tarpaulins battened over the skylights. He put the yacht as completely as possible in heavy-weather trim, to meet the gale scudding along over the black sea toward them. He was none too soon, for the storm was not long in coming. The gray sky above the yacht grew darker and darker, the sea about her more and more "cobbly." The wind freshened rapidly, and veered more toward the west. The Merle sailed on gallantly, the green waves breaking against her weather shoulder, and the spindrift flying down the decks as she slashed her way to windward. The tops of the great seas, as they heaved themselves skyward, were snatched off by the gale, and sped in white sheets down the wind. Jack was standing in the cockpit with Jerry. He was watching the weather narrowly, and now and then, with a brief word or two, gave the steersmen--for the wheel needed two of them--a command or a warning. The force of the gale so increased that at the end of an hour and a half the mainsail, though triple-reefed, was got down and furled, and the forestaysail, which had been unbent to give place to the spitfire, was set on the boom as a trysail. It had come on to rain, and the big drops were driven along almost in horizontal lines. When they struck the face Jack felt as if he had been pelted with hailstones. Mixed with the flying spindrift they filled the air as if with a mist, blinding and fierce. Suddenly, as the yacht was dipping into the trough of a long sea, a strong gust listed her over so that aft the green water rose on the decks to within a fathom of the cockpit combings. A sharp report burst out above all the roaring of the wind and the multitudinous clamor of the waters. Jack looked up to see the trysail streaming out in tattered ribbons, writhing and twisting like pale snakes in mad fury. The sight inflamed him like a personal insult flung at him by the storm. He broke out with a cry, and with a great oath swore he would see the Merle through in spite of everything. "Tab," he shouted in the mate's ear, "get along forward on that sea-anchor! Stand by to launch it. We don't want any more of this!" He saw Jerry gather the port watch,--for all the men had been on deck for two hours past, clinging to whatever was nearest and alternately watching the storm and the captain,--and with them scrabble forward, making way by the help of whatever could be grasped. Their difficulty in getting forward was to Jack like a sudden realization of the danger they were in, and made him for the moment think of the men, whereas he had before been conscious of nothing but of the yacht herself. He saw the men gather about the "sea-anchor," swaying and pitching with the motion of the bow, and Jerry turn to look for his signal. The yacht was carrying such a strong lee-helm that the steersmen could not keep her head to the wind, and Jack shouted and gesticulated frantically to Jerry to get down the storm-jib, while at the same time he ordered the starboard watch to unstop the mainsail. He was in deadly fear lest the vessel should get clean broadside to the wind and that the decks would be swept. "Unstop the mainsail!" he roared. "Show the peak! Douse the jib!" Again he motioned to Jerry, knowing that his voice would not be heard forward. He saw Tab pause a moment, and then wave his arm in reply. To his utter dismay, however, he saw the mate and the men with him stoop, get hold of the "sea-anchor," and, tugging and stumbling, begin to haul it up to the weather side. It flashed on Jack that his gestures had been misunderstood, and his order to get down the jib mistaken for a command to launch the "anchor." With a sickening plunge the Merle at that moment coasted down a mighty wave, fell off, and lay broadside to the seas. For a second he felt as if everything was lost. "Smartly!" he roared to the starboard watch, who were working for their lives upon the main-boom. He gave them one glance, and started to rush forward, running recklessly along, and feeling for his sheath-knife as he went. A quick lurch of the yacht to port flung him off his feet, and shot him forward and to his right. He instinctively flung out his hand, and clutched something metallic. "'Ware water!" he mumbled, half stunned. A green shadow curled over him. There was a crashing roar to leeward. He felt the yacht stagger and tremble, and suddenly and with an odd mental twist he remembered vividly an earthquake shock he had once felt at Patras. The shadow disappeared, a little water came slap! on his oilskin jacket between the shoulders. The rest of the wave--tons and tons of green water--had curled itself over him, and crashed on the decks to leeward. He got to his feet unsteadily, and with a queer singing in his ears ran forward. He threw a quick look to port as he ran. The force of the sea had evidently been heaviest amidships, for he saw that for thirty feet on the lee beam the rail had been burst out between the fore and main rigging; two boats were gone, and the skylights, broken, yawned blackly. Jack groaned inwardly, but did not stop. Pitching and staggering, he made his way to the foremast. A sudden fling of the yacht threatened to make him, as he afterward put it, "overshoot the mark" and tumble past the halyards. Fortunately, however, he checked himself by catching at the foretopsail-clewline as he was being pitched by, and he clung to it desperately. He laid hold of the spitfire halyard. One quick glance at the turns about the pin in the rack told him how much time he should save by cutting the rope, and with a swift backdrawing of the sharp sheath-knife he severed it. The fall of the halyard flew up aloft, playfully dealing him a smart rap on the chin as it went; the sail ran down in thunder, and blew away in shreds. The Merle began to rise, and Jack felt a thrill of joyful relief to see that she was coming up into the wind. The men aft had showed the peak of the mainsail, and the schooner was feeling its effects. A few yards forward, Jerry and the port watch were still toiling over the "sea-anchor." Twice they had tried to set it in position for launching, and each time wind and sea had overmastered them. Jack, in an agony lest the structure should be launched before the yacht was laid about on the other tack, or at least so near the wind that the awkward contrivance could be got over the bows to port, stumbled forward shouting. "To port!" he roared. "Get it over to port!" He gripped Jerry by the arm. "The wrong tack!" he bellowed in the mate's ear. "Run it over to leeward, and put it over when I wave my arm. Watch sharp!" "Aye!" shouted Tab, but Jack was already gone. Castleport stumbled aft much as he had gone forward, now climbing laboriously up hill, now leaning back and struggling to keep himself from rushing headlong down the sloping deck with an impetus that would have carried him overboard. When he reached the cockpit, he dropped inside almost spent. "Back the helm every time she rises!" he called to the men at the wheel. "We want her to fall over!" "Aye, aye, sir." "Now, then,--over with her!" he cried, as the yacht rose. The men gave her all they dared. The effect was imperceptible. "Hold her!" shouted Jack. At the risk of their lives, the two helmsmen held her as the schooner slid down the big slope of the wave, shivering as she went. As she rose, the captain, with a laughing heart, saw that she would make it. He tore off his "sou'-wester," and waved it frantically to Tab forward. Jerry threw up his arm in reply; the big "sea-anchor" rose from the deck, and went out on the port side. "Helm amidships!" sang out Jack. "Aye, aye, sir." The Merle began to drift back. "Watch along!" the captain roared again. "Gaskets on the mainsail!" The starboard watch began to wrestle with the heavy canvas which they had partially freed from its bonds so short a time before. The sail was made snug, and the Merle dragged back on her "anchor," and though she plunged and tugged, pitched and rolled, still kept her sharp nose to the wind. Through the mist of the stinging brine which the wind drove down the decks in sheets, the captain saw the hands forward pay out some forty fathoms of scope, and then, man by man, work their way aft. "I'm awfully sorry I--I made such a mess," Tab shouted in the captain's ear as he reached him. "It's all right," returned Jack, aglow with a wild exultation. "It's all right! No matter." The ominous belt of opaque mist which they had so shortly before seen on the horizon was now all about them. The Merle and her crew were enveloped in a shroud of rushing rain. It drove before the blast in incredible torrents, and with a force that made them catch their breaths chokingly whenever they faced it. The seas increased to frightful size. Even to the sailors, bred on the sea, it seemed hardly possible that the schooner could live in such surges. The cockpit, although self-bailing, was kept flooded; in it the water, sloshing about with the motion of the schooner, was as high as the transoms. The uproar of the wind, singing on the ropes strung by its own force to tautness, was like the shrieking of an immense and untuned harp. The crash of the waves sounded like a continuous cannonade all about the yacht. The mingling of sea and air produced a vertigo, as if everything was resolving again into its original chaos. Yet in the midst of it all Jack felt his blood sing in his veins with pure joy of the battle. Suddenly the captain remembered the broken skylights. He splashed out of the cockpit, where he stood almost waist-deep in the jumping water, steadied himself by the combings, and started forward. "Pumps!" he shouted. "Come!" He waved his arm to the men, and the yellow-clad figures detached themselves in the mist and blurring rain from the points of vantage to which they had clung, and dumb, obedient, followed him. The pumps were just abaft the foremast, and were of the semi-rotary sort. The bars were fitted, and two of the men, swinging themselves back and forth, back and forth, with a dull and dreary monotony, began pumping as if they had become parts of a machine. A steady flow of water came from the waste-pipe in a continuous stream. It spread out over the deck to port and to starboard as the yacht swayed. It was full of bubbles and flecks of froth, and was a sickly yellow in hue. Jack set the rest of the men to stretch new tarpaulins over the gaping skylights, and then he went below to look at the glass. Drenched, bruised, cold from his long fight with the storm and the hours which had gone by without his having had food, he found himself, now that for the moment action was not imperative, seized with a sort of terror at the perils he had gone through. The instant reflection that worse might be yet to come restored his courage. He could face whatever might befall as long as he might act. The sight which met him in the once trig cabin was sufficiently dispiriting. A thin sheet of water swashed softly about over the Turkish carpet. It chuckled in dark places as if sentient and fully aware of the impropriety of its being there. A locker door had burst open, and was banging maddeningly. Farther forward, in the dark staterooms, similar noises could be heard, with sounds which suggested that all sorts of small things were being flung about. Everything was sopped with sea-water and drenched by the beating rain: the transom-cushions, two of which were skating about the cabin with the wicker deck-chairs; the books on their shelves; the lockers, the mirrors, the sheathing, down which large drops ran in dizzying zigzags,--in short, everything. The sight gave Jack a feeling of discouragement worse than anything on deck--even the tearing away of the bulwarks--had been able to produce. He felt as if the cruel old ocean were mouthing the schooner as a beast breaks the bones of its prey before devouring it. He drew in his breath with fierce resolution, all his combative spirit aroused to fight to the last gasp, and made his stumbling way to the barometer. He steadied it with his hand, and read it. It stood at 27.04. This was a drop of only .05 since his last observation, and the captain's face cleared a little. If the glass had practically stopped falling, as apparently it had, the hardest part of the gale would come soon, and be speedily over. The old weather saw came into his head,-- Long foretold, long last; Short notice, soon past. The relief, slight as it was, affected him so strongly that he almost smiled. He reflected that the Merle was as well prepared to meet it as under the circumstances she could be, and he had no real doubt of her ability to ride it out, unless some unexpected accident disabled the "sea-anchor." When he came on deck he was greeted by Tab, who had taken charge in his absence, and who asked eagerly the state of the glass. Jack told him, and drawing him into the companionway, where they could escape the wind enough to talk, he added his reasons for thinking that a short time might see them through the worst. "How are things below?" asked the mate. "Look!" the captain answered, with a sweep of his hand. Tab bent down and peered into the dismantled cabin. "The devil!" he cried in dismay. "Precisely--but it might be worse," returned Jack; "but by George, Tab!" he burst out with sudden vehemence, "I--I'm glad I haven't got all this to do over again. You don't know--can't imagine the strain of this sort of thing." "Does your conscience get up like a cat with the wind?" laughed Jerry. "No, Tab," Jack answered soberly, "but the men, you know, and thinking I took them into this when I'd no right to. Oh, rot! No matter, only I'm jolly glad I ran off with the Merle before I realized all this. I couldn't bring myself to do it again for"-- "Come on deck, Jacko," Tab said, after a brief silence in which with eyes cast down awkwardly he had waited for the captain to continue. "I know how you feel, but thank the Lord there's work to be done, and we'll fight through all right. Besides, Gonzague's forward getting a ration of some sort. We can't afford to miss that." He put out his hand, and Jack grasped it appreciatively, with a half-conscious thanksgiving for the comfort of a friend. "Right you are!" the captain said heartily. "We're both of us ready for a feed, I fancy." And out into the storm they went again, buoyant and ready. [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Seventeen FACING THE MUSIC "Well," Tab said, "I'll see you as far as the door for fear you'll bolt. You're a sight nearer funking than I ever saw you, Jacko. You must have your nerve with you if you don't want to come out of the little end of the horn." "I feel small enough to go through it," Jack retorted. "Oh, that's all right. Just take a brace, and"-- "Humph!" snorted the captain. "It's all well enough for you to snoozle round and give me advice, but if you had to face Uncle Randolph yourself, you wouldn't be so chipper, let me tell you!" The young men were crossing Atlantic Avenue not far from the East Boston Ferry. They had at last, sea-weary and glad of land, made harbor on the previous evening. Jack had hardly waited for the anchor to be down before he had sent off in haste for his European letters, intrusting the messenger to post a voluminous epistle on which he had written industriously at intervals all the way over; and for half the night he had read and reread Katrine's missives, giving Jerry tantalizing bits now and then, with messages from Mrs. Fairhew enjoining him not again to aid and abet Jack in any nefarious schemes. In the morning the crew had been paid off generously, and given passages on the City of Rockland. Then Gonzague had been left in charge of the yacht, and now, with feelings curiously mixed, the captain was bound for the office of his uncle for the inevitable reckoning with the owner of the stolen Merle. It was a bright, sharp morning, without a cloud in the sky. The air had a clean crispness which went to the head like wine. The streets were thronged and noisy. Heavy trucks rolled past the pair like batteries moving into action; the Elevated thundered overhead with its rumbling screech. The teamsters shouted profanely at their straining horses; a fat policeman at the crowded crossing waved his arms like semaphores, now holding up the traffic and again with commanding gesture sweeping it along. The shrill voices of the newsboys rang out in mechanical iteration of the leading sensations of the morning journals. "Oh," cried Tab, as they walked briskly up State Street, "how good it is, isn't it, Jacko?" Jack was too much absorbed in the interview before him to do more than nod mechanically. He could not at the moment bring himself up to the gay mood of his friend. "There's no place like it after all," Jerry ran on, his honest, homely face aglow with delight. "My word, you may talk about Italy and all the rest of it till the crack of doom, but they can't hold a candle to good old Boston! Blest if this isn't the best part of the whole cruise!" "Think so, do you?" asked Jack dryly. "It's funny, but the very reverse was in my head. What the deuce," he burst out, "what the deuce am I going to tell the President anyway?" "Oh, just give him the yarn off the reel," returned Tab, as if it were all the simplest thing in the world. "You've got the log with you, and--I say, do look at those pigeons! Aren't they jolly! Come, brace up!" "Oh, yes," said Jack. "Brace up, of course--in the very mouth of the lion's lair. Here's the building,--we're just about seventy feet under Uncle Randolph's den. Brace up! The very thing, of course! So glad you suggested it!" "Now, Jacko," protested Jerry, "you mustn't take things this way. Do put some spirit into it. I'll leave you here; but if you want, I'll face the music with you." "No, thank you," his friend said gravely; "I'll take the medicine alone." "Well, that's what we decided last night when we threshed things out. Go ahead. Bring the remains round to lunch, though. The Roundheads at one. It's eleven now, and you've got two hours for the job of placating the president. Come sure; for I shall be in a stew till I know how you two get on together." "All right," Jack responded dispiritedly. "Good luck," Jerry said, stretching out his hand. "Thank you," Jack returned, giving Tab a hearty grasp. "So long." "One o'clock," Jerry repeated; and with a buoyant wave of the hand, he went on his way up State Street. "Suppose he'll weep when he sees the Frog Pond," muttered Jack to himself with a wan smile. "Wish I felt half as chipper." He went to the elevator, and pressed the electric button. The big cage came down, the boy clashed the door, and Jack went in as he might have mounted the steps to a scaffold. "Mr. Drake's," he said briefly, moistening his lips, and wondering why they seemed so stiff and dry. Deposited on the proper floor, he tucked the brown log-book more tightly under his arm, and approached his uncle's office. "I must have time," he said to himself. "I haven't thought this business out for a cent." He turned on his heel, and walked slowly down the marble-flagged corridor past the glazed doors of half a dozen offices. Then he stopped with sudden resolution. "Damn it! Be a man!" he adjured himself. "This won't do." He walked resolutely up to the door, and entered his uncle's outer office. A typewriter was clicking busily at one desk, and various clerks were scratching away assiduously. Several people were seated about, evidently waiting to speak with Mr. Drake. Even as Jack entered, the door opened, and a man came out from the inner room. The head clerk nodded to Jack, but regarded him curiously. "How do you do, Mr. Castleport?" he said. "Can I see my uncle?" Jack asked, returning his salutation, and he added to himself, "He knows all about the Merle. I can tell by his looks." "He's pretty busy this morning," the clerk answered, "but I'll tell him you're here. Of course he'll see you as soon as he can." Jack took a seat and waited until the next man came out of the inner office. Then the head clerk went in, and in a moment returned with a queer look on his face. "Mr. Drake says these men are here by appointment," he reported, "and he cannot see you till they are gone." "All right," Jack answered, reflecting ruefully that he was not accustomed to be thus kept waiting in his uncle's office. "I am in no hurry." He settled himself in his chair, feeling that he could have borne anything better than this delay, and half tempted now to give it up, and beat a retreat. He saw one man after another go into the inner room, and after a time return and go away. He crossed and recrossed his legs with an impatient feeling that he had never sat in so uncomfortable a chair. He tried to beguile the time by reading the log, but first he opened to the account of the lifting of the Merle, and then to the story of how her bulwarks were torn away by the storm. He fell to thinking how good Uncle Randolph had always been to him, and every minute felt more and more like a wretch for having left the old gentleman stranded at North Haven. The time grew longer and longer, and every moment more intolerable as the second hour began to drag its slow length after the first. Then he noticed that only one man remained to delay his interview, and so completely was he demoralized that he felt that he would have given anything in the world to be excused from the trial before him. It seemed to him that the last man but one did his business, whatever it was, in an amazingly short time; and he all but bolted when the last went to his appointment. If he could get away and think things over once more, he might perhaps be able to devise some sort of excuse more plausible than anything he had to offer; and he all but started to his feet to fly when the door opened to let out the only visitor who had stood between him and the dreaded encounter with the president. "Mr. Drake will see you now, sir," said the office boy. Jack got to his feet as if by automatic action, and felt them drag him forward against his will. Another instant, and the door had closed behind him; he stood in the inner office. With a tremendous effort--an effort which was almost physical--to pull himself together, he looked up at his uncle. He saw a slight gentleman, dressed in a well-fitting suit of gray, looking out of one of the windows with his back to the door. The office was high enough to command a view of the harbor, shining blue in the sun beyond the clusters of roofs and chimneys. Mr. Drake stood for a moment as if examining the view for the first time, while Jack wondered whether this unconsciousness of his presence was real, or was of a piece with the infliction of the long wait. Then the President turned to him, and bowed formally, as if to a stranger. His face wore a curious look of weariness and patience which somehow reminded Jack of his father. The high forehead was wrinkled with a line or two that Jack did not remember, and the curly hair was surely more thickly streaked with gray. "Well, sir?" Mr. Drake said in a tone hard and even. "Well, Uncle Randolph," said Jack, confused, "I--I'm here." "So I see," remarked the President. "Is that what you came to say?" Jack felt that the interview promised to be even worse than he had feared. He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and studied the figures in the rug. Then he looked up at the face of the elder man, and something in it smote him to the heart. "Uncle Randolph," he said suddenly, "I suppose it's pretty late to say anything of the sort, but--but something that happened on the way over made me see that--made me see what a blackguard I'd been to steal the Merle as I did. I don't think apologies are much good, anyway, especially after you've had all the fun. It's a good deal like trying to sneak out of consequences, but I--I really mean most sincerely that I'm beastly sorry." Mr. Drake did not move a muscle of his keen, well-bred face, but into his eyes came some faint glint of humor which made Jack stop in confusion. "Are you done, sir?" his uncle asked. "I'm not quite through, sir," Jack said in a sort of desperate humility. "I--I--that is"--He floundered for a moment, and then went on with a rush, "I may as well explain that I'm not sorry one way; that is--I can't honestly say I wish I hadn't taken the Merle, for I--you know I'm engaged to Miss Marchfield, and I never could have been except--that is, unless I'd got over there. I can't be sorry for that." "No?" queried Mr. Drake, raising his brows. "You are not thinking, perhaps, what is the price I have paid for the privilege of congratulating you on this engagement. I have no son, and from the day your father died I have made one of you. You deceive me, humiliate me in the eyes of my guests, make me the joke of my club, leave me high and dry at North Haven"-- Sad and sorry as Jack really was, he could not help the impulse that made him see the chance, and murmur under his breath,-- "I didn't think anything could be high and dry in the sort of fog we went off in." His uncle gave a slight cough, as if he were strangling an inclination to laugh, and then went on in the same even voice as before. "Of course I can't expect you to have any feeling about the way I felt about your tricking me, any more than of the anxiety I went through when the Merle disappeared, and I didn't know whether you were on top of the sea or under it." "I--I never thought of that," stammered Jack, feeling his cheeks grow hot. "No, I suppose not. Nor how I enjoyed the storm you must have been in on the way home. Lloyd's people sent me word of your giving them the slip at Plymouth." "But they let us," Jack put in eagerly, seizing with avidity at any point which seemed to afford him a chance to defend himself. "I didn't think, Uncle Randolph, and I'm afraid I've been a beastly cad to you. I am sorry to the very bottom of my heart." The President took a quick stride forward and clapped one hand on his nephew's shoulder, while with the other he grasped warmly the hand Jack put out swiftly to meet him. "There, Jack," he said, "that's all I want. You don't know what we old fools go through worrying over you young ones. Perhaps it's just as well you don't." He gave Jack's hand a vigorous shake, and then turned away to blow his own nose with equal violence. Jack himself felt hot in the eyes, but he had no words which seemed adequate to the situation. "Sit down," his uncle said, waving him to a chair, and then going to his desk. He took from a pigeon-hole some letters and papers. "I have several things to say to you. Mrs. Fairhew writes a very spicy letter when she wants to." "I should think she might, sir. She can be spicy when she talks." "She says I didn't know you were grown-up, Jack." Jack blushed at the remembrance, vivid and sharp, of his declaration to Jerry that he would make his uncle realize that he had come to man's estate. "Oh, ho," said Mr. Drake, regarding him keenly, but with humorous eyes, "you thought so too, did you? Of course you did! Well, I know it now, and I've been an old fool. I congratulate you, Jack, with all my heart. If Miss Marchfield is like her mother"--He broke off as if his thought had got the better of his speech. "If she is all that Mrs. Fairhew says she is, you have a treasure, my boy. Don't ever run off with her yacht." "I never mean to repeat that performance with anybody," Jack declared stoutly, again shaking hands fervently. "You've always been awfully good to me, Uncle Randolph, and I've never done anything for you." "Hum, perhaps not that you know of," the other replied, with a humorous lift of his eyebrows; "but we sometimes do good when we think we're doing harm. Read this." He held out a long blue envelope, much stamped and written upon, and provided with both American and English postage-stamps. Jack knew it at a glance as the one he had taken from the messenger that foggy night at North Haven, had found in the pocket of his coat at Nice, and had after much cogitation remailed at Plymouth. In the upper left-hand corner was the notice to return to R. B. Tillington, if not delivered in five days, and the Boston address written in his own hand. He drew out the letter and read:-- MY DEAR DRAKE,--You and I have known the ins and outs of the market for so many years that we ought to appreciate both the danger of getting into an unsound stock and the foolishness of letting the real thing go by for the want of a little courage. I think you are not likely to have forgotten what Orrington said in the club last week about Orion Copper, or that I told you I meant to sift that thing to the very bottom. Well, I have been looking it up with a microscope ever since. I enclose three or four copies of letters,--this is all confidential, of course; you would know that without my saying so, but the thing's too important not to be particular about. I write to you because I've got to have somebody share the thing, and I think you can raise the money without putting anybody on the scent. Besides that, we have always got on well together, I believe in your luck, and I want somebody to stand with me in running the whole thing. There's nothing less than millions in it if we can get control at once. Sell anything,--I'm selling _everything_ myself,--and get in on the ground floor of Orion. If I had known just where to hit you, I'd have got you to town to investigate for yourself; but I've wasted a small fortune already telegraphing to every damned port on the coast I could think of. You'll find wires waiting at every place you put into. Orion's bound to be the coming financial constellation. B. B., Mellington, Foster, and two or three others have blundered into it just by bull luck, but they haven't got enough stock to hurt us if you'll stand by me. Yours for Orion, R. B. T. Jack read in steadily increasing consternation. "Good heavens!" he said. "Did I make you lose the chance? Did you get the telegrams?" "I got them, but they referred me to the letter, and I was too upset about the Merle to pay much attention. Then I went over to the island, and stayed there three or four days; so that by the time I did get a letter--a second one--the whole thing was over." "Was that what broke Tillington?" Jack asked, feeling as if his escapade had destroyed half the financial world. "It saved me from going with him," Mr. Drake returned, with a smile. "See here." He extended a lot of newspaper cuttings, and then drew them back. "Never mind, though," he went on. "There's no need of going into the particulars. The whole thing was a trap from beginning to end. If you made a fool of me, Jack, by running off with the Merle, it isn't a circumstance to the fool I'd have made of myself if I'd got that letter. If it hadn't been for that perfectly heartless and entirely inexcusable performance of yours, we'd both of us be beggars at this blessed moment. We came so near it that I can't read that sign downstairs, 'Beggars and Peddlers not Allowed,' without thinking how near I was to having it forbid me my own office." "Do you really mean it, Uncle Randolph?" Jack asked half breathlessly. "I do mean it, my boy, though I'm afraid the moral of it all's pretty crooked. I had been led in with a cleverness that gives me cold shivers. That talk at the club that I'd heard as if by accident had all been planned out, and so on for a lot more things I won't go into. Mellington's blown his brains out, and poor old Foster isn't up to anything but cadging for drinks at the club, and telling how he was roped in when he was drunk, poor old fellow! I was so sure of Orion that I'd have put in the last dollar of yours or mine I could have laid hands on! I feel like a humbug when men congratulate me on knowing enough to keep out of the mess." "And I saved you?" cried Jack, bending forward with boyish eagerness. "Yes, you rascally jackanapes; but small credit to you!" Jack sent the log up into the air, and, bounding to his feet, caught it as it fell. "Whoop!" he shouted. "Oh, how glad I am old Tillington wrote that letter and I carried it off!" The President laughed with responsive joyousness, but reminded his ebullient nephew that there were clerks in the other room. He began to ask questions about the voyage, but the clock struck one and Jack recalled the fact that Taberman was waiting for him at the Roundheads, and probably was on tenterhooks for his news. "You'll come to luncheon, won't you, sir?" he pleaded. "That'll look well," retorted his uncle with humorous derision. "Everybody knows about your running off with the Merle--Bardale couldn't hold his tongue--and I shall be accused of condoning a felony." Nevertheless they set out arm in arm for the club, and as they went the President informed his secretary that he should not be back at the office that afternoon. "We shall want to run over the log," he explained to Jack as they waited for the elevator. "I've no doubt it will make you blush to have me read it, but I'm going to." "I brought it for you," Jack answered, with a grin of pure joy. "Do you mind waiting a minute, while I send a cable to Katrine? She was awfully anxious to know how hard you'd be on me." "Now she'll think I've no backbone at all. Well, when you played me that trick, Jack, I felt terribly old and alone; but I think I am a little bit younger now you're back, and prepared to behave yourself." "Wait till you've read the log," laughed Jack, "and you'll think you're in your teens!" [Illustration: Decoration] Chapter Eighteen EPILUDE Jack, who had been dining at Mrs. Fairhew's, was taking leave of Katrine one evening a few weeks before the day set for the wedding. The farewell had all the characteristic deliberateness which has marked the unwilling separation of engaged couples from time immemorial, and was to-night prolonged more than usual by his teasing refusal to answer a question. "Do tell me what the great secret is between you and Mr. Drake, Jack," she begged. "I think you are perfectly horrid!" He looked down into her face and laughed softly. "You're not," he returned. "You're perfectly stunning to-night." "Of course I am," she retorted, laughing and pouting; "but you can't put me off with a compliment. If you hadn't meant to tell me, you wouldn't have spoken about it at all; and I think you've teased me enough. What is it about the President and you?" She touched the tips of her fingers to his cravat, as if she were straightening it, whereas she was probably only exerting instinctively her privilege of proprietorship in Jack and his belongings. "Well," he laughed, "you have borne it beautifully, and I've had you crazy with curiosity till I don't dare put off telling you. But you'll probably lie awake half the night thinking about it." "That depends upon how important it is." "I expect to be paid for telling you," he declared with a look that made her flush. "I should think you might be generous enough to tell me for nothing," she responded; but her dimples deepened. He stooped forward quickly, and kissed her. Then he took both her hands in his, and stood caressing them while he went on. "The news is this," he said. "We've got to change our plans for the wedding journey from stem to stern." "Why, Jack! What do you mean?" "It's a fact, dear," he went on, assuming an expression of profound regret which was too obviously artificial to be depressing. "But why?" "Because--Are you ready for a great shock? Wouldn't you like me to support you in case you couldn't bear it?" "Don't be silly," she urged, with an adorable smile. "Because what?" "Because Uncle Randolph has given us the Merle as a wedding present. He told me this afternoon, so that we should have time to shape our plans accordingly." "Oh, dear Jack!" "Splendid of him, isn't it? How would it strike you to have the Merle sent over and to take a whole year in her on the Mediterranean?" "Oh, that would be too beautiful!" Katrine cried. She clasped her hands, and looked up at him with loving brave eyes. Her first thought was of his pleasure, and instantly followed the reflection that she was making her first sacrifice; for her quick mind foresaw that Jack on a yacht, with duties in which he delighted, would probably be less wholly hers than in the travel by land which they had arranged. She smiled wonderfully, and for the first time in their engagement she bent forward of her own accord, and offered him her lips. The Riverside Press _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co._ _Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ 9309 ---- Distributed Proofreaders from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. IN A STEAMER CHAIR AND _OTHER SHIPBOARD STORIES_ BY ROBERT BARR (LUKE SHARP) [Illustration: He played one game.] A PRELIMINARY WORD. As the incidents related herein took place during voyages between England and America, I dedicate this book to the Vagabond Club of London, and the Witenagemote Club of Detroit, in the hope that, if any one charges me with telling a previously told tale, the fifty members of each club will rise as one man and testify that they were called upon to endure the story in question from my own lips prior to the alleged original appearance of the same. R. B. CONTENTS IN A STEAMER CHAIR MRS TREMAIN SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE AN INTERNATIONAL BOW A LADIES' MAN A SOCIETY FOR THE REFORMATION OF POKER PLAYERS THE MAN WHO WAS NOT ON THE PASSENGER LIST THE TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF PLODKINS A CASE OF FEVER HOW THE CAPTAIN GOT HIS STEAMER OUT MY STOWAWAY THE PURSER'S STORY MISS MCMILLAN IN A STEAMER CHAIR THE FIRST DAY. Mr. George Morris stood with his arms folded on the bulwarks of the steamship _City of Buffalo_, and gazed down into the water. All around him was the bustle and hurry of passengers embarking, with friends bidding good-bye. Among the throng, here and there, the hardworking men of the steamer were getting things in order for the coming voyage. Trunks were piled up in great heaps ready to be lowered into the hold; portmanteaux, satchels, and hand-bags, with tags tied to them, were placed in a row waiting to be claimed by the passengers, or taken down into the state-rooms. To all this bustle and confusion George Morris paid no heed. He was thinking deeply, and his thoughts did not seem to be very pleasant. There was nobody to see him off, and he had evidently very little interest in either those who were going or those who were staying behind. Other passengers who had no friends to bid them farewell appeared to take a lively interest in watching the hurry and scurry, and in picking out the voyagers from those who came merely to say good-bye. At last the rapid ringing of a bell warned all lingerers that the time for the final parting had come. There were final hand-shakings, many embraces, and not a few tears, while men in uniform with stentorian voices cried, "All ashore." The second clanging of the bell, and the preparations for pulling up the gang-planks hurried the laggards to the pier. After the third ringing the gang-plank was hauled away, the inevitable last man sprang to the wharf, the equally inevitable last passenger, who had just dashed up in a cab, flung his valises to the steward, was helped on board the ship, and then began the low pulsating stroke, like the beating of a heart, that would not cease until the vessel had sighted land on the other side. George Morris's eyes were fixed on the water, yet apparently he was not looking at it, for when it began to spin away from the sides of the ship he took no notice, but still gazed at the mass of seething foam that the steamer threw off from her as she moved through the bay. It was evident that the sights of New York harbour were very familiar to the young man, for he paid no attention to them, and the vessel was beyond Sandy Hook before he changed his position. It is doubtful if he would have changed it then, had not a steward touched him on the elbow, and said-- "Any letters, sir?" "Any what?" cried Morris, suddenly waking up from his reverie. "Any letters, sir, to go ashore with the pilot?" "Oh, letters. No, no, I haven't any. You have a regular post-office on board, have you? Mail leaves every day?" "No, sir," replied the steward with a smile, "not _every_ day, sir. We send letters ashore for passengers when the pilot leaves the ship. The next mail, sir, will leave at Queenstown." The steward seemed uncertain as to whether the passenger was trying to joke with him or was really ignorant of the ways of steamships. However, his tone was very deferential and explanatory, not knowing but that this particular passenger might come to his lot at the table, and stewards take very good care to offend nobody. Future fees must not be jeopardized. Being aroused, Mr. Morris now took a look around him. It seemed wonderful how soon order had been restored from the chaos of the starting. The trunks had disappeared down the hold; the portmanteaux were nowhere to be seen. Most of the passengers apparently were in their state-rooms exploring their new quarters, getting out their wraps, Tam-o-Shanters, fore-and-aft caps, steamer chairs, rugs, and copies of paper-covered novels. The deck was almost deserted, yet here and there a steamer chair had already been placed, and one or two were occupied. The voyage had commenced. The engine had settled down to its regular low thud, thud; the vessel's head rose gracefully with the long swell of the ocean, and, to make everything complete, several passengers already felt that inward qualm--the accompaniment of so many ocean voyages. George Morris yawned, and seemed the very picture of _ennui_. He put his hands deeply into his coat pockets, and sauntered across the deck. Then he took a stroll up the one side and down the other. As he lounged along it was very evident that he was tired of the voyage, even before it began. Judging from his listless manner nothing on earth could arouse the interest of the young man. The gong sounded faintly in the inner depths of the ship somewhere announcing dinner. Then, as the steward appeared up the companion way, the sonorous whang, whang became louder, and the hatless official, with the gong in hand, beat that instrument several final strokes, after which he disappeared into the regions below. "I may as well go down," said Morris to himself, "and see where they have placed me at table. But I haven't much interest in dinner." As he walked to the companion-way an elderly gentleman and a young lady appeared at the opposite door, ready to descend the stairs. Neither of them saw the young man. But if they had, one of them at least would have doubted the young man's sanity. He stared at the couple for a moment with a look of grotesque horror on his face that was absolutely comical. Then he turned, and ran the length of the deck, with a speed unconscious of all obstacles. "Say," he cried to the captain, "I want to go ashore. I _must_ go ashore. I want to go ashore with the pilot." The captain smiled, and said, "I shall be very happy to put you ashore, sir, but it will have to be at Queenstown. The pilot has gone." "Why, it was only a moment ago that the steward asked me if I had any letters to post. Surely he cannot have gone yet?" "It is longer than that, I am afraid," said the captain. "The pilot left the ship half an hour ago." "Is there no way I can get ashore? I don't mind what I pay for it." "Unless we break a shaft and have to turn back there is no way that I know of. I am afraid you will have to make the best of it until we reach Queenstown." "Can't you signal a boat and let me get off on her?" "Well, I suppose we could. It is a very unusual thing to do. But that would delay us for some time, and unless the business is of the utmost necessity, I would not feel justified in delaying the steamer, or in other words delaying several hundred passengers for the convenience of one. If you tell me what the trouble is I shall tell you at once whether I can promise to signal a boat if I get the opportunity of doing so." Morris thought for a moment. It would sound very absurd to the captain for him to say that there was a passenger on the ship whom he desired very much not to meet, and yet, after all, that was what made the thought of the voyage so distasteful to him. He merely said, "Thank you," and turned away, muttering to himself something in condemnation of his luck in general. As he walked slowly down the deck up which he had rushed with such headlong speed a few moments before, he noticed a lady trying to set together her steamer chair, which had seemingly given way--a habit of steamer chairs. She looked up appealing at Mr. Morris, but that gentleman was too preoccupied with his own situation to be gallant. As he passed her, the lady said-- "Would you be kind enough to see if you can put my steamer chair together?" Mr. Morris looked astonished at this very simple request. He had resolved to make this particular voyage without becoming acquainted with anybody, more especially a lady. "Madam," he said, "I shall be pleased to call to your assistance the deck steward if you wish." "If I had wished that," replied the lady, with some asperity, "I would have asked you to do so. As it is, I asked you to fix it yourself." "I do not understand you," said Mr. Morris, with some haughtiness. "I do not see that it matters who mends the steamer chair so long as the steamer chair is mended. I am not a deck steward." Then, thinking he had spoken rather harshly, he added, "I am not a deck steward, and don't understand the construction of steamer chairs as well as they do, you see." The lady rose. There was a certain amount of indignation in her voice as she said-- "Then pray allow me to present you with this steamer chair." "I--I--really, madam, I do not understand you," stammered the young man, astonished at the turn the unsought conversation had taken. "I think," replied the lady, "that what I said was plain enough. I beg you to accept this steamer chair as your own. It is of no further use to me." Saying this, the young woman, with some dignity, turned her back upon him, and disappeared down the companion-way, leaving Morris in a state of utter bewilderment as he looked down at the broken steamer chair, wondering if the lady was insane. All at once he noticed a rent in his trousers, between the knee and the instep. "Good heavens, how have I done this? My best pair of trousers, too. Gracious!" he cried, as a bewildered look stole over his face, "it isn't possible that in racing up this deck I ran against this steamer chair and knocked it to flinders, and possibly upset the lady at the same time? By George! that's just what the trouble is." Looking at the back of the flimsy chair he noticed a tag tied to it, and on the tag he saw the name, "Miss Katherine Earle, New York." Passing to the other side he called the deck steward. "Steward," he said, "there is a chair somewhere among your pile with the name 'Geo. Morris' on it. Will you get it for me?" "Certainly, sir," answered the steward, and very shortly the other steamer chair, which, by the way, was a much more elegant, expensive, and stable affair than the one that belonged to Miss Katherine Earle, was brought to him. Then he untied the tag from his own chair and tied it to the flimsy structure that had just been offered to him; next he untied the tag from the lady's chair and put it on his own. "Now, steward," he said, "do you know the lady who sat in this chair?" "No, sir," said the steward, "I do not. You see, we are only a few hours out, sir." "Very well, you will have no trouble finding her. When she comes on deck again, please tell her that this chair is hers, with the apologies of the gentleman who broke her own, and see if you can mend this other chair for me." "Oh yes," said the steward, "there will be no trouble about that. They are rather rickety things at best, sir." "Very well, if you do this for me nicely you will not be a financial sufferer." "Thank you, sir. The dinner gong rang some time ago, sir." "Yes, I heard it," answered Morris. Placing his hands behind him he walked up and down the deck, keeping an anxious eye now and then on the companion way. Finally, the young lady whom he had seen going down with the elderly gentleman appeared alone on deck. Then Morris acted very strangely. With the stealthy demeanour of an Indian avoiding his deadly enemy, he slunk behind the different structures on the deck until he reached the other door of the companion-way, and then, with a sigh of relief, ran down the steps. There were still quite a number of people in the saloon, and seated at the side of one of the smaller tables he noticed the lady whose name he imagined was Miss Katherine Earle. "My name is Morris," said that gentleman to the head steward. "Where have you placed me?" The steward took him down the long table, looking at the cards beside the row of plates. "Here you are, sir," said the steward. "We are rather crowded this voyage, sir." Morris did not answer him, for opposite he noticed the old gentleman, who had been the companion of the young lady, lingering over his wine. "Isn't there any other place vacant? At one of the smaller tables, for instance? I don't like to sit at the long table," said Morris, placing his finger and thumb significantly in his waistcoat pocket. "I think that can be arranged, sir," answered the steward, with a smile. "Is there a place vacant at the table where that young lady is sitting alone?" said Morris, nodding in the direction. "Well, sir, all the places are taken there; but the gentleman who has been placed at the head of the table has not come down, sir, and if you like I will change his card for yours at the long table." "I wish you would." So with that he took his place at the head of the small table, and had the indignant young lady at his right hand. "There ought to be a master of ceremonies," began Morris with some hesitation, "to introduce people to each other on board a steamship. As it is, however, people have to get acquainted as best they may. My name is Morris, and, unless I am mistaken, you are Miss Katherine Earle. Am I right?" "You are right about my name," answered the young lady, "I presume you ought to be about your own." "Oh, I can prove that," said Morris, with a smile. "I have letters to show, and cards and things like that." Then he seemed to catch his breath as he remembered there was also a young woman on board who could vouch that his name was George Morris. This took him aback for a moment, and he was silent. Miss Earle made no reply to his offer of identification. "Miss Earle," he said hesitatingly at last, "I wish you would permit me to apologise to you if I am as culpable as I imagine. _Did_ I run against your chair and break it?" "Do you mean to say," replied the young lady, looking at him steadily, "that you do not _know_ whether you did or not?" "Well, it's a pretty hard thing to ask a person to believe, and yet I assure you that is the fact. I have only the dimmest remembrance of the disaster, as of something I might have done in a dream. To tell you the truth, I did not even suspect I had done so until I noticed I had torn a portion of my clothing by the collision. After you left, it just dawned upon me that I was the one who smashed the chair. I therefore desire to apologise very humbly, and hope you will permit me to do so." "For what do you intend to apologise, Mr. Morris? For breaking the chair, or refusing to mend it when I asked you?" "For both. I was really in a good deal of trouble just the moment before I ran against your chair, Miss Earle, and I hope you will excuse me on the ground of temporary insanity. Why, you know, they even let off murderers on that plea, so I hope to be forgiven for being careless in the first place, and boorish in the second." "You are freely forgiven, Mr. Morris. In fact, now that I think more calmly about the incident, it was really a very trivial affair to get angry over, and I must confess I was angry." "You were perfectly justified." "In getting angry, perhaps; but in showing my anger, no--as some one says in a play. Meanwhile, we'll forget all about it," and with that the young lady rose, bidding her new acquaintance good night. George Morris found he had more appetite for dinner than he expected to have. SECOND DAY. Mr. George Morris did not sleep well his first night on the _City of Buffalo_. He dreamt that he was being chased around the deck by a couple of young ladies, one a very pronounced blonde, and the other an equally pronounced brunette, and he suffered a great deal because of the uncertainty as to which of the two pursuers he desired the most to avoid. It seemed to him that at last he was cornered, and the fiendish young ladies began literally, as the slang phrase is, to mop the deck with him. He felt himself being slowly pushed back and forward across the deck, and he wondered how long he would last if this treatment were kept up. By and by he found himself lying still in his bunk, and the swish, swish above him of the men scrubbing the deck in the early morning showed him his dream had merged into reality. He remembered then that it was the custom of the smoking-room steward to bring a large silver pot of fragrant coffee early every morning and place it on the table of the smoking-room. Morris also recollected that on former voyages that early morning coffee had always tasted particularly good. It was grateful and comforting, as the advertisement has it. Shortly after, Mr. Morris was on the wet deck, which the men were still scrubbing with the slow, measured swish, swish of the brush he had heard earlier in the morning. No rain was falling, but everything had a rainy look. At first he could see only a short distance from the ship. The clouds appeared to have come down on the water, where they hung, lowering. There was no evidence that such a thing as a sun existed. The waves rolled out of this watery mist with an oily look, and the air was so damp and chilly that it made Morris shiver as he looked out on the dreary prospect. He thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, which seemed to be an indolent habit of his, and walked along the slippery deck to search for the smoking-room. He was thinking of his curious and troublesome dream, when around the corner came the brunette, wrapped in a long cloak that covered her from head to foot. The cloak had a couple of side pockets set angleways in front, after the manner of the pockets in ulsters. In these pockets Miss Earle's hands were placed, and she walked the deck with a certain independent manner which Mr. Morris remembered that he disliked. She seemed to be about to pass him without recognition, when the young man took off his cap and said pleasantly, "Good morning, Miss Earle. You are a very early riser." "The habit of years," answered that young lady, "is not broken by merely coming on board ship." Mr. Morris changed step and walked beside her. "The habit of years?" he said. "Why, you speak as if you were an old woman." "I _am_ an old woman," replied the girl, "in everything but one particular." "And that particular," said her companion, "is the very important one, I imagine, of years." "I don't know why that is so very important." "Oh, you will think so in after life, I assure you. I speak as a veteran myself." The young lady gave him a quick side glance with her black eyes from under the hood that almost concealed her face. "You say you are a veteran," she answered, "but you don't think so. It would offend you very deeply to be called old." "Oh, I don't know about that. I think such a remark is offensive only when there is truth in it. A young fellow slaps his companion on the shoulder and calls him 'old man.' The grey-haired veteran always addresses his elderly friend as 'my boy.'" "Under which category do you think you come, then?" "Well, I don't come under either exactly. I am sort of on the middle ground. I sometimes feel very old. In fact, to confess to you, I never felt older in my life than I did yesterday. Today I am a great deal younger." "Dear me," replied the young lady, "I am sorry to hear that." "Sorry!" echoed her companion; "I don't see why you should be sorry. It is said that every one rejoices in the misfortunes of others, but it is rather unusual to hear them admit it." "It is because of my sympathy for others that I am sorry to hear you are younger today than you were yesterday. If you take to running along the deck today then the results will be disastrous and I think you owe it to your fellow passengers to send the steward with his gong ahead of you so as to give people in steamer chairs warning." "Miss Earle," said the young man, "I thought you had forgiven me for yesterday. I am sure I apologised very humbly, and am willing to apologise again to-day." "Did I forgive you? I had forgotten?" "But you remembered the fault. I am afraid that is misplaced forgetfulness. The truth is, I imagine, you are very unforgiving." "My friends do not think so." "Then I suppose you rank me among your enemies?" "You forget that I have known you for a day only." "That is true, chronologically speaking. But you must remember a day on shipboard is very much longer than a day on shore. In fact, I look on you now as an old acquaintance, and I should be sorry to think you looked on me as an enemy." "You are mistaken. I do not. I look on you now as you do on your own age--sort of between the two." "And which way do you think I shall drift? Towards the enemy line, or towards the line of friendship?" "I am sure I cannot tell." "Well, Miss Earle, I am going to use my best endeavours to reach the friendship line, which I shall make unless the current is too strong for me. I hope you are not so prejudiced against me that the pleasant effort will be fruitless." "Oh, I am strictly neutral," said the young lady. "Besides, it really amounts to nothing. Steamer friendships are the most evanescent things on earth." "Not on earth, surely, Miss Earle. You must mean on sea." "Well, the earth includes the sea, you know." "Have you had experience with steamer friendships? I thought, somehow, this was your first voyage." "What made you think so?" "Well, I don't know. I thought it was, that's all." "I hope there is nothing in my manner that would induce a stranger to think I am a verdant traveller." "Oh, not at all. You know, a person somehow classifies a person's fellow-passengers. Some appear to have been crossing the ocean all their lives, whereas, in fact, they are probably on shipboard for the first time. Have you crossed the ocean before?" "Yes." "Now, tell me whether you think I ever crossed before?" "Why, of course you have. I should say that you cross probably once a year. Maybe oftener." "Really? For business or pleasure?" "Oh, business, entirely. You did not look yesterday as if you ever had any pleasure in your life." "Oh, yesterday! Don't let us talk about yesterday. It's to-day now, you know. You seem to be a mind-reader. Perhaps you could tell my occupation?" "Certainly. Your occupation is doubtless that of a junior partner in a prosperous New York house. You go over to Europe every year--perhaps twice a year, to look after the interests of your business." "You think I am a sort of commercial traveller, then?" "Well, practically, yes. The older members of the firm, I should imagine, are too comfortably situated, and care too little for the pleasures of foreign travel, to devote much of their time to it. So what foreign travel there is to be done falls on the shoulders of the younger partner. Am I correct?" "Well, I don't quite class myself as a commercial traveller, you know, but in the main you are--in fact, you are remarkably near right. I think you must be something of a mind-reader, as I said before, Miss Earle, or is it possible that I carry my business so plainly in my demeanour as all that?" Miss Earle laughed. It was a very bright, pleasant, cheerful laugh. "Still, I must correct you where you are wrong, for fear you become too conceited altogether about your powers of observation. I have not crossed the ocean as often as you seem to think. In the future I shall perhaps do so frequently. I am the junior partner, as you say, but have not been a partner long. In fact I am now on my first voyage in connection with the new partnership. Now, Miss Earle, let me try a guess at your occupation." "You are quite at liberty to guess at it." "But will you tell me if I guess correctly?" "Yes. I have no desire to conceal it." "Then, I should say off-hand that you are a teacher, and are now taking a vacation in Europe. Am I right?" "Tell me first why you think so?" "I am afraid to tell you. I do not want to drift towards the line of enmity." "You need have no fear. I have every respect for a man who tells the truth when he has to." "Well, I think a school teacher is very apt to get into a certain dictatorial habit of speech. School teachers are something like military men. They are accustomed to implicit obedience without question, and this, I think, affects their manner with other people." "You think I am dictatorial, then?" "Well, I shouldn't say that you were dictatorial exactly. But there is a certain confidence--I don't know just how to express it, but it seems to me, you know--well, I am going deeper and deeper into trouble by what I am saying, so really I shall not say any more. I do not know just how to express it." "I think you express it very nicely. Go on, please." "Oh, you are laughing at me now." "Not at all, I assure you. You were trying to say that I was very dictatorial." "No, I was trying to say nothing of the kind. I was merely trying to say that you have a certain confidence in yourself and a certain belief that everything you say is perfectly correct, and is not to be questioned. Now, do as you promised, and tell me how near right I am." "You are entirely wrong. I never taught school." "Well, Miss Earle, I confessed to my occupation without citing any mitigating circumstances. So now, would you think me impertinent if I asked you to be equally frank?" "Oh, not at all! But I may say at once that I wouldn't answer you." "But you will tell me if I guess?" "Yes, I promise that." "Well, I am certainly right in saying that you are crossing the ocean for pleasure." "No, you are entirely wrong. I am crossing for business." "Then, perhaps you cross very often, too?" "No; I crossed only once before, and that was coming the other way." "Really, this is very mysterious. When are you coming back?" "I am not coming back." "Oh, well," said Morris, "I give it up. I think I have scored the unusual triumph of managing to be wrong in everything that I have said. Have I not?" "I think you have." "And you refuse to put me right?" "Certainly." "I don't think you are quite fair, Miss Earle." "I don't think I ever claimed to be, Mr. Morris. But I am tired of walking now. You see, I have been walking the deck for considerably longer than you have. I think I shall sit down for a while." "Let me take you to your chair." Miss Earle smiled. "It would be very little use," she said. The deck steward was not to be seen, and Morris, diving into a dark and cluttered-up apartment, in which the chairs were piled, speedily picked out his own, brought it to where the young lady was standing, spread it out in its proper position, and said-- "Now let me get you a rug or two." "You have made a mistake. That is not my chair." "Oh yes, it is. I looked at the tag. This is your name, is it not?" "Yes, that is my name; but this is not my chair." "Well, I beg that you will use it until the owner calls for it." "But who is the owner? Is this your chair?" "It was mine until after I smashed up yours." "Oh, but I cannot accept your chair, Mr. Morris." "You surely wouldn't refuse to do what you desired, in fact, commanded, another to do. You know you practically ordered me to take your chair. Well, I have accepted it. It is going to be put right to-day. So, you see, you cannot refuse mine." Miss Earle looked at him for a moment. "This is hardly what I would call a fair exchange," she said. "My chair was really a very cheap and flimsy one. This chair is much more expensive. You see, I know the price of them. I think you are trying to arrange your revenge, Mr. Morris. I think you want to bring things about so that I shall have to apologise to you in relation to that chair-breaking incident. However, I see that this chair is very comfortable, so I will take it. Wait a moment till I get my rugs." "No, no," cried Morris, "tell me where you left them. I will get them for you." "Thank you. I left them on the seat at the head of the companion-way. One is red, the other is more variegated; I cannot describe it, but they are the only two rugs there, I think." A moment afterwards the young man appeared with the rugs on his arm, and arranged them around the young lady after the manner of deck stewards and gallant young men who are in the habit of crossing the ocean. "Would you like to have a cup of coffee?" "I would, if it can be had." "Well, I will let you into a shipboard secret. Every morning on this vessel the smoking-room steward brings up a pot of very delicious coffee, which he leaves on the table of the smoking-room. He also brings a few biscuits--not the biscuit of American fame, but the biscuit of English manufacture, the cracker, as we call it--and those who frequent the smoking-room are in the habit sometimes of rising early, and, after a walk on deck, pouring out a cup of coffee for themselves." "But I do not expert to be a _habitué_ of the smoking-room," said Miss Earle. "Nevertheless, you have a friend who will be, and so in that way, you see, you will enjoy the advantages of belonging to the smoking club." A few moments afterwards, Morris appeared with a camp-stool under his arm, and two cups of coffee in his hands. Miss Earle noticed the smile suddenly fade from his face, and a look of annoyance, even of terror, succeed it. His hands trembled, so that the coffee spilled from the cup into the saucer. "Excuse my awkwardness," he said huskily; then, handing her the cup, he added, "I shall have to go now. I will see you at breakfast-time. Good morning." With the other cup still in his hand, he made his way to the stair. Miss Earle looked around and saw, coming up the deck, a very handsome young lady with blonde hair. THIRD DAY. On the morning of the third day, Mr. George Morris woke up after a sound and dreamless sleep. He woke up feeling very dissatisfied with himself, indeed. He said he was a fool, which was probably true enough, but even the calling himself so did not seem to make matters any better. He reviewed in his mind the events of the day before. He remembered his very pleasant walk and talk with Miss Earle. He knew the talk had been rather purposeless, being merely that sort of preliminary conversation which two people who do not yet know each other indulge in, as a forerunner to future friendship. Then, he thought of his awkward leave-taking of Miss Earle when he presented her with the cup of coffee, and for the first time he remembered with a pang that he had under his arm a camp-stool. It must have been evident to Miss Earle that he had intended to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her, and continue the acquaintance begun so auspiciously that morning. He wondered if she had noticed that his precipitate retreat had taken place the moment there appeared on the deck a very handsome and stylishly dressed young lady. He began to fear that Miss Earle must have thought him suddenly taken with insanity, or, worse still, sea-sickness. The more Morris thought about the matter the more dissatisfied he was with himself and his actions. At breakfast--he had arrived very late, almost as Miss Earle was leaving--he felt he had preserved a glum, reticent demeanour, and that he had the general manner of a fugitive anxious to escape justice. He wondered what Miss Earle must have thought of him after his eager conversation of the morning. The rest of the day he had spent gloomily in the smoking-room, and had not seen the young lady again. The more he thought of the day the worse he felt about it. However, he was philosopher enough to know that all the thinking he could do would not change a single item in the sum of the day's doing. So he slipped back the curtain on its brass rod and looked out into his state-room. The valise which he had left carelessly on the floor the night before was now making an excursion backwards and forwards from the bunk to the sofa, and the books that had been piled up on the sofa were scattered all over the room. It was evident that dressing was going to be an acrobatic performance. The deck, when he reached it, was wet, but not with the moisture of the scrubbing. The outlook was clear enough, but a strong head-wind was blowing that whistled through the cordage of the vessel, and caused the black smoke of the funnels to float back like huge sombre streamers. The prow of the big ship rose now into the sky and then sank down into the bosom of the sea, and every time it descended a white cloud of spray drenched everything forward and sent a drizzly salt rain along the whole length of the steamer. "There will be no ladies on deck this morning," said Morris to himself, as he held his cap on with both hands and looked around at the threatening sky. At this moment one wave struck the steamer with more than usual force and raised its crest amidship over the decks. Morris had just time to escape into the companion-way when it fell with a crash on the deck, flooding the promenade, and then rushing out through the scuppers into the sea. "By George!" said Morris. "I guess there won't be many at breakfast either, if this sort of thing keeps up. I think the other side of the ship is the best." Coming out on the other side of the deck, he was astonished to see, sitting in her steamer chair, snugly wrapped up in her rugs, Miss Katherine Earle, balancing a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. The steamer chair had been tightly tied to the brass stanchion, or hand-rail, that ran along the side of the housed-in portion of the companion-way, and although the steamer swayed to and fro, as well as up and down, the chair was immovable. An awning had been put up over the place where the chair was fastened, and every now and then on that dripping piece of canvas the salt rain fell, the result of the waves that dashed in on the other side of the steamer. "Good morning, Mr. Morris!" said the young lady, brightly. "I am very glad you have come. I will let you into a shipboard secret. The steward of the smoking-room brings up every morning a pot of very fragrant coffee. Now, if you will speak to him, I am sure he will be very glad to give you a cup." "You do like to make fun of me, don't you?" answered the young man. "Oh, dear no," said Miss Earle, "I shouldn't think of making fun of anything so serious. Is it making fun of a person who looks half frozen to offer him a cup of warm coffee? I think there is more philanthropy than fun about that." "Well, I don't know but you are right. At any rate, I prefer to take it as philanthropy rather than fun. I shall go and get a cup of coffee for myself, if you will permit me to place a chair beside yours?" "Oh, I beg you not to go for the coffee yourself. You certainly will never reach here with it. You see the remains of that cup down by the side of the vessel. The steward himself slipped and fell with that piece of crockery in his hands. I am sure he hurt himself, although he said he didn't." "Did you give him an extra fee on that account?" asked Morris, cynically. "Of course I did. I am like the Government in that respect. I take care of those who are injured in my service." "Perhaps, that's why he went down. They are a sly set, those stewards. He knew that a man would simply laugh at him, or perhaps utter some maledictions if he were not feeling in very good humour. In all my ocean voyages I have never had the good fortune to see a steward fall. He knew, also, the rascal, that a lady would sympathise with him, and that he wouldn't lose anything by it, except the cup, which is not his loss." "Oh yes, it is," replied the young lady, "he tells me they charge all breakages against him." "He didn't tell you what method they had of keeping track of the breakages, did he? Suppose he told the chief steward that you broke the cup, which is likely he did. What then?" "Oh, you are too cynical this morning, and it would serve you just right if you go and get some coffee for yourself, and meet with the same disaster that overtook the unfortunate steward. Only you are forewarned that you shall have neither sympathy nor fee." "Well, in that case," said the young man, "I shall not take the risk. I shall sacrifice the steward rather. Oh, here he is. I say, steward, will you bring me a cup of coffee, please?" "Yes, sir. Any biscuit, sir?" "No, no biscuit. Just a cup of coffee and a couple of lumps of sugar, please; and if you can first get me a chair, and strap it to this rod in the manner you do so well, I shall be very much obliged." "Yes, sir. I shall call the deck steward, sir." "Now, notice that. You see the rascals never interfere with each other. The deck steward wants a fee, and the smoking-room steward wants a fee, and each one attends strictly to his own business, and doesn't interfere with the possible fees of anybody else." "Well," said Miss Earle, "is not that the correct way? If things are to be well done, that is how they should be done. Now, just notice how much more artistically the deck steward arranged these rugs than you did yesterday morning. I think it is worth a good fee to be wrapped up so comfortably as that." "I guess I'll take lessons from the deck steward then, and even if I do not get a fee, I may perhaps get some gratitude at least." "Gratitude? Why, you should think it a privilege." "Well, Miss Earle, to tell the truth, I do. It is a privilege that--I hope you will not think I am trying to flatter you when I say--any man might be proud of." "Oh, dear," replied the young lady, laughing, "I did not mean it in that way at all. I meant that it was a privilege to be allowed to practise on those particular rugs. Now, a man should remember that he undertakes a very great responsibility when he volunteers to place the rugs around a lady on a steamer chair. He may make her look very neat and even pretty by a nice disposal of the rugs, or he may make her look like a horrible bundle." "Well, then, I think I was not such a failure after all yesterday morning, for you certainly looked very neat and pretty." "Then, if I did, Mr. Morris, do not flatter yourself it was at all on account of your disposal of the rugs, for the moment you had left a very handsome young lady came along, and, looking at me, said, with such a pleasant smile, 'Why, what a pretty rug you have there; but how the steward _has_ bungled it about you! Let me fix it,' and with that she gave it a touch here and a smooth down there, and the result was really so nice that I hated to go down to breakfast. It is a pity you went away so quickly yesterday morning. You might have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the lady, who is, I think, the prettiest girl on board this ship." "Do you?" said Mr. Morris, shortly. "Yes, I do. Have you noticed her? She sits over there at the long table near the centre. You must have seen her; she is so very, very pretty, that you cannot help noticing her." "I am not looking after pretty women this voyage," said Morris, savagely. "Oh, are you not? Well, I must thank you for that. That is evidently a very sincere compliment. No, I can't call it a compliment, but a sincere remark, I think the first sincere one you have made to-day." "Why, what do you mean?" said Morris, looking at her in a bewildered sort of way. "You have been looking after me this morning, have you not, and yesterday morning? And taking ever so much pains to be helpful and entertaining, and now, all at once you say--Well, you know what you said just now." "Oh yes. Well, you see--" "Oh, you can't get out of it, Mr. Morris. It was said, and with evident sincerity." "Then you really think you are pretty?" said Mr. Morris, looking at his companion, who flushed under the remark. "Ah, now," she said, "you imagine you are carrying the war into the enemy's country. But I don't at all appreciate a remark like that. I don't know but I dislike it even more than I do your compliments, which is saying a good deal." "I assure you," said Morris, stiffly, "that I have not intended to pay any compliments. I am not a man who pays compliments." "Not even left-handed ones?" "Not even any kind, that I know of. I try as a general thing to speak the truth." "Ah, and shame your hearers?" "Well, I don't care who I shame as long as I succeed in speaking the truth." "Very well, then; tell me the truth. Have you noticed this handsome young lady I speak of?" "Yes, I have seen her." "Don't you think she is very pretty?" "Yes, I think she is." "Don't you think she is the prettiest woman on the ship?" "Yes, I think she is." "Are you afraid of pretty women?" "No, I don't think I am." "Then, tell me why, the moment she appeared on the deck yesterday morning, you were so much agitated that you spilled most of my coffee in the saucer?" "Did I appear agitated?" asked Morris, with some hesitation. "Now, I consider that sort of thing worse than a direct prevarication." "What sort of thing?" "Why, a disingenuous answer. You _know_ you appeared agitated. You know you _were_ agitated. You know you had a camp-stool, and that you intended to sit down here and drink your coffee. All at once you changed your mind, and that change was coincident with the appearance on deck of the handsome young lady I speak of. I merely ask why?" "Now, look here, Miss Earle, even the worst malefactor is not expected to incriminate himself. I can refuse to answer, can I not?" "Certainly you may. You may refuse to answer anything, if you like. It was only because you were boasting about speaking the truth that I thought I should test your truth-telling qualities. I have been expecting every moment that you would say to me I was very impertinent, and that it was no business of mine, which would have been quite true. There, you see, you had a beautiful chance of speaking the truth which you let slip entirely unnoticed. But there is the breakfast gong. Now, I must confess to being very hungry indeed. I think I shall go down into the saloon." "Please take my arm, Miss Earle," said the young man. "Oh, not at all," replied that young lady; "I want something infinitely more stable. I shall work my way along this brass rod until I can make a bolt for the door. If you want to make yourself real useful, go and stand on the stairway, or the companion-way I think you call it, and if I come through the door with too great force you'll prevent me from going down the stairs." "'Who ran to help me when I fell,'" quoted Mr. Morris, as he walked along ahead of her, having some difficulty in maintaining his equilibrium. "I wouldn't mind the falling," replied the young lady, "if you only would some pretty story tell; but you are very prosaic, Mr. Morris. Do you ever read anything at all?" "I never read when I have somebody more interesting than a book to talk to." "Oh, thank you. Now, if you will get into position on the stairway, I shall make my attempts at getting to the door." "I feel like a base-ball catcher," said Morris, taking up a position somewhat similar to that of the useful man behind the bat. Miss Earle, however, waited until the ship was on an even keel, then walked to the top of the companion-way, and, deftly catching up the train of her dress with as much composure as if she were in a ballroom, stepped lightly down the stairway. Looking smilingly over her shoulder at the astonished baseball catcher, she said-- "I wish you would not stand in that ridiculous attitude, but come and accompany me to the breakfast table. As I told you, I am very hungry." The steamer gave a lurch that nearly precipitated Morris down the stairway, and the next moment he was by her side. "Are you fond of base-ball?" she said to him. "You should see me in the park when our side makes a home run. Do you like the game?" "I never saw a game in my life." "What! you an American girl, and never saw a game of base-ball? Why, I am astonished." "I did not say that I was an American girl." "Oh, that's a fact. I took you for one, however." They were both of them so intent on their conversation in walking up the narrow way between the long table and the short ones, that neither of them noticed the handsome blonde young lady standing beside her chair looking at them. It was only when that young lady said, "Why, Mr. Morris, is this you?" and when that gentleman jumped as if a cannon had been fired beside him, that either of them noticed their fair fellow-traveller. "Y--es," stammered Morris, "it is!" The young lady smiled sweetly and held out her hand, which Morris took in an awkward way. "I was just going to ask you," she said, "when you came aboard. How ridiculous that would have been. Of course, you have been here all the time. Isn't it curious that we have not met each other?--we of all persons in the world." Morris, who had somewhat recovered his breath, looked steadily at her as she said this, and her eyes, after encountering his gaze for a moment, sank to the floor. Miss Earle, who had waited for a moment expecting that Morris would introduce her, but seeing that he had for the time being apparently forgotten everything on earth, quietly left them, and took her place at the breakfast table. The blonde young lady looked up again at Mr. Morris, and said-- "I am afraid I am keeping you from breakfast." "Oh, that doesn't matter." "I am afraid, then," she continued sweetly, "that I am keeping you from your very interesting table companion." "Yes, that _does_ matter," said Morris, looking at her. "I wish you good morning, madam." And with that he left her and took his place at the head of the small table. There was a vindictive look in the blonde young lady's pretty eyes as she sank into her own seat at the breakfast table. Miss Earle had noticed the depressing effect which even the sight of the blonde lady exercised on Morris the day before, and she looked forward, therefore, to rather an uncompanionable breakfast. She was surprised, however, to see that Morris had an air of jaunty joviality, which she could not help thinking was rather forced. "Now," he said, as he sat down on the sofa at the head of the table, "I think it's about time for us to begin our chutney fight." "Our what?" asked the young lady, looking up at him with open eyes. "Is it possible," he said, "that you have crossed the ocean and never engaged in the chutney fight? I always have it on this line." "I am sorry to appear so ignorant," said Miss Earle, "but I have to confess I do not know what chutney is." "I am glad of that," returned the young man. "It delights me to find in your nature certain desert spots--certain irreclaimable lands, I might say--of ignorance." "I do not see why a person should rejoice in the misfortunes of another person," replied the young lady. "Oh, don't you? Why, it is the most natural thing in the world. There is nothing that we so thoroughly dislike as a person, either lady or gentleman, who is perfect. I suspect you rather have the advantage of me in the reading of books, but I certainly have the advantage of you on chutney, and I intend to make the most of it." "I am sure I shall be very glad to be enlightened, and to confess my ignorance whenever it is necessary, and that, I fear, will be rather often. So, if our acquaintance continues until the end of the voyage, you will be in a state of perpetual delight." "Well, that's encouraging. You will be pleased to learn that chutney is a sauce, an Indian sauce, and on this line somehow or other they never have more than one or two bottles. I do not know whether it is very expensive. I presume it is. Perhaps it is because there is very little demand for it, a great number of people not knowing what chutney is." "Thank you," said the young lady, "I am glad to find that I am in the majority, at least, even in the matter of ignorance." "Well, as I was saying, chutney is rather a seductive sauce. You may not like it at first, but it grows on you. You acquire, as it were, the chutney habit. An old Indian traveller, whom I had the pleasure of crossing with once, and who sat at the same table with me, demanded chutney. He initiated me into the mysteries of chutney, and he had a chutney fight all the way across." "I still have to confess that I do not see what there is to fight about in the matter of chutney." "Don't you? Well, you shall soon have a practical illustration of the terrors of a chutney fight. Steward," called Morris, "just bring me a bottle of chutney, will you?" "Chutney, air?" asked the steward, as if he had never heard the word before. "Yes, chutney. Chutney sauce." "I am afraid, sir," said the steward, "that we haven't any chutney sauce." "Oh yes, you have. I see a bottle there on the captain's table. I think there is a second bottle at the smaller table. Just two doors up the street. Have the kindness to bring it to me." The steward left for the chutney, and Morris looking after him, saw that there was some discussion between him and the steward of the other table. Finally, Morris's steward came back and said, "I am very sorry, sir, but they are using the chutney at that table." "Now look here, steward," said Morris, "you know that you are here to take care of us, and that at the end of the voyage I will take care of you. Don't make any mistake about that. You understand me?" "Yes, sir, I do," said the steward. "Thank you, sir." "All right," replied Morris. "Now you understand that I want chutney, and chutney I am going to have." Steward number one waited until steward number two had disappeared after another order, and then he deftly reached over, took the chutney sauce, and placed it before Mr. Morris. "Now, Miss Earle, I hope that you will like this chutney sauce. You see there is some difficulty in getting it, and that of itself ought to be a strong recommendation for it." "It is a little too hot to suit me," answered the young lady, trying the Indian sauce, "still, there is a pleasant flavour about it that I like." "Oh, you are all right," said Morris, jauntily; "you will be a victim of the chutney habit before two days. People who dislike it at first are its warmest advocates afterwards. I use the word warmest without any allusion to the sauce itself, you know. I shall now try some myself." As he looked round the table for the large bottle, he saw that it had been whisked away by steward number two, and now stood on the other table. Miss Earle laughed. "Oh, I shall have it in a moment," said the young man. "Do you think it is worth while?" "Worth while? Why, that is the excitement of a chutney fight. It is not that we care for chutney at all, but that we simply are bound to have it. If there were a bottle of chutney at every table, the delights of chutney would be gone. Steward," said Morris, as that functionary appeared, "the chutney, please." The steward cast a rapid glance at the other table, and waited until steward number two had disappeared. Then Morris had his chutney. Steward number two, seeing his precious bottle gone, tried a second time to stealthily obtain possession of it, but Morris said to him in a pleasant voice, "That's all right, steward, we are through with the chutney. Take it along, please. So that," continued Mr. Morris, as Miss Earle rose from the table, "that is your first experience of a chutney fight--one of the delights of ocean travel." FOURTH DAY. Mr. George Morris began to find his "early coffees," as he called them, very delightful. It was charming to meet a pretty and entertaining young lady every morning early when they had the deck practically to themselves. The fourth day was bright and clear, and the sea was reasonably calm. For the first time he was up earlier than Miss Earle, and he paced the deck with great impatience, waiting for her appearance. He wondered who and what she was. He had a dim, hazy idea that some time before in his life, he had met her, and probably had been acquainted with her. What an embarrassing thing it would be, he thought, if he had really known her years before, and had forgotten her, while she knew who he was, and had remembered him. He thought of how accurately she had guessed his position in life--if it was a guess. He remembered that often, when he looked at her, he felt certain he had known her and spoken to her before. He placed the two steamer chairs in position, so that Miss Earle's chair would be ready for her when she did appear, and then, as he walked up and down the deck waiting for her, he began to wonder at himself. If any one had told him when he left New York that, within three or four days he could feel such an interest in a person who previous to that time had been an utter stranger to him, he would have laughed scornfully and bitterly at the idea. As it was, when he thought of all the peculiar circumstances of the case, he laughed aloud, but neither scornfully nor bitterly. "You must be having very pleasant thoughts, Mr. Morris," said Miss Earle, as she appeared with a bright shawl thrown over her shoulders, instead of the long cloak that had encased her before, and with a Tam o' Shanter set jauntily on her black, curly hair. "You are right," said Morris, taking off his cap, "I was thinking of you." "Oh, indeed," replied the young lady, "that's why you laughed, was it? I may say that I do not relish being laughed at in my absence, or in my presence either, for that matter." "Oh, I assure you I wasn't laughing at you. I laughed with pleasure to see you come on deck. I have been waiting for you." "Now, Mr. Morris, that from a man who boasts of his truthfulness is a little too much. You did not see me at all until I spoke; and if, as you say, you were thinking of me, you will have to explain that laugh." "I will explain it before the voyage is over, Miss Earle. I can't explain it just now." "Ah, then you admit you were untruthful when you said you laughed because you saw me?" "I may as well admit it. You seem to know things intuitively. I am not nearly as truthful a person as I thought I was until I met you. You seem the very embodiment of truth. If I had not met you, I imagine I should have gone through life thinking myself one of the most truthful men in New York." "Perhaps that would not be saying very much for yourself," replied the young lady, as she took her place in the steamer chair. "I am sorry you have such a poor opinion of us New Yorkers," said the young man. "Why are you so late this morning?" "I am not late; it is you who are early. This is my usual time. I have been a very punctual person all my life." "There you go again, speaking as if you were ever so old." "I am." "Well, I don't believe it. I wish, however, that you had confidence enough in me to tell me something about yourself. Do you know, I was thinking this morning that I had met you before somewhere? I feel almost certain I have." "Well, that is quite possible, you know. You are a New Yorker, and I have lived in New York for a great number of years, much as you seem to dislike that phrase." "New York! Oh, that is like saying you have lived in America and I have lived in America. We might live for hundreds of years in New York and never meet one another!" "That is very true, except that the time is a little long." "Then won't you tell me something about yourself?" "No, I will not." "Why?" "Why? Well, if you will tell me why you have the right to ask such a question, I shall answer why." "Oh, if you talk of rights, I suppose I haven't the right. But I am willing to tell you anything about myself. Now, a fair exchange, you know--" "But I don't wish to know anything about you." "Oh, thank you." George Morris's face clouded, and he sat silent for a few moments. "I presume," he said again, "that you think me very impertinent?" "Well, frankly, I do." Morris gazed out at the sea, and Miss Earle opened the book which she had brought with her, and began to read. After a while her companion said-- "I think that you are a little too harsh with me, Miss Earle." The young lady placed her finger between the leaves of the book and closed it, looking up at him with a frank, calm expression in her dark eyes, but said nothing. "You see, it's like this. I said to you a little while since that I seem to have known you before. Now, I'll tell you what I was thinking of when you met me this morning. I was thinking what a curious thing it would be if I had been acquainted with you some time during my past life, and had forgotten you, while you had remembered me." "That was very flattering to me," said the young lady; "I don't wonder you laughed." "That is why I did not wish to tell you what I had been thinking of--just for fear that you would put a wrong construction on it--as you have done. But now you can't say anything much harsher to me than you have said, and so I tell you frankly just what I thought, and why I asked you those questions which you seem to think are so impertinent. Besides this, you know, a sea acquaintance is different from any other acquaintance. As I said, the first time I spoke to you--or the second--there is no one here to introduce us. On land, when a person is introduced to another person, he does not say, 'Miss Earle, this is Mr. Morris, who is a younger partner in the house of So-and-so.' He merely says, 'Miss Earle, Mr. Morris,' and there it is. If you want to find anything out about him you can ask your introducer or ask your friends, and you can find out. Now, on shipboard it is entirely different. Suppose, for instance, that I did not tell you who I am, and--if you will pardon me for suggesting such an absurd supposition---imagine that you wanted to find out, how could you do it?" Miss Earle looked at him for a moment, and then she answered-- "I would ask that blonde young lady." This reply was so utterly unexpected by Morris that he looked at her with wide eyes, the picture of a man dumbfounded. At that moment the smoking-room steward came up to them and said-- "Will you have your coffee now, sir?" "Coffee!" cried Morris, as if he had never heard the word before. "Coffee!" "Yes," answered Miss Earle, sweetly, "we will have the coffee now, if you please. You will have a cup with me, will you not, Mr. Morris?" "Yes, I will, if it is not too much trouble." "Oh, it is no trouble to me," said, the young lady; "some trouble to the steward, but I believe even for him that it is not a trouble that cannot be recompensed." Morris sipped his coffee in silence. Every now and then Miss Earle stole a quiet look at him, and apparently was waiting for him to again resume the conversation. This he did not seem in a hurry to do. At last she said-- "Mr. Morris, suppose we were on shipboard and that we had become acquainted without the friendly intervention of an introducer, and suppose, if such a supposition is at all within the bounds of probability, that you wanted to find out something about me, how would you go about it?" "How would I go about it?" "Yes. How?" "I would go about it in what would be the worst possible way. I would frankly ask you, and you would as frankly snub me." "Suppose, then, while declining to tell you anything about myself I were to refer you to somebody who would give you the information you desire, would you take the opportunity of learning?" "I would prefer to hear from yourself anything I desired to learn." "Now, that is very nicely said, Mr. Morris, and you make me feel almost sorry, for having spoken to you as I did. Still, if you really want to find out something about me, I shall tell you some one whom you can ask, and who will doubtless answer you." "Who is that? The captain?" "No. It is the same person to whom I should go if I wished to have information of you--the blonde young lady." "Do you mean to say you know her?" asked the astonished young man. "I said nothing of the sort." "Well, _do_ you know her?" "No, I do not." "Do you know her name?" "No, I do not even know her name." "Have you ever met her before you came on board this ship?" "Yes, I have." "Well, if that isn't the most astonishing thing I ever heard!" "I don't see why it is. You say you thought you had met me before. As you are a man no doubt you have forgotten it. I say I think I have met that young lady before. As she is a woman I don't think she will have forgotten. If you have any interest in the matter at all you might inquire." "I shall do nothing of the sort." "Well, of course, I said I thought you hadn't very much interest. I only supposed the case." "It is not that I have not the interest, but it is that I prefer to go to the person who can best answer my question if she chooses to do so. If she doesn't choose to answer me, then I don't choose to learn." "Now, I like that ever so much," said the young lady; "if you will get me another cup of coffee I shall be exceedingly obliged to you. My excuse is that these cups are very small, and the coffee is very good." "I am sure you don't need any excuse," replied Morris, springing to his feet, "and I am only too happy to be your steward without the hope of the fee at the end of the voyage." When he returned she said, "I think we had better stop the personal conversation into which we have drifted. It isn't at all pleasant to me, and I don't think it is very agreeable to you. Now, I intended this morning to give you a lesson on American literature. I feel that you need enlightening on the subject, and that you have neglected your opportunities, as most New York men do, and so I thought you would be glad of a lesson or two." "I shall be very glad of it indeed. I don't know what our opportunities are, but if most New York men are like me I imagine a great many of them are in the same fix. We have very little time for the study of the literature of any country." "And perhaps very little inclination." "Well, you know, Miss Earle, there is some excuse for a busy man. Don't you think there is?" "I don't think there is very much. Who in America is a busier man than Mr. Gladstone? Yet he reads nearly everything, and is familiar with almost any subject you can mention." "Oh, Gladstone! Well, he is a man of a million. But you take the average New York man. He is worried in business, and kept on the keen jump all the year round. Then he has a vacation, say for a couple of weeks or a month, in summer, and he goes off into the woods with his fishing kit, or canoeing outfit, or his amateur photographic set, or whatever the tools of his particular fad may be. He goes to a book-store and buys up a lot of paper-covered novels. There is no use of buying an expensive book, because he would spoil it before he gets back, and he would be sure to leave it in some shanty. So he takes those paper-covered abominations, and you will find torn copies of them scattered all through the Adirondacks, and down the St. Lawrence, and everywhere else that tourists congregate. I always tell the book-store man to give me the worst lot of trash he has got, and he does. Now, what is that book you have with you?" "This is one of Mr. Howells' novels. You will admit, at least, that you have heard of Howells, I suppose?" "Heard of him? Oh yes; I have read some of Howells' books. I am not as ignorant as you seem to think." "What have you read of Mr. Howells'?" "Well, I read 'The American,' I don't remember the others." "'The American!' That is by Henry James." "Is it? Well, I knew that it was by either Howells or James, I forgot which. They didn't write a book together, did they?" "Well, not that I know of. Why, the depth of your ignorance about American literature is something appalling. You talk of it so jauntily that you evidently have no idea of it yourself." "I wish you would take me in hand, Miss Earle. Isn't there any sort of condensed version that a person could get hold of? Couldn't you give me a synopsis of what is written, so that I might post myself up in literature without going to the trouble of reading the books?" "The trouble! Oh, if that is the way you speak, then your case is hopeless! I suspected it for some time, but now I am certain. The trouble! The _delight_ of reading a new novel by Howells is something that you evidently have not the remotest idea of. Why, I don't know what I would give to have with me a novel of Howells' that I had not read." "Goodness gracious! You don't mean to say that you have read _everything_ he has written?" "Certainly I have, and I am reading one now that is coming out in the magazine; and I don't know what I shall do if I am not able to get the magazine when I go to Europe." "Oh, you can get them over there right enough, and cheaper than you can in America. They publish them over there." "Do they? Well, I am glad to hear it." "You see, there is something about American literature that you are not acquainted with, the publication of our magazines in England, for instance. Ah, there is the breakfast gong. Well, we will have to postpone our lesson in literature until afterwards. Will you be up here after breakfast?" "Yes, I think so." "Well, we will leave our chairs and rugs just where they are. I will take your book down for you. Books have the habit of disappearing if they are left around on shipboard." After breakfast Mr. Morris went to the smoking-room to enjoy his cigar, and there was challenged to a game of cards. He played one game; but his mind was evidently not on his amusement, so he excused himself from any further dissipation in that line, and walked out on deck. The promise of the morning had been more than fulfilled in the day, and the warm sunlight and mild air had brought on deck many who had not been visible up to that time. There was a long row of muffled up figures on steamer chairs, and the deck steward was kept busy hurrying here and there attending to the wants of the passengers. Nearly every one had a book, but many of the books were turned face downwards on the steamer rugs, while the owners either talked to those next them, or gazed idly out at the blue ocean. In the long and narrow open space between the chairs and the bulwarks of the ship, the energetic pedestrians were walking up and down. At this stage of the voyage most of the passengers had found congenial companions, and nearly everybody was acquainted with everybody else. Morris walked along in front of the reclining passengers, scanning each one eagerly to find the person he wanted, but she was not there. Remembering then that the chairs had been on the other side of the ship, he continued his walk around the wheel-house, and there he saw Miss Earle, and sitting beside her was the blonde young lady talking vivaciously, while Miss Earle listened. Morris hesitated for a moment, but before he could turn back the young lady sprang to her feet, and said--"Oh, Mr. Morris, am I sitting in your chair?" "What makes you think it is my chair?" asked that gentleman, not in the most genial tone of voice. "I thought so," replied the young lady, with a laugh, "because it was near Miss Earle." Miss Earle did not look at all pleased at this remark. She coloured slightly, and, taking the open book from her lap, began to read. "You are quite welcome to the chair," replied Morris, and the moment the words were spoken he felt that somehow it was one of those things he would rather have left unsaid, as far as Miss Earle was concerned. "I beg that you will not disturb yourself," he continued; and, raising his hat to the lady, he continued his walk. A chance acquaintance joined him, changing his step to suit that of Morris, and talked with him on the prospects of the next year being a good business season in the United States. Morris answered rather absent-mindedly, and it was nearly lunch-time before he had an opportunity of going back to see whether or not Miss Earle's companion had left. When he reached the spot where they had been sitting he found things the very reverse of what he had hoped. Miss Earle's chair was vacant, but her companion sat there, idly turning over the leaves of the book that Miss Earle had been reading. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Morris?" said the young woman, looking up at him with a winning smile. "Miss Earle has gone to dress for lunch. I should do the same thing, but, alas! I am too indolent." Morris hesitated for a moment, and then sat down beside her. "Why do you act so perfectly horrid to me?" asked the young lady, closing the book sharply. "I was not aware that I acted horridly to anybody," answered Morris. "You know well enough that you have been trying your very best to avoid me." "I think you are mistaken. I seldom try to avoid any one, and I see no reason why I should try to avoid you. Do you know of any reason?" The young lady blushed and looked down at her book, whose leaves she again began to turn. "I thought," she said at last, "that you might have some feeling against me, and I have no doubt you judge me very harshly. You never _did_ make any allowances." Morris gave a little laugh that was half a sneer. "Allowances?" he said. "Yes, allowances. You know you always were harsh with me, George, always." And as she looked up at him her blue eyes were filled with tears, and there was a quiver at the corner of her mouth. "What a splendid actress you would make, Blanche," said the young man, calling her by her name for the first time. She gave him a quick look as he did so. "Actress!" she cried. "No one was ever less an actress than I am, and you know that." "Oh, well, what's the use of us talking? It's all right. We made a little mistake, that's all, and people often make mistakes in this life, don't they, Blanche?" "Yes," sobbed that young lady, putting her dainty silk handkerchief to her eyes. "Now, for goodness sake," said the young man, "don't do that. People will think I am scolding you, and certainly there is no one in this world who has less right to scold you than I have." "I thought," murmured the young lady, from behind her handkerchief, "that we might at least be friends. I didn't think you could ever act so harshly towards me as you have done for the past few days." "Act?" cried the young man. "Bless me, I haven't acted one way or the other. I simply haven't had the pleasure of meeting you till the other evening, or morning, which ever it was. I have said nothing, and done nothing. I don't see how I could be accused of acting, or of anything else." "I think," sobbed the young lady, "that you might at least have spoken kindly to me." "Good gracious!" cried Morris, starting up, "here comes Miss Earle. For heaven's sake put up that handkerchief." But Blanche merely sank her face lower in it, while silent sobs shook her somewhat slender form. Miss Earle stood for a moment amazed as she looked at Morris's flushed face, and at the bowed head of the young lady beside him; then, without a word, she turned and walked away. "I wish to goodness," said Morris, harshly, "that if you are going to have a fit of crying you would not have it on deck, and where people can see you." The young woman at once straightened up and flashed a look at him in which there were no traces of her former emotion. "People!" she said, scornfully. "Much _you_ care about people. It is because Miss Katherine Earle saw me that you are annoyed. You are afraid that it will interfere with your flirtation with her." "Flirtation?" "Yes, flirtation. Surely it can't be anything more serious?" "Why should it not be something more serious?" asked Morris, very coldly. The blue eyes opened wide in apparent astonishment. "Would you _marry_ her?" she said, with telling emphasis upon the word. "Why not?" he answered. "Any man might be proud to marry a lady like Miss Earle." "A lady! Much of a lady she is! Why, she is one of your own shop-girls. You know it." "Shop-girls?" cried Morris, in astonishment. "Yes, shop-girls. You don't mean to say that she has concealed that fact from you, or that you didn't know it by seeing her in the store?" "A shop-girl in my store?" he murmured, bewildered. "I knew I had seen her somewhere." Blanche laughed a little irritating laugh. "What a splendid item it would make for the society papers," she said. "The junior partner marries one of his own shop-girls, or, worse still, the junior partner and one of his shop-girls leave New York on the _City of Buffalo_, and are married in England. I hope that the reporters will not get the particulars of the affair." Then, rising, she left the amazed young man to his thoughts. George Morris saw nothing more of Miss Katherine Earle that day. "I wonder what that vixen has said to her," he thought, as he turned in for the night. FIFTH DAY. In the early morning of the fifth day out, George Morris paced the deck alone. "Shop-girl or not," he had said to himself, "Miss Katherine Earle is much more of a lady than the other ever was." But as he paced the deck, and as Miss Earle did not appear, he began to wonder more and more what had been said to her in the long talk of yesterday forenoon. Meanwhile Miss Earle sat in her own state-room thinking over the same subject. Blanche had sweetly asked her for permission to sit down beside her. "I know no ladies on board," she said, "and I think I have met you before." "Yes," answered Miss Earle, "I think we have met before." "How good of you to have remembered me," said Blanche, kindly. "I think," replied Miss Earle, "that it is more remarkable that you should remember me than that I should remember you. Ladies very rarely notice the shop-girls who wait upon them." "You seemed so superior to your station," said Blanche, "that I could not help remembering you, and could not help thinking what a pity it was you had to be there." "I do not think that there is anything either superior or inferior about the station. It is quite as honourable, or dishonourable, which ever it may be, as any other branch of business. I cannot see, for instance, why my station, selling ribbons at retail, should be any more dishonourable than the station of the head of the firm, who merely does on a very large scale what I was trying to do for him on a very limited scale." "Still," said Blanche, with a yawn, "people do not all look upon it in exactly that light." "Hardly any two persons look on any one thing in the same light. I hope you have enjoyed your voyage so far?" "I have not enjoyed it very much," replied the young lady with a sigh. "I am sorry to hear that. I presume your father has been ill most of the way?" "My father?" cried the other, looking at her questioner. "Yes, I did not see him at the table since the first day." "Oh, he has had to keep his room almost since we left. He is a very poor sailor." "Then that must make your voyage rather unpleasant?" The blonde young lady made no reply, but, taking up the book which Miss Earle was reading, said, "You don't find Mr. Morris much of a reader, I presume? He used not to be." "I know very little about Mr. Morris," said Miss Earle, freezingly. "Why, you knew him before you came on board, did you not?" questioned the other, raising her eyebrows. "No, I did not." "You certainly know he is junior partner in the establishment where you work?" "I know that, yes, but I had never spoken to him before I met him on board this steamer." "Is that possible? Might I ask you if there is any probability of your becoming interested in Mr. Morris?" "Interested! What do you mean?" "Oh, you know well enough what I mean. We girls do not need to be humbugs with each other, whatever we may be before the men. When a young woman meets a young man in the early morning, and has coffee with him, and when she reads to him, and tries to cultivate his literary tastes, whatever they may be, she certainly shows some interest in the young man, don't you think so?" Miss Earle looked for a moment indignantly at her questioner. "I do not recognise your right," she said, "to ask me such a question." "No? Then let me tell you that I have every right to ask it. I assure you that I have thought over the matter deeply before I spoke. It seemed to me there was one chance in a thousand--only one chance in a thousand, remember--that you were acting honestly, and on that one chance I took the liberty of speaking to you. The right I have to ask such a question is this--Mr. George Morris has been engaged to me for several years." "Engaged to _you_?" "Yes. If you don't believe it, ask him." "It is the very last question in the world I would ask anybody." "Well, then, you will have to take my word for it. I hope you are not very shocked, Miss Earle, to hear what I have had to tell you." "Shocked? Oh dear, no. Why should I be? It is really a matter of no interest to me, I assure you." "Well, I am very glad to hear you say so. I did not know but you might have become more interested in Mr. Morris than you would care to own. I think myself that he is quite a fascinating young gentleman; but I thought it only just to you that you should know exactly how matters stood." "I am sure I am very much obliged to you." This much of the conversation Miss Earle had thought over in her own room that morning. "Did it make a difference to her or not?" that was the question she was asking herself. The information had certainly affected her opinion of Mr. Morris, and she smiled to herself rather bitterly as she thought of his claiming to be so exceedingly truthful. Miss Earle did not, however, go up on deck until the breakfast gong had rung. "Good morning," said Morris, as he took his place at the little table. "I was like the boy on the burning deck this morning, when all but he had fled. I was very much disappointed that you did not come up, and have your usual cup of coffee." "I am sorry to hear that," said Miss Earle; "if I had known I was disappointing anybody I should have been here." "Miss Katherine," he said, "you are a humbug. You knew very well that I would be disappointed if you did not come." The young lady looked up at him, and for a moment she thought of telling him that her name was Miss Earle, but for some reason she did not do so. "I want you to promise now," he continued, "that to-morrow morning you will be on deck as usual." "Has it become a usual thing, then?" "Well, that's what I am trying to make it," he answered. "Will you promise?" "Yes, I promise." "Very well, then, I look on that as settled. Now, about to-day. What are you going to do with yourself after breakfast?" "Oh, the usual thing, I suppose. I shall sit in my steamer chair and read an interesting book." "And what is the interesting book for to-day?" "It is a little volume by Henry James, entitled 'The Siege of London.'" "Why, I never knew that London had been besieged. When did that happen?" "Well, I haven't got very far in the book yet, but it seems to have happened quite recently, within a year or two, I think. It is one of the latest of Mr. James's short stories. I have not read it yet." "Ah, then the siege is not historical?" "Not historical further than Mr. James is the historian." "Now, Miss Earle, are you good at reading out loud?" "No, I am not." "Why, how decisively you say that. I couldn't answer like that, because I don't know whether I am or not. I have never tried any of it. But if you will allow me, I will read that book out to you. I should like to have the good points indicated to me, and also the defects." "There are not likely to be many defects," said the young lady. "Mr. James is a very correct writer. But I do not care either to read aloud or have a book read to me. Besides, we disturb the conversation or the reading of any one else who happens to sit near us. I prefer to enjoy a book by reading it myself." "Ah, I see you are resolved cruelly to shut me out of all participation in your enjoyment." "Oh, not at all. I shall be very happy to discuss the book with you afterwards. You should read it for yourself. Then, when you have done so, we might have a talk on its merits or demerits, if you think, after you have read it, that it has any." "Any what? merits or demerits?" "Well, any either." "No; I will tell you a better plan than that. I am not going to waste my time reading it." "Waste, indeed!" "Certainly waste. Not when I have a much better plan of finding out what is in the book. I am going to get you to tell me the story after you have read it." "Oh, indeed, and suppose I refuse?" "Will you?" "Well, I don't know. I only said suppose." "Then I shall spend the rest of the voyage trying to persuade you." "I am not very easily persuaded, Mr. Morris." "I believe that," said the young man. "I presume I may sit beside you while you are reading your book?" "You certainly may, if you wish to. The deck is not mine, only that portion of it, I suppose, which I occupy with the steamer chair. I have no authority over any of the rest." "Now, is that a refusal or an acceptance?" "It is which ever you choose to think." "Well, if it is a refusal, it is probably softening down the 'No,' but if it is an acceptance it is rather an ungracious one, it seems to me." "Well, then, I shall be frank with you. I am very much interested in this book. I should a great deal rather read it than talk to you." "Oh, thank you, Miss Earle. There can be no possible doubt about your meaning now." "Well, I am glad of that, Mr. Morris. I am always pleased to think that I can speak in such a way as not to be misunderstood." "I don't see any possible way of misunderstanding that. I wish I did." "And then, after lunch," said the young lady, "I think I shall finish the book before that time;--if you care to sit beside me or to walk the deck with me, I shall be very glad to tell you the story." "Now, that is perfectly delightful," cried the young man. "You throw a person down into the depths, so that he will appreciate all the more being brought up into the light again." "Oh, not at all. I have no such dramatic ideas in speaking frankly with you. I merely mean that this forenoon I wish to have to myself, because I am interested in my book. At the end of the forenoon I shall probably be tired of my book and will prefer a talk with you. I don't see why you should think it odd that a person should say exactly what a person means." "And then I suppose in the evening you will be tired of talking with me, and will want to take up your book again." "Possibly." "And if you are, you won't hesitate a moment about saying so?" "Certainly not." "Well, you are a decidedly frank young lady, Miss Earle; and, after all, I don't know but what I like that sort of thing best. I think if all the world were honest we would all have a better time of it here." "Do you really think so?" "Yes, I do." "You believe in honesty, then?" "Why, certainly. Have you seen anything in my conduct or bearing that would induce you to think that I did not believe in honesty?" "No, I can't say I have. Still, honesty is such a rare quality that a person naturally is surprised when one comes unexpectedly upon it." George Morris found the forenoon rather tedious and lonesome. He sat in the smoking room, and once or twice he ventured near where Miss Earle sat engrossed in her book, in the hope that the volume might have been put aside for the time, and that he would have some excuse for sitting down and talking with her. Once as he passed she looked up with a bright smile and nodded to him. "Nearly through?" he asked dolefully. "Of 'The Siege of London'?" she asked. "Yes." "Oh, I am through that long ago, and have begun another story." "Now, that is not according to contract," claimed Morris. "The contract was that when you got through with 'The Siege of London' you were to let me talk with you, and that you were to tell me the story." "That was not my interpretation of it. Our bargain, as I understood it, was that I was to have this forenoon to myself, and that I was to use the forenoon for reading. I believe my engagement with you began in the afternoon." "I wish it did," said the young man, with a wistful look. "You wish what?" she said, glancing up at him sharply. He blushed as he bent over towards her and whispered, "That our engagement, Miss Katherine, began in the afternoon." The colour mounted rapidly into her cheeks, and for a moment George Morris thought he had gone too far. It seemed as if a sharp reply was ready on her lips; but, as on another occasion, she checked it and said nothing. Then she opened her book and began to read. He waited for a moment and said-- "Miss Earle, have I offended you?" "Did you mean to give offence?" she asked. "No, certainly, I did not." "Then why should you think you had offended me?" "Well, I don't know, I--" he stammered. Miss Earle looked at him with such clear, innocent, and unwavering eyes that the young man felt that he could neither apologise nor make an explanation. "I'm afraid," he said, "that I am encroaching on your time." "Yes, I think you are: that is, if you intend to live up to your contract, and let me live up to mine. You have no idea how much more interesting this book is than you are." "Why, you are not a bit flattering, Miss Earle, are you?" "No, I don't think I am. Do you try to be?" "I'm afraid that in my lifetime I have tried to be, but I assure you, Miss Earle, that I don't try to be flattering, or try to be anything but what I really am when I am in your company. To tell the truth, I am too much afraid of you." Miss Earle smiled and went on with her reading, while Morris went once more back into the smoking-room. "Now then," said George Morris, when lunch was over, "which is it to be? The luxurious languor of the steamer chair or the energetic exercise of the deck? Take your choice." "Well," answered the young lady, "as I have been enjoying the luxurious languor all the forenoon, I prefer the energetic exercise, if it is agreeable to you, for a while, at least." "It is very agreeable to me. I am all energy this afternoon. In fact, now that you have consented to allow me to talk with you, I feel as if I were imbued with a new life." "Dear me," said she, "and all because of the privilege of talking to me?" "All." "How nice that is. You are sure that it is not the effect of the sea air?" "Quite certain. I had the sea air this forenoon, you know." "Oh, yes, I had forgotten that." "Well, which side of the deck then?" "Oh, which ever is the least popular side. I dislike a crowd." "I think, Miss Earle, that we will have this side pretty much to ourselves. The madd'ing crowd seems to have a preference for the sunny part of the ship. Now, then, for the siege of London. Who besieged it?" "A lady." "Did she succeed?" "She did." "Well, I am very glad to hear it, indeed. What was she besieging it for?" "For social position, I presume. "Then, as we say out West, I suppose she had a pretty hard row to hoe?" "Yes, she had." "Well, I never can get at the story by cross-questioning. Now, supposing that you tell it to me." "I think that you had better take the book and read it. I am not a good story-teller." "Why, I thought we Americans were considered excellent story-tellers.' "We Americans?" "Oh, I remember now, you do not lay claim to being an American. You are English, I think you said?" "I said nothing of the kind. I merely said I lay no claims to being an American." "Yes, that was it." "Well, you will be pleased to know that this lady in the siege of London was an American. You seem so anxious to establish a person's nationality that I am glad to be able to tell you at the very first that she was an American, and, what is more, seemed to be a Western American." "Seemed? Oh, there we get into uncertainties again. If I like to know whether persons are Americans or not, it naturally follows that I am anxious to know whether they were Western or Eastern Americans. Aren't you sure she was a Westerner?" "The story, unfortunately, leaves that a little vague, so if it displeases you I shall be glad to stop the telling of it." "Oh no, don't do that. I am quite satisfied to take her as an American citizen; whether she is East or West, or North or South, does not make the slightest difference to me. Please go on with the story." "Well, the other characters, I am happy to be able to say, are not at all indefinite in the matter of nationality. One is an Englishman; he is even more than that, he is an English nobleman. The other is an American. Then there is the English nobleman's mother, who, of course, is an English woman; and the American's sister, married to an Englishman, and she, of course, is English-American. Does that satisfy you?" "Perfectly. Go on." "It seems that the besieger, the heroine of the story if you may call her so, had a past." "Has not everybody had a past?" "Oh no. This past is known to the American and is unknown to the English nobleman." "Ah, I see; and the American is in love with her in spite of her past?" "Not in Mr. James's story." "Oh, I beg pardon. Well, go on; I shall not interrupt again." "It is the English nobleman who is in love with her in spite of his absence of knowledge about her past. The English nobleman's mother is very much against the match. She tries to get the American to tell what the past of this woman is. The American refuses to do so. In fact, in Paris he has half promised the besieger not to say anything about her past. She is besieging London, and she wishes the American to remain neutral. But the nobleman's mother at last gets the American to promise that he will tell her son what he knows of this woman's past. The American informs the woman what he has promised the nobleman's mother to do, and at this moment the nobleman enters the room. The besieger of London, feeling that her game is up, leaves them together. The American says to the nobleman, who stands rather stiffly before him, 'If you wish to ask me any questions regarding the lady who has gone out I shall be happy to tell you.' Those are not the words of the book, but they are in substance what he said. The nobleman looked at him for a moment with that hauteur which, we presume, belongs to noblemen, and said quietly, 'I wish to know nothing.' Now, that strikes me as a very dramatic point in the story." "But _didn't_ he wish to know anything of the woman whom he was going to marry?" "I presume that, naturally, he did." "And yet he did not take the opportunity of finding out when he had the chance?" "No, he did not." "Well, what do you think of that?" "What do I think of it? I think it's a very dramatic point in the story." "Yes, but what do you think of his wisdom in refusing to find out what sort of a woman he was going to marry? Was he a fool or was he a very noble man?" "Why, I thought I said at the first that he was a nobleman, an Englishman." "Miss Katherine, you are dodging the question. I asked your opinion of that man's wisdom. Was he wise, or was he a fool?" "What do you think about it? Do you think he was a fool, or a wise man?" "Well, I asked you for your opinion first. However, I have very little hesitation in saying, that a man who marries a woman of whom he knows nothing, is a fool." "Oh, but he was well acquainted with this woman. It was only her past that he knew nothing about." "Well, I think you must admit that a woman's past and a man's past are very important parts of their lives. Don't you agree with me?" "I agree with you so seldom that I should hesitate to say I did on this occasion. But I have told the story very badly. You will have to read it for yourself to thoroughly appreciate the different situations, and then we can discuss the matter intelligently." "You evidently think the man was very noble in refusing to hear anything about the past of the lady he was interested in." "I confess I do. He was noble, at least, in refusing to let a third party tell him. If he wished any information he should have asked the lady himself." "Yes, but supposing she refused to answer him?" "Then, I think he should either have declined to have anything more to do with her, or, if he kept up his acquaintance, he should have taken her just as she was, without any reference to her past." "I suppose you are right. Still, it is a very serious thing for two people to marry without knowing something of each other's lives." "I am tired of walking," said Miss Earle, "I am now going to seek comfort in the luxuriousness, as you call it, of my steamer chair." "And may I go with you?" asked the young man. "If you also are tired of walking." "You know," he said, "you promised the whole afternoon. You took the forenoon with 'The Siege,' and now I don't wish to be cheated out of my half of the day." "Very well, I am rather interested in another story, and if you will take 'The Siege of London,' and read it, you'll find how much better the book is than my telling of the story." George Morris had, of course, to content himself with this proposition, and they walked together to the steamer chairs, over which the gaily coloured rugs were spread. "Shall I get your book for you?" asked the young man, as he picked up the rugs. "Thank you," answered Miss Earle, with a laugh, "you have already done so," for, as he shook out the rugs, the two books, which were small handy volumes, fell out on the deck. "I see you won't accept my hint about not leaving the books around. You will lose some precious volume one of these days." "Oh, I fold them in the rugs, and they are all right. Now, here is your volume. Sit down there and read it." "That means also, 'and keep quiet,' I suppose?" "I don't imagine you are versatile enough to read and talk at the same time. Are you?" "I should be very tempted to try it this afternoon." Miss Earle went on with her reading, and Morris pretended to go on with his. He soon found, however, that he could not concentrate his attention on the little volume in his hand, and so quickly abandoned the attempt, and spent his time in meditation and in casting furtive glances at his fair companion over the top of his book. He thought the steamer chair a perfectly delightful invention. It was an easy, comfortable, and adjustable apparatus, that allowed a person to sit up or to recline at almost any angle. He pushed his chair back a little, so that he could watch the profile of Miss Katherine Earle, and the dark tresses that formed a frame for it, without risking the chance of having his espionage discovered. "Aren't you comfortable?" asked the young lady, as he shoved back his chair. "I am very, very comfortable," replied the young man. "I am glad of that," she said, as she resumed her reading. George Morris watched her turn leaf after leaf as he reclined lazily in his chair, with half-closed eyes, and said to himself, "Shop-girl or not, past or not, I'm going to propose to that young lady the first good opportunity I get. I wonder what she will say?" "How do you like it?" cried the young lady he was thinking of, with a suddenness that made Morris jump in his chair. "Like it?" he cried; "oh, I like it immensely." "How far have you got?" she continued. "How far? Oh, a great distance. Very much further than I would have thought it possible when I began this voyage." Miss Earle turned and looked at him with wide-open eyes, as he made this strange reply. "What are you speaking of?" she said. "Oh, of everything--of the book, of the voyage, of the day." "I was speaking of the book," she replied quietly. "Are you sure you have not fallen asleep and been dreaming?" "Fallen asleep? No. Dreaming? Yes." "Well, I hope your dreams have been pleasant ones." "They have." Miss Earle, who seemed to think it best not to follow her investigations any further, turned once more to her own book, and read it until it was time to dress for dinner. When that important meal was over, Morris said to Miss Earle: "Do you know you still owe me part of the day?" "I thought you said you had a very pleasant afternoon." "So I had. So pleasant, you see, that I want to have the pleasure prolonged. I want you to come out and have a walk on the deck now in the starlight. It is a lovely night, and, besides, you are now halfway across the ocean, and yet I don't think you have been out once to see the phosphorescence. That is one of the standard sights of an ocean voyage. Will you come?" Although the words were commonplace enough, there was a tremor in his voice which gave a meaning to them that could not be misunderstood. Miss Earle looked at him with serene composure, and yet with a touch of reproachfulness in her glance. "He talks like this to me," she said to herself, "while he is engaged to another woman." "Yes," she answered aloud, with more firmness in her voice than might have seemed necessary, "I will be happy to walk on the deck with you to see the phosphorescence." He helped to hinder her for a moment in adjusting her wraps, and they went out in the starlit night together. "Now," he said, "if we are fortunate enough to find the place behind the after-wheel house vacant we can have a splendid view of the phosphorescence." "Is it so much in demand that the place is generally crowded?" she asked. "I may tell you in confidence," replied Mr. Morris, "that this particular portion of the boat is always very popular. Soon as the evening shades prevail the place is apt to be pre-empted by couples that are very fond of--" "Phosphorescence," interjected the young lady. "Yes," he said, with a smile that she could not see in the darkness, "of phosphorescence." "I should think," said she, as they walked towards the stern of the boat, "that in scientific researches of that sort, the more people who were there, the more interesting the discussion would be, and the more chance a person would have to improve his mind on the subject of phosphorescence, or other matters pertaining to the sea." "Yes," replied Morris. "A person naturally would think that, and yet, strange as it may appear, if there ever was a time when two is company and three is a crowd, it is when looking at the phosphorescence that follows the wake of an ocean steamer." "Really?" observed the young lady, archly. "I remember you told me that you had crossed the ocean several times." The young man laughed joyously at this _repartee_, and his companion joined him with a laugh that was low and musical. "He seems very sure of his ground," she said to herself. "Well, we shall see." As they came to the end of the boat and passed behind the temporary wheel-house erected there, filled with _debris_ of various sorts, blocks and tackle and old steamer chairs, Morris noticed that two others were there before them standing close together with arms upon the bulwarks. They were standing very close together, so close in fact, that in the darkness, it seemed like one person. But as Morris stumbled over some chains, the dark, united shadow dissolved itself quickly into two distinct separate shadows. A flagpole stood at the extreme end of the ship, inclining backwards from the centre of the bulwarks, and leaning over the troubled, luminous sea beneath. The two who had taken their position first were on one side of the flag-pole and Morris and Miss Earle on the other. Their coming had evidently broken the spell for the others. After waiting for a few moments, the lady took the arm of the gentleman and walked forward. "Now," said Morris, with a sigh, "we have the phosphorescence to ourselves." "It is very, very strange," remarked the lady in a low voice. "It seems as if a person could see weird shapes arising in the air, as if in torment." The young man said nothing for a few moments. He cleared his throat several times as if to speak, but still remained silent. Miss Earle gazed down at the restless, luminous water. The throb, throb of the great ship made the bulwarks on which their arms rested tremble and quiver. Finally Morris seemed to muster up courage enough to begin, and he said one word-- "Katherine." As he said this he placed his hand on hers as it lay white before him in the darkness upon the trembling bulwark. It seemed to him that she made a motion to withdraw her hand, and then allowed it to remain where it was. "Katherine," he continued, in a voice that he hardly recognised as his own, "we have known each other only a very short time comparatively; but, as I think I said to you once before, a day on shipboard may be as long as a month on shore. Katherine, I want to ask you a question, and yet I do not know--I cannot find--I--I don't know what words to use." The young lady turned her face towards him, and he saw her clear-cut profile sharply outlined against the glowing water as he looked down at her. Although the young man struggled against the emotion, which is usually experienced by any man in his position, yet he felt reasonably sure of the answer to his question. She had come with him out into the night. She had allowed her hand to remain in his. He was, therefore, stricken dumb with amazement when she replied, in a soft and musical voice-- "You do not know what to say? What do you _usually_ say on such an occasion?" "Usually say?" he gasped in dismay. "I do not understand you. What do you mean?" "Isn't my meaning plain enough? Am I the first young lady to whom you have not known exactly what to say?" Mr. Morris straightened up, and folded his arms across his breast; then, ridiculously enough, this struck him as a heroic attitude, and altogether unsuitable for an American, so he thrust his hands deep in his coat pockets. "Miss Earle," he said, "I knew that you could be cruel, but I did not think it possible that you could be so cruel as this." "Is the cruelty all on my side, Mr. Morris?" she answered. "Have you been perfectly honest and frank with me? You know you have not. Now, I shall be perfectly honest and frank with you. I like you very much indeed. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying this, because it is true, and I don't care whether you know it, or whether anybody else knows it or not." As she said this the hope which Morris had felt at first, and which had been dashed so rudely to the ground, now returned, and he attempted to put his arm about her and draw her to him; but the young lady quickly eluded his grasp, stepping to the other side of the flag-pole, and putting her hand upon it. "Mr. Morris," she said, "there is no use of your saying anything further. There is a barrier between us; you know it as well as I. I would like us to be friends as usual; but, if we are to be, you will have to remember the barrier, and keep to your own side of it." "I know of no barrier," cried Morris, vehemently, attempting to come over to her side. "There is the barrier," she said, placing her hand on the flag-pole. "My place is on this side of that barrier; your place is on the other. If you come on this side of that flag-pole, I shall leave you. If you remain on your own side, I shall be very glad to talk with you." Morris sullenly took his place on the other side of the flag-pole. "Has there been anything in my actions," said the young lady, "during the time we have been acquainted that would lead you to expect a different answer?" "Yes. You have treated me outrageously at times, and that gave me some hope." Miss Earle laughed her low, musical laugh at this remark. "Oh, you may laugh," said Morris, savagely; "but it is no laughing matter to me, I assure you." "Oh, it will be, Mr. Morris, when you come to think of this episode after you get on shore. It will seem to you very, very funny indeed; and when you speak to the next young lady on the same subject, perhaps you will think of how outrageously I have treated your remarks to-night, and be glad that there are so few young women in the world who would act as I have done." "Where did you get the notion," inquired George Morris, "that I am in the habit of proposing to young ladies? It is a most ridiculous idea. I have been engaged once, I confess it. I made a mistake, and I am sorry for it. There is surely nothing criminal in that." "It depends." "Depends on what?" "It depends on how the other party feels about it. It takes two to make an engagement, and it should take two to break it." "Well, it didn't in my case," said the young man. "So I understand," replied Miss Earle. "Mr. Morris, I wish you a very good evening." And before he could say a word she had disappeared in the darkness, leaving him to ponder bitterly over the events of the evening. SIXTH DAY. In the vague hope of meeting Miss Earle, Morris rose early, and for a while paced the deck alone; but she did not appear. Neither did he have the pleasure of her company at breakfast. The more the young man thought of their interview of the previous evening, the more puzzled he was. Miss Earle had frankly confessed that she thought a great deal of him, and yet she had treated him with an unfeelingness which left him sore and bitter. She might have refused him; that was her right, of course. But she need not have done it so sarcastically. He walked the deck after breakfast, but saw nothing of Miss Earle. As he paced up and down, he met the very person of all others whom he did not wish to meet. "Good morning, Mr. Morris," she said lightly, holding out her hand. "Good morning," he answered, taking it without much warmth. "You are walking the deck all alone, I see. May I accompany you?" "Certainly," said the young man, and with that she put her hand on his arm and they walked together the first two rounds without saying anything to each other. Then she looked up at him, with a bright smile, and said, "So she refused you?" "How do you know?" answered the young man, reddening and turning a quick look at her. "How do I know?" laughed the other. "How should I know?" For a moment it flashed across his mind that Miss Katherine Earle had spoken of their interview of last night; but a moment later he dismissed the suspicion as unworthy. "How do you know?" he repeated. "Because I was told so on very good authority." "I don't believe it." "Ha, ha! now you are very rude. It is very rude to say to a lady that she doesn't speak the truth." "Well, rude or not, you are not speaking the truth. Nobody told you such a thing." "My dear George, how impolite you are. What a perfect bear you have grown to be. Do you want to know who told me?" "I don't care to know anything about it." "Well, nevertheless, I shall tell you. _You_ told me." "I did? Nonsense, I never said anything about it." "Yes, you did. Your walk showed it. The dejected look showed it, and when I spoke to you, your actions, your tone, and your words told it to me plainer than if you had said, 'I proposed to Miss Earle last night and I was rejected.' You poor, dear innocent, if you don't brighten up you will tell it to the whole ship." "I am sure, Blanche, that I am very much obliged to you for the interest you take in me. Very much obliged, indeed." "Oh no, you are not; and now, don't try to be sarcastic, it really doesn't suit your manner at all. I was very anxious to know how your little flirtation had turned out. I really was. You know I have an interest in you, George, and always will have, and I wouldn't like that spiteful little black-haired minx to have got you, and I am very glad she refused you, although why she did so I cannot for the life of me imagine." "It must be hard for you to comprehend why she refused me, now that I am a partner in the firm." Blanche looked down upon the deck, and did not answer. "I am glad," she said finally, looking up brightly at him with her innocent blue eyes, "that you did not put off your proposal until to-night. We expect to be at Queenstown to-night some time, and we leave there and go on through by the Lakes of Killarney. So, you see, if you hadn't proposed last night I should have known nothing at all about how the matter turned out, and I should have died of curiosity and anxiety to know." "Oh, I would have written to you," said Morris. "Leave me your address now, and I'll write and let you know how it turns out." "Oh," she cried quickly, "then it isn't ended yet? I didn't think you were a man who would need to be refused twice or thrice." "I should be glad to be refused by Miss Earle five hundred times." "Indeed?" "Yes, five hundred times, if on the five hundredth and first time she accepted." "Is it really so serious as that?" "It is just exactly that serious." "Then your talk to me after all was only pretence?" "No, only a mistake." "What an escape I have had!" "You have, indeed." "Ah, here comes Miss Earle. Really, for a lady who has rejected a gentleman, she does not look as supremely happy as she might. I must go and have a talk with her." "Look here, Blanche," cried the young man, angrily, "if you say a word to her about what we have been speaking of, I'll--" "What will you do?" said the young lady, sweetly. Morris stood looking at her. He didn't himself know what he would do; and Blanche, bowing to him, walked along the deck, and sat down in the steamer chair beside Miss Earle, who gave her a very scant recognition. "Now, you needn't be so cool and dignified," said the lady. "George and I have been talking over the matter, and I told him he wasn't to feel discouraged at a first refusal, if he is resolved to have a shop-girl for his wife." "What! Mr. Morris and you have been discussing me, have you?" "Is there anything forbidden in that, Miss Earle? You must remember that George and I are very, very old friends, old and dear friends. Did you refuse him on my account? I know you like him." "Like him?" said Miss Earle, with a fierce light in her eyes, as she looked at her tormentor. "Yes, I like him, and I'll tell you more than that;" she bent over and added in an intense whisper, "I love him, and if you say another word to me about him, or if you dare to discuss me with him, I shall go up to him where he stands now and accept him. I shall say to him, 'George Morris, I love you.' Now if you doubt I shall do that, just continue in your present style of conversation." Blanche leaned back in the steamer chair and turned a trifle pale. Then she laughed, that irritating little laugh of hers, and said, "Really I did not think it had gone so far as that. I'll bid you good morning." The moment the chair was vacated, George Morris strolled up and sat down on it. "What has that vixen been saying to you?" he asked. "That vixen," said Miss Earle, quietly, "has been telling me that you and she were discussing me this morning, and discussing the conversation that took place last night." "It is a lie," said Morris. "What is? What I say, or what she said, or what she says you said?" "That we were discussing you, or discussing our conversation, is not true. Forgive me for using the coarser word. This was how it was; she came up to me--" "My dear Mr. Morris, don't say a word. I know well enough that you would not discuss the matter with anybody. I, perhaps, may go so far as to say, least of all with her. Still, Mr. Morris, you must remember this, that even if you do not like her now--" "Like her?" cried Morris; "I hate her." "As I was going to say, and it is very hard for me to say it, Mr. Morris, you have a duty towards her as you--we all have our duties to perform," said Miss Earle, with a broken voice. "You must do yours, and I must do mine. It may be hard, but it is settled. I cannot talk this morning. Excuse me." And she rose and left him sitting there. "What in the world does the girl mean? I am glad that witch gets off at Queenstown. I believe it is she who has mixed everything up. I wish I knew what she has been saying." Miss Earle kept very closely to her room that day, and in the evening, as they approached the Fastnet Light, George Morris was not able to find her to tell her of the fact that they had sighted land. He took the liberty, however, of scribbling a little note to her, which the stewardess promised to deliver. He waited around the foot of the companion-way for an answer. The answer came in the person of Miss Katherine herself. If refusing a man was any satisfaction, it seemed as if Miss Katherine Earle had obtained very little gratification from it. She looked weary and sad as she took the young man's arm, and her smile as she looked up at him had something very pathetic in it, as if a word might bring the tears. They sat in the chairs and watched the Irish coast. Morris pointed out objects here and there, and told her what they were. At last, when they went down to supper together, he said-- "We will be at Queenstown some time to-night. It will be quite a curious sight in the moonlight. Wouldn't you like to stay up and see it?" "I think I would," she answered. "I take so few ocean voyages that I wish to get all the nautical experiences possible." The young man looked at her sharply, then he said-- "Well, the stop at Queenstown is one of the experiences. May I send the steward to rap at your door when the engine stops?" "Oh, I shall stay up in the saloon until that time?" "It may be a little late. It may be as late as one or two o'clock in the morning. We can't tell. I should think the best thing for you to do would be to take a rest until the time comes. I think, Miss Earle, you need it." It was a little after twelve o'clock when the engine stopped. The saloon was dimly lighted, and porters were hurrying to and fro, getting up the baggage which belonged to those who were going to get off at Queenstown. The night was very still, and rather cold. The lights of Queenstown could be seen here and there along the semi-circular range of hills on which the town stood. Passengers who were to land stood around the deck well muffled up, and others who had come to bid them good-bye were talking sleepily with them. Morris was about to send the steward to Miss Earle's room, when that young lady herself appeared. There was something spirit-like about her, wrapped in her long cloak, as she walked through the half-darkness to meet George Morris. "I was just going to send for you," he said. "I did not sleep any," was the answer, "and the moment the engine stopped I knew we were there. Shall we go on deck?" "Yes," he said, "but come away from the crowd," and with that he led her towards the stern of the boat. For a moment Miss Earle seemed to hold back, but finally she walked along by his side firmly to where they had stood the night before. With seeming intention Morris tried to take his place beside her, but Miss Earle, quietly folding her cloak around her, stood on the opposite side of the flagpole, and, as if there should be no forgetfulness on his part, she reached up her hand and laid it against the staff. "She evidently meant what she said," thought Morris to himself, with a sigh, as he watched the low, dim outlines of the hills around Queenstown Harbour, and the twinkling lights here and there. "That is the tender coming now," he said, pointing to the red and green lights of the approaching boat. "How small it looks beside our monster steamship." Miss Earle shivered. "I pity the poor folks who have to get up at this hour of the night and go ashore. I should a great deal rather go back to my state-room." "Well, there is one passenger I am not sorry for," said Morris, "and that is the young woman who has, I am afraid, been saying something to you which has made you deal more harshly with me than perhaps you might otherwise have done. I wish you would tell me what she said?" "She has said nothing," murmured Miss Earle, with a sigh, "but what you yourself have confirmed. I do not pay much attention to what she says." "Well, you don't pay much attention to what I say either," he replied. "However, as I say, there is one person I am not sorry for; I even wish it were raining. I am very revengeful, you see." "I do not know that I am very sorry for her myself," replied Miss Earle, frankly; "but I am sorry for her poor old father, who hasn't appeared in the saloon a single day except the first. He has been sick the entire voyage." "Her father?" cried Morris, with a rising inflection in his voice. "Certainly." "Why, bless my soul! Her father has been dead for ages and ages." "Then who is the old man she is with?" "Old man! It would do me good to have her hear you call him the old man. Why, that is her husband." "Her husband!" echoed Miss Earle, with wide open eyes, "I thought he was her father." "Oh, not at all. It is true, as you know, that I was engaged to the young lady, and I presume if I had become a partner in our firm sooner we would have been married. But that was a longer time coming than suited my young lady's convenience, and so she threw me over with as little ceremony as you would toss a penny to a beggar, and she married this old man for his wealth, I presume. I don't see exactly why she should take a fancy to him otherwise. I felt very cut up about it, of course, and I thought if I took this voyage I would at least be rid for a while of the thought of her. They are now on their wedding trip. That is the reason your steamer chair was broken, Miss Earle. Here I came on board an ocean steamer to get rid of the sight or thought of a certain woman, and to find that I was penned up with that woman, even if her aged husband was with her, for eight or nine days, was too much for me. So I raced up the deck and tried to get ashore. I didn't succeed in that, but I _did_ succeed in breaking your chair." Miss Earle was evidently very much astonished at this revelation, but she said nothing. After waiting in vain for her to speak, Morris gazed off at the dim shore. When he looked around he noticed that Miss Earle was standing on his side of the flagstaff. There was no longer a barrier between them. SEVENTH DAY. If George Morris were asked to say which day of all his life had been the most thoroughly enjoyable, he would probably have answered that the seventh of his voyage from New York to Liverpool was the red-letter day of his life. The sea was as calm as it was possible for a sea to be. The sun shone bright and warm. Towards the latter part of the day they saw the mountains of Wales, which, from the steamer's deck, seemed but a low range of hills. It did not detract from Morris's enjoyment to know that Mrs. Blanche was now on the troubleless island of Ireland, and that he was sailing over this summer sea with the lady who, the night before, had promised to be his wife. During the day Morris and Katherine sat together on the sunny side of the ship looking at the Welsh coast. Their books lay unread on the rug, and there were long periods of silences between them. "I don't believe," said Morris, "that anything could be more perfectly delightful than this. I wish the shaft would break." "I hope it won't," answered the young lady; "the chances are you would be as cross as a bear before two days had gone past, and would want to go off in a small boat." "Oh, I should be quite willing to go off in a small boat if you would come with me. I would do that now." "I am very comfortable where I am," answered Miss Katherine. "I know when to let well enough alone." "And I don't, I suppose you mean?" "Well, if you wanted to change this perfectly delightful day for any other day, or this perfectly luxurious and comfortable mode of travel for any other method, I should suspect you of not letting well enough alone." "I have to admit," said George, "that I am completely and serenely happy. The only thing that bothers me is that to-night we shall be in Liverpool. I wish this hazy and dreamy weather could last for ever, and I am sure I could stand two extra days of it going just as we are now. I think with regret of how much of this voyage we have wasted." "Oh, you think it was wasted, do you?" "Well, wasted as compared with this sort of life. This seems to me like a rest after a long chase." "Up the deck?" asked the young lady, smiling at him. "Now, see here," said Morris, "we may as well understand this first as last, that unfortunate up-the-deck chase has to be left out of our future life. I am not going to be twitted about that race every time a certain young lady takes a notion to have a sort of joke upon me." "That was no joke, George. It was the most serious race you ever ran in your life. You were running away from one woman, and, poor blind young man, you ran right in the arms of another. The danger you have run into is ever so much greater than the one you were running away from." "Oh, I realise that," said the young man, lightly; "that's what makes me so solemn to-day, you know." His hand stole under the steamer rugs and imprisoned her own. "I am afraid people will notice that," she said quietly. "Well, let them; I don't care. I don't know anybody on board this ship, anyhow, except you, and if you realised how very little I care for their opinions you would not try to withdraw your hand." "I am not trying very hard," answered the young woman; and then there was another long silence. Finally she continued-- "I am going to take the steamer chair and do it up in ribbons when I get ashore." "I am afraid it will not be a very substantial chair, no matter what you do with it. It will be a trap for those who sit in it." "Are you speaking of your own experience?" "No, of yours." "George," she said, after a long pause, "did you like her very much?" "Her?" exclaimed the young man, surprised. "Who?" "Why, the young lady you ran away from. You know very well whom I mean." "Like her? Why, I hate her." "Yes, perhaps you do now. But I am asking of former years. How long were you engaged to her?" "Engaged? Let me see, I have been engaged just about--well, not twenty-four hours yet. I was never engaged before. I thought I was, but I wasn't really." Miss Earle shook her head. "You must have liked her very much," she said, "or you never would have proposed marriage to her. You would never have been engaged to her. You never would have felt so badly when she--" "Oh, say it out," said George, "jilted me, that is the word." "No, that is not the phrase I wanted to use. She didn't really jilt you, you know. It was because you didn't have, or thought you didn't have, money enough. She would like to be married to you to-day." George shuddered. "I wish," he said, "that you wouldn't mar a perfect day by a horrible suggestion." "The suggestion would not have been so horrible a month ago." "My dear girl," said Morris, rousing himself up, "it's a subject that I do not care much to talk about, but all young men, or reasonably young men, make mistakes in their lives. That was my mistake. My great luck was that it was discovered in time. As a general thing, affairs in this world are admirably planned, but it does seem to me a great mistake that young people have to choose companions for life at an age when they really haven't the judgment to choose a house and lot. Now, confess yourself, I am not your first lover, am I?" Miss Earle looked at him for a moment before replying. "You remember," she said, "that once you spoke of not having to incriminate yourself. You refused to answer a question I asked you on that ground. Now, I think this is a case in which I would be quite justified in refusing to answer. If I told you that you were my first lover, you would perhaps be manlike enough to think that after all you had only taken what nobody else had expressed a desire for. A man does not seem to value anything unless some one else is struggling for it." "Why, what sage and valuable ideas you have about men, haven't you, my dear?" "Well, you can't deny but what there is truth in them." "I not only can, but I do. On behalf of my fellow men, and on behalf of myself, I deny it." "Then, on the other hand," she continued, "if I confessed to you that I did have half a score or half a dozen of lovers, you would perhaps think I had been jilting somebody or had been jilted. So you see, taking it all in, and thinking the matter over, I shall refuse to answer your question." "Then you will not confess?" "Yes, I shall confess. I have been wanting to confess to you for some little time, and have felt guilty because I did not do so." "I am prepared to receive the confession," replied the young man, lazily, "and to grant absolution." "Well, you talk a great deal about America and about Americans, and talk as if you were proud of the country, and of its ways, and of its people." "Why, I am," answered the young man. "Very well, then; according to your creed one person is just as good as another." "Oh, I don't say that, I don't hold that for a moment. I don't think I am as good as you, for instance." "But what I mean is this, that one's occupation does not necessarily give one a lower station than another. If that is not your belief then you are not a true American, that is all." "Well, yes, that is my belief. I will admit I believe all that. What of it?" "What of it? There is this of it. You are the junior partner of a large establishment in New York?" "Nothing criminal in that, is there?" "Oh, I don't put it as an accusation, I am merely stating the fact. You admit the fact, of course?" "Yes. The fact is admitted, and marked 'Exhibit A,' and placed in evidence. Now, what next?" "In the same establishment there was a young woman who sold ribbons to all comers?" "Yes, I admit that also, and the young lady's name was Miss Katherine Earle." "Oh, you knew it, then?" "Why, certainly I did." "You knew it before you proposed to me." "Oh, I seem to have known that fact for years and years." "She told it to you." "She? What she?" "You know very well who I mean, George. She told it to you, didn't she?" "Why, don't you think I remembered you--remembered seeing you there?" "I know very well you did not. You may have seen me there, but you did not remember me. The moment I spoke to you on the deck that day in the broken chair, I saw at once you did not remember me, and there is very little use of your trying to pretend you thought of it afterwards. She told it to you, didn't she?" "Now, look here, Katherine, it isn't I who am making a confession, it is you. It is not customary for a penitent to cross-examine the father confessor in that style." "It does not make any difference whether you confess or not, George; I shall always know she told you that. After all, I wish she had left it for me to tell. I believe I dislike that woman very much." "Shake hands, Kate, over that. So do I. Now, my dear, tell me what she told _you_." "Then she _did_ tell you that, did she?" "Why, if you are so sure of it without my admitting it, why do you ask again?" "I suppose because I wanted to make doubly sure." "Well, then, assurance is doubly sure. I admit she did." "And you listened to her, George?" said Katherine, reproachfully. "Listened? Why, of course I did. I couldn't help myself. She said it before I knew what she was going to say. She didn't give me the chance that your man had in that story you were speaking of. I said something that irritated her and she out with it at once as if it had been a crime on your part. I did not look on it in that light, and don't now. Anyhow, you are not going back to the ribbon counter." "No," answered the young lady, with a sigh, looking dreamily out into the hazy distance. "No, I am not." "At least, not that side of the counter," said George. She looked at him for a moment, as if she did not understand him; then she laughed lightly. "Now," said Morris, "I have done most of the confession on this confession of yours. Supposing I make a confession, and ask you to tell me what she told you." "Well, she told me that you were a very fascinating young man," answered Katherine, with a sigh. "Really. And did after-acquaintance corroborate that statement?" "I never had occasion to tell her she was mistaken." "What else did she say? Didn't mention anything about my prospects or financial standing in any way?" "No; we did not touch on that subject." "Come, now, you cannot evade the question. What else did she say to you about me?" "I don't know that it is quite right to tell you, but I suppose I may. She said that you were engaged to her." "Had been." "No, were." "Oh, that's it. She did not tell you she was on her wedding tour?" "No, she did not." "And didn't you speak to her about her father being on board?" Katherine laughed her low, enjoyable laugh. "Yes," she said, "I did, and I did not think till this moment of how flustered she looked. But she recovered her lost ground with a great deal of dexterity." "By George, I should like to have heard that! I am avenged!" "Well, so is she," was the answer. "How is that?" "You are engaged to me, are you not?" Before George could make any suitable reply to this bit of humbug, one of the officers of the ship stopped before them. "Well," he said, "I am afraid we shall not see Liverpool to-night." "Really. Why?" asked George. "This haze is settling down into a fog. It will be as thick as pea-soup before an hour. I expect there will be a good deal of grumbling among the passengers." As he walked on, George said to Katherine, "There are two passengers who won't grumble any, will they, my dear?" "I know one who won't," she answered. The fog grew thicker and thicker; the vessel slowed down, and finally stopped, sounding every now and then its mournful, timber-shaking whistle. EIGHTH DAY. On the afternoon of the eighth day George Morris and Katherine Earle stood together on the deck of the tender, looking back at the huge steamship which they had just left. "When we return," he said, "I think we shall choose this ship." "Return?" she answered, looking at him. "Why, certainly; we are going back, are we not?" "Dear me," she replied, "I had not thought of that. You see, when I left America I did not intend to go back." "Did you not? I thought you were only over here for the trip." "Oh no. I told you I came on business, not on pleasure." "And did you intend to stay over here?" "Certainly." "Why, that's strange; I never thought of that." "It is strange, too," said Katherine, "that I never thought of going back." "And--and," said the young man, "won't you go?" She pressed his arm, and stood motionless. "'Where thou goest, I will go. Thy people shall be my people.'" "That's a quotation, I suppose?" said George. "It is," answered Katherine. "Well, you see, as I told you, I am not very well read up on the books of the day." "I don't know whether you would call that one of the books of the day or not," said Katherine; "it is from the Bible." "Oh," answered the other. "I believe, Kate, you will spend the rest of your life laughing at me." "Oh no," said the young lady, "I always thought I was fitted for missionary life. Now, look what a chance I have." "You have taken a big contract, I admit." They had very little trouble with their luggage. It is true that the English officials looked rather searchingly in Katherine's trunk for dynamite, but, their fears being allayed in that direction, the trunks were soon chalked and on the back of a stout porter, who transferred them to the top of a cab. "I tell you what it is," said George, "it takes an American Custom-house official to make the average American feel ashamed of his country." "Why, I did not think there was anything over there that could make you feel ashamed of your country. You are such a thorough-going American." "Well, the Customs officials in New York have a knack of making a person feel that he belongs to no place on earth." They drove to the big Liverpool hotel which is usually frequented by Americans who land in that city, and George spent the afternoon in attending to business in Liverpool, which he said he did not expect to have to look after when he left America, but which he desired very much to get some information about. Katherine innocently asked if she could be of any assistance to him, and he replied that she might later on, but not at the present state of proceedings. In the evening they went to a theatre together, and took a long route back to the hotel. "It isn't a very pretty city," said Miss Earle. "Oh, I think you are mistaken," replied her lover. "To me it is the most beautiful city in the world." "Do you really mean that?" she said, looking at him with surprise. "Yes, I do. It is the first city through which I have walked with the lady who is to be my wife." "Oh, indeed," remarked the lady who was to be his wife, "and have you never walked with--" "Now, see here," said Morris, "that subject is barred out. We left all those allusions on the steamer. I say I am walking now with the lady who _is_ to be my wife. I think that statement of the case is perfectly correct, is it not?" "I believe it is rather more accurate than the average statement of the average American." "Now, Katherine," he said, "do you know what information I have been looking up since I have been in Liverpool?" "I haven't the slightest idea," she said. "Property?" "No, not property." "Looking after your baggage, probably?" "Well, I think you have got it this time. I _was_ looking after my baggage. I was trying to find out how and when we could get married." "Oh!" "Yes, oh! Does that shock you? I find they have some idiotic arrangement by which a person has to live here three months before he can be married, although I was given some hope that, by paying for it, a person could get a special licence. If that is the case, I am going to have a special licence to-morrow." "Indeed?" "Yes, indeed. Then we can be married at the hotel." "And don't you think, George, that I might have something to say about that?" "Oh, certainly! I intended to talk with you about it. Of course I am talking with you now on that subject. You admitted the possibility of our getting married. I believe I had better get you to put it down in writing, or have you say it before witnesses, or something of that sort." "Well, I shouldn't like to be married in a hotel." "In a church, then? I suppose I can make arrangements that will include a church. A parson will marry us. That parson, if he is the right sort, will have a church. It stands to reason, therefore, that if we give him the contract he will give us the use of his church, _quid pro quo_, you know." "Don't talk flippantly, please. I think it better to wait until to-morrow, George, before you do anything rash. I want to see something of the country. I want us to take a little journey together to-morrow, and then, out in the country, not in this grimy, sooty city, we will make arrangements for our marriage." "All right, my dear. Where do you intend to go?" "While you have been wasting your time in getting information relating to matrimony, I have been examining time-tables. Where I want to go is two or three hours' ride from here. We can take one of the morning trains, and when we get to the place I will allow you to hire a conveyance, and we will have a real country drive. Will you go with me?" "_Will_ I? You better believe I will. But you see, Katherine, I want to get married as soon as possible. Then we can take a little trip on the Continent before it is time for us to go back to America. You have never been on the Continent, have you?" "Never." "Well, I am very glad of that. I shall be your guide, philosopher, and friend, and, added to that, your husband." "Very well, we will arrange all that on our little excursion to-morrow." NINTH DAY. Spring in England--and one of those perfect spring days in which all rural England looks like a garden. The landscape was especially beautiful to American eyes, after the more rugged views of Transatlantic scenery. The hedges were closely clipped, the fields of the deepest green, and the hills far away were blue and hazy in the distance. "There is no getting over the fact," said Morris, "that this is the prettiest country in the whole world." During most of the journey Katherine Earle sat back in her corner of the first-class compartment, and gazed silently out of the flying windows. She seemed too deeply impressed with the beauty of the scene to care for conversation even with the man she was to marry. At last they stopped at a pretty little rural station, with the name of the place done in flowers of vivid colour that stood out against the brown of the earth around, them and the green turf which formed the sloping bank. "Now," said George, as they stood on the platform, "whither away? Which direction?" "I want to see," said she, "a real, genuine, old English country home." "A castle?" "No, not a castle." "Oh, I know what you want. Something like Haddon Hall, or that sort of thing. An old manor house. Well, wait a minute, and I'll talk to the station master, and find out all there is about this part of the country." And before she could stop him, he had gone to make his inquiry of that official. Shortly after he came back with a list of places that were worth seeing, which he named. "Holmwood House," she repeated. "Let us see that. How far is it?" George again made inquiries, and found that it was about eight miles away. The station-master assured him that the road thither was one of the prettiest drives in the whole country. "Now, what kind of a conveyance will you have? There are four-wheeled cabs, and there is even a hansom to be had. Will you have two horses or one, and will you have a coachman?" "None of these," she said, "if you can get something you can drive yourself--I suppose you are a driver?" "Oh, I have driven a buggy." "Well, get some sort of conveyance that we can both sit in while you drive." "But don't you think we will get lost?" "We can inquire the way," she said, "and if we do get lost, it won't matter. I want to have a long talk with you before we reach the place." They crossed the railway by a bridge over the line, and descended into a valley along which the road wound. The outfit which George had secured was a neat little cart made of wood in the natural colour and varnished, and a trim little pony, which looked ridiculously small for two grown people, and yet was, as George afterwards said, "as tough as a pine knot." The pony trotted merrily along, and needed no urging. George doubtless was a good driver, but whatever talents he had in that line were not brought into play. The pony was a treasure that had apparently no bad qualities. For a long time the two in the cart rode along the smooth highway silently, until at last Morris broke out with-- "Oh, see here! This is not according to contract. You said you wanted a long talk, and now you are complacently saying nothing." "I do not know exactly how to begin." "Is it so serious as all that?" "It is not serious exactly--it is merely, as it were, a continuation of the confession." "I thought we were through with that long ago. Are there any more horrible revelations?" She looked at him with something like reproach in her eyes. "If you are going to talk flippantly, I think I will postpone what I have to say until another time." "My dear Kate, give a man a chance. He can't reform in a moment. I never had my flippancy checked before. Now then, I am serious again. What appalling--I mean--you see how difficult it is, Katherine--I mean, what serious subject shall we discuss?" "Some other time." "No--now. I insist on it. Otherwise I will know I am unforgiven." "There is nothing to forgive. I merely wanted to tell you something more than you know about my own history." "I know more now than that man in the story." "He did not object to the knowledge, you know. He objected to receiving it from a third person. Now I am not a third person, am I?" "Indeed, you are not. You are first person singular--at present--the first person to me at least. There, I am afraid I have dropped into flippancy again." "That is not flippancy. That is very nice." The interval shall be unreported. At last Katherine said quietly, "My mother came from this part of England." "Ah! That is why you wanted to come here." "That is why I wanted to come here. She was her father's only daughter, and, strange to say, he was very fond of her, and proud of her." "Why strange?" "Strange from his action for years after. She married against his will. He never forgave her. My father did not seem to have the knack of getting along in the world, and he moved to America in the hope of bettering his condition. He did not better it. My father died ten years ago, a prematurely broken down man, and my mother and I struggled along as best we could until she died two years ago. My grandfather returned her letter unopened when mother wrote to him ten years ago, although the letter had a black border around it. When I think of her I find it hard to forgive him, so I suppose some of his nature has been transmitted to me." "Find it hard? Katherine, if you were not an angel you would find it impossible." "Well, there is nothing more to tell, or at least, not much. I thought you should know this. I intended to tell you that last day on shipboard, but it seemed to me that here was where it should be told--among the hills and valleys that she saw when she was my age." "Katherine, my dear, do not think about it any more than you can help. It will only uselessly depress you. Here is a man coming. Let us find out now whether we have lost our way or not." They had. Even after that they managed to get up some wrong lanes and byways, and took several wrong turnings; but by means of inquiry from every one they met, they succeeded at last in reaching the place they were in search of. There was an old and grey porter's lodge, and an old and grey gateway, with two tall, moss-grown stone pillars, and an iron gate between them. On the top of the pillars were crumbled stone shields, seemingly held in place by a lion on each pillar. "Is this Holmwood House?" asked Morris of the old and grey man who came out of the porter's lodge. "Yes, sir, it be," replied the man. "Are visitors permitted to see the house and the grounds?" "No, they be'ant," was the answer. "Visitors were allowed on Saturdays in the old Squire's time, but since he died they tell me the estate is in the courts, and we have orders from the London lawyers to let nobody in." "I can make it worth your while," said George, feeling in his vest pocket; "this lady would like to see the house." The old man shook his head, even although George showed him a gold piece between his finger and thumb. Morris was astonished at this, for he had the mistaken belief which all Americans have, that a tip in Europe, if it is only large enough, will accomplish anything. "I think perhaps I can get permission," said Katherine, "if you will let me talk a while to the old man." "All right. Go ahead," said George. "I believe you could wheedle anybody into doing what he shouldn't do." "Now, after saying that, I shall not allow you to listen. I shall step down and talk with him a moment and you can drive on for a little distance, and come back." "Oh, that's all right," said George, "I know how it is. You don't want to give away the secret of your power. Be careful, now, in stepping down. This is not an American buggy," but before he had finished the warning, Katherine had jumped lightly on the gravel, and stood waiting for him to drive on. When he came back he found the iron gates open. "I shall not get in again," she said. "You may leave the pony with this man, George, he will take care of it. We can walk up the avenue to the house." After a short walk under the spreading old oaks they came in sight of the house, which was of red brick and of the Elizabethan style of architecture. "I am rather disappointed with that," said George, "I always thought old English homesteads were of stone." "Well, this one at least is of brick, and I imagine you will find a great many of them are of the same material." They met with further opposition from the housekeeper who came to the door which the servant had opened after the bell was rung. She would allow nobody in the house, she said. As for Giles, if he allowed people on the grounds that was his own look-out, but she had been forbidden by the lawyers to allow anybody in the house, and she had let nobody in, and she wasn't going to let anybody in. "Shall I offer her a tip?" asked George, in a whisper. "No, don't do that." "You can't wheedle her like you did the old man, you know. A woman may do a great deal with a man, but when she meets another woman she meets her match. You women know each other, you know." Meanwhile the housekeeper, who had been about to shut the door, seemed to pause and regard the young lady with a good deal of curiosity. Her attention had before that time been taken up with the gentleman. "Well, I shall walk to the end of the terrace, and give you a chance to try your wiles. But I am ready to bet ten dollars that you don't succeed." "I'll take you," answered the young lady. "Yes, you said you would that night on the steamer." "Oh, that's a very good way of getting out of a hopeless bet." "I am ready to make the bet all right enough, but I know you haven't a ten-dollar bill about you." "Well, that is very true, for I have changed all my money to English currency; but I am willing to bet its equivalent." Morris walked to the end of the terrace. When he got back he found that the door of the house was as wide open as the gates of the park had been. "There is something uncanny about all this," he said. "I am just beginning to see that you have a most dangerous power of fascination. I could understand it with old Giles, but I must admit that I thought the stern housekeeper would--" "My dear George," interrupted Katherine, "almost anything can be accomplished with people, if you only go about it the right way." "Now, what is there to be seen in this house?" "All that there is to be seen about any old English house. I thought, perhaps, you might be interested in it." "Oh, I am. But I mean, isn't there any notable things? For instance, I was in Haddon Hall once, and they showed me the back stairway where a fair lady had eloped with her lover. Have they anything of that kind to show here?" Miss Earle was silent for a few moments. "Yes," she said, "I am afraid they have." "Afraid? Why, that is perfectly delightful. Did the young lady of the house elope with her lover?" "Oh, don't talk in that way, George," she said. "Please don't." "Well, I won't, if you say so. I admit those little episodes generally turn out badly. Still you must acknowledge that they add a great interest to an old house of the Elizabethan age like this?" Miss Earle was silent. They had, by this time, gone up the polished stairway, which was dimly lighted by a large window of stained glass. "Here we are in the portrait hall," said Miss Earle. "There is a picture here that I have never seen, although I have heard of it, and I want to see it. Where is it?" she asked, turning to the housekeeper, who had been following them up the stairs. "This way, my lady," answered the housekeeper, as she brought them before a painting completely concealed by a dark covering of cloth. "Why is it covered in that way? To keep the dust from it?" The housekeeper hesitated for a moment; then she said-- "The old Squire, my lady, put that on when she left, and it has never been taken off since." "Then take it off at once," demanded Katherine Earle, in a tone that astonished Morris. The housekeeper, who was too dignified to take down the covering herself, went to find the servant, but Miss Earle, with a gesture of impatience, grasped the cloth and tore it from its place, revealing the full-length portrait of a young lady. Morris looked at the portrait in astonishment, and then at the girl by his side. "Why, Katherine," he cried, "it is your picture!" The young lady was standing with her hands tightly clenched and her lips quivering with nervous excitement. There were tears in her eyes, and she did not answer her lover for a moment; then she said-- "No, it is not my picture. This is a portrait of my mother." MRS. TREMAIN "And Woman, wit a flaming torch Sings heedless, in a powder-- Her careless smiles they warp and scorch Man's heart, as fire the pine Cuts keener than the thrust of lance Her glance" The trouble about this story is that it really has no ending. Taking an ocean voyage is something like picking up an interesting novel, and reading a chapter in the middle of it. The passenger on a big steamer gets glimpses of other people's lives, but he doesn't know what the beginning was, nor what the ending will be. The last time I saw Mrs. Tremain she was looking over her shoulder and smiling at Glendenning as she walked up the gangway plank at Liverpool, hanging affectionately on the arm of her husband. I said to myself at the time, "You silly little handsome idiot, Lord only knows what trouble you will cause before flirting has lost its charm for you." Personally I would like to have shoved Glendenning off the gangway plank into the dark Mersey; but that would have been against the laws of the country on which we were then landing. Mrs. Tremain was a woman whom other women did not like, and whom men did. Glendenning was a man that the average man detested, but he was a great favourite with the ladies. I shall never forget the sensation Mrs. Tremain caused when she first entered the saloon of our steamer. I wish I were able to describe accurately just how she was dressed; for her dress, of course, had a great deal to do with her appearance, notwithstanding the fact that she was one of the loveliest women I ever saw in my life. But it would require a woman to describe her dress with accuracy, and I am afraid any woman who was on board the steamer that trip would decline to help me. Women were in the habit of sniffing when Mrs. Tremain's name was mentioned. Much can be expressed by a woman's sniff. All that I can say about Mrs. Tremain's dress is that it was of some dark material, brightly shot with threads of gold, and that she had looped in some way over her shoulders and around her waist a very startlingly coloured silken scarf, while over her hair was thrown a black lace arrangement that reached down nearly to her feet, giving her a half-Spanish appearance. A military-looking gentleman, at least twice her age, was walking beside her. He was as grave and sober as she appeared light and frivolous, and she walked by his side with a peculiar elastic step, that seemed hardly to touch the carpet, laughing and talking to him just as if fifty pair of eyes were not riveted upon her as the pair entered. Everybody thought her a Spanish woman; but, as it turned out afterward, she was of Spanish-Mexican-American origin, and whatever beauty there is in those three nationalities seemed to be blended in some subtle, perfectly indescribable way in the face and figure of Mrs. Tremain. The grave military-looking gentleman at her side was Captain Tremain, her husband, although in reality he was old enough to be her father. He was a captain in the United States army, and had been stationed at some fort near the Mexican border where he met the young girl whom he made his wife. She had seen absolutely nothing of the world, and they were now on their wedding trip to Europe, the first holiday he had taken for many a year. In an incredibly short space of time Mrs. Tremain was the acknowledged belle of the ship. She could not have been more than nineteen or twenty years of age, yet she was as perfectly at her ease, and as thoroughly a lady as if she had been accustomed to palaces and castles for years. It was astonishing to see how naturally she took to it. She had lived all her life in a rough village in the wilds of the South-West, yet she had the bearing of a duchess or a queen. The second day out she walked the deck with the captain, which, as everybody knows, is a very great honour. She always had a crowd of men around her, and apparently did not care the snap of her pretty fingers whether a woman on board spoke to her or not. Her husband was one of those slow-going, sterling men whom you meet now and again, with no nonsense about him, and with a perfect trust in his young wife. He was delighted to see her enjoying her voyage so well, and proud of the universal court that was paid to her. It was quite evident to everybody on board but himself that Mrs. Tremain was a born coquette, and the way she could use those dark, languishing, Spanish-Mexican eyes of hers was a lesson to flirts all the world over. It didn't, apparently, so much matter as long as her smiles were distributed pretty evenly over the whole masculine portion of the ship. But by-and-by things began to simmer down until the smiles were concentrated on the most utterly objectionable man on board--Glendenning. She walked the deck with him, she sat in cozy corners of the saloon with him, when there were not many people there, and at night they placed their chairs in a little corner of the deck where the electric light did not shine. One by one the other admirers dropped off, and left her almost entirely to Glendenning. Of all those of us who were deserted by Mrs. Tremain none took it so hard as young Howard of Brooklyn. I liked Howard, for he was so palpably and irretrievably young, through no fault of his own, and so thoroughly ashamed of it. He wished to be considered a man of the world, and he had grave opinions on great questions, and his opinions were ever so much more settled and firm than those of us older people. Young Howard confided a good deal in me, and even went so far one time as to ask if I thought he appeared very young, and if I would believe he was really as old as he stated. I told him frankly I had taken him to be a very much older man than that, and the only thing about him I didn't like was a certain cynicism and knowledge of the world which didn't look well in a man who ought to be thinking about the serious things of life. After this young Howard confided in me even more than before. He said that he didn't care for Mrs. Tremain in that sort of way at all. She was simply an innocent child, with no knowledge of the world whatever, such as he and I possessed. Her husband--and in this I quite agreed with him--had two bad qualities: in the first place he was too easy going at the present, and in the second place he was one of those quiet men who would do something terrible if once he were aroused. One day, as young Howard and I walked the deck together, he burst out with this extraordinary sentiment-- "All women," he said, "are canting hypocrites." "When a man says that," I answered, "he means some particular woman. What woman have you in your eye, Howard?" "No, I mean _all_ women. All the women on board this boat, for instance." "Except one, of course," I said. "Yes," he answered, "except one. Look at the generality of women," he cried bitterly; "especially those who are what they call philanthropic and good. They will fuss and mourn over some drunken wretch who cannot be reclaimed, and would be no use if he could, and they will spend their time and sympathy over some creature bedraggled in the slums, whose only hope can be death, and that as soon as possible, yet not one of them will lift a finger to save a fellow creature from going over the brink of ruin. They will turn their noses in the air when a word from them would do some good, and then they will spend their time fussing and weeping over somebody that nothing on earth can help." "Now, Howard," I said, "that's your cynicism which I've so often deplored. Come down to plain language, and tell me what you mean?" "Look at the women on board this steamer," he cried indignantly. "There's pretty little Mrs. Tremain, who seems to have become fascinated by that scoundrel Glendenning. Any person can see what kind of a man he is--any one but an innocent child, such as Mrs. Tremain is. Now, no man can help. What she needs is some good kindly woman to take her by the hand and give her a word of warning. Is there a woman on board of this steamer who will do it? Not one. They see as plainly as any one else how things are drifting; but it takes a man who has murdered his wife to get sympathy and flowers from the modern so-called lady." "Didn't you ever hear of the man, Howard, who made a large sum of money, I forget at the moment exactly how much, by minding his own business?" "Oh yes, it's all very well to talk like that; but I would like to pitch Glendenning overboard." "I admit that it would be a desirable thing to do, but if anybody is to do it, it is Captain Tremain and not you. Are you a married man, Howard?" "No," answered Howard, evidently very much flattered by the question. "Well, you see, a person never can tell on board ship; but, if you happen to be, it seems to me that you wouldn't care for any outsider to interfere in a matter such as we are discussing. At any rate Mrs. Tremain is a married woman, and I can't see what interest you should have in her. Take my advice and leave her alone, and if you want to start a reforming crusade among women, try to convert the rest of the ladies of the ship to be more charitable and speak the proper word in time." "You may sneer as much as you like," answered young Howard, "but I will tell you what I am going to do. 'Two is company, and three is none'; I'm going to make the third, as far as Mrs. Tremain and Glendenning are concerned." "Supposing she objects to that?" "Very likely she will; I don't care. The voyage lasts only a few days longer, and I am going to make the third party at any _tête-à -tête_." "Dangerous business, Howard; first thing, you know, Glendenning will be wanting to throw _you_ overboard." "I would like to see him try it," said the young fellow, clenching his fist. And young Howard was as good as his word. It was very interesting to an onlooker to see the way the different parties took it. Mrs. Tremain seemed to be partly amused with the boy, and think it all rather good fun. Glendenning scowled somewhat, and tried to be silent; but, finding that made no particular difference, began to make allusions to the extreme youth of young Howard, and seemed to try to provoke him, which laudable intention, to young Howard's great credit, did not succeed. One evening I came down the forward narrow staircase, that leads to the long corridor running from the saloon, and met, under the electric light at the foot, Mrs. Tremain, young Howard, and Glendenning. They were evidently about to ascend the stairway; but, seeing me come down, they paused, and I stopped for a moment to have a chat with them, and see how things were going on. Glendenning said, addressing me, "Don't you think it's time for children to be in bed?" "If you mean me," I answered, "I am just on my way there." Mrs. Tremain and young Howard laughed, and Glendenning after that ignored both Howard and myself. He said to Mrs. Tremain, "I never noticed you wearing that ring before. It is a very strange ornament." "Yes," answered Mrs. Tremain, turning it round and round. "This is a Mexican charmed ring. There is a secret about it, see if you can find it out." And with that she pulled off the ring, and handed it to Glendenning. "You ought to give it to him as a keepsake," said young Howard, aggressively. "The ring, I notice, is a couple of snakes twisted together." "Little boys," said Mrs. Tremain, laughing, "shouldn't make remarks like that. They lead to trouble." Young Howard flushed angrily as Mrs. Tremain said this. He did not seem to mind it when Glendenning accused him of his youth, but he didn't like it coming from her. Meanwhile Glendenning was examining the ring, and suddenly it came apart in his hand. The coils of the snake were still linked together, but instead of composing one solid ring they could now be spread several inches apart like the links of a golden chain. Mrs. Tremain turned pale, and gave a little shriek, as she saw this. "Put it together again," she cried; "put it together quickly." "What is the matter?" said Glendenning, looking up at her. She was standing two or three steps above him; Glendenning was at the bottom of the stair; young Howard stood on the same step as Mrs. Tremain, and I was a step or two above them. "Put it together," cried Mrs. Tremain again. "I am trying to," said Glendenning, "is there a spring somewhere?" "Oh, I cannot tell you," she answered, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands; "but if you do not put it together without help, that means very great ill-luck for both you and me." "Does it?" said Glendenning, looking up at her with a peculiar glance, quite ignoring our presence. "Yes, it does," she said; "try your best to put that ring together as you found it." It was quite evident that Mrs. Tremain had all the superstition of Mexico. Glendenning fumbled with the ring one way and another, and finally said, "I cannot put it together." "Let me try," said young Howard. "No, no, that will do no good." Saying which Mrs. Tremain snatched the links from Glendenning, slipped them into one ring again, put it on her finger, and dashed quickly up the stairs without saying a word of good night to any of us. Glendenning was about to proceed up the stair after her, when young Howard very ostentatiously placed himself directly in his path. Glendenning seemed to hesitate for a moment, then thought better of it, turned on his heel and walked down the passage towards the saloon. "Look here, Howard," I said, "you are going to get yourself into trouble. There's sure to be a fuss on board this steamer before we reach Liverpool." "I wouldn't be at all surprised," answered young Howard. "Well, do you think it will be quite fair to Mrs. Tremain?" "Oh, I shan't bring her name into the matter." "The trouble will be to keep her name out. It may not be in your power to do that. A person who interferes in other people's affairs must do so with tact and caution." Young Howard looked up at me with a trace of resentment in his face. "Aren't you interfering now?" he said. "You are quite right, I am. Good night." And I went up the stairway. Howard shouted after me, but I did not see him again that night. Next day we were nearing Queenstown, and, as I had letters to write, I saw nothing of young Howard till the evening. I found him unreasonably contrite for what he had said to me the night before; and when I told him he had merely spoken the truth, and was quite justified in doing so, he seemed more miserable than ever. "Come," he said, "let us have a walk on the deck." It was between nine and ten o'clock; and when we got out on the deck, I said to him, "Without wishing to interfere any further--" "Now, don't say that," he cried; "it is cruel." "Well, I merely wanted to know where your two charges are." "I don't know," he answered, in a husky whisper; "they are not in the usual corner to-night, and I don't know where they are." "She is probably with her husband," I suggested. "No, he is down in the saloon reading." As young Howard was somewhat prone to get emphatic when he began to talk upon this subject, and as there was always a danger of other people overhearing what he said, I drew him away to a more secluded part of the ship. On this particular boat there was a wheelhouse aft unused, and generally filled up with old steamer chairs. A narrow passage led around this at the curving stern, seldom used by promenaders because of certain obstructions which, in the dark, were apt to trip a person up. Chains or something went from this wheelhouse to the sides of the ship, and, being covered up by boxes of plank, made this part of the deck hard to travel on in the dark. As we went around this narrow passage young Howard was the first to stop. He clutched my arm, but said nothing. There in the dark was the faint outline of two persons, with their backs towards us, leaning over the stern of the ship. The vibration at this part of the boat, from the throbbing of the screw, made it impossible for them to hear our approach. They doubtless thought they were completely in the dark; but they were deluded in that idea, because the turmoil of the water left a brilliant phosphorescent belt far in the rear of the ship, and against this bright, faintly yellow luminous track their forms were distinctly outlined. It needed no second glance to see that the two were Glendenning and Mrs. Tremain. Her head rested on his shoulder, and his arm was around her waist. "Let us get back," I said in a whisper; and, somewhat to my surprise, young Howard turned back with me. I felt his hand trembling on my arm, but he said nothing. Before we could say a word to each other a sadden and unexpected complication arose. We met Captain Tremain, with a shawl on his arm, coming towards us. "Good evening, captain," I said; "have a turn on the deck with us?" "No, thanks," he replied, "I am looking for my wife. I want to give her this shawl to put over her shoulders. She is not accustomed to such chilly weather as we are now running into, and I am afraid she may take cold." All this time young Howard stood looking at him with a startled expression in his eyes, and his lower jaw dropped. I was afraid Captain Tremain would see him, and wonder what was the matter with the boy. I tried to bring him to himself by stamping my heel--not too gently--on his toes, but he turned his face in the semi-darkness toward me without changing its expression. The one idea that had taken possession of my mind was that Captain Tremain must not be allowed to go further aft than he was, and I tried by looks and nudges to tell young Howard to go back and give her warning, but the boy seemed to be completely dazed with the unexpected horror of the situation. To have this calm, stern, unsuspecting man come suddenly upon what we had seen at the stern of the boat was simply appalling to think of. He certainly would have killed Glendenning where he stood, and very likely Mrs. Tremain as well. As Captain Tremain essayed to pass us I collected my wits as well as I could, and said-- "Oh, by the way, captain, I wanted to speak to you about Mexico. Do you--do you--think that it is a good--er--place for investment?" "Well," said Captain Tremain, pausing, "I am not so sure about that. You see, their Government is so very unstable. The country itself is rich enough in mineral wealth, if that is what you mean." All the while Howard stood there with his mouth agape, and I felt like shoving my fist into it. "Here, Howard," I said, "I want to speak to Captain Tremain for a moment. Take this shawl and find Mrs. Tremain, and give it to her." Saying this, I took the shawl from the captain's arm and threw it at young Howard. He appeared then to realise, for the first time, what was expected of him, and, giving me a grateful look, disappeared toward the stern. "What I wanted more particularly to know about Mexico," I said to the captain, who made no objection to this move, "was whether there would be any more--well, likely to have trouble--whether we would have trouble with them in a military way, you know--that's more in your line." "Oh, I think not," said the captain. "Of course, on the boundary where we were, there was always more or less trouble with border ruffians, sometimes on one side of the line and sometimes on the other. There is a possibility always that complications may arise from that sort of thing. Our officers might go over into the Mexican territory and seize a desperado there, or they might come over into ours. Still, I don't think anything will happen to bring on a war such as we had once or twice with Mexico." At this moment I was appalled to hear Glendenning's voice ring out above the noise of the vibration of the vessel. "What do you mean by that, you scoundrel," he said. "Hallo," exclaimed the captain, "there seems to be a row back there. I wonder what it is?" "Oh, nothing serious, I imagine. Probably some steerage passengers have come on the cabin deck. I heard them having a row with some one to-day on that score. Let's walk away from it." The captain took my arm, and we strolled along the deck while he gave me a great deal of valuable information about Mexico and the state of things along the border line, which I regret to say I cannot remember a word of. The impressions of a man who has been on the spot are always worth hearing, but my ears were strained to catch a repetition of the angry cry I had heard, or the continuation of the quarrel which it certainly seemed to be the beginning of. As we came up the deck again we met young Howard with the shawl still on his arm and Mrs. Tremain walking beside him. She was laughing in a somewhat hysterical manner, and his face was as pale as ashes with a drawn look about the corners of his lips, but the captain's eyes were only on his wife. "Why don't you put on the shawl, my dear?" he said to her affectionately. "The shawl?" she answered. Then, seeing it on young Howard's arm, she laughed, and said, "He never offered it to me." Young Howard made haste to place the shawl on her shoulders, which she arranged around herself in a very coquettish and charming way. Then she took her husband's arm. "Good night," she said to me; "good night, and thanks, Mr. Howard." "Good night," said the captain; "I will tell you more about that mine to-morrow." We watched them disappear towards the companion-way. I drew young Howard towards the side of the boat. "What happened?" I asked eagerly. "Did you have trouble?" "Very nearly, I made a slip of the tongue. I called her Mrs. Glendenning." "You called her _what_?" "I said, 'Mrs. Glendenning, your husband is looking for you.' I had come right up behind them, and they hadn't heard me, and of course both were very much startled. Glendenning turned round and shouted, 'What do you mean by that, you scoundrel?' and caught me by the throat. She instantly sprang between us, pushing him toward the stern of the boat, and me against the wheelhouse. "'Hush, hush,' she whispered; 'you mean, Mr. Howard, that my husband is there, do you not?' "'Yes,' I answered, 'and he will be here in a moment unless you come with me.' With that she said 'Good night, Mr. Glendenning,' and took my arm, and he, like a thief, slunk away round the other side of the wheelhouse. I was very much agitated. I suppose I acted like a fool when we met the captain, didn't I?" "You did," I answered; "go on." "Well, Mrs. Tremain saw that, and she laughed at me, although I could see she was rather disturbed herself." Some time that night we touched at Queenstown, and next evening we were in Liverpool. When the inevitable explosion came, I have no means of knowing, and this, as I have said before, is a story without a conclusion. Mrs. Tremain the next day was as bright and jolly as ever, and the last time I saw her, she was smiling over her shoulder at Glendenning, and not paying the slightest attention to either her husband on whose arm she hung, or to young Howard, who was hovering near. SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE. "The quick must haste to vengeance taste, For time is on his head; But he can wait at the door of fate, Though the stay be long and the hour be late-- The dead." Melville Hardlock stood in the centre of the room with his feet wide apart and his hands in his trousers pockets, a characteristic attitude of his. He gave a quick glance at the door, and saw with relief that the key was in the lock, and that the bolt prevented anybody coming in unexpectedly. Then he gazed once more at the body of his friend, which lay in such a helpless-looking attitude upon the floor. He looked at the body with a feeling of mild curiosity, and wondered what there was about the lines of the figure on the floor that so certainly betokened death rather than sleep, even though the face was turned away from him. He thought, perhaps, it might be the hand with its back to the floor and its palm towards the ceiling; there was a certain look of hopelessness about that. He resolved to investigate the subject some time when he had leisure. Then his thoughts turned towards the subject of murder. It was so easy to kill, he felt no pride in having been able to accomplish that much. But it was not everybody who could escape the consequences of his crime. It required an acute brain to plan after events so that shrewd detectives would be baffled. There was a complacent conceit about Melville Hardlock, which was as much a part of him as his intense selfishness, and this conceit led him to believe that the future path he had outlined for himself would not be followed by justice. With a sigh Melville suddenly seemed to realise that while there was no necessity for undue haste, yet it was not wise to be too leisurely in some things, so he took his hands from his pockets and drew to the middle of the floor a large Saratoga trunk. He threw the heavy lid open, and in doing so showed that the trunk was empty. Picking up the body of his friend, which he was surprised to note was so heavy and troublesome to handle, he with some difficulty doubled it up so that it slipped into the trunk. He piled on top of it some old coats, vests, newspapers, and other miscellaneous articles until the space above the body was filled. Then he pressed down the lid and locked it, fastening the catches at each end. Two stout straps were now placed around the trunk and firmly buckled after he had drawn them as tight as possible. Finally he damped the gum side of a paper label, and when he had pasted it on the end of the trunk, it showed the words in red letters, "S.S. _Platonic_, cabin, wanted." This done, Melville threw open the window to allow the fumes of chloroform to dissipate themselves in the outside air. He placed a closed, packed and labelled portmanteau beside the trunk, and a valise beside that again, which, with a couple of handbags, made up his luggage. Then he unlocked the door, threw back the bolt, and, having turned the key again from the outside, strode down the thickly-carpeted stairs of the hotel into the large pillared and marble-floored vestibule where the clerk's office was. Strolling up to the counter behind which stood the clerk of the hotel, he shoved his key across to that functionary, who placed it in the pigeon-hole marked by the number of his room. "Did my friend leave for the West last night, do you know?" "Yes," answered the clerk, "he paid his bill and left. Haven't you seen him since?" "No," replied Hardlock. "Well, he'll be disappointed about that, because he told me he expected to see you before he left, and would call up at your room later. I suppose he didn't have time. By the way, he said you were going back to England to-morrow. Is that so?" "Yes, I sail on the _Platonic_. I suppose I can have my luggage sent to the steamer from here without further trouble?" "Oh, certainly," answered the clerk; "how many pieces are there? It will be fifty cents each." "Very well; just put that down in my bill with the rest of the expenses, and let me have it to-night. I will settle when I come in. Five pieces of luggage altogether." "Very good. You'll have breakfast to-morrow, I suppose?" "Yes, the boat does not leave till nine o'clock." "Very well; better call you about seven, Mr. Hardlock. Will you have a carriage?" "No, I shall walk down to the boat. You will be sure, of course, to have my things there in time." "Oh, no fear of that. They will be on the steamer by half-past eight." "Thank you." As Mr. Hardlock walked down to the boat next morning he thought he had done rather a clever thing in sending his trunk in the ordinary way to the steamer. "Most people," he said to himself, "would have made the mistake of being too careful about it. It goes along in the ordinary course of business. If anything should go wrong it will seem incredible that a sane man would send such a package in an ordinary express waggon to be dumped about, as they do dump luggage about in New York." He stood by the gangway on the steamer watching the trunks, valises, and portmanteaus come on board. "Stop!" he cried to the man, "that is not to go down in the hold; I want it. Don't you see it's marked 'wanted?'" "It is very large, sir," said the man; "it will fill up a state-room by itself." "I have the captain's room," was the answer. So the man flung the trunk down on the deck with a crash that made even the cool Mr. Hardlock shudder. "Did you say you had the captain's room, sir?" asked the steward standing near. "Yes." "Then I am your bedroom steward," was the answer; "I will see that the trunk is put in all right." The first day out was rainy but not rough; the second day was fair and the sea smooth. The second night Hardlock remained in the smoking-room until the last man had left. Then, when the lights were extinguished, he went out on the upper deck, where his room was, and walked up and down smoking his cigar. There was another man also walking the deck, and the red glow of his cigar, dim and bright alternately, shone in the darkness like a glow-worm. Hardlock wished that he would turn in, whoever he was. Finally the man flung his cigar overboard and went down the stairway. Hartlock had now the dark deck to himself. He pushed open the door of his room and turned out the electric light. It was only a few steps from his door to the rail of the vessel high above the water. Dimly on the bridge he saw the shadowy figure of an officer walking back and forth. Hardlock looked over the side at the phosphorescent glitter of the water which made the black ocean seem blacker still. The sharp ring of the bell betokening midnight made Melville start as if a hand had touched him, and the quick beating of his heart took some moments to subside. "I've been smoking too much to-day," he said to himself. Then looking quickly up and down the deck, he walked on tip toe to his room, took the trunk by its stout leather handle and pulled it over the ledge in the doorway. There were small wheels at the bottom of the trunk, but although they made the pulling of it easy, they seemed to creak with appalling loudness. He realised the fearful weight of the trunk as he lifted the end of it up on the rail. He balanced it there for a moment, and glanced sharply around him, but there was nothing to alarm him. In spite of his natural coolness, he felt a strange, haunting dread of some undefinable disaster, a dread which had been completely absent from him at the time he committed the murder. He shoved off the trunk before he had quite intended to do so, and the next instant he nearly bit through his tongue to suppress a groan of agony. There passed half a dozen moments of supreme pain and fear before he realised what had happened. His wrist had caught in the strap handle of the trunk, and his shoulder was dislocated. His right arm was stretched taut and helpless, like a rope holding up the frightful and ever-increasing weight that hung between him and the sea. His breast was pressed against the rail and his left hand gripped the iron stanchion to keep himself from going over. He felt that his feet were slipping, and he set his teeth and gripped the iron with a grasp that was itself like iron. He hoped the trunk would slip from his useless wrist, but it rested against the side of the vessel, and the longer it hung the more it pressed the hard strap handle into his nerveless flesh. He had realised from the first that he dare not cry for help, and his breath came hard through his clenched teeth as the weight grew heavier and heavier. Then, with his eyes strained by the fearful pressure, and perhaps dazzled by the glittering phosphorescence running so swiftly by the side of the steamer far below, he seemed to see from out the trunk something in the form and semblance of his dead friend quivering like summer heat below him. Sometimes it was the shimmering phosphorescence, then again it was the wraith hovering over the trunk. Hardlock, in spite of his agony, wondered which it really was; but he wondered no longer when it spoke to him. "Old Friend," it said, "you remember our compact when we left England. It was to be 'share and share alike,' my boy--'share and share alike.' I have had my share. Come!" Then on the still night air came the belated cry for help, but it was after the foot had slipped and the hand had been wrenched from the iron stanchion. AN INTERNATIONAL ROW "A simple child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of--" kicking up a row (NOTE.--Only the last four words of the above poem are claimed as original.) "Then America declared war on England."--_History of_ 1812 Lady, not feeling particularly well, reclining in a steamer chair, covered up with rags. Little girl beside her, who wants to know. Gentleman in an adjoining steamer chair. The little girl begins to speak. "And do you have to pay to go in, mamma?" "Yes, dear." "How much do you have to pay? As much as at a theatre?" "Oh, you need not pay anything particular--no set sum, you know. You pay just what you can afford." "Then it's like a collection at church, mamma?" "Yes, dear." "And does the captain get the money, mamma?" "No, dear; the money goes to the poor orphans, I think." "Where are the orphans, mamma?" "I don't know, dear, I think they are in Liverpool." "Whose orphans are they, mamma?" "They are the orphans of sailors, dear." "What kind of sailors, mamma?" "British sailors, darling." "Aren't there any sailors in America, mamma?" "Oh yes, dear, lots of them." "And do they have any orphans?" "Yes, dear, I suppose there are orphans there too." "And don't they get any of the money, mamma?" "I am sure I do not know, dear. By the way, Mr. Daveling, how is that? Do they give any of the money to American orphans?" "I believe not, madam. Subscriptions at concerts given on board British steamers are of course donated entirely to the Seamen's Hospital or Orphanage of Liverpool." "Well, that doesn't seem to be quite fair, does it? A great deal of the money is subscribed by Americans." "Yes, madam, that is perfectly true." "I should think that ten Americans cross on these lines for every one Englishman." "I am sure I do not know, madam, what the proportion is. The Americans are great travellers, so are the English too, for that matter." "Yes; but I saw in one of the papers that this year alone over a hundred thousand persons had taken their passage from New York to England. It seems to me, that as all of them contribute to the receipts of the concerts, some sort of a division should be made." "Oh, I have no doubt if the case were presented to the captain, he would be quite willing to have part of the proceeds at least go to some American seamen's charity." "I think that would be only fair." Two young ladies, arm in arm, approach, and ask Mrs. Pengo how she is feeling to-day. Mrs. Pengo replies that she doesn't suppose she will feel any better as long as this rolling of the ship continues. They claim, standing there, endeavouring to keep as perpendicular as possible, that the rolling is something simply awful. Then the lady says to them, "Do you know, girls, that all the money subscribed at the concerts goes to England?" "Why, no; I thought it went to some charity." "Oh, it _does_ go to a charity. It goes to the Liverpool Seamen's Hospital." "Well, isn't that all right?" "Yes, it's all right enough; but, as Sadie was just suggesting now, it doesn't seem quite fair, when there are orphans of sailors belonging to America, and as long as such large sums are subscribed by Americans, that the money should not be divided and part of it at least given to an American charity." "Why, that seems perfectly fair, doesn't it, Mr. Daveling?" "Yes, it is perfectly fair. I was just suggesting that perhaps if the state of things was presented to the captain, he would doubtless give a portion at least of the proceeds to an American Seamen's Home--if such an institution exists." "Then," remarked the other girl, "I propose we form a committee, and interview the captain. I think that if Americans subscribe the bulk of the money, which they certainly do, they should have a voice in the disposal of it." This was agreed to on all hands, and so began one of the biggest rows that ever occurred on board an Atlantic liner. Possibly, if the captain had had any tact, and if he had not been so thoroughly impressed with his own tremendous importance, what happened later on would not have happened. The lady in the steamer chair took little part in the matter, in fact it was not at that time assumed to be of any importance whatever; but the two young American girls were enthusiastic, and they spoke to several of the passengers about it, both American and English. The English passengers all recognised the justice of the proposed plan, so a committee of five young ladies, and one young gentleman as spokesman, waited upon the captain. The young ladies at first had asked the doctor of the ship to be the spokesman; but when the doctor heard what the proposal was, he looked somewhat alarmed, and stroked his moustache thoughtfully. "I don't know about that," he said; "it is a little unusual. The money has always gone to the Liverpool Seamen's Hospital, and--well, you see, we are a conservative people. We do a thing in one way for a number of years, and then keep on doing it because we have always done it in that way." "Yes," burst out one of the young ladies, "that is no reason why an unjust thing should be perpetuated. Merely because a wrong has been done is no reason why it should be done again." "True," said the doctor, "true," for he did not wish to fall out with the young lady, who was very pretty; "but, you see, in England we think a great deal of precedent." And so the result of it all was that the doctor demurred at going to see the captain in relation to the matter. He said it wouldn't be the thing, as he was an official, and that it would be better to get one of the passengers. I was not present at the interview, and of course know only what was told me by those who were there. It seems that the captain was highly offended at being approached on such a subject at all. A captain of an ocean liner, as I have endeavoured to show, is a very great personage indeed. And sometimes I imagine the passengers are not fully aware of this fact, or at least they do not show it as plainly as they ought to. Anyhow, the committee thought the captain had been exceedingly gruff with them, as well as just a trifle impolite. He told them that the money from the concerts had always gone to the Liverpool Seamen's Hospital, and always would while he was commanding a ship. He seemed to infer that the permission given them to hold a concert on board the ship was a very great concession, and that people should be thankful for the privilege of contributing to such a worthy object. So, beginning with the little girl who wanted to know, and ending with the captain who commanded the ship, the conflagration was started. Such is British deference to authority that, as soon as the captain's decision was known, those who had hitherto shown an open mind on the subject, and even those who had expressed themselves as favouring the dividing of the money, claimed that the captain's dictum had settled the matter. Then it was that every passenger had to declare himself. "Those who are not with us," said the young women, "are against us." The ship was almost immediately divided into two camps. It was determined to form a committee of Americans to take the money received from the second concert; for it was soon resolved to hold two concerts, one for the American Seamen's Orphans' Home and the other for that at Liverpool. One comical thing about the row was, that nobody on board knew whether an American Seamen's Orphans' Home existed or not. When this problem was placed before the committee of young people, they pooh-poohed the matter. They said it didn't make any difference at all; if there was no Seamen's Hospital in America, it was quite time there should be one; and so they proposed that the money should be given to the future hospital, if it did not already exist. When everything was prepared for the second concert there came a bolt from the blue. It was rumoured round the ship that the captain had refused his permission for the second concert to be held. The American men, who had up to date looked with a certain amused indifference on the efforts of the ladies, now rallied and held a meeting in the smoking-room. Every one felt that a crisis had come, and that the time to let loose the dogs of war--sea-dogs in this instance--had arrived. A committee was appointed to wait upon the captain next day. The following morning the excitement was at its highest pitch. It was not safe for an American to be seen conversing with an Englishman, or _vice versá._ Rumour had it at first--in fact all sorts of wild rumours were flying around the whole forenoon--that the captain refused to see the delegation of gentlemen who had requested audience with him. This rumour, however, turned out to be incorrect. He received the delegation in his room with one or two of the officers standing beside him. The spokesman said-- "Captain, we are informed that you have concluded not to grant permission to the Americans to hold a concert in aid of the American Seamen's Orphans' Home. We wish to know if this is true?" "You have been correctly informed," replied the captain. "We are sorry to hear that," answered the spokesman. "Perhaps you will not object to tell us on what grounds you have refused your permission?" "Gentlemen," said the captain, "I have received you in my room because you requested an interview. I may say, however, that I am not in the habit of giving reasons for anything I do, to the passengers who honour this ship with their company." "Then," said the spokesman, endeavouring to keep calm, but succeeding only indifferently, "it is but right that we should tell you that we regard such a proceeding on your part as a high handed outrage; that we will appeal against your decision to the owners of this steamship, and that, unless an apology is tendered, we will never cross on this line again, and we will advise all our compatriots never to patronise a line where such injustice is allowed." "Might I ask you," said the captain very suavely, "of what injustice you complain?" "It seems to us," said the spokesman, "that it is a very unjust thing to allow one class of passengers to hold a concert, and to refuse permission to another class to do the same thing." "If that is all you complain of," said the captain, "I quite agree with you. I think that would be an exceedingly unjust proceeding." "Is not that what you are about to do?" "Not that I am aware of." "You have prohibited the American concert?" "Certainly. But I have prohibited the English concert as well." The American delegates looked rather blankly at each other, and then the spokesman smiled. "Oh, well," he said, "if you have prohibited both of them, I don't see that we have anything to grumble at." "Neither do I," said the captain. The delegation then withdrew; and the passengers had the unusual pleasure of making one ocean voyage without having to attend the generally inevitable amateur concert. A LADIES MAN "Jest w'en we guess we've covered the trail So's no one can't foller, w'y then we fail W'en we feel safe hid. Nemesis, the cuss, Waltzes up with nary a warnin' nor fuss. Grins quiet like, and says, 'How d'y do, So glad we've met, I'm a-lookin' fer you'" I do not wish to particularise any of the steamers on which the incidents given in this book occurred, so the boat of which I now write I shall call _The Tub_. This does not sound very flattering to the steamer, but I must say _The Tub_ was a comfortable old boat, as everybody will testify who has ever taken a voyage in her. I know a very rich man who can well afford to take the best room in the best steamer if he wants to, but his preference always is for a slow boat like _The Tub_. He says that if you are not in a hurry, a slow boat is preferable to one of the new fast liners, because you have more individuality there, you get more attention, the officers are flattered by your preference for their ship, and you are not merely one of a great mob of passengers as in a crowded fast liner. The officers on a popular big and swift boat are prone to be a trifle snobbish. This is especially the case on the particular liner which for the moment stands at the top--a steamer that has broken the record, and is considered the best boat in the Atlantic service for the time being. If you get a word from the captain of such a boat you may consider yourself a peculiarly honoured individual, and even the purser is apt to answer you very shortly, and make you feel you are but a worm of the dust, even though you have paid a very large price for your state-room. On _The Tub_ there was nothing of this. The officers were genial good fellows who admitted their boat was not the fastest on the Atlantic, although at one time she had been; but if _The Tub_ never broke the record, on the other hand, she never broke a shaft, and so things were evened up. She wallowed her way across the Atlantic in a leisurely manner, and there was no feverish anxiety among the passengers when they reached Queenstown, to find whether the rival boat had got in ahead of us or not. Everybody on board _The Tub_ knew that any vessel which started from New York the same day would reach Queenstown before us. In fact, a good smart sailing vessel, with a fair wind, might have made it lively for us in an ocean race. _The Tub_ was a broad slow boat, whose great speciality was freight, and her very broadness, which kept her from being a racer, even if her engines had had the power, made her particularly comfortable in a storm. She rolled but little; and as the state-rooms were large and airy, every passenger on board _The Tub_ was sure of a reasonably pleasant voyage. It was always amusing to hear the reasons each of the passengers gave for being on board _The Tub_. A fast and splendid liner of an opposition company left New York the next day, and many of our passengers explained to me they had come to New York with the intention of going by that boat, but they found all the rooms taken, that is, all the desirable rooms. Of coarse they might have had a room down on the third deck; but they were accustomed in travelling to have the best rooms, and if they couldn't be had, why it didn't much matter what was given them, so that was the reason they took passage on _The Tub_. Others were on the boat because they remembered the time when she was one of the fastest on the ocean, and they didn't like changing ships. Others again were particular friends of the captain, and he would have been annoyed if they had taken any other steamer. Everybody had some particularly valid reason for choosing _The Tub_, that is, every reason except economy, for it was well known that _The Tub_ was one of the cheapest boats crossing the ocean. For my own part I crossed on her, because the purser was a particular friend of mine, and knew how to amalgamate fluids and different solid substances in a manner that produced a very palatable refreshment. He has himself deserted _The Tub_ long ago, and is now purser on one of the new boats of the same line. When the gong rang for the first meal on hoard _The Tub_ after leaving New York, we filed down from the smoking-room to the great saloon to take our places at the table. There were never enough passengers on board _The Tub_ to cause a great rush for places at the table; but on this particular occasion, when we reached the foot of the stairway, two or three of us stood for a moment both appalled and entranced. Sitting at the captain's right hand was a somewhat sour and unattractive elderly woman, who was talking to that smiling and urbane official. Down the long table from where she sat, in the next fifteen seats were fifteen young and pretty girls, most of them looking smilingly and expectantly toward the stairway down which we were descending. The elderly woman paused for a moment in her conversation with the captain, glanced along the line of beauty, said sharply, 'Girls!' and instantly every face was turned demurely toward the plate that was in front of it, and then we, who had hesitated for a moment on the stairway, at once made a break, not for our seats at the table, but for the purser. "It's all right, gentlemen," said that charming man, before we could speak; "it's all right. I've arranged your places down the table on the opposite side. You don't need to say a word, and those of you who want to change from the small tables to the large one, will find your names on the long table as well as at the small tables, where you have already chosen your places. So, you see, I knew just how you wished things arranged; but," he continued, lowering his voice, "boys, there's a dragon in charge. I know her. She has crossed with us two or three times. She wanted me to arrange it so that fifteen ladies should sit opposite her fifteen girls; but, of course, we couldn't do that, because there aren't fifteen other ladies on board, and there had to be one or two ladies placed next the girls at the foot of the table, so that no girl should have a young man sitting beside her. I have done the best I could, gentlemen, and, if you want the seats rearranged, I think we can manage it for you. Individual preferences may crop up, you know." And the purser smiled gently, for he had crossed the ocean very, very often. We all took our places, sternly scrutinised by the lady, whom the purser had flatteringly termed the "dragon." She evidently didn't think very much of us as a crowd, and I am sure in my own heart I cannot blame her. We were principally students going over to German colleges on the cheap, some commercial travellers, and a crowd generally who could not afford to take a better boat, although we had all just missed the fast liner that had left a few days before, or had for some reason not succeeded in securing a berth on the fast boat, which was to leave the day after. If any of the fifteen young ladies were aware of our presence, they did not show it by glancing toward us. They seemed to confine their conversation to whispers among themselves, and now and then a little suppressed giggle arose from one part of the line or the other, upon which the "dragon" looked along the row, and said severely, "Girls!" whereupon everything was quiet again, although some independent young lady generally broke the silence by another giggle just at the time the stillness was becoming most impressive. After dinner, in the smoking-room, there was a great deal of discussion about the fifteen pretty girls and about the "dragon." As the officers on board _The Tub_ were gentlemen whom an ordinary person might speak to, a delegation of one was deputed to go to the purser's room and find out all that could be learned in relation to the young and lovely passengers. The purser said that the dragon's name was Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling, with a hyphen. The hyphen was a very important part of the name, and Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling always insisted upon it. Any one who ignored that hyphen speedily fell from the good graces of Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling. I regret to say, however, in spite of the hyphen, the lady was very generally known as the "dragon" during that voyage. The purser told us further, that Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling was in the habit of coming over once a year with a party of girls whom she trotted around Europe. The idea was that they learnt a great deal of geography, a good deal of French and German, and received in a general way a polish which Europe is supposed to give. The circular which Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling issued was shown to me once by one of the girls, and it represented that all travelling was first-class, that nothing but the very best accommodations on steamers and in hotels were provided, and on account of Mrs. S. Y.'s intimate knowledge of Europe, and the different languages spoken there, she managed the excursion in a way which any one else would find impossible to emulate, and the advantages accruing from such a trip could not be obtained in any other manner without a very much larger expenditure of money. The girls had the advantage of motherly care during all the time they were abroad, and as the party was strictly limited in number, and the greatest care taken to select members only from the very best families in America, Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling was certain that all her patrons would realise that this was an opportunity of a lifetime, etc., etc. Even if _The Tub_ were not the finest boat on the Atlantic, she certainly belonged to one of the best lines, and as the circular mentioned the line and not the particular vessel on which the excursion was to go, the whole thing had a very high-class appearance. The first morning out, shortly after, breakfast, the "dragon" and her girls appeared on deck. The girls walked two and two together, and kept their eyes pretty much on the planks beneath them. The fifteenth girl walked with the "dragon," and thus the eight pairs paced slowly up and down the deck under the "dragon's" eye. When this morning promenade was over the young ladies were marshalled into the ladies' saloon, where no masculine foot was allowed to tread. Shortly before lunch an indignation meeting was held in the smoking-room. Stewart Montague, a commercial traveller from Milwaukee, said that he had crossed the ocean many times, but had never seen such a state of things before. This young ladies' seminary business (he alluded to the two and two walk along the deck) ought not to be permitted on any well regulated ship. Here were a number of young ladies, ranging in age from eighteen upwards, and there lay ahead of us a long and possibly dreary voyage, yet the "dragon" evidently expected that not one of the young ladies was to be allowed to speak to one of the young gentlemen on board, much less walk the deck with him. Now, for his part, said Stewart Montague, he was going to take off his hat the next morning to the young lady who sat opposite him at the dinner-table and boldly ask her to walk the deck with him. If the "dragon" interfered, he proposed that we all mutiny, seize the vessel, put the captain in irons, imprison the "dragon" in the hold, and then take to pirating on the high seas. One of the others pointed out to him an objection to this plan, claiming that _The Tub_ could not overtake anything but a sailing-vessel, while even that was doubtful. Montague explained that the mutiny was only to be resorted to as a last desperate chance. He believed the officers of the boat would give us every assistance possible, and so it was only in case of everything else failing that we should seize the ship. In a moment of temporary aberration I suggested that the "dragon" might not be, after all, such an objectionable person as she appeared, and that perhaps she could be won over by kindness. Instantly a motion was put, and carried unanimously, appointing me a committee to try the effect of kindness on the "dragon." It was further resolved that the meeting should be adjourned, and I should report progress at the next conclave. I respectfully declined this mission. I said it was none of my affair. I didn't wish to talk to any of the fifteen girls, or even walk the deck with them. I was perfectly satisfied as I was. I saw no reason why I should sacrifice myself for the good of others. I suggested that the name of Stewart Montague be substituted for mine, and that he should face the "dragon" and report progress. Mr. Montague said it had been my suggestion, not his, that the "dragon" might be overcome by kindness. He did not believe she could, but he was quite willing to suspend hostilities until my plan had been tried and the result reported to the meeting. It was only when they brought in a motion to expel me from the smoking-room that I succumbed to the pressure. The voyage was just beginning, and what is a voyage to a smoker who dare not set foot in the smoking-room? I do not care to dwell on the painful interview I had with the "dragon." I put my foot in it at the very first by pretending that I thought she came from New York, whereas she had really come from Boston. To take a New York person for a Bostonian is flattery, but to reverse the order of things, especially with a woman of the uncertain temper of Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling, was really a deadly insult, and I fear this helped to shipwreck my mission, although I presume it would have been shipwrecked in any case. Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling gave me to understand that if there was one thing more than another she excelled in it was the reading of character. She knew at a glance whether a man could be trusted or not; most men were not, I gathered from her conversation. It seems she had taken a great many voyages across the Atlantic, and never in the whole course of her experience had she seen such an objectionable body of young men as on this present occasion. She accused me of being a married man, and I surmised that there were other iniquities of which she strongly suspected me. The mission was not a success, and I reported at the adjourned meeting accordingly. Mr. Stewart Montague gave it as his opinion that the mission was hopeless from the first, and in this I quite agreed with him. He said he would try his plan at dinner, but what it was he refused to state. We asked if he would report on the success or failure, and he answered that we would all see whether it was a success or failure for ourselves. So there was a good deal of interest centring around the meal, an interest not altogether called forth by the pangs of hunger. Dinner had hardly commenced when Mr. Stewart Montague leaned over the table and said, in quite an audible voice, to the young lady opposite him, "I understand you have never been over the ocean before?" The young lady looked just a trifle frightened, blushed very prettily, and answered in a low voice that she had not. Then he said, "I envy you the first impressions you will have of Europe. It is a charming country. Where do you go after leaving England?" "We are going across to Paris first," she replied, still in a low voice. Most of us, however, were looking at the "dragon." That lady sat bolt upright in her chair as if she could not believe her ears. Then she said, in an acid voice, "Miss Fleming." "Yes, Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling," answered that young lady. "Will you oblige me by coming here for a moment?" Miss Fleming slowly revolved in her circular chair, then rose and walked up to the head of the table. "Miss Strong," said the "dragon" calmly, to the young lady who sat beside her, "will you oblige me by taking Miss Fleming's place at the centre of the table?" Miss Strong rose and took Miss Fleming's place. "Sit down beside me, please?" said the "dragon" to Miss Fleming; and that unfortunate young woman, now as red as a rose, sat down beside the "dragon." Stewart Montague bit his lip. The rest of us said nothing, and appeared not to notice what had occurred. Conversation went on among ourselves. The incident seemed ended; but, when the fish was brought, and placed before Miss Fleming, she did not touch it. Her eyes were still upon the table. Then, apparently unable to struggle any longer with her emotions, she rose gracefully, and, bowing to the captain, said, "Excuse me, please." She walked down the long saloon with a firm step, and disappeared. The "dragon" tried to resume conversation with the captain as if nothing had happened; but that official answered only in monosyllables, and a gloom seemed to have settled down upon the dinner party. Very soon the captain rose and excused himself. There was something to attend to on deck, he said, and he left us. As soon as we had reassembled in the smoking-room, and the steward had brought in our cups of black coffee, Stewart Montague arose and said, "Gentlemen, I know just what you are going to say to me. It _was_ brutal. Of course I didn't think the 'dragon' would do such a thing. My plan was a complete failure. I expected that conversation would take place across the table all along the line, if I broke the ice." Whatever opinions were held, none found expression, and that evening in the smoking-room was as gloomy as the hour at the dinner-table. Towards the shank of the evening a gentleman, who had never been in the smoking-room before, entered very quietly. We recognised him as the man who sat to the left of the captain opposite the "dragon." He was a man of middle age and of somewhat severe aspect. He spoke with deliberation when he did speak, and evidently, weighed his words. All we knew of him was that the chair beside his at meal-times had been empty since the voyage began, and it was said that his wife took her meals in her state-room. She had appeared once on deck with him, very closely veiled, and hung upon his arm in a way that showed she was not standing the voyage very well, pleasant as it had been. "Gentlemen," began the man suavely, "I would like to say a few words to you if I were certain that my remarks would be taken in the spirit in which they are given, and that you would not think me intrusive or impertinent." "Go ahead," said Montague, gloomily, who evidently felt a premonition of coming trouble. The serious individual waited until the steward had left the room, then he closed the door. "Gentlemen," he continued, "I will not recur to the painful incident which happened at the dinner-table to-night further than by asking you, as honourable men, to think of Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling's position of great responsibility. She stands in the place of a mother to a number of young ladies who, for the first time in their lives, have left their homes." "Lord pity them," said somebody, who was sitting in the corner. The gentleman paid no attention to the remark. "Now what I wish to ask of you is that you will not make Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling's position any harder by futile endeavours to form the acquaintance of the young ladies." At this point Stewart Montague broke out. "Who the devil are you, sir, and who gave you the right to interfere?" "As to who I am," said the gentleman, quietly, "my name is Kensington, and--" "West or South?" asked the man in the corner. At this there was a titter of laughter. "My name is Kensington," repeated the gentleman, "and I have been asked by Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling to interfere, which I do very reluctantly. As I said at the beginning, I hope you will not think my interference is impertinent. I only do so at the earnest request of the lady I have mentioned, because I am a family man myself, and I understand and sympathise with the lady in the responsibility which she has assumed." "It seems to me," said the man in the corner, "that if the 'dragon' has assumed responsibilities and they have not been thrust upon her, which I understand they have not, then she must take the responsibility of the responsibilities which she has assumed. Do I make myself clear?" "Gentlemen," said Mr. Kensington, "it is very painful for me to speak with you upon this subject. I feel that what I have so clumsily expressed may not be correctly understood; but I appeal to your honour as gentlemen, and I am sure I will not appeal in vain when I ask you not to make further effort towards the acquaintance of the young ladies, because all that you can succeed in doing will be to render their voyage unpleasant to themselves, and interrupt, if not seriously endanger, the good feeling which I understand has always existed between Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling and her _protégées_." "All right," said the man in the corner. "Have a drink, Mr. Kensington?" "Thank you, I never drink," answered Mr. Kensington. "Have a smoke, then?" "I do not smoke either, thank you all the same for your offer. I hope, gentlemen, you will forgive my intrusion on you this evening. Good night." "Impudent puppy," said Stewart Montague, as he closed the door behind him. But in this we did not agree with him, not even the man in the corner. "He is perfectly right," said that individual, "and I believe that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. It will only make trouble, and I for one am going to give up the hunt." So, from that time forward, the smoking-room collectively made no effort towards the acquaintance of the young ladies. The ladies' seminary walk, as it was called, took place every morning punctually, and sometimes Mr. Kensington accompanied the walkers. Nevertheless, individual friendships, in spite of everything that either Mr. Kensington or the "dragon" could do, sprang up between some of the young men and some of the girls, but the "dragon" had an invaluable ally in Mr. Kensington. The moment any of the young ladies began walking with any of the young gentlemen on deck, or the moment they seated themselves in steamer chairs together, the urbane, always polite Mr. Kensington appeared on the scene and said, "Miss So-and-So, Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling would like to speak with you." Then the young lady would go with Mr. Kensington, while the young gentleman was apt to use strong language and gnash his teeth. Mr. Kensington seemed lynx-eyed. There was no escaping him. Many in the smoking-room no doubt would have liked to have picked a flaw in his character if they could. One even spoke of the old chestnut about a man who had no small vices being certain to have some very large ones; but even the speakers themselves did not believe this, and any one could see at a glance that Mr. Kensington was a man of sterling character. Some hinted that his wife was the victim of his cruelty, and kept her state-room only because she knew that he was so fond of the "dragon's" company, and possibly that of some of the young ladies as well. But this grotesque sentiment did not pass current even in the smoking-room. Nevertheless, although he was evidently so good a man, he was certainly the most unpopular individual on board _The Tub_. The hatred that Stewart Montague felt for him ever since that episode in the smoking-room was almost grotesque. Montague had somehow managed to get a contrite note of apology and distress to Miss Fleming, and several times the alert Mr. Kensington had caught them together, and asked Miss Fleming with the utmost respect to come down and see Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling. All in all the "dragon" did not have a very easy time of it. She fussed around like any other old hen who had in charge a brood of ducks. Once I thought there was going to be a row between Montague and Kensington. He met that gentleman in a secluded part of the deck, and, going up to him, said-- "You old wife deserter, why can't you attend to your own affairs?" Kensington turned deadly pale at this insult, and his fists clinched-- "What do you mean?" he said huskily. "I mean what I say. Why don't you take your own wife walking on the deck, and leave the young ladies alone. It's none of your business with whom they walk." Kensington seemed about to reply; but he thought better of it, turned on his heel, and left Montague standing there. The old _Tub_ worried her way across the ocean, and reached the bar at Liverpool just in time to be too late to cross it that night. Word was passed along that a tender would come out from Liverpool for us, which was not a very cheering prospect, as we would have two hours' sail at least in what was practically an open boat. Finally the tender came alongside, and the baggage was dumped down upon it. All of us gathered together ready to leave _The Tub_. Mr. Kensington, with his closely-veiled wife hanging on his arm, was receiving the thanks and congratulations of the "dragon." The fifteen girls were all around her. Before any one started down the sloping gangway plank, however, two policemen, accompanied by a woman, hurried up on board _The Tub_. "Now, madam," said the policeman, "is he here?" We saw that trouble was coming, and everybody looked at everybody else. "Is he here?" cried the woman excitedly; "there he stands, the villain. Oh, you villain, you scoundrel, you _mean_ rascal, to leave me, as you thought, penniless in New York, and desert your own wife and family for that--that creature!" We all looked at Kensington, and his face was greenish-pale. The heavily veiled woman shrunk behind him and the policeman tried to make the true wife keep quiet. "Is your name Braughton?" Kensington did not answer. His eyes were riveted on his wife. "In the name of God," he cried aghast, "how did _you_ come here?" "How did I come here," she shrieked. "Oh, you thought you slipped away nicely, didn't you? But you forgot that the _Clipper_ left the next day, and I've been here two days waiting for you. You little thought when you deserted me and my children in New York that we would be here to confront you at Liverpool." "Come, come." said the policeman, "there's no use of this. I am afraid you will have to come with us, sir." They took him in charge, and the irate wife then turned like a tigress on the heavily veiled woman who was with him. "No wonder you are ashamed to show your face," she cried. "Come, come," said the policeman, "come, come." And they managed to induce her to say no more. "Madam," said young Montague to the speechless 'dragon,' "I want to ask your permission to allow me to carry Miss Fleming's hand-baggage ashore." "How dare you speak to me, sir?" she answered. "Because," he said, in a low voice, "I thought perhaps you wouldn't like an account of this affair to go to the Boston newspapers. I'm a newspaper man, you see," he added, with unblushing mendacity. Then, turning to Miss Fleming, he said, "Won't you allow me to carry this for you?" Miss Fleming surrendered the natty little handbag she had with her, and smiled. The "dragon" made no objection. A SOCIETY FOR THE REFORMATION OF POKER PLAYERS. "O Unseen Hand that ever makes and deals us, And plays our game! That now obscures and then to light reveals us, Serves blanks of fame How vain our shuffling, bluff and weak pretending! Tis Thou alone can name the final ending" The seductive game of poker is one that I do not understand. I do not care to understand it, because it cannot be played without the putting up of a good deal of the coin of the realm, and although I have nothing to say against betting, my own theory of conduct in the matter is this, that I want no man's money which I do not earn, and I do not want any man to get my money unless he earns it. So it happens, in the matter of cards, I content myself with eucre and other games which do not require the wagering of money. On board the Atlantic steamers there is always more or less gambling. I have heard it said that men make trips to and fro merely for the purpose of fleecing their fellow-passengers; but, except in one instance, I never had any experience with this sort of thing. Our little society for the reformation of poker players, or to speak more correctly, for the reformation of one particular poker player, was formed one bright starlight night, latitude such a number, and longitude something else, as four of us sat on a seat at the extreme rear end of the great steamer. We four, with one other, sat at a small table in the saloon. One of the small tables on a Transatlantic steamer is very pleasant if you have a nice crowd with you. A seat at a small table compares with a seat at the large table as living in a village compares with living in a city. You have some individuality at the short table; you are merely one of a crowd at the long table. Our small table was not quite full. I had the honour of sitting at the head of it, and on each side of me were two young fellows, making five altogether. We all rather prided ourselves on the fact that there were no ladies at our little table. The young Englishman who sat at my right hand at the corner of the table was going out to America to learn farming. I could, myself, have taught him a good deal about it, but I refrained from throwing cold water on his enthusiastic ideas about American agriculture. His notion was that it was an occupation mostly made up of hunting and fishing, and having a good time generally. The profits, he thought, were large and easily acquired. He had guns with him, and beautiful fishing-rods, and things of that sort. He even had a vague idea that he might be able to introduce fox-hunting in the rural district to which he was going. He understood, and regretted the fact, that we in the United States were rather behind-hand in the matter of fox-hunting. He had a good deal of money with him, I understood, and he had already paid a hundred pounds to a firm in England that had agreed to place him on a farm in America. Of course, now that the money had been paid, there was no use in telling the young man he had been a fool. He would find that out soon enough when he got to America. Henry Storm was his name, and a milder mannered man with a more unsuitable name could hardly be found. The first two or three days out he was the life of our party. We all liked him, in fact, nobody could help liking him; but, as the voyage progressed, he grew more and more melancholy, and, what was really serious, took little food, which is not natural in an Englishman. I thought somebody had been telling him what a fool he had been to pay away his hundred pounds before leaving England, but young Smith of Rochester, who sat at my left, told me what the trouble was one day as we walked the deck. "Do you know," he began, "that Henry Storm is being robbed?" "Being robbed?" I answered; "you mean he has been robbed." "Well, has been, and is being, too. The thing is going on yet. He is playing altogether too much poker in the smoking-room, and has lost a pile of money--more, I imagine, than he can well afford." "That's what's the trouble with him, is it? Well, he ought to know better than to play for bigger stakes than he can afford to lose." "Oh, it's easy to say that; but he's in the hands of a swindler, of a professional gambler. You see that man?" He lowered his voice as he spoke, and I looked in the direction of his glance. By this time we knew, in a way, everybody on board the ship. The particular man Smith pointed out was a fellow I had noticed a good deal, who was very quiet and gentlemanly, interfering with nobody, and talking with few. I had spoken to him once, but he had answered rather shortly, and, apparently to his relief, and certainly to my own, our acquaintance ceased where it began. He had jet black beard and hair, both rather closely clipped; and he wore a fore and aft cap, which never improves a man's appearance very much. "That man," continued Smith, as he passed us, "was practically under arrest for gambling on the steamer in which I came over. It seems that he is a regular professional gambler, who does nothing but go across the ocean and back again, fleecing young fellows like Storm." "Does he cheat?" I asked. "He doesn't need to. He plays poker. An old hand, and a cool one, has no occasion to cheat at that game to get a young one's money away from him." "Then why doesn't some one warn young Storm?" "Well, that's just what I wanted to speak to you about. I think it ought to be done. I think we should call a meeting of our table, somewhere out here in the quiet, and have a talk over it, and make up our mind what is to be done. It's a delicate matter, you know, and I am afraid we are a little late as it is. I do believe young Storm has lost nearly all his money to that fellow." "Can't he be made to disgorge?" "How? The money has been won fairly enough, as that sort of thing goes. Other fellows have played with them. It isn't as if he had been caught cheating--he hasn't, and won't be. He doesn't cheat--he doesn't need to, as I said before. Now that gambler pretends he is a commercial traveller from Buffalo. I know Buffalo down to the ground, so I took him aside yesterday and said plumply to him, 'What firm in Buffalo do you represent?' He answered shortly that his business was his own affair. I said, 'Certainly it is, and you are quite right in keeping it dark. When I was coming over to Europe, I saw a man in your line of business who looked very much like you, practically put under arrest by the purser for gambling. You were travelling for a St. Louis house then.'" "What did he say to that?" "Nothing; he just gave me one of those sly, sinister looks of his, turned on his heel, and left me." The result of this conversation was the inauguration of the Society for the Reforming of a Poker Player. It was agreed between us that if young Storm had lost all his money we would subscribe enough as a loan to take care of him until he got a remittance from home. Of course we knew that any young fellow who goes out to America to begin farming, does not, as a general rule, leave people in England exceedingly well off, and probably this fact, more than any other, accounted for the remorse visible on Storm's countenance. We knew quite well that the offering of money to him would be a very delicate matter, but it was agreed that Smith should take this in hand if we saw the offer was necessary. Then I, as the man who sat at the head of the table, was selected to speak to young Storm, and, if possible, get him to abandon poker. I knew this was a somewhat impudent piece of business on my part, and so I took that evening to determine how best to perform the task set for me. I resolved to walk the deck with him in the morning, and have a frank talk over the matter. When the morning came, I took young Storm's arm and walked two or three turns up and down the deck, but all the while I could not get up courage enough to speak with him in relation to gambling. When he left me, I again thought over the matter. I concluded to go into the smoking-room myself, sit down beside him, see him lose some money and use that fact as a test for my coming discourse on the evils of gambling. After luncheon I strolled into the smoking-room, and there sat this dark-faced man with his half-closed eyes opposite young Storm, while two others made up the four-handed game of poker. Storm's face was very pale, and his lips seemed dry, for he moistened them every now and then as the game went on. He was sitting on the sofa, and I sat down beside him, paying no heed to the dark gambler's look of annoyance. However, the alleged Buffalo man said nothing, for he was not a person who did much talking. Storm paid no attention to me as I sat down beside him. The gambler had just dealt. It was very interesting to see the way he looked at his hand. He allowed merely the edges of the cards to show over each other, and then closed up his hand and seemed to know just what he had. When young Storm looked at his hand he gave a sort of gasp, and for the first time cast his eyes upon me. I had seen his hand, but did not know whether it was a good one or not. I imagined it was not very good, because all the cards were of a low denomination. Threes or fours I think, but four of the cards had a like number of spots. There was some money in the centre of the table. Storm pushed a half-crown in front of him, and the next man did the same. The gambler put down a half-sovereign, and the man at his left, after a moment's hesitation, shoved out an equal amount from the pile of gold in front of him. Young Storm pushed out a sovereign. "I'm out," said the man whose next bet it was, throwing down his cards. The gambler raised it a sovereign, and the man at his left dropped out. It now rested between Storm and the gambler. Storm increased the bet a sovereign. The gambler then put on a five-pound note. Storm said to me huskily, "Have you any money?" "Yes," I answered him. "Lend me five pounds if you can." Now, the object of my being there was to stop gambling, not to encourage it. I was the president _pro tem_, of the Society for the Reformation of Poker Players, yet I dived into my pocket, pulled out my purse under the table and slipped a five-pound note into his hand. He put that on the table as if he had just taken it from his own pocket. "I call you," he said. "What have you got?" asked the gambler. "Four fours," said Storm, putting down his hand. The gambler closed up his and threw the cards over to the man who was to deal. Storm paused a moment and then pulled towards him the money in the centre of the table and handed me my five-pound note. When the cards were next dealt, Storm seemed to have rather an ordinary hand, so apparently had all the rest, and there was not much money in the pile. But, poor as Storm's hand was, the rest appeared to be poorer, and he raked in the cash. This went on for two or three deals, and finding that, as Storm was winning all the time, although not heavily, I was not getting an object lesson against gambling, I made a move to go. "Stay where you are," whispered Storm to me, pinching my knee with his hand so hard that I almost cried out. Then it came to the gambler's turn to deal again. All the time he deftly shuffled the cards he watched the players with that furtive glance of his from out his half-shut eyes. Storm's hand was a remarkable one, after he had drawn two cards, but I did not know whether it had any special value or not. The other players drew three cards each, and the gambler took one. "How much money have you got?" whispered Storm to me. "I don't know," I said, "perhaps a hundred pounds." "Be prepared to lend me every penny of it," he whispered. I said nothing; but I never knew the president of a society for the suppression of gambling to be in such a predicament. Storm bet a sovereign. The player to his left threw down his hand. The gambler pushed out two sovereigns. The other player went out. Storm said, "I see your bet, and raise you another sovereign." The gambler, without saying a word, shoved forward some more gold. "Get your money ready," whispered Storm to I did not quite like his tone, but I made allowance for the excitement under which he was evidently labouring. He threw on a five-pound note. The gambler put down another five-pound note, and then, as if it were the slightest thing possible, put a ten-pound note on top of that, which made the side players gasp. Storm had won sufficient to cover the bet and raise it. After that I had to feed in to him five-pound notes, keeping count of their number on my fingers as I did so. The first to begin to hesitate about putting money forward was the gambler. He shot a glance now and again from under his eyebrows at the young man opposite. Finally, when my last five-pound note had been thrown on the pile, the gambler spoke for the first time. "I call you," he said. "Put down another five-pound note," cried the young man. "I have called you," said the gambler. Henry Storm half rose from his seat in his excitement. "Put down another five-pound note, if you dare." "That isn't poker," said the gambler. "I have called you. What have you got?" "Put down another five-pound note, and I'll put a ten-pound note on top of it." "I say that isn't poker. You have been called. What have you got?" "I'll bet you twenty pounds against your five-pound note, if you dare put it down." By this time Storm was standing up, quivering with excitement, his cards tightly clenched in his hand. The gambler sat opposite him calm and imperturbable. "What have you got?" said Storm. "I called you," said the gambler, "show your hand." "Yes; but when I called you, you asked me what I had, and I told you. What have _you_ got?" "I am not afraid to show my hand," said the gambler, and he put down on the table four aces. "There's the king of hearts," said Storm, putting it down on the table. "There's the queen of hearts, there's the knave of hearts, there's the ten of hearts. Now," he cried, waving his other card in the air, "can you tell me what this card is?" "I am sure I don't know," answered the gambler, quietly, "probably the nine of hearts." "It _is_ the nine of hearts," shouted Storm, placing it down beside the others. The gambler quietly picked up the cards, and handed them to the man who was to deal. Storm's hands were trembling with excitement as he pulled the pile of bank notes and gold towards him. He counted out what I had given him, and passed it to me under the table. The rest he thrust into his pocket. "Come," I said, "it is time to go. Don't strain your luck." "Another five pounds," he whispered; "sit where you are." "Nonsense," I said, "another five pounds will certainly mean that you lose, everything you have won. Come away, I want to talk with you." "Another five pounds, I have sworn it." "Very well, I shall not stay here any longer." "No, no," he cried eagerly; "sit where you are, sit where you are." There was a grim thin smile on the lips of the gambler as this whispered conversation took place. When the next hand was dealt around and Storm looked at his cards, he gave another gasp of delight. I thought that a poker player should not be so free with his emotions; but of course I said nothing. When it came his time to bet, he planked down a five-pound note on the table. The other two, as was usual, put down their cards. They were evidently very timorous players. The gambler hesitated for a second, then he put a ten-pound note on Storm's five-pounds. Storm at once saw him, and raised him ten. The gambler hesitated longer this time, but at last he said, "I shall not bet. What have you got?" "Do you call me?" asked Storm. "Put up your money if you do." "No, I do not call you." Storm laughed and threw his cards face up on the table. "I have nothing," he said, "I have bluffed you for once." "It is very often done," answered the gambler, quietly, as Storm drew in his pile of money, stuffing it again in his coat pocket. "Your deal, Storm." "No, sir," said the young man, rising up; "I'll never touch a poker hand again. I have got my own money back and five or ten pounds over. I know when I've had enough." Although it was Storm's deal, the gambler had the pack of cards in his hand idly shuffling them to and fro. "I have often heard," he said slowly without raising his eyes, "that when one fool sits down beside another fool at poker, the player has the luck of two fools--but I never believed it before." THE MAN WHO WAS NOT ON THE PASSENGER LIST. "The well-sworn Lie, franked to the world with all The circumstance of proof, Cringes abashed, and sneaks along the wall At the first sight of Truth." The _Gibrontus_ of the Hot Cross Bun Line was at one time the best ship of that justly celebrated fleet. All steamships have, of course, their turn at the head of the fleet until a better boat is built, but the _Gibrontus_ is even now a reasonably fast and popular boat. An accident happened on board the _Gibrontus_ some years ago which was of small importance to the general public, but of some moment to Richard Keeling--for it killed him. The poor man got only a line or two in the papers when the steamer arrived at New York, and then they spelled his name wrong. It had happened something like this: Keeling was wandering around very late at night, when he should have been in his bunk, and he stepped on a dark place that he thought was solid. As it happened, there was nothing between him and the bottom of the hold but space. They buried Keeling at sea, and the officers knew absolutely nothing about the matter when inquisitive passengers, hearing rumours, questioned them. This state of things very often exists both on sea and land, as far as officials are concerned. Mrs. Keeling, who had been left in England while her husband went to America to make his fortune, and tumbled down a hole instead, felt aggrieved at the company. The company said that Keeling had no business to be nosing around dark places on the deck at that time of night, and doubtless their contention was just. Mrs. Keeling, on the other hand, held that a steamer had no right to have such mantraps open at any time, night or day, without having them properly guarded, and in that she was also probably correct. The company was very sorry, of course, that the thing had occurred; but they refused to pay for Keeling unless compelled to do so by the law of the land, and there matters stood. No one can tell what the law of the land will do when it is put in motion, although many people thought that if Mrs. Keeling had brought a suit against the Hot Cross Bun Company she would have won it. But Mrs. Keeling was a poor woman, and you have to put a penny in the slot when you want the figures of justice to work, so the unfortunate creature signed something which the lawyer of the company had written out, and accepted the few pounds which Keeling had paid for Room 18 on the _Gibrontus_. It would seem that this ought to have settled the matter, for the lawyer told Mrs. Keeling he thought the company acted very generously in refunding the passage money; but it didn't settle the matter. Within a year from that time, the company voluntarily paid Mrs. Keeling £2100 for her husband. Now that the occurrence is called to your mind, you will perhaps remember the editorial one of the leading London dailies had on the extraordinary circumstance, in which it was very ably shown that the old saying about corporations having no souls to be condemned or bodies to be kicked did not apply in these days of commercial honour and integrity. It was a very touching editorial, and it caused tears to be shed on the Stock Exchange, the members having had no idea, before reading it, that they were so noble and generous. How, then, was it that the Hot Cross Bun Company did this commendable act when their lawyer took such pains to clear them of all legal liability? The purser of the _Gibrontus_, who is now old and superannuated, could probably tell you if he liked. When the negotiations with Mrs. Keeling had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the lawyer of the company, and when that gentleman was rubbing his hands over his easy victory, the good ship _Gibrontus_ was steaming out of the Mersey on her way to New York. The stewards in the grand saloon were busy getting things in order for dinner, when a wan and gaunt passenger spoke to one of them. "Where have you placed me at table?" he asked. "What name, sir?" asked the steward. "Keeling." The steward looked along the main tables, up one side and down the other, reading the cards, but nowhere did he find the name he was in search of. Then he looked at the small tables, but also without success. "How do you spell it, sir?" he asked the patient passenger. "K-double-e-l-i-n-g." "Thank you, sir." Then he looked up and down the four rows of names on the passenger list he held in his hand, but finally shook his head. "I can't find your name on the passenger list," he said. "I'll speak to the purser, sir." "I wish you would," replied the passenger in a listless way, as if he had not much interest in the matter. The passenger, whose name was not on the list, waited until the steward returned. "Would you mind stepping into the purser's room for a moment, sir? I'll show you the way, sir." When the passenger was shown into the purser's room that official said to him, in the urbane manner of pursers-- "Might I look at your ticket, sir?" The passenger pulled a long pocket-book from the inside of his coat, opened it, and handed the purser the document it contained. The purser scrutinized it sharply, and then referred to a list he had on the desk before him. "This is very strange," he said at last. "I never knew such a thing to occur before, although, of course, it is always possible. The people on shore have in some unaccountable manner left your name out of my list. I am sorry you have been put to any inconvenience, sir." "There has been no inconvenience so far," said the passenger, "and I trust there will be none. You find the ticket regular, I presume?" "Quite so--quite so," replied the purser. Then, to the waiting steward, "Give Mr. Keeling any place he prefers at the table which is not already taken. You have Room 18." "That was what I bought at Liverpool." "Well, I see you have the room to yourself, and I hope you will find it comfortable. Have you ever crossed with us before, sir? I seem to recollect your face." "I have never been in America." "Ah! I see so many faces, of course, that I sometimes fancy I know a man when I don't. Well, I hope you will have a pleasant voyage, sir." "Thank you." No. 18 was not a popular passenger. People seemed instinctively to shrink from him, although it must be admitted that he made no advances. All went well until the _Gibrontus_ was about half-way over. One forenoon the chief officer entered the captain's room with a pale face, and, shutting the door after him, said-- "I am very sorry to have to report, sir, that one of the passengers has fallen into the hold." "Good heavens!" cried the captain. "Is he hurt?" "He is killed, sir." The captain stared aghast at his subordinate. "How did it happen? I gave the strictest orders those places were on no account to be left unguarded." Although the company had held to Mrs. Keeling that the captain was not to blame, their talk with that gentleman was of an entirely different tone. "That is the strange part of it, sir. The hatch has not been opened this voyage, sir, and was securely bolted down." "Nonsense! Nobody will believe such a story! Some one has been careless! Ask the purser to come here, please." When the purser saw the body, he recollected, and came as near fainting as a purser can. They dropped Keeling overboard in the night, and the whole affair was managed so quietly that nobody suspected anything, and, what is the most incredible thing in this story, the New York papers did not have a word about it. What the Liverpool office said about the matter nobody knows, but it must have stirred up something like a breeze in that strictly business locality. It is likely they pooh-poohed the whole affair, for, strange to say, when the purser tried to corroborate the story with the dead man's ticket the document was nowhere to be found. The _Gibrontus_ started out on her next voyage from Liverpool with all her colours flying, but some of her officers had a vague feeling of unrest within them which reminded them of the time they first sailed on the heaving seas. The purser was seated in his room, busy, as pursers always are at the beginning of a voyage, when there was a rap at the door. "Come in!" shouted the important official, and there entered unto him a stranger, who said--"Are you the purser?" "Yes, sir. What can I do for you?" "I have room No. 18." "What!" cried the purser, with a gasp, almost jumping from his chair. Then he looked at the robust man before him, and sank back with a sigh of relief. It was not Keeling. "I have room No. 18," continued the passenger, "and the arrangement I made with your people in Liverpool was that I was to have the room to myself. I do a great deal of shipping over your--" "Yes, my dear sir," said the purser, after having looked rapidly over his list, "you have No. 18 to yourself." "So I told the man who is unpacking his luggage there; but he showed me his ticket, and it was issued before mine. I can't quite understand why your people should--" "What kind of a looking man is he?" "A thin, unhealthy, cadaverous man, who doesn't look as if he would last till the voyage ends. I don't want _him_ for a room mate, if I have to have one. I think you ought--" "I will, sir. I will make it all right. I suppose, if it should happen that a mistake has been made, and he has the prior claim to the room, you would not mind taking No. 24--it is a larger and better room." "That will suit me exactly." So the purser locked his door and went down to No. 18. "Well?" he said to its occupant. "Well," answered Mr. Keeling, looking up at him with his cold and fishy eyes. "You're here again, are you?" "I'm here again, and I _will_ be here again. And again and again, and again and again." "Now, what the--" Then the purser hesitated a moment, and thought perhaps he had better not swear, with that icy, clammy gaze fixed upon him. "What object have you in all this?" "Object? The very simple one of making your company live up to its contract. From Liverpool to New York, my ticket reads. I paid for being landed in the United States, not for being dumped overboard in mid-ocean. Do you think you can take me over? You have had two tries at it and have not succeeded. Yours is a big and powerful company too." "If you know we can't do it, then why do you--?" The purser hesitated. "Pester you with my presence?" suggested Mr. Keeling. "Because I want you to do justice. Two thousand pounds is the price, and I will raise it one hundred pounds every trip." This time the New York papers got hold of the incident, but not of its peculiar features. They spoke of the extraordinary carelessness of the officers in allowing practically the same accident to occur twice on the same boat. When the _Gibrontus_ reached Liverpool all the officers, from the captain down, sent in their resignations. Most of the sailors did not take the trouble to resign, but cut for it. The managing director was annoyed at the newspaper comments, but laughed at the rest of the story. He was invited to come over and interview Keeling for his own satisfaction, most of the officers promising to remain on the ship if he did so. He took Room 18 himself. What happened I do not know, for the purser refused to sail again on the _Gibrontus_, and was given another ship. But this much is certain. When the managing director got back, the company generously paid Mrs. Keeling £2100. THE TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF PLODKINS. "Which--life or death? Tis a gambler's chance! Yet, unconcerned, we spin and dance, On the brittle thread of circumstance." I understand that Plodkins is in the habit of referring sceptical listeners to me, and telling them that I will substantiate every word of his story. Now this is hardly fair of Plodkins. I can certainly corroborate part of what he says, and I can bear witness to the condition in which I found him after his ordeal was over. So I have thought it best, in order to set myself right with the public, to put down exactly what occurred. If I were asked whether or not I believe Plodkins' story myself, I would have to answer that sometimes I believe it, and sometimes I do not. Of course Plodkins will be offended when he reads this, but there are other things that I have to say about him which will perhaps enrage him still more; still they are the truth. For instance, Plodkins can hardly deny, and yet probably he will deny, that he was one of the most talented drinkers in America. I venture to say that every time he set foot in Liverpool coming East, or in New York going West, he was just on the verge of delirium tremens, because, being necessarily idle during the voyage, he did little else but drink and smoke. I never knew a man who could take so much liquor and show such small results. The fact was, that in the morning Plodkins was never at his best, because he was nearer sober then than at any other part of the day; but, after dinner, a more entertaining, genial, generous, kind-hearted man than Hiram Plodkins could not be found anywhere. I want to speak of Plodkins' story with the calm, dispassionate manner of a judge, rather than with the partisanship of a favourable witness; and although my allusion to Plodkins' habits of intoxication may seem to him defamatory in character, and unnecessary, yet I mention them only to show that something terrible must have occurred in the bath-room to make him stop short. The extraordinary thing is, from that day to this Plodkins has not touched a drop of intoxicating liquor, which fact in itself strikes me as more wonderful than the story he tells. Plodkins was a frequent crosser on the Atlantic steamers. He was connected with commercial houses on both sides of the ocean; selling in America for an English house, and buying in England for an American establishment. I presume it was his experiences in selling goods that led to his terrible habits of drinking. I understood from him that out West, if you are selling goods you have to do a great deal of treating, and every time you treat another man to a glass of wine, or a whiskey cocktail, you have, of course, to drink with him. But this has nothing to do with Plodkins' story. On an Atlantic liner, when there is a large list of passengers, especially of English passengers, it is difficult to get a convenient hour in the morning at which to take a bath. This being the case, the purser usually takes down the names of applicants and assigns each a particular hour. Your hour may be, say seven o'clock in the morning. The next man comes on at half-past seven, and the third man at eight, and so on. The bedroom steward raps at your door when the proper time arrives, and informs you that the bath is ready. You wrap a dressing-gown or a cloak around you, and go along the silent corridors to the bath-room, coming back, generally before your half hour is up, like a giant refreshed. Plodkins' bath hour was seven o'clock in the morning. Mine was half-past seven. On the particular morning in question the steward did not call me, and I thought he had forgotten, so I passed along the dark corridor and tried the bath-room door. I found it unbolted, and as everything was quiet inside, I entered. I thought nobody was there, so I shoved the bolt in the door, and went over to see if the water had been turned on. The light was a little dim even at that time of the morning, and I must say I was horror-stricken to see, lying in the bottom of the bath-tub, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, Plodkins. I am quite willing to admit that I was never so startled in my life. I thought at first Plodkins was dead, notwithstanding his open eyes staring at the ceiling; but he murmured, in a sort of husky far-away whisper, "Thank God," and then closed his eyes. "What's the matter, Plodkins?" I said. "Are you ill? What's the matter with you? Shall I call for help?" There was a feeble negative motion of the head. Then he said, in a whisper, "Is the door bolted?" "Yes," I answered. After another moment's pause, I said-- "Shall I ring, and get you some whiskey or brandy?" Again he shook his head. "Help me to get up," he said feebly. He was very much shaken, and I had some trouble in getting him on his feet, and seating him on the one chair in the room. "You had better come to my state-room," I said; "it is nearer than yours. What has happened to you?" He replied, "I will go in a moment. Wait a minute." And I waited. "Now," he continued, when he had apparently pulled himself together a bit, "just turn on the electric light, will you?" I reached up to the peg of the electric light and turned it on. A shudder passed over Plodkins' frame, but he said nothing. He seemed puzzled, and once more I asked him to let me take him to my stateroom, but he shook his head. "Turn on the water." I did so. "Turn out the electric light." I did that also. "Now," he added, "put your hand in the water and turn on the electric light." I was convinced Plodkins had become insane, but I recollected I was there alone with him, shaky as he was, in a room with a bolted door, so I put my fingers in the water and attempted to turn on the electric light. I got a shock that was very much greater than that which I received when I saw Plodkins lying at the bottom of the bath-tub. I gave a yell and a groan, and staggered backwards. Then Plodkins laughed a feeble laugh. "Now," he said, "I will go with you to your state-room." The laugh seemed to have braced up Plodkins like a glass of liquor would have done, and when we got to my state-room he was able to tell me what had happened. As a sort of preface to his remarks, I would like to say a word or two about that bath-tub. It was similar to bath-tubs on board other steamers; a great and very deep receptacle of solid marble. There were different nickel-plated taps for letting in hot or cold water, or fresh water or salt water as was desired; and the escape-pipe instead of being at the end, as it is in most bath-tubs, was in the centre. It was the custom of the bath-room steward to fill it about half full of water at whatever temperature you desired. Then, placing a couple of towels on the rack, he would go and call the man whose hour it was to bathe. Plodkins said, "When I went in there everything appeared as usual, except that the morning was very dark. I stood in the bath-tub, the water coming nearly to my knees, and reached up to turn on the electric light. The moment I touched the brass key I received a shock that simply paralyzed me. I think liquor has something to do with the awful effect the electricity had upon me, because I had taken too much the night before, and was feeling very shaky indeed; but the result was that I simply fell full length in the bath-tub just as you found me. I was unable to move anything except my fingers and toes. I did not appear to be hurt in the least, and my senses, instead of being dulled by the shock, seemed to be preternaturally sharp, and I realized in a moment that if this inability to move remained with me for five minutes I was a dead man--dead, not from the shock, but by drowning. I gazed up through that clear green water, and I could see the ripples on the surface slowly subsiding after my plunge into the tub. It reminded me of looking into an aquarium. You know how you see up through the water to the surface with the bubbles rising to the top. I knew that nobody would come in for at least half an hour, and even then I couldn't remember whether I had bolted the door or not. Sometimes I bolt it, and sometimes I don't. I didn't this morning, as it happens. All the time I felt that strength was slowly returning to me, for I continually worked my fingers and toes, and now feeling seemed to be coming up to my wrists and arms. Then I remembered that the vent was in the middle of the bath-tub; so, wriggling my fingers around, I got hold of the ring, and pulled up the plug. In the dense silence that was around me, I could not tell whether the water was running out or not; but gazing up towards the ceiling I thought I saw the surface gradually sinking down and down and down. Of course it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, but it seemed to be years and years and years. I knew that if once I let my breath go I would be drowned, merely by the spasmodic action of my lungs trying to recover air. I felt as if I should burst. It was a match against time, with life or death as the stake. At first, as I said, my senses were abnormally sharp, but, by and by, I began to notice that they were wavering. I thought the glassy surface of the water, which I could see above me, was in reality a great sheet of crystal that somebody was pressing down upon me, and I began to think that the moment it reached my face I would smother. I tried to struggle, but was held with a grip of steel. Finally, this slab of crystal came down to my nose, and seemed to split apart. I could hold on no longer, and with a mighty expiration blew the water up towards the ceiling, and drew in a frightful smothering breath of salt water, that I blew in turn upwards, and the next breath I took in had some air with the water. I felt the water tickling the corners of my mouth, and receding slower and slower down my face and neck. Then I think I must have become insensible until just before you entered the room. Of course there is something wrong with the electric fittings, and there is a leak of electricity; but I think liquor is at the bottom of all this. I don't believe it would have affected me like this if I had not been soaked in whiskey." "If I were you," I said, "I would leave whiskey alone." "I intend to," he answered solemnly, "and baths too." A CASE OF FEVER. "O, underneath the blood red sun, No bloodier deed was ever done! Nor fiercer retribution sought The hand that first red ruin wrought." This is the doctor's story-- The doctors on board the Atlantic liners are usually young men. They are good-looking and entertaining as well, and generally they can play the violin or some other instrument that is of great use at the inevitable concert which takes place about the middle of the Atlantic. They are urbane, polite young men, and they chat pleasantly and nicely to the ladies on board. I believe that the doctor on the Transatlantic steamer has to be there on account of the steerage passengers. Of course the doctor goes to the steerage; but I imagine, as a general thing, he does not spend any more time there than the rules of the service compel him to. The ladies, at least, would be unanimous in saying that the doctor is one of the most charming officials on board the ship. This doctor, who tells the story I am about to relate, was not like the usual Atlantic physician. He was older than the average, and, to judge by his somewhat haggard, rugged face, had seen hard times and rough usage in different parts of the world. Why he came to settle down on an Atlantic steamer--a berth which is a starting-point rather than a terminus--I have no means of knowing. He never told us; but there he was, and one night, as he smoked his pipe with us in the smoking-room, we closed the door, and compelled him to tell us a story. As a preliminary, he took out of his inside pocket a book, from which he selected a slip of creased paper, which had been there so long that it was rather the worse for wear, and had to be tenderly handled. "As a beginning," said the doctor, "I will read you what this slip of paper says. It is an extract from one of the United States Government Reports in the Indian department, and it relates to a case of fever, which caused the death of the celebrated Indian chief Wolf Tusk. "I am not sure that I am doing quite right in telling this story. There may be some risk for myself in relating it, and I don't know exactly what the United States Government might have in store for me if the truth came to be known. In fact, I am not able to say whether I acted rightly or wrongly in the matter I have to tell you about. You shall be the best judges of that. There is no question but Wolf Tusk was an old monster, and there is no question either that the men who dealt with him had been grievously--but, then, there is no use in my giving you too many preliminaries; each one will say for himself whether he would have acted as I did or not. I will make my excuses at the end of the story." Then he read the slip of paper. I have not a copy of it, and have to quote from memory. It was the report of the physician who saw Wolf Tusk die, and it went on to say that about nine o'clock in the morning a heavy and unusual fever set in on that chief. He had been wounded in the battle of the day before, when he was captured, and the fever attacked all parts of his body. Although the doctor had made every effort in his power to relieve the Indian, nothing could stop the ravages of the fever. At four o'clock in the afternoon, having been in great pain, and, during the latter part, delirious, he died, and was buried near the spot where he had taken ill. This was signed by the doctor. "What I have read you," said the physician, folding up the paper again, and placing it in his pocket-book, "is strictly and accurately true, otherwise, of course, I would not have so reported to the Government. Wolf Tusk was the chief of a band of irreconcilables, who were now in one part of the West and now in another, giving a great deal of trouble to the authorities. Wolf Tusk and his band had splendid horses, and they never attacked a force that outnumbered their own. In fact, they never attacked anything where the chances were not twenty to one in their favour, but that, of course, is Indian warfare; and in this, Wolf Tusk was no different from his fellows. "On one occasion Wolf Tusk and his band swooped down on a settlement where they knew that all the defenders were away, and no one but women and children were left to meet them. Here one of the most atrocious massacres of the West took place. Every woman and child in the settlement was killed under circumstances of inconceivable brutality. The buildings, such as they were, were burnt down, and, when the men returned, they found nothing but heaps of smouldering ruin. "Wolf Tusk and his band, knowing there would be trouble about this, had made for the broken ground where they could so well defend themselves. The alarm, however, was speedily given, and a company of cavalry from the nearest fort started in hot pursuit. "I was the physician who accompanied the troops. The men whose families had been massacred, and who were all mounted on swift horses, begged permission to go with the soldiers, and that permission was granted, because it was known that their leader would take them after Wolf Tusk on his own account, and it was thought better to have every one engaged in the pursuit under the direct command of the chief officer. "He divided his troop into three parts, one following slowly after Wolf Tusk, and the other two taking roundabout ways to head off the savages from the broken ground and foothills from which no number of United States troops could have dislodged them. These flanking parties were partly successful. They did not succeed in heading off the Indians entirely, but one succeeded in changing their course, and throwing the Indians unexpectedly into the way of the other flanking party, when a sharp battle took place, and, during its progress, we in the rear came up. When the Indians saw our reinforcing party come towards them each man broke away for himself and made for the wilderness. Wolf Tusk, who had been wounded, and had his horse shot under him, did not succeed in escaping. The two flanking parties now having reunited with the main body, it was decided to keep the Indians on the run for a day or two at least, and so a question arose as to the disposal of the wounded chief. He could not be taken with the fighting party; there were no soldiers to spare to take him back, and so the leader of the settlers said that as they had had enough of war, they would convey him to the fort. Why the commander allowed this to be done, I do not know. He must have realized the feelings of the settlers towards the man who massacred their wives and children. However, the request of the settlers was acceded to, and I was ordered back also, as I had been slightly wounded. You can see the mark here on my cheek, nothing serious; but the commander thought I had better get back into the fort, as he was certain there would be no more need of my services. The Indians were on the run, and would make no further stand. "It was about three days' march from where the engagement had taken place to the fort. Wolf Tusk was given one of the captured Indian horses. I attended to the wound in his leg, and he was strapped on the horse, so that there could be no possibility of his escaping. "We camped the first night in a little belt of timber that bordered a small stream, now nearly dry. In the morning I was somewhat rudely awakened, and found myself tied hand and foot, with two or three of the settlers standing over me. They helped me to my feet, then half carried and half led me to a tree, where they tied me securely to the trunk. "'What are you going to do? What is the meaning of this?' I said to them in astonishment. "'Nothing,' was the answer of the leader; 'that is, nothing, if you will sign a certain medical report which is to go to the Government. You will see, from where you are, everything that is going to happen, and we expect you to report truthfully; but we will take the liberty of writing the report for you. "Then I noticed that Wolf Tusk was tied to a tree in a manner similar to myself, and around him had been collected a quantity of firewood. This firewood, was not piled up to his feet, but formed a circle at some distance from him, so that the Indian would be slowly roasted. "There is no use in my describing what took place. When I tell you that they lit the fire at nine o'clock, and that it was not until four in the afternoon that Wolf Tusk died, you will understand the peculiar horror of it. "'Now,' said the leader to me when everything was over,' here is the report I have written out,' and he read to me the report which I have read to you. "'This dead villain has murdered our wives and our children. If I could have made his torture last for two weeks I would have done so. You have made every effort to save him by trying to break loose, and you have not succeeded. We are not going to harm you, even though you refuse to sign this report. You cannot bring him to life again, thank God, and all you can do is to put more trouble on the heads of men who have already, through red devils like this, had more trouble than they can well stand and keep sane. Will you sign the report?' "I said I would, and I did." HOW THE CAPTAIN GOT HIS STEAMER OUT. "On his own perticular well-wrought row, That he's straddled for ages-- Learnt its lay and its gages-- His style may seem queer, but permit him to know, The likeliest, sprightliest, manner to hoe." "There is nothing more certain than that some day we may have to record a terrible disaster directly traceable to ocean racing. "The vivid account which one of our reporters gives in another column of how the captain of the _Arrowic_ went blundering across the bar yesterday in one of the densest fogs of the season is very interesting reading. Of course the account does not pretend to be anything more than imaginary, for, until the _Arrowic_ reaches Queenstown, if she ever does under her present captain, no one can tell how much of luck was mixed with the recklessness which took this steamer out into the Atlantic in the midst of the thickest fog we have had this year. All that can be known at present is, that, when the fog lifted, the splendid steamer _Dartonia_ was lying at anchor in the bay, having missed the tide, while the _Arrowic_ was nowhere to be seen. If the fog was too thick for the _Dartonia_ to cross the bar, how, then, did the captain of the _Arrowic_ get his boat out? The captain of the _Arrowic_ should be taught to remember that there are other things to be thought of beside the defeating of a rival steamer. He should be made to understand that he has under his charge a steamer worth a million and a half of dollars, and a cargo probably nearly as valuable. Still, he might have lost his ship and cargo, and we would have had no word to say. That concerns the steamship company and the owners of the cargo; but he had also in his care nearly a thousand human lives, and these he should not be allowed to juggle with in order to beat all the rival steamers in the world." The above editorial is taken from the columns of the New York _Daily Mentor_. The substance of it had been cabled across to London and it made pleasant reading for the captain of the _Arrowic_ at Queenstown. The captain didn't say anything about it; he was not a talkative man. Probably he explained to his chief, if the captain of an ocean liner can possibly have a chief, how he got his vessel out of New York harbour in a fog; but, if he did, the explanation was never made public, and so here's an account of it published for the first time, and it may give a pointer to the captain of the rival liner _Dartonia_. I may say, however, that the purser was not as silent as the captain. He was very indignant at what he called the outrage of the New York paper, and said a great many unjustifiable things about newspaper men. He knew I was a newspaper man myself, and probably that is the reason he launched his maledictions against the fraternity at my head. "Just listen to that wretched penny-a-liner," he said, rapping savagely on the paper with the back of his hand. I intimated mildly that they paid more than a penny a line for newspaper work in New York, but he said that wasn't the point. In fact the purser was too angry to argue calmly. He was angry the whole way from Queenstown to Liverpool. "Here," he said, "is some young fellow, who probably never saw the inside of a ship in his life, and yet he thinks he can tell the captain of a great ocean liner what should be done and what shouldn't. Just think of the cheek of it." "I don't see any cheek in it," I said, as soothingly as possible. "You don't mean to pretend to argue, at this time of day that a newspaper man does _not_ know how to conduct every other business as well as his own." But the purser did make that very contention, although of course he must be excused, for, as I said, he was not in a good temper. "Newspaper men," he continued, "act as if they did know everything. They pretend in their papers that every man thinks he knows how to run a newspaper or a hotel. But look at their own case. See the advice they give to statesmen. See how they would govern Germany, or England, or any other country under the sun. Does a big bank get into trouble, the newspaper man at once informs the financiers how they should have conducted their business. Is there a great railway smash-up, the newspaper man shows exactly how it could have been avoided if he had had the management of the railway. Is there a big strike, the newspaper man steps in. He tells both sides what they should do. If every man thinks he can run a hotel, or a newspaper--and I am sure most men could run a newspaper as well as the newspapers are conducted now--the conceit of the ordinary man is nothing to the conceit of the newspaper man. He not only thinks he can run a newspaper and a hotel, but every other business under the sun." "And how do you know he can't," I asked. But the purser would not listen to reason. He contended that a captain who had crossed the ocean hundreds of times and for years and years had worked his way up, had just as big a sense of responsibility for his passengers and his ship and his cargo as any newspaper man in New York could have, and this palpably absurd contention he maintained all the way to Liverpool. When a great ocean racer is making ready to put out to sea, there can hardly be imagined a more bustling scene than that which presents itself on the deck and on the wharf. There is the rush of passengers, the banging about of luggage, the hurrying to and fro on the decks, the roar of escaping steam, the working of immense steam cranes hoisting and lowering great bales of merchandise and luggage from the wharf to the hold, and here and there in quiet corners, away from the rush, are tearful people bidding good-bye to one another. The _Arrowic_ and the _Dartonia_ left on the same day and within the same hour, from wharfs that were almost adjoining each other. We on board the _Arrowic_ could see the same bustle and stir on board the _Dartonia_ that we ourselves were in the midst of. The _Dartonia_ was timed to leave about half an hour ahead of us, and we heard the frantic ringing of her last bell warning everybody to get on shore who were not going to cross the ocean. Then the great steamer backed slowly out from her wharf. Of course all of us who were going on the _Arrowic_ were warm champions of that ship as the crack ocean racer; but, as the _Dartonia_ moved backwards with slow stately majesty, all her colours flying, and her decks black with passengers crowding to the rail and gazing towards us, we could not deny that she was a splendid vessel, and "even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear a cheer." Once out in the stream her twin screws enabled her to turn around almost without the help of tugs, and just as our last bell was ringing she moved off down the bay. Then we backed slowly out in the same fashion, and, although we had not the advantage of seeing ourselves, we saw a great sight on the wharf, which was covered with people, ringing with cheers, and white with the flutter of handkerchiefs. As we headed down stream the day began to get rather thick. It had been gloomy all morning, and by the time we reached the Statue of Liberty it was so foggy that one could hardly see three boats' length ahead or behind. All eyes were strained to catch a glimpse of the _Dartonia_, but nothing of her was visible. Shortly after, the fog came down in earnest and blotted out everything. There was a strong wind blowing, and the vapour, which was cold and piercing, swept the deck with dripping moisture. Then we came to a standstill. The ship's bell was rung continually forward and somebody was whanging on the gong towards the stern. Everybody knew that, if this sort of thing lasted long, we would not get over the bar that tide, and consequently everybody felt annoyed, for this delay would lengthen the trip, and people, as a general thing, do not take passage on an ocean racer with the idea of getting in a day late. Suddenly the fog lifted clear from shore to shore. Then we saw something that was not calculated to put our minds at ease. A big three-masted vessel, with full sail, dashed past us only a very few yards behind the stern of the mammoth steamer. "Look at that blundering idiot," said the purser to me, "rushing full speed over crowded New York Bay in a fog as thick as pea-soup. A captain who would do a thing like that ought to be hanged." Before the fog settled down again we saw the _Dartonia_ with her anchor chain out a few hundred yards to our left, and, farther on, one of the big German steamers, also at anchor. In the short time that the fog was lifted our own vessel made some progress towards the bar. Then the thickness came down again. A nautical passenger, who had crossed many times, came aft to where I was standing, and said-- "Do you notice what the captain is trying to do?" "Well," I answered, "I don't see how anybody can do anything in weather like this." "There is a strong wind blowing," continued the nautical passenger, "and the fog is liable to lift for a few minutes at a time. If it lifts often enough our captain is going to get us over the bar. It will be rather a sharp bit of work if he succeeds. You notice that the _Dartonia_ has thrown out her anchor. She is evidently going to wait where she is until the fog clears away entirely." So with that we two went forward to see what was being done. The captain stood on the bridge and beside him the pilot, but the fog was now so thick we could hardly see them, although we stood close by, on the piece of deck in front of the wheelhouse. The almost incessant clanging of the bell was kept up, and in the pauses we heard answering bells from different points in the thick fog. Then, for a second time, and with equal suddenness, the fog lifted ahead of us. Behind we could not see either the _Dartonia_ or the German steamer. Our own boat, however, went full speed ahead and kept up the pace till the fog shut down again. The captain now, in pacing the bridge, had his chronometer in his hand, and those of us who were at the front frequently looked at our watches, for of course the nautical passenger knew just how late it was possible for us to cross the bar. "I am afraid," said the passenger, "he is not going to succeed." But, as he said this, the fog lifted for the third time, and again the mammoth steamer forged ahead. "If this clearance will only last for ten minutes," said the nautical passenger, "we are all right." But the fog, as if it had heard him, closed down on us again damper and thicker than ever. "We are just at the bar," said the nautical passenger, "and if this doesn't clear up pretty soon the vessel will have to go back." The captain kept his eyes fixed on the chronometer in his hand. The pilot tried to peer ahead, but everything was a thick white blank. "Ten minutes more and it is too late," said the nautical passenger. There was a sudden rift in the fog that gave a moment's hope, but it closed down again. A minute afterwards, with a suddenness that was strange, the whole blue ocean lay before us. Then full steam ahead. The fog still was thick behind us in New York Bay. We saw it far ahead coming in from the ocean. All at once the captain closed his chronometer with a snap. We were over the bar and into the Atlantic, and that is how the captain got the _Arrowic_ out of New York Bay. MY STOWAWAY. "Ye can play yer jokes on Nature, An' play 'em slick, She'll grin a grin, but, landsakes, friend, Look out fer the kick!" One night about eleven o'clock I stood at the stern of that fine Atlantic steamship, the _City of Venice,_ which was ploughing its way through the darkness towards America. I leaned on the rounded bulwark and enjoyed a smoke as I gazed on the luminous trail the wheel was making in the quiet sea. Some one touched me on the shoulder, saying, "Beg pardon, sir;" and, on straightening up, I saw in the dim light a man whom at first I took to be one of the steerage passengers. I thought he wanted to get past me, for the room was rather restricted in the passage between the aft wheelhouse and the stern, and I moved aside. The man looked hurriedly to one side and then the other and, approaching, said in a whisper, "I'm starving, sir!" "Why don't you go and get something to eat, then? Don't they give you plenty forward?" "I suppose they do, sir; but I'm a stowaway. I got on at Liverpool. What little I took with me is gone, and for two days I've had nothing." "Come with me. I'll take you to the steward, he'll fix you all right." "Oh, no, no, no," he cried, trembling with excitement. "If you speak to any of the officers or crew I'm lost. I assure you, sir, I'm an honest man, I am indeed, sir. It's the old story--nothing but starvation at home, so my only chance seemed to be to get this way to America. If I'm caught I shall get dreadful usage and will be taken back and put in jail." "Oh, you're mistaken. The officers are all courteous gentlemen." "Yes, to you cabin passengers they are. But to a stowaway--that's a different matter. If you can't help me, sir, please don't inform on me." "How can I help you but by speaking to the captain or purser?" "Get me a morsel to eat." "Where were you hid?" "Right here, sir, in this place," and he put his hand on the square deck-edifice beside us. This seemed to be a spare wheel-house, used if anything went wrong with the one in front. It had a door on each side and there were windows all round it. At present it was piled full of cane folding steamer chairs and other odds and ends. "I crawl in between the chairs and the wall and get under that piece of tarpaulin." "Well, you're sure of being caught, for the first fine day all these chairs will be taken out and the deck steward can't miss you." The man sighed as I said this and admitted the chances were much against him. Then, starting up, he cried, "Poverty is the great crime. If I had stolen some one else's money I would have been able to take cabin passage instead of--" "If you weren't caught." "Well, if I were caught, what then? I would be well fed and taken care of." "Oh, they'd take _care_ of you." "The waste food in this great ship would feed a hundred hungry wretches like me. Does my presence keep the steamer back a moment of time? No. Well, who is harmed by my trying to better myself in a new world? No one. I am begging for a crust from the lavish plenty, all because I am struggling to be honest. It is only when I become a thief that I am out of danger of starvation--caught or free." "There, there; now, don't speak so loud or you'll have some one here. You hang round and I'll bring you some provender. What would you like to have? Poached eggs on toast, roast turkey, or--" The wretch sank down at my feet as I said this, and, recognising the cruelty of it, I hurried down into the saloon and hunted up a steward who had not yet turned in. "Steward," I said, "can you get me a few sandwiches or anything to eat at this late hour?" "Yessir, certainly, sir; beef or 'am, sir?" "Both, and a cup of coffee, please." "Well, sir, I'm afraid there's no coffee, sir; but I could make you a pot of tea in a moment, sir." "All right, and bring them to my room, please?" "Yessir." In a very short time there was that faint steward rap at the state-room door and a most appetising tray-load was respectfully placed at my service. When the waiter had gone I hurried up the companion-way with much the air of a man who is stealing fowls, and I found my stowaway just in the position I had left him. "Now, pitch in," I said. "I'll stand guard forward here, and, if you hear me cough, strike for cover. I'll explain the tray matter if it's found." He simply said, "Thank you, sir," and I went forward. When I came back the tray had been swept clean and the teapot emptied. My stowaway was making for his den when I said, "How about to-morrow?" He answered, "This'll do me for a couple of days." "Nonsense. I'll have a square meal for you here in the corner of this wheel-house, so that you can get at it without trouble. I'll leave it about this time to-morrow night." "You won't tell any one, any one at all, sir?" "No. At least, I'll think over the matter, and if I see a way out I'll let you know." "God bless you, sir." I turned the incident over in my mind a good deal that night, and I almost made a resolution to take Cupples into my confidence. Roger Cupples, a lawyer of San Francisco, sat next me at table, and with the freedom of wild Westerners we were already well acquainted, although only a few days out. Then I thought of putting a supposititious case to the captain--he was a thorough gentleman--and if he spoke generously about the supposititious case I would spring the real one on him. The stowaway had impressed me by his language as being a man worth doing something for. Nest day I was glad to see that it was rainy. There would be no demand for ship chairs that day. I felt that real sunshiny weather would certainly unearth, or unchair, my stowaway. I met Cupples on deck, and we walked a few rounds together. At last, Cupples, who had been telling me some stories of court trials in San Francisco, said, "Let's sit down and wrap up. This deck's too wet to walk on." "All the seats are damp," I said. "I'll get out my steamer chair. Steward," he cried to the deck steward who was shoving a mop back and forth, "get me my chair. There's a tag on it, 'Berth 96.'" "No, no," I cried hastily; "let's go into the cabin. It's raining." "Only a drizzle. Won't hurt you at sea, you know." By this time the deck steward was hauling down chairs trying to find No. 96, which I felt sure would be near the bottom. I could not control my anxiety as the steward got nearer and nearer the tarpaulin. At last I cried-- "Steward, never mind that chair; take the first two that come handy." Cupples looked astonished, and, as we sat down, I said-- "I have something to tell you, and I trust you will say nothing about it to any one else. There's a man under those chairs." The look that came into the lawyer's face showed that he thought me demented; but, when I told him the whole story, the judicial expression came on, and he said, shaking his head-- "That's bad business." "I know it." "Yes, but it's worse than you have any idea of. I presume that you don't know what section 4738 of the Revised Statutes says?" "No; I don't." "Well, it is to the effect that any person or persons, who wilfully or with malice aforethought or otherwise, shall aid, abet, succor or cherish, either directly or indirectly or by implication, any person who feloniously or secretly conceals himself on any vessel, barge, brig, schooner, bark, clipper, steamship or other craft touching at or coming within the jurisdiction of these United States, the said person's purpose being the defrauding of the revenue of, or the escaping any or all of the just legal dues exacted by such vessel, barge, etc., the person so aiding or abetting, shall in the eye of the law be considered as accomplice before, during and after the illegal act, and shall in such case be subject to the penalties accruing thereunto, to wit--a fine of not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisonment of not more than two years--or both at the option of the judge before whom the party so accused is convicted." "Great heavens! is that really so?" "Well, it isn't word for word, but that is the purport. Of course, if I had my books here, I--why, you've doubtless heard of the case of the Pacific Steamship Company _versus_ Cumberland. I was retained on behalf of the company. Now all Cumberland did was to allow the man--he was sent up for two years--to carry his valise on board, but we proved the intent. Like a fool, he boasted of it, but the steamer brought back the man, and Cumberland got off with four thousand dollars and costs. Never got out of that scrape less than ten thousand dollars. Then again, the steamship _Peruvian versus_ McNish; that is even more to the--" "See here, Cupples. Come with me to-night and see the man. If you heard him talk you would see the inhumanity--" "Tush. I'm not fool enough to mix up in such a matter, and look here, you'll have to work it pretty slick if you get yourself out. The man will be caught as sure as fate; then knowingly or through fright he'll incriminate you." "What would you do if you were in my place?" "My dear sir, don't put it that way. It's a reflection on both my judgment and my legal knowledge. I _couldn't_ be in such a scrape. But, as a lawyer--minus the fee--I'll tell you what _you_ should do. You should give the man up before witnesses--before _witnesses_. I'll be one of them myself. Get as many of the cabin passengers as you like out here, to-day, and let the officers search. If he charges you with what the law terms support, deny it, and call attention to the fact that you have given information. By the way, I would give written information and keep a copy." "I gave the man my word not to inform on him and so I can't do it to-day, but I'll tell him of it to-night." "And have him commit suicide or give himself up first and incriminate you? Nonsense. Just release yourself from your promise. That's all. He'll trust you." "Yes, poor wretch, I'm afraid he will." About ten o'clock that night I resolved to make another appeal to Roger Cupples to at least stand off and hear the man talk. Cupples' state-room, No. 96, was in the forward part of the steamer, down a long passage and off a short side passage. Mine was aft the cabin. The door of 96 was partly open, and inside an astonishing sight met my gaze. There stood my stowaway. He was evidently admiring himself in the glass, and with a brush was touching up his face with dark paint here and there. When he put on a woe-begone look he was the stowaway; when he chuckled to himself he was Roger Cupples, Esq. The moment the thing dawned on me I quietly withdrew and went up the forward companion way. Soon Cupples came cautiously up and seeing the way clear scudded along in the darkness and hid in the aft wheelhouse. I saw the whole thing now. It was a scheme to get me to make a fool of myself some fine day before the rest of the passengers and have a standing joke on me. I walked forward. The first officer was on duty. "I have reason to believe," I said, "that there is a stowaway in the aft wheelhouse." Quicker than it takes me to tell it a detachment of sailors were sent aft under the guidance of the third mate. I went through the saloon and smoking room, and said to the gentlemen who were playing cards and reading--"There's a row upstairs of some kind." We were all on deck before the crew had surrounded the wheelhouse. There was a rattle of steamer folded chairs, a pounce by the third mate, and out came the unfortunate Cupples, dragged by the collar. "Hold on; let go. This is a mistake." "You can't both hold on and let go," said Stalker, of Indiana. "Come out o' this," cried the mate, jerking him forward. With a wrench the stowaway tore himself free and made a dash for the companion way. A couple of sailors instantly tripped him up. "Let go of me; I'm a cabin passenger," cried Cupples. "Bless me!" I cried in astonishment. "This isn't you, Cupples? Why, I acted on your own advice and that of Revised Statutes, No. what ever-they-were." "Well, act on my advice again," cried the infuriated Cupples, "and go to--the hold." However, he was better in humour the next day, and stood treat all round. We found, subsequently, that Cupples was a New York actor, and at the entertainment given for the benefit of the sailors' orphans, a few nights after, he recited a piece in costume that just melted the ladies. It was voted a wonderfully touching performance, and he called it "The Stowaway." THE PURSER'S STORY. "O Mother-nature, kind in touch and tone. Act as we may, thou clearest to thine own" I don't know that I should tell this story. When the purser related it to me I know it was his intention to write it out for a magazine. In fact he _had_ written it, and I understand that a noted American magazine had offered to publish it, but I have watched that magazine for over three years and I have not yet seen the purser's story in it. I am sorry that I did not write the story at the time; then perhaps I should have caught the exquisite peculiarities of the purser's way of telling it. I find myself gradually forgetting the story and I write it now in case I _shall_ forget it, and then be harassed all through after life by the remembrance of the forgetting. There is no position more painful and tormenting than the consciousness of having had something worth the telling, which, in spite of all mental effort, just eludes the memory. It hovers nebulously beyond the outstretched finger-ends of recollection, and, like the fish that gets off the hook, becomes more and more important as the years fade. Perhaps, when you read this story, you will say there is nothing in it after all. Well, that will be my fault, then, and I can only regret I did not write down the story when it was told to me, for as I sat in the purser's room that day it seemed to me I had never heard anything more graphic. The purser's room was well forward on the Atlantic steamship. From one of the little red-curtained windows you could look down to where the steerage passengers were gathered on the deck. When the bow of the great vessel plunged down into the big Atlantic waves, the smother of foam that shot upwards would be borne along with the wind, and spatter like rain against the purser's window. Something about this intermittent patter on the pane reminded the purser of the story, and so he told it to me. There were a great many steerage passengers coming on at Queenstown, he said, and there was quite a hurry getting them aboard. Two officers stood at each side of the gangway and took the tickets as the people crowded forward. They generally had their tickets in their hands and there was usually no trouble. I stood there and watched them coming aboard. Suddenly there was a fuss and a jam. "What is it?" I asked the officer. "Two girls, sir, say they have lost their tickets." I took the girls aside and the stream of humanity poured in. One was about fourteen and the other, perhaps, eight years old. The little one had a firm grip of the elder's hand and she was crying. The larger girl looked me straight in the eye as I questioned her. "Where's your tickets?" "We lost thim, sur." "Where?" "I dunno, sur." "Do you think you have them about you or in your luggage?" "We've no luggage, sur." "Is this your sister?" "She is, sur." "Are your parents aboard?" "They are not, sur." "Are you all alone?" "We are, sur." "You can't go without your tickets." The younger one began to cry the more, and the elder answered, "Mabbe we can foind thim, sur." They were bright-looking, intelligent children, and the larger girl gave me such quick, straightforward answers, and it seemed so impossible that children so young should attempt to cross the ocean without tickets that I concluded to let them come, and resolved to get at the truth on the way over. Next day I told the deck steward to bring the children to my room. They came in just as I saw them the day before, the elder with a tight grip on the hand of the younger, whose eyes I never caught sight of. She kept them resolutely on the floor, while the other looked straight at me with her big, blue eyes. "Well, have you found your tickets?" "No, sur." "What is your name?" "Bridget, sur." "Bridget what?" "Bridget Mulligan, sur." "Where did you live?" "In Kildormey, sur." "Where did you get your tickets?" "From Mr. O'Grady, sur." Now, I knew Kildormey as well as I know this ship, and I knew O'Grady was our agent there. I would have given a good deal at that moment for a few words with him. But I knew of no Mulligans in Kildormey, although, of course, there might be. I was born myself only a few miles from the place. Now, thinks I to myself, if these two children can baffle a purser who has been twenty years on the Atlantic when they say they came from his own town almost, by the powers they deserve their passage over the ocean. I had often seen grown people try to cheat their way across, and I may say none of them succeeded on _my_ ships. "Where's your father and mother?" "Both dead, sur." "Who was your father?" "He was a pinshoner, sur." "Where did he draw his pension?" "I donno, sur." "Where did you get the money to buy your tickets?" "The neighbors, sur, and Mr. O'Grady helped, sur." "What neighbours? Name them." She unhesitatingly named a number, many of whom I knew; and as that had frequently been done before, I saw no reason to doubt the girl's word. "Now," I said, "I want to speak with your sister. You may go." The little one held on to her sister's hand and cried bitterly. When the other was gone, I drew the child towards me and questioned her, but could not get a word in reply. For the next day or two I was bothered somewhat by a big Irishman named O'Donnell, who was a fire-brand among the steerage passengers. He _would_ harangue them at all hours on the wrongs of Ireland, and the desirability of blowing England out of the water; and as we had many English and German passengers, as well as many peaceable Irishmen, who complained of the constant ructions O'Donnell was kicking up, I was forced to ask him to keep quiet. He became very abusive one day and tried to strike me. I had him locked up until he came to his senses. While I was in my room, after this little excitement, Mrs. O'Donnell came to me and pleaded for her rascally husband. I had noticed her before. She was a poor, weak, broken-hearted woman whom her husband made a slave of, and I have no doubt beat her when he had the chance. She was evidently mortally afraid of him, and a look from him seemed enough to take the life out of her. He was a worse tyrant, in his own small way, than England had ever been. "Well, Mrs. O'Donnell," I said, "I'll let your husband go, but he will have to keep a civil tongue in his head and keep his hands off people. I've seen men, for less, put in irons during a voyage and handed over to the authorities when they landed. And now I want you to do me a favour. There are two children on board without tickets. I don't believe they ever had tickets, and I want to find out. You're a kind-hearted woman, Mrs. O'Donnell, and perhaps the children will answer you." I had the two called in, and they came hand in hand as usual. The elder looked at me as if she couldn't take her eyes off my face. "Look at this woman," I said to her; "she wants to speak to you. Ask her some questions about herself," I whispered to Mrs. O'Donnell. "Acushla," said Mrs. O'Donnell with infinite tenderness, taking the disengaged hand of the elder girl. "Tell me, darlint, where yees are from." I suppose I had spoken rather harshly to them before, although I had not intended to do so, but however that may be, at the first words of kindness from the lips of their countrywoman both girls broke down and cried as if their hearts would break. The poor woman drew them towards her, and, stroking the fair hair of the elder girl, tried to comfort her while the tears streamed down her own cheeks. "Hush, acushla; hush, darlints, shure the gentlemin's not goin' to be hard wid two poor childher going to a strange country." Of course it would never do to admit that the company could carry emigrants free through sympathy, and I must have appeared rather hard-hearted when I told Mrs. O'Donnell that I would have to take them back with me to Cork. I sent the children away, and then arranged with Mrs. O'Donnell to see after them during the voyage, to which she agreed if her husband would let her. I could get nothing from the girl except that she had lost her ticket; and when we sighted New York, I took them through the steerage and asked the passengers if any one would assume charge of the children and pay their passage. No one would do so. "Then," I said, "these children will go back with me to Cork; and if I find they never bought tickets, they will have to go to jail." There were groans and hisses at that, and I gave the children in charge of the cabin stewardess, with orders to see that they did not leave the ship. I was at last convinced that they had no friends among the steerage passengers. I intended to take them ashore myself before we sailed; and I knew of good friends in New York who would see to the little waifs, although I did not propose that any of the emigrants should know that an old bachelor purser was fool enough to pay for the passage of a couple of unknown Irish children. We landed our cabin passengers, and the tender came alongside to take the steerage passengers to Castle Garden. I got the stewardess to bring out the children, and the two stood and watched every one get aboard the tender. Just as the tender moved away, there was a wild shriek among the crowded passengers, and Mrs. O'Donnell flung her arms above her head and cried in the most heart-rending tone I ever heard--"Oh, my babies, my babies." "Kape quiet, ye divil," hissed O'Donnell, grasping her by the arm. The terrible ten days' strain had been broken at last, and the poor woman sank in a heap at his feet. "Bring back that boat," I shouted, and the tender came back. "Come aboard here, O'Donnell." "I'll not!" he yelled, shaking his fist at me. "Bring that man aboard." They soon brought him back, and I gave his wife over to the care of the stewardess. She speedily rallied, and hugged and kissed her children as if she would never part with them. "So, O'Donnell, these are your children?" "Yis, they are; an' I'd have ye know I'm in a frae country, bedad, and I dare ye to lay a finger on me." "Don't dare too much," I said, "or I'll show you what can be done in a free country. Now, if I let the children go, will you send their passage money to the company when you get it?" "I will," he answered, although I knew he lied. "Well," I said, "for Mrs. O'Donnell's sake, I'll let them go; and I must congratulate any free country that gets a citizen like you." Of course I never heard from O'Donnell again. MISS MCMILLAN. "Come hop, come skip, fair children all, Old Father Time is in the hall. He'll take you on his knee, and stroke Your golden hair to silver bright, Your rosy cheeks to wrinkles white" In the saloon of the fine Transatlantic liner the _Climatus_, two long tables extend from the piano at one end to the bookcase at the other end of the ample dining-room. On each side of this main saloon are four small tables intended to accommodate six or seven persons. At one of these tables sat a pleasant party of four ladies and three gentlemen. Three ladies were from Detroit, and one from Kent, in England. At the head of the table sat Mr. Blair, the frosts of many American winters in his hair and beard, while the lines of care in his ragged, cheerful Scottish face told of a life of business crowned with generous success. Mr. Waters, a younger merchant, had all the alert vivacity of the pushing American. He had the distinguished honour of sitting opposite me at the small table. Blair and Waters occupied the same room, No. 27. The one had crossed the Atlantic more than fifty times, the other nearly thirty. Those figures show the relative proportion of their business experience. The presence of Mr. Blair gave to our table a sort of patriarchal dignity that we all appreciated. If a louder burst of laughter than usual came from where we sat and the other passengers looked inquiringly our way the sedate and self-possessed face of Mr. Blair kept us in countenance, and we, who had given way to undue levity, felt ourselves enshrouded by an atmosphere of genial seriousness. This prevented our table from getting the reputation of being funny or frivolous. Some remark that Blair made brought forth the following extraordinary statement from Waters, who told it with the air of a man exposing the pretensions of a whited sepulchre. "Now, before this voyage goes any further," he began, "I have a serious duty to perform which I can shirk no longer, unpleasant though it be. Mr. Blair and myself occupy the same state-room. Into that state-room has been sent a most lovely basket of flowers. It is not an ordinary basket of flowers, I assure you, ladies. There is a beautiful floral arch over a bed of colour, and I believe there is some tender sentiment connected with the display;--'Bon Voyage,' 'Auf Wiedersehen,' or some such motto marked out in red buds. Now those flowers are not for me. I think, therefore, that Mr. Blair owes it to this company, which has so unanimously placed him at the head of the table, to explain how it comes that an elderly gentleman gets such a handsome floral tribute sent him from some unknown person in New York." We all looked at Mr. Blair, who gazed with imperturbability at Waters. "If you had all crossed with Waters as often as I have you would know that he is subject to attacks like that. He means well, but occasionally he gives way in the deplorable manner you have just witnessed. Now all there is of it consists in this--a basket of flowers has been sent (no doubt by mistake) to our state-room. There is nothing but a card on it which says 'Room 27.' Steward," he cried, "would you go to room 27, bring that basket of flowers, and set it on this table. We may as well all have the benefit of them." The steward soon returned with a large and lovely basket of flowers, which he set on the table, shoving the caster and other things aside to make room for it. We all admired it very much, and the handsome young lady on my left asked Mr. Blair's permission to take one of the roses for her own. "Now, mind you," said Blair, "I cannot grant a flower from the basket, for you see it is as much the property of Waters as of myself, for all of his virtuous indignation. It was sent to the room, and he is one of the occupants. The flowers have evidently been misdirected." The lady referred to took it upon herself to purloin the flower she wanted. As she did so a card came in view with the words written in a masculine hand-- To Miss McMillan, With the loving regards of Edwin J-- "Miss McMillan!" cried the lady; "I wonder if she is on board? I'd give anything to know." "We'll have a glance at the passenger list," said Waters. Down among the M's on the long list of cabin passengers appeared the name "Miss McMillan." "Now," said I, "it seems to me that the duty devolves on both Blair and Waters to spare no pains in delicately returning those flowers to their proper owner. _I_ think that both have been very remiss in not doing so long ago. They should apologise publicly to the young lady for having deprived her of the offering for a day and a half, and then I think they owe an apology to this table for the mere pretence that any sane person in New York or elsewhere would go to the trouble of sending either of them a single flower." "There will be no apology from me," said Waters. "If I do not receive the thanks of Miss McMillan, it will be because good deeds are rarely recognised in this world. I think it must be evident, even to the limited intelligence of my journalistic friend across the table, that Mr. Blair intended to keep those flowers in his state-room, and--of course I make no direct charges--the concealment of that card certainly looks bad. It may have been concealed by the sender of the flowers, but to me it looks bad." "Of course," said Blair dryly, "to you it looks bad. To the pure, etc." "Now," said the sentimental lady on my left, "while you gentlemen are wasting the time in useless talk the lady is without her roses. There is one thing that you all seem to miss. It is not the mere value of the bouquet. There is a subtle perfume about an offering like this more delicate than that which Nature gave the flowers--" "Hear, hear," broke in Waters. "I told you," said Blair aside, "the kind of fellow Waters is. He thinks nothing of interrupting a lady." "Order, both of you!" I cried, rapping on the table; "the lady from England has the floor." "What I was going to say--" "When Waters interrupted you." "When Mr. Waters interrupted me I was going to say that there seems to me a romantic tinge to this incident that you old married men cannot be expected to appreciate." I looked with surprise at Waters, while he sank back in his seat with the resigned air of a man in the hands of his enemies. We had both been carefully concealing the fact that we were married men, and the blunt announcement of the lady was a painful shock. Waters gave a side nod at Blair, as much as to say, "He's given it away." I looked reproachfully at my old friend at the head of the table, but he seemed to be absorbed in what our sentimental lady was saying. "It is this," she continued. "Here is a young lady. Her lover sends her a basket. There may be some hidden meaning that she alone will understand in the very flowers chosen, or in the arrangement of them. The flowers, let us suppose, never reach their destination. The message is unspoken, or, rather, spoken, but unheard. The young lady grieves at the apparent neglect, and then, in her pride, resents it. She does not write, and he knows not why. The mistake may be discovered too late, and all because a basket of flowers has been missent." "Now, Blair," said Waters, "if anything can make you do the square thing surely that appeal will." "I shall not so far forget what is due to myself and to the dignity of this table as to reply to our erratic friend. Here is what I propose to do--first catch our hare. Steward, can you find out for me at what table and at what seat Miss McMillan is?" While the steward was gone on his errand Mr. Blair proceeded. "I will become acquainted with her. McMillan is a good Scotch name and Blair is another. On that as a basis I think we can speedily form an acquaintance. I shall then in a casual manner ask her if she knows a young man by the name of Edwin J., and I shall tell you what effect the mention of the name has on her." "Now, as part owner in the flowers up to date, I protest against that. I insist that Miss McMillan be brought to this table, and that we all hear exactly what is said to her," put in Mr. Waters. Nevertheless we agreed that Mr. Blair's proposal was a good one and the majority sanctioned it. Meanwhile our sentimental lady had been looking among the crowd for the unconscious Miss McMillan. "I think I have found her," she whispered to me. "Do you see that handsome girl at the captain's table. Really the handsomest girl on board." "I thought that distinction rested with our own table." "Now, please pay attention. Do you see how pensive she is, with her cheek resting on her hand? I am sure she is thinking of Edwin." "I wouldn't bet on that," I replied. "There is considerable motion just now, and indications of a storm. The pensiveness may have other causes." Here the steward returned and reported that Miss McMillan had not yet appeared at table, but had her meals taken to her room by the stewardess. Blair called to the good-natured, portly stewardess of the _Climatus_, who at that moment was passing through the saloon. "Is Miss McMillan ill?" he asked. "No, not ill," replied Mrs. Kay; "but she seems very much depressed at leaving home, and she has not left her room since we started." "There!" said our sentimental lady, triumphantly. "I would like very much to see her," said Mr. Blair; "I have some good news for her." "I will ask her to come out. It will do her good," said the stewardess, as she went away. In a few moments she appeared, and, following her, came an old woman, with white hair, and her eyes concealed by a pair of spectacles. "Miss McMillan," said the stewardess, "this is Mr. Blair, who wanted to speak to you." Although Mr. Blair was, as we all were, astonished to see our mythical young lady changed into a real old woman, he did not lose his equanimity, nor did his kindly face show any surprise, but he evidently forgot the part he had intended to play. "You will pardon me for troubling you, Miss McMillan," he said, "but this basket of flowers was evidently intended for you, and was sent to my room by mistake." Miss McMillan did not look at the flowers, but gazed long at the card with the writing on it, and as she did so one tear and then another stole down the wrinkled face from behind the glasses. "There is no mistake, is there?" asked Mr. Blair. "You know the writer." "There is no mistake--no mistake," replied Miss McMillan in a low voice, "he is a very dear and kind friend." Then, as if unable to trust herself further, she took the flowers and hurriedly said, "Thank you," and left us. "There," I said to the lady on my left, "your romance turns out to be nothing after all." "No, sir," she cried with emphasis; "the romance is there, and very much more of a romance than if Miss McMillan was a young and silly girl of twenty." Perhaps she was right. 39629 ---- IRMA IN ITALY [Illustration: PERUGIA. _Frontispiece_ (_See page 205._)] IRMA IN ITALY A TRAVEL STORY BY HELEN LEAH REED AUTHOR OF "THE BRENDA BOOKS," "IRMA AND NAP," "NAPOLEON'S YOUNG NEIGHBOR," ETC. ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND FROM DRAWINGS BY WILLIAM A. MCCULLOUGH BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1908 _Copyright_, 1908, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved_ The Tudor Press BOSTON, U. S. A. To M. E. F. A TRUE TRAVELLER CONTENTS PAGE I. THE START 1 II. THE WESTERN ISLANDS 19 III. TOWARD THE CONTINENT 39 IV. AWAY FROM GIBRALTAR 60 V. ON SHORE 80 VI. NAPLES AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD 98 VII. CAVA AND BEYOND 111 VIII. PAESTUM AND POMPEII 125 IX. ROMAN DAYS 146 X. A QUEEN AND OTHER SIGHTS 169 XI. TIVOLI--AND HADRIAN'S VILLA 187 XII. AN ANCIENT TOWN 203 XIII. OLD SIENA--AND NEW FRIENDS 215 XIV. NAP--AND OTHER THINGS 232 XV. A LETTER FROM FLORENCE 251 XVI. A CHANGE IN MARION 270 XVII. IN VENICE 288 XVIII. EXPLANATIONS 312 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Perugia _Frontispiece_ "I wish I could take them all," she said 6 Naples. A Street View 84 "With one girl clutching her dress, she could not move fast" 132 Pompeii 144 Near La Trinità, Rome 170 Rome. Group on Spanish Steps 170 Cascades at Tivoli 188 Wall of Orvieto 188 Spires of Florence 262 San Marco, Florence 262 Siena. General View with Campanile 292 Ravenna. Theodoric's Tomb 292 "As Irma approached, the girl looked up" 296 Venice. The Grand Canal 308 Venice. A Gondolier 308 IRMA IN ITALY CHAPTER I THE START "OF course it's great to go to Europe; any one would jump at the chance, but still----" As the speaker, a bright-eyed girl of sixteen, paused, her companion, slightly younger, continued: "Yes, I know what you mean--it doesn't seem just like Irma to go away before school closes. Why, if she misses the finals, she may have to drop from the class next year." "Probably she expects Italy to help her in her history and Latin." "Travelling is all very well," responded the other, "but there's nothing better than regular study. Why, here's Irma coming," she concluded hastily; "she can speak for herself." "You are surely gossiping about me," cried Irma pleasantly, as she approached her two friends seated on the front steps of Gertrude's house. "You have surely been gossiping, for you stopped talking as soon as you saw me, and Lucy looks almost guilty." "Listeners sometimes hear good of themselves," replied Lucy, "but we'll admit we have been wondering how you made up your mind to run away from school. I shouldn't have dared." "My father and mother decided for me, when Aunt Caroline said she must know at once. There was some one else she would invite, if I couldn't go. I simply could not give up so good a chance to see Europe. But of course I am sorry to leave school." "Now, Irma, no crocodile tears." Gertrude pinched her friend's arm as she spoke. "Fond as I am--or ought to be--of school, I wouldn't think twice about leaving it all, if I had a chance to shorten this horrid winter." "Winter! And here we are sitting in the open air. In six weeks it will be May, and you won't find a pleasanter month in Europe than our May," protested Lucy. "We intend to have some fine picnics this spring; you'll lose them if you go," added Gertrude. "One can't have everything," sighed Irma. "I know that I must lose some good things if I go away." "Examinations, for instance," cried George Belman, who had joined the group. "And promotions, perhaps," added John. "But still," continued George, "I say Irma deserves a change for her unselfishness in having whooping-cough last summer, just to keep Tessie company." "Well, it was considerate in Irma to get over it before school opened; stand up, dear, and let yourself be counted." "Oh, Gertrude, how silly you are!" but even while protesting Irma rose slowly to her feet, and her friends, looking at her, noticed that she was paler and thinner than she had been a year earlier. "Come, now," said Lucy, rising, and affectionately slipping her arm around Irma's waist, "tell us your plans. Gertrude knows them, but I have heard only rumors." "I am not quite sure myself about it all. Only I am to sail with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim to Naples by the southern route, and, after going through Italy, we shall be home in July--and a niece of Aunt Caroline's, or rather of Uncle Jim's, is going with us." "You didn't tell _me_ that," interposed Gertrude. "You won't miss us half as much if you have another girl with you. I begin to be jealous." "If there were ten other girls in our party I'd miss my friends just as much," said Irma. "Besides, I'll be too busy to take an interest in mere girls." "Busy!" It was George who said this, with a little, mocking laugh. "Yes, busy; busy sightseeing and reading, and perhaps studying a little. For you know I must take a special examination in September. How mortifying if I had to stay behind next year!" "Then I shall drop behind, too, or at least I should wish to," said George gallantly. "Did some one speak of summer?" asked Lucy, rising. "Now that the sun is low I am half frozen. Come, Irma, I will walk to your door with you," and, after a word of farewell to the others, the two friends walked away together. Irma, now in her second year in the High School, had really enjoyed her studies, and she was sure that her ancient history was to be made much more vivid by her journey, and even the dry hours she had spent on Cæsar would count for much when she reached Italy. It was well, perhaps, that Irma herself had little to do in preparing for her journey. As it was, it was hard enough to keep her mind on lessons those last weeks, when there was so much besides to think of. Still, the March days flew by swiftly. Irma was to sail from New York the Saturday before Easter, which this year came very early. A week before she was to start a steamer trunk arrived from New York, accompanied by a letter from Aunt Caroline. "Your mother must have so much to do that I wish to save her a little of the trouble of shopping," wrote Aunt Caroline, "and I do hope that these will fit you." "I can't see that the steamer rug is a very close fit," said Rudolph, laughing, as Irma held up the warm-looking square of blue and green plaid. "But the Panama hat's all right,--only the rug and the hat will look rather queer together." Into the steamer trunk during the week Irma put many little things that the girls at school--and indeed some of the boys--gave her as parting gifts. "I wish I could take them all," she said, as she stood beside the trunk. "But there are so many duplicates. I suppose I could use two pinballs and two brush-holders, but I don't need three needlebooks and half a dozen toothbrush cases. Oh, dear, and all have been so kind that I wish they had compared notes first, so that I needn't have so many things I can't use." [Illustration: "I WISH I COULD TAKE THEM ALL," SHE SAID. (_Page 6._)] "It's better to have too many than too few," said Tessie sagely. "Tessie," however, only occasionally, since the ten year old maiden scorned the diminutive of her earlier years, and insisted that now she was old enough to be known as "Theresa." "It's better for you, Theresa," responded Irma, "for some of these things may find their way to your room. Lucy might let me give you this needlebook, or at least lend it, for perhaps it wouldn't do to give a present away." "Well, I'll borrow it now, to help me remember you when you are gone," and Tessie, delighted with her treasure, ran off to her room with it. During her last days at home Irma realized that Nap was not happy. He followed her from room to room, and, so far as he could, kept her always in sight. When she sat down, he lay at her feet with his nose touching her dress. When she moved she almost stumbled over him; and once, when she went to close the steamer trunk, there he was inside! He might have suffered Ginevra's fate, had not Irma happened to look within. "He truly knows just what you are going to do, and he meant to hide until the trunk was opened on the ship, so you'd have to take him with you," cried Tessie. "Yes," added Chris, "perhaps he thinks that's his only chance of finding Katie Grimston again. She's still in Europe, isn't she?" "Well, Katie Grimston shall never have him." "But she did not give him to you; she wrote she would claim him on her return." "Yes, but she isn't here to claim him, and possession is nine points of the law." Then Irma picked the little creature up and ran away with him. The boys were very philosophical about their sister's departure. "If I should stay home they'd be grievously disappointed," Irma confided to Gertrude. "They are calculating so on the stamps and post cards I am to collect for them, that I wouldn't dare change my mind." Mahala's interest, however, made up for the indifference of the boys to their sister's departure. "We shall miss you dreadfully," and Mahala sighed heavily, "though it's a great thing for a person to have the advantage of foreign travel; not that I'd cross the ocean myself, for what with the danger of meeting icebergs," she continued cheerfully, "and bursting boilers and all the other perils of the sea--dear me, I'd feel as if I was taking my life in my hands to embark on an ocean liner. But I'm glad you're going, Irma. One of the family ought to have the experience----" "Of icebergs and bursting boilers," cried Irma. "O Mahala, I am surprised at you." "Going to Europe has seemed to me like a dream," continued Irma, turning to her mother, "but Mahala would change it to a nightmare," and the help from Aroostook, Maine, withdrew in confusion to the kitchen. If Irma had thought going to Europe a dream, the dream seemed pretty nearly true one Saturday morning, when from the deck of the great steamship she watched the receding dock, until in the crowd she could barely discern the figure of her father as he stood there waving his handkerchief. At this moment there were real tears in her eyes, though she had fully made up her mind not to cry. For the moment a great many thoughts crowded upon her,--memories of her mother looking from the window as the coach drove off to the station, of the boys and Tessie standing at the gate, and Mahala on the steps with Nap in her arms, held tightly, lest his continued wriggling should at last result in his running after the carriage. "It's really very selfish in me to go so far when none of the others can go," Irma mused, and as the ship moved seaward, she was so lost in sad thoughts that she hardly heeded Aunt Caroline's "Come, dear. Here is Marion, whom you haven't met yet." Turning about, Irma experienced one of the greatest surprises of her life. Instead of the girl in long skirts whom she expected to see, there stood by her aunt's side a tall boy, apparently a little older than John Wall or George Belman. Who could he be? And where was Marian? The boy had pleasant, brown eyes, but a fretful line about his lips interfered with the attractiveness of his face. There was no time for questions. Before Irma could speak, Aunt Caroline continued, "I do hope you two young people will like each other. Marion, this is Irma, about whom I have told you so much." The boy and the girl looked at each other for a moment in silence. Irma was the first to speak. "Why--why I thought from your letter that Marion was a girl," she said awkwardly. This speech did not better matters. Marion was still silent as he extended his hand to meet the one that Irma offered him. Then, acknowledging the introduction with a touch of his hat, he turned on his heel and walked off. "Poor boy!" exclaimed Aunt Caroline, as he passed out of sight. "We must be patient. We must do what we can for him. Had things been different, he could hardly have come with us. But why did you think Marion a girl?" "I never heard of a boy named Marian." "Oh--it's after General Marion. Perhaps my wretched writing made the 'o' look an 'a'. I didn't refer to our nephew?" "No, you only said you hoped I'd like Marian, who was the same relation to Uncle Jim that I am to you," and Irma smiled, remembering that Aunt Caroline was only an aunt by courtesy,--in other words, an intimate friend of her mother's. "Well, we are very fond of Marion--even if he isn't a real nephew--only we must all make allowances for him," then Aunt Caroline flitted off, while Irma wondered why allowances must be made for a tall, good-looking boy, who seemed well able to take care of himself. Meanwhile, Marion, leaning against a rail at some distance from Irma, was on the verge of a fit of the blues. "Thought I was a girl. Oh, yes, I suppose they have told her everything. Aunt Caroline ought to have had more sense. Anyway, I hate girls, and I'll try not to see much of this one." Then Marion, to whom New York Harbor was no novelty, went within, while Uncle Jim joined Irma, and pointed out many interesting things. The great city they were leaving looked picturesque to Irma, as she gave its spires and high buildings a backward glance. The mammoth Liberty, standing on its little island, held her attention for a moment. Past the closely built shore of Long Island and the forts on the Westchester side, they were getting into deeper water, and Irma was straining her eyes in the direction of Sandy Hook, toward which Uncle Jim was pointing, when Aunt Caroline hurried up to her: "If you come in now, you can write a short letter to your mother." "To my mother?" "Yes, to send back by the pilot. But you must be quick." Following her aunt, Irma was soon in the small saloon, where twenty or thirty persons were writing at small tables or on improvised lap-tablets. In one corner a ship's officer was tying up bundles of letters and putting them in the large mail bag that lay beside him. Irma quickly finished her brief home letter. It was only a word to let them know she was thinking of them. As she approached the mail steward, "No, sir, we 'aven't a stamp left," she heard him say, "heverybody's been writing. The stamps are hall gone--hat least the Hamerican." "Oh, don't we need English stamps?" Irma turned to her aunt. "No, dear. I am sorry he has no American stamps. I can enclose your letter with my own to Cousin Fannie, and she'll remail it." "Oh, but I have stamps. I brought half a dozen with me." An old gentleman who had vainly asked the steward for a stamp stood near Irma. She had heard him express annoyance that he must entrust his letter to the pilot unstamped. "One can seldom trust a friend to put a stamp on a letter--still less a complete stranger--and this is very important." "Excuse me," interposed Irma, stepping up to him. She wondered afterwards how she had dared. "Will you not take one of my stamps?" she said. A broad smile brightened the old gentleman's face. "You certainly are long on stamps, and I am obliged to you for letting me share your prosperity." Then, stamping his letter, he dropped it into the mail bag. "I'll take two," said a lady abruptly, approaching Irma, and without so much as "by your leave," she detached two from Irma's strip of four, and dropping a nickel into her hand, walked off with a murmured "Thank you." A second and younger lady then approached. "Could you let me have two stamps?" she asked politely. "I overheard you say that you had some." "Certainly," said Irma, and after thanking her, this applicant, with a pleasant "Fair exchange is no robbery," slipped into Irma's hand two Italian stamps. This seemed a much more gracious payment than the nickel. Later she recalled that the old gentleman had paid her nothing--and this, she decided, was the most courteous way of all. The steward had fastened the bag when Marion rushed up to him. "Oh, say, steward, give me a stamp." "'Aven't hany, sir." "Well, you ought to have some." "Mine are all gone, too," said Irma. "I had half a dozen a few minutes ago." "You might have saved some for me," snapped Marion; "why should a girl write so many letters?" "I wrote only one," began Irma. "You can give your letter to the pilot." But Marion's only answer was to tear his letter into fragments. Then he followed the steward with the bag, and Irma was almost alone in the deserted saloon. The letter she had just written was the last word she could send home for a week. It would be twice as long before she could hear from any of the family. She began to wish that she had gone back on the pilot boat. Why, indeed, had she ever left home? She should have waited until they could all visit Europe together. Now all kinds of things might happen to Chris or Rudolph or Tessie--or even to her father and mother--and it might all be over before she could hear a word. She began to be really unhappy, and again her eyes filled in a desperate feeling of homesickness. After this first attack, Irma was, for a time, able to put the family out of her mind. At the first luncheon on shipboard, which she hardly tasted, her place at table was between Aunt Caroline and Marion. But at dinner when Marion appeared he dropped into the seat next to Uncle Jim, leaving his former place vacant. "It's only one of Marion's notions," whispered Aunt Caroline. "I fear he is shy, and doesn't know what to say to you." Irma was not comfortable in learning that Marion regarded her as a person to be avoided. "If only Marion had been a friendly girl how much pleasanter our party would be," she thought. At first Irma felt she could hardly manage to live in her small stateroom. But when she had fastened to the wall the linen hold-all her mother had made, filled with various little things, and had stowed other small possessions in the drawer under the mirror, she saw the possibility of adapting herself to her cramped quarters. She soon had a regular program. She rose with the first morning bugle, and after her early bath, while Aunt Caroline dozed, dressed quickly. Then she had a brisk walk on deck before breakfast, which Uncle Jim's party had at the second table. Sunday morning--her second day at sea--Irma found a letter by her plate at breakfast. "It's from Lucy," she cried, turning it over and over. "A steamer letter," explained Uncle Jim. "Are you such a landlubber as not to know that in these days letters follow you regularly on your voyage?" A moment later she discerned in a corner, "Care the Purser," and then she broke the seal. "What news?" asked Uncle Jim, as she finished. "All you'd expect from a letter written before I left home. I wonder how far we are now," she concluded with a sigh. "Too far for you to swim back," answered Aunt Caroline, reading her thoughts. Among the letters that Irma received daily after this, Mahala's was especially entertaining. "To dream of a horse," she began, "is a sign of a letter, so I'm writing because I dreamt of a horse last night, though that isn't the way it's generally meant to work. Tessie's beginning to live up to many of the signs I've taught her, and when I told her I hoped your voyage wouldn't be unlucky because you were leaving Cranston Friday--just after you started she ran out of the room, and when I went on the steps to see if she'd gone over to the Flynns', well, just at that very minute something struck me on the head, and such a mess, all down my face and over my apron. When I got hold of Tessie she explained that she'd heard me say that if any one wished on an egg dropped from a second story window, the wish would come true--if the egg didn't break--but this egg certainly broke, and I hope it won't cause you ill luck. This wouldn't require mentioning, only I thought it might make you laugh if you happen to feel peaked the day you read this letter. We didn't punish Tessie, because she's feeling kind of bad about you, and she got scared enough when the egg broke on my head." CHAPTER II THE WESTERN ISLANDS The first day or so of the voyage seemed long to Irma. She could not lie in a steamer chair, and pretend to read, as Aunt Caroline did. She had more than a suspicion that her aunt seldom turned the leaves of her book, and that left to herself she was apt to doze, although each morning Uncle Jim placed beside her chair a large basket containing books and magazines. "Lean back, Irma," Uncle Jim would say, "you are not a real bird that you need perch on the arm of your chair. Lean back; I will fix your cushions--as Marion is not here to do this for you," he concluded mischievously. "I wonder what Marion does with himself," interposed Aunt Caroline. "We see him only at meals, and I thought he would be such company for Irma." "Irma doesn't need him," responded Uncle Jim. "Come, my dear, let us look at the steerage." "Don't go below," protested Aunt Caroline. "You don't know what frightful disease you might catch." "We'll only look over the railing," and Uncle Jim led Irma to a spot where she could look down at the steerage passengers, sitting in the sun on the deck below. "It's not very crowded," explained Uncle Jim, "on the passage to Europe at this season. Most of those you see have a free passage because the authorities fear they may become public charges." "How hard!" "No, my dear. Many of them have better food and quarters here than they ever have on shore." "Are there many sick among them?" "The doctor told me of one poor woman who may not live until she reaches the Azores. She has been working in New Bedford, but when the doctors told her she could not live long, she was sure the air of the Western Islands would cure her. So her friends had a raffle, and raised enough for her passage, and a little more for her to live on after her arrival here, at least, that's what Marion told me." "Marion!" "Yes, he takes a great interest in the steerage. I dare say he knows those three ferocious-looking desperadoes in the corner." "Desperadoes!" "Well, they might be brigands, might they not? at least judging from their appearance. Most men returning at this season--and not a few of the women, too--are sent back by our Government because undesirable for citizenship." "Oh!" exclaimed Irma. "That explains why so many wear strange clothes. They are really foreigners." "Yes. The majority of them have probably never even landed." As Irma turned away, her interest in the steerage increased rather than lessened. But when she asked Uncle Jim questions, she found he knew little about individuals. She wished that Marion would talk to her. She believed that he could tell her what she wished to know. But as the days passed Marion did not thaw out. It is true he usually reported the day's run to Irma, a little ahead of the time when it was marked on the ship's chart, and if she was not near Aunt Caroline when the steward passed around with his tea and cakes, he would usually hunt her up. But if she began to talk to him, he answered in the briefest words, and did not encourage further conversation. One day, when he came to the table rather more animated than usual, she could not help overhearing him describe a visit he had made to the lower regions of the ship, where he had seen the inner workings of things. She listened eagerly to his description of the stoking hole with the flames weirdly lighting up the figures of the busy stokers. This interested her more than what he told of the machinery and the huge refrigerating plant. "The doctor might have asked me, too. It's different from the steerage. Marion is very selfish, never to think of me. If there were more girls of my age, I wouldn't care. There isn't a boy in Cranston who would be so mean." Soon after this, the day before they reached the Azores, Irma made the acquaintance of the one girl on board, near her own age. Hitherto Muriel had looked at her wistfully, not venturing to leave her governess, who talked French endlessly, as they paced the deck. But now, as Irma was watching a game of shuffleboard, played by older persons, Muriel approached and began a conversation, and soon the two were comparing their present impressions and their future plans. "I'm awfully tired of Europe," said Muriel. "We go every year, but this time it may not be so bad, as we are to motor through Italy." The most of this day the two new friends were together, separating only to finish the letters that they wished to mail at St. Michael's. After dinner, when Irma went back to the dining saloon, the mail steward sat at a table with a scale before him, receiving money for the stamps he was to put on letters at Ponta Delgada. "Why, here's my little lady of the stamps," cried a voice in Irma's ear, and turning, she recognized the little old gentleman, whom she had not seen since the first day. Irma returned his greeting, and he went up with her toward the deck. "It's so mild," she explained, "that my aunt said I might sit outside. I am so anxious to see land." "Even if we were nearer shore, there's not moon enough to show an outline. Why are you so anxious to see land?" "Because it will be my first foreign country. Except when we sailed from New York, I had never been out of New England." "There are worse places to spend one's life in than New England," and the old gentleman sighed, as he added, "yet in the fifty years since I left it, I have been back only half a dozen times." "I suppose you know the Azores," ventured Irma. "Oh, yes, the country was very primitive in the old days. The interior, they tell me, has changed little, but the cities are more up to date." "Cities?" "Not large cities like ours in America, though Ponta Delgada is the third largest in Portugal. But there, young ladies of your age dislike guidebook information, at least out of school." "Oh, please go on," begged Irma, and for half an hour her new friend talked delightfully about the Azores and other places. "Ah, there's Uncle Jim," she exclaimed, as she saw her uncle approaching under one of the electric lights. "I never thought of finding you out here alone," cried her uncle. "Not alone," rejoined Irma, turning to introduce her new friend. But he had mysteriously disappeared. "It is high time to come in, if the night air makes you see double," said Uncle Jim dryly. But Irma gave no explanations. How could she have introduced the old gentleman, when she did not know his name? "Aunt Caroline says please hurry. They are in sight." Thus Marion's voice and repeated rappings waked Irma the next morning. "Who are in sight?" she asked sleepily. "The Azores, of course." "Oh, dear," cried Irma, forgetting to thank Marion for his trouble. "Why," she wondered, "did I take this particular morning to oversleep?" Dressing at lightning speed, after a hurried repast she was soon on deck. Then, to her disappointment, there was nothing to see. The islands, wherever they might be, were veiled by a soft mist. "They have been in sight for hours," some one said. Irma wished she had asked her steward to call her at dawn. Not until they were well upon Ponta Delgada did they have their first glimpse of St. Michael's toward noon, and the warmth of the sun was modified by the thin veil of mist. Gradually the mist dissolved, and not far away was the green shore, and behind, a line of low, conical mountains parallel with the coast. Then a white village appeared, and soon the spires and red roofs of Ponta Delgada. Luncheon had been served early, and towards one o'clock the boat stopped, when still some distance from land. Large rowboats were pushing out from shore, and one or two tugs carrying the Portuguese flag. "The tugs are bringing health and customs officers. We can't land until they have made their examination," Uncle Jim explained. "How tedious to wait when we shall have so little time at the best!" "Are we to go in those dreadful little boats?" "Oh, it's a smooth sea; we'll get there safely enough." "The town looks decidedly Spanish." These and many similar remarks floated to Irma's ears. What impressed her most was the fact that she must descend the steep steps that the sailors were letting down from the side, and go ashore in a boat. "It's safe enough," said Aunt Caroline. "Any one is foolish who remains on the ship. But I am willing to stay here myself." So Aunt Caroline remained on the boat, and Irma, with Uncle Jim ahead and Marion behind, went down the long steps cautiously. When she had taken her seat in the large rowboat, she found herself near Muriel and her governess. The two girls were soon deep in conversation, while Marion, some distance away, sat listless and silent. "Your brother isn't cheerful to-day," said Muriel, as the boat neared shore. "He isn't my brother,--far from it," responded Irma, and unluckily at that moment Marion, rising to be of assistance to the ladies on landing, was near enough to hear both Muriel's remark and Irma's answer. "Well, I am very glad not to be her brother," he thought, "and as to that other girl, she's exactly the kind I don't like." And in this mood Marion jumped hastily off when the boat pulled up, and running up the short steps, walked along the quay in solitary sulkiness, with his hands in his pockets. "Your cavalier seems to have left you," said Uncle Jim mischievously, as he helped Irma ashore. "I wonder if he will condescend to join us on our tour of the town." When they had pushed their way among the loungers at the wharf, however, they saw Marion standing near an open carriage, drawn by two underfed horses. "How would this suit?" he asked. "The best carriages have been taken. You know our boat was almost the last." "Over there are a couple of good automobiles looking for passengers." For the instant Marion's face clouded. "Oh, of course," added Uncle Jim hastily. "I had forgotten. That wouldn't do. These horses may prove better than they look, and as we have no time to lose, let us start." Before setting off, Uncle Jim turned about to see whether Muriel and Mademoiselle Potin had found a vehicle. Already they were seated in a carriage much like the one he had chosen, with horses that looked equally meek and hungry. Then Uncle Jim's driver flourished and snapped his whip, and the horses went off at a lively pace. Irma, indeed, wished they would go more slowly, that she could get a better idea of the narrow streets. Yet even as they drove rapidly along she had a definite impression of clean pavements and small houses, many of them painted in bright colors. After they had left the little crowd near the wharf, the streets seemed deserted. Here and there an old man hobbled along, or a woman with a shawl over her head, or a girl with a large basket of fruit. They met oddly constructed carts, drawn by donkeys, and once they stopped to buy fruit from a man who bore a long pole on his shoulders, from one end of which hung a string of bananas, while from the other dangled a dozen pineapples. "Fortunately," said Uncle Jim, "as our time is limited, there are not many important things to see in Ponta Delgada. We shall be obliged to look at so many churches in Italy that we can neglect those here." "I'd like to see the church where Columbus and his sailors gave thanks, when they landed there after the storm." "Santa Maria! Miles away!" cried Marion. "Well," said Irma, slightly snubbed, "even if this isn't the place, it is interesting to remember that some of these islands had been settled years and years before America was discovered." Soon they reached the famous garden, one of the two or three things best worth seeing in the town. When they walked through the great iron gates opened by a respectful servitor, at once Irma felt she was in a region of mystery. The three went along in silence under tall trees whose branches arched over the broad path. Turning aside an instant, they gazed down a deep ravine, with banks moss-grown and covered with ferns. Far below was a little stream, and here and there the ravine was spanned by rustic bridges. Irma caught a glimpse of a dark grotto and a carved stone seat. "It is rather musty here; let us hurry on," suggested Uncle Jim. "Musty!" protested Irma. "It is like poetry." "Well, poetry is rather musty sometimes." Irma could not tell whether or not Marion was in earnest. Farther in the garden they saw more flowers--waxlike camellias and some brilliant blossoms that neither she nor her companions could name. But there were other favorites--fuschias, geraniums, roses, in size and beauty surpassing anything Irma had ever seen. "It reminds me of California," said Marion. "Yes, there is the same soft air combined with the moisture that plants love. Europe has no finer gardens than one or two of these on St. Michael's. We'll have no time for another that belonged to José de Cantos. The owner died a few years ago and left it to the public, with enough money to keep it up. It has bamboo trees and palm trees and mammoth ferns and the greenhouses are filled with orchids. But we'll have to leave that for another visit. It is better now to go where we can get a general view of this part of the island." In the course of their walk they had met groups of sightseers from the ship. But when they were ready to go back they had to turn to a group of old men and women at work on a garden bed, who, with gesticulations, directed them to the right path. "Every one seems old here," said Irma, "even the men sweeping leaves from the paths with their twig brooms look nearly a hundred." "The young and strong probably emigrate," said Uncle Jim. On leaving the garden the coachman took them to the "buena vista," a hill where they had a lovely view of land and water. Far, far as they could see, stretched fertile farms with comfortable houses and outbuildings. "Small farms," explained Uncle Jim, "ought to mean that a good many people are very well off, and yet it is said that most of the people here are poor." When they were in the center of the town again, they sent their carriage away, and then Irma and Marion hastened to one of the little shops on the square, where the former bought post cards and the latter some small silver souvenirs. They rejoined Uncle Jim at the Cathedral door, but a glance at its tawdry interior contented them. Uncle Jim filled Irma's arms with flowers bought from one of the young flower sellers, and when at last they reached the wharf, they were among the last to embark for the ship. Muriel and Mademoiselle Potin were waiting for the same boat, and when they compared notes, the two girls found that they had seen practically the same things, though in a different order. During their two or three hours on shore a fresh breeze had sprung up, and the waves were high. The boat, making her way with difficulty, sometimes did not seem perfectly under the control of the stalwart oarsmen. This at least was Irma's opinion, as she sat there trembling. Even Muriel, the experienced traveller, looked pale, and Irma wondered how Marion felt, seated near the bow with his face turned resolutely away from his friends. "How huge the ship is," exclaimed Muriel, as they drew near the _Ariadne_, a great black hulk whose keel seemed to touch bottom. For a moment Irma had a spasm of fear. What if this great, black thing should tip over some night! How could she make up her mind to live in it for another week! Their rowers rested on their oars a few minutes, while other boats just ahead were putting passengers aboard. Looking to the decks so far above, Irma recognized Aunt Caroline waving her handkerchief. If only she could fly up there without any further battling with the waves! "Come, Irma," said Uncle Jim. "There isn't the least danger. I will stay on the boat until the last, and you can step just ahead of me." All the others, even Muriel and Mademoiselle, had gone up the stairs before Marion. He was just ahead of Irma, and when he had his footing, he stood a step or two from the bottom, to help Irma. The men had difficulty in steadying the boat. But one of them held Irma firmly, until her feet were on a dry step. Then, as Marion extended his hand to her, she put out hers when, it was hard to tell how it really happened, Marion's foot slipped, and instead of helping Irma he fell against her, almost throwing her into the tossing waves. Irma, however, fortunately kept her presence of mind. Not only did she grasp the guard rope quickly, but with her other arm she held Marion firmly. Their feet were wet by the dashing waves, but there was no further damage. They had had a great fright, though Marion seemed to suffer the most. When Irma relaxed her hold, she could walk up to the deck unaided, but Marion had to be supported by a boatman, until Uncle Jim, closely following, drew his arm through his, and so helped him to the deck. Not even Aunt Caroline realized what had happened, when Irma said she must go to her room to change her wet shoes. This she did quickly, as she wished to see all she could of the coast of beautiful St. Michael's. "Tell me now," said Aunt Caroline, from the depths of her chair, "was going ashore really worth while?" "Yes, indeed, you shouldn't have missed it." "Ah, well, I was there years ago, visiting cousins who lived there. But they are now dead, and everything would be so changed. I am told they have electric lights, not only in Ponta Delgada, but in the villages near by, and I don't suppose you met a single woman in the long capote, with its queer hood, nor even one man in a dark carpuccia." "Why, yes," responded Irma, smiling, "I met them on some post cards, but nowhere else." Irma hastened through her dinner that evening. Marion did not appear, but the old gentleman came to her, and placed himself in Aunt Caroline's vacant chair. He entered into a long conversation--or rather a monologue, since in answer to Irma's brief questions he did most of the talking. He told Irma how isolated the islanders were from one another, so that on Corvo, and one or two of the others, if the crops fail, or there is any disaster, they signal for help by means of bonfires. Some of them have mails to Portugal only once in two or three months. Ponta Delgada is much better off, with boats at least twice a month to Lisbon, and fairly good communication with other places. "But if I had time," continued the old gentleman, "I could find nothing more healthful and pleasant than a cruise around these nine Western Islands." "How large are they?" asked Irma abruptly. "Well, they cover more water than land. St. Mary, St. Michael's nearest neighbor, is fifty miles away, and Terceira, the next neighbor, is ninety miles off. But St. Michael's, the largest of them all, is only thirty-seven miles long by nine broad, and Corvo, the smallest, you could almost put in your pocket with its four and a half miles of length and three of breadth. But what they lack in size they make up in climate." "Then I don't see why the men are so ready to leave the islands." "To make money, my child. If Portugal were better off, the islands would share her prosperity. But they share the political troubles of the mother country. Many farms produce barely enough for the tenants, who have to deal with exacting landlords. But some of the large landowners, especially those who raise pineapples, grow rich. The oranges and bananas that they send to Lisbon, and their butter and cheese, too, make money for the producers. But the islands won't be really prosperous until they have more manufactures." In his soliloquy, the old gentleman seemed to have forgotten Irma, and she was on the point of calling his attention to the particularly high and rugged aspect of the coast they were then passing, when he continued, "St. Michael's, I believe, has made a good beginning with carriages and furniture for its own use, and soap and potato alcohol for export, and in time--but, my dear child, I am boring you to death----" "Oh, no, but isn't the coast beautiful, with that veil of mist around the tops of those mountains; what a pity it grows dark." "What a pity it has grown so damp that I must order you in," said the old gentleman kindly, and though he was neither uncle nor aunt, and no real authority, Irma found herself following him within, as she turned her back to the Western Islands. CHAPTER III TOWARD THE CONTINENT "Aren't you tired of hearing people wonder when we shall arrive at Gibraltar?" "They needn't wonder. This is a slow boat, but we have averaged about three hundred and twenty-five miles every day, so we must get in early Tuesday unless something unusual happens. A high wind may spring up, but even then we are pretty certain to come in sight of Gibraltar before night." "Oh, I can hardly wait until then," began Irma. "I hope we can go up on top of the Rock, and down in the dungeons, and everywhere." Muriel, who was walking with Irma and Marion, looked surprised at her friend's enthusiasm, and even a trifle bored. "Don't talk like a school book," she whispered, and Irma, reddening, glanced up at Marion, to see if he shared Muriel's strange distaste for history. But he gave no sign. Since leaving the Azores, Muriel's frank friendliness for Irma had added much to the pleasure of the two girls. Though they had been brought up so differently, they had much in common. Muriel's winters were usually spent there, but she had also travelled widely. She had been educated by governesses, and yet Irma could but notice that she was less well informed in history and had less interest in books than many of her own friends at home. Irma did not compare her own knowledge with Muriel's, but an impartial critic would probably have decided that, whatever might be the real merits of the two systems, Irma had profited the more from the education given her. In modern French and German, however, Muriel certainly was proficient, and when she complained of Mademoiselle Potin, Irma would tell her to be thankful that she had so good a chance to practice French. Since the day at St. Michael's, Marion had ceased to avoid Irma, and though he spent little time with her, he was evidently trying to be friendly. He never referred to his misadventure coming on board. Aunt Caroline had brought Irma his thanks. "He is very nervous, as you must have noticed," she said, "and he may be unable to talk to you about this. For he feels that he has disgraced himself again; and though he is incorrect in this, still I appreciate his feelings, and hope you will accept his thanks." "Why, there's really nothing to thank me for," began Irma. "Oh, yes, my dear, we all think differently. You certainly have great presence of mind. Poor Marion." In spite of Aunt Caroline's sympathetic tones, Irma did not pity Marion. He was a fine, manly-looking boy, and the sea air had brought color to his face, while his fretful expression had almost gone. After the first day or two at sea Irma had begun to make new acquaintances. Among them was a little girl who greatly reminded her of Tessie as she had been a few years earlier. So one day she called her to listen to the steamer letter from Tessie, that she had found under her plate that morning. "Dear Irma, when you read this--for I hope Uncle Jim will give my letter to you--you will be far out on the ocean, where it is very deep, with no islands or peninsulas in sight, and I hope you will be careful not to fall overboard. But please look over the edge of the boat once in a while to see if there are any whales about. Of course, I hope they won't be large enough to upset your steamboat, but if you see one, please take a photograph and send it to me, for I never saw a photograph of a truly, live whale. "I can't tell you any news, because I am writing this before you leave home, so you'll be sure to get it. I would feel too badly to write after you get started. "From your loving Tessie." The letter interested little Jean very much. She had already heard about Tessie and Nap, and now she rushed to the edge of the deck, and when Irma followed her, the child upturned to her a disappointed face. "I can't see one." "One what?" "A whale--and Tessie will be so disappointed. I know she wants that photograph." "No matter, I can take your photograph, only you must smile." So Jean smiled, and the photograph was taken with the camera that Uncle Jim had given Irma. "It will be more fun to look for Gibraltar than for whales. To-morrow we must all have our eyes open." "What's Gibraltar?" "The great big rock where we are going to land." "I don't want to land on a rock," pouted Jean. "I want to go ashore." "Oh, we'll go ashore, too." That evening there was a dance on the ship. The upper deck was covered with canvas, and canvas enclosed the sides. Gay bunting and English and American flags brightened the improvised ballroom, and most of the younger passengers, as well as not a few of the elder, spent at least part of the evening there. "Hasn't Marion been here?" asked Aunt Caroline, when she and Uncle Jim appeared on the scene. "I haven't seen him," responded Irma. "What a goose he is!" exclaimed Uncle Jim. "He's very grumpy, isn't he?" commented Muriel, but Irma made no reply. On Tuesday Irma was on deck early. In the distance a thin dark line after a time took on height and breadth. "Cape Trafalgar!" some one exclaimed. "Europe at last!" thought Irma. "What do you think of Spain?" asked Uncle Jim, standing beside her. "It seems to be chiefly brown cliffs. And so few villages! Where are the cities?" "You'll find seaports only where there are harbors. They are not generally found on rocky promontories." Irma turned about. Yes, the speaker was indeed Marion, whose approach she had not observed. "Oh, Cadiz is not so very far to the north there," interposed Uncle Jim, in an effort to throw oil on the troubled waters, "and we cannot tell just what lies behind those heights. What is there, Marion? You've been in Spain." But Marion had disappeared. After passing Trafalgar, the _Ariadne_ kept nearer shore. Now there was a house in sight, again a little white hamlet lying low at the base of the brown, bare cliffs. Far ahead the clouds took on new shapes, and did not change. Could that be the huge bulk of Gibraltar, seen through a mist? Uncle Jim laughed when Irma put the question to him. "You are looking in the wrong direction." "Then it must be Africa. Oh, I wish we might go nearer." "In that case you might miss the Rock altogether, and take the chance, too, of being wrecked on a savage coast." But the Spanish shore gained in interest. Here and there small fishing boats pushed out. Sometimes steamboats were in sight, smaller than the _Ariadne_ yet of good size, traders along the coast from London, perhaps, to Spanish or French ports. Muriel and Irma amused themselves guessing their nationality, with Uncle Jim as referee. Strange birds flew overhead. Then a town, grayish rather than white, and a lighthouse on the height above. "Tarifa," some one explained, and those who knew said that Gibraltar could not be far away. Soon Irma, who had kept her face toward the African shore, was startled by a voice in her ear. "The Pillars of Hercules are near; people are so busy gathering up their things to go ashore that I was afraid you might go to your stateroom for something, and so miss them." "You are very kind to think of me," said Irma, turning toward Marion, for it was he who had spoken. "How I wish we were to land at some of those strange African places." "Tangiers might be worth while, but I love this distant view of the mountains." "Do you know the name of the African pillar?" "Yes--Abyla! and Gibraltar, formerly known as Calpé, was the other. It's a pity we won't have time to go to the top of the Rock. The Carthaginians used to go up there to watch for the Roman ships. The British officer on guard at the top of the Rock must have a wonderful view. Some one told me you can see from the Sierra Nevadas in Spain to the Atlas in Africa. Just think of being perched up there, fourteen hundred feet above the sea. If only we could have a whole day at Gibraltar, we might see something, but now----" and the old expression of discontent settled on Marion's lips. "Oh, well, we can probably go around the fortifications," responded Irma, trying to console him. "The fortifications! Oh, no, there are miles of them, and the galleries are closed at sundown, so that we couldn't get into them, even if we had a pass,--I suppose that's what they call it." "Well, at least we'll see the town itself, and we can't help running upon some of the garrison, for there are several thousand soldiers and officers." "Oh, I dare say, but it isn't the same thing as visiting Gibraltar decently. Uncle Jim ought to have planned a trip through Spain. It would be three times more interesting than Italy." Irma, who had visited neither country, did not contradict Marion. Enough for her even a short stay at one of the most famous places in the world, the wonderful fortress that the British had defended and held so bravely during a four years' siege more than a century ago. "Marion is a strange boy," thought Irma. "I wonder why he tries to make himself miserable." After passing the jagged and mysterious Pillars of Hercules, Irma soon saw the huge bulk of Gibraltar not far off, and then it seemed but a short run until they had gained the harbor. Her heart sank when she found they were to anchor some distance from shore, for though the water was still and calm, she did not like the small boats. But Uncle Jim laughed at her fears, assuring her that they would be taken off in a comfortable tender. The tender was slow in coming, and during the time of waiting some passengers fretted and fumed. "If they don't get us in by sunset they may not let us land at all. There is such a rule." When others asserted that there was no such rule, some still fretted, because after five there would be no chance to visit the fortifications. "Come, Irma," said Uncle Jim, "these lamentations have some foundation in fact. But Gibraltar's a small town, and we'll improve our two shining hours, which surely shine with much heat, by getting our bearings here." "There's plenty to see," responded Irma. "I suppose those are English warships in their gray coats, and there's a German flag on that great ocean liner. It seems to be crowded with men, immigrants, I suppose, for they are packed on the decks like--like----" "Yes, like flies on flypaper." And Irma smiled at the comparison. Not far from a great mole that stretched out, hot and bare in the sun, two clumsy colliers were anchored; here and there little sailboats darted in and out, and the small steam ferries plied backward and forward to the distant wooded shore, which Uncle Jim said was Algeciras. But it was the gray mass of Gibraltar itself that held Irma's attention. The town side, seen from the harbor, though less steep than the outline usually seen in pictures, was yet most imposing. Along its great breadth, lines of fortifications could be discerned, and barracks, grayish in color, like the rock itself. There were lines of pale brown houses that some one said were officers' quarters, and an old ruin, the remains of an ancient Moorish castle. A number of passengers were to land at Gibraltar to make a tour of Spain, among them little Jean. Irma had turned for a last good-by to them, when Aunt Caroline, joining her, told her that people were already going on board the tender. "What are your exact sensations, Irma?" whispered Uncle Jim, mischievously, "on touching your foot to the soil of Europe? You know you'll wish to be accurate when you record this in your diary. Excuse me for reminding you." "Come, come," remonstrated Aunt Caroline. "Irma may have to record her feelings on finding that every conveyance into the town has been secured by other passengers, while a frivolous uncle had forgotten his duty." But even as she spoke, Marion approached them, walking beside a carriage, to whose driver he was talking. "Well done, Marion; so you jumped off ahead, and though it's a queer-looking outfit, it will probably have to suit your critical aunt." "It's much better than most carriages here," replied Marion, a trifle indignantly; "some of them have only one horse." "You are very thoughtful, Marion," said Aunt Caroline, as they took their places in the brown, canopied phaeton. "No, not now, not now," she cried, as a tall, dignified Spaniard thrust a basket of flowers toward her. "Orange blossoms and pansies are almost irresistible, but it is wiser to wait until we are on our way back to the boat." Marion's face had brightened at Aunt Caroline's praise, and thus, in good humor, he chatted pleasantly with Irma as they drove on. So long was the procession of vehicles ahead of them that their own carriage went slowly through the narrow street. A Moor in flowing white robes and huge turban attracted Irma's attention, as she observed him seated in the doorway of a warehouse on the dock. Farther on they saw a boy of perhaps seventeen, similarly arrayed, pushing a baby carriage. "The servant of an English officer," Uncle Jim explained. "Look your hardest at him, for we shall not see many of his kind after this. It is now past the hour when the Moorish market closes. After that all Moors must be out of the town in their homes outside the gates, except those employed in private families." As the carriage turned into the long, crooked thoroughfare that is the chief business street of Gibraltar, the driver pulled up before a small shop that had a sign "New York Newspapers." "He knows what we need; run, Marion, and get us the latest news." "Yes, Aunt Caroline." But there was disappointment on Marion's face when he returned a few moments later. "There was another liner in early this morning, and all the latest papers are gone. They have only the European editions of New York papers, and the two I could get are a week old." "No matter, son, you did the best you could." "These are two or three days later than the last we saw in New York, and as they have no bad news, or I might say no news at all, we may be thankful. But we must move on. In this bustling town there's no time to stand still." "What interesting shops!" began Irma. "Oh, they're ugly and dingy," said Marion. "In Europe we're almost bound to admire the dingy, if not the ugly," returned Uncle Jim. "Where are we going?" asked Aunt Caroline. "Out to the jumping-off place," said Marion. "That won't take long. After that we can go shopping, or at least you can." "There's a great deal I can enjoy," said Irma pleasantly. Then they drove on past a park where boys were romping on a gravelled playground, while in another portion officers played cricket. They passed many soldiers in khaki, and here and there a red coat. A sloping road led up to a set of officers' quarters, detached houses, shaded by tropical trees. Here they noticed a girl on horseback, a young girl of about Irma's age, with her hair hanging in a long braid beneath her broad, felt hat, and not far from her two or three girls driving. At the little Trafalgar burying-ground their driver paused a moment that they might read the inscriptions on some of the monuments, marking the burial places of many brave English patriots. They had time for a bare glance at the old Moorish garden across the road. "This is the jumping-off place," cried Marion, as they came in sight of the water. At one side was a pool where the soldiers bathed, and near by the officers' bathing-houses. "I know that I should be turning back," said Aunt Caroline. "My special shop is up Gunners' Lane, and when I have been left there, you others may inspect the town. At the most there isn't much time." Marion, however, insisted on staying with Aunt Caroline. "Very well, then. After we have spent all our money on antiques, we'll meet you in front of the post office. I noticed it as we came along; and you must surely be there at half past seven." "Yes, yes," promised Uncle Jim. "Now, my dear," he said, as he and Irma returned to the main street, "we can let the carriage go, as we shall probably spend our time passing in and out of these shops." It was now after six, and the street was thronged. Many were evidently working people on their way home from their day's labors, but some were shoppers with baskets on their arms, and others were evidently tourists, loitering or running in and out of the shops. It was a good-natured crowd that pushed and jostled and overflowed into the middle of the street. Among the throng were many sailors from the ships of war. For some time Uncle Jim with Irma gazed in the windows, and wandered in and out of the most promising shops. In his shopping he had one invariable method. No matter what the object, or its cost, he always offered half the price asked. "Is it fair," asked Irma timidly, "to beat them down?" "It's fair to me," he replied. "In this way I stand a chance of getting things at something near their value." "How much is that?" "Usually one half the asking price. Listen." So Irma listened while a lady near by was bargaining with the Hindu salesman. "Never in my life has such a price been known," he protested, as the lady held up for inspection a spangled Egyptian scarf. The lady advanced reasons for her price. "I cannot make my bread," cried the man, "if I throw my goods away." Yet he thrust the scarf into the lady's hand, and then sold her a second at the same price, without a word of argument. "These men are Orientals," explained Uncle Jim, "and this is their way of doing business. They mark a thing double or treble what they expect to get, and would be surprised if you should buy without bargaining. This man probably goes through this process a dozen times a day after an ocean liner has come into port, and doubtless congratulates himself on the extent of his trade." Uncle Jim further explained that things made in India and Egypt were brought to Gibraltar at small expense, and could be sold for much less than in America or France or even Spain. So he bought spangled scarfs and silver belt buckles, and a number of other little things that he said would exactly suit Aunt Caroline. But Irma bought nothing, tempting though many things were. Realizing that all Italy lay before her, she did not care to draw yet on the little hoard that she was saving for presents for those at home. After they had visited a number of shops, Irma remembered that she had several letters to post. "You can't buy stamps at the post office," said Uncle Jim. "That's one of the peculiarities of Europe. Stamps are sold where you least expect to find them, usually in a tobacconist's. I will go to the shop over there and get some." A moment later, when Uncle Jim returned with the stamps, a gentleman whom Irma did not know was with him. "This is my old friend, Gregory," he said, presenting him to Irma. "If we had not that appointment to meet your aunt and Marion here, I would take you to the hotel to see Mrs. Gregory. It is impossible for her to come out, and I am sorry to miss her." "Yes, and she will be disappointed at not seeing you. But she is extremely tired, as we arrived on the German liner this morning, and to-morrow we start on a fatiguing trip through Spain." "If it would not take more than a quarter of an hour, there is no reason why you should not go back to the hotel, Uncle Jim. I can wait here, for Aunt Caroline and Marion may come along at any minute." After a little thought, Uncle Jim decided that Irma's plan was practicable. But he wished her to wait in a phaeton, to whose driver he gave explicit directions not to go more than a block from the post-office door. But when after a quarter of an hour neither Uncle Jim nor Aunt Caroline had appeared, Irma was greatly disturbed. "I wouldn't make a good Casabianca," she thought. Some of her friends from the _Ariadne_ passed her, and one or two stopped to advise her. "They would have been here ten minutes ago, had they expected to meet you here." "No, they are probably waiting for you at the landing." Even the driver shared this view, and at a quarter of eight Irma drove down to the boat escorted by the carriage in which sat Muriel and her mother and governess. "You must stay with us," said Muriel, "until you find your aunt. She's probably on the tender." But just at this moment a hand was laid on Irma's arm. Turning about, she saw that the little old gentleman was beside her. "Excuse me," he said, "but your aunt is over there. She has not yet gone aboard the tender." As he pointed to the left, Irma saw Aunt Caroline and Marion under the electric light near the waiting-room. When she had reached them the old gentleman was nowhere in sight. "We forgot that we had agreed on the post office," explained Aunt Caroline, "at least I thought it was the landing. Then we were afraid to go back, for fear of making matters worse. But what has become of your uncle?" Irma's explanation was not particularly soothing to her aunt. "If he isn't here soon, he will lose his passage on the _Ariadne_. We must go on, even without him. Some other boat for Naples will come soon. We can better spend extra time at Naples than wait here." "But suppose something has happened to him!" suggested Marion. "I am not afraid. This isn't the first time he has missed boats--but still----" Aunt Caroline seemed to waver. The last whistle had been blown when a figure was seen making flying leaps towards the boat. It was Uncle Jim, who later explained that he had forgotten to look at his watch until his friend suddenly reminded him that he had but five minutes in which to reach the boat. Thereupon he had decided that his only way was to run as if for his life. Almost exhausted, he was evidently not a fit subject for reproof, and Aunt Caroline merely expressed her thankfulness that he had not been detained at Gibraltar. CHAPTER IV AWAY FROM GIBRALTAR As the _Ariadne_ steamed away from Gibraltar, the harbor looked very unlike that of the afternoon. It was now cool, and dark except when lit by flashes from the searchlights. The warships that had looked so sombre in the afternoon were now outlined by rows of tiny electric lights, and myriads of lights twinkled from the town lying along the face of the Rock. With so much beauty outside, Irma could not leave the deck of the _Ariadne_. As she stood there alone, the little old gentleman approached. "There is to be a sham fight in the harbor to-night. That accounts for the unusual illumination." "It is too beautiful for words. I must stay until we see the other face of the Rock--the picture side." "I wish I could stay, but I came only to bring you this. It may be of use to you, as you can have no dinner." "No dinner! But I wish none." "Some of your friends, however, may need something more substantial than the view. The company is saving an honest penny by allowing those who went ashore to abstain from dinner. It would have been served as usual, it was ready, the stewards say, if there had been passengers here to eat it." "But they were all ashore." "The passengers coming on at Gibraltar were here. Others could have been, but they preferred sightseeing at Gibraltar. Consequently they were punished." The company's meanness seemed absurd, but as the old gentleman departed, Irma thanked him warmly for his gift,--a good-sized basket filled with fruit and cakes. For some time Irma strained her eyes for a glimpse of the other side of the Rock. At length, against the sky rose a huge bulk that might have escaped a less keen vision. Almost instantly a passing cloud darkened the sky, and the giant became invisible. When Irma went inside she found a discontented crowd gathered in passageways and in the library. Loud were the complaints that greeted her of the company's cruelty in omitting dinner. "We went ashore without even our usual afternoon tea, and no one had time to think of food at Gibraltar." Irma held out her basket. "A fairy godfather visited me," she said, "but I really do not know just what he gave me. Come, share it with me." Aunt Caroline looked surprised; Uncle Jim gave an expressive whistle, while even on Marion's face was an expression of curiosity. "I do not even know what is in the basket," repeated Irma, "though the fairy godfather said it held fruit and cakes." "I should say so," exclaimed Uncle Jim lifting the cover. "What fruit! And that cake looks as if it had been made in Paris. Just now these are much more attractive than those spangled scarfs I wrestled for with that Hindu. By the way, Irma, are these for show or use? They look too good to eat." "Try them and see," answered Irma. "I'd be more eager to eat if I knew the name of the fairy godfather." "I don't know it myself," said Irma. "This feast will dull our appetites for the nine o'clock rarebit," interposed Uncle Jim, who had made a test of the basket's contents. "I am sure a fairy godfather wouldn't use poison," and Aunt Caroline followed Uncle Jim's example. When Irma turned to offer the basket to Marion, he had left the group. "Poor boy," exclaimed Aunt Caroline. "He told me he felt very faint. It seems he had little luncheon. Perhaps we shall find him in the dining saloon." But when they descended to the dining saloon, Marion was not there, nor did they see him again that night. Yet, if she could not share the old gentleman's gift with Marion, Irma found Muriel most grateful for a portion. For some time the two girls sat together at one end of the long table, comparing notes about Gibraltar. They stayed together so late, indeed, that just before the lights were put out Aunt Caroline appeared. "Why, Irma, my dear, after this exciting day I should think you would need rest earlier than usual." "Perhaps so, Aunt Caroline. But the day has been so exciting that I cannot feel sleepy." "It has grown foggy," said Aunt Caroline, as they went to their room. "I do not like fog, and I am glad that we have but two or three more nights at sea." Once in her berth Irma soon slept. She thought indeed that she had been asleep for hours, when suddenly she woke. It must be morning! But as she opened her eyes, not a glimmer of light came through the porthole. What had wakened her? Then she realized that the boat was still. What had happened? She was conscious of persons walking on the decks above, of voices far away, even of an occasional shout. Ought she to waken Aunt Caroline? While her thoughts were running thus, she had jumped from her berth, and a moment later, in wrapper and moccasins, had made her way to the deck. A few other passengers were moving about, and a group of stewards and stewardesses stood at the head of the stairs, as if awaiting orders. "What is it?" she cried anxiously. Before her question had been answered, some one shoved her arm rather roughly. Looking up she saw that Marion had come up behind her. "What are you doing here?" he said brusquely. "You will get your death. It is very cold." Irma shivered. In spite of her long cape she was half frozen. The night air was chilly, and it was on this account that Marion pulled her from the open door. "Are we in danger? I thought I wouldn't wake Aunt Caroline until I knew." At this moment Marion, unfortunately, smiled. He was fully dressed and wore a long overcoat. With his well-brushed hair he presented a strong contrast to poor, dishevelled Irma. Naturally, then, she resented his smile, occasioned, she thought, by her untidy appearance. "You are a very disagreeable boy," she cried angrily. "I wish I had told you so long ago." Thereupon Irma turned toward the stewards, among whom she recognized the man who took care of her stateroom. "No, Miss, we're not in danger," he answered. "It's foggy, and there was something wrong about signals, but we stopped just in time to get clear of a man-of-war. It would have been pretty bad if she had run into us. So go back to your bed, Miss; it's all right now, and we're starting up again." Marion was unhappy as he watched Irma walking downstairs. Evidently he had in some way offended her; but how? She was an amiable girl; he was sure of this. Therefore his own offence must have been very serious. "It is no use," said Marion bitterly, "I cannot expect people to like me. Of course, she started with a prejudice, and she will never get over it." Now Irma, when she returned to her berth, though reassured by what the steward had said, did not at once fall asleep. For a long time she lay with eyes wide open listening to many strange sounds, some real, some imaginary. But at last, when a metallic hammering had continued for hours, as it seemed to her, she was quite sure something had happened to the boilers, and she drowsily hoped the _Ariadne_ would keep afloat until morning. It would be so much easier to get off in the lifeboats by daylight. Then she must have fallen asleep. At least the next thing of which she was aware was Aunt Caroline's loud whisper to the stewardess. "We won't disturb her. She can sleep until luncheon." Aunt Caroline laughed, when Irma, looking through the curtains of her berth, asked the time. "Past breakfast time, my dear, but the stewardess will bring you hot coffee and toast. You will have only a short hour to wait for luncheon." Thus Irma broke her record of never missing a meal in the dining-room, and shortened a day that otherwise would have seemed very long, as the fog did not clear until late afternoon. All this day Marion spent in a corner of the library. The ship's collection of books contained nothing very recent, but in it were one or two old favorites, whom for the time he preferred as companions to any of his fellow passengers. As to Irma, he tried to put her out of his mind. The world for him again became a dull, stupid place, and most of its inhabitants were his enemies. Strange as it may seem, Irma had soon forgotten her pettishness of the night before. Her fright, the noises from the boiler room, all had seemed a kind of nightmare. So on Thursday, which might be their last full day at sea, she wondered that Marion, who had seemed so friendly at Gibraltar, should now be so unsocial. She and Muriel spent much time together. Though they had not been fortunate enough to see any whales, they did catch sight of a few porpoises, spouting in the water not far away, and as the day was particularly sunny, Irma used her camera to advantage. Not only had she photographed little Jean and her black nurse earlier, and several passengers whom she best knew, but she caught the captain and several of the officers going the rounds at morning inspection, and some of the crew at fire drill. She even leaned over the railing and turned her camera toward the steerage. As she steadied her camera, many turned their eyes toward her. Two or three smiled and waved their hands in a friendly manner. Altogether there was not a large number. In the spring, the captain had told her, not many immigrants returned to Europe. Those now going back to Italy were chiefly those whom the Government had forbidden to land. Some others, who had been in America a short time, were also sent back at the public expense, because likely to become public charges. Muriel and Irma had frequently speculated about the character of several whom they had seen on the third cabin deck from day to day. One group of rough men with bright handkerchiefs twisted about their necks, and caps pulled over their eyes, they called anarchists, and they had theories about most of the others. Both girls had a strong desire to make a tour of the steerage quarters, under the guidance of the ship's doctor. He assured Aunt Caroline that there was no contagious disease. One poor woman had consumption, and might not live to reach Italy, and two or three others were in a decline, but there would be no danger for the young ladies. But neither Muriel's mother nor Aunt Caroline would consent to let the girls see more of the third cabin than they could observe from their own deck. "I really believe," said Irma, "that Aunt Caroline thinks I will catch something from these negatives of the steerage. She is so nervous about it." "Then I should think she would be unwilling to have Marion spend so much time there." "Marion! oh, she doesn't care to have him down there. I remember what she said when he asked her one day." "Well, he goes just the same. I heard my mother and Mademoiselle talking about it only yesterday." This so surprised Irma that she closed her camera and took no more pictures. "I wonder," she said, as if to change the subject, "why that old woman sits there in the corner with her hands over her face. Those little girls, I think, must be her grandchildren. Generally she has the baby in her arms, but the two older girls seem to be taking care of it to-day, and the oldest isn't here at all. She's about my age. Why, there she is, sitting by herself, and her eyes are very red, as if she had been crying." Later in the day, after Muriel had left her, Irma sat down on a settee at the uncovered end of the deck where a number of people, old and young, were playing shuffleboard. Just then the ship's doctor passed, and she thought it a good time to ask him about the old woman in the steerage. "The old woman is downhearted. Her daughter, the mother of the four girls, died a couple of days ago. She was longing to live until she reached Italy, was sure, in fact, that once there she would recover. But from the first I knew her case was hopeless, and we buried her at sea the night before we touched at Gibraltar." "Oh," sighed Irma, "it must be hard for the children." "Yes, very hard. You see it's only a short time since they went out from Italy. The father had a trade, but a week or two after landing he was taken ill, and in another week or two had died. Charitable societies looked after them for a while. They came under the law that requires those likely to become a public charge to be sent back. They have no friends in America." "I suppose they have in Italy." "Yes, and though probably they, too, are poor, still the family will be better off there. With no real wage-earner I do not see what they could do in your country." "I can't see what they will do in Italy, if they have no money." "Oh, they have enough to take them up to Fiesole. That is where they live. But there, you must know something about it; some of the passengers are taking up a collection for them." "Why, no! I have heard nothing of it." "That's strange, for that young man in your party, Marion Horton, is interested. He's been very good, too, to another steerage passenger, a young fellow from Bologna, who is paying his own way back. He has taken Italian lessons from him, I believe." "You surprise me," said Irma, as the doctor moved away. Could it be that Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim knew nothing of Marion's doings? Later others spoke to her about the death of the Italian woman and the needs of her family, and then Muriel came to say that she had given five dollars to the fund a Mrs. Brown was gathering, "and do you know that Marion Horton has charge of it? Isn't it funny he never told you?" The more Irma thought about it the more certain she became that Marion hesitated about letting Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim know that he was in the habit of visiting the steerage. While they had no right, perhaps, to dictate to a boy of seventeen, still Aunt Caroline had expressed herself strongly against his going to the third cabin. Evidently he did not wish her to know that he had disregarded her wishes. What he was unwilling to tell Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim, he would hardly confide to Irma. It happened, however, that at dinner that evening Marion himself told the story of the old grandmother and her young charges. But though he spoke of the little fund that had been raised, he did not mention his own interest in it. "Some one came to me yesterday," said Uncle Jim, when Marion had finished, "and I made a contribution. I did not know the exact need, but you have made it now quite clear." She approached him as he was starting out on deck. "Here is a dollar; please add it to the fund," said Irma to Marion after dinner. Marion glanced at her in astonishment. But he did not take her money. Instead he waved his hand as if to push it away. "No, no," he replied. "No, we do not need it. We have enough." Then, without another glance at Irma, he walked away. "Does he think I offer too little, or does he dislike me so much that he won't take my money?" But there was no one to answer her question. It was now Irma's turn to feel hurt. Small as her offering was, the dollar meant some sacrifice. At least she had taken it from the little sum she had set aside for presents for the family and Lucy and Gertrude and other friends. From her it was a larger sum than twenty dollars from Muriel. So it was trying to have her intended gift treated disdainfully. That evening, as she sat on deck, wondering if this would really be her last night at sea, some one dropped into the empty chair beside hers. "Why so quiet, god-daughter?" It was the voice of the old gentleman, but how had he learned that she sometimes called him the "fairy godfather?" She was glad now to see him. She might not have many more of those pleasant talks with him, unless, perhaps, their paths should cross in Italy. But she had never ventured to ask him just where he was going. Now, contrary to his habit, the old gentleman talked less of the countries he had visited in the past. In some way, before she realized it, he had turned the conversation in the direction of Marion, and after he had left her, Irma was conscious that she had given him much more information than she ought to have given a stranger. "Yes, yes," he had exclaimed, "I can see just what he is like. Willful as ever," and with an abrupt "good night" he had hurried away. "It isn't quite fair that we should all be so pleased at the prospect of landing," said Uncle Jim Friday morning. "Every one seems to think the sooner we are in Naples the better. But we've had a fine trip, no accidents, few seasick, few homesick. Yet here we are with our steamer trunks packed, almost ready to swim ashore, rather than stay longer on the _Ariadne_." "It's human nature, always longing for change. But we might as well possess our souls in patience. Those who know say it will be late afternoon before we even catch a glimpse of the Bay of Naples." "Oh, Aunt Caroline!" "There, Irma, you are as impatient as the rest of us. It is really true that we may not land until evening." Evidently Aunt Caroline spoke with good authority. It was late afternoon before they saw the rugged heights of Ischia in the distance. They were at dinner when they actually passed it, and when they entered the lovely Bay of Naples, the sun had set, and it was too dark to see its actual beauties clearly. When at last they were anchored, it was as if they were in fairyland. The city was a semicircle of brilliant lights curving in front of them. They were surrounded by boats of every size, all of them carrying lights. "Must we land again in tenders?" sighed Irma. "Are there no wharves in Europe?" A fine mist was falling. "Before we go ashore it may be a heavy rain," said Uncle Jim. "If you agree, we can do as the larger number here intend to do. We can sleep on shipboard, and in the morning make a fresh start." The others agreed with Uncle Jim, and remained out on deck to watch the embarkation of those who were going ashore. While they waited, many little boats pushed near the _Ariadne_. In one a quartette sang the sweet Neapolitan songs. In another some stringed instruments played a soft melody. Sometimes the music stopped, while players or singers scrambled for the coppers thrown to the boats by passengers on deck. Then, when the music was resumed, the sound of laughter was mingled with it. Presently a procession of immigrants passed along the deck, carrying bundles and baskets. They made their way slowly to the gangway to descend to the tender. "I wonder if they are glad to be coming home," whispered Irma to Uncle Jim. "No, I fancy most of them prefer America." Just then, at the sound of laughter behind them, Irma and her uncle turned about to see a tall Italian stooping to pick some bananas from the deck. Over his shoulder was a long string of bananas, bought probably in the Azores. Some that were overripe had fallen to the deck. Hardly had he picked these up, when two or three others fell--then others. The poor fellow was in despair. He did not wish to leave them. But he had no way of carrying them. For besides the string of bananas he had to take care of his bundle of clothing carried clumsily under the other arm. While he stood there half dazed, as a companion stooped to help him, suddenly there was a movement in the group of bystanders. A brown linen bag was thrown down at his feet, and a voice cried in Italian, "There, put your bananas in the bag, put them all in and take the bag home with you." "Well done, Marion," cried Uncle Jim, for he and Irma had instantly recognized Marion's voice. "Come here and tell us how you happened to think of it." "Oh, it was easy enough to think of the bag. It was the last thing I put in the tray of my trunk. I was only afraid I couldn't get back with it in time. I dare say the poor wretch meant to sell those bananas at a profit when he lands, and I didn't wish to have his trade spoiled." "But where in the world did you learn the Italian you hurled at him? He seemed to understand it, too." "Oh, I knew a few words before I left home, and here on shipboard I have managed to pick up a few more." Did Marion speak with embarrassment, or did Irma imagine this because she had heard of his going to the steerage for lessons? "_Addio, addio_," cried the owner of the bananas, who had completed his task of packing the fruit in Marion's bag. "_Addio, addio_," responded Marion, while the man, as he passed on to the gangway, poured forth a flood of thanks. When the tender had steamed off, Irma went below. She needed a good night's rest, for breakfast was to be at half past seven. In the misty morning the tender made a quick run to the dock. Just as they pushed away from the _Ariadne_ Irma heard a voice crying, "Good-by, god-daughter." It was the little old gentleman. Since evening she had not seen him, and now she was ashamed that she had not tried to find him for a word of farewell. "Good-by, good-by," she cried, waving her handkerchief. But already he had slipped back out of sight. "To whom were you calling?" asked Aunt Caroline. "To the fairy godfather." "If you were not generally so sensible, sometimes I should think you quite out of your mind," rejoined Aunt Caroline. "Except for that fruit at Gibraltar, your fairy godfather would seem a myth. For neither your uncle nor I ever saw such a person on the _Ariadne_. Did you, Marion?" "Of course not," replied Marion shortly. But Irma only smiled. She knew there was such a person. CHAPTER V ON SHORE The arrival at Naples was much less terrible than many persons had pictured it to Irma and Aunt Caroline. No one attempted to tear their chatelaine bags from them; the officers of the _dogana_ were perfectly civil; no one tried to abstract their trunks. It is true there was a long and apparently needless delay before their trunks were examined and marked, but they made light of this when once they were in the carriage on their way to the hotel. The busy streets through which they first passed were broad and clean. Electric cars, hardly different from the American type, ran through them. The men and women on the sidewalks stepped along briskly. Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim made constant contrasts between the Naples of the present and the past. "The cholera of '84 had one good result; it enabled the city fathers here to do away with many old slums, and put these new streets in their place." Their way eventually led up a broad avenue that mounted to the heights above the old city. Once or twice, at a turn of the road, they had a view of the bay, and of Vesuvius in the distance. "There, there, Irma," cried Uncle Jim, when they first saw the mountain. "Let your heart beat as rapidly as it will; you now look on one of the wonders of the world." Their hotel was on ground so high that they entered it by a subway, and thence by elevator to the summit of a rock whereon stood the hotel. While Uncle Jim was securing rooms, the others, by a common impulse, rushed out on a balcony, of which they had caught a glimpse. "Yes, this is Naples!" exclaimed Aunt Caroline, looking down on the lovely bay, clear and blue. "But," she continued, "Vesuvius is certainly changed--I did not realize that losing the top would so alter him, or her. What do you call volcanoes, Irma?" "Them," responded Irma, and even Marion smiled at her promptness. While they were still looking at the bay and the distant shores of Sorrento and Amalfi, Irma suddenly felt two hands clasp themselves over her eyes. "Don't forget your friends just because you have a volcano to look at," and then, unclasping her hands from Irma's eyes, Muriel stepped in front, where Irma could see her. Muriel was one of those who had left the _Ariadne_ the night before, and as she had not mentioned where she should stay in Naples, Irma and her party were surprised to see her. "Isn't it great that we should be here together?" continued Muriel, after the others had said a word or two of greeting. "The only disagreeable thing is that I am going on to-morrow, for our motor is here, and mamma does not wish to wait longer in Naples." So it happened that though they planned to spend part of the next morning together, this was the last time that Muriel and Irma saw each other for several weeks. "It's well we didn't make plans over night," said Irma, when she joined the others at _déjeuner_ on the morning of her arrival in Naples. "There seems to be a fine mist in the air; and probably that means rain." "Then we won't plan a long drive. You can come shopping with me, Irma," said Aunt Caroline. "I wish to look for coral." "I did not know there was so much coral in the world," said Irma, after they had been out some time. "Where do they get it?" "From Japan and Sardinia and--oh--several other places." "But why should it all come here?" "Because in Naples they know how to cut coral and cameos better than elsewhere in the world." "It is beautiful, of course, and there are so many shades of pink, I shall never know what is meant when any one calls a thing coral colored." "You must choose something for yourself," urged Aunt Caroline, "a little souvenir of Naples;" and when Irma hesitated she selected for her a string of pale red beads. "The very light pink are the most valuable," said Aunt Caroline, "but I will not suggest a change." From the shops near the water front they drove over to the Galleria Umberto I, a huge structure with a glass dome that gave plenty of light to the shops in the arcades on the street level. Here Irma bought two or three little gifts for some of her friends at home,--just whom does not matter now. The afternoon passed quickly, and Irma was pleased when Aunt Caroline said it would be wiser to get afternoon tea in a restaurant down town. Irma herself would have enjoyed the open-air restaurants which she had noted as they drove around, but in the more conventional place that her aunt chose, they managed to find a few novelties on the menu. [Illustration: NAPLES. A STREET VIEW.] Later, they took a drive through some narrow streets, where Irma saw many of the peculiarities of Neapolitan street life, of which she had read a little. There were whole families sitting in front of their dwellings. In some cases mothers were combing the hair of little children, or changing their clothes, or bending over what Irma called "cooking-stands," for they certainly could hardly be considered stoves. "I wonder what they are cooking," she said, "in those queer copper kettles or pans. I should not know what to call them." "Snail soup, perhaps," replied Aunt Caroline, "or more probably macaroni." The word "macaroni" seemed to catch their coachman's ear, and turning toward them, he said some words in Italian so rapidly that Aunt Caroline hardly understood, and then, urging his horse, drove straight on. "He said something about 'old men,' and 'eating macaroni,' but I have no idea what he really means, and I do not like the region where he is taking us." Finally, after many windings, they passed up a street on which the houses were poor, but of a rather better type than those they had seen a short time earlier. "There must be an institution near by," said Aunt Caroline, after they had met, one after the other, several old men wearing a blue uniform. This conjecture proved correct, for at the end of the street they came upon a large building, evidently a home for old men. "Why is the driver so anxious to have us go inside? We really must make him understand. No, no. No, no!" continued Aunt Caroline, and finally, by repeating "No, no," and using gesticulations more emphatic than his own, she made him turn about. But he still continued his pantomime of carrying his hand to his mouth, as if in the act of eating. This he varied by occasionally pointing toward the windows of the houses he was passing, where, as their eyes followed the direction of his finger, Irma and Aunt Caroline saw other blue-coated old men eating at tables close to the window. "I begin to understand," said Aunt Caroline, "he wished us to give these old men money that they could eat macaroni for us. Now we will let him do what he will. He has some plan." A moment later he had driven them to an open space at the junction of two streets, where a man was cooking macaroni in a large copper vessel. Two or three little boys who had been following the carriage now stepped up beside the horses, and they, too, made the gesture in imitation of eating, at the same time crying, "_Soldi, soldi_." "Oh, yes, I recall it all now," said Aunt Caroline, laughing. "It was the same when we were here before." Then she threw some coppers to the little boys, who immediately handed them over to the man at the cooking stall. He, in his turn, gave each a heaped-up plate of macaroni cooked with tomato. "It would be worth three times the price, though I don't know just what you gave them, Aunt Caroline, to see those boys eat such a quantity, and it all disappeared in an instant." "It is one of the accomplishments of the Neapolitan street boy to devour at lightning speed great plates of macaroni, in return for the _soldi_ of the stranger. Their manner of conveying the macaroni to their mouths with the sole use of their fingers is indeed a regular circus trick." "If the same boys repeat the trick many times a day, I should think they might have indigestion." "They are willing to suffer, for they love macaroni. The poorest Neapolitans eat much uncooked food, not only fruits, but fish and raw vegetables. But the macaroni with _pomo d'oro_ is a real delicacy. Some of those old men would probably have done the trick as adroitly as the boys." The driver, smiling broadly on account of his success, as he turned about drove again through squalid narrow streets. Those in the carriage could here look through open doors into the one untidy room, the _basso_ that formed the abiding place often for a large family. "In warm weather the men of the family usually sleep in the street," said Aunt Caroline, "and when you see the dark, windowless room that is the only home that many thousands can call their own, you cannot wonder that day and night so many Neapolitans prefer the streets." Sometimes a wretched beggar would run after the carriage. "We must make it a rule in Italy to take no notice of these poor creatures. Fortunately, I am told, they are far less numerous than they used to be, and the only way to stop begging is for each to refuse alms. Gradually they are finding other ways of helping the poor here." "I feel sorrier for the horses here than for the people," responded Irma. "There are so many of them, and most look half starved, as well as ill treated." "The cruelty of the cab men of Naples is known the world over. Cabs are cheap, and every one drives, and the cabmen not only snap their long whips freely, but use them viciously, if so inclined. But some one I was talking with says that a S. P. C. A. has been started here, and already has accomplished much good." "But the donkeys here seem much better cared for. I have noticed several that look almost fat, and they have pompons of bright wool, and some metal decorations shining on their harness, and altogether they are quite gay." "Those queer-shaped bits of metal," said her aunt, "are devices, sometimes pagan, and sometimes Christian, that the superstitious Italian wishes his animals to wear to guard against the evil eye or other ills. But here we are at the hotel." "Where do you suppose we have been?" asked Uncle Jim, greeting Irma and her aunt, as they entered their sitting-room. "And what will you give for what I have for you?" "Letters, letters! Give them to us quickly." "Yes, letters. I found them at our bankers, and also obliged him to honor my letter of credit, but just now I dare say you would rather have the letters than the money." The letters, written so soon after their departure, contained little news. Yet Irma found hers particularly cheering, because they brought her so closely in touch with the family at home. "Napoleon," her mother wrote, "was very low spirited the day you left home, but with the fickleness of his kind, he now wags his tail hopefully as if he expected you to-morrow. Mahala's grief is mitigated by her expectation of post cards from strange places, and Tessie is wondering about presents. The boys, I am sorry to say, do not let your absence weigh upon them. Baseball is now the one important thing." Then followed some directions about taking care of herself, and making the most of her opportunities. A short letter from Lucy gave her school news, but Irma sighed, because there was no word from Gertrude. That evening, as Irma sat on the balcony after dinner, Marion came near her. "You were very good to go with Uncle Jim for our letters. It makes home seem so much nearer, to know that letters can reach me." "Yes," said Marion, "I suppose so." "Was there good news in yours, too?" continued Irma, after a moment of silence. Without answering, Marion walked forward to the edge of the balcony. "Shall I ever learn to practice what mother always preaches," thought Irma, conscience-stricken lest she had disturbed Marion, "not to ask direct personal questions?" Marion continued to walk up and down with his hands in his pockets. Then he stopped directly in front of Irma. "Tell me what was in your letters," he said abruptly. "I had none." So surprised was Irma by Marion's interest, that at first she could hardly reply. "Yes," he continued, dropping into a chair beside her, "I should like to hear about some one else's relations." Then Irma found her voice, and prefacing her remarks with, "There really was not much news in the letters I had to-day," she soon found herself telling Marion all about home, about her father and mother, about Tessie and the boys and Mahala, and last, but not least, about Nap. Marion listened attentively, occasionally making some comment that showed he was really interested in what Irma said. Then, after perhaps half an hour, he rose as abruptly as he had sat down, and with a hasty "good night," went indoors. "Yet after all I have told him, he didn't say a word about his own family. How queer he is!" thought Irma. "As we have been better than most travellers in going to morning service," said Uncle Jim, on Sunday, "we will do as they do by driving this afternoon. I, for one, wish to see the Cathedral, and there are other churches worth visiting." Toward the middle of the afternoon, therefore, the four travellers set forth for the Cathedral dedicated to San Gennaro (St. Januarius), the patron saint of Naples. In a cross street, on their way, their carriage drew up to let a funeral procession pass. It was a typically Neapolitan procession, yet uncommonly gorgeous, with its white, open-sided hearse, showing a coffin covered with beautiful flowers. The hearse was drawn by eight horses, their heads decorated with yellow, and saddlecloths trimmed with gilt. Close to the horses were a number of priests carrying lighted candles, and after them two or three carriages heaped with wreaths. Irma's attention, however, was most attracted by a dozen weird-looking men in long, loose garments, with dominoes over their faces, with holes cut out for eyes, that made them almost ghostly. "Who are they?" she whispered to Aunt Caroline. "Professional mourners, my dear, and those men in uniform in the last carriages are probably family servants." "Oh, yes," interposed Marion, "that is the way the Romans did. It's one of their old customs handed down--to have a whole retinue of retainers in the funeral procession." As they turned into the broad street toward the Cathedral, the sidewalks were thronged, and in the distance they heard the music of a band. Aunt Caroline translated briefly the succession of rapid sentences with which the driver answered her. "He says there was a special service in the Cathedral to-day. But the music goes the other way, and we cannot see the procession." Inside the church, persons of all ages and conditions were walking about, boys and girls, young men and women, some of whom carried a baby in arms, bent old men and women, too, and as there was no service then, when acquaintances met, they stopped for a chat, as if on a street corner. "The Cathedral," explained Aunt Caroline, "is dedicated to St. Januarius, Naples's patron saint, Bishop of Beneventum, whom Diocletian put to death. Some of his blood, gathered up by a Christian woman, is preserved in a vessel in his chapel here. The precious relic is locked up in boxes within boxes, but twice a year it is brought out with great ceremony. If the blood liquefies quickly, the superstitious people believe it a favorable omen for the city; if it does not, they are downcast at the prospect of great misfortunes for the next six months." At this moment a sacristan swinging his keys offered to lead them to the Chapel of St. Januarius, and there they saw the tabernacle with the relics, and the silver bust of the saint and of thirty other saints. Though the Chapel contained some fine paintings by Domenichino, its decorations were rather more florid than beautiful. The crypt under the church was much more interesting, with its great bronze doors, and marble columns from a Temple of Apollo that once stood near the site. But neither Marion nor Irma cared to linger long in the Cathedral. "Don't sigh," protested Uncle Jim, as Irma took her place in the carriage. "This is but the first of scores of churches you'll have to visit in Italy. Luckily Naples has fewer noteworthy pictures than Rome or Florence, and your aunt cannot help dealing leniently with us here." "The only church I wish to see in Naples," said Irma, "is the one where Conradin is buried." Marion looked up quickly. "Is Conradin one of your heroes, too?" "His whole story is so sad," replied Irma, "that I have always been interested in it. Though he was only seventeen when he died, if he had lived to be old enough, he would probably have become a real hero." "Can't a boy of seventeen be a real hero?" asked Marion anxiously. "I did not mean that he couldn't." "But you said----" began Marion. "Stop, children. You'll find yourselves quarrelling," interposed Aunt Caroline. Then she spoke a word or two to the coachman. "I have asked him," she said, "to drive us to the Conradin monument." Within the church all admired the beautiful reliefs from Thorwaldsen's designs, and the statue itself realized all Irma's ideals of a hero. In the Piazza del Mercato, they saw two fountains marking the spot where Conradin and Frederic of Baden were beheaded, by order of Charles of Anjou. On their way home, as their carriage skirted the poorer section, where goats and fowls wandered about as freely as the children who were playing with them, Uncle Jim told amusing stories of goats he had seen going intelligently from door to door to be milked by regular customers, in some cases even walking up several pairs of stairs to the right apartment. "I have read those very stories myself," said Irma, "so if you wish to astonish me, please think of something new." That evening as she sat on the balcony, Marion approached Irma with an expression even more serious than usual. "What is your idea of a hero?" he asked abruptly, as he slipped into the chair beside her. "Why, the same as everybody's," responded Irma, after a moment's hesitation. "A man who does a brave thing, without fear of danger, and without thinking what he will gain from it." "Can't a boy be a hero?" "Yes, indeed--and a girl also," she replied. "But I noticed to-day that you said Conradin, if he had lived, might have been a hero, but he was seventeen--just my age." "I was not thinking especially of his age," said Irma. "I only meant that thus far Conradin had had no chance to show what great things he could do. But he might have had chances had he lived longer." "Oh! Then a hero must do great things." For the moment Irma was puzzled, not understanding the drift of Marion's questions. Fortunately she was saved the need of replying by the appearance of Aunt Caroline, and at the same moment Marion, rising from his chair, walked off without another word. Together Aunt Caroline and Irma stood for a few minutes, looking from the bay, where almost opposite them Vesuvius loomed up against the dull sky, toward the city at their feet, with its square roofs and occasional towers, with here and there a few palm trees giving a tropical touch. The long white road wound like a thread up the hill, and for a moment Irma felt a returning throb of homesickness. She realized how far she was from home. CHAPTER VI NAPLES AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD At Naples Irma saw that if she attempted to record half that interested her, no diary would be large enough, and if she tried to describe things at length, there would be time for little else. So she made rather brief notes, which, when she reached home would recall what she had seen, so that she could then describe at greater length to the family. A more experienced traveller might have been less interested in the Royal Palace, but, since it was her first palace, Irma found in it an air of romance that Uncle Jim was inclined to scoff at. It was a long, imposing building, with eight statues on the façade, representing the different dynasties that had governed Naples: Roger the Norman, Frederic II of Hohenstaufen, Charles I of Anjou, Alphonse I, Charles V, Charles III of Bourbon, Joachim Murat, and Victor Emanuel. "Poor Neapolitans!" exclaimed Uncle Jim. "No wonder they are restless, so often changing rulers, and until now seldom having kings who cared a farthing for them. Even before these Normans there were Greeks, Oscans, Romans, Goths, and Byzantines, all to take their turn here in Southern Italy. Neapolitans are naturally turbulent and troublesome in America. It will take them some time to learn to govern themselves." "We are not out to listen to history lectures. We simply wish to see things," said Aunt Caroline. "But this palace is in such bad taste. I am trying to divert your minds from its hideous furnishings." Though in her secret heart Irma admired the throne room, with its gold embroidered, crimson velvet furniture, enormous Sèvres and Dresden vases, and its more artistic bronze busts, later, perhaps, what she remembered best of this visit was the magnificent terrace view of the harbor and the Arsenal. "Do the Neapolitans get their love of noise from all those ancestors you were talking about, Uncle Jim?" she asked, as they drove along the broad Toledo, where the crack of whips, the braying of donkeys, and the shouts of hawkers prevented conversation. Uncle Jim raised his hand deprecatingly, as if an adequate reply were then impossible. "There," cried Aunt Caroline. "I understand why the people of Naples use gestures so largely. You know they can carry on long conversations without a word. By use of their hands they can make themselves understood above the din of the streets." "A good theory, if gesture were not as common in the country districts as in Naples." Here Marion interrupted. "We might stop at the Catacombs to-day, if you wish." "I don't wish," cried Irma decidedly. Marion looked at her with surprise. "No Catacombs to-day, only Capo di Monte," returned Aunt Caroline. Then they drove swiftly past one or two squares containing statues, one a monument to Dante, and at last, at the Bosco, they showed their permits. They felt the charm of the gardens around Capo di Monte, laid out in English style, but they did not linger in the Palace itself; Marion said the Sword of Scandberg was the one thing he had come to see, and though he spent a few minutes in the armory, he gave but a passing glance at the high colored Capo di Monte ware. "My mother has some of that," he said, as Aunt Caroline called his attention to a particularly beautiful piece. "Isn't it very valuable?" asked Irma. He made no reply. Perhaps he did not hear her. But Irma remembered that she had never before heard Marion refer to his mother. That very afternoon, while the others rested, Marion explored the city by himself, and came back in great spirits. He had been up in the _lanterna_, or lighthouse, where he had had a magnificent view of the town, and in the Villa del Popolo, a great open square, he had come upon one of the public readers who daily gather there at a certain hour, and read aloud from some of the great poets to a circle of auditors; each of whom had paid a small price for the privilege of listening. He had glanced also at the University, which has four thousand students and one hundred professors. Of the whole party, Marion, indeed, saw the most of Naples. He went among the fishermen at the wharves; he inspected the old mediæval forts, Castello St. Elmo, so magnificently situated on the heights, Castello dell' Ovo by the water, and the others. He brought home many little bits of amusing folklore, gathered from the boatmen, especially regarding their belief in the evil eye. In his new, friendly mood, he shared the results of his wanderings, until Irma began to think him a decidedly entertaining boy. The visit to the Museum took a whole day, and tired though she was at the end, Irma declared she would gladly spend another day there. For now, for the first time, she saw many a fine statue that she had seen before only in pictures, and she was surprised to learn that many of these had been dug up from the ruins of Pompeii; the boy with the dolphin, the boy with the goose, and the charming Narcissus pleased her more than the colossal Farnese Hercules and the group of the Farnese bull. "Our sculptors cannot get ahead of those old fellows," said Uncle Jim, "though I can't give the same praise to their painters." And Irma agreed with him, as she looked at the Pompeian frescoes. But neither paintings nor sculptures interested her as did the household utensils, the ornaments, and the jewels from Pompeii and Herculaneum. "Designers of jewelry and other beautiful things to-day get some of their best ideas from these treasures of Pompeii," explained Uncle Jim, after Irma had told him that she had seen Gertrude's mother wear a bracelet the counterpart of one they were looking at. Yet as they passed from case to case, and from room to room, Irma thought less of the beauty, or even of the usefulness of these things, than of the unhappy people to whom they had belonged who had been buried under the hot ashes of Vesuvius. In glass vessels she saw grains and fruits that the lava had preserved from decay, and in the cases there were loaves of much the same appearance as when the baker took them from the oven. These homely things brought the sufferings of the Pompeians much nearer than did the great treasure chests, or some of the more valuable objects in the collection. "I feel as if I had been at a funeral," she murmured to Aunt Caroline, and she was not sorry that the closing hour had come. "I'll show you something more cheerful to-morrow," suggested Marion. "They have the most wonderful Aquarium here. It can't be better than ours in New York, even if it is more famous. So I wish you would come with me to-morrow and tell me what you think." "But I have never seen the New York Aquarium," ventured Irma. "Then you must believe what I tell you about it." The next morning Irma set off with Marion. She had learned from Uncle Jim that this Aquarium in Naples, founded by Dr. Dohrn, a German, was really a scientific institution where students from all parts of the world could study the lowest forms of marine life, the finest examples of which are found in the Bay of Naples. Marion and Irma found that the larger part of the white Aquarium building was given to rooms for students and to the library. The fish were in the lower part, underground it seemed to her. As she walked about from cave to cave, for so she called the glass-fronted caverns where the fish were swimming about, she began to shiver. "Are you cold?" asked Marion, anxiously. "No, but these fish seem more disagreeable than the things from Pompeii." "They are certainly different," responded Marion, successfully resisting a desire to smile. "I rather like the living coral," continued Irma, "though it seems queer to see coral branches waving to and fro as if they were getting ready to swim, and some of the fish are funny, but some are really gruesome. I shall be haunted for a long time by this horrible thing," pointing to a jellylike mass that suddenly hurled itself through the water, and sent out innumerable legs, or arms, ready to grasp and destroy everything within reach. After inspecting all the cases, Marion and Irma went out the door behind two girls who were talking rather loudly. "How foolish you are, Katie Grimston," cried one of them, and at the sound of this name Irma looked toward Marion as if expecting some word from him. Though he made no comment, he, too, looked with some interest at the girls, as they stood outside awaiting their carriage. "Oh, dear," exclaimed Irma, as the two drove away, "I wish I had spoken to them." "Do you know them?" "No, but still I might have spoken, for one called the other 'Katie Grimston,' and that is the name of the girl that Nap used to belong to. I wish I had spoken to her." "One thing may console you: when you once run across people in Europe, you are sure to meet them again. You know we've been meeting some one from the ship every day since we landed. But I'll keep my eye open for your friend, Katie Grimston." "I shouldn't exactly call her a friend." "She's a friend until she proves an enemy. But in any case I'll watch for her. Perhaps she's a friend of mine. I'm sure I know one of those girls, and, by the way, wouldn't you prefer the New York Aquarium?" "Yes," responded Irma, "as I have seen only this one, I am sure I'd prefer the other." When they returned to the hotel, Marion and Irma found Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim enthusiastic over their excursion to Posilipo, declined by the young people in favor of the Aquarium. "You missed it, Marion," said Uncle Jim, "the region where we have been is just filled with classical memories. The Posilipo was a favorite stamping ground of Virgil's. He wrote the Georgics and the Æneid there, and you can have as long an argument as you wish with the guides as to whether the tomb they show is really his or some other fellow's. If you say it is, Petrarch and Bocaccio, who used to go there, are on your side. Not far off, between Puteoli and Baiae, Caligula performed some foolish stunt of his on a bridge of boats. Or, if that doesn't content you, you can remember that Augustus was fond of the Posilipo. You can also hunt for the ruins of the villa of Lucullus. Our friends, the Roman patricians, loved this region. Instead of digging up ruins, your aunt and I just sat in front of one of the little cafés and incidentally had a magnificent view." "Yes, we didn't try to go on to Solfaterra," continued Aunt Caroline, "though some one who had been there told a tale of fissures from which gas was exuding, and of remarkable sounds of water boiling violently not far beneath the surface when you put your ear to the ground." "Isn't Puteoli the place where St. Paul landed?" asked Irma timidly. "Yes, my dear, and he found a number of Christians there to welcome him. Indeed, all the region of the Posilipo and beyond, has so many associations that we ought to spend a week here." "Come," said Uncle Jim, "we must all agree to be true philosophers. The rapid flight of time and the shortness of human life in general compel us to let many delightful places go unvisited. Like everything in life, it's a question of choices. While we try to see the most important things along our route, we must still neglect other things and places that are not unimportant." "Capri, for example," murmured Marion. "Nothing could induce me to repeat that odious trip," and Aunt Caroline shuddered at the remembrance. "Bad landings, and boats so overcrowded, combined with rough water, make it positively dangerous, at least to one's nerves. If I could fly, I'd go there gladly." "But isn't Capri very beautiful?" queried Irma. "And the blue grotto something no one should miss?" added Marion. "You children can go there, if you prefer it to Paestum." "What is Paestum?" asked Irma. "Not to know Paestum--and you a school girl fitting for college. Now I shall insist on your going with me. For certainly, you have one thing to learn, 'What is Paestum!'" and Uncle Jim walked away, as if quite in despair at Irma's ignorance. "Capri really is beautiful," continued Aunt Caroline, turning to Marion and Irma. "Its men and women are fine types. As I remember there were quantities of flowers around the pretty little white cottages, and charming scenery at every turn. I don't know whether the people still wear their picturesque costumes, and make soft, high-colored ribbons and weave beautiful white woolen materials. But I imagine it is less changed than some other parts of Italy, and if you should go there five years from now, you would probably find it just the same. They still give a wonderful fête in July or August to ward off the grape disease. They have celebrated it for centuries with dancing and sports, but, as they carry a cross at the head of the procession, they fancy it's religious." "It sounds great," said Marion, "but we can't wait until midsummer. If I should go, I'd hunt up the ruins of Tiberius's villas. This was his favorite resort, and so terribly cruel was he that mothers still threaten bad children that 'Timberio' will get them. I believe a steep rock is shown from which he used to throw his victims into the sea below." "Well done, Marion. If we have time perhaps we'll go to Capri in spite of the wretched boats. But failing that we'll visit Vedder's studio in Rome. He has a summer villa at Capri, and if he has not used Capri types in his pictures, he can tell us about the people." CHAPTER VII CAVA AND BEYOND Uncle Jim had volunteered no explanation about Paestum, neither Aunt Caroline nor Marion had spoken on the subject, and Irma had been too busy packing to study her guidebook. So as they left Naples, as she looked from the railway carriage, she could but wonder what was before her. Soon passing the thickly settled environs of Naples they were in a region of small farms. The season had been late, and the vines were not far advanced, but there were many workers in the fields and some of the vines trained on poles showed a certain amount of leafage. After a while, they had passed the slopes of Vesuvius, and then began to realize, by the panting of their engine, that they were going up hill. "We stay at Cava for the night, and to-morrow go to Paestum. Of course you know about Paestum," said Uncle Jim teasingly. "I am contented with Cava," replied Irma. At dusk the little Cava station gave no hint of what the place was. A group of _facchini_ fell upon their baggage, the four were hurried into a carriage, and after driving through a long, quiet street, they reached the outskirts. Here, at the entrance of a house in a garden, a fat landlady welcomed them with many bows. A _facchino_ with a green apron took some bags, a diminutive _cameriera_, in scarlet skirt and pink blouse, seized others, and soon Irma found herself in a small room filled with massive inlaid furniture. Curtesying low, the little _cameriera_ quickly returned with a can of hot water. Left to herself, Irma was a trifle lonely, and she was glad when the little maid returned to guide her to the dining-room. There she heard a strange mixture of accents, as she entered the room. Her uncle came forward and led her to a seat. As she watched and listened, she found that her opposite neighbors were Germans, while beside her was an Italian lady. Now indeed she was in a foreign country. The dinner, too, was different from the conventional table d'hôte of their Naples hotel. Irma refused an elaborate dish of macaroni, remembering the curtains of yellow macaroni drying in untidy places, that she had noticed from the train. "If you don't eat macaroni," said Uncle Jim, understanding her reluctance, "you will often have to go hungry." In the morning Irma woke to the depressing sound of rain. "No Paestum, to-day!" exclaimed Uncle Jim, as she took her seat at breakfast. "Paestum! What is Paestum?" she asked, and after that he permitted her to eat in peace. All the morning the rain poured in torrents, to the discouragement of two or three parties of automobilists, who had planned a trip to Paestum, and a return to Naples by the Amalfi road. Most of the men wandered about the huge house aimlessly, dropping occasionally into a chair in the sitting-room, trying vainly to help time pass more quickly by reading the month-old newspapers and magazines on the little center table. A few wrote letters, and a number of men and women gathered in little groups to compare notes about past or future travels. Marion held himself aloof from the three or four other young people in the house. He sat in the furthest corner of the long drawing-room, buried in a book, and he said not a word to Irma during the whole morning. As for Irma, she spent perhaps an hour on her diary that she had neglected for a day or two. Opposite her, at the center table, was a girl of about her own age. Often the two paused from their labors--for the girl was also writing--at about the same moment. Finally the other girl broke the rather oppressive silence by asking Irma if she was on her way to or from Naples. Learning that Irma had been in Italy hardly a week, she informed her that she had been there all winter, and with her parents was now on her way to Naples. She questioned Irma about the best shops in Naples, and Irma was able to give her some addresses she wished. She in turn told Irma of many shops and other things of interest in Rome and Florence. Those Irma entered carefully in her notebook. While the two were thus occupied, Marion rose and passed them on his way to the door. When he had left the room the other girl leaned toward Irma. "Isn't that Marion Horton?" "Why, yes; do you know him?" "No. But I have heard a great deal about him, as he visits cousins of mine. It is strange to see him in Europe. I should think he would be at home now." "Why shouldn't he be in Europe?" "Surely you must have heard the story if you left New York only a few weeks ago." "I don't know what story you refer to," responded Irma with dignity. "Marion is travelling with my uncle and aunt. He is a relation of theirs." "He is in your party? Then you must have heard----" But at that moment the porter brought a message summoning Madge Gregg to get ready at once for a train that would start in half an hour for Naples. This unexpected departure put all thoughts of Marion Horton out of Madge's mind. She gathered up her writing materials, bade Irma good-by, expressing the hope that they might meet again. "What can the story be?" thought Irma. "Marion is sometimes queer, and yet--I do not believe he has done anything wrong." Still she felt that for the present it would be wiser not to question her uncle and aunt about Marion. Sometime they would tell her what they wished her to know. After _déjeuner_ the rain ceased, and by three o'clock the sun was shining. "This was a fortunate storm that kept us here, for they say that up there on the hills there's an interesting old monastery, such as we may not see again. The carriage will be here in ten minutes, so run and get your bonnet and shawl, as they used to say in old novels," said Uncle Jim. Soon they were on their way to the monastery, Uncle Jim, Aunt Caroline, and Irma. "Aren't you coming with us?" Aunt Caroline had asked Marion, as they started. "Oh, I'll follow; I have arranged with a donkey boy to take me." "Is it possible that he's going to ride?" asked Aunt Caroline. "I'm sure I don't know. There are times when it's best not to question Marion. Haven't you found that out, Irma?" said Uncle Jim. "I do not know Marion very well," replied Irma. "But you ought to be great friends, you are so near of an age, and almost cousins." The country through which they drove for a quarter of an hour was very pretty, with many trees and shrubs that looked particularly green and fresh after the recent rain, and the hilly roads were far less muddy than they had expected. From one high point they had a delightful view of the village they had just left, circled by hills. On one was a ruined castle, on another the remains of an old monastery where a hermit monk was said to live. Irma felt that now she was indeed in the old world. On two or three hills she noted slender, gray stone towers, and through Aunt Caroline the driver explained that they were used for snaring pigeons. "From those little openings, like portholes, small white stones are thrown out, which the pigeons mistake for food, and as they swoop down upon it they are snared in nets cleverly contrived for their capture." "That seems cruel," cried Irma. "But it would be still more cruel to deprive a lot of hungry people of their pigeon pie," said Uncle Jim. Now turning their backs on the lovely view, the carriage went up a higher hill. It passed an occasional simple cottage, and they met two or three groups of people evidently returning from a visit to the monastery. They stopped for a moment at a church in front of which was a stone on which the driver said Pope Urban II had dismounted more than nine hundred years ago. A few minutes later they were at their goal, the old Benedictine Monastery, La Trinità della Cava. "Ought we to go in before Marion arrives?" Aunt Caroline's tone implied that she thought they should wait. "Marion is too uncertain, and the hours for visiting the monastery are limited!" Soon the door opened, showing a pleasant-faced monk standing there to welcome them. Before they went within he halted at the entrance, explaining that a handful of churchmen had established themselves here in the very early days because on these remote heights they could be comparatively safe from marauders. "It is certainly a natural fortress," responded Uncle Jim, looking from the steep cliff on which they stood to the narrow river bed, far, far below. "And a few sharp-shooting bowmen up here on the heights could keep off any number of the enemy. Come, Irma. Can't you imagine the venturesome Lombards creeping up the ravine, only to be held back by the storm of arrows?" "But it could only be for a little time. In the end I am sure that the bold Northerners won. I don't know how it was in this particular case, as all traces of the Lombards in this region have now passed away. They were so few compared with the native races, and now the people here are Italians pure and simple." "Your theories are interesting," said Aunt Caroline, as they followed the monk inside, "but unfortunately for them the convent here was founded by a member of an old Lombard family. The site was chosen for defence, probably against marauding nobles." Their guide spoke clearly and slowly and Aunt Caroline easily translated what he said. He told them that the convent gave a school and college training to boys of good family, and that these large and attractive halls had been provided for them. In the library were some good old pictures, but the most valuable treasures were the ancient manuscripts, among them the laws of the Lombards on parchment of the early eleventh century, and a Bible of the early eighth century. But for all this there was time for only a passing impression, and Uncle Jim was rather amused by the awe with which Irma regarded them. On their way out they saw a number of boys walking up and down the cloisters, arrayed in long surpliced coats that made them look like very youthful priests. "They are intended for the Church," explained Aunt Caroline, "but those smaller boys in ordinary clothes will go into other professions. I am sorry," she added a moment later, as they stood in an ancient room, built into the solid rock,--almost the only thing remaining of the original abbey, "that Marion will miss this. It is too late, our guide tells me, for us to get admission to the church, and we must bid him good-by here." So, after their monk had dropped their visitor's fee in a collection box near the door, they went down the hills toward Cava di Tirreni. They did not meet Marion on the way, nor in the course of their drive along the one-mile, narrow street of the little town. The arcaded shops were dingy and the houses unattractive. "In Italy you must get used to these squalid, rather dirty towns in the heart of a lovely country. The Italians love to herd together, clinging closely to a habit no longer necessary for defence against enemies, as it was in the ancient times. Even in America they prefer city to country life," said Uncle Jim. The soup plates had been removed when Marion appeared at dinner. He greeted his friends pleasantly without explaining what had detained him. Though Aunt Caroline gave a glowing account of their afternoon's trip, he made no comments beyond a mere "I wish I had been with you." After dinner he turned to his book, and soon went to his own room on the plea that he must repack his valise and get to bed early in preparation for their morning start. During the evening Irma and Aunt Caroline joined their landlady in the deserted dining-room to look at some of the antiques in glass cases along the wall intended for sale. After picking them over carefully, Aunt Caroline bought one or two old iron knockers and a piece of glass that she felt sure was Murano. The landlady's husband appeared at just the right moment to fix the price, and from a secret drawer produced a bit of old brocade that Aunt Caroline pounced on with exclamations of delight. "It won't last until you reach Rome!" "Oh, indeed it will. But it is for ornament and not use, and the kind of thing I never _can_ pass by." After this Aunt Caroline added several other things to her collection--an old key and lock, and a fine bit of carved wood. "If only it wouldn't crack and split in our dry atmosphere I would take some of this inlaid furniture home with me," she said. "Everything in the house is seemingly for sale even to the bed that Madame our hostess sleeps on. Although she is married to an Italian, I observe that she prefers 'Madame' to 'Signora.'" At this moment the landlady approaching, invited them into the garden. "As Madame the American lady admired old things she might like to examine the lion's head at the door. It had belonged to the great Filangeri family, as indeed did the hotel in the ancient days. Naturally Madame had observed that this was no ordinary hotel, but a veritable palace with ancient traditions and legends, and----" Finally Aunt Caroline stopped her flow of words to show Irma that the massive lion's head with its open mouth was but a flambeau holder to light the path of guests at night. "You will need more than one flambeau to light your path to-night," said Uncle Jim, joining them, as they stood there reading a tablet with an interesting inscription. "Remember that we take an early train for Paestum." "Paestum--what is Paestum?" rejoined Irma mockingly, as she hurried ahead of Uncle Jim up the long marble staircase that led to her room. In the morning, however, long before their train reached Paestum, Irma knew all about it. The country through which they began to pass, soon after leaving Salerno, was not closely settled. Farther on there were great stretches of marshes where cattle roamed about. Marion was surprised to discover that the so-called buffaloes were quite unlike the bison, resembling large grayish oxen with a slight hump. They are the chief beasts of burden for the country people of this region. Uncle Jim explained that the whole country here was malarious. It had a bad reputation even in the time of Augustus, and on this account the name of ancient Poseidonia had been changed to "Pesto," and if you doubt me, you may look on the map. There, indeed, Irma did find "Pesto" instead of the more classic name, yet she continued to doubt Uncle Jim's account of its origin--"Paestum" was evidently from "Poseidonia." CHAPTER VIII PAESTUM AND POMPEII "There is said to be one vehicle in Paestum," remarked Uncle Jim, as they reached the little station, "and as we are not the only passengers on this train we might as well make up our minds in advance whether we shall fight for it or walk." "Walk," was the unanimous response, and after checking their luggage they started up a long, dusty road. Some distance from the station an arch spanned the roadway. "It must have been part of an old town wall," said Marion, and at the same moment a tall, short-skirted woman came toward them, carrying a large stone water jar on her head. In an instant Irma had focussed her camera, aiming it just as the woman was in the center of the arch. "She doesn't seem to object," murmured Aunt Caroline. The woman was now close to them, and as she passed them she did not even deign to smile or to look at them directly. "The Temples! The Temples!" A few minutes later Irma gave an exclamation of delight. "How beautiful--with the view of the sea beyond," added Aunt Caroline. Then all stood still. Before them, with a background of blue sea and bluer sky, rose the two great temples, the largest of the three edifices that are now practically the sole remains of a once great city--Poseidonia--founded six hundred years before Christ, by colonists from Sybaris in Greece. "Outside of Athens, there are no finer temples left standing in the world!" said Uncle Jim. "Until I read it in my guidebook to-day, I thought one had to go to Greece to see Greek temples," added Irma. "Oh, there are several in Sicily," rejoined Marion, in what Irma to herself called his "high and mighty tone," a tone that always made her feel that he despised her lack of knowledge. "Yes," said Aunt Caroline, "but for those of us who are not going now to Greece or Sicily, these are worth printing on our memories. I dare say, Marion, with your exactness, you would like to walk around them and measure them to see whether they are what they are represented to be. Irma and I will content ourselves with general impressions." "I might verify the fact that the Temple of Neptune is one hundred and ninety-six feet long and seventy-nine feet wide, but it would be harder for me to prove without a ladder that each of the thirty-six columns is twenty-eight feet high," responded Marion good naturedly. "No, no," cried Aunt Caroline, "no such uninteresting facts! All I wish to remember is the soft, mellow brown of the whole structure and its noble proportions." Then, looking to the slightly smaller structure at the left, she added, "The Basilica is less complete and less imposing. It has something of the attractiveness of a younger sister." "I don't like its color as well, but I suppose both are faded." "Undoubtedly, though originally they were both covered with stucco to imitate marble; the pediment was adorned with sculptures, and the temple held other works of art." They were now crossing the rough field between them and the Temple of Neptune. Some of those who had come with them in the train were wandering about the interior--if a roofless space without walls may be called an interior--and a larger group had gone with the uniformed guide toward the more distant Temple of Ceres. "That pinkish flower over there must be asphodel," said Uncle Jim. "Now don't rush to gather it, Irma. It would be far wiser to sit here and test the luncheon the padrone provided for us. Here is a good place, and Marion will open the box." As Uncle Jim made room at the base of a great Doric column, Irma gave a little scream. "Oh, it's only a little lizard--no, two little lizards, and you can't blame them for showing alarm at a party of American invaders. Why, even Marion doesn't object to them." A deep flush rose on Marion's cheek. Irma was looking at him as Uncle Jim spoke, and saw that he pressed his lips tightly, as if to suppress an angry reply. "Before he opens the box," continued Uncle Jim, whose spirits were rising, "I can tell exactly what that pasteboard receptacle contains,--two hard-boiled eggs for each of us, a fine assortment of chicken legs and wings, some butter, some salt, several unbuttered rolls almost too hard to eat, and an orange apiece." "You must have prepared the menu yourself," said Irma, laughing; "for things are absolutely what you said, except," and she opened a little package, "here is a piece of cheese." "Oh, yes, I forgot the cheese. But I have opened too many Italian luncheon boxes not to know what to expect, and in ten years they haven't changed." "_Muore di fame, muore di fame_," whined a small voice in their ears. Looking about, Irma saw a girl of twelve or fourteen, with a shawl over her head, carrying her hand to her mouth in the well-known gesture of hunger. "_Muore di fame_ (I am dying of hunger)," she repeated, standing in front of the four picnickers, while at the same time she turned her head from side to side as if fearing some one's approach. "It is the _custode_," exclaimed Uncle Jim; "begging here on Government property is probably against the rules, and she fears he will return before we have given her all our luncheon." "No, no," he cried, but the girl reached out her hand as if to snatch. "Oh, give her something," cried Marion, "or at least I will; the poor thing may be starving." "_Muore di fame, muore di fame_," repeated the girl, catching the sympathetic note in his voice. Then, just as he had given her a roll and a chicken leg she took to her heels, disappearing over a hedge of bushes between the temple enclosure and a partly ploughed field that stretched between them and the sea. A moment later the _custode_ came around the corner of the temple, thus explaining the girl's sudden flight. At the same time two dogs appeared, sniffing for their share of the luncheon. More polite than the girl, however, when told to go away, they went off some distance, sitting on their haunches and still eyeing the party hungrily. It was now Irma's turn to be sympathetic. "That little one makes me think of Nap, and I just can't help giving him a wing with something on it." "Just wait until we have finished." Obedient to this suggestion, Irma waited, and at last there was a good heap of bones as well as some scraps of bread on which the two little creatures fell greedily. Later, making her way with difficulty over the brambles, Irma reached the grass beyond the strip of ploughed land. She carried a little package containing rolls, an orange or two, and a little chicken. She had gone ahead of the others to get a photograph from this point of view. She had already taken nearer views of portions of the columns and base with Aunt Caroline posed for comparative size, looking a veritable pigmy. The temples, with the background of hills, were less imposing from the other side. The eye could not help seeing not only the temple, but a lot of ugly little houses in the far background near the station. "_Muore di fame, muore di fame_," cried two voices, one after the other. The girl with the shawl had crept up behind Irma, and a larger girl stood beside her. The first girl was a pitiable object, yet Irma knew that she had lately had something to keep her from starvation. The other was fairly well dressed, and for her Irma felt no sympathy. In fact the two had a manner so impertinent that she took no notice of the oft-repeated monotonous "_Muore di fame_." But she cast anxious glances toward the temples. Why did her uncle and aunt delay coming! Then she caught a glimpse of them just entering the Basilica. One of her tormentors now jerked her skirt, the other shook her hand in her face. Irma waved them back, crying, "_Andate, andate_" (go away, go away), in Aunt Caroline's most effective tone. The girls grew bolder and dashed at Irma as if to take both her camera and her package. Yet Irma, though frightened, was determined not to surrender either. At last, when she attempted to call for help, she could not make a sound loud enough to be heard by her uncle or aunt. Of course she had not stood still all this time, but with one girl clutching her dress she could not move fast, especially as she was now in the ploughed ground, into which her feet sank deeper with every step. There was no occasion to fear, as the girls could accomplish no very desperate deed before help came, but Irma's spirit was up, and her nerves irritated by the constant "_Muore di fame_." So she held the package of food more closely than the camera, and the older girl, watching her chance, rushed off with it, while the other, making a dash at Irma's head, tore off her hat. [Illustration: "WITH ONE GIRL CLUTCHING HER DRESS, SHE COULD NOT MOVE FAST." (_Page 132._)] "Help, help," cried Irma, finding her voice as the amateur brigands ran toward the road. Then, almost at the same moment, something flew past her so quickly that she could hardly tell what it was. A minute later he had reached the two girls, who were unaware of the avenger's presence until too late to escape. When the flying figure stood still Irma recognized Marion, and a moment later he was back at her side, holding triumphantly aloft the hat and the camera. "Did they hurt you?" "Is it ruined?" The two young people spoke in one breath. "No, of course they didn't hurt me," responded Marion, with some indignation, while Irma wondered why a little stream of blood trickled down his cheek. "No," said Irma, in the same tone, "of course my hat isn't ruined," and she smoothed out the crushed ribbon bows, and plucked off one of the wings that had been broken in the tussle. Then Marion wiping his face discovered a scratch. "I thought one of those girls had mighty sharp claws," he said, and Irma, opening her bag, presented him with a strip of thin court-plaster from the case John Wall had given her as a parting present, and then they retraced their steps toward the Basilica, where their elders were awaiting them. "You haven't explored the temples," said Aunt Caroline. "You can get a very good idea of the interior by examining the stones that show the position of the altar, and----" "Oh, I don't care about temples now, not until I have studied more. I just like to look about and wonder what the town was like with all its people moving here, when these fields were streets, or----" "There, there," interposed Aunt Caroline. "When I look about, I can only think that in a solitary place like this I should hate to be attacked by brigands. At the present moment we are monarchs of all we survey. Even the _custode_ is lost to sight, though perhaps he'd appear if we were in real danger." "I didn't find him of much use," she began, but at a warning glance from Marion, she was silent. "I wish we had time to go down by the sea, where the Greeks originally landed. As it's much lower land, the temples must show up wonderfully well." "You must give up the seashore this time. We can barely catch the train, after visiting the Temple of Ceres. Come, children." But Irma and Marion remained seated. "Oh, Aunt Caroline, we'd rather wait a while; we'll go back part way by the town wall, and meet you under the Siren's Arch, that would be much more fun. You can dig for the Roman remains that they say lie hidden in that field over there. You know this is one of the towns that remained faithful to Rome in Hannibal's time. Ugh," concluded Marion suddenly, wincing, as if in pain. "Oh, it's nothing," he replied to Irma's inquiries. "Perhaps I ran too hard in the field over there. You were a brick not to tell Aunt Caroline about it; she would have come down on me mighty hard." Though Irma did not understand Marion's meaning, she thanked him for recovering her camera. "It was nothing at all; the little wretches were probably more than half in fun and wouldn't have dared keep it long, with the _custode_ likely to pounce on them, for I suppose one of them, at least, lives in that miserable little house beyond the fence. But it's strange that Uncle Jim didn't ask about the court-plaster on my face. His eyes are generally so sharp. But see what I've found for you," he concluded, picking up something near the base of the great, weather-beaten column beside which they sat. Irma gave an exclamation of delight as he put in her hand a small piece of the travertine that in some way had been broken off from the column, inside which was a tiny shell,--a shell now exposed to the light for the first time in the more than two thousand years since the temples were built. When she had tied this up in a corner of her handkerchief, and had pressed two of the pink blossoms that Uncle Jim called "asphodel" between the leaves of her notebook, Irma felt that she indeed had begun to collect classical trophies. From the old town wall, several sections of which are still in fair condition, Marion and Irma took their last view of Paestum and the surrounding plain. "I suppose the old Poseidonians used to go up in that corner tower and watch for their enemies," said Marion. "Well, Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim are not enemies, yet we can watch for them. Ah, there we are! And if we return to the road now we can reach the station ten minutes ahead of them and have time to select post cards before train time." "It will be dusk," said Aunt Caroline, as they took their places in the crowded train, "before we reach Pompeii. I am sorry we have to give up the beautiful Amalfi drive on the high, rocky road above the sea. But that rainy day at Cava was a lost day, and the telegram your uncle received as we left Naples requires him to hurry to Rome to keep a business engagement. To-morrow, Pompeii, and the morning after we leave Naples for Rome." Of the Amalfi drive Irma caught a glimpse from a curve in the road above picturesque Salerno, and even away from the sea, looking toward the mountains they had glimpses of snow-clad peaks in strange contrast with the summer-like aspect of the country nearer them. But the people she saw at the stations along the way interested Irma almost more than the scenery. At Salerno station, especially, there were peasants of a very strange type. One man with a beard of long growth, in coat and trousers of sacking, carried a long axe, as if bound for the woods. Another brigandish creature with khaki trousers and a slouched hat wore a long black cloak, an end of which was thrown over his shoulders. Two girls setting out on a journey wept bitterly, as an old gray-headed woman kissed them good-by. One carried her belongings in two fairly large baskets, and the other had a white sacking bag for hers, with a few extra things tied up in a black handkerchief. The girls wore no hats, but like all the other women at the station they had their hair elaborately bedecked with combs, front, back, and side combs, until Irma wondered how their heads could bear the weight. _Carbonieri_, with their picturesque cocked hats, strutted across the platform. A railroad official with red pipings on his hat and gilt buttons on his coat also added to the gaiety of the scene. "What are we waiting for?" at last Marion cried impatiently. "The horn man doesn't dare blow until every one in Salerno visits this train." At this moment the little man with brass buttons on his coat blew his small brass trumpet, and the train set off for Pompeii, still a couple of hours away. From Pompeii Irma wrote her first long letter to Gertrude, long in comparison with the one sent from the ship. But she had plenty of time that evening after dinner, and though tired after her hours of strolling in the ruined city, she felt in the mood for writing. Moreover, Gertrude had especially asked her to describe Pompeii, and having promised, Irma knew that the most sensible thing was to make good her promise promptly. "My dear Gertrude," she began. "After all I am not to see Herculaneum, although you hoped I would. But a man we met to-day said we need not be sorry we have no time for Herculaneum. It gave him a kind of smothered feeling, and he did not stay there long. They have not yet dug out enough to make it really interesting, and all the fine statues have been taken to the Naples Museum, so there isn't so much to see yet, and it is all underground. "But Pompeii is different. In one way it is cheerful, though at times I had an awfully melancholy feeling when I looked about at those roofless buildings and remembered how they had been destroyed, with thousands of people, all in an instant. Our hotel is close to the entrance, in fact my bedroom window looks out on the gate, and when I went to bed it seemed uncanny to be sleeping near so gruesome a place. But in the morning, when I saw two or three carriages standing there and loafers lounging about and tourists going in and out of the little curiosity shop next door, I forgot everything, except that I was a sightseer, too. "There is nothing shut up about Pompeii, and I am glad I left the Museum until the last, for that took away some of my cheerful feeling. "I was surprised when we first began to move about, to see such enormous paving-stones in their narrow streets, and you can hardly believe that the chariot wheels could wear such deep ruts. The horses' feet must sometimes have slipped down between the stones. "The houses have no roofs, and from the street they are so small that I could think of nothing but playhouses. Some of them open out when you go inside and have more than one court. They all have at least one court, with rooms opening off it, and some have little fountains in the center, and sometimes the white marble basins are beautifully carved and there is grass growing around the margin, and even bright plants and vines are trained here and there, just as in the time of the live Pompeians. "As you walk about you can tell which room was a kitchen and which a bathroom, for they used lead pipes just like ours. In the smaller houses the family used to spend most of their time in the atrium. The sleeping rooms were generally tiny, and the poor slaves were put in little cubby-holes upstairs. "The frescoes on some walls are bright, but I think our taste has changed, for Marion and I did not admire them so very much. In one lovely house I saw where the Young Narcissus had been found. The original is in the Naples Museum, but a copy is here in its old place. Another interesting house is where they found the graceful statue of a dancing faun. I saw the house that Bulwer calls the house of Glaucus, in the 'Last Days of Pompeii,' and there in front of it is the inscription in mosaics, _Cave canem_, which I needn't translate for you. They are always uncovering new houses, and one of the newest, the 'House of the Vetii,' is the most beautiful, partly because they have left most of the things in the places where they found them, instead of sending them off to museums. The frescoes here are the most fascinating little Cupids playing games and amusing themselves. Of course one carries away only a general impression of these houses. There are traces of bright color everywhere inside, chiefly red and yellow. The bases of many of the columns in the houses were one of these colors. Some streets were full of shops--_tabernae_. Would you have known what that meant? You can see the marble-covered counters, and the earthen jars for oil and wine and other things. One market has paintings on the walls, showing that various kinds of provisions were sold there, and in a large pit in the center quantities of fish scales were found. Probably that was where the fish were kept. Instead of quart measures like ours, I saw a set of marble basins side by side, with holes in the bottom to let the liquid run out into the buyer's jars. Most of the shops are labelled, so you can tell what was sold there. On some walls are notices scratched, that take the place of our posters, though Uncle Jim says they have more to do with politics than with buying and selling. "The great baths astonished me, for they had hot and cold water and different rooms for people to pass through, like a Turkish bath. You can't say it's a good thing that Pompeii was destroyed, but as long as it _had_ to be, it's fine that they have excavated it. To see for yourself how these people lived is better than a hundred lessons in history. Of course it gives you an awful feeling when you stand by the villa of Diomedes and hear that the bodies of eighteen women and children were found there. They had fled to the cellar and had food enough with them to last some time, but the ashes sifted in and they were found with wraps over their heads and hands out trying to shield themselves. "Diomedes, with keys in his hand, was at the door, and a slave carrying money and valuables. I haven't time to tell you about the Forum and the Basilica and the theatre. Just imagine the fifty or sixty gladiators, whose bodies were found in the gladiators' barracks! Most of them wore heavy manacles, and what they must have suffered when they found they could not escape! "When I walked up the street of Tombs, where you get the best view of Vesuvius, I could not help thinking that in spite of its calm appearance the mountain is a very dangerous neighbor, and I am rather glad that we have decided not to make the ascent. "Afterwards when I stood on a small hill, it was hard to believe that under the green slopes in front of us there lay perhaps as large a part of Pompeii as they have yet uncovered. Who knows what wonderful things may yet be found, though it may take more than fifty years to finish the work? It was up here that I dared pick a few tiny buttercups, that I send you as a souvenir of Pompeii. [Illustration: POMPEII.] "The town has a bricky look as you see it from the hill, that's one reason, I suppose, why it seems so modern. After all, the greater part of the inhabitants of Pompeii escaped alive. They fled at the first warning. When the eruption stopped for a while, many went back for their valuables, or because they thought it was all over, and there were some old and sick who, perhaps, couldn't be moved at first. All these two thousand were caught in the second fearful eruption. Casts of some of the bodies are in the little museum on the grounds, but I hardly looked at them, and, in fact, we spent very little time there because we had seen the same kind of things at Naples. This is a fearfully long letter, but I hope I shall find a longer one from you at Rome, where we go from Naples by the morning express to-morrow." CHAPTER IX ROMAN DAYS When Irma awoke on her first morning in Rome, she felt that one of her real desires was gratified. She was in the city she most wished to see. Looking at her watch she found it was too early for breakfast, and she did not care to go down ahead of the others in this new, strange hotel. So, seated in an easy-chair, she tried to recall some of the incidents of her journey of the day before, the five hours' ride that had seemed long, on account of the heat. The country through which they passed had been interesting, though she had seen few of the picturesque peasants working in the fields that she expected to see on every side. In the distance, however, she had had glimpses of snow-clad mountains, and occasionally on a hill a monastery or castle, or even a small walled town. Then across a vast plain to the right was the unmistakable dome of St. Peter's. Yes, she could write home that at the first sight of Rome her heart had beaten quicker. After the sunny ride from the station through crowded streets all, even the indefatigable Uncle Jim, had been tired, too tired, after unpacking, to do anything but rest, until at five o'clock they had gone to the large hotel near by for afternoon tea. "This isn't Rome," Aunt Caroline had said, as they sat there over their tea and cakes, listening to the music. "It is the Waldorf-Astoria, and these people moving about are largely Americans. To-morrow we shall see Rome." "To-day is to-morrow," murmured Irma, in her easy-chair, "and I wonder what we shall see first in Rome. I am sure I should never know where to begin." Aunt Caroline decided for her. Then when they first set out, she would not tell her just what they were to see until they had mounted the steps of an old casino; after passing through a little courtyard,--all that remained of the once fine Rospigliosi garden. "Look up," cried Aunt Caroline, as they stood in the large salon hung with pictures, and there on the ceiling, more beautiful than any reproduction, Irma saw the familiar Aurora, the godlike auburn-haired vision and the spirited horses: Apollo seen in a strong yellowish light, and the attendant hours in robes shading from blue to white, and from green to white, with reddish browns in the draperies of the nymph nearest him, and Aurora herself, a lovely figure, scattering flowers in his path. In the beautiful gallery, with its carvings and paintings, there were other fine pictures, but as she went away Irma still remembered only the Aurora. The warm sun beat on their heads as they re-entered their carriage. "The Roman summer has begun," said Aunt Caroline, "though it is only May. We must accustom ourselves now to a daily siesta and save our strength; but first for letters." A rapid drive brought them to their bankers, opposite the Spanish Steps. Irma recognized the place immediately from pictures she had seen, and while Aunt Caroline went inside for letters, she ran across the piazza to buy a bunch of roses from one of the picturesque flower girls gathered on the lower steps. But when, on the house at the right-hand corner, she read an inscription stating that in this house John Keats had died, she immediately unfolded her camera. She was so interested in her photograph, that when she saw her aunt standing by the carriage she recrossed the street without the flowers. "Here are letters for all of us," said Aunt Caroline, "even for Marion; two for him, the first he has had, poor boy!" "Aunt Caroline," asked Irma, for the first time since they sailed venturing to put the question, "why do you say 'poor boy' when you speak of Marion?" Aunt Caroline, who usually answered questions so quickly, was silent for so long that Irma wondered if her audacity had offended her. Then she replied gravely, "Marion has had a most unhappy experience. It is hard to say yet whether he is to be blamed or pitied. Until he is ready to talk about it, your uncle and I prefer not to speak on the subject, even with Marion himself. But when the right time comes, you shall know all about it." With this Irma, for the present, had to be content. But she realized that the idle remarks of her acquaintance at Cava had some foundation in fact. At _déjeuner_ Aunt Caroline gave Marion his letters, and Irma noticed that his face reddened as he looked at the envelopes, and that then he put them unopened in his pocket. This she thought a strange way of treating his first home letters. But then Marion was a strange boy. Irma herself had impatiently torn open her own letters even while in the carriage, and had partly read Gertrude's before reaching her hotel. "We miss you awfully," she wrote, "and Lucy and I hope you won't be so taken up with that other girl that you'll forget all about us." "She hadn't received my Azores letter about Marion," mused Irma, "when she wrote that. I am sure I wish that Marion were a girl instead of such a queer kind of boy." "You remember," continued Gertrude, "how jealous you used to be of Sally? Yes, you were, though you wouldn't admit it; well that's the way I feel about your Marian. But even if I am jealous, I do hope that you look better than when you left home, and that you are having a perfectly stunning time. I suppose you will be in Rome when you get this, and I wonder if you have seen the Queen--I mean Margherita. I have a photograph of her that I love, so don't dare come back without seeing her so you can tell me if she is like it. No matter if she hasn't invited you to call, just leave your card, and perhaps they will let you in accidentally. We miss you terribly at school. Until we are called up to recite we never know whether our translations are right. I wonder if you find the old inscriptions in Rome more fun than Cæsar. We've just had a week of early warm weather, and we girls have decided to let John Wall and George Belman fight for the head of the class." "The letter sounds just like Gertrude," said Irma, as she finished, "and though it has no news, it makes home seem much nearer." "Yet you sighed when you finished it; you mustn't let us think you are homesick," and Aunt Caroline patted Irma's shoulder, as they entered the house together. "There's only one thing for to-day," said Uncle Jim, after _déjeuner_, as they waited for the carriage. "There are said to be three hundred and sixty-five churches in Rome, and if you intend to see them all, you must begin at once with the largest and most important." "But I don't intend to see them all," expostulated Irma, "nor a tenth of them." "Then you must begin with St. Peter's just the same. You have been in the Eternal City now nearly twenty-four hours without visiting St. Peter's. Such a thing is unheard of and will bring disgrace on us all. Ah, here's the carriage, and your reform will begin." "Talk of floods in the Tiber," cried Irma, as they drove along the bank of the historic stream. "A little river like that could never do any damage. It could not be energetic enough to overflow its banks, especially when it's so fenced in." "Even in modern times the embankment has sometimes failed to keep it in place," said Uncle Jim, "and in its three miles of wanderings the yellow Tiber is sometimes hard to manage. There, there, doesn't that please you?" and Irma answered with an exclamation of delight, glancing beyond the bridge to the other side, where she had her first view of the Castle St. Angelo, Hadrian's tomb, the antique circular structure around which clusters so much history. But their horses were quick, and their driver did not stop for a long view; and after a turn or two they were soon crossing the sunny, paved piazza in front of St. Peter's, with its obelisk and fountain. "This is to be only the most general view. You must come again some day when there is a great ceremony, when you can see various dignitaries; now you are merely to get a first impression." "A first impression!" cried Irma. "Can I put it into words? It's a tremendous building; I shall never see another as large, and yet, it doesn't seem too large. What a great man the architect was!" "I have been reading up a little to-day," said Marion, "so things are fresh in my mind. I won't pretend I'll remember them to-morrow, but it's true that this is not the first church on the spot. In the beginning there was a circus of Nero's here, where that beautiful emperor was in the habit of torturing Christians to death. There's a tradition that St. Peter himself was burned here, and so Constantine built the first St. Peter's over the spot. Perhaps we can go down into the tomb to-day." "But this isn't Constantine's church?" There was a decided note of interrogation in Irma's voice. Perhaps it would have been better for her not to ask the question, for Marion's reply was in the nature of a snub. "Any one can see that this St. Peter's is comparatively new. It was begun by Julius II in the first part of the sixteenth century, and Bramante probably made the original plans." "Why, I thought Michelangelo----" "Yes, my dear," interposed Uncle Jim, "in the end Michelangelo did come to the rescue of the first plan. For after Bramante died, leaving the building far from completed, some of his successors made changes that affected the beauty of the building. I believe the dome was largely the result of Michelangelo's skill." "It took long enough to finish it!" exclaimed Marion, who had been looking at his guidebook. "It was not consecrated until 1626, more than a hundred years after Bramante's death." "Just six years after the landing of the Pilgrims," added Irma. "To compare small things with great," said Uncle Jim, with a laugh. "Which is which?" asked Irma, and for the moment no one answered. "Perhaps you don't care for guidebook information. But up to the end of the seventeenth century, St. Peter's had cost about fifty million dollars, and it now takes about eighteen thousand dollars a year to maintain it." "The salary of one of our ambassadors for a year," interpolated Irma. "Don't laugh," she cried, "that's the way I always try to remember things." "Then," continued Marion, "perhaps you will remember the height of the dome, four hundred and thirty-five feet from the cross to the pavement, is twice that of Bunker Hill Monument." "We are getting into the realm of useless knowledge," protested Uncle Jim, "and as this is but a bird's-eye view, we need only remember the beautiful proportions of the dome and the grandeur of the whole. Yet there are one or two things to see now. I must point out Canova's tomb of Clement XIII, and over there, by the door leading to the dome, you'll find Canova's monument to the last of the Stuarts. You ought to go over there and shed a tear or two, Irma, for you doubtless have the usual school girl sentimentality for the Stuarts. There are busts of the Old Pretender and his two sons." "Guidebook information would probably be as useful as that of a misguided guide," said Irma, refusing to express herself about the Stuarts. "Twenty-nine altars and one hundred and forty-eight columns," read Marion. "Come," said Uncle Jim, "don't listen to him. I can show you something better worth seeing," and he led her to the nave, where he showed her in the pavement the round slab of porphyry on which the emperors were formerly crowned. "Why, Charlemagne, of course," began Irma, and then she reddened. For Marion was standing near, and she suddenly realized that Charlemagne had been dead eight hundred years before St. Peter's was consecrated. "Oh, it was in Constantine's church that Charlemagne was crowned, but though this slab is older than the present St. Peter's, I doubt that he or his earlier successors stood on it, and best of all, I doubt that Marion can inform us," he concluded in a whisper. When at last the four turned toward the door, Irma noticed the people about her more than she had on entering. Bareheaded peasants were walking about in groups; laboring men, who had stolen an hour from work, bowed before various altars. Tourists of all nations were studying mosaic pictures, sculptured tombs, or were gazing at the priests in rich vestments and the altar boys in one of the chapels where there was a service. Here an old woman hobbled along, and there was a mother with two or three awestruck children. There were two or three soldiers in uniform, and several long-coated priests, visitors evidently from outside Rome. "It is the People's Church," said Aunt Caroline, "the church of the people of the whole world," she added. "There may not be as many languages as there are people in this large building, but I'll warrant a dozen nations are represented here." The fifteenth century bronze doors of St. Peter's amused Irma, with their curious mingling of Christian and pagan subjects, Europa and the bull, Ganymede, as well as scenes directly from the scriptures. She had a chance to admire her favorite Charlemagne, whose statue on horseback and one of Constantine were on either side of the entrance. "Over there," and Uncle Jim pointed to the left, "is the German cemetery, which Constantine originally filled with earth from Mt. Calvary, and made the first Christian burying ground. We have as little time for that to-day as for the sacristy with its treasures, or the chapels with their pictures and sculptures. There is just one other important thing to see before we reach our hotel. Wake up, _cocchiere_, here we are." As they drove between the colonnades away from St. Peter's and then along the Tiber bank, Uncle Jim called their attention to the new Rome rising on every side. "It is the Rome of the masses," he said. "Many of these tall apartment houses are occupied by people of very moderate means. And see that great public building across the river! It is as ugly as some of our own city halls." Their coachman now took a turn through narrow streets, crowded with people, to Aunt Caroline's disgust. "There may be all kinds of diseases floating about here." But hardly had her protest been heard, when they drove up in front of a portico that Marion recognized at once. "The Pantheon! We were thinking so much of the narrow streets that we did not see where we were." "Yes," responded Uncle Jim, "the Pantheon. He brought us the shortest way. I suppose you know this is the only ancient building in Rome. Walls and vaulting are the same as in the time of Hadrian. It goes back even farther than Hadrian, for Augustus's son in law, Agrippa, founded the temple, dedicated probably to the gods of the seven planets. When paganism died, it had no use for many years until Phocas the Tyrant presented it to the Pope, and it was dedicated to the Christian religion in 604." "You can't mention anything happening in our country just then," said Aunt Caroline, turning to Irma. "I might, but I won't, though I do remember that this was several hundred years earlier than our Leif Ericson," she retorted. "Uncle Jim, you did very well, even though you had to turn to your notebook." "I'll admit that I had read up a few figures for this occasion, you and Marion sometimes put me so to the blush. But what do you think of it?" For a full minute Irma was silent as she looked around the vast interior. "I am afraid," she began, "I am afraid that I like it better than St. Peter's. In some way it seems grander." "You needn't be afraid; older and wiser persons have been heard to say the same thing. A circular building is always impressive, and no interior in the world has finer proportions than this. In some ways it isn't what it once was. The bronze casings of part of the walls one of the popes once stripped off to make cannon for St. Angelo, and in the eighteenth century the beautiful marbles of the attic story above were covered with whitewash, but nothing can destroy the beautiful proportions." "Don't tell us what they are," urged Aunt Caroline. "It would destroy half the effect to hear what it is in feet and inches." "There's just one thing Irma ought to know, since she quite scorns a guidebook now. That open aperture in the centre of the dome that looks like a small hole is thirty feet across. It is the only way of lighting the building." "What do they do when it rains?" asked Irma. "Why, they let it rain." "Marion," exclaimed Aunt Caroline, "if you are willing to repeat so aged and infirm a joke as that, you must be feeling better." Marion glanced toward Irma, but she made no sign as to whether or not she, too, scorned the joke. "Twenty-eight wagon loads of bones," she was saying. "Yes, my dear, it was dedicated to Santa Maria ad Martyres, and naturally this was regarded as a more fitting place than the Catacombs for their final interment. Yet the sacredness of the place didn't prevent Constans II from stripping the gilt tiles from the dome to use in Constantinople. But now you are to look at only two tombs on your way out, this of Victor Emanuel, which is always covered with wreaths, and over there Raphael's tomb--only a passing glance at each--and notice the wonderfully beautiful marbles of the pavement. It would repay you sometime to study them, and the--run, my dear, ask your aunt to hurry," he concluded hastily. "We shall have time for the Corso," said Uncle Jim, as they drove off. But the Corso proved disappointing to Marion and Irma. "It is neither wide nor long, and why people with fine carriages and footmen should enjoy driving here at the end of a pleasant spring afternoon I can't understand," complained Marion. "Why, it's so crowded that there's no particular pleasure in being here." "That's why most people are driving here, to see and be seen; that's part of the fun of living for the idler Italians, and as they can't sit about in piazzas like their countrymen and women a few grades below them, exchanging nods from a carriage is the next best thing. And you can't deny that the shop windows are attractive." "It's almost like driving for pleasure on Washington Street, in Boston," said Irma, scornfully, "only it's a little less crowded, and there are no surface cars." "Though you speak sarcastically, young lady, just now I won't attempt to stand up for Il Corso," retorted Uncle Jim. "It doesn't begin to compare with Fifth Avenue," said Marion. "It doesn't pretend to, young patriot. I simply brought you here to do as the Romans do fine afternoons. Some day you'll drive on the Pincian at the fashionable hour, and after that I'd like to hear your American comparisons." "But where in the world can you find a street short as Il Corso with more associations with great men? Over there's the house where Shelley wrote 'The Cenci,' and Goethe's home in Rome is not far away. A little off at one side you'll find Donizetti's house, and on the other Sir Walter Scott's, and just ahead of us is the Bonaparte Palace, where Madame Letitia spent her sad later years. You hardly have to turn out of your way to find the remains of old temples, and there in the Piazza is the Marcus Aurelius Column." "Oh, it's inter--," but with the word unfinished, Marion put his hand to his hat as if to bow to some one in a passing carriage. He did not really bow, however, and the others noticed that he reddened deeply. "That looked like the fairy godfather!" cried Irma. "Whom I consider a myth," responded Uncle Jim. But Marion said nothing. Irma's first week in Rome seemed to pass almost as quickly as her first day. Though she had been sightseeing constantly, she still had not seen the Colosseum, the Forum, or the Vatican treasures. Each day was not long enough. In the morning she usually visited some gallery with her aunt. But in the warmer hours, from twelve to three, they rested. Some object of interest and a drive took the later afternoon, and by evening all were too tired to do anything but sit about and compare experiences with one another or with their hotel acquaintances. "I haven't forgotten your advice," wrote Irma in a long letter to her mother, "to remember clearly at least one or two things from each gallery. In the Borghese there is Canova's beautiful statue of Pauline, Napoleon's sister, and Titian's Holy and Profane Love, and in the Colonna that enormous ceiling painting--I almost broke my neck looking up at it--of the Battle of Lepanto, where some Prince Colonna fought, and some wonderful ivory carvings, one of them, in a few square inches, shows all the figures of Michelangelo's Last Judgment. Then in the Doria is Velasquez' Pope Julius X, in his red robes, and some Claude Lorraines that I liked. "Then I loved Domenichino's Sybil, in the Borghese, and I can never forget the Saint Sebastians I have seen. It may be wicked to laugh at a martyr, but it is almost wickeder for artists to make a good man look like a pincushion stuck full of arrows. The Doria Palace is the handsomest of all, with its gilded furniture and fine ceilings and polished floors. How gorgeous it must have looked when a ball was given there in the old days. I'd like to have seen the private apartments and the Colonna gardens. They say it was from a building in the Colonna Gardens that Nero watched Rome burning. On certain days these galleries are free, but generally you pay admission to a regular ticket taker in a gilt-banded cap. I wonder if the princes who own these palaces make money by showing their pictures, or if public spirit leads them to open their houses. "One day Marion and I went to the Lateran where the popes lived before they had the Vatican, and please tell Tessie that the first thing we looked at was the Scala Sancta, or Holy Stairs, that they say were in Pontius Pilate's house in Jerusalem, over which Christ once walked. On this account people must go up and down them on their knees. But it is only on Holy Week that many do this. There are twenty-eight marble steps, although all you can see, as you look through the narrow door, is the wooden covering that protects them. The Empress Helena, Constantine's mother, brought them here. Tessie used to be interested in these Holy Stairs on account of a picture in one of her Sunday-school books, and she will be glad to know I have seen them. "Everything around the Lateran reminds one of Constantine. St. John Lateran has the site of a church he founded, and near it is the Baptistery where he was baptized. The font is green basalt, and there are beautiful porphyry columns and lovely gold mosaics on a blue ground. "Opposite, in the piazza, is an obelisk Constantine brought from the Temple of the Sun at Thebes, and set up in the Circus Maximus. Three or four hundred years ago they found it in three pieces buried under ruins, and decided to place it here. Uncle Jim says there are more obelisks here than in all the rest of the world, and people who study hieroglyphs find Rome a better place than Egypt. "Marion is good company, and often wishes to see just the same thing that I do, and then sometimes he doesn't; and I must say he always seems to suit himself. He knows a great deal. He has usually studied with private tutors and he has read everything. But he won't talk about his family. I don't even know whether he has any brothers or sisters. "He was splendid the other day when we went to the Capitoline Museum, from the minute we began to walk up the broad stairs toward the statue of Marcus Aurelius. He pointed out the places where Tiberius Gracchus was slain, and not far away, though so long afterwards, Rienzi, too. "Then he explained that though most of the buildings now on the Campodoglio were by Michelangelo, this had been a centre for public offices even under the first emperors. The Tabularium, where all old records were kept, is under the palace of the Senators. We had not time for it, but Marion had been there before, and he says it is almost the only building now left of the time of the Republic. Then we walked through the Capitoline Museum and I recognized many statues,--the Dying Gladiator and Hawthorne's Marble Faun and the busts of the Emperors. Marion says nearly all have been identified from coins, and are truer than the heads of philosophers and poets that we saw. Then there is the famous mosaic picture of the doves that shows even the shadows, which came from Hadrian's villa, like so many things in marble and porphyry I have seen this week. "There are many relics from the ancient graves, gold bracelets and other ornaments, and old inscriptions. They are not always easy to read, but here is one to amuse the boys that Marion translated for me. I can't give the exact words, but it was the epitaph of a boy eleven and a half years old who had worked himself to death in a competition to recite Greek verses. After we had seen all we wished in the museums, Marion took me through a narrow way, the Via Tarpeia, and past the German Embassy and then through a garden, where we paid an old lady a fee, and then, but of course you have guessed it, we were standing on the famous Tarpeian Rock. We looked down from the rock into a rather poor and commonplace street, and I tried to imagine what it was like in the old, old times when this was the edge of Rome, and Tarpeia was killed there for betraying the city to the invaders. "Without Marion I never could have found the Rock, and I don't believe Uncle Jim and Aunt Caroline would have taken the trouble to go there." CHAPTER X A QUEEN--AND OTHER SIGHTS Irma was descending the Spanish Steps one morning on her way to the piazza when she heard Marion calling her. Turning her head, she saw him hastening toward her. "What's your hurry?" he cried. "I can't hurry going down these steps. I am on my way to return a book for Aunt Caroline. Then----" "Well, what then?" "I haven't decided." "Then come with me to Rag Fair, and after that I have something else for the afternoon. Aunt Caroline says she won't try to go out to-day, her cold is worse and Uncle Jim intends to stay in to read to her, and I, well, she said I must look out for you." Marion said the last a trifle sheepishly, adding, "Of course I will do whatever you wish. But I am sure you will like my plan." "Yes, provided you haven't the Catacombs in mind, or that awful church with bones and skulls for decorations." "The Cappuccini; no, we won't go there." "And you won't ask me to ride around Aurelian's wall on a bicycle?" "No, though you'd find it great fun! I don't know anything I have enjoyed better. The towers are so picturesque and they were useful, too. I went up in one to see the little rooms inside the walls that the soldiers occupied, and the guard-rooms, up there more than forty feet. They certainly had a good chance to see the enemy at a long distance. If you and Aunt Caroline would drive some day, I'd point things out to you." "Perhaps we will, but now--" Irma had taken out her camera. "Oh, I wish I could get a photograph, but I suppose they will run when they see what I want." "They" made a picturesque group, slowly mounting the steps, a mother with babe in arms, a shawl thrown over her head, a half-grown girl in a faded pink gingham, and a little boy in a shabby velveteen suit and felt hat with a feather over his curls. [Illustration: NEAR LA TRINITÀ, ROME.] [Illustration: ROME. A GROUP ON SPANISH STEPS.] "The boy is probably an artist's model, dressed for effect. I am not sure about the others, but I can make them stand for you." "Oh! Please!" Whereupon Marion stepped up to the woman, spoke a few words in Italian, and lo, they at once grouped themselves picturesquely in a spot where the sun fell in just the right way for a photograph. Irma took her place, snapped her camera, turned the key, took a second snap, in case anything should go wrong with the first and murmured, "_Grazie, grazie_," one of her few Italian words. "_Niente, niente, signorina_," said the girl, who seemed to be the spokesman of the party, looking inquiringly at Marion. Then almost instantly Marion dropped a small piece of silver in her hand. "That's the way to get them to stand," he said laughing; "generally the smallest copper will fetch them." "But you gave more." "Oh, this was a group of four. I have noticed that little chap before, selling flowers. He's very amusing." Soon Irma had returned her library book, and by various short cuts Marion led her to the Palazzo Cancelleria, near which the so-called Rag Fair is held every Wednesday. They found a series of canvas booths, where a great variety of things was displayed. The sellers, more numerous than the buyers, praised their wares at the tops of their voices, if Irma or Marion even glanced toward them. "I should call it a rummage sale, and things are rather rubbishy," said Irma. At this moment a man thrust a pair of silver-mounted opera glasses in Marion's face, naming a ridiculously low price. With some difficulty, Marion shook him off. "Nothing would induce me to buy them." "But they seemed very cheap." "Yes, but that's the reason. I believe they were stolen." "Oh, but would the police allow it?" "Not if they knew it, but these people keep such things hidden. Perhaps other goods are stolen, too. There are some pretty things here." "Aunt Caroline might find some old lace or embroidery that she'd like, but for my own part I am disappointed. However, we've seen the Rag Fair, and we can cross that off our list of sights." Leaving the Fair and the voluble merchants, after a walk of a block or two Marion suggested that they go home by trolley. This pleased Irma, who had not yet ridden in the Roman cars. When the conductor came for their fare, Marion gave a cry of surprise. "What is it?" asked Irma. "Well, it's worse than ridiculous. I have lost my purse. My last small piece of money was the silver bit I gave to the girl on the Spanish Steps. I know I had my purse then." While they were talking Irma put her own little purse in Marion's hand, and he paid their fare. "Let us go back to the Rag Fair," she said. "Some one there must have taken it. You know how they were jostling us." "There'd be no good in going back. The person who took it would hardly return it. Besides there wasn't much in it, not more than two hundred _liri_." "Two hundred _liri_, forty dollars." Irma rapidly transferred the sum to American money. Why, that was more than she had brought from home as extra spending money and for little gifts, and Marion could say it was nothing. "It is worth trying to find," she suggested mildly. "If there was any chance of finding it, but we'd only waste time. It's too near luncheon, and I'm anxious to carry out my afternoon plan." "How strange Marion is!" thought Irma. "It doesn't disturb him in the least to lose money, and yet some little thing that no one can account for will give him a fit of blues for two or three days." At three in the afternoon Irma came down to the hotel office, looking cool and comfortable in her simple pongee suit. "I am awfully curious," she said, as Marion helped her into the carriage. "Aunt Caroline says she knows where we're going, but she wouldn't spoil your fun." Marion only smiled, as he directed the coachman, "To the Villa Corsini," and the words conveyed little to Irma, beyond the fact that a villa was Italian for "park" and not for "country house," as in English. After a quarter of an hour through a part of Rome she did not know, at last they came to some rather poor streets, where people were lounging about their doors as if expecting something. "I suppose they're not turning out just to see us pass." "Who knows? Perhaps they have heard that we are distinguished American visitors." Soon they turned in toward a park, before whose gate stood a number of carriages and automobiles. "We shall be here an hour," said Marion in Italian, and the driver bowed comprehendingly. Showing their tickets, they went up a broad avenue past fine trees and occasional flower-beds. "It's a garden party for some kind of a charity," Marion explained, "and I thought it would be fun to see some of the princesses and marchionesses who are running it. There was a long list of them in the newspapers yesterday." "Yes, it will be fun," responded Irma, really surprised that Marion should willingly waste an hour on what might be called a society affair. That wasn't the way with most boys, and from what she had seen of Marion, she had not thought him fond of society. Soon they came in sight of a long table, where many men and women were drinking and serving tea. Near it was a large marquee into which they looked as they passed, with a table handsomely spread and decorated with flowers and bright streamers. At one end of the apartment several handsome chairs were placed. "Some special guest must be coming," said Irma, "but the lawn is good enough for me. Let us go toward those chairs under the trees." For a minute or two they watched the gay scene at the long table. "It is evidently a family affair," said Marion. "Every one seems to know every one else. Those men are not bad looking, for Italians," he concluded. "Many of the ladies are beautiful," responded Irma, "and what lovely gowns! I suppose they are in the height of fashion, but I should think they'd hate to trail them over the ground." Presently a most attractive lady, whom Irma had especially noticed, approached them. "Will you have your tea now?" she asked in English, with the slightest accent that showed it was not her native language. "I will have it sent you at once," she continued, "and some cakes." Without waiting for a reply, in a moment she had returned to the table, from which a young girl soon came bringing a tray with cups of tea and a plate of tiny cakes. "Yes, she is expected at once," the young girl replied to some question of Marion's that Irma had not heard. "The Queen, the Queen Margherita," cried Irma. "You are expecting to see the Queen." "You are a good guesser," retorted Marion. "For when I read that Margherita had promised to attend this fête I thought it would be fun for you to come. I know your friend Gertrude has been anxious to have you see her, and there may not be another chance unless you should make up your mind to ask an audience." "Hardly," replied Irma smiling, "and I do hope she will come." Before the two had finished their tea, the groups at the large table moved forward, forming a semicircle near the marquee. The other strangers, who like themselves were at little tables under the trees, rose and moved toward the crowd. In a few minutes a little group came up the avenue from the gate. Irma's whole attention was fastened on the gracious lady in the centre, who leaned a trifle on her parasol handle, as she bowed to those who greeted her on each side. "I should know her anywhere," cried Irma; "her face is as sweet as in the photographs I have seen. Look, they are kissing her hand." Margherita paused a moment, as if to take in the whole scene before her. Irma noticed that although she was scarcely above middle height, in her soft black gown and wide black hat she had an air of grace and elegance that would have distinguished her, even among those who did not know that she was the widow of King Humberto. "How pleased Gertrude will be that I have seen her!" she exclaimed, as Queen Margherita entered the marquee, attended by a number of those who had been in attendance upon the tables, "and it is all owing to you," she added, turning to thank Marion for his thoughtfulness. "As King Victor Emanuel and Queen Elena have gone to their country place, we are not likely to see any other royalties in Italy. But _now_ I can write home that I have seen Queen Margherita." A little later, as Irma and Marion passed the marquee on their way to the carriage, they paused to glance within, where Margherita sat, talking with much animation, the centre of a circle of ladies. "Well, young people," said Uncle Jim at dinner that evening, "you have had a giddy day, with rag fairs and fêtes and things of that kind. To-morrow we return to hard, earnest sightseeing, the Borgia apartments at the Vatican and the Vatican Library. Your aunt wishes you to go while her cold lasts, so she has a reasonable excuse for not travelling the several miles necessary to see these things." "Fortunately I am strong," said Marion, "and Irma seems equal to any amount of walking." "I'm not sure," Irma protested, "that I wish to see more in the Vatican. I enjoyed the sculptures the other day, and the paintings in Raphael's Stanze. Perhaps I am wrong, but I would almost like to leave Rome without seeing the rest of the Pope's palace. Just now I recall clearly all the frescoes: the School of Athens and the Borgo, and Parnassus and the others, and then the Ascension in the gallery, with that wonderful yellowish light. I am contented to remember nothing else of the Vatican." "Oh, that will never do, the largest palace in the world, with a thousand different apartments, covering thirteen and a half acres, and you wish to remember it by a few frescoes and one large painting!" "The greatest frescoes in the world. I've heard you say that yourself." "Oh, yes, but the treasures of the Vatican are all great, and you must have a chance to judge between what you've seen of Raphael and what you will see of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Those popes of the Middle Ages were wise in their day, especially after Nicholas V, in 1450, who decided to make the Vatican the most imposing palace in the world by bringing under one roof all the papal offices. Since then the building has been constantly enlarged and improved. But now only a small part is occupied by the Papal Court. Certain days and hours most of the Vatican treasures are shown to visitors. If you could spend all your time there for a week, you would not have seen half." Next day Uncle Jim decided not to go with the young people to the Vatican, and so again Marion was Irma's guide. "I am less afraid of the Swiss guards than I was the first day," said Irma, as they passed the Pope's soldiers in their brilliant red and yellow uniforms, on their way to the Scala Regia. "Oh," responded Marion, "they wouldn't dare touch a visitor. Just wait a moment, I've forgotten exactly where we go first." So they waited, while Marion turned the leaves of his guidebook, and then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and heard in Italian a very positive "Move on." He looked into the frowning face of a Swiss guard, and without further ado he moved rapidly up the broad staircase. "There," said Irma, when out of hearing of the soldiers. "What did I tell you? They might have done something terrible. You know we are not in Italy now. The Vatican is the Pope's country." "And the Pope is one of the best-hearted men in the world. Why, actually you are trembling! I suppose they have rules to keep people moving, but they wouldn't dare harm an American." Irma, however, was disturbed by this incident, and was not sorry a few minutes later to find herself one of several in an anteroom waiting the guide to take them through the library. "A library!" she exclaimed, when they had entered the vast hall, "but where are the books?" "In these glass cases--listen to the guide." Not until the end of their tour of the great hall did they learn that the library, in the ordinary sense of books and manuscripts available for students, was not open to ordinary visitors. The so-called library through which the guide led them was high vaulted, and more than two hundred feet long, with painted ceiling, floors of marble mosaics from ancient temples and baths, and exquisite marble columns also from ancient buildings. In the end they saw some books worth seeing: the oldest Bible in existence, a manuscript of the fourth century, and an old second century Virgil. Of later times there was a volume of Henry VIII's love letters to Anne Boleyn, and many exquisitely illustrated manuscripts, among them a Natural History illuminated by Raphael and his pupils. "I wish he'd cut it short," said Marion, as the guide gave long descriptions of each manuscript that he pointed out in its case, or in the drawers that he sometimes unlocked. "I rather enjoy what he says about the manuscripts as you translate it for me," responded Irma, "but he need not describe every present given to every pope. Vases are vases, and we know all these things were presents to one pope or another. They are all costly and some are beautiful. But I am getting tired." It would not have been possible, even had they dared try to hurry the loquacious guide. Before they left the hall Irma almost forgot her fatigue in looking at the ancient paintings, inscriptions, and other relics of early Christians. Again, as at the Lateran, she sighed deeply at the pathos of the little things brought from the Catacombs, combs and small toilet articles, little brooches, and other pieces of simple jewelry. "You are really tired!" exclaimed Marion, as they passed through the glass door out of the hall. "But in the Sistine Chapel you can sit down." So it happened that after Irma had looked into a mirror held under the ceiling, on which are painted Michelangelo's frescoes--the sibyls and the prophets, and the well-known Adam and Eve, Irma from a bench along the side looked with more or less interest at the paintings opposite her by Pinturicchio and other masters. A girl of sixteen, however, is not expected to have the interest of her elders in old masters, as Irma frankly acknowledged. "Of course I know the Last Judgment of Michelangelo's is a great altarpiece, but I do not care to look at it longer. I'm very glad, though, that you brought me to the Sistine Chapel. When I read about the great church ceremonies in which the Pope takes part, I can imagine the crowd here, and the Pope in the centre and----" Before Irma had finished speaking, from behind a wooden partition that screened some men repairing the mosaic pavement, one of the workers stepped out, and with a finger of one hand on his lips, lifted the other on high with one finger significantly extended. When he saw that he had gained Marion's attention, he held up a small object, as if he wished Marion to examine it. Then Marion went forward, and the man put the object in his hand. "Cheap enough for a franc," said Marion, displaying a small octagon of mosaics, green, red, and white. "Why it's the same pattern as the pavement there." "Of course, that's why I bought it," he replied, "as a souvenir of the Sistine Chapel." "But ought you to take it?" asked Irma. "Had he the right to sell it?" An expression of anger crossed Marion's face. "Do you think I would do what is not right? Come," he continued, "we ought to be on our way out." Then he strode on, keeping far enough ahead of Irma to prevent conversation. "He is certainly like a spoiled child!" she thought, "and I fancied we were getting on so well together." The drive back to the hotel was rather silent, as well as hot. "In our hottest weather it is never like this," thought poor Irma. She was glad enough to reach the shelter of the cool hotel. "Did you see where the papal dominions end and Italy begins?" asked Uncle Jim at _déjeuner_. "No? Then you didn't look in the right place. There is one window from which the guide could have shown you a soldier of the Pope's on guard, while at a short distance a sentry from the Italian army is pacing up and down." "From one or two windows I caught sight of the beautiful Vatican gardens," Irma replied, "and even if the Pope is a prisoner, he must find a great deal to enjoy in his walks." "_If_ he is a prisoner," began Uncle Jim. "He is certainly a voluntary prisoner," said Aunt Caroline, "but the subject is too large a one to discuss now." Marion was silent, evidently sulking. But Aunt Caroline understood him, for when he left the table without a word she made no comment. CHAPTER XI TIVOLI--AND HADRIAN'S VILLA "Tivoli," said Irma, as they sat at luncheon in a pleasant garden not far from the cascades, "has disappointed me." "In what way?" asked Uncle Jim. "Oh, the name sounds so bright and frivolous that you expect it to be very gay here, and it isn't." "The cataracts are lively." "Yes, they foam and roar like the falls of Lodore, when you reach them, but Tivoli itself is a crowded little town, and the people seem solemn. Even the Temple of the Sibyl is shabby and dirty, without looking old." "Irma turning pessimist," cried Uncle Jim. "But the town isn't the whole of Tivoli. Villa d'Este is charming enough, unless it has changed since my day, and then there's the road to Hadrian's villa!" Marion took neither one side nor the other in the discussion. He had talked to Irma little enough since their Vatican visit a day or two before. Yet he was always polite, and she judged from the past that his sulkiness would not last long. The drive to the Villa d'Este was short, and as she stood on the terrace looking over the tops of the pointed cypresses, Irma admitted that this view alone was worth seeing. "Ligorio, whom Cardinal Ippolito d'Este employed to construct this villa, was certainly an artist," said Aunt Caroline, "and I am sure it is true that there are few finer Renaissance villas in Italy." [Illustration: WALL OF ORVIETO. (_See page 211._)] [Illustration: CASCADES AT TIVOLI.] "If only it were not going to ruin so fast. Broken statuary and moss-grown fountains are not very cheerful. But perhaps there are some amusing stories connected with the place. What has the guide been saying to you?" said Uncle Jim. "Oh, he has been telling me that he is one of the most remarkable guides in Europe, with government certificates and letters of recommendation from innumerable tourists. The German Emperor depended on him, so he says, on his visit two or three years ago, and, ah, yes--" The guide had brought the party to a stop as he pointed to a stone bench at the end of a path. "Yes," continued Aunt Caroline, "let us sit down, one by one, for this is the bench on which the Kaiser rested to get full enjoyment of the vista of the house on the terrace at the end of the long avenue of pointed cypresses. But come, he says he has even a finer view to show." A few minutes' walk brought the party to a wall bounding one side of the garden, whence they had a wide outlook over a flourishing country. "He says," interpreted Aunt Caroline, "that where that large factory stands was Maecenas's villa, and that Horace also had a farm not far away." "I could contradict him if it were worth while," said Uncle Jim, "although it is true enough that many eminent Romans, including Augustus himself, had villas in this neighborhood. But there are few sites of which we are sure, except that of Hadrian's villa a hundred years later." The guide continued to pour out information and misinformation until the party returned to the carriage, and he was even anxious to go with them to Hadrian's villa. "No, there we shall not need him," said Uncle Jim decidedly. "I have studied the plans, and as we shall not attempt to explore a very large part of the one hundred and seventy-nine acres, I believe I am equal to my task of guide." Leaving their carriage at the entrance, the party was soon at the custodian's house. Here Aunt Caroline and Irma lingered to compare pictures of Hadrian's villa as it is, with sketches showing the artist's ideal of its original splendor. Other tourists were wandering about the vast ruins, and the custodian was occupied with the first comers. "Whether a palace or a collection of palaces, it is the most surprising ruin I have ever seen," said Aunt Caroline. "Imagine what it must have been in Hadrian's day! Many of the finest statues now in Rome were unearthed here a few centuries ago, and these mosaic pavements and broken columns give us an idea of the whole. It was really, I suppose, a collection of magnificent buildings with baths and great halls and even quarters for the imperial troops." Irma, walking about, had a strange feeling of loneliness; she had never seen a building so vast. It brought before her more vividly than anything else she had seen the greatness of the Roman emperors. She wished to be by herself, undisturbed by Aunt Caroline's continuous explanations and Uncle Jim's facetious comments. "Over there," said Marion, whom she met unexpectedly at a turn, "an opening in the trees gives a fine view of the valley, with Tivoli on the hills beyond." As Marion did not offer to accompany her to the spot toward which he pointed, Irma went on alone. Uncle Jim and Aunt Caroline were not far away, and would doubtless follow soon enough. "It was very good in Marion to tell me of this view," thought Irma, as she looked over the valley. "He is getting over his sulkiness." After waiting a few minutes, longer perhaps than she realized, Irma turned back to the place where Marion had spoken to her. But now there was no one in sight but a distant custodian, who was engrossed by a tourist. "Where is Marion?" thought Irma, "and why did Uncle Jim and Aunt Caroline turn about so quickly?" At this moment she saw a small cube of green marble in her path. Though it was very like the marble of the pavement on which she stood, she could see no broken place. "What a perfect paperweight it would make!" she thought. "I couldn't have a finer souvenir from Hadrian's villa." But as she was about to pick it up, the custodian suddenly turned his head. She wondered if she were doing wrong. Yet the little green cube still fascinated her and she waited until the custodian and the tourist had moved out of sight. While she waited Irma made a few notes in her book, and when she at last felt that she could safely do it, she picked up the little piece of marble and dropped it in her bag. But now where should she go? She had a vague idea of the general direction, yet she knew that a wrong turn might lead her far from the entrance. How foolish she had been not to consult the custodian, and all for a wretched piece of marble! For the moment she felt like throwing it away. The feeling of melancholy she had had since first entering the villa now increased. The sun was low, and as she looked at her watch she saw it was but ten minutes of train time. "If, by any chance, we should become separated, you and Marion must surely be at the station five minutes before train time," Uncle Jim had said, while they were still in the carriage, pointing out the little structure, where the steam tram for Rome made a stop. "That is why they went on," thought Irma, "they supposed Marion was with me, and now what _will_ they think?" Now, strange though it may seem, when the tram pulled away from the little station, Uncle Jim and Aunt Caroline did not realize Irma's absence. After a hurried cup of tea, they had rushed for the cars with a number of other passengers. "Where's Irma?" Aunt Caroline had asked anxiously, as she took her own seat. "Oh, she's in the next car; I saw Marion helping her on." This was Uncle Jim's honest opinion. But the girl whom Marion was assisting politely, happened not to be Irma, but another girl of her general appearance, as it seemed to near-sighted Uncle Jim. Meanwhile Marion, quite unconscious that Irma was not with his uncle and aunt in the forward car, surrendered himself to a book. Poor Irma! She was not ashamed of the tears that began to fall, when after several minutes' walk she found herself back at a point near where she had found the unlucky bit of marble. It was far from a pleasant prospect that she might spend the night at Hadrian's villa, twenty-five miles from Rome. She had no intention, naturally, of sitting still, and she felt sure that eventually, probably even before dark, she might find her way out to the custodian's house. The last tram for the day had returned to Rome, and she wondered who would give her shelter for the night. "Crying won't help," and she wiped away what she meant should be her last tear. "I am sure I know the general direction, and if----" "Hello, hello," cried a cheerful voice behind her, "a lady in distress, and no one but me to rescue her. This is _remarkable_." Irma started to her feet, almost ready to throw her arms around the speaker, whom she had instantly recognized. Before her stood the fairy godfather. It did not take long to explain the situation, though the old gentleman was rather outspoken in his words of blame for Marion and Uncle Jim. "Your uncle evidently thought the boy was looking after you, and I must say he deserves punishment, if he has gone back to Rome without you." "Oh, it is my fault for not staying with the others." "Well, well, that can be settled later; meanwhile, if you have really seen all you wish of Hadrian's villa, I will conduct you outside, where I have a carriage and pair. We can soon reach Tivoli, where I can send a telegram that will meet your friends when they reach the end of the route." "But when shall I go back to Rome?" "On the regular railroad from Tivoli. Fortunately it has an evening train. Ah, here we are!" As Irma waited at the little building at the entrance to the grounds, where post cards and other relics were sold, she saw a piece of marble, almost the counterpart of the one that had made her lose her way. She did not buy it, in spite of her first impulse. "I believe it's not wrong for me to keep the other piece," she thought. "In one way it has taught me a lesson." On their way to Tivoli the old gentleman seemed more inclined to get Irma's impressions of Rome, rather than to talk freely himself. She did not, therefore, venture to ask where he had been since their landing at Naples, nor even whether he had been long in Rome. This last question seemed unnecessary, as the old gentleman's conversation showed a wide acquaintance with modern as well as ancient Rome. Irma had begun, however, to ask him one or two questions about Roman school children, when without replying he said abruptly, "Now, tell me, don't you think there are too many churches in Rome?" "There _are_ a great many," replied Irma, smiling, "and I shall not have seen more than a tenth of them, even if I stay here a month longer." "Then you do not care for them?" "Oh, I simply haven't time. Indeed, I care for some of them. I used to think church legends rather hard to believe, but now they mean much more to me. Perhaps I did not like San Pietro in Montorio as well as some others when I first saw it the other day, but it meant more when I found they believe it is built on the very spot where the apostle was martyred, and so, while the church of San Paolo seems too large and splendid, still it is beautiful to have a church to mark St. Paul's burial place." "Yes, Rome constantly reminds us what the martyrs suffered. You came out the San Lorenzo gate to-day?" "Yes." "Well, the church of San Lorenzo just beyond honors St. Lawrence, whose story is one of the most pathetic. He was assistant to the Bishop Sextus II, and when the latter was condemned to death he begged that he might die with him. 'In three days you shall follow me,' said Sextus. St. Lawrence was a young man of great personal beauty, and he had been a devoted friend to the poor. Sextus directed him to distribute the treasure of the Church among the poor, and when he was asked by the Tyrant to show the treasure, he gathered about him those he had helped. His bravery and piety converted his jailer, Hippolytus, and he met his death--roasting on a gridiron--with the greatest bravery. Whether the story is wholly true, there was certainly a brave martyr named Lawrence. St. Cecilia, too, is another martyr who ought to interest you. Ah, Rome is full of such memories! But this is not a cheerful subject for a girl who has lost her relatives." In an instant the old gentleman had turned the subject, giving Irma an entertaining account of Easter week celebrations that he had once seen in Rome. As a result of the despatch from Tivoli, Uncle Jim was at the station to meet Irma. "You gave us a great fright," he said reproachfully. "We did not discover that you were missing until we had almost reached Rome." "Don't scold the young lady," said the fairy godfather. "It was the fault of that boy." He spoke so sternly that Irma was glad Marion was not present. Yet Uncle Jim did not resent this speech. It almost seemed as if he had met the old gentleman before. Then, with a bare acknowledgment of the thanks that Uncle Jim showered on him for his care of Irma and his thoughtfulness in telegraphing, the old gentleman jumped into a carriage and drove rapidly away. "Do you know him, Uncle Jim?" asked Irma. "I must have seen him on the _Ariadne_," he replied. "My dear Chris and Rudolph," wrote Irma a few days later. "This is to be a long letter, because we have a rainy day and I can spare the time. For my trunk is packed, and to-morrow we leave Rome. "In the first place, you wish to know about the seven hills. Well, I believe they are all here, only they have been so built upon or so levelled that they are hard to find. Even in old times the Palatine and the Aventine were the only hills worth speaking of, and they are still fairly steep. Not so long ago they showed a small hut on the Palatine called Romulus's house that had been preserved since the earliest days. So it seems certain that Romulus and Remus were real people, and if we needed more proof, not long since they discovered an old tomb in the Forum which they are quite sure was the grave of Romulus. I have looked down into it, and am willing to believe this, too. On the Palatine now are the ruins of the enormous palaces of the emperors. Generally only parts of the high walls are standing, but from these you get an idea of the grandeur of ancient Rome. On the walls of one house (The House of the Pages it is supposed to be) they found a rough little drawing, such as a boy might scratch on a blackboard to-day, the picture of a donkey, and under it: 'Work, little ass, as I have worked, and may it profit thee.' "Besides the palaces they have unearthed the small house of Germanicus, in which we saw some good wall paintings, and what would interest you more, lead pipes for carrying water, almost like those we use in our houses. "We spent one day in the Forum with a special guide, who made everything so plain! I saw the place where Cæsar fell at the foot of Pompey's statue. They are constantly unearthing new things in the Forum, and Aunt Caroline says it is really twice as large as it was when she was last here. The beautiful House of the Vestals interested me the most. "The Colosseum is some distance from the Forum, and you know it from photographs. Only no picture can really give you a good idea of its size. When you stand inside you feel as if you were hardly larger than a fly. "Rome, for the first few days, seemed like a big, new city, with bright shops and rushing trolley cars and _carabinieri_ in cocked hats sauntering about. But I soon began to see old Rome everywhere. You have to patch it together as you go about. Pavements and columns from ancient temples are found in the Middle Age churches. Alabaster and colored marbles from all over the world were brought to Rome, and as late as the fifth century there were thirty-six marble arches, hundreds of temples, and many great baths, circuses, and fine private houses, besides the rows of tall houses arranged in flats in which ordinary people lived. There were also a great many fine statues, nearly all of which have disappeared. In the Middle Ages, when people wished to build new houses and churches, they simply pulled down some fine old Roman temple or palace and so got building materials without any expense. But there is enough of ancient Rome left to help form a picture of what it was. Sometime I hope you will see it all, the old wall with its towers, the Appian Way with its tombs and monuments. "But old Rome is only a part of what we enjoy. The streets are bright and gay with so many people driving about, and soldiers in uniforms sometimes marching, sometimes walking along the sidewalks like ordinary people. Then often we meet twenty or thirty school children dressed just alike, taking exercise in the care of sisters, or priests in their church dress. Then there are a great many theological students studying in Rome, and some of them wear broad red or broad blue sashes, or have other colored trimmings on their long black robes. "I dare say you are disappointed that we have not seen the king and queen--I wrote mother about Margherita--but I have been all through the royal palace, the Quirinal, and will tell you about it when I come home." CHAPTER XII AN ANCIENT TOWN "I feel sorrier even than I expected," said Irma, as their train drew out of the station at Rome. "No other city can be half as interesting." "Just wait, my dear," replied Uncle Jim; "wherever you go in Italy you will find more churches and pictures than you can properly grasp. You are a pretty good sightseer, but in another month you will have had enough." "It isn't antiquities and pictures that I mind leaving," responded Irma smiling; "but I was only beginning to realize how many pleasant people there are in Rome." "You and your aunt were certainly getting rather frivolous; teas and calls and that kind of thing are a great waste of time in a city full of churches. Remember, to improve your mind is your chief object in coming abroad." Uncle Jim had assumed a mock-serious manner. "To improve her health," interposed Aunt Caroline; "and I have written her mother that she has gained six pounds and has recovered her red cheeks." "So you attribute this improvement to teas, and not to churches!" "Our little bit of social life the past week or two has been good for us both. Americans away from home often seem unexpectedly interesting, and we have enjoyed hearing little things about the Roman winter that we might not have heard if I had not met so many New York and Philadelphia acquaintances. Then we have seen some of our artist friends at work in their studios, and this has been entertaining." "Don't forget the shops, Aunt Caroline. Even if I haven't had much money to spend I have enjoyed shopping, and I think I have done very well with Roman souvenirs. Sometimes I have wished I could spend just a little more, and yet I have done very well." If Irma had been looking at Marion, she might have seen that he was observing her more closely than the pages of the book that earlier had seemed to absorb him. As they journeyed, Uncle Jim reminded Irma that they were travelling toward the sources of the Tiber, and at one station he told her that here she might go off to Perugia, the home of Perugino and Raphael. "Orvieto," he added, "is a town set on a small mountain by itself, and I hope you will like the funicular." "By funicular!" cried Marion, in a tone of disgust; "that's the kind of thing I particularly hate." "You might go around by carriage. There is a winding road, as I remember, but it takes much longer." When they arrived at Orvieto, Marion, however, entered the strange little train that was to be pulled up the steep ascent by underneath cable. "Look back at the view," urged Aunt Caroline, when they were almost at the top. Turning her head Irma beheld a beautiful sight, the broad valley lying far beneath and the distant hills. Then glancing toward Marion she saw that he was leaning upon the seat in front and steadying himself as if to brace himself against disaster. "Sit up straight," called Uncle Jim, mischievously. "You cannot possibly fall out, and if the car slips we shall all perish together." Then Irma noticed that Marion bit his lip, as if angry, and made no effort to look at the view. A short drive from the end of the funicular brought them to an old-fashioned hotel. "A little rest, a little _déjeuner_, and then the cathedral!" exclaimed Aunt Caroline. "I can hardly wait to see it. That is the only thing that brings people to this queer little town." "It is surely a queer little hotel, and we are the only Americans here," thought Irma, observing the guests at the other tables, a stout, long-frocked priest, a uniformed officer, and two or three swarthy Italians, apparently prosperous business men. Soon after _déjeuner_ they set out, and a turn or two brought them to the piazza of the Duomo, or cathedral. For a moment all stood silent, as the sun shining full on the façade showed them an enormous picture. "Isn't it the most wonderful thing you ever saw?" cried Aunt Caroline, and Irma thought it too beautiful for words. For those who had planned and those who had carried out the plans had managed to give to the little hill town a church that any city in the world might envy. Beautiful pictures in mosaic in rich tones and gold backgrounds occupy the upper part of the front. The marble pillars are exquisitely carved, and around the large rose window are marble statues of apostles and saints, while fine bronze emblems also form part of the decorations. "I would really rather not go inside," said Irma, when Uncle Jim proposed their seeing the interior. "I should like to sit here for an hour and simply look at this beautiful, enormous picture," and she raised her eyes to the high, pointed gables of the cathedral, far, so far above her. While she was speaking Uncle Jim had crossed the street to a group of boys gathered on the cathedral steps. "Yes," he said, as he returned, "they are actually playing cards, and they didn't show the slightest signs of guilt when I looked over their shoulders." "Just think of being so intimate with this cathedral that you could play games on its steps without thinking of the front." "And those bareheaded women repairing the pavement never glance at the church." "Oh, Marion," protested Aunt Caroline, "don't give her a penny. Here are two more old women hobbling along, and if you give to one you will have the whole hospital at your back. I am sure there is some kind of an institution there at the corner of the piazza." Marion smiled good humoredly, and took his hand from his pocket, without producing the bit of silver that the old woman evidently expected. Two other old women came along, one leaning heavily on a crutch, the other with a heavy woollen shawl over her head in spite of the heat of the day. "But just think what a fine time they could have with my half franc to spend." "You will find some more worthy cause, if you need a cause on which to waste your money. There--there--go--go," cried Aunt Caroline to the three old women, who had now come close up to her, mumbling and making signs of hunger. "Come, Irma, inside the cathedral," and laying her hand on Irma's arm, Aunt Caroline crossed the street, while Uncle Jim and Marion followed: and if the truth be told, as soon as Aunt Caroline's back was turned, the very coin that had been burning Marion's pocket quickly transferred itself to the hand of the most importunate of the old women. This, at least, was Irma's impression, as she looked around before entering the cathedral door, attracted by the rather peculiar striking of a clock. Looking in the direction of the sound she gave an exclamation of surprise that led Aunt Caroline to turn also. There on a building at the corner stood a life size figure of a small man hitting a bell with a hammer, and thus informing the town of the hours and quarter hours without the need of a clock face. The cool, white interior of the cathedral was a pleasant change from the hot piazza. The pillars were of marble, striped black and white like the outside. The young people admired some of the old frescoes by Fra Angelico and Signorelli, and watched the priest copying the head of Virgil, one of several poets of the future life chosen to decorate one chapel. But when Aunt Caroline drew out her book to sketch some architectural details Irma sighed audibly. Only Marion, however, heard and understood the sigh. "Aunt Caroline," he said, "while you are drawing, Irma and I might ramble around the town. The streets are so narrow that there would be no fun driving, and you never care to walk in the sun." "Certainly, children. Run off by yourselves. You needn't apologize for tiring of the society of your elders. As we have so little time here I intend to devote myself to the cathedral inside and out. Only remember what you see, and please don't get lost." So Irma and Marion set off by themselves. Although they had been informed that the little Municipal Museum contained many interesting vases and ornaments found in the ancient Etruscan tombs so numerous in this neighborhood, they decided to omit the museum. "We saw so many of those things in the National Museum at Rome," sighed Irma, "and these cannot be any finer. Aren't you tired of museums? There must be much to see here, for Orvieto is such an old, old town." "Yes," assented Marion, "and we might as well begin to set ourselves against museums, for Uncle Jim says that all the Italian towns, no matter how small, are stuffed full of local pride, and have municipal museums, and even art galleries that they tax the poor people heavily to support. If no one should visit them then taxes would be lighter, and the poor Italians would be happier, and not so many would be driven to emigrate to America." While Irma laughed at the absurdity of his reasoning she also thought that Marion was a very clever boy. Then they wandered through the narrow streets of Orvieto, passing under stone arches, looking in at various shops, where shoemakers or tinsmiths or tailors were working in rather primitive fashion. Irma photographed one or two old churches, and at last they came to a wall that seemed to hold the town from tumbling down the high hill. There they had a wide view across a lovely valley. While they stood there, three or four well-dressed children surrounded them, asking for money, and going through the usual form of speech, "We are dying of hunger." Far from sympathizing, Marion and Irma only laughed as they drove the children away, and finally the children, too, burst into loud laughter as they retreated. "I never imagined an Italian town as clean as this," said Irma, as they walked over the big cobblestones of a sidewalkless thoroughfare. "It looks as if it had been swept and scrubbed, and yet I am sorry for the people so near the beautiful country, who yet must live in a closely built town." "Oh, many probably work in the fields below there, young as well as old. Though they don't need the protection of a fortified town, as they did in the Middle Ages, they still love to huddle together." Before returning to the hotel, the two went to another edge of the town. A public garden covered the site of the old fortress, but from a ruin of the ancient castle they formed an idea of what it had been in its days of usefulness. "Give me your camera for a moment," cried Marion, as Irma leaned against the wall looking over the Valley of the Tiber, toward the Umbrian hills. "Now, stand still, just as you are," and when she heard the click she turned to thank Marion. "You must be a thought reader. I was wishing I might have a picture taken here to send home, but----" "You weren't afraid to ask me?" "Well--you might have thought I was vain--or something. It always seems so silly to wish to have one's own picture taken. But this is for Gertrude. She tried to make me promise to have one taken in every town we visited." "I really believe you'd rather please Gertrude than any one else. I am almost sorry I took the photograph." Marion turned away half angrily, and Irma could not tell whether or not he was in earnest, as they followed the custodian of the garden, who had been insisting that they must see the _pozzo_, or old well. When they had looked down into its gloomy depths of a couple of hundred feet the man seemed rather disappointed that neither of them would descend part way. "The remarkable thing about it is that the spiral staircase is so built that donkeys with buckets went down on one side, and came up on the other with water." "But who cares about that now?" cried Irma impatiently. As they turned away from the well, they saw a hotel omnibus approaching, and a moment later Aunt Caroline was calling to them. "We were so afraid we might miss you. They insisted on bringing us down early for the funicular, and here are your bags. But this is better than being late, and it will give your uncle and me a chance to visit the famous well." Whereat Irma and Marion exchanged smiles, though it did not seem worth while to dissuade their elders from seeing one of the few sights of the old town. "It will be a quarter of an hour before the train starts for Siena, and they ought to have some way of killing time." "By the way," continued Marion, as they waited for the train, "you may be glad to hear that you were right and I was wrong, the other day about my purse." "The one that was stolen?" "Yes. I ought to have reported it, as you said. It contained a piece of--well--something that I wouldn't have lost for anything. I only found it out when I came to pack this morning. I had thought it was in its box. But when to-day I found the box empty, I remembered that I had it in my purse to take to a jeweler's to repair." "Can't you report it now?" "Oh, it's absolutely too late, now that we have left Rome." At this moment the train came in. CHAPTER XIII OLD SIENA--AND NEW FRIENDS When Irma looked out of her window before breakfast her first morning at Siena, she was surprised to see before her not a town street, but what seemed a section of farming country, with vegetable gardens and occasional small cottages. She saw men and women at work in the fields, and she wondered whether she were awake or asleep. For her impression of Siena, as they had driven through the streets the night before, was of a closely built town. When she had dressed, she hastened from her room to see what impression she would get from a front window. It seemed to be a morning of surprises, for as she passed a sitting-room at the head of the stairs, she heard Marion laughing, yes, actually laughing, and other voices were mingled with his in conversation and laughter, too. So surprised was Irma that she paused, with her hand on the banister, and a moment later Marion stood beside her. "Come in, there is some one here you ought to meet," he said, and almost before she realized it he had led her into the room. The faces of the two girls who stood near the window were certainly not exactly the faces of strangers, and yet she could not tell where she had previously seen them. "Miss Grimston, Miss Sanford, this is Irma Derrington." At these words of Marion's she realized who the strangers were, the two girls she had seen at the Naples Aquarium. "Don't I come in for an introduction, too?" said a boy's voice, almost before Irma had a chance to say a word to the two girls, and at the same moment a tall, blue-eyed boy came forward with a smile. "I am Richard Sanford," he said pleasantly. "Come, children, come to breakfast," cried Uncle Jim, now appearing at the door; "your aunt will have her coffee upstairs." Then he started back. "Excuse me," he said, "I did not realize that Siena was so full of young Americans," and then Marion repeated the introductions. In the breakfast room a table was found where all the young people could sit together, under the vigilant eye of Uncle Jim, "a chaperon _pro tem_," as he called himself, whose chief duty it was to see that they did not let their conversation interfere with their appetites. Before the meal ended he had made them admit that he had done his duty. "We have seen all the most important things in Siena," Katie Grimston explained, "but we had arranged to be here a week, and that gives us two days more. Mrs. Sanford happens to be rather tired to-day, and while she is resting we can go about with you if you'd like to have us." "Indeed we should," responded Uncle Jim, "for if you have been over the ground, you can probably save us many steps." "Of course we won't promise to go everywhere, but we can save you time at first." A little later Irma was at the door, ready to start. The street in front of the house looked like the street of some pleasant New England suburb. The houses seemed comparatively modern. But not so very far away she caught glimpses of roofs crowded together, and of the tower of a large church. Marion and Katie and Uncle Jim had gone off a little ahead of the others, and Irma found herself with Richard Sanford and his sister. "Let us take a short cut to the Duomo," said Richard. "We've always driven, but it would really be more fun to walk." The girls assented, and the three set off in good spirits. But Richard, although he asked his way once or twice, did not pay close attention to directions, and they quickly found themselves going down a steep, narrow street that had no sidewalk, and was paved with large stones that made walking difficult. The street was full of people, chiefly women and little children, and some of the children gathered around the Americans as they passed along. "The only thing I know about the cathedral," protested Irma, when they found themselves at the bottom of the long street, "is that it occupies the highest land in Siena, which I am sure we shall never reach if we keep going down hill." "Patience, patience," cried Richard pleasantly. "I'll show you that I am a regular Duke of York," and he stepped aside to talk with an intelligent-looking woman in a doorway, who gesticulated while she talked. "Her gestures tell me more than her words," said Richard, "and all we have to do, evidently, is to turn a corner or two and go up hill again." "Oh, Richard, you are so heedless. You should have thought twice before bringing us down here," cried his sister. "But think what fun to go up those queer little stepping-stones," and with a long stride Richard was soon so far ahead of them that again the only sensible thing was to follow. For a moment he was out of sight around a corner, and when they came upon him, he was on the steps of a building that was at a considerably lower level than the cathedral towering above. Then they followed him within, and Ellen fortunately withheld her word of reproof, which might otherwise have seemed an interruption to a service that was going on. "A christening," she whispered to Irma; "this must be the baptistery." "See, there are two of them. I believe they are twins." Both girls now drew nearer to the font. There were several persons besides the priest, and two of the women wore cloaks with bright linings, one blue, one pink. The lady of the pink-lined cloak held in her arms a baby with a cloak of the same color, and a baby in a blue cloak was held by the wearer of the blue-lined cloak. "I wish we could look at them," whispered Ellen, as the children and their train turned away from the font. "I do so love to see twins," and then, to the surprise of both girls, the baby in the blue cloak was carried out of the baptistery, followed by her parents and grandparents, without a farewell to the baby in the pink cloak; while the parents of the other child sat down for a minute or two before taking him away. "They are not twins. They are not even brother and sister," cried Ellen, in a tone of great dejection. "As if that made any difference!" exclaimed Richard, overhearing her. "Oh, Ellen, you can be such a goose. But come, after you have admired Donatello's stunning St. John, we must go outside and take a few more steps up to the cathedral." From the piazza the black and white striped marble, the gabled front and its fine sculptures, reminded Irma of the Orvieto Duomo. But it had not the rich color of the other. On each side of the door were columns surmounted by a marble wolf. "Oh, you must get used to _La Lupa_ in Siena. You know the story goes that Siena was founded by Senus, son of Remus, hence the Sienese claim the wolf as their especial emblem. You'll see it everywhere. Now follow me and listen attentively, young ladies, and you'll find you can 'do' this vast Duomo in the shortest time on record. No, no." The last was said to a guide who was following them closely, a half-grown boy, who was not easily shaken off. "Richard really is a very good guide," whispered Ellen. "He knows so many stories about everything, and when he doesn't remember he can make up something just as interesting." In consequence of this remark of Ellen's, Irma was not always sure how much was truth and how much imagination, in the legends that Richard rapidly told of saints and church dignitaries, painted on the walls, or done in graffito in the marble pavement. But of one thing she was certain, she had never seen a building so complete in its carvings, whether of wood or marble, its paintings and gildings. She admired the tall flagstaffs captured at Montaperti, though they seemed out of place in a church. She stood long, studying the details of the exquisite marble pulpit by Nicholas Pisano, when Richard exclaimed, "The most beautiful pulpit in Europe. He worked on it for three years, and then received for it--about thirty dollars." "Is that the truth or a legend?" she asked, smiling. "The real true truth," he answered. "I saw it in a book of accounts in the Municipal building. They have a great many interesting manuscripts there. The letters of Catherine of Siena, and many other autographs would fetch their weight in gold in our country." "An autograph wouldn't weigh very much," suggested Irma. But Richard took no notice of the interruption. "Well, I made a particular note about Nicholas Pisano. So I am sure I am right. But come, if you wish to do the cathedral in the shortest known time, we must go at once to the library." "I am not in so tremendous a hurry." "Ah, that's because you have no idea how much there is in Siena. See, there's the librarian letting one group of victims go. We can easily slip in." The room they now entered, though small, was beautifully decorated. Above the rich woodwork were ten frescoes on the walls, each a complete scene from the life of some hero. "He is Enio Sylvio Piccolomini," explained their self-appointed guide, "who became Pope Pius II, and isn't that a funny scene where he is trying to persuade the king of Scotland to harry the border so that Henry VI of England may have so much to do at home that he won't interfere with the affairs on the continent?" "Oh, but the colors are so rich, and Enio Sylvio, if he looked like that, must have been a very interesting person." Richard laughed at Irma's seriousness. "Pinturicchio knew how to please Pope Pius III, the nephew of Enio Sylvio, who engaged him to paint these pictures. But still, on the whole, I imagine that the Piccolomini were rather interesting. For generations they held the chief offices in the church here in Siena, and in the years they were fighting with the Tolmei, they kept things pretty lively. But in Enio Sylvio's time the worst of the Civil Wars were over. But now come," and Richard looked at his watch. "You can have only five minutes for all these illuminated books." "Oh, more than that," cried Ellen. "No, my dear, that is enough for a general impression, which is all you would retain if you were to spend an hour here." The five minutes, however, lengthened into ten before Ellen and Irma were ready to leave the fascinating folios in their leather bindings. They were all books of devotion, some of them music books, with the chants of the church, and all of them illustrated with tiny paintings rich in color. "It is all very well to hurry us," said Ellen, as they walked toward the door of the Duomo, "but you spent a whole morning here, and this is my first visit, as well as Miss Derrington's." "You have a good enough general impression," replied Richard, with a laugh; "and what more can any one expect, on a first visit?" "Evidently," thought Irma, "Richard Sanford looks on sightseeing much as Uncle Jim does." A little later, at the great door, Irma and her friends almost ran into Uncle Jim, behind whom walked Katie Grimston and Marion. "Well, you must have taken the longest way round; where in the world have you been, Katie?" asked Ellen. "Oh, we came through the town, and there were so many nice little shops there that I had to stop, as I always do," replied Katie, whose hands were full of little bundles. "Besides, none of us were in a great hurry for the cathedral. You know I have been all through it," and she glanced coquettishly at Richard. "If you wish us to go on with you now, we can as well as not," she added. "You must suit yourself, but as Marion and his uncle have not been here, I should think you'd like to give them the advantage of your superior knowledge." Then Uncle Jim spoke for himself. "I really think Marion and I ought to take a turn around inside, if nothing more. But Miss Grimston----" "Oh, of course I'd rather do what you do," said Katie, turning her back to Richard, who thereupon went outside. Then after Irma had had a word or two with Uncle Jim, she and Ellen found Richard near a carriage. "It is too warm to walk, and I am going to take you down to the Campo. It is the most interesting spot here in Siena and I wish to be the first to show it to you." "Oh, not more interesting than St. Catherine's house," said Ellen. "More interesting to me, and I believe it will be to Miss Derrington," said Richard. As they drove along, Irma realized that it was indeed strange that she should be so contented in the company of Ellen and Richard, two persons of whom she had not even heard until this very morning. As if he read her thoughts, Richard said rather abruptly, "I suppose Marion hasn't had a chance to tell you that he and I used to go to school together in New York. That was years ago, when we were first out of the kindergarten. Lately he has studied at home, and I've been off at boarding school, so I have seen him only occasionally in my holidays. You must have seen more of him, Ellen." "Oh, no," responded his sister. "Until to-day, I had hardly even seen him since he was a small boy. Of course I felt very sorry for him this winter." "Ah, here we are!" and Richard signalled the driver to pull up, as they reached the end of a narrow street. "Oh, it is picturesque!" cried Irma, looking at the square before her. The great open space was hardly a square, but a piazza tending toward a semicircle, and slightly lower than the street. On the side farthest from them were several fine buildings, from one of which rose a high, square tower, of which Irma remembered to have seen many pictures. Then she recalled something she had just read. Surely Richard would know. "Yes," responded Richard. "This is the very tower they are copying for the Provincetown monument. What a genuine Yankee you are to remember. There," continued Richard, "this is the famous Campo. It is in a hollow, where the three hills of Siena meet. How I should like to have seen it five or six hundred years ago, on one of those days when a fisticuff game was going on, or one of the more exciting donkey races. Oh, it makes our sports to-day seem tame, when we read what these old Sienese used to do. You see," he continued, without waiting for the girls to ask questions, "at one of these fisticuff fights one Sunday before Carnival, the fighters on one side grew so excited when driven off the ground that they fell upon their opponents with sticks and stones, and then with lances and darts, and all of Siena crowded to the neighborhood. The soldiers, the greatest men of the city, too, tried in vain to stop them, and some of the soldiers were killed. Then people who lived in the very palaces we're looking at threw stones out of their windows, but the mob only threatened to set fire to the houses." "Well, how did it end?" asked Ellen impatiently. "Oh, the fight would probably have continued to this day, if some one, after several soldiers had been killed, had not thought of getting the Bishop of Siena, and all the Friars here to come down to the Campo, and when they began to march in a solemn procession right through the thick of the fight, carrying the cross and other religious emblems, of course the fighting stopped. But naturally their games were not often as exciting as this." "What were the donkey races like?" "Oh, quite different. The city was divided into _contrade_, or districts, and on the days of the races each district appeared with its captain and other officers, with its special banner, and a donkey painted in its colors. The game was to get the donkeys to go twice around the Campo. No one on the field was permitted to have a weapon of any kind, not even a finger ring, but they could fight and push and do all in their power to prevent any donkey's winning, except that of their own district. After the donkey races died out they used to have buffalo races; you know," in a tone of contempt, "the kind of buffaloes they have in Italy, and later horse races, which they still have." "Here on the Campo? How I should like to see them." "Then you must come here the second of July or the middle of August. The _Palio_ is the name given to the race, and as the city is still divided into _contrade_, these horses are mounted by representatives of the different ones. But I have a friend who came here one summer, and he says that in spite of the crowds and the display of rich banners and colors these races are now rather tame affairs." "Nothing is what it used to be," said Ellen, half mockingly. "My brother," she explained, turning to Irma, "is romantic, and always longing for the past, in spite of which I don't believe he would have cared to live in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries." "Well, they did some things better than we can, the men of those days. Just come for a moment to the Palazzo Municipio, and I'll show you some pictures that will make you envy the Sienese." As the girls followed he marched them rapidly from room to room, decorated with enormous frescoes, in which were shown the victories of the Sienese over their neighbors, especially over their chief rival, Florence. From the great Council Hall they passed to the Hall of the Nine, who at one time were supreme in the Government of Siena. After one or two efforts Irma ceased trying to understand the allegorical figures that had almost as large a place in the pictures as the historical. But the color was so beautiful, and generally the paintings were so pleasing that she restrained the laugh that was often on her lips, when something appeared to her particularly absurd. But Richard, who had been here before, had the meanings of the allegories, as well as the historical incidents, at his tongue's end. In one room, he told them, a treacherous leader of the Sienese forces had been entrapped and stabbed to death by The Fifteen, who then were the rulers of Siena, and he would have described fully these blood-curdling events, if Ellen had permitted. Finally, as they drove towards home, Richard pointed out several old palaces in which leading families had lived, and in almost every case he had a tale of Salimbeni or Tolomei or Saraceni in the days when the followers of one great house would kill hundreds of the followers of the other. "When," said Richard, "these narrow streets literally ran blood in those old days of Guelph and Ghibelline." "Thank you," said Irma faintly, as they reached their hotel, "I feel as if I had swallowed a whole history." "Well," responded Richard, "I thought it was well for you to accomplish all you could this morning, for I don't see why you shouldn't make quick work with Siena, and go on with us to-morrow or the next day to San Gimignano." "I don't know, I am sure, what Aunt Caroline's plans are," said Irma, "but I can ask her." Yet she realized that she could not repeat Richard's strange name. "San--what?" CHAPTER XIV NAP--AND OTHER THINGS A whole day as strenuous as the morning Richard had provided would have been too much for Irma's strength. Fortunately Aunt Caroline came to her rescue, and insisted on a rest during the early afternoon, and prescribed a drive later. But after driving a short time, Aunt Caroline herself suggested visiting the Oratory of San Bernardino, and one or two other churches where certain masterpieces of Sodoma and other great artists were to be seen. In the evening, after dinner, Uncle Jim brought in a number of letters, forwarded from Rome. There were three for Marion, whose face brightened perceptibly as he glanced at the envelopes. "Here are two from Cranston," added Uncle Jim, as he gave Irma hers. "Cranston," exclaimed Katie, "is there any one here from Cranston? That is where my grandmother lives." "I know it," rejoined Irma, whereupon Katie tossed her head with a little air of exaggerated surprise, as if to say, "And how does it happen that you know anything about my grandmother?" "But I do not know your grandmother," continued Irma. "She has been away ever since I lived there. It is only Nap,--the little dog----" She could not bring herself to say "your little dog," even if she had been willing to admit Katie's ownership. Instantly Katie comprehended. "Oh, you are the girl," she said, "who found my little Pat." "Rescued him," began Aunt Caroline, who well knew the story. "Whereby hangs a tale," added Uncle Jim. "A dog's tail?" queried Richard, with a boy's desire to make a joke, although he didn't yet understand the story of this particular Nap. "I am sure I am very much obliged to you for taking care of my dog," said Katie, "though my relations would have kept him for me." "They didn't seem able to," thought Irma. "Well, he's Irma's dog now," said Uncle Jim decidedly. "You would be quite sure he knows to whom he belongs if you could see him follow Irma about, as I saw him last summer." "Nap, as you call him, 'Pat' as I say, is still my dog. I have never given him away. Every one knows that," and Katie looked in defiance at Irma. "As the bone of contention is so far away, by which I do not mean that Pat is unduly thin, it seems as if we might leave the subject in peace for the present." "Of course," continued Katie, "I did not expect to be in Europe so long. But I am to join grandma in Paris next month, and a week or two later we shall sail. I shall be glad enough to see Pat again." There was no more just then for Irma to say. She wondered if Katie really meant what she said. Later, when they were alone, she would ask her. Soon Katie left the sitting-room, and Marion and Irma and one or two others for whom letters had come proceeded to read them. Richard, who had been politely silent for some time, now turned to Irma, when he saw she was at leisure. "Would you mind telling us about the little dog. All I could understand was that Katie intends to have her own way about something, and when that is the case, it is very hard to make her change her mind." "I should like to hear about it, too," said Marion. "I know just a little about Nap." "I'll tell you what," cried the resourceful Richard. "There's a little balcony outside, at the end of the hall, just large enough for four. If we go there, Ellen, Marion, and Miss Derrington, we can have the whole story, without disturbing any one else." "There's really little enough to tell," began Irma, as they seated themselves outside. "Only, about three years ago, a little less, perhaps, when I first went to Cranston to live, one morning I met a boy with a small dog. He asked me to buy it to save it from being shot. The lady who owned it was going abroad, he said, and had ordered it shot. But he thought it cruel, and was willing to sell it. Well, I took a great fancy to the little creature, he had such lovely brown eyes; and while I was wondering whether I could buy him, Gertrude came along, and between us we bought him. Gertrude is always so generous." For a moment Irma was silent, as her mind went back to that memorable October day, and to the way in which the little dog had helped settle the misunderstanding between her and Gertrude. "Then we had to name him, and happened to choose Nap, which sounds so much like his original 'Pat' that he must have felt pleased." "But where does Katie come in?" asked Richard. "That's the strange part of it. We took Nap with us on an excursion to Concord, and there we ran across Ada Amesbury, who is old Mrs. Grimston's granddaughter. Nap and she recognized each other at once, because, you see, he really belonged to Katie Grimston, whose home, you know, is in Concord." "Well, if Mrs. Grimston or Katie wished to have the dog shot, just because they were going to Europe, I can't see why they should object to your having him!" "Oh, naturally that story of the boy's was only made up. He saw a chance to get a little money by selling the dog, and Katie's family thought Pat was lost. Ada Amesbury was to have taken care of him in Katie's absence. When I first heard about it I thought I ought to give Nap up, but Mrs. Amesbury said it was fair for me to keep him until Katie's return." "I should say so!" interpolated Richard. "But now Katie has stayed away so long it will be very hard for us to part with Nap, especially for my little sister Tessie,--Theresa, I mean." "Oh, you and Katie can surely settle the matter now," said Ellen. "She should be glad enough to let you keep him. A dog is a great trouble to any one who travels much." "I suppose Katie will stay at home for some time after she returns. Perhaps I oughtn't to say Katie behind her back, but I know so many who speak of her in that way. She has quantities of friends in Cranston." "Ellen," said Richard, "even though Katie is our cousin, don't you know her well enough to be sure that if she has once said she would claim Nap, she is not likely to give in, or give up, or whatever you call it?" "That's the worst of it," said Ellen; "she isn't easy to influence." "Oh, well," sighed Irma, "I suppose if she is so fond of Nap, she has a right to him. Of course we have written to Mrs. Grimston and Ada has written to Katie, but she has always said she expected to have the dog on her return." "You could easily get another pet dog," interposed Marion, who thus far had taken no part in the discussion. "It couldn't possibly be the same," and Marion knew that Irma was despondent. "It is cold," cried Ellen. "Let us go back to the sitting-room," and as they passed through the dimly lit hall, Marion saw Irma wipe away a tear. Had she known that he noticed this, and had she thought the matter worth explaining, she might have told him that Nap was not alone responsible for the tear, but that behind it was the feeling of homesickness, her very strong desire to see Tessie and the boys and her parents, and yes, even Mahala and Gertrude, and in fact every one in Cranston. Marion this evening was more sympathetic than usual, because he had received a letter with better news than any he had had since leaving home. Yet such was his reticence that he could not talk of it, even to Aunt Caroline. On their return to the sitting-room, when Irma was introduced for the first time to Mrs. Sanford, she partly understood the reason for Richard's extreme energy. Mrs. Sanford was pale and delicate in appearance, and as Richard's father had long been dead, she could see that he not unnaturally had to take great responsibility, and had had to make plans that under other conditions would have been first proposed by his mother. "It seems a great pity," he was saying to Aunt Caroline, "that you should not go on with us to San Gimignano. It's a fine drive, right through the heart of Tuscany, to the queerest old town. You may never have such a chance again." "Richard!" exclaimed his mother, smiling, even while her tone held more or less reproof. "A chance, I mean, to go with us." "One carriage would hardly hold seven persons." "No, there would be two carriages, and each would have a pair of these fine Sienese horses. I have never seen stronger or better kept beasts in Europe, and one carriage shall be driven by that rosy-cheeked _cocchiere_, who has been so devoted to you, mother, and we'll find his twin for the other carriage, and when any two in one carriage grow tired of any other two, why they will change places with the others. And we'll have two huge luncheon baskets for supper on the way, for of course to avoid the heat we must leave late in the afternoon. Oh, it will be great; and it's only twenty-five miles, and if you wished you couldn't go by train, nearer than Poggibonsi." "You seem to have it so well arranged that the rest of us need not say or do anything," said Uncle Jim, with an attempt at sarcasm that could not cut very deep. "Well, what do the others say? You, Marion, for example?" "Oh, it might be worth trying," responded Marion, and when no one really disagreed with Richard, he felt that the matter was settled as he wished. The next day Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim devoted themselves to the Accademia. With Ellen and Marion, Irma did walk through the Accademia, with its countless pictures, a complete exhibition of the renowned Sienese school, but there were very few paintings before which she cared to linger. "You won't go shopping with me?" asked Aunt Caroline, as she turned away. "They make fine old furniture here and beautiful carved frames." "Yes, and genuine old masters,--madonnas, bambinos, and all the saints," said Marion. "Some one has been telling me about them." "Ah, but I am not looking for an old master," said Aunt Caroline, "and I shall like the furniture all the better if it isn't old." The rest of this morning the young people strolled along the narrow picturesque streets, occasionally going inside some old building where Richard knew there was something to see, or standing at a corner, he would give them the details of some bloody street combat between Guelphs and Ghibellines. Once he took them up into a high building, from which they viewed the old city wall, and from the same window he pointed toward the field of Montaperto where the Sienese completely routed their great enemies, the Florentines. "The battlefield is six miles away," he explained. "I am only pointing in its general direction. It's hard to believe that the Sienese killed twelve thousand Florentines and made six thousand prisoners, though that was when Siena had a hundred thousand inhabitants, instead of twenty-five thousand, as now." Richard took them to the Litza, the pretty park that is thronged with Sienese, old and young, every afternoon, and he explained the nearness of the farms that Irma had noticed between the Litza and the back of their hotel. Finally in the afternoon she went with Richard and Marion to visit the house of the famous Saint Catherine, in the street of the dyers, for Catherine's father, Bernincasa, had been a dyer, and in this small house Catherine was born in 1347. Every room of the small house on this steep street had been turned into a chapel or oratory. Life-size paintings of St. Catherine were on the wall. The pavement she had trodden was covered with wooden slats. The rooms where, as a little girl, she had helped her mother in her humble household tasks were now richly decorated with paintings. There was a certain solemnity in all the rooms, in the smaller oratories, as in the larger lower church. The pictures on the walls spoke of the saint's good deeds, and Richard told stories he had read of her kindness to the poor, of her comfort to prisoners, in one case staying by young Niccolo di Toldo, holding his head even while the executioners were severing it. One of her missions was to the pope at Avignon, another to Rome, where she went with a band of her disciples, and her influence made itself felt wherever she was. "She must have been a wonderful woman. Her memory is as fresh in Siena as if she had lived but last year, and the reverence for her began even before her death, more than six hundred years ago." The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, and all the young people spent the evening pleasantly together. Although Irma was aware of a slight unfriendliness on Katie's part, the two girls talked and laughed about Cranston people, some of whom Katie knew better than Irma, as she had made many visits at her grandmother's in Cranston. When the day dawned when Mrs. Sanford and her party were to drive to San Gimignano, it was clear that Richard had carried his point. Aunt Caroline at breakfast announced that she had decided to shorten her stay at Siena. "Our trunks have already gone on to Florence, and there is nothing to prevent our driving to San Gimignano with the Sanfords." The plan pleased Irma, who was really anxious to see the strange town that Richard had described. Uncle Jim professed to be resigned to anything that suited Aunt Caroline; and Marion, although he said nothing, was evidently interested in what promised to be a novel experience. Accordingly, toward four o'clock, two large comfortable carriages drove up to the door of the _pension_, each drawn by a pair of sturdy horses, with a young, red-cheeked, amiable driver. All the employes of the house, down to the cook and a little scullion, lined up beside the door, with hands extended for the centimes and francs that Uncle Jim and Richard doled out, some of the boarders waved a good-by from the little balcony--and then they were off. At first Marion and Aunt Caroline were in the carriage with Mrs. Sanford and Katie. "Families do get so bored by one another travelling," said Richard. "That's one reason I hoped we might take this trip together. Any one who grows particularly tired of any one else has only to ask to exchange to the other carriage. Ellen and I usually get on very well together, but Katie----" "Hush, Richard," and Ellen laid a warning finger on her brother's lips. The road over which they travelled was hard and smooth, and although houses were few, there was much of interest on every side. Richard invented many tales by the way, about noble Florentines riding this road, only to be waylaid and killed by Sienese rivals. In his stories the Sienese were always as successful as they were in the paintings on the walls of the public buildings in Siena. Once they stopped to look back, and the coachman chose the most favorable point for a last view of the city wall, with one of the old gates. Richard and Ellen both understood Italian, and spoke it fairly well. "I have just been complimenting the _cocchiere_ on his accent," said Richard, "and he took it quite as a matter of course. He says that every one knows that only in Siena can one hear the true Italian, and that the strangers who wish to speak Tuscan properly come to Siena to study." "I thought that it was Florence where one must go," said Ellen. "Hush, hush," whispered Richard; "if our coachman should understand you, I should fear for our lives. The very horses might run away and dash us into a ditch. Florence and Siena forsooth!" The coachman himself did his part in entertaining them. He pointed out the entrance to one estate, and told a story or two about its owner, whose house was set far back and hidden from the road by extensive woods. "Where do the working people live who cultivate these great farms?" asked Ellen, and the man answered by pointing to a large house in the distance. "Sometimes twenty or thirty people live in one of the houses of the _contadino_, or farmer. Their real home is in some town, but they stay with the farmer while he needs them." Even with the best of company a long ride on a warm afternoon becomes tiresome. After a time Irma found herself counting the milestones, or kilometre stones, and she saw that instead of being perfectly plain blocks, most of them had some little carved ornament. On one hill they saw a wall that enclosed an old town, and the coachman could hardly find words to express the rapidity with which the population was diminishing. "Why in the world should any one wish to live on the top of a hill?" asked Uncle Jim. "It was all very well when war was their occupation, but in these piping days of peace it would be too much like work to have to mount that hill daily for the protection of that old castle wall." After a while the party came to a place where they could draw up by the side of the road and examine their lunch baskets. "The first hotel luncheon I ever saw," exclaimed Uncle Jim, "without chicken legs and butterless rolls." "You never before had me to order for you," said Richard. "I know their tricks and their manners, and so I did a little shopping on my own account. At this time of day I knew we would need nothing very substantial, and now you may praise the Sienese fruit and pastry to your heart's content, for that luncheon came chiefly from the little shops, and not from the landlady's larder." "We can show appreciation without mere words." And soon the luncheon was finished to the last crumb, with due appreciation. The air was cooler, and shortly they were passing through a factory town at the foot of a hill. As working hours were just over, people were sitting at their open doors, or going in and out of the little shops, much as they would in a New England village. Indeed, Uncle Jim said it made him think of a certain New Hampshire town that he knew well, until, as the horses clattered up the hilly street, suddenly at one side were the high substantial walls of a mediæval town. Through an open gate they could see the old, narrow streets and high houses. In the beginning there had been but a castle here, around which the town had grown. Now, in modern times, it had spread all over the hill, or perhaps had spread up from the little mill that had had its first humble beginning on the stream below. "I seem to be looking at history as it is made," said Irma. "That's a fine way of putting it," cried Richard. "Irma sees things exactly as they are," added Uncle Jim. Soon they had descended the other side of the high hill they had so lately mounted. Ahead of them, and still a good distance away, was another hill with a coronet of slender towers. "San Gimignano!" exclaimed Richard. "I have never seen it before, but I know it from the pictures. Isn't it picturesque? I wanted to surprise you, Ellen, so I have said hardly anything to you about it. But you all know," and he included Uncle Jim and Irma in his remarks, "that you are soon to be inside of the one town in Italy that has kept its old mediæval towers. If the whole town is as quaint as the towers, you will thank me for bringing you here." "We thank you now," said Uncle Jim. "Why is the carriage ahead waiting for us?" asked Ellen. "Katie thought you might like to come in here for the rest of the journey." "Probably Katie herself wishes to change," whispered Richard. Whereupon Ellen jumped lightly from the carriage, and a moment later she and Katie had exchanged places. San Gimignano lost none of its picturesqueness as they drew near it, passing olive orchards and vineyards as they went up the hill. "What a beautiful country!" cried Irma. "The people up there must be very happy if it is all as pretty." It was now growing dusk, and the horses took the last turn very quickly. Irma noticed that Katie was quiet. Could it be that she and Marion had had some disagreement? The driver hurried on through an arched gateway. "Oh, a narrow, city street," cried Irma, in a tone of disappointment. "No matter," responded Richard, as their horse clattered along. "We'll get some fun out of it to-morrow. Now, in the dusk, I'll admit it does look rather like a tenement district." After their long, warm drive, it wasn't a pleasing prospect to find their hotel on this narrow street instead of in a pleasant garden, as Katie said she had pictured it. "At least it is different from any other hotel we have seen," said Ellen, philosophically, "and we hoped San Gimignano would be rather queer." "But not this kind of queerness," Katie continued to protest. CHAPTER XV A LETTER FROM FLORENCE Irma had been two or three days in Florence before she had time to write the long letter to Tessie that for some time she had been planning. "Dear Tessie," she began: "Though I have sent you messages and post cards, this is my first letter. I know you do not care to hear much about pictures and churches, of which I have seen almost too many, so I will tell you about other things. I can't say much about foreign children, only that they all seem shy, except the little girls who beg, and the little boys who wish to be our guides, and I am sorry to say that sometimes, just to get rid of them, we give them the penny that we know is not good for them. They want all the money they can get from _forestieri_, for we are _forestieri_ here. "The Italian children seem to have long school hours, and that is one reason we do not see many of them about. When we do see a group together it troubles Aunt Caroline that they are not playing, but simply standing about solemnly. Sometimes, when we pass a station in the middle of the day, we see a little boy with a loaf of bread under his arm, cutting off a slice with a jack-knife. That probably is all he has for breakfast, and perhaps his dinner will be nothing but a dish of macaroni. "Well, all we have ourselves for breakfast is chocolate and some rolls and butter. Older people take coffee. If we ask for a boiled egg we can have it, but we are trying to live as the Italians do. After breakfast we go sightseeing, and we are always half starved by one o'clock, when we have _déjeuner_. Everything then is served in courses, and if you are late you simply have to go without the things that were served before you sat down. In the middle of the day we rest, for it is as hot as our hottest summer from twelve to three. After that we drive, or visit some church or museum, ending with afternoon tea. If you happen to have friends at some hotel, it is fun to drop in there. But over all the pastry shops, that are almost like restaurants, you see the sign 'afternoon tea.' It is the one English expression most Italians seem to know. "Dinner is served in courses like _déjeuner_. But whatever else they give us, we are sure of one thing, a course of chicken and salad. By the time the chicken comes to me, it is generally all wings, which I never eat. None of us ever eat salad, because we are suspicious of the water it is washed in. "You have not had many railroad journeys, and so the little cars and engines might not seem as funny to you as they do to us. Each car is divided into little compartments, with room for five persons on each side, and there you have to sit and stare at the persons opposite. But we have generally been fortunate enough to have a carriage to ourselves. "When we arrive at a station, we always find a row of men in blue cotton blouses and conductors' caps lined up waiting to carry our bags. They are the _facchini_, or porters, and each one tries to carry several bags, for it is the law that he shall be paid ten centimes, or two cents, for each piece of luggage he carries. "We got rid of crowded railway carriages and _facchini_, when we went from Siena to Florence. For we drove all the way, staying one day at San Gimignano, the most curious place we have seen. We wouldn't have thought of going there but for Richard Sanford, whose family we met in Siena. Just think! His cousin, Katie Grimston, is travelling with him and his mother. Katie Grimston, who says that Nap still belongs to her; and I am afraid she really will take him away from us. But to return to San Gimignano. It is on the top of a high hill, and has a wall going completely around it, with handsome great arches, or gates. "There are eight tall towers in the town, and five on the walls. But none of them are considered safe now for visitors to climb, though we had all we could do to keep Marion and Richard from trying one or two of them. The people of San Gimignano were divided into two great parties, Guelph for the pope and Ghibelline for the emperor. From the towers, belonging to the leading families in the town, they could do any amount of harm to their enemies in the streets below, and also keep a lookout for outside enemies on their way from Siena. "Next to the towers (which, to be honest, look a great deal like factory chimneys of gray stone) you would like the pictures in the cathedral that tell all the old Bible stories, especially the one where they are building the Ark, with Noah and his family and all the animals standing about and looking on. "In another church some beautiful frescoes by Gozzoli tell the story of St. Augustine's life. One, where he is shown going to school with his books under his arm, is very entertaining. "All the young people seem to have left San Gimignano. There are none but middle-aged and old, and I never in one place saw so many bent old men and women. The town itself is so gray and old and poor that we were glad to leave it. We had enjoyed our drive from Siena so much that Aunt Caroline and Mrs. Sanford thought we might as well drive to Florence. This was forty miles, and we all got rather tired. But the country was beautiful, and after our sixty miles of it by carriage, we feel that we know just what Tuscany is. The farmers use great white oxen for their work, white and large and smooth skinned. They made more impression on us than anything else we saw. "Now we feel quite at home in Florence. My room looks out on the Arno, the river that runs through the centre of the city. Not far away I see the famous Ponte Vecchio, or old bridge. Give my love to every one, especially Mahala and Nap. "Your affectionate sister, "Irma." Hardly had Irma signed her letter, when Ellen Sanford came into the room. "The door was half open, and you did not hear my knock. But what a long letter. My family never gets anything but post cards from me when I am travelling." "Well, this is to my little sister. I promised her one long letter." "I am glad it's finished, for now you can go out with me. Katie went off in great spirits, because she had managed to get Marion and Richard both to go shopping with her; the boys hate shops, too. Your uncle and aunt have taken mother driving, and so what shall we do?" "Let us go to the Medici Chapel. I am tired of galleries. I shall need a week to digest what I saw yesterday at the Uffizi." "What suits you will suit me," said Ellen, and soon the girls were driving toward San Lorenzo. "These booths remind me of the Rag Fair at Rome," said Irma, glancing at the display of trinkets and small household articles on canvas-shaded tables, in an open space near the church. "Only these things are much cheaper. But what a crowd. Italians seem to like open-air shopping." Within the lofty church the girls saw much to admire, especially the sculptures by Thorwaldsen, Donatello, and Verocchio. But the tomb of Cosimo de Medici, "the father of his country," was a plain porphyry slab. "The great monument must be somewhere else." And Irma followed Ellen to the old sacristy, where, though they saw other Medici tombs, they knew these were not what they sought. In the new sacristy were Michelangelo's famous statues of Lorenzo, with the figures of Dawn and Twilight at the base, and of Guiliano, with Day and Night. But beautiful as these were, they knew they must search further. At last some one directed them to a door outside, at the other end of the church, and then with tickets they entered the mausoleum. "Ah," said Irma, "it is really all I expected. Some one told me it was not in good taste, and it is not really completed. But a building like this is more impressive than if decorated with paintings. The pavement is beautiful, and the walls of exquisite marbles seem built to last forever." "There are not many statues," said Ellen. "No, but I dare say they meant to have more. It is because the grandeur of the Medicis didn't last that this interests me, Ellen. In the Palazzo Vecchio and the Riccardi Palace we have seen them painted as conquering heroes, and every one of them holds his head as if he owned the world." "They did own a good bit of their little world in their own day." "That is just what I mean. We have the paintings and the statues, and we know all that Cosimo the first and Lorenzo the Magnificent did for Florence by encouraging art and establishing museums and libraries. But the later men who were not so great built this chapel, and when I look on these magnificent tombs, and remember what harm came to Savonarola through a de Medici, and what harm Catherine de Medici did----" "Oh, Irma, I believe they did more good than harm in the world, and this tomb is a splendid memorial." "Yes, it is; only the effect it has on me is different from its effect on you." "Now for the library," said Irma, as they turned away from the tomb, "and after that I will try to show you something quite different." "This isn't at all like a library," exclaimed Ellen, as they stood in the high-roofed hall of the Laurentian Library. "There are no bookcases, and why are these pews here?" Before Irma could reply, an attendant explained that Irma's pews were stands for the valuable manuscripts, and he added that Michelangelo had designed them as well as the fine wooden ceiling of the great room. He permitted the girls to look at the manuscripts in substantial covers chained to the stands. Many of them were Greek and Latin classics of great age. Others were in Italian, and exquisitely illuminated, like the _Canzone_ of Petrarch, with portraits of Petrarch and Laura. Ellen bought large copies of these portraits, with the delicate coloring exquisitely reproduced, and Irma sighed, as she realized how seldom she herself could spend money on things she liked. "Ask him the way to the cloisters," she whispered, as they bade the librarian good-by; and Ellen, when she had interpreted his reply, asked, "But why should we go to the cloisters?" "Oh, you will see," and Irma looked at her watch. "We are in good time. It is only quarter of twelve." "In good time for what?" persisted Ellen, as they entered the cloistered enclosure at one side of San Lorenzo, and walked along the arcades to read the many memorial tablets on wall and pavement. "I will tell you," said Irma. "This is a kind of Animal Rescue League, a refuge for stray cats. Persons anxious to get rid of their cats bring them here, and those who wish to adopt cats come here for them. They say that the stray cats of Florence hide here in corners and on roofs." "Well, if I needed a cat I shouldn't know how to find it here. There certainly isn't one in sight." "Well, that's why twelve o'clock is the important hour. Exactly on the stroke of twelve the cats are fed with meat. They seem to know the time, and come rushing down from roofs and chimneys, and after they are fed people choose the cats they want." "Hark! Isn't twelve striking now?" asked Ellen, as the bells of many churches began to peal loudly. "It is certainly striking twelve; but I see no cats." "I don't understand it," said Irma. "I read a long account the other day, in a book that described Florence." "Here is the custodian; I will ask him." After talking for several minutes with the custodian, Ellen turned with a smile to Irma. "This is the place where the cats used to be fed, and it was a very ancient custom to let stray cats have refuge here. But many of them refused to be adopted and became so wild that now they are all given over to a society, I suppose like the prevention of cruelty. Your book was not up to date, though it is not very long since the feeding of the cats was given up." "Well, I am glad that we have seen the place where they used to feed them. I can at least describe it to Tessie. I am always trying to see things that will entertain her when I go home." At _déjeuner_ Katie was in great spirits; she had bought a number of pretty things, and had kept the two boys with her all the morning, on the pretext that she was in great need of their advice. Among her purchases a long double necklace of large amber beads was especially beautiful, and Irma praised it generously. "I would rather have them than anything I have seen in Florence; any piece of jewelry," she added quickly. Uncle Jim and Aunt Caroline exchanged significant glances. After _déjeuner_ Richard and Ellen invited Irma to go with them to San Marco. "Mother and Katie say they wish simply to drive, and Marion, I believe, is going with them to San Miniato, and your aunt thinks you might not care for the Accademia to-day," said Ellen, as she gave Irma her own invitation. "But Richard is sure you would enjoy San Marco and Savonarola." [Illustration: SPIRES OF FLORENCE.] [Illustration: SAN MARCO, FLORENCE.] So in the early afternoon the three friends found themselves wandering in the beautiful cloisters of the old monastery, with its little flower garden in the centre, and its great pine, whose trunk was wreathed with ivy. They walked around a second cloistered garden whose rosebeds were fenced in by a row of pointed bricks. Seated on a bench, they looked up at the tiny windows of the second story, and wondered if the garden that Savonarola had looked on was much like this. "We must not sit here long," and, as he spoke, Richard walked over to one of the frescoes painted on the brick walls under the arches. He called Irma's attention to those by Fra Angelico, representing scenes in the life of Christ. "The monastery," he explained, "was suppressed forty years ago, and the whole building is now a museum. There are some beautiful paintings in the chapter house and the refectory, but I am most anxious to see the cells upstairs, nearly all of which are decorated with paintings by Fra Angelico and his pupils." "Richard," said Ellen, "I see that this is to be one of the occasions when you are going to appear terribly wise and talk like a book. Sometimes, when you are particularly pleased with things in general, you are so frivolous that I feel that I ought to explain you to some one, but to-day I believe that you are going to the opposite extreme." "No matter," interposed Irma. "You know all about San Marco, but I am less wise." "Well spoken, young lady," said Richard, in the tone which Irma already had learned to associate with his fun-making mood. "But I cannot pretend to have any knowledge about San Marco, or Savonarola or Fra Angelico that you and my sister might not already possess, if you have read your books carefully. First, as to Savonarola; he became Prior of San Marco in 1490, and when he preached in the church here, the whole piazza in front was crowded hours before the doors opened, and shopkeepers did not think it worth while to open their shops until the great preacher's sermon was over. He made religion seem a simple thing, within the reach of all who tried to live pure lives. He addressed himself to the poor and to the young; and he especially blamed the love of luxury that was spreading in Florence, though he encouraged artists to use their talents on religious pictures." "Well, we all know that," said Ellen, mildly. "Then you remember how on the last day of Carnival, 1497, his followers went from house to house collecting books and pictures and musical instruments and other things that they thought had an evil influence, and burned them all in a great fire in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. I will point out the place later." "I should like to see it," responded Irma, to whom Richard had turned. "Savonarola had made many enemies by his plain speaking, and though for a time Florence seemed to have had a change of heart, when the Pope Alexander VI excommunicated him, the supporters of the de Medici power went against him, and at last San Marco was stormed, and Savonarola was carried away to death." "Yes--yes--it is a very sad story. It is pleasanter to go into these cells and remember how Savonarola encouraged art. Let us look at these frescoes carefully," and the three walked on slowly, stopping a moment at the entrance to each cell, where, on the whitewashed walls, were exquisite paintings by Fra Angelico, his brother Fra Benedetto, and Fra Bartolommeo. At last, after a turn or two at the end of the corridor, they came to the Prior's Cell, with Fra Bartolommeo's frescoes on the wall. "Of course you recognize Savonarola," said Richard, "and that other is his friend Benievieni, and look at these smaller cells inside; here is his hair shirt and his rosary and this bit of old wood, as the inscription says, is from the pile on which he was burnt." "Ugh!" cried Irma, "I don't like it"; and she turned to look at Savonarola's sermons and his crucifix. The three were silent as they left the dormitories of the good brothers of San Marco, especially when they remembered the great prior, whose terrible death the fickle Florentines in time repented. "Time is so precious to-day," said Richard, as they left San Marco. "And why, pray?" asked Ellen. "Because you have me with you, dear sister. You cannot be sure when I shall be ready to go with you again." "Indeed!" responded Ellen. "We are not sure that we shall need you again." "Well, then, since time is precious, we will drive for a moment to S. Annunziata to see something fine and something funny." Soon they were in the little courtyard of the church, and after leaving them for a moment Richard returned with a sacristan, carrying keys. He unlocked the doors of the corridor surrounding the court, in which were some fine frescoes by Andrea del Sarto and two or three other great painters. After they had admired these paintings, while their guide moved off toward some other visitors, Richard said, "Here is the 'something funny,'" and he pointed to a number of small, crude paintings at the end of the corridor. "They _are_ funny; what in the world are they?" asked Irma. "You mustn't laugh, even though they seem funny. Come here, and I will explain," and Richard pointed to one that showed a man falling headlong down a steep flight of stairs. "This man, you see, escaped death from a broken neck, on the date put above the picture, and this one, on the deck of the ship tossing about so wildly on the ocean, was saved from shipwreck, and this other in the carriage with two wildly prancing horses was evidently not fatally injured, and this woman in bed, surrounded by her weeping family, was apparently at the point of death, when her patron saint saved her." "Oh," exclaimed Ellen. "Then these are pious offerings, and I won't laugh at them. It is rather a pretty idea to show thankfulness in this way, and we oughtn't to laugh, even if they could not have Del Sartos or Botticellis for their artists." On their way home, they looked at the spot in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, now marked by a stone, where Savonarola was burned, and his two chief followers, Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro. "When I leave Florence," said Irma, "I shall remember the Palazzo Vecchio more because it was the prison of Savonarola than for anything else." "But you haven't forgotten the wonderful great halls, and the gildings and paintings. There are no halls more splendid in Florence." "No, I haven't forgotten them, and I remember Uncle Jim told us the Hall of the Five Hundred was built from the plans of Savonarola for his great Council, and Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. But the return of the de Medici changed all this, and instead, every inch of space records the greatness of the de Medici and their victories over the enemies of Florence. But the great statue of Savonarola is there, and I believe his memory will last the longest." "You are right," responded Richard absentmindedly. He had just seen a flower girl with a basket of exquisite roses. "Oh, Richard, you are extravagant," cried Ellen, as the girl emptied her basket. "One can't be extravagant with flowers in Florence," he replied. Katie and Marion were standing at the door when they reached the hotel. "Where did you get those roses?" Katie asked, as they descended from the carriage with their arms full. "Gathered them, of course," replied Richard promptly, although the question had not been addressed to him. "Richard gathered them for us," added Ellen. "He is a brother worth having." "Marion and I didn't see any like them," said Katie. CHAPTER XVI A CHANGE IN MARION It was the evening of Constitution Day, the Italian Fourth of July. Aunt Caroline and Irma, seated in the doorway of the hotel, watched the passing crowd. On the Arno in front of the house, not far from the Ponte Vecchio, were several boats decorated with flags and paper lanterns. There was also a large float, and the voluble porter explained that a chorus was to be stationed there during the evening to sing. "Where is Marion?" asked Uncle Jim. "He has walked to the Cascine with Katie and Richard and Ellen. I wished to stay with Aunt Caroline," replied Irma. "I am afraid Katie has cut you out with Marion," exclaimed Uncle Jim. "How foolish!" protested Aunt Caroline. "Irma has no such ideas. Marion has never exerted himself for Irma, and she has always been too busy to think of him." "When it's quite dark," continued Uncle Jim, "we must walk over to the Piazza in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. They say the illumination of the tower is the thing best worth seeing, better even than the fireworks these crowds are waiting for." A little later the three stood in front of the tall gray tower of the old palace, whose outlines were wonderfully beautiful, set in a frame of fire made up of countless tiny lamps. "Hello," cried a voice, "we didn't expect to see you here." Richard was the speaker, and with him were Marion and Ellen. "Where is Katie?" asked Aunt Caroline. "Oh, she and Marion have had some kind of a spat, and she insisted on our leaving her at the hotel." "Spat! Nonsense!" interposed Ellen. "Well, a quarrel by any other name will do just as well. I'm glad she can stay with mother. One of us ought to be with her." Marion made no reply to Richard. But he walked beside Ellen on their way back to the hotel, while Richard helped Irma find a way through the throng. "What a quiet, orderly crowd!" cried Aunt Caroline, "and to-day their Fourth of July!" "It's only after they have crossed the Atlantic that foreigners grow uproarious. There seems to be more law and order over here." The Lungarno was packed with people when they reached the hotel, so all went upstairs to Aunt Caroline's room, that overlooked the river and the boat from which the fireworks were sent off. There were one or two set pieces, the chorus on the large float sang several part songs, and at intervals showers of stars of all colors fell from the Roman candles and rockets sent up from the boats. It was late when they began to separate. "Where is Marion?" asked Aunt Caroline, when the lights were turned on, and the others came to bid her good night. "He must have gone to his room," said Uncle Jim. "I noticed half an hour ago that he was not here." "Perhaps he didn't like the noise," said Richard, with what sounded like a slight shade of sarcasm. "His nerves are not very strong." The next morning, when Irma went to breakfast, none of the older members of her party were at the table, and Marion, too, was missing. "Of course Marion didn't give it to me," she heard Katie say, as she took her seat. "It's certainly very strange that it should be the same device as his small seal." "Probably they wouldn't look at all alike, if you should bring them together and compare them." "Can mine eyes deceive me?" Richard assumed a tragic tone. "It's the ring that Katie has around her scarf." Ellen explained to Irma. "Richard is sure that Marion gave it to her. But he ought to believe Katie when she says this is not so." Irma looked closely at the ring through which Katie had pulled the end of her silk necktie. The dragon carved on the agate stone certainly seemed familiar. Yes, she recalled the same dragon on an old-fashioned seal that Marion had shown her one day; at least it looked the same, though of course the dragon was by no means an uncommon device. But after all, this was no affair of hers. If Katie said Marion had not given the ring to her there seemed to be no reason for Richard to doubt Katie's word. Suppose even that he had loaned it to her, why should her cousin concern himself about it? After breakfast Katie and Ellen drove to their dressmaker's, and just as Irma had finished a home letter Marion appeared in the reading-room. "I had an early breakfast," he explained, "and have been out walking. Now I wish some one would take a trolley ride with me. Will _you_ go?" At first Irma could hardly believe the invitation was meant for her; she had been so little with Marion the past fortnight. But when she saw that he undoubtedly meant her, she accepted gladly. "It does not matter where we go," he cried, as the car started. "I simply wish to see what the suburbs are like out this way." Soon they had passed beyond the old narrow streets, and were running through a broad avenue of the newer Florence that has begun to drive the old city out of sight. After a word or two to the conductor, "Why, this is a car for Fiesole," said Marion. "I had meant to drive out there some day, but now----" He did not finish the sentence, but later in the morning Irma realized what he had had in mind when he spoke. "Fiesole," Marion began to explain, "the old Faesulae, was an important place long before Florence. I believe there are imposing Etruscan fortifications still to be seen up there on the hill. But Fiesole was conquered and destroyed in the early part of the twelfth century, and Florence soon became rich. Many English and Americans have country villas at Fiesole. It is not so damp there as in Florence. There are several people I know living out there, if I cared to see them." "Oh, we don't come to Europe to see Americans," said Irma, noticing a severe expression on Marion's face, such as she had seen before, when Americans were spoken of. After leaving the car they rambled around the pleasant, shady roads of Fiesole for an hour or more, visiting the piazza and the old church. At the terminus they had to wait a little time for the car by which they were to return. While standing near a little shop where they had made some purchases, a tall girl rushed up to Marion, and, seizing his hand, first raised it to her lips, and then poured out a flood of words. Marion reddened, pulled his hand away, and looked puzzled, as the girl began to talk. But before she had finished her long, long sentence, his face cleared, and he turned toward Irma. "She was on the _Ariadne_; her mother died. Perhaps you remember." Of course Irma remembered. This was the girl upon whom she had so often looked from the deck above the steerage, the girl for whose family Marion had raised the subscription. When the girl's words at last came to an end, Marion tore a leaf from his notebook and gave it to her, after he had written something upon it. "_Grazie, grazie_," she cried, and then, when he shook his head to some request of hers, "_A rivederci_, signor and signorina," she cried, as they stepped toward the approaching car on which they were to return to the city. "Now, I will explain," said Marion, as they rode toward Florence. "Luisa hopes some time to return to America, and I have given her my mother's address, in case she should need advice from us." ("The second time," Irma thought, "I have heard Marion speak of his mother.") "She was greatly disappointed," continued Marion, "that we could not go up to see the family. They have a little house back there on the hills, and with the subscription raised on the ship they could lease it for five years, and they have a little besides to keep them going until their garden is grown. The grandmother hopes to sell enough flowers and vegetables in Florence to pay for clothes and things they can't raise on the farm. It's surprising, though, how little it takes for people to live on over here. Luisa says she earns something by working for a cousin who has one of those little shops at the terminus, two days in the week." While Marion talked, Irma longed to ask why he had been unwilling to add her little gift to the money he had raised for Luisa's family on the _Ariadne_. But, in spite of his being so friendly now, she did not quite dare question him. Later in the day, however, when alone with Aunt Caroline, she told her about Luisa, and brought up the matter of the subscription. "Oh," said Aunt Caroline, "I can partly explain that subscription to you. Marion told me little at the time, but since then we have had a talk. Indeed he is much more inclined to confide in me than when we first left New York. He says that he spent more or less time among the steerage passengers coming over, and when he found money did not come in readily for Luisa's family, he decided to make up the whole amount himself. "He seldom changes his mind, when once he has decided upon a certain thing, and so when you offered your money he did not think it right to take it. You know Marion has a great deal of money of his own, and he could afford to do all that was necessary for this poor Italian family. I am sorry, however, that he hurt your feelings, for really Marion is goodhearted. Of course he has had a particularly hard time this year, and has not yet got over the effects of all he has been through." "Now," thought Irma, "I will ask Aunt Caroline to tell me all about Marion. Every one else seems to know, and I hate mysteries." But before she had a chance to ask the question, Marion and Uncle Jim appeared on the scene, and the opportunity was lost. After this the days at Florence passed swiftly. Aunt Caroline was absorbed in the galleries, and Uncle Jim or Mrs. Sanford spent much time there with her. The young people did their sightseeing by themselves, Richard, Ellen, Irma, and Marion, at least. Katie seemed, as Richard put it, "disaffected." She said she had been in Europe too long to care to spend much time over galleries and historical places. "Shopping is much more necessary now, as I am to sail so soon, and grandmamma is willing to pay duty on any amount of things." So, while Katie bought embroidered dresses, and spent hours over fittings, the others made what Ellen called "pilgrimages." Once it was to the old palace that had been Michelangelo's home, lately presented to Florence by a descendant of his brother. There they saw furniture and smaller belongings of the great man, manuscripts and sketches and plans of some of his great works, and on the walls of one room a series of paintings representing dramatic incidents in his life. "And yet he died almost a century before Plymouth was settled," said Irma, returning to the historical comparisons of the first part of her trip. Again, one day, rambling through a narrow street, they came to the so-called "house of Dante," a tiny dwelling with small rooms and steep stairs, and though Marion tried to throw cold water on the enthusiasm of the girls by telling them that no one now really believed this to be the house where Dante had lived, they only laughed at him. "No one can prove that it is _not_ the house where he was born; and every one knows that it belonged to his father. But at any rate it's a charming little museum, and since I have seen all the interesting manuscripts and books there, I am more anxious than ever to read Dante," and Ellen patted her brother's arm, adding, "No, Richard, what we wish to believe we will believe, especially when it's true." "Just like a girl," responded Richard, smiling. One other day they made a pilgrimage to the Protestant cemetery, chiefly to please Ellen, who wished to see the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They found it without trouble, a plain marble sarcophagus on Corinthian columns, with no inscription except the initials of the poet and the date of her death. Near the sarcophagus a few pink roses were in bloom. "How I wish I dared pick one," sighed Ellen. "Why not?" asked Richard. "There's no one but us to see, and we won't tell." Irma was not sure how much in earnest Richard was, but she believed he was only in fun, for he made no reply to Ellen's, "Oh, I think there's nothing worse than carrying away flowers and stones as souvenirs. I have known people to do such silly things. Surely you remember Hadrian's villa." Now Irma, although she had no clue to Ellen's reference, at once recalled her own success in securing a fragment of marble from this same villa of Hadrian's, and what it had almost cost her. Even while she recalled it, it seemed to her that Marion glanced significantly toward her, yet she was sure she had never told him what had caused her to miss her train on that eventful evening. One never to be forgotten day, Irma, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Caroline went down to Perugia. Mrs. Sanford and her party had been there before their arrival in Siena, and Marion, who said he hadn't time for both, preferred a trip to Pisa. But to Irma, the railway journey itself, through tunnels, past mountain towns, around the lovely shores of Lake Thrasymene, was something long to be remembered. "If I hadn't come to Perugia," she said to Uncle Jim, "I suppose I shouldn't have known what I had missed, but now it seems as if I shouldn't have really known Italy without coming here. It is so much larger than Orvieto, and brighter, and yet it is a hill town with streets that tumble into one another, and picturesque arches, and though it hasn't an Orvieto Cathedral, it has more beautiful churches than one expects to find in a place of its size. Then that perfect little Merchants' Exchange! One could spend a day there studying the frescoes. There are more quaint carvings on the outside of the buildings than in most places we have seen, and in spite of this broad main street, with the trolley cars running through it, it seems still a mediæval town, a cheerful one, not a melancholy one like San Gimignano. Then I shall be very proud when I go home to say that I have actually been in the house where Raphael lived and taught before the world knew how great he really was." "A long speech for a little girl," said Uncle Jim, "but it doesn't explain your unwillingness to stay with your aunt this morning while she makes a careful study of the exhibition of Umbrian art." "Why, I think it _does_ explain it. I was there long enough to learn Perugino by heart, his funny little bodyless angels, and his young men with thin, graceful legs and small skull caps, and of course his beautiful color." Uncle Jim laughed at Irma's characterization of Perugino. "And is that all you remember of that great building with its treasures of art, as the books might say?" "Of course not," said Irma indignantly. "I remember quantities of other things. Raphael, and all those strange, pious Umbrian painters, and the beautiful silver chalices from the churches, and all the carved crucifixes. On the ship going home Aunt Caroline will be able to talk to us for hours about these things, describing them exactly. Isn't it much better for a girl of my age to enjoy this lovely view? Come, let us sit down on a bench in the little piazza in front of the hotel. As we look off to the valley, so far below, we seem to be on the edge of a high mountain. Every one in Perugia seems to enjoy the view. See, there are two soldiers strolling about; a group of priests; well to do children riding around in that donkey cart; half a dozen others who are almost in rags watching them; several strangers besides ourselves; two or three dignitaries of the town. So it's a very popular place." Again Uncle Jim smiled at Irma's astuteness. Then he left her to enjoy the view still longer, while he went down to the Municipal Building, to "rescue" Aunt Caroline, as he expressed it, from too long a stay at the exhibition of Umbrian art. On her return to Florence the next evening, Irma wrote Lucy about her visit to Assisi. She had promised this before she left home, as Lucy had especially asked her to see for herself the thornless roses growing in St. Francis's Garden. "I have seen the garden," she wrote, "in the cloister back of the church, and here is a leaf from the thornless rosebushes. The good brothers have these leaves already pressed on little cards, as souvenirs of the visit to St. Mary of the Angels, St. Francis's church. Inside the great church they have preserved the tiny church in which St. Francis preached, and also the cell in which he died. The great church of San Francesco on the hill above where St. Francis was buried was built in his memory. His body was finally buried there. It is an enormous building, and I will try to tell you here about the beautiful frescoes describing his life. But I have some photographs for you, and they show all his great deeds told in pictures. "I wish I had time to tell you about Florence. But in six weeks I shall be at home again, and then how much I shall have to say! It seems to me that all the paintings you and I like best are here, and in color they are so beautiful. The Pitti Gallery is wonderful. It is in a great palace where the de Medicis (of course) once lived. It now belongs to the king, and his rooms are most beautiful. But the gallery is quite apart from the rest of the palace, and filled with the greatest paintings, Titian and Raphael and Andrea del Sarto and Botticelli and Bronzino, and some time, when I am older, I hope to come back and study them and criticise them just as I hear people doing now. Now I simply enjoy them. "There are always many people copying in the galleries, especially in the Uffizi, and the other day we saw two sisters in their convent dress at work at easels. I suppose they were painting for their convents. There are so many things in Florence I wish we could look at together, the cathedral and Giotto's tower, and the wonderful della Robbia reliefs; you know the small cast of the singing boys that your mother gave you Christmas. Then, though this is different, I wish you could see the green, pointed hills that are outside of Florence on two sides. When I first saw them they seemed like old friends, I had seen them in so many paintings by the old painters who worked in Florence. I thought they put them in just for ornament, but now I know they couldn't help it. This was the background they were most used to here. "But there! I have seen so many things besides pictures--the old palaces, like fortresses, and the people who seem so gentle, though they are descendants of all those old fighters who thought nothing of killing one another when they had had the slightest disagreement (or often when they hadn't had any) just because their ancestors were enemies. Yet in some ways they were very good to one another. Yesterday we met a queer-looking procession, hardly a procession, for there were not more than a dozen men, but they wore long black robes, with hoods, and black masks over their faces, and holes cut for their eyes, and, really, they were terrifying. "Uncle Jim explained that they were the Misericordia, or Brothers of Mercy. Rich and poor belong to it, and have for centuries, and when a man is on duty, when he hears a certain bell ring--I think it's in the Campanile--he stops whatever he is doing and goes to the headquarters of the brothers to learn whether he is to watch with some sick man, or help bury some dead person with no friends to follow him to the grave. "I have been disappointed not to see more picturesque costumes here, but in the cities they are never seen, and seldom in the country. The apprentice boys in different trades wear big aprons, and the nursemaids have great caps with long, colored streamers, but that is all. "I feel rather mean, sometimes, when I think how hard you all are working now, and I am just amusing myself. When you get this, examinations will be about over, and I do wonder if George Belman will be at the head of the class. "Well, even if I am idle now, I may have to study hard enough in August. I won't be able to make the excuse that I am not well. "Hastily, "Irma." CHAPTER XVII IN VENICE "I wouldn't have missed Bologna for anything," said Ellen, one very warm June morning, as Mrs. Sanford and Mr. and Mrs. Curtin and the young people in their care found themselves on the train between Bologna and Ravenna. "If every Italian city would have arcades over the sidewalks like those in almost every street of Bologna, life would be better worth living." "So the arcades made the most impression on you," said Uncle Jim smiling. "And what have you to say of Bologna, Mrs. Sanford?" "Well I am glad to have found that it is really true that there were learned women in Italy in the Middle Ages. I certainly cannot forget that I have seen a statue to a woman professor of the fourteenth century, who used to lecture in this university at Bologna. If there were women professors, there must have been women students." "Ellen thinks the little tombs on pillars outside the churches were the strangest things she saw," cried Katie. "Not stranger than the leaning towers," interposed Irma. "I suppose the people of Bologna must be terribly afraid of earthquakes. I hated even to drive near the leaning towers." "I did not know we were to tell only strange things we had seen," said Aunt Caroline. "I was most impressed by the Accademia. You others did not stay long enough in the gallery. Besides Raphael's St. Cecilia, there are very many pictures worth seeing; no one can really have a good idea of Guido Reni without coming to Bologna." "Well, I enjoyed the drive through the park, and our glimpse of Carducci's house on the way back. It was all so restful after the noise of the streets," said Uncle Jim. "There are certainly many beautiful churches in Bologna, and more homelike-looking palaces than I have seen anywhere else in Italy," said Mrs. Sanford. "We might have enjoyed a longer stay there." "I didn't think much of the shops," interposed Katie. "There was hardly a thing I wanted to buy." Whereat the others smiled, as shopping was Katie's favorite pastime. "You'll find them worse in Ravenna, for that is not only a decaying, but a decayed city, from all the accounts I've heard." "I almost wish we were not going there," added Aunt Caroline. "They say it's full of malaria." "Oh, in one short day and night we can keep out of the way of germs." It was noon when they reached Ravenna, tired enough after a warm journey. "Dante's tomb is only a step from here," said Marion to Irma, as they finished _déjeuner_. "Bring your camera and we'll go out and take a shot at it." Irma posed herself in front of the door of the domed building containing the remains of the great poet, while Marion took a snapshot. They stopped for a minute to read an inscription on an opposite house, where Garibaldi had been entertained, and turning another corner, with some little trouble, Marion found the simple dwelling where Lord Byron had lived during his year or two in Ravenna. "Now," began Marion, "if you can get Ellen to come, I move that we three drive about the town. I am tired of too large a crowd, or perhaps it is the weather. But this is one of the days when more than three would spoil all the fun of looking at things." As the suggestion pleased Ellen, the three started out in their carriage ahead of the others. There were no trolley cars; few people were moving around in the long, dusty streets; and many of the larger houses, or palaces, were indeed deserted mansions, with no signs of life about them. "First to Theodoric's tomb," Marion had announced, as they started, and as they drove along he talked entertainingly about old Ravenna, especially in the last days of the Roman Empire, when the Emperor Honorius held court there, believing the place to be safe against the barbarians. Later, after the fall of Rome, Theodoric made this his city, and tried to revive the Western Empire. "Ravenna used to be a great seaport," said Marion, "with a harbor for a large fleet, but the sea has been gradually receding until now it is five miles away." "These marshes and this little creek, I suppose, are all that the sea has left Ravenna as a reminder of those days," said Irma. "Yes," responded Marion, "but Theodoric's tomb is a thing we shall remember better." And the girls agreed with him a few minutes later, when they stood in the garden in front of the gray walls of the impressive circular mausoleum. "Oh, please stand still a moment," cried Marion, as they leaned over a particularly beautiful rosebush; then a click came from the camera. "I hate to have my picture taken when I am not expecting it," cried Ellen. "Don't worry! Theodoric's tomb will quite overshadow us," responded Irma, in mock consolation. After this the three drove from one church to another to see the splendid mosaics that are Ravenna's chief treasures. Saints and emperors and other great personages were there in all the glory of rich color, and scriptural truths were taught in the symbols of the early Church. "Although the figures are sometimes out of drawing and the designs rather queer, it is just the same in these mosaics as in some of the old frescoes; they were put on the church walls to teach truth to the mass of people who could not read, and that is why I do not laugh at them." [Illustration: SIENA. GENERAL VIEW, WITH CAMPANILE. (_See page 227._)] [Illustration: RAVENNA. THEODORIC'S TOMB.] It seemed to Irma, when the whole party met at dinner that evening, that Katie was displeased with somebody or something. Had Richard been teasing her? For teasing was a cousinly privilege which he often exercised. Was she annoyed that she had not been asked to join Marion's particular group of three? For the present there seemed to be no answer. The next day, after a warm journey of several hours, the whole party stood on the steps of the railway station at Venice, waiting to see their luggage put aboard the gondola. "How strange it seems to wait for a boat instead of a cab to take one from the station to a hotel," and Irma watched the water of the canal break with a slight wavelike motion against the steps. "Yes," responded Richard, who happened to be standing next her, "and here we part for the present. I wish our rooms were in the same hotel, but since that cannot be, Ellen and I, at least, will try to give you all we can of our society." "Please do," said Irma. "Ellen says you will be only a few doors away. Good-by, good-by," she concluded, as Richard helped his mother and Ellen and Katie into a gondola, where they sat rather stiffly with their bags piled up behind them in the stern. "Is it what you expected?" asked Aunt Caroline, as they glided in their own gondola over the Grand Canal. "Yes," sighed Irma; "it's more than I expected. I know that I shall be perfectly happy in Venice." But although Venice did not disappoint Irma, many things in this Queen of the Adriatic were different from her expectations. She soon discovered that it was possible to walk almost as far in Venice as in any other large city, provided you did not object to threading your way sometimes through narrow passages and over curving bridges. "Has any one ever counted the bridges in Venice?" she asked one day. "There must be hundreds of them," she said on the second day of her stay there, when she and Marion had had a long walk that had ended in the great Piazza in front of San Marco. "Some one has counted them, of course, but I can only guess that there are several hundred. But here we are at the heart of Venice. Isn't it great?" "Yes, this is just what I expected; it is almost too beautiful to be real," and Irma stood in front of the great church with its gilded domes, its mosaic pictures, and the four bronze horses from Constantinople, over the main entrance, forming, as a whole, a picture of which the eye could never weary. "Let us not go inside to-day," said Marion. "Oh, I would rather get a general impression of the piazza. That beautiful building, white and yellow, must be the Doge's Palace. Ah, yes, and there is the Lion of St. Mark's on his column. But who is that odd-looking saint on the other column, standing on a crocodile?" "St. Theodore, I believe. It's a wonder that he can continue to look so pleasant, since he was quite cut out by St. Mark." "I don't understand." "Oh, St. Theodore was the patron saint of Venice. He was a Byzantine saint, by the way, until some Venetian sea captains at Alexandria, where St. Mark was buried, took offence at the way the relics of the saint were treated by the sultan. They got the priests in charge to view the matter as they did, and so the body was secretly delivered to their care. On the voyage to Venice the saint saved the vessel from shipwreck, and after their arrival St. Mark threw all others into the shade. Nevertheless, St. Theodore smiles on, as if he had nothing to forgive." "It is an interesting story; and is it perfectly true?" queried Irma. "As true as any Richard would tell you," replied Marion. "Oh, the pigeons, the pigeons!" cried Irma, turning about and walking toward a spot where scores of pigeons were gathering around a girl who was scattering handfuls of peas from a little basket. As Irma approached, the girl looked up, and then---- "Why, Irma Derrington!" she cried, and she let her basket fall to the ground as she rushed toward Irma. [Illustration: "AS IRMA APPROACHED, THE GIRL LOOKED UP." (_Page 296._)] "It really is Muriel," said Irma, as she hastened toward her friend. "Why haven't you written in all these weeks?" cried Muriel reproachfully, after the first exchange of greetings. "How could I without your address?" "Didn't I give you our banker's?" "Indeed you did not; but you might have written to me." "Indeed I hadn't the slightest idea how to reach you. But no matter, I hope you will be in Venice a week at least." "Yes, indeed; and here is Marion Horton. You remember him." At this moment Mademoiselle Potin came forward from the shade of one of the arcades in front of the shops, where she had been watching Muriel, and while Marion talked with her politely for a few minutes, Muriel, speaking in an undertone, said, "How much brighter Marion Horton looks. And is it possible that he goes about with you? He was generally so glum and unsocial on the ship. He looks stronger now, too." "Oh, Aunt Caroline says he has gained in every way, and lately we have been travelling with a Mrs. Sanford and her son and daughter and----" "Richard and Ellen? Oh, I know them quite well." "Then you know how lively Richard is, and I think their being with us has made Marion come out of his shell." "When he's pleasant I should think he might be very good company. But Mademoiselle Potin has been telling me about him, and I should think he has had good reason to feel a little melancholy." "There," thought Irma, "I won't let another day pass without finding out from Aunt Caroline what it is that every one else knows about Marion, that makes him seem an object of sympathy." Meanwhile Marion had approached the girls. "Of course you both have some story to account for the pigeons, and each story is probably different." "I have no story, except that they are regarded as almost sacred, and it would be a great sin for any one to kill them." "To be _caught_ killing them," interposed Marion, "but I have an idea that many a pigeon pie in Venice is indebted to these same pigeons of St. Mark's. But if you have nothing better, I will tell my story. It is simply that some carrier pigeons brought good news to Enrico Dandolo, the Crusader, when he was besieging Candia, and since that time these pigeons and their descendants have been under the special protection of the city." "It is certainly great fun to feed them," said Muriel, "and if you come here often, you'll see all kinds of people doing it,--old and young, rich and poor. Why, I have seen a man sit for an hour by that pillar, feeding them." "As your basket quite emptied itself when you let it fall, let us go over to one of those little tables outside the restaurant and have some tea. We may, may we not, Mademoiselle Potin? And you will join us?" During the pleasant half hour spent over the tea and cakes, pigeon after pigeon approached them, looking, evidently, for stray crumbs. One was even so bold as to hop up on the table, and would not be driven away until Muriel had fed it. "It is all delightful," said Irma, "only I must write to Tessie about these pigeons, and I have so much to do. I am growing selfish. The air of Venice makes me wish to do nothing but enjoy myself." Later, when they went to the spot where the gondolas were waiting, they found that Muriel's hotel was in a different direction from theirs. "Please come to see me to-morrow," she cried, as she glided away. "You know I cannot always do what I wish to." "That means that perhaps her mother may not let her come to call on you," commented Marion. "Nonsense," cried Irma. Katie was on the balcony of the hotel, as they made their landing. She seemed surprised to see them. "I thought you were going to walk back," she said. As she spoke, she put her hand to her collar. This attracted the attention of both Irma and Marion, and Irma saw that Katie wore around her tie the circlet with the dragon's head, and she could not help noticing a strange expression on Marion's face as he too observed it. That very evening, when she and Aunt Caroline were alone, Irma remembered the question she had so often meant to ask about Marion. "When we first left home," responded her aunt, "I could not have answered you. What I said might have prejudiced you against Marion. But things have changed, and even he could not object to my telling you now. "It is not a complicated story. Marion's father died when he was a little boy. He has no sisters, and his only brother is a few years older than he. Herbert, I am afraid, has always been his mother's favorite, because he is much livelier than Marion, and fonder of people. But though most persons would call Herbert the more amiable, he has a terrible temper, and all who have seen him under its influence know how unreasonable he can be. One day, last winter, both boys were out in Herbert's motor. While going very fast it seriously injured a child. There were no witnesses to the accident, and the motor did not stop. But a mile farther on, when they had begun to slow down, Marion signalled a mounted policeman, told him there had been an accident, and obliged Herbert to turn back. By this time the child's parents had come out, and a crowd had collected. The boys were arrested, but soon had bail. At the trial Marion refused to utter a word against his brother, for I will say this for Herbert, he did admit that he was acting chauffeur. At last Marion had to admit that Herbert was going much faster than the law permits. Herbert's lawyer tried to show that the child's carelessness caused the accident. But further testimony of Marion's changed this. As Herbert was of age, the judge decided to make an example of him, and he was sentenced to jail for a short period, and in addition had a fine to pay. The child by this time was almost well, and many persons thought the punishment excessive." "I should think it was his brother who should be pitied, and not Marion." "Ah, many persons thought that Marion by a word might have put Herbert in a better light. His mother took the view that it was Marion, and not Herbert, who had disgraced the family. Some newspapers wrote articles criticising him, and one published his photograph, labelled "An unbrotherly brother." Now Marion himself had had a nervous breakdown during the winter after an attack of measles. When he had given his testimony at the trial he fainted and had to be carried from the room. The strain had been too much. Your Uncle Jim and I at once invited him to go abroad with us (for his father was an intimate friend and classmate of your uncle's) when we heard that his mother would not even speak to him. The strange thing was that while other relatives were so bitter toward Marion, Herbert did not blame him. Yet in all these weeks Marion had no letter from Herbert until we reached Siena. Even now I think his mother has not written him." "He has been very badly treated," said Irma. "I cannot see that Marion did anything wrong." "I will say this. Marion himself is partly to blame for being so cut off from his relatives. He, too, has a temper. When he found that several blamed him, he wrote a disrespectful letter to an uncle of his father's, who is really very fond of him, saying that he hoped never to speak to one of the family again, or something to that effect. Mr. Skerritt is joint guardian of Marion with your uncle--and----" Here Aunt Caroline paused. Then she added, "When Marion is twenty-five he will have a large income. Even now he has more money to spend than would be wise for most boys. But fortunately he is not a spendthrift." "Thank you," said Irma, when her aunt had finished. "I understand Marion better than I did. If he should speak to me about this, I suppose I can say that I sympathize with him." "Certainly, and I hope that he will be more inclined to talk now, since Herbert has forgiven him." "I don't see what he had to forgive." "I am only speaking from the family's point of view." The next morning, as Irma sat in her favorite corner of the little balcony overhanging the Grand Canal, Marion approached her. On a small round table that a waiter had moved out for her, she had set a pasteboard box containing most of her souvenirs for the family at home. There was nothing very valuable, though these pretty trifles had taken all the money Irma had brought from home; cameo pins from Naples, one or two mosaics from Rome, some strings of Roman pearls, an amber necklace from Florence, a leather cover stamped in gilt for books, and a couple of strings of Venetian beads, so dainty and fine that in her inmost heart she rather begrudged giving them away. "What is this?" asked Marion, holding up an envelope. "That? Oh, that has the asphodel you gathered at Paestum, and in that small box is the fossil shell you gave me the day you rescued my camera from that foolish little girl." "How long ago that seems," responded Marion. "We have seen so many places since then that Paestum is ancient history, and yet it is little more than a month away." "I haven't forgotten," said Irma. "I thought you were very brave." "Brave!" Marion colored. "I should think you'd call me a regular duffer when you remember what a fool I made of myself getting on board the _Ariadne_ at St. Michael's. I can tell you I felt awfully ashamed to think that a girl had saved me from a tumble into the water. I haven't forgotten what I owe you, though I haven't been able to get even yet." "Oh, yes, you have. You saw that I wasn't any too brave the night I thought we were going to sink." "Ah, that was natural. For you know we had barely escaped collision with a man of war. But what's this?" While talking, Irma had opened a small package, and Marion, fumbling with things on the table, had come across the piece of green marble from Hadrian's villa. For a moment Irma hesitated, then she plunged into the story of the way she had missed the train that memorable afternoon. "Aha!" exclaimed Marion, "and you were the girl who disapproved of my buying that tile from the Sistine Chapel." Then he started as if to go into the house. "Excuse me," he said. "I'll be back in a minute." When Marion returned he had the octagonal tile in his hand. "Fair exchange is always a good thing," he said, "and if you will take this, I would like to have the Hadrian marble. It will be a good reminder to me of something I can't explain just now." "Yes, you may exchange," said Irma, hesitatingly. For in her inmost heart she preferred her own marble. Yet, this was almost the first favor Marion had ever asked of her. "Thank you," said Marion. "I was altogether too ugly about that tile, but to tell you the truth I have had so much nagging this year, before I left home, that I've been too ready to defend myself." "I know," responded Irma. Marion looked up suddenly, as if he wondered how much she knew. But Irma said nothing. Not far from the hotel some gondolas were tied to the poles that marked their station. Marion leaned forward and signalled, and the nearest gondolier glided up. "Put these trinkets away. I will leave the box in the office," said Marion, "and we can go out for an hour." Irma accepted the invitation gladly enough, and the two were on the point of starting when Richard and Ellen appeared. Marion invited them also, and soon the four young people were gliding past S. Maria della Salute up toward the railway station. "There," said Richard, as they passed one beautiful palace after another. "If this were not Marion's party, I could tell you all kinds of wonderful stories as we go along. But as it is, I must content myself with saying, 'This is the Palace where Robert Browning spent so much time, and where he finally died. There, on that corner, lives Don Carlos. He and the parrot are not visible to-day, but you can almost look into the kitchen windows and see the most wonderful collection of copper kettles. When Lord Byron lived in that gray-fronted edifice, he was in the habit of taking a daily swim in the waters of the Grand Canal. I would like to tell you about the Dandolos and Foscari, and all the others, including the Falieri. Some of them were beheaded; some had their eyes put out, and----" "Don't, Richard," cried Ellen. "The Venetians were almost as bloodthirsty as the Florentines and Romans, and I wonder at their cruel deeds when I look about at all the beauty here." "Oh, there are also highly romantic stories, if I only had time to tell them, not bloodthirsty, but full of sentiment," continued Richard, in the tone that always meant he was only half in earnest. "The Merchant of Venice, for instance, and here we are at the Rialto, which of course makes you think of Shylock, though it was the section back there, and not the bridge, that Shakespeare had in mind." "I walked through the Merceria the other day," said Ellen. "You know it's the street that runs from this bridge to the clock tower opposite St. Mark's." "Did you find many bargains?" asked Marion suddenly. "A few, though we were not out to shop. But it was great fun to see the real Venetians hurrying along almost like Americans." At this moment one of the little steamboats that constantly ply up and down the Grand Canal seemed to be bearing down upon them. Irma gave a little scream, but already the gondolier had pushed his craft away so adroitly that they barely felt the swash. [Illustration: VENICE. THE GRAND CANAL.] [Illustration: VENICE. A GONDOLIER.] Once or twice they pulled up at some landing to have a better view of an old building or Campo, and always an aged man arose from some corner, boathook in hand, to help them ashore, waiting until their return to receive the small fee that custom has decreed. At last, as they glided homeward, and came in sight of their hotel, Irma discerned Katie standing on the balcony. "Irma," said Marion, in an undertone, for evidently he, too, had seen Katie, "has Katie said anything to you about Nap lately?" "No, not for some time." "Well, I hoped she would say you could keep Nap." "Aha, Marion," cried Richard, "I believe I understand why you have spent so much time with Katie lately, escorting her around to places I wouldn't have taken the trouble to go. I see why you did it." "Why?" asked Ellen; "why should he need a special reason?" "Perhaps he didn't need it. But I believe he has set out to make Katie give up Nap to Irma, but," and he turned toward Marion with a flourish of his hat, "I'll bet you almost anything that you don't succeed. Katie is my cousin, and I know." As they landed at the steps of the hotel, Katie greeted them pleasantly. "The rest of us have had a splendid afternoon. We've been shopping." "Of course," interposed Richard. "Oh, this time we went to such interesting palaces, full of wonderful old furniture and pictures, collectors' places; and your aunt, Irma, has bought any amount of lovely things. And then, over across the way, we saw them making mosaics, and I have bought some beautiful long slender iridescent glass vases." "You can buy the same in New York," murmured Richard, "and we'll have all the trouble of carrying these vases home. Probably they'll be put in a basket for _me_ to carry." Then in a sudden spirit of mischief: "Katie," cried Richard, "did Marion give you that arrangement for your scarf? I don't know whether to call it a pin or a ring." "Nobody gave it to me," she replied, in a tone of annoyance. "Then _where_ did you get it?" It was Marion who spoke sharply. Katie made no answer. "Did you advertise it?" asked Marion. Even to Katie this question seemed as puzzling as to the others. "I don't know what you mean," she replied. "I bought it at Rome." "Oh," said Marion, and it was quite evident that he did not believe her. "Well," said Katie, "if you must know, I bought it at the Rag Fair, and very cheap it was. Every one tells me that I have a great bargain, for the carving on the stone is very fine, and I wouldn't part with it for anything." Marion made no comment after Katie's speech, and instantly Irma understood the whole thing. This was the "something else" that Marion had lost with the two hundred liri in his purse. It had probably been stolen by some one at the fair. Certainly it was easy now to account for Katie's bargain. CHAPTER XVIII EXPLANATIONS "I am sorry," Aunt Caroline was saying, as she and Irma and Uncle Jim drifted along in a gondola, "that you will lose Milan. Perhaps you might have gone up with your uncle on his trip last week, but it seemed hot." "It was hot," interposed Uncle Jim. "And I had so much business that I could have given no time to showing Irma around. She could have seen the Cathedral, of course, which, after all, is one of the most beautiful in the world, and different from the others you have seen in Italy; and she could have visited one or two delightful galleries. But I doubt that your head will retain an impression of half those you've already visited. If you will accept my impression of Milan, you will know just what it is, a busy, bustling city, full of energetic people who are making their way upward. If the rest of Italy could catch the spirit of Milan, the whole country would soon be prosperous. In fact the spirit of independence is so strong that car conductors, policemen, and shopkeepers, as well as cabmen, are insolent, and inclined to look down on the _forestieri_. Sometime, when you return to Italy in cooler weather, you can visit Milan; but be thankful you didn't go there with me last week." "We shall have a warm journey back to Naples, and if your business were not so pressing, I should be inclined to go to Switzerland. While she is over here, Irma ought to see----" "Oh, no, no," interrupted Irma, without waiting for Aunt Caroline to finish the sentence. "Really I do not need to see more. I ought, that is, I _must_ go home." "Why, my dear child," cried Aunt Caroline, "I had no idea you were getting homesick. I thought you were enjoying everything." "Yes, I am enjoying everything," replied Irma, "and that is why I feel as if I can hardly wait to see them all at home. I just long to tell them about everything, and I don't want Tessie to grow up before I see her again. And if Katie gets to Cranston before I do, she will take Nap away, and perhaps I may never see him again. Oh, I am glad we are going home." Irma's voice now broke completely, and she made no attempt to hide her tears. "There, my dear, it is the warm weather. The climate of Venice is too relaxing----" "We'd get home sooner, Irma, if we should give up our Mediterranean passage and take a boat from Havre or Cherbourg. Perhaps you would like to start to-morrow with Mrs. Sanford's party. You wouldn't lose sight of Katie then," said Uncle Jim mischievously. "Nonsense," rejoined Aunt Caroline. "A few days more or less will be nothing to Irma, when once her face is turned toward the United States." "I feel better now," cried Irma. "Those were only makebelieve tears, but I do feel better to be going home. I am glad that we are not to be away three months more, and, if you please, I would rather not go to the Bridge of Sighs to-day." "You can look at it without any qualms," said Uncle Jim, "for our matter of fact historians say that since that bridge was built more than two hundred years ago, only one prisoner has been sent across to the _pozzi_, under sentence of death." "_Pozzi?_" asked Irma. "Yes, _pozzi_, or wells, is a good name for those dungeons across from the palace. The water used to rise two feet in them, and the poor wretch had to spend his time on a kind of trestle. I went through the _pozzi_ the other day, but I shouldn't care to have you or your aunt there; they are too depressing for tender-hearted people." "Why not take a last look at the Doge's Palace to-day; that would be more cheerful," suggested Aunt Caroline. "Certainly," and in a short time their gondola was at the steps near St. Mark's, the usual old man rose from his slumbers and steadied the gondola with his hook, and the three, after getting their tickets, wandered through the immense halls of the Doge's Palace. "When I was here the other day," said Irma, "the carvings and gildings and the enormous paintings dazzled me. Yes, I feel it is the same now, and I believe, after all, I care more for the general impression. I cannot remember each separate painting." "Why should you try to?" asked Uncle Jim. "These gray-bearded doges in their caps and ermine-trimmed cloaks are much alike, whether Titian or Veronese, or some other one of the great masters painted them." "Doesn't it seem as if those old doges were pretty conceited," said Irma, "to have themselves painted in sacred pictures with the Madonna and Christ?" "But you will notice that they are generally in an attitude of humility, and perhaps in that way they meant to attribute their greatness to something besides themselves." "A Doge could not do whatever he wished. Weren't they something like our presidents, simply elected to be the executive officer of the state?" asked Aunt Caroline. "Yes, it was the Great Council, and not the Doge, that held the supreme power, at least until the time of the Council of Ten. But the Doge, although at first chosen for only a year, was often re-elected term after term, and with his councillors he often had great power." "Yet the Venetians didn't like him to have too great power?" "Oh, no. You noticed the black tablet in the great hall in place of the portrait of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his ambition." "Yes, I have read about him, but I feel almost sorrier for Ludovico Manin, the last Doge. You know the French made him abdicate in 1797, and they burnt his Doge's bonnet, and the Libro d'oro--the Golden Book of Venetian nobility under the Liberty-tree, and they say this nearly broke his heart, although he lived a number of years longer. When he died he left all his fortune to some charity." "The history of Italy is full of tragedies," responded Uncle Jim. "So don't waste your sorrow on any one man, even though he is the last of the doges." A little later the three were in front of St. Mark's. "I must look my last at the Piazza," said Irma. "But I thought you were coming down this evening to hear the band play." "Oh, yes, but there will be such a crowd that we shall only sit at the little tables." "Yes, and sip lemonade." "Of course. It is Muriel's party. It is singular that we have seen her so little. But the music and the lemonade and all we shall have to say to each other--for she goes away to-morrow--will prevent my thinking much of the Piazza. Just now," and Irma half closed her eyes, "I am imagining the day when the Venetians gathered here to decide whether or not they should help the Crusaders. What a grand sight it must have been; and now, I open my eyes and see nothing but pigeons." "Aunt Caroline," said Irma, as they glided homeward, "I like Venice better than any other place. There seem to be more really old buildings here than anywhere else. I have not tried to remember the great pictures as I did in Rome and Florence. I have a general impression of Bellini and the Vivarini, Titian and Veronese and Tintoretto, they are the great Venetian painters, but I cannot describe any one picture." "We hardly expect a girl of your age to care for artistic details," responded Aunt Caroline, smiling. "You could probably tell more about the palaces." "I am not sure that I could describe a single one of them, so that any one would recognize it. It is the effect of Venice as a whole that pleases me, even if it isn't just what artists paint it. The palaces are really much grayer than they look in pictures, and there are never many sails on the canal, and even down toward the Lido there is seldom one of those bright painted sails." "Is there any other thing that falls below your expectations?" "Oh, some things are different, but I like them all the better. I used to think that only gondolas and small pleasure boats went on the Grand Canal. But there are so many other things--these little steamboats that pass constantly up and down, and take people so quickly and cheaply, and those large _barche_ that are like express wagons. Why, the other morning I sat at my window before breakfast, and first a large gondola passed, loaded with vegetables; and then a larger one piled high with bricks for building; and then it really looked so funny--some family was moving, and there was a boat full of furniture, with the mother and children sitting at one end, while the father and eldest son were pushing it on with their long sticks. Then the gondolas, too! I thought they were only pleasure boats; but the other day, when I saw a funeral procession going across to the island where the cemetery is, I realized they took the place of horses and carriages for everything." "I believe there isn't a horse in all Venice," said Uncle Jim, "and only two or three at the Lido. But here we are," and a moment later they had landed at the hotel. That evening, in spite of the charm of the music on the Piazza, and the evident gaiety of the crowd of listeners, the young people of the Sanford and Curtin parties were less gay than usual. Muriel, the next morning, was to start for the Dolomites, and later in the day Mrs. Sanford and her party were to begin their journey to Paris, allowing a few days for Switzerland on the way. "Irma," whispered Richard, in one of the pauses of the music, "I must tell you that I think Marion and Katie have struck a bargain about Nap. It seems Marion was able to prove that that ring we have seen Katie wear around her scarf really belongs to him. He showed her his initials inside. They were very small, but could be seen under a glass. He lost a purse one day when he visited the Rag Fair in Rome." "Yes, I was with him," said Irma. "Well, the same day Katie and a friend whom we met at our hotel in Rome also went to the fair. The ring was offered for sale at one of the booths, and Katie took a great fancy to it. She ought to have known it was stolen; for she got it for almost nothing." "Then she can afford to give it back to Marion; for of course she ought to do so." "That's just the point. Katie hates to give it up; I heard her talking to Marion about it. She said she'd like to buy it, but he wouldn't listen to that. Then he began to talk about your little dog, and I am pretty sure it ended in Katie's promising to give up all claim to the dog if Marion would let her keep the ring. Rather it was just the other way. Marion made the offer and Katie agreed, but it amounts to the same thing, and as soon as Katie is out of the way Marion will tell you." It happened, however, that after all the good-byes had been said to Muriel and her mother and Mademoiselle Potin, the other young people and their elders walked home to their hotel. It chanced that Katie was near Irma part of the way, and thus had a chance to announce her decision about Nap. "After all," she said, "a dog is a great trouble, and Nap is so much better acquainted with your family that I think I will let him stay with them." "Oh, thank you," replied Irma, wishing she felt free to tell Katie what she had heard about Marion's offer. "Thank you," she repeated. "It would break my little sister's heart to give him up, and I should feel very badly myself." At this moment they reached a bridge where they went single file. When they were on the level road again, Irma found herself beside Aunt Caroline, and she had no chance to discuss Nap either with Katie or Marion. "Our last evening together!" exclaimed Richard, as they reached the hotel. "There's a faint moon, and if so young a thing as that can sit up late, why not we?" and before Aunt Caroline and Mrs. Sanford had time to protest, four young people were seated around the little table on the balcony overlooking the Canal, and Richard had sent the waiter for what he called "a last lemonade." Marion had not joined the others. He stood with his hand on the railing. The water was lapping the steps just below him. "Don't fall in," cried Richard, from his seat at the table. "You look as if you were meditating a bath. But it's late, and in spite of the moon the water is cold." As Richard spoke the girls turned their heads in Marion's direction, and there, under their very eyes, Marion was hurling his coat from him. With his hand on the railing a moment later he had sprung into the Grand Canal. The others jumped to their feet; Katie screamed, and in an instant Richard might have plunged after Marion, had he not seen a reason for Marion's act. Some one had fallen into the water, and Marion had made his wild leap to rescue him. It all happened very quickly, and when, a few minutes later, rescuer and rescued stood on the balcony some distance from where Marion had gone in, the latter was seen to be a boy of about ten. He was evidently more frightened than hurt, and he whimpered a little as the crowd gathered around him. "I don't see how it could have happened," cried Katie. "No one _ever_ falls from a gondola," and her tone implied that this particular boy could not possibly have been in need of rescuing. "But he _did_ fall in; you can see that for yourself; a small boy can always get into impossible mischief." There was certainly no doubt that this particular small boy had managed to elude both his mother and the gondolier. Sitting on the prow, he had been screened for the moment by the cabin. Then a sudden impulse had led him to creep to the very end, where he raised himself to shake his hand in defiance at the gondolier. At this moment a passing steamboat gave a new motion to the gondola and threw the little fellow into the water. "Oh, but really it was nothing," cried Marion. "The water was not deep, and the gondolier would have been in almost as soon as I--and----" "Nonsense, nonsense, boy; when you do a brave thing take the credit that is your due." Irma started at the voice. She was one of the crowd that had drawn nearer to Marion. "I saw the whole thing," continued the voice. "You acted without a shadow of fear, but this chill may be bad for you." "Come, Marion, I will go with you to your room," and Richard led the unresisting Marion away, only too glad to escape the eyes of the curious who had come from the numerous reading and reception rooms on the first floor, at the rumor of an accident. "Billy," said the mother of the boy, who had caused all the excitement, "this is the last time I'll let you sit up after eight o'clock, no matter how you tease." "Madame," interposed the voice that a few moments earlier had praised Marion, "I would advise you to take your little boy at once to his room. His escapade might have cost him his life, and might have had serious results for my nephew, who is only recovering from the effects of a shock to his nerves. Put your little boy to bed at once, Madame." Then the mother and the little boy and a number of sympathizing friends walked off, while the fairy godfather, for of course it was he whose voice Irma had recognized, took Irma's hand in his. "Well, my child, we haven't met since I brought you back from Hadrian's villa. I found I couldn't safely keep so near Marion without really explaining myself. But the time hadn't come. He wrote me a pretty savage letter before he left New York. He thought I was one of those who had accused him of cowardice. This was a mistake on his part. But in the mood he was in three months ago, it would have been useless to try to change his mind. I had occasion to come to Italy myself, and there seemed to be no reason why I should not come on the ship with him. I knew that in the company of your aunt and uncle and yourself," and the old gentleman smiled at Irma, "he would have influences that ought to lift him out of his depression." "Did Uncle Jim and Aunt Caroline know?" asked Irma. "Yes, they knew after a while that I was hovering near. But I did not mean to dog Marion's steps, especially after I had seen at Rome that he was beginning to be himself again. At first Marion was unaware that I had come to Europe, but when a letter of apology was forwarded from him to me, I thought the time had come to tell him. So I had written him that I would see him soon. "He is really a fine, manly fellow, and it hurt him very much that he should have been so unjustly blamed. But I know that you, as well as your uncle and aunt, have been very patient with him, and now, well, now I must have a little talk with him before he falls asleep. I am to sail with you from Naples. Good night." Irma thought it quite the natural thing for the fairy godfather to disappear in this sudden fashion. When she had answered the questions that Richard showered upon her, she ran up to Aunt Caroline's room. "So you have always known about the fairy godfather." "I had never known him by that name until you gave it to him," said Aunt Caroline, smiling. "But as Mr. Skerritt, I have always felt that he was one of Marion's best friends. I spoke of him to you the other day when I told you Marion's story. Perhaps he mentioned that he is going back on the ship with us. Do you realize that in three days you will be sailing away from Italy?" "It is hard to realize it." "But you are glad to go home?" queried Aunt Caroline. "I am a little more homesick than when I left home," responded Irma, "but I have enjoyed every minute in Italy." The evening before leaving Venice Irma made a long entry in her diary: "No one knows how glad I am to be going home. Four months is a long time to be away from one's own country, and especially from one's family. Of course I have enjoyed everything, and I have learned even more than I expected, and I am so grateful for the trip. But there's no place I would rather see now than Cranston. "To-night I had such a surprise. Aunt Caroline came to my room, carrying a large pasteboard box. Then she opened it and showed me a lovely amber necklace, just like one I had admired in Florence. 'This is a present for you from Marion,' she said, 'and these other little things he hopes you will give to Tessie and the boys and Mahala. You will know how to divide them.' "I won't attempt to describe them, only I know Tessie will be delighted with the little flock of bronze pigeons, because I have written her about the pigeons of St. Mark's. There was even a silver-mounted leather collar for Nap. 'You may wonder at Marion's thoughtfulness,' explained Aunt Caroline, 'but he says you have taught him to think of others besides himself, and he appreciates your patience with him when he was so unamiable.' "It is true that Marion _did_ seem rather disagreeable at first, and perhaps I didn't try to like him because I was so disappointed that he was not a girl. But now--well, I only hope Chris and Rudolph will know as much as he does when they are his age. So I told Aunt Caroline that the whole trouble had been that I didn't try to understand him at first. Then she smiled, and added, 'Marion is sure that he has learned a great deal from you, especially how to govern his temper. But he says particularly, that no one is to thank him for these things. It is as if you had bought them yourself, for everything in the box is something he heard you admire, when you and he were out together. I believe there's something from every city we have been in. He says the money part doesn't count at all for everything there represents your taste.' "But I think I shall find some way of thanking him, if not now, sometime when our trip is over, and really, if it hadn't been for Marion, I am sure that I should not have had half as much fun." _A Story for Younger Girls_ IRMA AND NAP By HELEN LEAH REED Author of "Amy in Acadia," The "Brenda" Books, etc. Illustrated by Clara E. Atwood. 12mo. $1.25 [Illustration] A brightly written story about children from eleven to thirteen years of age, who live in a suburban town, and attend a public grammar school. The book is full of incident of school and home life. The story deals with real life, and is told in the simple and natural style which characterized Miss Reed's popular "Brenda" stories.--_Washington Post._ There are little people in this sweetly written story with whom all will feel at once that they have been long acquainted, so real do they seem, as well as their plans, their play, and their school and home and everyday life.--_Boston Courier._ Her children are real; her style also is natural and pleasing.--_The Outlook_, New York. Miss Reed's children are perfectly natural and act as real girls would under the same circumstances. Nap is a lively little dog, who takes an important part in the development of the story.--_Christian Register_, Boston. A clever story, not a bit preachy, but with much influence for right living in evidence throughout.--_Chicago Evening Post._ LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON HELEN LEAH REED'S "BRENDA" BOOKS The author is one of the best equipped of our writers for girls of larger growth. Her stories are strong, intelligent, and wholesome.--_The Outlook_, New York. Miss Reed's girls have all the impulses and likes of real girls as their characters are developing, and her record of their thoughts and actions reads like a chapter snatched from the page of life.--_Boston Herald._ BRENDA, HER SCHOOL AND HER CLUB Illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith. 12mo. $1.50. One of the most natural books for girls. It is a careful study of schoolgirl life in a large city, somewhat unique in its way.--_Minneapolis Journal._ BRENDA'S SUMMER AT ROCKLEY Illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith. 12mo. $1.50. It is a wholesome book, telling of a merry and healthy vacation.--_Dial_, Chicago. BRENDA'S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. 12mo. $1.50. No better college story has been written.--_Providence News._ BRENDA'S BARGAIN Illustrated by Ellen Bernard Thompson. 12mo. $1.50. The story deals with social settlement work, under conditions with which the author is familiar.--_The Bookman_, New York. AMY IN ACADIA Illustrated by Katherine Pyle. 12mo. $1.50. A splendid tale for girls, carefully written, interesting and full of information concerning the romantic region made famous by the vicissitudes of Evangeline.--_Toronto Globe._ BRENDA'S WARD Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. 12mo. $1.50. The story details the experience of a Chicago girl at school in Boston, and very absorbing those experiences are--full of action and diversity.--_Chicago Post._ LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, _Publishers_ 254 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS NAPOLEON'S YOUNG NEIGHBOR By HELEN LEAH REED _Illustrated, 12mo. $1.50_ Mrs. Abell's story, retold and made vivid with a true story-teller's art, forms the theme of the present book, which combines singularly well the veracity of history and the attractiveness of fiction.--_Living Age_, Boston. It should have a very wide circulation, since it puts Napoleon, for the first time, before the minds of children as a playmate and a friend; and they will go back to him in later reading as one whom they enjoyed in childhood. It should be in every public library, without fail, and you describe it well as a captivating story.--COL. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. [Illustration] A most beautiful story of the great Napoleon's exile on the island of St. Helena, and his friendship for a little English girl. A book of interest to children and grown-ups, magnificently written.--_Chicago Advance._ In this readable and delightful volume the author portrays in story form the character and doings of Napoleon Bonaparte in his days of exile at St. Helena.--_Journal of Education_, Boston. It has the advantage of being probably the only book for the young on its subject in existence.--_New York Commercial._ The author understands the art of telling stories for young people in a very entertaining manner. Her style is simple and natural, and even historic facts are transmuted by her into entertaining tales.--_New York Sun._ LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., _Publishers_, BOSTON New Illustrated Edition of The Spinning-Wheel Series THE SPINNING-WHEEL SERIES BY LOUISA M. ALCOTT. New Illustrated Edition. Uniform in size with the Illustrated Edition of The Little Women Series, printed from entirely new plates, with new and attractive cover design. 4 vols. 12mo. Decorated cloth, in box, $6.00. Separately, $1.50. 1. SPINNING-WHEEL STORIES With 8 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by Wm. A. McCullough. $1.50. 2. SILVER PITCHERS With 8 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by J. W. F. Kennedy. $1.50. 3. PROVERB STORIES With 8 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by Ethel Pennewill Brown. $1.50. 4. A GARLAND FOR GIRLS With 12 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by Clara E. Atwood and other artists. $1.50. Four volumes of healthy and hearty stories so told as to fascinate the young people, while inculcating sturdy courage and kindness to the weak in the boys, and in the girls those virtues which fit them for filling a woman's place in the home. The several artists have caught the spirit of the author and have provided capital illustrations for these new editions. It is not rash to say that Miss Alcott's stories were never more appealing to young readers than at the present moment. In spite of a profusion of juvenile fiction, they have steadily held their own; and they persistently refuse, through their inherent merits, to be elbowed aside by pretentious modern stories of unnatural and unreal childhood life. The very genuineness of character and incident, the homely appeal to all that is best in young womanhood and young manhood, have made "Little Men," "Little Women," and their successors classics in their kind.--_Boston Transcript._ LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY _Publishers_, 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. [Transcriber's Notes Italic typeface in the original book is indicated with _underscores_. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent. Page 16, added the word "to" ("the seat next to Uncle Jim"). Page 74, changed "Wilful" to "Willful" ("Willful as ever"). Page 82, changed "dejeuner" to "déjeuner" ("at déjeuner on the morning") Page 159, changed "Lief" to "Leif" ("earlier than our Leif Ericson"). Page 165, changed "Domenchino" to "Domenichino" ("I loved Domenichino's Sybil"). Page 202, changed "see" to "seen" ("you are disappointed that we have not seen") Page 234, added the word "in" ("Katie looked in defiance at Irma"). Page 257, changed "Guiliano" to "Giuliano" ("and of Giuliano, with Day and Night").] 45306 ---- AN AMERICAN HOBO IN EUROPE By WINDY BILL A TRUE NARRATIVE OF THE ADVENTURES OF A POOR AMERICAN AT HOME AND IN THE OLD COUNTRY PRESS OF THE CALKINS PUBLISHING HOUSE SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. Copyright 1907 by B. Goodkind Contents Chapter. Page. I. Billy and Me 1 II. Frisco 41 III. The Journey Overland 85 IV. New York City 130 V. Them Bloomin' Publishers 139 VI. The Ocean Voyage 148 VII. The Steerage 156 VIII. Glasgow 171 IX. Getting a Square Meal 181 X. The Glasgow Green (or Common) 188 XI. Hunting for a Furnished Room 193 XII. Dancing in the Green 202 XIII. Taking in a Glasgow Show 214 XIV. Robert Burns, the Poet 224 XV. Sir Walter Scott 276 CHAPTER I. BILLY AND ME. Stranger, will you please permit me to give you an introduction to a particular friend of mine, little Billy. Little Billy and I had long been friends and had become so intimate that we were more like brothers than friends. Some brothers indeed do not stick to each other as closely as Billy and I did for we never quarreled and the worst that ever happened between us was a little growl which we soon got over. Billy and I had been on the bum together a long while and had prospected for gold and other things in Utah, Nevada and California. The adventures we had if I were to relate them would fill several such volumes as this. And many of them were worth relating, too, but I will merely give a general outline of our experiences, for his experiences were mostly mine. While hiking it along the railroad one day between Ogden and Salt Lake City which is a distance of about thirty-seven miles, we ran across a couple of pretty Mormon girls about half a mile from town and they made goo-goo eyes at us. Billy, who is rather reserved with strangers, was for moving on, but I, who am a friendly and sociable cuss, was in for having a little time with them. "What's the harm, Billy?" said I to my chum; "let's see what kind of stuff the girls are made of." "Oh, what's the use, Windy," responded Billy; "we might get into trouble." "Trouble be blowed," said I; "they ain't agoing to make any trouble so why should _we_. Let's see what their game is anyway." We approached the ladies, tipped our hats, and passed the compliments of the day. They responded pleasantly enough, entered into a conversation with us and soon we all strolled further on from the town and sat down on a viaduct spanning a rushing irrigation ditch. Billy was as chipper as anyone when once he got started and held his end down in the conversation first class. The girls were merry and talkative and seemed to like to talk to the fellers. They told us all about the Mormons, how they live, act, and what they do, and Billy wanted to know how Mormons got married. "Why don't you get married and find out?" asked one of the girls. "I ain't no Mormon," spoke up Billy. "You can be if you want to," says the girl, "religion is free." "All right," says Billy, "I'll think it over." The girls were giving us a game I thought, but we could stand it if they could. We chinned away there for hours until it began to grow late, when the girls concluded they would have to go. We were sorry to part from such elegant company but it was a case of have to. After they had gone we wondered what their little game was, whether it was merely a case of flirtation or whether they were looking for converts to their religion. Billy put the question to me and I told him he could search me; I didn't know. Anyway, neither of us wanted to get married just then, so after the girls left us we troubled our heads no more about them. We stopped in Ogden, Utah, a few days, and then beat our way to Virginia City, Nevada, where we did some laboring work at the old Bonanza mines. Neither of us were miners, although we had prospected some without results. We found the miners to be a good-hearted set of fellows and liked to be among them. Grub and booze could be had for the asking in Virginia City when we were broke, but handouts were more plentiful than work. Not many strangers wander to Virginia City these days, for the town is off the main line and no bums visit it. It is on the decay order. Its streets are in ruins, ditto the sidewalks and houses, and over the whole place there is a musty odor. It is away high up in the air about eight thousand feet above sea level and the wealth that once was brought up from several thousand feet below the surface amounted to billions, not millions of dollars. Today the big mill houses still stand in their usual place in good order but little mining is done there. Some of the big plants, such as the Ophir, Savage, Norcross and Hale, Consolidated Virginia and Best & Belcher are still there, but where there were a thousand miners working before there are not ten working today. The place is strictly on the bum, just like me and my little pardner. Once there were forty or fifty thousand people in Virginia City, but today there are not five thousand, or anyways near that number and the ruins and scenes of desolation make a fellow feel sad. The old International Hotel where the nobs used to stop and spent a fortune every day, is now run by a Chinaman at a cheap rate. There is plenty of fine scenery around Virginia City, however, and plenty of Piute Indians, but the Piutes don't enhance the scenery any. They are a dirty crowd and sit around on decaying lumber piles and hillsides within the town, playing cards and other gambling games. The miners are mostly Cornishmen, Englishmen from Cornwall, England, and as Billy is English he took to them very readily. Carson was our next stopping place and we found it to be a nice little town. It isn't far from Virginia City and is the capital of Nevada. It contains a few thousand people, lots of tall poplar trees which stand along the streets, sage-brush and alkali covered hills and plains, a large stone railroad roundhouse, the State Capitol building (which is enclosed in a park several acres in extent), a U. S. mint and that's about all. No work to speak of is going on around there and as Billy and me could not get anything to do we lived on hand-outs mostly. One evening we saw a hen wandering about rather aimlessly, so to put her out of misery we caught her, wrung her neck and took her out of town where we roasted her over a slow fire. We rubbed her while she was cooking with a little sage to make us think of Christmas and devoured her by starlight. Bill said she reminded him of home and felt kind of blue for a few moments. But he munched away and soon cheered up. It may be the proper thing here to give a short description of Billy. Billy was a little fellow, about five foot two, and was a Britisher, a native of the city of York, in Yorkshire, after which New York is named. He was what you might call a strawberry blonde, for he had light hair and a moustache that was halfway between golden and red. It wasn't one of your straggly kind of moustaches with big hairs sticking out all over it, but small, neat and compact with just the cutest little turned up spit-curls at each end of it you ever saw. Maybe Billy wasn't proud of that moustache! He was dead stuck on it and was nearly always fussing with it and fondling it. Quite often he trimmed it with the aid of a little looking glass which he carried in his kit. Whenever the kit was unrolled Billy got the glass and admired himself with it. And yet I can't say the little cuss was vain, for whenever he met females he seemed indifferent to their charms and looked another way. His eyes were blue and his hands and feet small. Taken all together he wasn't a bad looking chap. Billy had some folks in the old country, a mother and two sisters but no father or brothers, and they lived in old York. Billy was born and raised in York and at a very early age was apprenticed to a harness-maker. His folks probably thought that the sooner he got out and rustled the better for himself and all concerned. Apprentices don't get much in old England, Billy told me, and have to serve long years at their trade before they can become a journeyman. Billy worked seven or eight years for his clothes and board and an occasional ha-'penny with which he bought a meat pie or lollipops. One day the idea struck him that he wasn't getting rich very fast. He had been working a long time and hadn't a bean to show for it, so he began to grow dissatisfied. He had heard some tales of how easy it is to get rich in America and he thought that it might be a good thing if he went there. His mother and sisters didn't agree with his notions but Billy didn't seem to care for that. He just laid low for awhile and said nothing. But the more he thought things over the more dissatisfied he became and the more determined to flit. He slept in the back room of his boss's shop and had to arise early every morning to take down the shutters, sweep out, dust off, and get things in shape generally for business. One day the boss came down and found the shutters still up, the place unswept and no Billy. The boss probably wondered where little Billy was but he had to take it out in wondering, for Billy had flown the coop and was over the hills and far away on his way to London. The boss went to Billy's folks and asked them if they knew where Billy was, but they told him he could search them. They didn't know anything about Billy. The boss probably did some pretty tall cussing just then and made up his mind that something would happen to Billy when he turned up, but he never did turn up and never will until he (Billy) gets rich. Then he'll go back to visit his folks and settle with his master, he told me. Billy says the boss don't owe him any money and he don't owe the boss any, so it's a standoff financially between them; but Billy owes him a few years of service which he says he is willing to put in if the boss can catch him. Billy says he had a hard time of it in London and found it difficult to secure passage to this country. Finally, after many heart-breaking experiences he secured a job as steward on an ocean liner by a fluke, merely because another chap who had previously been engaged failed to show up. Billy was in luck, he thought. He landed in New York with a little tip-money, for the steamship company would pay him no wages unless he made the round trip according to an agreement previously made in London and with this small sum of money he managed to live until he found work. He secured a job as dishwasher in a restaurant and received five dollars a week and his chuck as wages. Out of this big sum he paid room rent and managed to save a little money which he sent home to his mother. Compared with what he had been getting in the old country Billy considered that he was on the road to fortune and he felt elated. He held down his job for some months but got into a difficulty one day with his boss over something or other and got fired. He took his discharge much to heart and concluded to leave New York. He made his way to Philadelphia, about one hundred miles west, and there secured work in a small restaurant as a hashslinger. When he left this place because of a little argument with another waiter, he concluded to go out West where he was told the opportunities were great. I met him in a camp seated at a fire one evening surrounded by a lot of 'bos in Wyoming. He didn't look wealthy just then. We scraped up an acquaintance and I took to the young fellow at the first go-off as I saw he was not a professional vag, and we joined forces and have been together ever since. Our trip from Carson in Nevada over the mountains into California was a delightful one. From Carson to Reno the scenery is no great shakes (although it was over hill and dale), for the hills looked lone and barren. The crops had just been gathered from these hills and dales. The leaves were turning color on the trees and it was the melancholy season of the year when nature looks blue. Me and Billy weren't melancholy, however, for we were good company to each other and never felt lonely. At Reno early one morning we crept into an unsealed boxcar and rode upward to the high Sierras. The scenery when day broke was so fine that we were enchanted. No barren mountains were here and no sage-brush covered plains, but well-timbered mountains whereon grew trees and bushes of all kinds. To us it seemed like wakening from autumn to spring. Billy and me couldn't understand this. A few miles away were leaves that were turning in their autumn tints whilst here everything was green and fresh like the dawning of life. It astonished us but made us feel good all over. We were both as happy and joyous as if we were millionaires. Here was a beautiful sheet of water with a big paper-mill near it; further along was a little railroad station entirely surrounded by hills. Nothing but lofty mountains towered all around us, with a canyon running through them, along which we rode. Ice-ponds were there with no ice in them just then, for it was the wrong season for ice, but numerous huge ice-houses were there, which showed us what the ponds were for. The iron horse wound around and around these lofty mountains and the keen, pure air made us feel as good as if we had been taking a nip. We sure felt gay and happy as larks. By-and-by we reached a place called Truckee which seemed to be quite a town. We hopped off to reconnoiter for we knew the freight train would be there some little time, and noticed that there was only one street in the town, which contained several stores, a butcher-shop or two, several restaurants, two hotels and about a dozen or more saloons. As we walked along the street we noticed a sign over a stairway leading into a cellar which read, "Benny's Gray Mule." We started to go down the steps but found that "Benny's Gray Mule" was shut up tight. Too bad! A saloon with such a romantic name as that ought to thrive. We went into another saloon and I ordered two beers and threw a dime upon the counter in payment. "Come again," said Mr. Barkeep, giving me an evil glance. I hesitated. "Another dime, pardner, all drinks are ten cents here," says barkeep. "All right," says I, "don't get huffy; I didn't know the price." I laid down another dime and this Mr. Barkeep swept into his till nonchalantly. The place seemed tough and so did the barkeeper. Toward the rear of the large room was a lunch counter where a square meal could be had for two bits (25 cents), or coffee and hot cakes for fifteen cents; sandwiches for a dime each; a piece of pie and coffee, ten cents. In convenient places were gambling layouts where a fellow could shoot craps, play roulette or stud-horse poker. It was too early in the day for gambling but a few tough-looking nuts were there sitting around and waiting for a chance to try their luck. We saw all we wanted of this place and sloped. Truckee is the last big town in California going eastward, and it is a lumber camp, railroad division and icing station (refrigerator cars are iced there). A pretty rough old place it is. Me and Billy bought a couple of loaves of bread and some cheese and then made tracks for our box-car. We found it all right and climbed aboard. Our train had done a lot of switching at Truckee and a good many cars had been added to the train. Two big engines now were attached to the train instead of one and soon with a "toot toot" we were off. It was uphill all the way and the locomotives seemed to be having a hard time of it for their coughs were loud and deep and the hissing of steam incessant. To Billy and me the work was easy for all we had to do was to listen to the laboring engines and look out at the pretty scenery. The scenery was fine and no mistake, for the higher we went the prettier it got. Mountains we saw everywhere with spruce, fir, pine and cedar trees upon them. The views were ever changing but soon we came to a lot of snow-sheds that partly shut off the views. They must have been a hundred miles in length, for it took us an awful long time to get through them. The sheds were huge affairs of timber built over the track to keep off the snow in winter, and I felt like stopping and counting how many pieces of timber were in each shed. It must have taken a forest to build these sheds. Along in the afternoon we began to get hungry, so we jumped off at a place called Dutch Flat, to see what we could scare up in the shape of a handout. The outlook didn't seem promising to us for all we could see of Dutch Flat was a lot of Chinese shacks strung along one side of the railroad track. "Billy, I guess we're up against it here," I remarked; "I don't see any signs of a white man's house around. Where can we get anything to eat?" "Let's try the Chinks; we've got to have something to eat, you know; we can't starve," ruefully responded Billy. We were both pretty hungry by this time for the bracing mountain air had given us a hearty appetite. I stepped up to the first hut we came to, rapped at the door and when a chink opened it told him we were very hungry and would like something to eat. "No sabee," says the chink, slamming the door. I tried other huts with the same result. It was "no sabee" with all of them. I told Billy that my errand was a failure and his jaw dropped. "How much money have you got, Billy?" I asked. Billy dug down and brought up a lone nickel. I had a dime. I asked Billy to give me his nickel and told him that as we couldn't beg any grub maybe we might be able to buy fifteen cents' worth of something. With the fifteen cents I strode forth to try my luck once more. I saw a very old Chinaman in front of his hut and asked him if he would sell me fifteen cents worth of grub. "No gotee anything; only law (raw) meat." "What kind of meat?" "Pork chop," answered the old man, briefly. "All right, here's fifteen cents; give me some meat." I handed him the money and he went inside and brought out two fair sized chops. "You sabee cookee?" asked the aged celestial. "Heap sabee, you bet; me cookee before," remarked I. "All lightee," said the celestial, giving me a little salt and pepper. The country around Dutch Flat was hilly so Billy and me hunted up some secluded spot where we could eat our chops in peace and quietness. We built a rousing fire, for wood around there was plentiful, and put the chops upon long sticks which we hung over the fire. The grass around our camp was pretty dry and the first thing we knew the fire began to spread all over the country. When we stamped it out on one side it made good headway on the other side, and do all we could we couldn't stop it. We got scared, dropped our meat and sloped. It wasn't long before the Chinamen saw the fire and then there was a whole lot of loud talk in Chinese. The whole village was out in a jiffy with buckets, pails, empty oil cans and any old thing that would hold water and at it they went, trying to put out the fire. Not a few of the Chinamen procured wet sacks with which they tried to beat out the flames, but it was no go. Me and Billy returned and grabbed a sack each, wet it and aided all we could in putting out the fire, but it had gained too much headway and defied us all. I concluded that it was going to burn down all the Sierra mountains before it got through. There was a laundry in the Chinese village for I noticed a lot of white man's underwear and white shirts hanging on lines to dry, and near by was the washerman's horse tethered to a stake. When the horse saw and smelt the flames he became frantic and was a hard horse to hold. His owner ran up and yelled and shouted at him in Chinese but the horse either did not or would not understand what was said to him for he tried to kick the stuffing out of his boss and everything else that came near him. He kicked down every wash line that he could, one after another, and did his best to break loose from his halter, but it was no go. He wouldn't let his boss get anyway near him for his heels flew in every direction and it made us laugh to hear the Chinamen swear in Chinese. After the brute kicked down every line within reach of his heels he finally broke loose and galloped over the hills at a breakneck pace. For all that Billy and I know to the contrary he is galloping yet. Billy and me concluded that it was about time for us to skip out, too, so we did so. We had done all we could to help put out the fire and lost our grub in the operation, so we felt that we had done our duty. I have often thought of that fire since and wondered what the result was, whether it ended in great damage to the country and the destruction of the Chinese village, or whether the horse had ever showed up again. There is no rainfall in California during the summer months, I am told, and in consequence the grass and much of the vegetation dries up and one has to be very careful where to light a fire. We didn't know that, hence the disaster. We climbed into our car again, and were ready to move on whenever the train did. We lit our pipes, indulged in a smoke, and laughed over our recent experience. We must have laughed pretty loud, for a head was suddenly thrust into the car doorway and a stern visage confronted us. It was the brakeman's. "What you fellers doin' there?" asked Brakey. "Only taking a ride," responded Billy. "Where to?" asked Brakey. "Down the line a little way." "What are you riding on?" asked Mr. Brakeman. "On a freight train," innocently answered Billy. I guffawed, for I knew Billy had given the wrong answer, but Brakey never cracked a smile. "Got any money or tickets?" asked he, gravely. "No," answered Billy. "Get off then and be quick about it," was the stern command. Off we hopped and quite crestfallen, too, for our journey for the time being was ended. We wandered back to the railroad station to ascertain when the next train would leave. There would be nothing until early the next morning we learned, so there was nothing for us to do but to unroll our blankets and lay off somewhere near by where we could catch a train as it came by. We were very hungry, but turned in supperless, and chewed tobacco to satisfy the cravings of our stomachs. We soon fell asleep but kept one ear open to catch the sound of any freight train coming our way. Wayfarers are wonderfully acute, even in their sleep, as regards noticing the approach of trains. No matter how sound their sleep may be, they will wake up at the proper time to board a train nine times out of ten, unless they are too badly boozed. During the early hours of the morning a long train full of empty cars came our way and we made it easily. It was mighty chilly at that time of the day, but as we had on heavy overcoats, our bodies did not suffer much. Our feet, however, did. Fellows who beat their way, though, must put up with such little inconveniences without kicking. It belongs to the business. They must bear hunger, cold, thirst, dust, dirt and other trifles of that kind and get used to it. Those who travel in Pullman and tourist cars pay their money and sleep on feathers, but we slept just as well and nearly as warmly, wrapped in our blankets in a box car. During our wanderings we slept on the ground, in old shacks, barns, sidetracked cars or any old place and got along fairly well. We didn't have washbasins to wash in, but we carried soap, brushes and hand-glasses with us, and could make our toilet at any place where there was running water. Water was plentiful in the Sierra mountains. We pulled out of Dutch Flat when the train got ready and flew down the mountain side at great speed. We could go as lively as the train could in our car, however, and the speed was exhilarating, but the morning breeze was mighty keen and cutting. We would have given a great deal for a cup of hot coffee just then, but of course it wasn't to be had. When we neared a place called Auburn we saw a grove of trees, the leaves of which were a deep green, and among them hung little balls of golden yellow fruit that looked good to us. "Hi, Billy," exclaimed I, "look at them yellow balls hanging on the trees, will you? Wonder what they are?" Billy looked at them fixedly for quite a while and then suddenly made a shrewd guess. "Them's oranges, Windy, as sure as we're alive." These were the first oranges Billy or I had ever seen growing on trees and they surely looked good to us. They reminded us of Christmas trees. We would liked to have jumped out to get some oranges for breakfast, but they were so near and yet so far that we desisted. How tantalizing it was to see a tempting breakfast before you and not be able to eat it. But the train didn't stop anywhere for refreshments, so that let us out. When we got down to a place called Roseville, which was a junction, we noticed several orange trees standing near the depot with plenty of oranges hanging amid the leaves, and oh, how we did long to make a rush for them. The train crew was on that side of the train, however, and there were plenty of people near the depot so we dared not make the venture. Oh, if this train would only stop twenty minutes for refreshments maybe we could get a handout, but it didn't stop, so we had to go hungry till we reached Sacramento. We got to Sacramento, the Capital of California, before noon, and jumped off the train in the railroad yard, keeping an eye on the bulls and fly-cops that buzzed around there. No one got on to us so we walked leisurely along with our blankets slung over our shoulders. The railroad yards were quite extensive and it took us quite a while to traverse them. In them were car shops, foundries and all kinds of buildings and things pertaining to railroads. Sacramento is a railroad division, the first out of Frisco, I believe, and we noticed a good deal doing in the way of railroad manufacturing, but we were too hungry to care for such things just then. We got to the passenger train shed which was a large housed-over building of glass and iron, and outside of it came upon a broad street which led into the town. Alongside of this street I noticed a slough with green scum upon it which didn't look good to me for swimming or any other purpose. On the other side of this pond was a big Chinatown and Billy and me thought we might as well see what it looked like. We entered it and saw a young workingman come out of a ten-cent restaurant. Billy stepped up to him and boned him for the price of a square meal. He listened to Billy's hungry tale of woe and coughed up a dime with which we bought two loaves of bread. We then wandered through the streets looking for a retired spot where we could sit down and eat but the streets in that locality were so filthy and the Mongolians so plentiful that we concluded to keep a moving. We came to J and then to K Street, which were broad business thoroughfares full of stores and then we walked along K Street until we saw a shady green park. To it we wandered and found a comfortable rustic seat under the shade of a spreading oak tree. We threw our blankets behind our seat and sat down and blew off steam. We were tired, hot, dusty and hungry. While eating we looked about us. The park wasn't a large one but it was a trim one. The lawns were shaved down close, the winding walks were well-kept, there were flowers to be seen, palm trees, pampas-plume bushes and, oh ye gods! orange trees with oranges on them. "Say Billy," remarked I with my mouth full of bread, "get on to the orange trees, will you?" "Where?" asked Billy, with wide-staring eyes. "Why, right along the walk up that way," said I, pointing. "Sure enough," says Billy, "keep an eye on my grub, will you, while I get a hatful," said he excitedly. "Keep your eyes peeled for cops," admonished I, as Billy rushed off. Billy made the riffle all right and came back with four or five nice looking oranges, which were all he could carry. He remarked that they would do for the present. After stowing the bread and getting a drink of muddy water from a fountain near by, we tackled the oranges and found them dry and tasteless and bitter as gall. "Call them things oranges!" sneered Billy, as he threw his portion away with disgust; why they're bitter as gall. I've bought many a better orange than that in the old country for a penny. "I thought they raised good oranges in California," said I, "but if they're all like these, then I don't want any of them," whereupon I threw mine over my shoulder, too, into the shrubbery behind me. Oh, weren't they bitter; Boo! "Billy, we've been misinformed," said I, "the oranges in California are N. G." "Right you are, Windy, but as they didn't cost us anything we oughtn't to kick." After eating and resting, we took in the town. We found Sacramento to be a sizeable place, containing about fifty thousand people, and the people to us seemed sociable, chatty and friendly. We both liked the place first class, and as we were broke, concluded to try our luck there for awhile. We struck a street cleaning job and held it down for a week. The water used in Sacramento comes from the Sacramento river, we were told, and as it wasn't at all good, we took to beer, as did many others. We were told about a class of people in Sacramento called Native Sons, who monopolized all the good things in the way of jobs. Native Sons are native born Californians who take a great deal of pride in their state and have an organization which they call the Native Sons of the Golden West. The aim of this organization is to beautify California, plant trees, keep up the old missions, preserve the giant redwood trees, forests, and the like. Lots of fellows spoke ill of the Native Sons, but we didn't, for they weren't hurting us any. The native Californians we met in Sacramento to us seemed a genial sort of people who are willing to do strangers or anyone a good turn, if they can. Lots of them were hustlers and full of business and their city surely is a snorter. There are several large parks in Sacramento, fruit and vegetable markets, and any number of swell saloons where a schooner of beer and a free lunch can be had for a nickel. Then there is the Western Hotel, State House and Capitol Hotels, all of which are big ones, and any number of fine stores and lots of broad, well-shaded residence streets, traction cars, electric lights, etc. The city is right up to date. After we had been there about a week, Billy suddenly got a severe attack of the shakes and seemed in a bad way. His lips turned blue, his eyes burned with fever, his teeth rattled like clappers, and his body shook as if he had the jim-jams. I went to a dispensary and had some dope fixed up for him, but it didn't seem to do him any good. I then bought a quart bottle of whiskey, and poured the whole of it down his throat. He took to it as naturally as a kid does to its mother's milk, but every day the poor little cuss got worse. "Let's hike out of this place, Billy," said I; "the best cure for the shakes is to go where there isn't any, for as long as we stay here you'll be sick." Billy, as usual, was willing to do as I said (and I was always willing to do as he said), so we made tracks out of Sacramento in pretty short order. We crossed the Sacramento river, which is about a half a mile across, on a wooden bridge, and it was all Billy could do to walk across it. He was as weak as a kitten and so groggy on his pins that he could hardly stand up. Some people who saw him probably thought he was boozed, but he wasn't, any more than I was. I took hold of his arm and led him along, but the little cuss sat down on a string piece of the bridge and told me to let him die in peace. "Die nothing, you silly little Britisher: you ain't any nearer death than I am," said I. "Sit down and rest yourself and then we'll take another little hike. We'll make a train somewhere on the other side of the river, then ho! for 'Frisco, where our troubles will soon be ended. Brace up, old man, and never say die." I jollied the little cuss along in that way until we got to a little station where we could catch a train and we soon did catch one. We rode on to Davis, which was a junction, and close to the station I saw a large vineyard. I pointed it out to Billy. "Stay where you are, Billy, and I'll get you some grapes," said I. Grapes were ripe just then. I jumped over the fence and secured a big hatful of fine big, flaming tokay grapes. They were delicious and did Billy a world of good. We were now fairly on our way to 'Frisco, the Mecca of all bums. We never saw a bum yet who hadn't been in 'Frisco or who didn't know all about the city. Billy and me had heard about it, but hadn't seen it, and though we were on the tramp, didn't consider ourselves bums. We worked when we could find something to do, but when there was nothing to do, of course we couldn't do it. Work is something a bum will never do. Lots of the bums we met along the road were criminals and some of them pretty desperate ones at that. A few were chaps who were merely traveling to get somewhere and had no money to pay their way. Others had money and would not pay. Some were honest laboring men flitting from point to point in search of work, and not a few were unfortunates who had held high positions and were down and out through drink or misfortune of some sort. There were all sorts beating their way, and there always will be. The professional vag is a low down fellow who has few redeeming qualities. He is agreeable with his chums and that is about all. Neither Billy nor I were low, base born fellows, or criminals, and our parents were respectable, so that is why we took to each other. We were fellow mortals in distress, that is all. We did not think it very wrong to take a chicken if we were very hungry, but that was the extent of our evil doing. We bought our own clothes, blankets, etc., and never broke into a house to steal anything. One outfit that we were with at one time in Utah, one night stole a suit case that was standing on the platform of a railroad station and they divided up its contents among themselves. It consisted of a coat, vest, pants, collars, ties, handkerchiefs, brush, combs, etc., and had we been caught the whole bunch of us might have been pinched, but the gang made tracks in a hurry and got as far away from the scene of the robbery as they could. Some of the characters we met in our travels would have contaminated a saint almost, for their looks, actions and words revealed their disposition. The higher up in crime some of these chaps were, and the abler and more desperate, the more were they admired by some of their fellows. This kind of chaps were generally the captains of the camp, and gave orders that were readily obeyed by the others. One bum was generally commanded by the captain to go and rustle up bread, another was sent for meat, a third for coffee, a fourth for sugar, a fifth for pepper and salt, etc. No matter how things were obtained, if they were obtained no questions were asked. One fellow returned to camp with a quarter of a lamb one night and boastfully told how he had got it. It had hung up outside a butcher shop and he stole it. The captain mumbled his approval in low tones, for he was too mighty to praise loudly or in many words. The ways of hobos are various, and it would take up a great deal of space to describe them in detail. It was along toward sundown when we made a train out of Davis. Davis, like Sacramento, was a pretty hard town to get out of, and the best we could do was to ride the rods. That was easy enough, even for Billy, who was rather delicate at that time. The rods under some freight cars are many and well arranged for riding purposes. They are fairly thick bars of iron set close together, stretching from one side of the car to the other, underneath the body of the car, and though not very often soft, when an overcoat is strung across them, with rolled up blankets for a pillow, they are the next best thing to a berth in a Pullman car. When one side of our body ached, we just turned over to the other side, and it beat riding on the bumpers or brake-beams all hollow. A berth in a Pullman costs about five dollars per night, fare extra, so we were saving lots of money. Beating our way on a railroad we considered no crime at all, for to judge from what I can read in the newspapers, the railroads rob the people, so why shouldn't the people rob them? That's a good argument, ain't it? The measly old train must have been a way-freight, for she made long stops at every little excuse of a town she came to. About ten o'clock at night she came to a place called Benicia, and there the train was cut in two, so I hopped off to see what the difficulty was. On both sides and ahead of us was water. I rushed back to Billy and told him to get off in a hurry. "What's the matter?" asked Billy. "There's water all around us, and I guess they're going to carry the cars over on a ferry boat. I suppose our journey for the night will end here." "Not much, Windy," replied Billy; "I want to get to 'Frisco tonight and maybe we can pay our way across on the boat." We walked boldly on a boat that we saw the cars being pulled onto by a locomotive, and when we got near a cabin a ship's officer stepped up to us and wanted to know where we were going. "To 'Frisco," said I. "To 'Frisco?" said he with a grin. "Well, you'll have to pay your way across the ferry on this boat." "What's the fare?" asked Billy. "Seeing that you two are good-looking fellows, I'll only charge you ten cents apiece," said the captain, or officer, jokingly. We both drew a long breath of relief, for we thought the boat was going to 'Frisco and that we'd have to pay a big price. I handed the good-natured officer two dimes for us both and we felt happy once more. The boat wasn't long making the trip, only about ten minutes or so, and on the other side we found no difficulty in making our train again, after she was made up. We held her down until she reached Oakland, which is opposite 'Frisco. There we learned there was one more ferry to cross before we could get into 'Frisco, so Billy and I decided to remain where we were for the night, for it was late. We prowled around until we found an open freight car, and turned in for a snooze. The next morning was a beautiful one, and we were up and out by daylight. The weather wasn't cold, the sun was bright and cheery, but over 'Frisco we could see a sort of fog hanging. It was easy enough to see across the bay of San Francisco, for the distance is only about five miles, but the length of the bay we could not determine, for it stretched further than the eye could reach. We noticed an island in the bay not far from Oakland, and from Oakland a long wharf extended far out into the harbor, maybe a mile or so. We walked along this wharf until we came to a big train-shed and ferry house combined, where we coughed up two more dimes and got upon a large ferry-boat. As it was very early in the morning, very few passengers were on the boat. We walked to the front of the boat and drank in the delicious morning breeze. The ferry-boat was as large and fine a one as I had ever seen. It was a double-decker with large cabins below and aloft, and with runways for vehicles between. The cabins were very spacious and handsomely fitted up. At about half past five the boat started on her way across, and now we were making a straight shoot for 'Frisco. Talking of 'Frisco, by the way, permit me to say a word about the name. The people of San Francisco don't like to have their city called 'Frisco, but prefer to have it called by its full title. They think the abbreviation is a slur. I can't see it in that light. 'Frisco is short and sweet and fills the bill; life is too short to call it San Francisco. The ride across the bay was fine and lasted about half an hour. We passed an island which someone told us was Goat Island, and Billy and me wondered whether there were any billies or nannies on it. We didn't get close enough to see any. Further on we saw another island which was hilly like Goat Island. It was called Alcatraz. It contained an army post and was fortified. It looked formidable, we thought. Not very far away, and straight out, was the Golden Gate, which had no gates near it that we could see, but just two headlands about a mile or so apart. Outside of the Golden Gate is the Pacific Ocean. We were now nearing 'Frisco, which lay right ahead of us. Nothing but steep hills could we see. They were built up compactly with houses. As we got close to the shore we saw plenty of level streets and wharves, and alongside of the wharves, ships. We steered straight for a tall tower on which there was a huge clock, which told us the time--six o'clock. We entered the ferry slip, moored fast and soon set foot in 'Frisco. CHAPTER II. 'FRISCO. Our first glimpse of 'Frisco made us like the place. Near the ferry slip were eating joints by the bushel, more saloons than you could shake a stick at, sailors' boarding houses, fruit stands containing fruit that made our teeth water; oyster-houses, lodging-houses--in fact there was everything there to make a fellow feel right at home. 'Frisco is all right and everyone who has been there will tell you so. What she ain't got ain't worth having. Every bum that I ever saw spoke well of the town and gave it a good name. It is a paradise for grafters. You can get as good a meal there for ten cents as you will have to pay double for anywhere else. Fruit is fine, plentiful and cheap; vegetables are enormous in size and don't cost anything, hardly; any and every kind of fish is there; meats are wonderful to behold, and not dear; and say, it's an all-around paradise, sure enough. Every kind of people can be found there--Greasers, Greeks, Scandinavians, Spanish, Turks, Armenians, Hebrews, Italians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, negroes and all sorts. It is a vast international city. Bums are there in unlimited quantities, any number of criminals, bunco-men, "chippies" till you can't rest, highbinders by the score up in Chinatown, and lots of bad people. The town is noted for being pretty lively. It surely is wide open and you can sit in a little game at any time. Californians in particular and Westerners generally take to gambling as naturally as a darky does to watermelons and pork chops. The 'Frisco gambling houses are never closed. Efforts have been made to close them but they were futile. Might as well try to sweep back the ocean with a broom. There are lots of good people in 'Frisco, but the bad ones are more than numerous. I think 'Frisco is about the liveliest, dizziest place on the continent today, of its size. It has more restaurants, saloons, theaters, dance halls, pull-in-and-drag-out places, groceries with saloon attachments to them, than any place I ever struck. Money is plentiful, easy to obtain and is spent lavishly. A dollar seems less to a Californian than a dime to an Easterner. He will let it go quicker and think less of it. If he goes into a restaurant or saloon and buys a drink or meal which does not suit him, he pays the price and makes no kick, but don't go there again. He don't believe in kicking. He was not brought up that way. He will lose his money at the races and try his luck again. "Better luck next time," says he, and his friends to him. He will take his girl out and blow in his money for her on the very best of everything. The best theater, the best wine supper are none too good for his girl. What if he does go broke, there's plenty more money to be had. Money is no object to a 'Friscoite. Billy and I weren't in 'Frisco long before we got onto these things. Californians are sociable and will talk to anyone. Billy concluded to live and die there, the place suited him so well. Work was plentiful, wages were high, and the working hours few. Billy said it beat the old country all hollow. Ha'-pennies or tup-pennies didn't go here; the least money used was nickels and dimes. Nothing could be purchased for less than a nickel (five cents) for even a newspaper of any kind cost that much. No wonder the newsboys could shoot craps or play the races. Even the servant girls gambled in something or other. 'Frisco is all right. Bet your sweet life! The rest of America ain't in it with her. Lots of Britishers live there, too; that is why Billy liked it so well. Everyone who ain't sick or got the belly ache, or some other trouble, likes 'Frisco. As regards climate! They have it in 'Frisco. About sixty degrees by the thermometer all the year round. No snow, ice, cyclones or mosquitoes; but bed-bugs, fleas, earthquakes and fogs. As for fleas, they are thick in 'Frisco and mighty troublesome. When you see a lady or gent pinch his or her leg that means a bite--flea. As 'Frisco is built on a sandy peninsula, that may be the reason why fleas are so plentiful, for it is said they like sandy spots. Billy and I had a little money which we earned in Sacramento, so we concluded that the first thing to do was to get a square meal. We sought out a likely looking restaurant along the water front where a good meal could be had for ten cents and in we went. I ordered a steak and Billy ordered mutton chops; Billy wanted tea and I wanted coffee. Each of us had a bowl of mush first, then potatoes, bread and butter, hot cakes, tea or coffee, and meat. More than we could eat was put before us and I had a horse-like appetite. Billy was a little off his feed. The meal was as good as it was cheap. The next thing to be done was to hunt up a lodging place. There were any number of them in the vicinity, and we soon found a joint where the two of us could room together for a dollar and a half per week. The place was over a saloon, and though it wasn't high-toned, it seemed neat enough. The next event on the program was sight-seeing. We left our things under lock and key in our room and leisurely strolled along the water front to see what we could see. While strolling along the street facing the wharves, we were passing a clothing store when a Hebrew gentleman stepped out and asked us if we wanted to buy a suit of clothes. We told him no, but he didn't seem to want to take "no" for an answer. "Shentlemens, I got some mighty fine clothes inside and I'll sell them very cheap." "Ain't got no money, today," said I, as we tried to pass on. "Don't be in der hurry," said the Hebrew gentleman; "come in and take a look, it won't cost you noddings." I was for moving on, but Billy said, "What's the harm? Let's go in and see what he's got." In we went, slowly and cautiously, but we knew the old Jew couldn't rob us in open daylight. "What size do you wear?" asked he of Billy. "Damfino," says Billy; "I didn't come in to buy any clothes today." "Let me measure you," says the Israelite, "I got some clothes here that will make your eyes water when you see dem." Billy stood up and let his measure be taken. This done, the vender of clothes made an inspection of the clothing-piles, calling out to Jakie in a back room to come forth and assist. Jakie appeared, and seemed a husky chap of twenty-five or so. Jakie had been eating his breakfast. The two storekeepers went through the clothing piles. "Aha!" triumphantly exclaimed the old Hebrew. "I've got a fine suit here. Dey'll make you look like a gentleman. Try 'em on," turning to Billy. He brought forth the clothes where Billy could examine them, but after examination Billy shook his head. "You don't like 'em?" exclaimed the old gent; "what's de matter with 'em?" "Oh, I don't fancy that kind of cloth," said Billy. It looked like gray blotting paper. "What kind do you like?" asked the Hebrew, rather aggressively. "Oh, I don't know," answered Billy. The Jew was getting mad, but he brought forth another suit after a short search. "Here is something fine; you kin wear 'em for efery day or Sunday." Billy examined the clothes, but shook his head. "Dry 'em on! Dry 'em on! You'll see they'll fid you like der paper on der vall!" "What's the use trying 'em on?" said Billy, quietly; "I don't like 'em and they wouldn't fit me anyway." "Not like 'em!" exclaimed the now thoroughly enraged clothing merchant; "I don't think you want to buy no clothes at all; you couldn't get a finer suit of clothes in San Francisco, and look at der price, too; only ten dollars, so hellup me Isaac!" "The price is all right, but I don't like the cut of the clothes," said Billy. "You don't like der style?" The angry man now got the thought through his noddle that Billy wasn't going to buy any clothes, whereupon he grew furious. "What you come in here for, you dirty tramp. Get out of here, or I trow you out." Here I stepped up and told the miserable duffer what I thought of him. I expected there was going to be a knock down and drag out scene, but as there were two of us, the two Israelites thought better of it than to tackle us. The young feller hadn't said a word, but the old man was mad clear through. If he had been younger I would have swiped him one just for luck. We got out of the place all right, the old man and I telling each other pretty loud what we thought of each other. I told Billy he ought not to have gone in there at all for he didn't intend to buy any clothes. "He wanted me to go in, didn't he, whether I wanted to or not?" asked Billy. "Of course, he did. You should have given him a kick in the rump and skipped out. That's what I would have done." "I'm glad it didn't end in a row. We might have got into trouble," concluded Billy. We strolled along the wharves to see the shipping. The ferry-house at the foot of Market Street is a huge granite building (with a lofty clock-tower on top) wherein are to be found the various ticket offices of the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, the North Shore, California & North Western and other railroads. Up stairs in the second story is an extensive horticultural exhibit, where are displayed the products of California; there are the offices of various railroad and other officials, there, too. To take a train on any railroad one must cross the bay on a ferry-boat. Each railroad line has its own line of ferry-boats and slips. One line of boats crosses to Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley; another to Tiburon; a third to Sausalito; a fourth to Point Richmond, etc. Every boat is a fine one and those of the Santa Fe Railroad plying to Point Richmond are all painted yellow. The traffic at the ferry building is considerable at all hours of the day and night. The next wharf, which is also a covered one like the ferry-house, is the landing-place of the Stockton steamboats. There are two lines of these boats plying between 'Frisco and Stockton, and they are rivals. The distance between Stockton and 'Frisco by water is about one hundred miles, yet the fare is only fifty cents. There are sleeping berths aboard, if one cares to use them, at fifty cents each, and meals may be had for twenty-five cents. Fifty cents in Western lingo is called four bits, and twenty-five cents, two bits. A dime is a short bit and fifteen cents a long bit; six bits is seventy-five cents, and a dollar is simply called a dollar. A few of the wharves we noticed were roofed over, but some were not. The Folsom Street Wharf is devoted to the United States Army transport service, and a huge transport ship going to Manila and other eastern countries can be seen there at any time, almost. No one is allowed on this wharf, except on business. As we hadn't any particular business on this wharf we didn't care to go upon it. There was a watchman at the gate. At a wharf or two from this one all the whaling vessels dock, and 'Frisco today is the greatest whaling port in America, we were told. There was one whaling vessel there at the time, but she didn't look good to us. She was short, squat, black and grimy, and smelled loudly of oil. Billy and I concluded we wouldn't care to sail in such a ship for a hundred dollars per month. Near by was a long uncovered wharf which extended quite a way out into the water. At either side of it were moored big deep-sea going vessels. One was the Dumbarton, of Glasgow, another the Selkirk, a third the Necker--all foreigners. The Selkirk was British, and Billy's heart warmed to her. When he saw an English flag flying on one of the masts tears came to his eyes and he got homesick. He walked up the gang-plank and wanted to go on board, but a sailor on deck told him there was no admittance. Billy marched down again much crestfallen. There are lots of evil characters in 'Frisco, so that is why the mariners are wary. We slowly sauntered along the wharf, and at a string piece at the end of it we came across other idlers, several of whom were engaged in fishing. We saw several young sharks pulled up and several other kinds of fish that we didn't know the names of. After watching the fishing for a while we moved on and went into some of the side streets. They were full of saloons, some of which were fitted up very handsomely with plate-glass, fine woodwork, marble floors and elaborate bars with free lunch counter. Other saloons were mere groggeries in which we could see and hear sailors and longshoremen singing and dancing. Steam beer and lager was five cents a glass and whiskey ten cents. Sailors' boarding-houses were numerous in these localities, as were hotels, stores of all kinds, ship-outfitting shops, lumber yards, coal offices, foundries, iron works and the like. We now strolled up Market Street, which is the main thoroughfare of 'Frisco. It is a broad street, flanked on either side by wholesale and retail commercial establishments, high-toned saloons and restaurants. Many street car lines traverse this street by means of cables, and there are one or two horse-car lines. The street was a lively one, and thronged with people and vehicles. Billy and I had heard a great deal about the Golden Gate Park, the Cliff House, the Seal Rocks and the Sutro Baths, so we concluded to take a little jaunt out that way to see what those places were like. The first things we wanted to see were the seals. We boarded a street-car running out to the Cliff House, and found the ride a long and interesting one. The distance was many miles and the fare only five cents. There was much to be seen. Long stretches of unfamiliar streets rolled by, residence and business sections, strange looking houses, hills and valleys, and the like. The air was wonderfully balmy and bracing and not a bit cold. The car whirled us along very rapidly and revealed to us a great deal of Golden Gate Park, and further on lofty tree-covered hills, bare sand hills, and a very extensive public building of some sort which was perched on a tree clad hillside, and then it skimmed along parallel with the ocean. We saw no ships on the ocean, but it was a grand sight nevertheless. We rushed by a life-saving station at railroad speed, which we regretted, for we should like to have seen more of it, and after riding about a mile or so more, finally stopped alongside a shed, which was the end of the car line. Here we hopped off with the rest of the crowd, and walked along a wooden sidewalk which was laid over the sands. Two or three restaurants and saloons were to be seen in the vicinity, and about a half dozen booths. There was a picture gallery or two, and fruit and peanut stands. We bought some candy and peanuts to keep from getting hungry, and then followed the crowd to the beach. We walked along the beach and then up a hill leading to the Cliff House. The views along this road were fine. We came to the Cliff House and saw it was nothing more nor less than a large hotel built on a cliff. It looked pretty high-toned to us, so me and Billy hesitated about going in. "They'll soak us when we get in there, Windy," warned Billy. "Nary time, Billy," retorted I. "We'll go in and if they try to hold us up we'll skip." "All right, then; let's try our luck," said Billy. In we went, and saw a barroom, which we didn't enter. Further on was a glass covered porch, along which were disposed tables and chairs, and which invited us to sit down and have something. We were not hungry or thirsty just then, so we kept a-walking, and through an open window facing the sea we saw some tall rocks in the water, about a quarter of a mile distant, upon which were a whole lot of seals that were barking to beat the band. "There's the seals, Billy, large as life, sure enough," remarked I. Billy stared. "I'll be blowed if they ain't cheeky beggars," said he, with a face full of astonishment. "It's a wonder they'd come so near to the shore." Some of the animals were snoozing on the rocks, others were crawling up the rocky sides of the islet, a few were bellowing, and the whole place seemed covered with them. A wonderful sight it was! We looked until we grew tired, and I wanted to drag Billy away, but he didn't seem to want to go. "There's other things to be seen, Billy," said I; "we can't stay here all day." Billy tore himself away reluctantly and then we wandered over to the Sutro Heights, which is a tall hill with fine and extensive gardens upon it. From this hill a fine view of the ocean may be obtained. There are fine drives in these gardens bordered with flowers, shady walks, statues, fountains, rustic arbors and seats, cosy niches where one could sit and view the ocean, roads built terrace-like upon the cliffs, and other very pretty features. A lovely spot indeed, it was. It was built by Mr. Adolph Sutro, a millionaire. It was free to all. We walked in the gardens until we grew tired, and then sat down and contemplated the ocean. Afterward we strolled toward Golden Gate Park and inspected it. It was close by and we found it a very extensive one. It seemed endless, indeed, to us, for long before we reached an entrance where we could take a car, we were dead tired. We took another route going cityward, for we wanted to see as much of the city as we could. The more we saw of 'Frisco, the better we liked it. It must be seen to be appreciated. We reached Market Street all right, and then we knew where we were. We strolled down toward the ferry-house, near which we knew our lodging-house to be, and after having a good supper, we went to our room to lay off until evening, when there would be more sight-seeing. "What do you think of 'Frisco, Windy?" asked Billy. "Suits me to a T, Billy. Believe I'll camp here for a while." "Same here, Windy. I never struck a place I like better. I think a fellow can get on here. I'm going to try it, anyway." "I'm with you, Billy," said I. "Where'll we go this evening?" "I've heard a lot about Chiney town. Suppose we go there." "Good idea! Let's take it in." Accordingly, about eight o'clock that evening we strolled forth, bent on seeing 'Frisco by gaslight. The streets were well lighted, and we found no difficulty in moving about. By making inquiries we readily found our way to the Mongolian district. What we saw there filled us with amazement. Street after street we saw (and long ones at that) inhabited solely by slanty-eyed Asiatics. There were thousands of them, and it seemed to us that we were transplanted into a Chinese city. All kinds of Chinese establishments were located in this quarter; barber shops, drug stores, furnishing goods stores, butcher shops, cigar manufacturing establishments, restaurants (chop suey), temples, theaters, opium joints in back alleys and basements, street venders who sold fruits, street cobblers, open air fortune tellers, newspapers, bookbinderies, vegetable stores, and not a few high-class curio establishments. Any number of Chinese children were noisily playing in the streets, Chinese women were walking about the streets and all over the quarter was an oriental atmosphere. It made us feel mighty foreign-like. Billy wanted to know whether he was in Asia or America, and I told him Asia. The Chinese women and children interested us considerably. The women were habited in loose flowing robes and trousers, and their lips and faces were painted scarlet. Their hair was done up in thick folds, with long golden pins stuck through them. They were mighty gaudy, I thought. The kids were noisy but interesting. They played all kinds of games like white children. Of course the games they played were Chinese, and what kind of games they were, I don't know. The articles of food and wear displayed were very curious. So were the books, photographs, etc. Billy and I took in the sights, and felt mighty interested in it all. It was better than a circus to us. At about ten o'clock we meandered homeward. We talked late that night about what we had seen, and it was after midnight before we fell asleep. Billy was unaccountably restless that night and kept a-tossing and a-rolling. He kept this up so long that finally I got huffy and asked him what the trouble was. He kept quiet for a while but suddenly he rose up and said he'd be ---- if he didn't think there were bugs in the bed. I felt a bite or two myself, but didn't mind it. "I'm going to get up and see what's in this bed," said Billy. He got up, lit a candle, and I hopped out too, so as to give him a chance to examine things. Billy threw back the clothes and saw three or four good-sized fleas hopping about and trying to escape to a safe shelter. We both went for them bodily, but they were too swift for us. We did a pile of cussing and swearing just then, but the fleas were probably laughing at us from some safe retreat. We couldn't catch a one of them. We went to bed again and I slept soundly, but Billy put in a bad night. I told Billy the next morning he oughtn't to mind such trifling things as fleas. "Trifles, are they?" snorted he, and showed me his bare white skin, which was all eaten up. "Look at that; call them trifles?" "What are you going to do about it, Billy?" inquired I. "Do?" retorted he, with disgust, "why, grin and bear it, of course; what else can I do; but those bites itch like blazes." Billy had to do what all 'Frisco people do when they are bitten--grin and bear it, or cuss and scratch. The 'Frisco fleas sure are lively, and the best way to catch them is to wet your finger and bear down on them suddenly. They'll wiggle away from a dry finger. The next morning was a fine one, balmy and sunny. We arose, dressed, breakfasted, and then felt happy. "How are we going to put in the day, Windy?" asked Billy, after we emerged from a restaurant and stood picking our teeth in front of the place. "Blest if I know," responded I. "Suppose we put it in sight-seeing?" "I'll go you," said Billy. "We haven't seen much of 'Frisco yet. Suppose we take a stroll up Market Street and see what there is to see up that way." Accordingly, up Market Street we leisurely strolled, taking in the sights by the wayside. Market Street, as I said before, is the main thoroughfare of 'Frisco, and is a broad one. The sidewalks are wide enough for a dozen or more people to walk abreast along them and the driveway in the middle of the street contains two or three sets of street-car tracks, and sufficient room on either side for vehicles. The lower portion of the street, toward the ferry-house, is taken up with wholesale business establishments, and the upper portion toward which we were now walking contains retail shops, high-class saloons, restaurants, newspaper buildings, sky-scrapers, banks, department stores, etc. We came to Market and Third Street, and turned down Third Street. It, too, was rather a broad thoroughfare, but not nearly so wide as Market Street. It wasn't high-toned like Market Street, nor were the buildings on it of a high class, for they were mostly of frame, one and two stories in height. The ground floors of these buildings were used as stores and the upper portions as dwellings. Fruit, fish and vegetable stores abounded, and saloons were more than numerous. The size and varieties of the fruit, fish and vegetables in the stores pleased the eye. Fine crabs and clams were there, but the California oysters seemed small. We stepped into a saloon called "The Whale," where a fine free lunch was set out on a side table. There were huge dishes of cheese on the table, tripe, various kinds of sausage sliced up thin, pickled tongue, radishes, cold slaw, pickles, sliced tomatoes and big trays of bread of various kinds. The layout was generous. Having had breakfast but a short time before, all these dainties did not tempt us, but we sat down for awhile and indulged in a smoke, in the meanwhile observing the ways of the patrons of the place. Some seedy looking bums were lined up against the bar chinning whilst others were sipping beer and paying their best respects to the lunch counter. They were a dirty lot, and if some of them weren't hobos, I miss my guess. We didn't remain in the place long, but strolled into a similar establishment further on. In one saloon we noticed a sign over the lunch counter which informed the hungry one to-- "Please regulate your appetite according to your thirst; this is not a restaurant." Notwithstanding the gentle hint conveyed on the sign, the place did a roaring trade, for the liquids as well as the solids were excellent. Beginning from Market and running parallel with Market were Mission, Howard, Folsom, Bryant, Brannan, Bluxome, Townsend, Channel and other streets. Nearly all of them were broad, but a few were narrow, such as Stevenson, Jessie, Minna, Natoma, Tehama, etc., being hardly more than alleys. This was the poorer residence section, inhabited by the working classes. Some of the alleys were tough and contained cheap lodging-houses wherein dwelt many a hard case and criminal. We walked down Third Street as far as the railroad depot and saw lots of things to interest us. All the goods displayed in the store windows seemed dirt cheap. How they did tempt us, but as we were not overburdened with wealth just then we didn't feel like buying. Silk pocket handkerchiefs, dandy hats, elegant trousers, mouth harmonicas, pistols, knives, razors, accordions were there in great variety. Why were we born poor? Had we been rich we would have blowed ourselves for fair. The display was too tempting. We walked to Fourth Street, which is the next one to Third, and then slowly sauntered up toward Market again. The blocks along Third and Fourth Streets were long ones, and from Market Street down to the railroad depot the distance is a mile or more. But we were not tired, so on we kept. Fourth Street was about like Third Street, and afforded many interesting sights. Billy and me liked everything we saw. When we finally reached Market Street again we crossed it and took in another quarter of the city. Where we had been was called south of Market; so this must be north of Market. We didn't like it half as well as we did south of Market. Here were pretentious shops and restaurants, and a fine class of dwellings, but even here the buildings were all of wood and hardly two were alike. In this quarter is located what is called "The Tenderloin," which means gambling joints, fast houses and the like. We, being strangers, could not locate them. It was now nearing noon and as we had become hungry, we concluded to step into a saloon to have a beer and a free lunch, but the free lunch establishments in that neighborhood seemed few and far between. Some saloons had signs on them which stated that free clam chowder, beef stew, roasted clams, or a ham sandwich with every drink was to be had today, but those were not the kind of a place we were after. We were looking for some place like "The Whale," but couldn't find one. We finally got tired of hunting for such a place, and stepped into a ten-cent restaurant, where we had a bum meal. After dining we strolled back to our lodging-house, where we laid off the rest of the day. "What'll it be tonight; a ten-cent show or Chinatown once more?" "A ten-cent show," answered Billy; "we did Chinatown last night, and can do it again some other night, so let's take in a show." Accordingly we went to a fine big theater that evening where the prices ranged from ten to fifty cents, and went up to "nigger heaven" (price ten cents), from whence we saw a pretty fair variety show. The show consisted of singing, dancing, moving pictures, a vaudeville play, negro act, monologue speaker and an acrobatic act. The performance lasted about two hours. The negro act made Billy laugh until he nearly grew sick, and we both enjoyed ourselves hugely. One singer, an Australian gentleman, sang the "Holy City," and he sang it so well that he was recalled many times. The little vaudeville play was good, and so were the moving pictures. It was about ten o'clock when the play let out, and it was after midnight when Billy and I turned in. We continued our sightseeing tour about a week and saw about all worth seeing of 'Frisco, and then as funds began to run low, we concluded it was about time for us to look for work. I struck a job as helper in a foundry the very next day, but Billy was not so fortunate. He did not find a job for several days. Of course I went "snucks" with him when he wasn't working, and saw to it that he had a bed to sleep in and something to eat, for he would have done as much for me. Billy struck a job a few days afterward and it was one that seemed to please him mightily. It was in a swell hotel run by an Englishman and Billy was installed as pantryman. His duties were to take good care of and clean the glassware and silverware. The job was an easy one, with the pay fairly good. Billy said it was like getting money from home. He worked from seven o'clock in the morning until eight at night, and had three hours off in the afternoon. The waiters took a shine to him, for they, like himself, were English, and brought him all kinds of good things to eat in the pantry, which was his headquarters. They brought him oysters, roast fowl of various kinds, game, ice cream, water ices, plum pudding, the choicest of wines, etc., and were sociable enough to help Billy eat and drink these things. No one molested them so long as they did their work, for the cast-off victuals would have gone into the swill-barrel, anyway. Billy was in clover and had the best opportunity in the world to grow stout on "the fat of the land." I was glad to know that he was getting along so well for he sure was a true and steady little pard. One night, several weeks after this, when we were in our room chinning, I remarked to Billy: "Say, Billy, you have told me so much about the old country that I've a notion to go there." Billy looked at me keenly to see if I was joking, but I wasn't. "I mean it, Billy," said I. "I've always had a notion that I'd like to see the old country, and if you can get along here I guess I can get along over there." "You're way off, Windy," replied Billy, "the old country is different from this, in every way." "In what way." "Why, you can't beat your way over there as you can here, and you couldn't earn as much there in a week as you can here in a day. And the ways of people are different, too. Stay where you are, Windy; that's my advice to you." "You say I can't beat my way in the old country, Billy; why not?" asked I. "You'll get pinched the first thing, if you try it. In the first place there are no railroad trains running across to Europe, so how are you going to cross the little duck pond; swim across?" "How do others cross it; can't I ride over in a boat?" "Of course you can but it will cost you lots of money, and where are you going to get it?" "What's the matter with earning it or getting a job on a steamer; didn't you do it?" "Of course I did; but the steamship companies hire their help on the other side of the ocean, not on this side." "Go on, Billy; you are giving me a fairy tale." "No, I'm not," earnestly responded Billy; "it's true as preaching." I doubted just the same. "You say I can't beat my way when I get across to Europe; why not?" "Because they won't let you. The towns are close together, for the country is small, and if you beat your way on a train you'd be spotted before you traveled ten miles. And another thing, there are no brake-beams on the other side, no blind baggage and no bumpers, so where are you going to ride? And another thing, too; the railway cars over there are totally different from those here. The coaches are different, the engines are different, the freight cars are different; everything is so different," said Billy with a reminiscent smile. "Go on, Billy; you're only talking to hear yourself talk," said I, thinking he was romancing. "You say, Billy," continued I, "that the ways of the people are different over there; in what way?" "In every way. I couldn't begin to explain it all to you, if I tried six months." "They talk English over there, don't they? Can't I talk English?" "Of course you can," laughed Billy; "but their language is different from yours and so are their ways. Their victuals are different; their dress, their politics--" "Cut out the politics, Billy; I ain't going over there to run for office. They must be a queer lot on the other side of the pond to judge from what you say." "Not a bit queer," warmly responded Billy. "They are just different, that is all. We will suppose you are over there, Windy. What will you do?" "Do the Britishers, of course; what else?" "Better stay at home and do your own countrymen. You'll find it easier," gravely admonished Billy. "You are on your own ground and know the country and the ways of the people. You'd have a hard time of it over there; mind now, I'm giving it to you straight. I don't think you're serious about going." "Serious and sober as a judge, Billy. I've been thinking about this thing for a long time. Let me tell you something else, Billy, that I haven't told you before. I intend to keep a diary when I get on the other side and write down everything I see worth noting." "The hell you are," profanely responded Billy; "what are you going to do with it after it is written down?" "Have it printed in a book," calmly responded I. Billy regarded me intently, as a dog does a human being whom he is trying to understand and cannot, and then when the full force of my revelation struck him he dropped on the bed and laughed and laughed until I thought he'd split his sides. "What's tickling you, Billy?" asked I, grinning, for his antics made me laugh. "You--you--" here he went off into another fit. "_You_ write a book? Say, Windy, I've been traveling with you a long while but I never suspected you were touched in the upper story." "No more touched than you are, Billy," said I indignantly. Billy rose up. "So you're going to write a book, eh?" asked Billy, still laughing. "Do you know anything about grammar, geography or composition?" "You bet I do, Billy; I was pretty fair at composition when I was at school, but I always hated grammar and don't know much about it." "That settles it," said Billy. "How could you write a book if you don't know anything about grammar?" "That stumps me, Billy, but I guess the printer can help me out." "The printer ain't paid for doing that sort of thing; he won't help you out." "The h---- he won't," responded I, angrily; "that's what he's paid for, isn't it?" "I don't think," said Billy. "Say, Windy, you're clean off. Better turn in and sleep over it." "Sleep over nothing," quickly retorted I; "am I the first man who ever wrote a book?" "No, you ain't the first, nor the last damn fool who has tried it." "Now, see here, Billy," said I, getting heated, "let me tell you something. I've read a whole lot of books in my time, and a good many of them weren't worth hell room. I've read detective stories that were written by fellows that didn't know anything about the detective business. Look at all the blood-and-thunder novels will you, that are turned out every year by the hundred. Not a word in them is true, yet lots of people read them. Why? Because they like them. See what kids read, will you? All about cowboys, Indians, scalping, buffalo hunting, the Wild West, etc. After the kids read such books they get loony and want to go on scalping expeditions themselves, so they steal money, run away from home, buy scalping knives, pistols and ammunition, and play hell generally. My book ain't that kind. When I write a book it will contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." "So help you ----," irreverently put in Billy. "No foolishness, Billy; I'm serious." "Oh, you are, are you?" answered Billy; "well, let's hear something serious, then." "Did you ever read the life of the James boys, Billy?" "No, I never did? Who were they?" "They were outlaws and robbers, and the book I read about them was the most interesting one I ever read. It was all facts, solid facts, and no nonsense about it. That's what I want to write, solid facts." "About the James boys?" "No, you little ignoramus; about what I see in the old country." "There are many smarter men than you are that have written books about the old country, Windy, and some of these writers were English and some were American. Are you going to go in opposition to them?" "Opposition your grandmother! Haven't I got as good a right to write a book as anyone else?" "Who says you haven't? After you get the book printed who's going to sell it for you; going around peddling it?" "No, I expect the printer to print what I write, and buy the book from me." "Who gets all the money from the sale of the book?" asked Billy, with a huge grin on his face. "Why, I expect that the printer and me'll go snucks. He gets half for printing it, and I get half for writing it." "Oh, that's the game, is it? I think you'll have a sweet time of it finding a printer on that sort of a deal." "Don't you think that would be a fair divvy?" "No, the printer is taking all the chances and you're taking none. He puts up the dough and what do you put up?" "My time and ability." "Your _ability_!" shouted Billy as he went off into a spasm; "well, you've got lots of time, but I never know'd you had any ability." "Laugh away, old boy," said I, considerably nettled; "it takes ability to write a book." "Of course it does," said Billy, meaningly. "Maybe you think I ain't got any?" "Maybe you have, but you'll have to show me." "Well, Billy," said I, "we've discussed this matter long enough; suppose we go to bed." Nothing more was said on the subject that night. The next morning we went to our separate jobs as usual, and I did a good deal of thinking during the day over some of the information Billy had given me about the old country. It made me waver at times about going, but at other times it did not. That night, after we came home from work, Billy and me took a stroll as usual through Chinatown, and every time we went through it we found something new to see. The streets were always thronged with celestials and sightseers, the stores of the Chinese and Japanese were all lit up, the queer goods in the windows still riveted our attention and the ways of the orientals proved a source of never-ending interest to us. There were several Chinese theaters in the quarter, too, in which the beating of gongs and the "high-toned" singing could plainly be heard by us, but as the admission fees to these theaters to the "Melican man" was fifty cents, we didn't go in. Some of the plays lasted about six weeks. We were strolling along quietly enjoying ourselves, when suddenly Billy banteringly remarked: "By the way, Windy, when are you going to take that little flier across the duck-pond?" "Don't know, Billy; haven't decided yet." "What are you going to do with all the money you make out of that book of yourn?" "Never you mind, Billy; I'm going to write the book just the same; don't you worry about that." "I suppose you'll get rich some day, and cut me the first thing. Fellers who write books make lots of money. I suppose you'll buy a mansion on Nob Hill, have a coach and four with a coachman in livery on the box and the regulation flunkey behind. Maybe you'll drive tandem and handle the ribbons yourself?" "Stop roasting me, Billy; let up!" But Billy continued mercilessly; "Of course you'll have a box at the opera, wear a claw hammer coat and a plug hat, put on white kids and take your lady-love to a little supper after the play is over. Be lots of champagne flowing about that time, eh?" "Let up, you darned little Britisher," said I laughing. "Greater things than that have come to pass. I'll cut you, the first thing, Billy." "I knew it. Rich people ain't got any use for their poor friends or relations. "Which bank will you put your money in?" "Haven't decided yet; ain't going to let that worry me." "Maybe you'll fall in love with some girl and get married. When a feller has money he'll do fool things." "The girl I marry will have to be a pretty good looker, and will have to have a little money of her own," responded I. "Of course, Windy; I'm glad to see you've got some sense. After that old country trip yarn of yours I didn't think you had any." "No yarn about it, Billy; I'm going." "Where to?" "To the old country." "When?" "Oh, you're asking me too many questions. Better go to the old country with me, Billy." "Not I, Windy; I've been there and know what it is. I'll never return to it until I'm rich." "Hope that'll be soon, Billy." "So do I, Windy; but it don't look that way now." "Can you blame me for trying to make a stake?" asked I. "Blame you, no; but you'll never make a stake writing a book." "Faint heart never won a fair lady, my boy, and I'm going to try it, if it takes a leg off." "I believe you are serious, Windy; I thought you were kiddin'!" "Kiddin' nothing; I was serious from the go-off." "Well, Windy, old pard, I wish you luck but it don't look to me as if you'd make it. Too big a contract." "Time will tell." We had many another talk on the subject, Billy bantering me every time, for he either couldn't or wouldn't believe I was serious. We had been together so long, that he was loath to believe I would desert him. One evening when I came home from work I informed Billy that I had made up my mind positively to start out on my trip at the end of the week. You should have seen him when I told him this. At first he argued, then, seeing that did no good, he called me all kinds of a fool, and cursed and fumed. He finally told me to go to hades if I wished, for he had no strings on me. He didn't care a tinker's damn how soon I went, or what became of me. He hoped I'd get drowned, or, if not that, then pinched as soon as I set foot on British soil. The little fellow was badly wrought up. I informed him it was my intention to beat my way to New York and that when I got that far, I would plan the next move. I told him also that I didn't believe in crossing a river until I got to it, and that I would find some means of crossing the ocean. He sarcastically advised me again to swim across, but I took no heed. We parted the next morning and I knew Billy felt sore, but he didn't show it. He told me that he should remain in 'Frisco, and that I would find him there when I came back, that is, if I ever came back. "Oh, I'll come back, my boy; never fear." "And mind what I told you about my folks. If you go to London they live only a short way from there, and if you see them tell them all about me." "I'll do it, old pard, and write you everything," responded I. "Good-bye, then, Windy, and don't take in any bad money while you're gone," was Billy's parting bit of advice. I felt bad, too, but didn't show it. I was leaving the true-heartedest little fellow that ever lived, but the best of friends must part sometimes. CHAPTER III. THE JOURNEY OVERLAND. The distance from 'Frisco to New York overland, is over three thousand miles, and by water it is much more than that, but such little trips are a trifle to me, as they are to every well-conditioned wayfarer. I started out happily enough one fine day at dawn to make the long journey and though I did feel a qualm or two the first few days after leaving Billy, the feeling soon wore off. I chose the central route, which is the shortest via Sacramento, Reno, Ogden, Omaha, Chicago, Niagara Falls and New York, and I anticipated having lots of fun along the way. I was out for sight-seeing and adventure and believed I would have a good time. I didn't have any money to speak of, for, though I had worked several months I had saved nothing. Anyway, it wasn't safe to travel hobo style with money, for if anyone suspects you have any, it may be possible that you'll get knocked on the head or murdered outright for it. Such things are a common occurrence. I got as far as Sacramento in good shape and when the freight train I was riding on got to Newcastle, which is a town in the foothills of the Sierra mountains, a long halt was made to attach a number of refrigerator cars to it. These cars were laden with fruit. Had I wished I could have crawled into one of them and made the journey east in ten days, or less, for they are laden with perishable goods and travel as fast, almost, as a passenger train, but I didn't care to travel that way, for the reason that I didn't like it. These refrigerator cars have heavy air-tight doors at the sides which are hermetically sealed when the cars are loaded, making the cars as dark as a pocket. When in them one can't see anything and can hardly turn around. There are no conveniences whatever. One must take a sufficiency of supplies with him to last during the trip in the shape of food and water, and one must go unwashed and unkempt during the journey. Lots of hobos travel that way, and think nothing of it, but I didn't care to do so. It is almost as bad, if not worse, than being in jail, for one can take little or no exercise, and the only light and ventilation afforded is from the roof, where there is an aperture about two feet wide, over which there is a sliding door. This can be shoved up or down, but it is usually locked when the train is en route. The cars must be kept at an even temperature always, and must not be too hot or too cold. A certain number of tons of ice is put into a compartment at either end of the car, which keeps the temperature even. The side doors, as I said, are hermetically closed and sealed. Thus the fruits, meats, vegetables or whatever the car may contain, are kept fresh and sweet. I slipped into one of these loaded cars and had a look around, but one survey was enough for me. I didn't like the prospect at all. Ten days of imprisonment was too much. Any hobo may ride over the Sierra Nevada Mountains as far as Reno without being molested, for it is a rule of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company not to incur their ill-will. Some hobos have been known to set fire to the snow sheds in revenge for being put off a train in the lonely mountains. Fires occur in the snow-sheds every year, but of course it is hard to tell who or what starts a fire. The sheds are of wood and have always had to be rebuilt, for without them the road would be blocked every winter and traffic stopped. There are miles of them and wonderful creations they are. They are roofed over and very strongly built. I held down the freight train until we reached Reno, where I was glad to hop off for rest and refreshment. Refreshments of all kinds are plentiful in Reno. The railroad runs through the main street of the town and the town is a wide open one. Across the track along the main street are restaurants, saloons and gambling houses. The gambling is not done secretly for it is licensed and anyone may play who wishes. One may step into, at least, one of these places from the street, for the gambling room is on the ground floor. It is a handsomely appointed apartment. The floors are of marble, the drinking bar is elaborate, the fittings superb. In front, as you enter, is the bar and behind it a back bar with the finest of glassware. The liquors are of excellent quality. Opposite the bar, near the wall, are faro and crap tables. At the rear of the long apartment is a horseshoe shaped lunch counter, where the best the market affords can be had at reasonable rates. The bar and restaurant are patronized by gamblers and by outsiders who never gamble. Anyone over the age of twenty-one may step inside and play, and no questions are asked. The crap game is interesting. It is played with dice and anyone may throw the dice. The way some fellows throw them would make a horse laugh. Some throw them with a running fire of conversation, their eyes blazing with excitement. Others, like the coons, keep a saying as they throw the dice, "Come seben, come eleben!" "What you doin' dar?" "Roll right dis time for me you son of--" etc., etc. It is interesting to watch the players. Many refined men visit these places and sometimes take a little flyer. These men are quiet, open-handed fellows, who seem to regard their little indulgence in the play as a joke, whether they win or lose. They seem to have plenty of money and don't care--at least one would judge so from their manner. While observing them I thought it must be a fine thing to have plenty of money, so as not to care whether you win or lose. Westerners, as a rule, are free and generous, and seem to be just as ready to spend their money as they are to earn it. Bootblacks, waiters, cooks, newsboys and all sorts of men are always ready and willing to take a chance in the games. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but win or lose they are always ready to try their luck again. Another gaming place I went into was situated on the first floor above the street in a building facing the railroad, and it, too, was palatial. On the ground floor was the saloon and above were the gambling rooms. A pretty tough crowd was in them at the time of my visit and the crowd was so dense it was rather difficult to move about. I was jostled considerably and found it difficult to get near the gaming tables. Craps and roulette were the main games here, too. Fights and shooting scrapes are common in the gambling places, but the Reno officers are alert and fearless, and soon put obstreperous people where the dogs won't bite them. Notwithstanding its gambling and recklessness, Reno is a good business town, and full of orderly, respectable people. There are many wholesale and retail establishments in the town; ice plants, machine shops, breweries, ore reduction works and lumber yards. Besides, it is a great cattle shipping center. Many of the streets are broad and well-shaded, and the Truckee River, in which are any number of speckled beauties in the shape of mountain trout, flows through the town. Surrounding Reno are tall mountains which form a part of the Sierra Nevada range, but they seem bare and lonely. I landed in Reno during the afternoon and steered straight for the Truckee River, as I needed a bath. I quickly espied a sequestered nook under a wagon-bridge on the outskirts of the town, and from the looks of things in the vicinity could tell that it was a hobo camping place. Old tin cans were strewn about, and down the bank near the water was a fireplace made of stones. One lone Wandering Willie was in camp and he greeted me as effusively as if I were a long-lost brother. A hobo can tell another hobo at a glance. "Hello, pardner; how's tricks?" was the greeting of my fellow wayfarer. "Fair to middlin'," responded I. "Where you bound for?" "Just got to Reno; and I am going to hold the town down for a while," said I. I was cautious and didn't want this chance acquaintance to know too much about my affairs. "Where'd you come from?" inquired I. "Me? Oh, I've been hittin' the line all the way from Bloomington, Illinoi', and I'm going to take a flier to the Coast." "You are, hey? I just came from there." "The hell you did; how's things out that way?" "Fine and dandy; ever been there?" "No," laconically answered the chap and began to question me about the Coast. I gave him all the information I could and then told him I was going to take a wash-down. He had just done the same and as he seemed anxious to go to town he soon left me. I stripped and had a glorious bath in the cool, swift-flowing river. The river was neither broad nor very deep but so clear that I could see every stone at the bottom of it. Not a fish could I see but doubtless they were plentiful. After the clean-up I leisurely strolled along the railroad track into town and steered for a restaurant, where I had a good supper for twenty-five cents. I then lit my pipe and strolled about taking in the sights. I remained in Reno a day or two, and did not find time hanging heavy on my hands. There are extensive cattle corrals about half a mile from the town where I put in a whole afternoon watching the loading of cattle into cars. It was better than seeing a circus. A chute ran from the corral to the car to be loaded and the animals were made to walk the plank in great shape. No harm was done them unless they grew obstreperous, in which case there was a great deal of tail twisting done, punching in the ribs with long poles, yelling and shouting, which soon brought a refractory animal to terms. The railroad depot in Reno is a lively spot, too. The S. P. R. R. trains and the Virginia & Truckee Railroad use the same depot, and at train times there is always a sizeable crowd on hand. The Virginia & Truckee road, which goes from Reno to Virginia City, a distance of about sixty miles, is said to be the crookedest road in the country. It winds around bare mountain sides to a great height and is continually going upward. It was built in the early Bonanza mining days when times were flush and is said to have cost a lot of money. It has paid for itself many times over and was a great help to Gold Hill, Carson and Virginia City. Although it has been in existence over a quarter of a century and though it winds over almost inaccessible mountain peaks, not a human life up to the writing of this book (1907) has ever been lost on this road. Indians may ride on the road free, and as they are aware of the fact, hardly a day passes but they may be seen in the smoking car or on the platform of a car taking a little flier to Carson, Virginia City, Washoe, Steamboat Springs or any other place along the line they care to go to. There is a State law in Nevada which permits any Indian to ride free on any railroad. What the object of this law is, I don't know. I noticed that the passenger trains going eastward over the S. P. R. R. leave Reno between eight and nine o'clock at night, so I concluded to beat my way out of town on one of them. I noticed that others did it and that it was easy. All a fellow had to do was to let the train get a good move on, then swing underneath to the rods, or jump the blind baggage. "The blind baggage is good enough for you, Windy," says I to myself. Accordingly, one very fine evening I permitted a passenger train to get a good move on, and then boarded her a little way out, before she began to go too fast. I was onto my job pretty well. I made it all right, but as soon as I swung onto the steps of the blind baggage I found I wasn't the only pebble on the beach for a number of other non-paying passengers were there who must have got on before the train pulled out. There were just seven deadheads on the car, excluding myself, and they were not a bit glad to see me. Seven on the platform of a car is a good many, but eight is one too many; so my fellow voyagers assured me by black looks. They were greasers, every one of them, and cow punchers at that, most likely. I was an American. There was no welcome for me. The greasers jabbered among themselves about me, but what they said I could not understand, for I don't understand Spanish. Finally one of them said to me in fairly good English: "It's too much crowded here; you better jump off." "Jump off while the train is going like this; not much! Jump off yourself and see how you like it," said I angrily. Not only was I angry but apprehensive, for I felt there was going to be trouble. I was not armed and had only a pocket knife with me. Even had I been armed what could I have done against seven men in close quarters? Nothing was said to me for quite a while after that and the train clattered along at a great rate. The cold, swift-rushing night wind blew keenly against us, making the teeth of some of the greasers chatter. They could stand any amount of heat but a little cold made them feel like hunting their holes. After riding along for an hour or so through the bare, cheerless plains of Nevada, the engine whistle blew for the town. The cow-puncher who had addressed me before spoke up and said: "It is more better you get off at the next station." "No, I won't; get off yourself," said I. Before I knew what had happened two of the greasers grabbed me around the throat so I couldn't holler, and two others pulled off my coat, which they threw from the train. The fellow who had spoken to me told me that if I didn't jump off the train as soon as she slacked up they'd throw me off. I knew they would do so when opportunity offered, so off I hopped, mad as blazes. As I didn't want to lose my coat I walked back to get it and I had to walk a mile or so to do so. Luckily, I found my coat not far from the track and after putting it on, I faced eastward again toward the station. It is no joke to hike through an unfamiliar wilderness at night with no habitation or human being in sight or anyways near. The night was a fine one, clear, cold and star-lit, so I managed to walk along the ties without serious mishap. In the sage brush, as I walked along, I could hear the sudden whirr of birds as they flew off startled, and the suddenness of the noise startled me at first for I didn't know what made the noise. But I quickly caught on. In the distance I could hear the melancholy yelp of a coyote which was quickly answered from all points by other animals of the same species. One or two coyotes can make more noise than a pack of wolves or dogs. They are animals of the wolf species and are death to poultry, sheep, little pigs and small animals generally. I got to the little town safe and sound but it must have been after midnight when I reached it, for there wasn't a soul to be seen in the streets and all was quiet. The town was Wadsworth. I walked to the pump-house of the railroad, which was situated along the tracks and where I could hear the pump throbbing, and talked to the engineer, who didn't seem averse to a chat. His vigil was a lonely one, and anything to him was agreeable to vary the monotony. During the course of the conversation I learned that an eastbound freight would be along in a few hours. I made the freight all right by riding the brakes. The train was made up of closed box-cars and there was no other way to ride except on the bumpers. I preferred the brakes. It was pretty cold riding during the early morning hours, but luckily I had my overcoat with me once more, which helped to keep me warm. Beating one's way is a picnic sometimes, but not always. During the summer time there is dust and heat to contend with, according to how one rides, and in winter time there are cold winds, snow and frost. I rode the brakes all night and was glad when day broke. I was quite numbed. The scenery was still the same--plains and alkali. At Lovelock I had time to get a bite of breakfast and a cup of hot coffee, and then the train was off for Humboldt. The distances between towns were great, about a hundred miles or so. Finally the train stopped at Winnemucca, a town which, for short and sweet, is called "Winnemuck" by the knowing ones. At this place I concluded to hop off for a rest. Winnemucca is quite a sizeable town, and is the county seat of some county. It contains about two thousand inhabitants, and used to be as wild and woolly a place as any in the West, but it has tamed down some since. Saloons are plentiful and all drinks are ten cents straight, with no discount for quantity. A pretty good meal can be had for two bits, but short orders and such things as life preservers, sinkers, or a bit of "mystery" with coffee, are all the same price--two bits. I found no place where I could get anything for less. There was a river or creek at the further end of town wherein I wished to bathe, but the water was so intolerably filthy that I deemed it wise to wait until I found a more suitable place along the route. I noticed a bank in Winnemucca and was informed that it had been robbed recently of many thousands of dollars by bandits. Soon after the robbery a trellis-work of structural iron was put up from the money-counters clear to the ceiling with mere slots for the receiving and paying out of money, so that the next set of bandits who call there will have to crawl through mighty small holes to make a raise. The next town along the line which amounted to anything was Elko and I made it that same day on a freight. I found it a pretty little town with good people in it, who treated me well. I learned there were some wonderful natural hot springs about a mile or so from town, so that afternoon I hiked out to see them. I shall never regret having seen them for they are one of nature's wonders. Out in the wilderness, near where they were situated, I came upon an amphitheater of hills, at the base of which was a little lake about 100 yards in diameter. The hills were bare and lonely and near them was no house or habitation. All was wild, lone, still. I climbed down one of these hills to the lake and had a good survey of it. The water was clear and pure as crystal but near the banks were sulphur springs which bubbled up now and then. The water was so hot it was impossible to put a finger in it. I walked around the banks and at one end of the lake there was a hole so deep I couldn't see bottom. This is a crater-hole so deep that bottom has never been found, although it has been sounded to a depth of several thousand feet. The entire place looks like the crater of an extinct volcano. A single glance would lead anyone to suppose so. Indian men, women, boys and girls go to the lake during the warm seasons to bathe, and many a daring buck who has swum across the crater was drowned in it and his body has never been recovered. I needed a bath myself so I disrobed and plunged in. The water was neither too hot nor too cold but half way between the two. It was just right. Where I swam was not in the crater but near it. The water there was part crater water and part sulphur water from the springs. The bath was delicious. The ride eastward from Elko was uneventful. There was nothing to see but bare plains and mountains and a few border towns. The towns were very small, and hardly more than railroad stations. They were composed of a general store or two, several saloons, a blacksmith shop, drug store, bakery, butchershop, barbershop, and that is all. I boarded a freight train at Wells and rode the brakes through the Lucin Cutoff to Ogden. The trains used to run around Salt Lake, but now a trestle has been built through it, which saves many miles. The trestle is forty or fifty miles long, I should judge, and as I clung tightly to my perch on the brakebeam and looked down into the clear blue water through the ties I got kind of dizzy, but met with no disaster. After a long and tedious ride of several hours I reached Ogden, the end of the S. P. line. As funds were low I remained in Ogden several days and went to work. Ogden is in Utah and full of Mormons. It is a beautiful city, surrounded by lofty mountains, the Wasatch range, and contains about 50,000 people. It has a Mormon tabernacle, tithe-house, broad streets, fine stores, elegant public buildings and is quite a railroad center. I happened to discover a Mormon lady who had a wood-pile in her back yard and she was needing a man to chop the wood, so we struck a bargain. I was to receive a dollar and a half per day and my board for my work and was given a room in an outhouse to bunk in. The terms suited me. The board was plentiful and good, and the sleeping quarters comfortable. I never saw a man about the place and wondered whether the lady was married or not. She was old enough to be. I knew she was a Mormon because she told me so, and possibly she was the plural wife of some rich old Mormon. I didn't like to ask too many questions for I might have got fired for being too nosy. The lady was sociable and kind-hearted and treated me well. The Mormons like apples, cider and ladies, and they are an industrious people. The Bible says they can have all the wives they want, but the United States law says they can't have 'em, so what are the poor fellows to do? Sh! They have 'em on the sly. Don't give me away. Can you blame a rich old Mormon for having a big bunch of wives if he can support them? If I had the price I'd have two, at least, one for week days and one for Sundays, but if the mother-in-law is thrown in, I pass. One good healthy mother-in-law of the right sort can make it mighty interesting for a fellow, but a bunch of them; whew! Excuse me! During my stay in Ogden I didn't see any funny business going on, and wouldn't have suspected there was any, but from what I could learn on the outside, there was something doing. I saw lots of rosy-cheeked Mormon girls in the tabernacle one day when I was there, but they behaved just like other girls. The tabernacle is a church and it ain't. It is an immense egg-shaped building arranged very peculiarly, yet it is snug and cosy inside. It can hold thousands of people. It must be seen to be appreciated. I liked Ogden very much and would like to linger there longer but I deemed it best to keep a moving. After leaving Ogden the scenery became interesting. The country is mountainous going eastward, and we struck a place called Weber Canyon, which is a narrow pass between high mountains through which the railroad winds. The mountains were pretty well wooded. In one spot I saw a place called the Devil's Slide, which was made by nature and consists of two long narrow ledges of rocks that begin high up on a mountain side and run down almost to the bottom of the mountain where the car tracks are. These rocks form two continuous lines that run down side by side with a space of several feet between them, and they are rough and raggedy on top. Imagine two rails with about four or five feet of space between them running down a mountain side several hundred feet and then you will have some idea of the formation of the slide. How in the devil the devil rode it, gets me. He must have been pretty broad in the beam, and I would like to have seen him when he performed the act. He must have come down a-flying, for the slide is nearly perpendicular. This kind of scenery, though wild, was a relief from the bare and lonely plains of Nevada, and I appreciated it. A little variety is the spice of life, they say, and after seeing dullness it is nice to see beauty. I was now on the Union Pacific Railroad and was in an empty cattle car, through the slats of which I could see the scenery on both sides of me. During the daytime it was nice, but at night the weather grew cold and the long watches of the night were dreary. A companion then would have been agreeable. I missed little Billy. At a small station in Wyoming called Rock Creek, I was put off the train one afternoon and as I hadn't a dime left, I felt it was incumbent on me to go to work. I saw a bunch of cattle in a corral near the railroad station that had probably been unloaded from a train, and as there were some bull-whackers with them I struck them for a job. "Kin you ride?" asked a chap who looked like the boss. "Ride anything with hair on," replied I. "Ever herd cattle?" asked the boss. "I'm an old hand at the business," answered I. "Where'd you do your herding?" "In California." I never herded cattle in my life, but I could ride all right, and as I didn't consider bull-whacking much of a job, I thought I could hold it down easily. The boss hired me then and there at twenty dollars per month and chuck, and while on the range my bedroom was to be a large one--all Wyoming. It didn't take the cowboys long to get on to the fact that I was a tenderfoot, but as I was a good rider they said nothing. They were a whole-souled, rollicking, devil-may-care set of fellows, and the best they had was none too good for me. They treated me like a lord. They knew, and the boss soon found out that I didn't know any more about roping a steer than a baby did, but as they were not branding cattle just then, that didn't matter so much. I got on to their way of herding quickly enough, and that was all that was necessary just then. I didn't ask where the outfit was bound for, nor did I care much, for all I was after was to earn a few dollars. There were a good many hundred head of cattle in the bunch and many of the them were steers, but there were also many dried-up cows among them and some yearlings. They had all to be herded carefully so they wouldn't stray away, and to accomplish this we had to keep riding around them all day long. At night after feeding, the cattle rested. On dark nights they generally squatted down contentedly and chewed the cud, but on a moonlit night they would keep on their feet and feed. The very first moonlit night I was put on watch I got into trouble. The cattle arose to feed, and do what I would, I could not keep them together. When riding along on one side of the herd to keep them in, a few ignorant brutes on the other side would wander away and at such times some hard riding had to be done to keep them in. I could do it, but I couldn't ride everywhere at once. I did some pretty fast riding and kept yelling and hallooing at the cattle, but one of the brutes got so far away from me that when he saw me coming he raised his tail and bolted outright. By the time I got him in others were scattered far and wide. I now saw that I was helpless, so I went to camp and aroused the sleeping cowboys. They knew instinctively what the trouble was and got out of their warm blankets cussing to beat the band. They mounted their ponies and off we all rode to gather the scattered herd. It was no picnic. There were four of us, and as the cattle had strayed off in all directions, it is easy to imagine what our task was. One of the boys and myself traveled together in one direction and made for an ornery brute that shook his head when we gently told him to "git in there." Off he shot like a rocket with a bellow of defiance, and his tail in the air. "I'll fix the ugly son of--!" yelled my comrade, as he uncoiled his rope from his saddle and got it ready for a throw. His pony was after the steer like a shot, for it knew its business, and got in range in a jiffy. Out flew the rope and settled around the steer's neck. Quick as a flash the steer flew in the air, turned a complete somersault and landed on the turf with a jar that shook the earth. "You will run away, you ----!" exclaimed the irate cowboy. "I guess you won't do it in a hurry again, gol darn your ugly hide." The animal got up meek as a lamb, trembled in every limb, shook his head in a dazed way, and probably wondered what had struck him. We had no trouble with him after that, and made off after the rest. It was long after midnight before all the cattle were rounded up. The boss was mad clear through. The next day he politely told me that I didn't understand my business; that I didn't know any more about herding cattle than a kid; that I had lied to him about being a cowboy and that I had better skip. He cursed me up and down and kept up his abuse so long that I finally got tired of it and fired back. That made matters worse. We soon were at it, tooth and nail. He struck me with his fist and it was a hard blow. I was taller and longer in the reach than he and kept him off from me. The first blow was the only one he struck me, but it was a good one and dazed me for a moment. "I knowed you was a Greaser," yelled he as he danced around me, "and I'm going to put you out of business." "Come on, you--," yelled I. He wasn't in the mix-up at all. I was younger, stronger and longer in the reach than he, and one of the blows I put in was a tremendous one, for it knocked him down and he lay still for awhile. When he got up I knocked him down again. I saw he was my meat. "Now, pay me off, you--, and I'll get out of here pretty darn quick; if you don't, I'll beat the life out of you," yelled I. The cowboys stood by and said nothing. It wasn't their funeral. The boss paid me off and I got out. At Cheyenne, Wyoming, I ran across a gassy little red-headed Hebrew who put me on to a good, money-making scheme. He had a lot of paste-board signs with him on which were neatly printed such things as: "Our trusting department is on the roof; take the elevator"; "Every time you take a drink things look different"; "In God we trust; all others must pay cash"; "We lead; others follow"; "Razors put in order good as new," etc., etc. The young fellow told me that he was beating his way to the Coast and that he sold enough of these signs to pay expenses. He told me also that the signs by the quantity cost him only five cents each, and that he sold them readily for twenty-five cents each. I thought the little chap was lying for I didn't think anyone would pay twenty-five cents for such a sign, but he solemnly assured me on his word of honor that he had no trouble selling them at the price. He further told me that he would sell me a hundred of the signs at cost price, adding that if I bought a hundred of them, he would give me the address of the wholesaler in Omaha where I could obtain all the signs I wanted. The little scheme looked good to me but unfortunately I had only two dollars in my possession. This I offered him for forty signs with the name of the wholesaler thrown in. He accepted. I soon found that the little Israelite had told me the truth, for the signs sold readily for two bits each, though in some places I had to do a deal of talking to sell a sign, and in other places they laughed at me, when I told them the price was twenty-five cents, and offered me ten cents. As I wasn't sure whether I could purchase any more signs at the price I paid for them, I was loath to sell them for ten cents each. When I reached Omaha I found the address of the sign man, and learned that I could buy all the signs I wanted in hundred lots at three cents each. The little cuss had done me after all. I bought a hundred signs and now felt that I had struck a good thing, for I would have to do no more hard work. I sold many of the signs in small towns and cities, and found little difficulty in doing so. No more handouts for yours truly, no more wood-chopping, no more cow-punching. I was a full-fledged merchant and able to hold my own with any of them. It was easier sailing now. The trip from Omaha to Chicago was interesting, but uneventful. At Omaha I crossed the muddy-looking Missouri River on a bridge while riding the bumpers of a freight, but was detected and put off on the other side of the river. That night I did rather a daring thing. Along toward nine o'clock there came along a passenger train and as I had made up my mind to get on to Chicago as fast as I could, I stepped upon the platform of one of the passenger coaches and climbed upon the roof of the car, where I rode along for many a mile. Bye-and-bye, however, the wind became so keen, cold and cutting, and the rush of air so strong, that I became numbed and was obliged to climb down for warmth. I walked boldly into the passenger coach and sat down in a vacant seat near the door. I knew the conductor would not be round again for some time, for he had made his round, so for the present I felt safe. When taking up tickets the conductor of a train usually starts at the front end and moves along to the rear. After his work is ended he will rarely sit down in any of the middle coaches, especially if every seat has an occupant, but he and the brakeman usually go to the smoker and sit down there. I was in the coach next to the smoker, and later on, I saw the conductor coming around again for tickets, I leisurely strolled to the rear platform of the car I was in and climbed on top again. I watched the conductor and waited until he had made his rounds, and then I returned to my seat in the coach. In this way I traveled a long distance. I kept up these tactics for hours, but bye-and-bye I noticed a young woman who was traveling with her husband (a young fellow of about twenty-five), watch me suspiciously. She put her husband on to my little racket, and he, most likely, told the conductor, who laid a cute little trap to catch me. After he had been through all the coaches on his next round he went to the smoker, as usual, but when he came to the rear coach I was in he locked the rear door behind him. It was through this door I had been making my exit. He then passed slowly through the train again from the front looking at the hat checks. When I saw him coming and the brakeman following in the rear I tried the usual tactics but found the door locked. I was trapped. The conductor came up to me and seeing no hat-check asked me for my ticket. I pretended to look for it, but couldn't find it. The conductor eyed me coldly and told me to follow him to the baggage car. The brakeman acted as a rear guard. When we stepped into the baggage car the conductor asked me a few questions which to him did not seem satisfactory, whereupon he sternly warned me to get off at the next station. "If I catch you on here again, I'll throw you off," threatened he. I knew he dared not legally throw me off a train while it was in motion, and that he was bluffing, but I got off at the next station just the same. I concluded I had ridden far enough that night, anyway. My journey to Chicago was soon completed. I remained in Chicago several days selling the signs for a living but found it difficult work. The sign that seemed to sell best in Chicago was the one reading: "Every Time You Take a Drink, Things Look Different," and it made quite a hit in the saloons, but I could only get ten cents for it. The Chicago saloon keepers wanted all the money to come their way. In the smaller towns this sign sold readily for twenty-five cents, and no questions asked. I concluded to shake the dust of Chicago off my feet in a hurry, for the grafting was too hard for me. I had got onto it that there were easier places. It was the Michigan Central that had the honor to yank me out of Chicago and a hard old road she was to beat. Spotters were everywhere--fly cops and bulls--and they gave me a run for my money. I gave some of them a cock-and-bull story about trying to get to a sick relative in New York City, and showed them the signs I was selling to help pay expenses. Some laughed, and told me to "git," but one or two sternly told me they had a mind to run me in. They didn't, though. I got along all right as far as Detroit, where I crossed over to Windsor, Canada, on a boat which ferried the whole train over at once. I was now in a foreign country, but everything there looked pretty much as it did in the United States. The Michigan Central took me clear through Canada to Niagara Falls, where I concluded to remain a few days, for much as I had heard of the Falls, I had never seen them. I found that there is a big city of about 25,000 people at the Falls called "Niagara Falls," and it is a beautiful place. On the Canadian side there is a little city, too, the name of which I forget. It is not nearly so large as the city on the American side, but it is a quaint and pretty little place. Niagara Falls City is something like Coney Island, only it is on an all-the-year-round scale. Ordinary electric cars run through the place, electric tourist cars that will take one over the Gorge Route for a dollar are there, and so are hotels, boarding and rooming houses, plenty of stores, an extensive government reservation called Prospect Park, a Ferris Wheel, Shoot-the-Chutes, candy and ice cream booths, a hot frankfurter booth, picture galleries, beer gardens, etc. The place is lively and pretty, but full of grafters. Why wouldn't it be, when suckers by the million flock there every year from all over the world? I got to like the place so well that I remained there nearly a week and learned a whole lot of things. I wasn't a sucker and didn't get catched for I wasn't worth catching. Small fry ain't wanted. Did I see the Falls? Did I? Well, you can bet your sweet life I did. I saw them early, late and often, and every time I saw them they made my hair rise higher and higher. They are stupendous, tremendous--well, I can't say all I feel. They will awe anyone and fill him chock full of all kinds of thoughts. I'll try to give you an idea of them. Niagara River is a stream about half a mile wide and about a hundred miles long. It connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, and as the waters of these great lakes form the river, the volume of its waters is great. About twenty-five miles from Buffalo the Niagara River enters rocky canyons, which are formed by Goat Island, and which divide the river. The rushing, roaring and leaping of the waters on either side of the island is tremendous. These rushing, roaring waters are called the Upper Rapids. The waters rush along at cannon-ball speed almost until they reach a hill about 165 feet in height. Down this they tumble. That constitutes the Falls. The river, as I said, is divided by Goat Island, so that one part of the stream shoots along the American shore and the other part along the Canadian. By far the greater part of the river rushes along the Canadian side, hence the falls on that side are much greater than on the American. In fact, the American falls ain't a marker to the Canadian. I saw the falls from both sides, and when viewed from the Canadian side they are indescribably grand. No words of mine can describe them. You can hear the thunder of the rushing, roaring, falling waters a mile off, and the spray that arises from the depths below after the fallen waters have struck the rocks can be seen at a great distance. While the great lakes flow and the Niagara River runs, this scene of rushing, roaring, tumbling waters will never cease. After the waters take their tumble they flow on placidly enough until they strike another narrow gorge or canyon, about a mile below the falls, which is called the Lower Rapids. In them may be seen a wicked whirlpool, the Devil's Hole, and other uncanny things. Niagara is great, but the grafters who are there are greater. They will fool the stranger who goes there so slick that he won't know he has been fooled. The majority of visitors don't care, for they go there to spend their money, anyway. Some do care, however, for their means are limited. The grafters, who are not only hackmen, but storekeepers and others, lie awake nights studying how to "do" you. It is their business to make money, but how they make it don't worry them. If you go to the Falls, beware of them. People from every nation under the sun flock to the Falls every year, as I said, and a million visitors a year is a low estimate, I am sure. There are some people who believe that this great work of nature ought to be preserved intact, but there are others who do not think so. The latter think the Falls were created for their benefit, so they can make money. I am not now speaking of the grafters, but the manufacturers who have established factories along the banks of the Niagara River and utilize its waters for running their machinery, etc. These people would drain the river dry were they permitted to do so, and were doing so until stopped by the Government. I make no comments on this but simply state the facts and let others do the commenting. After I had done the Falls pretty thoroughly I concluded to go to Buffalo, the beautiful city by the lake (Erie). It can be reached in several ways from Niagara Falls by trolley and by several lines of railroads. It cannot be reached by water, however, for the reason that the Upper Rapids in the river extend a mile or so from the Falls toward Buffalo, rendering navigation impracticable. The trolley line running from Buffalo to the Falls is one of the best patronized roads in the country, and is crowded every day and overcrowded on holidays and Sundays. The fare is fifty cents the round trip and the scenery, through which a part of the road passes, is very fine. The road runs pretty close to the Niagara River for quite a distance, and along the banks of the river may be seen manufacturing establishments, such as cyanide plants, paper mills, chemical works, etc., nearly all of which empty their refuse into the stream, polluting its waters considerably. All of these establishments can easily be seen near the river as you ride along in the trolley. In the town of Niagara Falls itself are quite a number of very large manufacturing plants, which use the waters of the river for their purposes. Buffalo is one of the handsomest cities in the United States, to my notion. Its water front along the business section of the town is pretty punky, for there is a vile-smelling canal in the vicinity, and malodorous streets and alleys, but otherwise the town is away up in G. She's a beaut, and no mistake. Delaware Avenue is a corker. Imagine a thoroughfare about 150 to 200 feet wide, with driveways in the center shaded by fine old trees, and ample sidewalks also shaded by fine trees. Along the sidewalks, but set far back, are roomy mansions that are set in ample gardens, and then you will have a faint idea of the beauty of Delaware Avenue. And there are many other streets in the vicinity of Delaware Avenue that are just as beautiful. Boulevards and fine streets abound in this fair city. The people of Buffalo are quite like the Westerners in disposition, for they are sociable and free, and not too busy or too proud to talk to you. They are like their city, lovely, and I speak of them as I found them. There are many Canadians in the city (for Canada is only across the Niagara River and can be reached by ferry-boat) and I think they are a very desirable class of citizens. There are all sorts among them, of course, as is the case with Americans. My signs went well in Buffalo, especially the one reading, "Every Time You Take a Drink, etc." It went well in the saloons along the water front and on Main Street, the leading thoroughfare. Lots of people laughed when they read it and said it was a good one. There is nothing like a laugh to put people in good humor. I liked some of the Canadians very well and loved to listen to their queer accent. It is nothing like the American, but peculiarly their own. I thought some of the Canadian ladies were very nice. I liked Buffalo so well that I concluded to remain there until I grew tired of it. After I had been there a day or so I became acquainted with a young girl whose front name was Rose. She was of an auburn type and very artless. She had a decided penchant for milk chocolates. She was as pretty as a rose and it was awful hard for me to resist her. She was a poor, but good, honest, hardworking girl. She had been hurt in a street car collision and was just recovering from its effects. She craved chocolates but was too poor to buy them herself. I pitied her. She told me in her frank and artless way that she had thought a great deal of a certain young fellow, but he was in another city at present, working, and that she hadn't seen him for a long time. She didn't know whether she ever would see him again, but she hoped to, for he was a very sweet fellow, she said. "If he thinks anything of me don't you think he'll come back to me?" she asked, turning up her soulful blue eyes at me. "He would be a brute if he didn't, Rose," responded I, with considerable warmth. The girl surely loved him. "Why don't he write to me?" "Maybe he hasn't got the time or ain't much of a writer," said I. "Some people don't like to write." "I guess that's true," said she, sadly. Though she had a sneaking regard for the young fellow, she didn't object to me buying milk chocolates for her, nor to going to a show with me, nor to taking a ride to Crescent Beach on a cosy little lake steamer. In fact, Rosie was out for a good time, and evidently wasn't particular who furnished the funds. As I fancied the poor girl I was not averse to giving her a good time. We went to Delaware Park and spent several whole afternoons rowing on the little lake. We fed the ducks, walked in shady groves, and the time flew swiftly by in her company. During the morning I sold signs and in the afternoon I went with Rosie. I put in a whole lot of time in Buffalo with her, more than I should have done. One day I told her that I would have to go and then there was a kick. She wouldn't have it. She could not and she would not let me go, she said. I argued the case with her, but she wasn't open to argument. She was one of these kind of girls who are apt to forget the absent one when the present charmer is nigh. It was the hardest job in the world for me to leave her, but I finally did so. Rosie, farewell; and if forever, then forever, fare thee well. CHAPTER IV. NEW YORK CITY. I have heard it stated that "a great city is a great solitude" and so it is if you are a stranger. New York seemed a big solitude to me, for I didn't know anyone and no one knew me. I landed in the Grand Central Depot in a swell quarter of the city one day, and felt utterly lost, for I didn't know which way to turn. As I was poor, that swell neighborhood was no place for me, but where was I to find a poorer locality? I concluded to walk and find one. I kept a walking and a walking and a walking, but the more I walked the more high-toned did the streets seem. Nothing but fine houses and well-paved streets met my view and they made me tired. I did not like to address any of the people walking along these streets for they seemed hurried, cold and distant. Says I to myself: "Windy, you've struck a cold place. Chicago was bad, but this place is worse. If you are going to Europe, this will have to be your headquarters for awhile, though." Bye-and-bye I struck a street called Eighth Avenue, which was a long and wide one. It was full of people and stores. The sidewalks were so crowded that locomotion was difficult, and I saw more coons there than I had ever seen in my life before. They were dressed up to kill and considered they owned the town. From their manner one would suppose they had no use for white trash. I had walked so much that I was pretty well tired out, and I also was hungry and thirsty. I concluded I would seek some saloon where I could obtain a rest, a drink and a free lunch, all for a nickel. There are such places everywhere in the cities, plenty of them, and all you have to do is to find them. I walked along and kept my eyes peeled for one. I saw lots of stylishly fitted-up stores along the avenue, and as there was so much style I thought there ought to be lots of money. Everyone I met was dressed to kill, and it seemed to me that no one was poor. Finally I came to a saloon which was bejeweled and be-cut-glassed outside, and swell inside, having marble floors and fancy fixtures. Into this saloon I stepped and strode up to the bar, where I ordered a schooner of beer. I laid down a nickel on the bar and then leisurely strolled over to the lunch counter, which contained a pretty good spread of free lunch. I tackled a fistful of bread and cheese, and then wound up with bologna, pickles, crackers and pickled tripe. I ordered another schooner and hit the free lunch again real hard. No one said anything to me. After a good long rest I hit the "Avenue" again to see the sights. There was plenty to be seen for the avenue was jammed with people, trolley cars and trucks. The buildings were of brick, as a rule, and old-fashioned in appearance. On the ground floor were stores and over head dwellings. Everyone was a hustling and a bustling and didn't seem to have much time for anything except to sell you something. No one knew me or seemed to care a cuss for me. I felt lonely. The din was so great and the crowd so dense that I couldn't hear myself think. I was swept along with the crowd and kept my eyes and ears open. The stores were very fine, and the signs upon them handsome. Though Eighth Avenue is by no means in a rich section of the city, it seemed to me that there was a whole lot of wealth and style there. I felt quite out of place for I wasn't well dressed. Some of the free lunch I had eaten--I believe it was the bologna--had given me a thirst, so I stepped into an ice cream saloon and had a "schooner" of ice cream soda, which quenched my thirst admirably. Things were cheap and good in New York, I quickly learned, and if one only had the price, one could live well there. One could have all kinds of fun, too, for there are so many people. The city is like an overgrown bee-hive--it more than swarms with people. I believe that New York City today has over four millions of people, with more a coming every year--thousands of them. I had heard a great deal about the Bowery in New York, so I concluded to see it. I knew the song about it, the chorus of which was: The Bowery, the Bowery, They say such things, and they do such things, On the Bowery, the Bowery-- Oh! I'll never go there any more. And I was wondering what kind of things they said there and what they did. Well, they didn't say much when I struck it and there was nothing doing to speak of, except people rushing along minding their own business. It may have been wicked, but it isn't now. It is a business street and that is all. There is an "Elevated" over the street, which makes noise enough to raise the dead, and a lot of cheap-looking stores and restaurants. There is any number of "hat-blocking" establishments run by Hebrews, and the whole street in fact, seems like a section of Jerusalem. Jews till you can't rest. There may be some knock-down-and-drag-out places, but these are not confined to the Bowery. There are other streets far worse. No, the Bowery today is a peaceful, quiet street, and there isn't "anything doing" worth speaking about. New York has some fine streets, such as Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Madison Square, Twenty-third Street, Fourteenth Street, etc. Broadway is the main business street and begins at Bowling Green and runs up to Central Park and thence beyond. It is several miles long, its lower portion from Bowling Green to Fourteenth Street being lined on either side by many sky-scrapers and massive wholesale business establishments, and from Fourteenth Street up, by retail stores. Rents are high on this street and the buildings fine. Fifth Avenue is not so long as Broadway and contains the residences of many millionaires and less rich people. There is lots of style and wealth on that street. The Central Park is a beautiful spot. It runs from Fifty-ninth Street to One Hundred and Tenth Street, and from Fifth to Eighth Avenue. It is two and a half miles long by about two miles wide, and isn't big enough sometimes to contain the crowds of people that flock into it. It contains shady walks and trees, lawns, baseball grounds, lakes, casinos, stately malls (avenues), a large zoological collection, a great art gallery, an immense natural history building, extensive drives, secluded nooks for love-making, and lots of other nice things. Around its grand entrance at Fifth Avenue are some of the largest and swellest hotels in New York. As everyone knows, of course, New York is the largest city in the country and the most cosmopolitan. It is the center of art, trade and finance, and its population is composed of all sorts. There are as many Irish as in the largest city in Ireland, as many Germans, almost, as in Hamburg, as many Jews as in Jerusalem, and a big crowd of almost every nationality under the sun. The main part of the city is situated on Manhattan Island, and it is overcrowded, compelling the overplus to seek the suburbs and other near-by localities. Even these are becoming too well populated. Jersey City, Newark, Brooklyn, Paterson, Kearney, Harrison, Staten Island, Coney Island, etc., are increasing in population all too rapidly. New York is one of the "step lively" towns, and you are expected to hustle there, whether you want to or not. It is all your life is worth sometimes to cross a street, and a car won't stop long enough to enable you to get on or off. The tenement sections are studies in human life, and malodorous ones at that. The throngs are wonderful to behold. If you have plenty of money New York is an interesting place to live in. You will never feel dull there. You can live in some pretty suburb and go back and forth every morning and evening, as thousands do; or you can live in the city and ride out into the country every day by carriage, train or boat. In the good old summer time, if you live in the city, you can go to Manhattan or Brighton Beach, Coney Island, North Beach, South Beach, Rockaway, Fire Island, Long Branch, the Highlands, Shrewsbury River and a thousand and one other resorts in the vicinity. There is no lack of amusement or pleasure places. Even the very poor can find lots of pleasant places to go, around New York, for the fares are low. For ten cents one can ride from New York to Coney Island, a distance of over twenty miles; to Fort George for five cents, fifteen miles or more; to Manhattan Beach, South Beach, Staten Island, Newark, up the Hudson, and lots of other places. In the city itself, and free for all, are the Aquarium, Art Galleries, Public Squares, Parks, Roof Gardens along the two rivers (the Hudson and East Rivers), the animals in Bronx and Central Parks, the museums and other things. There is always something to hear and see in New York City at all hours of the day and night. New York surely is quite a sizeable village, and to judge from the way it has been growing, ten years from now it will extend a hundred miles or more up the Hudson, to Albany, maybe. CHAPTER V. THEM BLOOMIN' PUBLISHERS. Before I say much more about New York I want to say a word about the book publishers of that city, for I got to know a little something about them. I will relate my experiences among them, which will enable others to judge what they are like. I wanted to find a publisher for this book, and was told that New York is the proper place to do business of that kind. The first publisher I attempted to do business with has a large establishment on Vandewater Street, which is not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. I asked an elevator man who stood in the hallway of this building where I could find the boss. "Which boss?" asked he, with a huge grin, for he probably deemed me some country jay looking for a job. My appearance was not very respect-inspiring, to say the truth; not for New York, anyway. "The head of this establishment," answered I, placidly. "What do you want to see him about? Are you looking for a job?" "No, I'm not; I want to have some printing done." "Oh, that's the ticket, is it? The superintendent is the man _you_ want to see. He's on the top-floor. Come with me and I'll take you up to him." I stepped into the elevator and up we shot. We never stopped until we struck the top landing, where a door confronted us which opened into a huge apartment that was full of type-stands, presses, paper-cutters and printing machinery of all sorts. At the furthest end of this huge apartment were some offices. Upon my entrance into the large apartment a man stepped up to me and wanted to know what I wanted. "I'd like to see the superintendent." "Looking for a job, cully?" asked this gentleman. "Well, hardly," responded I. "I want to have some printing done." "Oh, you do, eh? You'll find the super in the rear office; away in the back," and he waved his hand toward the rear. I walked toward the rear and was met by a small boy, who came out of an office and wanted to know my business. "I want to see the superintendent, sonny," said I. "What do you want to see him about?" asked the kid. "Never you mind; I want to see him." "Will you please let me have your card?" "My card? What do you want my card for?" "So as to let the boss know who you are." "He don't know me; anyway, I haven't got a card." "Will you please write your name and the nature of your business on this tablet? and I'll take it to him," said the boy, handing me a writing tablet and pencil. I didn't understand this method of doing business but I did as requested. The boy took the card in and presently the superintendent appeared. His name was Axtell. "What can I do for you?" promptly asked Mr. Axtell, without any preliminaries. Probably he was a busy man. "I have written a book, sir, and I want to have it printed." The gent looked at me contemplatively. What his thoughts were I don't know. "What kind of a book is it you've written? History, travel, poetry, novel or what?" I told him it was a novel. "How many pages will the book contain?" asked the superintendent. "There will be four or five hundred pages, I guess, as near as I can figure it," responded I. "How many copies will you want?" "I'll leave that to you, sir, for you know best. This is my first book, and though I don't think it is going to set the world on fire," said I modestly, "I think a first edition of about ten thousand copies would be the thing. Don't you think that would do for a starter?" "It might," said he contemplatively. "Excuse me," continued he as he sat down at his desk and began to do some figuring. When he got through he turned to me and said: "Ten thousand copies of the book in paper cover will cost you in the neighborhood of $1000." "Cost _me_ $1000," almost shrieked I. "I wanted to know what you'll give me for the manuscript and print it yourself." A cold glare froze in the gent's eye. "We only print 'reprint' here; we do not buy manuscripts." I did not understand, and the gent judged so from my demeanor, for he added: "You want to see a publisher. Go up to Twenty-third Street; you'll find lots of them up that way." I did not know the difference between a printer and a publisher at that time, so that is how I came to make the mistake. Up Twenty-third Street way I went. Twenty-third Street was a pretty swell one, far too swell for rather a seedy-looking chap like me. I came upon the establishment of Messrs. Graham & Sons, which was one of the swellest on the street. It was contained in a six-story marble building, all ornaments and furbelows in front, and it was so swell that it made me feel small. The store must have been at least 200 feet long and nearly as wide as it was long. A small part of this vast space was divided off into offices, but by far the greater portion was devoted to the exposure of books. Books were piled around till you couldn't rest--on counters, shelves, in elaborate glass cases, and on the floor, even. All were handsomely bound and good to look at. When I saw the conglomeration my heart sank. "Look at all this array, Windy," said I to myself; "where are you going to get off at? You want to add another book to this little pile, do you? You are all kinds of a fool." For a few moments I was discouraged, but the feeling did not last long. I am an optimist, a fellow who never gets discouraged. Instantly I mustered courage and walked up to a white-haired old gentleman whom I told that I would like to see the proprietor. The old gentleman told me that he was in his office on the top floor of the building. Up I went to see him. When I reached the top floor, which was a sort of literary symposium and printing office combined, a small boy came forward and asked me my business. I told him, whereupon he asked me for my card. As I hadn't any, I wrote my name and the nature of my business on a tablet, and the boy took it into an office. A well-groomed and handsome young gentleman came forward and asked me to be seated. It was in an outer, not walled-in office, but even the furniture in it was swell. After exchanging airy compliments and discussing the weather a bit, the gentleman remarked _en passant_, "You have written a book?" That broke the ice. I told him I had and then we proceeded to business. He wanted to know the nature of the book and such other things as were well for him to know. I then asked a few questions myself. "What do you pay authors for their books, Mr. Graham?" "That depends," replied he. "We usually pay a royalty of $500 down and ten per cent on every book sold, after that." I thought that was a pretty fair rattle out of the box. I concluded to leave my writings with Mr. Graham on those terms and he consented to receive them. I knew he had but to read to accept. I always was optimistic, as I said before. Mr. Graham requested me to leave my address, so he could communicate with me. He informed me I would hear from him in a few days. I did. In a few days I got a note from him in a high-toned, crested envelope, which stated that "the first reader" of the house had read the book and found good points in it, but that "the second reader" was dubious. To make sure he, Mr. Graham, had read the book himself and wasn't certain whether there was any money in it. Under these circumstances he was constrained to forego the pleasure of publication, etc., etc., etc. These were not his exact words, but their substance. After reading the kind note I concluded to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, but thought better of it. Messrs. Graham & Sons were not the only pebbles on the beach, so why not see what I could do elsewhere. That's what I did--tried my luck elsewhere. There were other publishers on Twenty-third Street and if Graham & Sons did not know a good thing when they saw it, others might. On the same block, only a few doors distant, was another large firm. To them I went. A small little man with a Scotch accent sat in the ante-room and asked me what I was after. He wanted my card, too, but didn't get it. He went in to see Mr. Phillips, the editor of the publishing house, and this gentleman turned me down in short order. He told me that there are too many books published nowadays, and that books of travel were a drug on the market. The cuss told me everything in the world to discourage me, but he couldn't do it. I just went around to see some of the other publishers, but none of them would "touch" the story at any price and each one had a different reason for refusing. I was unknown, poor and obscure, and that settled it. There was no show there for me. To get along one must be rich or have "a pull." CHAPTER VI. THE OCEAN VOYAGE. I put in the winter in New York working at Berry's, one of the swellest catering houses in the city. It is situated on Fifth Avenue and is a rival of the great Delmonico establishments. The nobs of New York, when they want to give a little dinner or supper at home, see Berry, who furnishes all the fine grub, cooks, waiters, dishes, plates, etc., or if they want to eat at his place they can do so, for he has private dining-rooms, ball-rooms, etc., where they can have anything they want, providing they have the price to pay for it. He employs a lot of people in his establishment, in the shape of a housekeeper, chambermaids, male chefs and assistants, waiters, omnibuses, porters, head-waiters, superintendents and a window-cleaner. I was the window-cleaner. It was the softest snap I had ever struck. I worked from 8 in the morning until about dusk, and all I had to do was to keep every window in the house as bright and shiny as a new dollar. The building is a large one and the windows are many, but it was no trick at all to keep them clean. I cleaned a few windows every day and put in a whole lot of unnecessary time at it. I got twenty-five dollars a month for the job with board thrown in. The board was extra fine. Roast goose and chicken for dinner every day (left over victuals, of course), crab, shrimp and potato salads, oysters in any style, rich puddings, pies and cakes, wines of all vintages--say, sonny, we lived there and no mistake. I had struck a home. I held the job down all winter and saved a little money. I told some of my fellow-workers, both male and female, that I intended to take a little flyer to the old country in the spring, and they laughed at me and guyed me unmercifully. One fine spring day "when fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love" as I once saw it stated in a novel, I strolled down Bowling Green where the steamship offices are located and got pointers for my little trip. I learned that I could go to London direct, to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and several other dams; to Hamburg, Southampton, Liverpool, Havre, Glasgow and to so many other places that I grew bewildered. As I stood in front of the Cunard line office a young fellow stepped up to me and asked: "Say, mister, are you thinking of going to Yurrup?" I didn't think it was any of his business, so I said: "What do you want to know for?" "Who, me?" replied he, taking time to gather his wits. "I'm connected with a ticket agency around on Greenwich Street, and if you want a ticket cheap, come with me and I'll get you one." "How cheap?" asked I. "That'll depend on where you want to go to. We sell tickets to all places mighty cheap. Where do you want to go?" "Don't know yet; haven't decided." "Let me sell you a ticket to Glasgow on the Anchor line. That line will take you to Ireland and Scotland and is the finest trip in the world." "What's the fare?" inquired I. "Only thirty dollars," answered he, "and you will get your money's worth." I didn't think I'd see much of Ireland or Scotland if I bought a ticket from him, so I told him I'd see him later. I wandered into the Anchor Line office and asked the ticket agent what the price of a ticket to Glasgow would be. "Cabin or steerage?" inquired he. "Steerage, of course; I'm no Vanderbilt." The agent looked at me quizzingly and then remarked: "From twenty-seven dollars upward, according to accommodation." I didn't know what he meant by "accommodation" but I thought twenty-seven dollars was enough for me. "Do you want a ticket?" asked the agent, as if he were in a hurry. "I haven't the price with me now," said I. "What did you come here for then," snapped he. "For information," snapped I. He saw that I was getting huffy so he pulled in his horns and said: "We can take you to Scotland in pretty good shape for twenty-seven dollars. You will have a good berth and the best of food, and we'll land you in Glasgow in less than ten days from the time you leave here. What do you say; shall I give you a ticket?" I cogitated. The prospect looked good to me. "Yes," said I impulsively, "give me a ticket!" I gave him my name, as he requested, answered all the questions he put to me, and in a jiffy he had the ticket made out for me. "What's the name of the ship I'm going to sail on?" asked I. "The Furnessia," answered he, adding, "she will leave from the foot of West Twenty-fourth Street on Saturday morning at nine o'clock sharp. Be on hand at that time, or you'll get left." "Don't you worry about me getting left," retorted I; "I'll be there all right." Was I happy after I bought the ticket? I can't say that I was, for I wasn't at all positive whether I had better go. I didn't know what the old country would be like, so that visions of all kinds of trouble floated through my noddle, but faint heart never won a fair lady. I might as well be found dead in Europe as in any other place. What's the dif? This was Thursday and the ship was to sail on Saturday. It seemed to me a long time to wait for when I go anywhere I like to go in a hurry. Saturday morning came and I arose bright and early. I slept very little that night, for I was thinking, thinking, thinking. After arising and having a cup of coffee I took my time strolling down toward the steamship pier. After I arrived there I was about to enter the long covered shed, when an official strode up to me and asked me where I was going. I carried no baggage of any sort and didn't think I needed any. I am too old a traveler to encumber myself with baggage. All I carried was on my person. I told the official I was bound for Europe on the Furnessia and showed him my ticket. He looked at it and let me pass. I went on board. When I reached the deck a young man dressed in a white jacket and peaked cap asked me if I were a married man. I didn't think it was any of his business, so I asked him what he wanted to know for. The young fellow frowned and exclaimed: "Don't give me no language, young feller; I want to know if yer married or single." I told him I was a single man, whereupon he said: "You go forward to the quarters for single men!" "Where's that?" queried I. "For'ard of the main hatch," responded he. I didn't know the difference between a main hatch and a chicken hatch, but I went up to the front part of the vessel where I saw several sailors slinging trunks down a hole by means of a rope. I walked up to them and asked one of them who wasn't too busy to answer a question, where the main hatch was. "It's in the fo'-castle," says Jack, with a wink at his mates; "do you want it?" "No," said I. "I don't; where's the quarters for the single men." "Oh, that's what you're after, is it? You follows your nose till you gets to the bows, and then you'll see a companionway down which you goes." "All right," says I; "thank you." The directions weren't clear, but I guessed I could find my way. I went forward through rows of boxes, trunks, valises, ropes and other impediments, and finally came to a stairway over which was a hood or sliding cover. This stairway was almost straight up and down, with rough brass plates on each step to prevent one from slipping. At either side of it was a rope in lieu of a balustrade. That stairway did not look good to me. CHAPTER VII. THE STEERAGE. As soon as I tried to go down the stairway there was trouble, trouble of the worst kind. I could get down all right, but when I got down a few steps an odor came up that made me pause. The odor was not of stale onions, a rotting steer or anything like that, but an indefinable one. I never smelt anything like it before and it conquered me at once. It caught me right in the throat and though I tried to swallow I couldn't do so to save my life. I began to chew as if I were chewing tobacco, and the lump rose in my throat and wouldn't go up nor down. I hadn't drunk a drop that morning excepting a cup of coffee, so it couldn't have been liquor that upset me. It must have been the smell and nothing else. I stood on a step holding to the side rope to steady myself and hesitated about going down. I grew dizzy and thought I was going to fall but held on like grim death. "Come Windy," says I to myself, "your bunk is below, and you'll have to go down to it or someone else will get it. This won't do." I went down slowly and the further down I got the stronger the smell became. Suddenly I got very sick. I felt like giving up the enterprise right then and there but as my friends would have had the laugh on me if I did so, I concluded to see the thing out. I had to go down the stairway, though, there was no getting around that; I had to select a berth, and to do that I had to go below. I kind of fooled around and hesitated to make the plunge but finally I mustered courage and made the attempt once more. I went down very slowly, holding my hand over my nose and mouth. I got down a few steps and then I stopped again. I just couldn't. I just laid down where I was and fired away like a good fellow. I was more than willing to die. As I lay there a jacky suddenly came down, airy-fairy fashion, as if he were dancing on eggs, and in his hands he carried a long, black tin pan in which was his mate's breakfast, consisting of meat, gravy and potatoes. I caught a whiff of the mess and oh mercy! When jacky got down to the bottom and saw me sitting there and the muss I had made he became very indignant and wanted to know what I meant by mussing up the ship like that. "Why don't you go on deck if you want to be sick?" said he. Had I been well I would have swiped the heartless cuss one just for luck, but I was too weak to speak, even. I fired away again and seeing this, Jacky flew away as if the devil was after him. After a good long time I got down in the steerage and saw the steerage steward who was a Scotchman with a broad accent, and he gave me a berth. He noticed that I had been sick and advised me to go upstairs and get all the fresh air I could. I acted on his advice and made my way up the stairway again as quickly as I could, but that wasn't very quick. When I got on deck the fresh air revived me somewhat, but it seemed to me as if my stomach were all gone. There was an "all gone" feeling there, sure enough. The ship was getting ready to start by this time. An officer mounted a raised deck over the forecastle and gave orders to heave the hawsers off. The captain, who stood on the bridge, signalled to the engineer below to let her go, and off we were. Slowly we moved out from the pier, to the farewells of the multitudes on shore and on deck. Some blubbered, but ne'er a blubber from me. I wasn't caring whether school kept or not. The vessel's prow after she got out of her dock was turned down the Hudson toward the Battery, and she went well out into the middle of the stream. This afforded us a good view of the river. On one side was the New York shore, and on the other, the Jersey. Panoramas of houses and docks on either side swept by us as we moved along, and sky-scrapers loomed up prominently. We passed pretty close to the Goddess of Liberty, and saw plainly Governor's Island, Ellis Island, Fort Hamilton, Fort Wordsworth, Bath Beach, Staten Island and Coney Island. Quickly enough we were abreast of Sandy Hook, which was the last point of land we would see until we reached Europe. Straight ahead of us was nothing but sky and water. It was now nearly noon. I had eaten nothing that morning and what I had eaten yesterday was mostly downstairs in the hallway. The fresh sea-breeze had revived me a little and now I felt that I could eat something. None of the passengers had eaten anything since they came on board, and probably they, too, must have been hungry, for when the dinner bell rang there was a mighty stampede. Some of them didn't take time to rush downstairs, they just dropped down. The dinner was good. There was plenty of nourishing soup on hand, a liberal allowance of meat, vegetables, bread, butter and coffee. No one need have gone hungry. All the other meals were satisfactory, though an occasional one was punky. Of course there were kickers, but those kind of people will be found everywhere. The second day out was Sunday, and it was a fine spring day, but on Monday morning clouds began to gather and tried to work up a storm. They succeeded all too speedily. The sky became black, the wind roared up aloft, the masts hummed, timbers creaked, the ship rolled from side to side and then rose and fell; the cordage whipped against the masts and everything looked lovely for a first-class storm. I got scared. I hated to die so young, but what's the odds? The waves were high as mountains and to me seemed about as mean looking as anything I ever saw. They were white on top and made straight for us. We could not run away from them. I was on deck waiting to see the storm out, for what was the use going below and being drowned there? If I was to die I would die game and at the front. It didn't seem to me that anything built by human hands could withstand the buffeting of those waves. The force of the sky-scraping billows was awful. They kind of made me wilt when I looked at them. I survived that storm or I wouldn't be writing this. If you catch me on the sea again though, you'll have to be a fast runner. I was told that we would see land again by the following Sunday and I was sort of pining to see it. It was a wait of several long days, but I didn't have much else to do than wait. There was nothing to do on board except to eat, sleep and wait. I got pretty badly drenched during the storm. A huge comber made a leap for me and broke right over me, spilling a few tons of water on top of me. It was a soaker, sure enough, and I didn't dry out until several days afterward. I had only one suit of clothes with me and they were on my back so they had no chance to dry. I slept in them to keep them warm. A life on the ocean wave is a gay thing. It is awful nice to be spun around like a cork and then see-sawed up and down with a possibility of touching bottom. The heel over from side to side is also very funny, for there is a good chance of being shot overboard when the ship jams suddenly away over. You hold on wondering whether the ship is going to right herself or not. If she does, you're in luck, and if she don't it's good-bye Lisa Jane. How many ships do tip over? Several thousand of them every year. Luckily, the Furnessia wasn't one of the unlucky ones this trip. The worst that happened to me was a bad scare and a shower-bath. Maybe the water wasn't cold when that wave struck me! Ugh! It knocked the wind out of me for a moment and I didn't know where I was at. I dripped like a drowned rat and when my fellow passengers saw me they roared. On Tuesday morning of the second week we saw the shores of Europe. We had now been out about ten days. I have read that Columbus and his crew felt pretty good when they saw land again after their eventful voyage but I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut they didn't feel half as good as I felt when I saw land again. I was more than pining to see it. Ten days of sloppiness was a whole lot for me. If there is any fun wandering around with one's clothing sticking to one's back I fail to see it. I was feeling all right and my general health was good, but the lack of sleep and the fetid odors down below helped to daze me. I was in a sort of pipe dream and hardly knew whether I was afoot or on horseback. There was land ahead, though, and I felt like shouting. The land ahead of us was the coast of Ireland and it looked good to me. The name of Ireland was familiar to me since my boyhood days, and I had seen Irishmen on the stage and off it, had heard songs sung about it and had heard it spoken of a million times. Here was the real thing right before me. I became mightily interested in it as did almost everyone else. The Irish passengers aboard, and there were plenty of them, became frantic with joy. Ireland surely is a beautiful country. Rocky headlands we saw, capes, bays, towering mountains in the background, green trees and farms. An air of romance seemed to hang over the place and the blue skies of the spring above looked down on it kindly. We steered straight in for the shore and then sailed northward along the coast. We kept off shore only a few miles. When we got to Tory Island we steamed between it and the mainland, and had a close view of this little islet. It was only a mile or two long with a quaint looking light-house at one end of it and a vegetable garden in bloom near by. Those green things growing, how they did entrance me! At the other end of the isle were rocks that towered up higher than the masts of our ship, and they were scarred, seamed and causewayed by the elements. They had taken the strangest shapes imaginable. We steamed through the strait between the island and the mainland swiftly, for though the strait was narrow the channel was deep; then we skirted southward along the east coast of Ireland until we came to a broad bay, where we anchored. This bay was shallow close in to the shore, so we anchored far out. On the shore was the town of Moville, where the Irish passengers were to disembark for points in Ireland. A little tender came steaming up and when she was loaded with baggage and passengers, there was hardly room enough to swing a cat in but as the Irish passengers were happy, we had no kick coming. The warm-hearted Irish bade us farewell with many a thrown kiss and handkerchief flutter. They were off. So we were soon, for Scotland. The scenes along the east coast of Ireland were no whit inferior to those on the west coast. It did not take us long to reach Scotland, where the scenery was enchanting. Words are entirely inadequate to give one a proper idea of it. To be appreciated it must be seen and _felt_, for reading about it don't do much good. Here, right before us, were the Highlands of Scotland and many a place famous in song and story. In due course of time we reached the Firth of Clyde and anchored off Greenock. This was the disembarking point for all the passengers. A little steamer shot out from Greenock and landed us, bag and baggage, at the Princess Pier, which reminded me somewhat of a Mississippi levee, for it was stone paved and sloping. On the pier cabbies stood about, touching their hats respectfully, but saying never a word. They were seeking "fares," and giving us the tip noiselessly. Newsboys were there, too, yelling in strange accents, "Morning Nip!" "Daily Bladder," etc., and some of them when they got on to my presence and saw that I was a greenhorn, made loud uncomplimentary remarks about me in language that I couldn't understand. This rather embarrassed me, for I didn't like to be made a show of. Them kids ought to have got a kick in the pants for their freshness but the more you fool with some kids the worse they get, so I just walked on minding my business and said nothing. All we third-raters were steered into the custom house where the baggage was to be examined. It didn't take the authorities long to examine mine. A quiet, lynx-eyed official asked me where my baggage was and when I told him I hadn't any, he jerked his head upward and backward, giving me a quiet hint to skip. I waited a few moments and then followed some of the other passengers to the railroad station, which was close by. Our destination was Glasgow, and Greenock was twenty-five miles distant, so we were compelled to make the rest of the journey by rail. When I entered the railroad station I stood stock still for a moment and stared. On one side of the station was a blank wall and on the other a "buffet," waiting-room, ticket office, "luggage" room and telegraph office. What stumped me was the cars and locomotive. The cars were stage-coaches strung on wheels with no bumpers to speak of; no blind baggage, no brake-beams, no nothing. Where was a fellow to ride when he was beating his way? One couldn't beat it in any shape, form or manner. To say that I was disappointed won't express my feelings. I was totally discouraged. I felt like going back home again on the return trip of the Furnessia but I didn't have the price. I had less than fifteen dollars in my possession and was up against it. I had no idea how big a country Scotland was or how the walking would be, so I did some pretty lively thinking. I now remembered what Little Billy had told me and found out that he had told me the truth. No, there was no way of "beating it" on those kind of cars. I mixed in with the push on the platform and began looking for a comfortable seat in a car. There were only two seats in a car, facing each other, and each seat was capable of holding four persons. Thus when there were eight persons in a coach it was full. I made a rush for a seat where I could view the scenery comfortably, and after the coaches were all filled and "all set," the doors were slammed shut, somebody outside blew a tin-horn and with a ratlike squeak from the engine we were off. The engine had seemed like a toy to me but she was speedy and powerful and could go like a streak. Away we clattered through tunnels, past fields and meadows, villages and towns. The scenery looked mighty foreign-looking to me and I was uneasy. I sure felt that I wasn't at home. On our right hand side as we sped up to Glasgow were the fields and meadows I just spoke of, and on the other side was a bare prairie through which wound the river Clyde. Along the banks of the Clyde were shipyards which are famous the world over. I believe these shipyards are so famous because ships can be built cheaper and better there than anywhere else. To be a Clyde-built ship is usually a recommendation. The scenery was interesting and would have been more so had I been happier. I was still half-dazed from the want of sleep during ten nights on board ship, my clothes didn't feel right on me from the soaking they had got and then the disappointment of not being able to "beat it," affected me, too. But it was all in the game, so I had no kick coming. After journeying about an hour we came upon the town of Paisley, which has been famous for centuries for the manufacture of "Paisley shawls." Large spool-cotton factories we could see in the place too, and it seemed to be a city of some size and consequence. In a little while after that we rushed into St. Enoch's station, Glasgow. This was our jumping-off place. The station was a very large and fine one, almost as much so as the Grand Central Station in New York. To judge from the station, Glasgow must be a sizeable place, for it was first-class in every respect and right up to date. CHAPTER VIII. GLASGOW. "All out for Glasgow," was the cry, so out we tumbled. I made my way out of the station and soon found myself upon the street, where I stood perplexed and bewildered. It seemed to me I had landed in some other world. Everything was so different--the houses, the stores, the streets, the sidewalks, the driveways, the people, the vehicles, the dogs, the horses, the skies, the clouds, everything. How or where will I begin to describe these things? I have a pretty big contract on my hands, one that I am unequal to. I had never seen so many Scotch people in a bunch before and had no idea there were so many alive. There were thousands of them, tens of thousands of them. If Glasgow hasn't got a million of people then I miss my guess sadly. Scotchmen till you can't rest, anywhere and everywhere. Even the names on all the stores were Scotch. There was MacPherson and Blair, MacTevish, MacDonald, Brown, Alexander, MacFeely. Shetland ponies came trotting by that were about knee-high to a grasshopper and though so small they dragged after them carriages in which were seated grown persons. Why, a grown man could have picked up pony, rig and all, and carried them. I felt like telling the people in those rigs to get out and walk, and not disgrace themselves by making such a little creature in the shape of a horse drag them about. Oh, my! Oh, my! What queer things a fellow can see. Here came a two-wheeled cart clattering along which was hauled by a melancholy-looking little donkey and it was called a "sweet-milk cart." I kept my eyes peeled to see if a "sour-milk" cart would come along, but I didn't see any. They designate their stores in a curious way. A butcher shop is called a "flesher's," a furnishing goods store is called a "haberdashery," a dry goods store a "draper's," etc., etc. Say, pardner, pinch me, will you? I wonder whether I am alive. By this time I had stopped gazing standing still, and walked along, for the people were getting on to the fact that I was a greenhorn. My dress and appearance, and the way I stared gave me away. As I walked along unsteadily, still feeling that the ship was under me, I saw things. The houses were of gray stone several stories in height, with tall chimney tiles on top all in a cluster; stores on the ground floor and dwellings overhead. Nearly all of them had mansard roofs. They were nearly all alike and their exterior seemed plain and dull to me. But the stores riveted and held my attention. They were rather dingy, but the show windows were fitted up fine. Here was a fish store in the window of which were displayed salmon, grilse, lemons, plaice, megrins, haddock, cod, herrings; labels upon the platters designating what they were. In a candy store I saw toffie balls, chocolate bouncers, pomfret cakes, voice pastiles, and frosty nailrods. I laughed and wondered if they had any railroad spikes and rails. Frosty nailrods and bouncers, hey! Well, I was getting a pretty good show for my money. I looked into a tobacco store and there I saw a vast array of cigars, tobacco and smokers' articles. The brands of tobacco had curious names, such as Baillie Nicol Jarvey, Starboard Navy, Tam O'Shanter, Aromatic Mixture, English Birdseye and many others. The tobacco and cigars were dear, tobacco being eight cents an ounce, and funny-looking cigars four cents each. In the clothing store windows I noticed clothes made of excellent cloth in all varieties, that sold for eight and ten dollars the suit. They were fine and made me feel sad, for I hadn't the price to buy one, though I needed a suit badly. Shoes, too, were cheap and good. The windows of all the stores were heaped to profusion with goods, and it seemed to me there was more stock in the windows than there was in the stores. The wares were displayed very temptingly with a price tag on everything. The jewelry displayed was more than tasteful, I thought; I wanted a few diamonds awful bad. I wandered along Argyle street, which seemed a broad and busy thoroughfare. The sidewalks were jammed and so was the roadway. I sauntered along slowly, taking in the circus, for it was better than a circus to me. It was a continuous performance. Lots of people gazed at me, nudged each other and made remarks, but I couldn't catch what they said. Probably they took me for some animal that had escaped from a menagerie. I wasn't caring, though, what they thought. I was having as much fun out of them as they were having out of me. I saw so many queer sights that I couldn't describe a tithe of them. Many fine people drove by in fine rigs, and some of these wealthy ones were probably out on shopping expeditions. There were grand ladies and gentlemen in multitudes, and I figured it out that wealth and nobility must be pretty prevalent in Scotland. Many of the ladies were beauties of the blond type and the gentlemen were well-dressed and elegant in appearance. They carried themselves nobly and proudly and seemed stern yet manly. The ladies surely were engaging and I noticed several of them alight from moving street cars gracefully. They didn't wait for the car to stop, but swung off, alighting in the right direction every time. Had they been American ladies it is more than likely they would have landed on top of their heads. The Glasgow ladies have mastered the trick, all right, and mastered it well, for you can't down them, nohow. As I sauntered along slowly, two young girls came along with plaid shawls thrown over their shoulders and when they got near me one of the girls collapsed and fell on the sidewalk. None of the crowd stopped, whereat I wondered, but I stopped to see what the trouble was. If the girl wasn't as full as a goat you may smother me. She must have been imbibing too much hot Scotch. The girl was in her teens, and quite pretty, and so was her companion. I felt sorry that so young and pretty a girl would make a spectacle of herself, so I strode up and asked if I could be of any assistance. The fallen one glared at me and the one standing on her feet trying to help her companion stared at me. My American accent may have been too much for her for she made no reply. I remained standing there, whereupon the sober one got angry and turned on me with the remark: "Did yer never see ah lassie fou?" From her indignant tones and manner I saw that she was huffy, so I made tracks in a hurry, for I wasn't looking for trouble. After seeing as much as I wanted to of Argyle Street, I walked toward the embankment of the Clyde River, which I could see not far away, and had a look at the shipping. The ships were as curious to me as everything else I saw in Glasgow, for they were distinctly foreign-looking and odd. Glasgow seemed a great port, for there were ships of all nations there. The banks along the water front were high and walled up with stone, forming fine promenades. Quite a number of very fine bridges spanned the stream and they must have cost a lot of money. They were of stone, iron and wood, and were equal to structures of their kind anywhere. I noticed that the water was of a dark chocolate color, which means--mud. The stream isn't very broad, but it is deep. I was speaking of the vessels! Well, they took my time. I had read of low, black-hulled, rakish crafts in pirate stories and these looked like them. Wonder if they were pirates? I didn't go aboard any of them to investigate. Along the water front street opposite the embankment were hotels, stores, lodging-houses, ship-outfitting establishments, taverns, inns, and all manner of places catering to seafaring men. All of them seemed curiosity shops to me. My little pen isn't able to describe them. What's the use of trying? I came upon a spot called for short and sweet "The Broomielaw," which was a section of the water front given up to the landing of "up-country" steamboats, which came down the various lochs, rivers, bays, "the Minch," and other waters of northern Scotland, and it was more than interesting to observe the little steamers when they came in. They were laden with cattle and people from the Highlands and elsewhere, and with produce and merchandise. Many of the people were dressed in togs that I never saw outside of a comic opera show and when cattle were unloaded from these long, narrow piratical-looking craft I had more fun watching them than I ever had in my life before. The cattle were mostly black like the ships, and a whole lot of tail-twisting and Scotch language had to be used before they would take the hint and go ashore. They didn't like the looks of things and bucked. The sights of the city bewildered them, no doubt, for they were used to quieter scenes. The cowboys had on Tam O'Shanter caps and wore not describable togs. They punched the cattle, twisted their tails and shouted words that the cattle maybe could understand, but I couldn't. Highland Scotch was too high for my nut. Excursion boats came to the Broomielaw and dumped their passengers on the landing from the Harris, Skye, Stormaway, Fladda, the Dutchman and all the other places so renowned in Scottish stories. After dumping one lot of passengers and freight they took another load back to the same places. Had I had the price I would have gone up country sure, for there are a whole lot of things to be seen up that way. But by this time it was nearing noon and I was getting hungry, so I concluded that a good, square meal would do me good. The Broomielaw and the other places weren't going to run away, and I would have plenty of opportunities of seeing them. CHAPTER IX. GETTING A SQUARE MEAL. I drifted along Salt Market Street and then came upon a street which, for want of a better name, was called Sauchiehall Street, in the neighborhood of which I saw a restaurant called the "Workingman's Restaurant," on the side-wall of which was painted in large letters the following bill of fare: Tea, 2 cents. Coffee, 2 cents. Porridge and milk, 2 cents. Sandwiches, 2 and 4 cents. Eggs, 2 cents. Ham and eggs, 16 cents. Broth, 2 cents. Pea soup, 2 cents. Potato soup, 2 cents. Beefsteak pudding, 4 cents. Sausage, 2 cents. Collops, 4 and 6 cents. Dessert puddings, 2 cents. Fish suppers, 8 and 12 cents. Tripe suppers, 8 and 12 cents. The bill of fare and the prices looked good to me and I concluded that this would be my dining place. In front of the restaurant were two large show windows in one of which was displayed all kinds of bakery goods, such as large flapjacks, big as elephant ears, labeled "scones." They looked like flapjacks to me, but were bigger and thicker, and could be had for two cents each. One of them was enough for a square meal. I wanted something better than that, though, just then. There were big biscuits in the window, too, cakes of various kinds, tarts, etc. In the other window were huge joints of beef and mutton, meat pies, hog-meat in various shapes and styles, and other dainties. My teeth began to water as I eyed the display and a drop trickled down my chin. "Lemme see, now; what'll I tackle?" says I to myself. Some of the hog meat looked good to me and so did the beef and mutton. I was willing to spend two bits or so for a good square meal. While I stood gazing and deliberating a young girl with a shawl around her shoulders came up to me and addressed me: "Hoo air ye?" asked she. I thought she had made a mistake and had taken me for someone she knew, so I asked her if she wasn't mistaken in the person. Either she did not understand pure English or else she did not want to, for she kept up the conversation. It didn't take me long to catch on to the fact that she was bent on making a mash. She didn't know me from Adam, nor I her. She was light haired and pretty, and had a slight, graceful figure, which was not well hidden by a shawl, which she kept opening and closing in front of her. I concluded that I was in for joy the first thing. To tell the real, honest truth, I wasn't hankering for fun just then, for I was too hungry, but of course it wouldn't do to be discourteous to a stranger, and a pretty one at that. To her inquiry how I was, I told her "Tiptop," which she didn't seem to understand. She did catch on to it, though, that I was a stranger. "Where'd ye come from, the noo?" "The noo, the noo," thinks I. "What does she mean by that?" I caught on suddenly. "Oh, I just landed this morning from New York." "Ho, yer a Yankee, then?" says she. "No, I'm not," answered I. "I'm a Westerner." "Ooh eye, ooh eye," repeated she twice, as if she didn't understand. "What air ye going to do in Glesgie?" asked she in clear, bell-like accents. She came up pretty close to me and now I could detect from her breath that she had been indulging in Scotch bug-juice. This displeased me. I gave her a hint that I had had no dinner and that I was pretty hungry, but it was evident that something stronger than a hint would be needed to cut me loose from her. She began to coax and then suddenly she called me a bully. That got me off. I told her in pretty plain language that she was a trifle fresh and that I hadn't said or done anything to warrant her in calling me names. She didn't understand what I said, but I guess she could tell from my manner that I was angry, so her soft eyes gazed down to the ground sadly. I excused myself, left her and went into the restaurant. The unexpected interview had agitated me somewhat, but I soon got over it. The front part of the restaurant was a sort of store, where edibles were displayed on counters and which could be bought and carried away, or eaten on the premises, as one chose. The rest of the apartment was divided off into cabinets having sliding doors to them. In each cabinet was a rough wooden table with backless, wooden benches, close up to it, and on either side of it. The cabinet wasn't big enough to turn around in, but it served the purpose for which it was built. A young waitress came to the cabinet I had chosen as my retreat and asked me what I would have. When she heard my foreign accent it was all she could do to keep from sniggering. I asked for pea soup for the first course. It was brought to me and it was nice. While eating it, the door slid back quietly, and who do you think entered it? Guess! I'll bet you never could guess. Why, it was no one else than the young girl who had addressed me outside the restaurant. She had probably watched from the outside and seen in which cabinet I had gone and there she was, large as life. Tell _me_ Scotch girls aren't cute. For a moment I was so flabbergasted you could have knocked me down with a feather, but I soon recovered my equanimity. The girl asked me if she might sit down beside me. What could I say? Of course, I said yes. I kept on eating my soup and cogitated. If this was the custom of the country I didn't like it. Where I came from strangers were not in the habit of inviting themselves to dinner. The lassie (that's what girls are called in Scotland) chinned away to me, but I didn't understand her, nor did I care to very much just then. After the pea soup had disappeared I asked the lassie if she was hungry and she gave me to understand that she was not. Probably she had only come in for a social chat. The waitress soon came in again and sniffed scornfully when she saw my companion there. She probably took me for a naughty man. All this goes to show how a poor, innocent fellow can get into trouble when he isn't looking for it. I next ordered some roast mutton, potatoes and bread and butter. To the waitress's inquiry what I would drink I said "Water." The lassie looked at me reproachfully. I divined that _she_ wouldn't have ordered water. While I ate the lassie chinned and seemed to stick to me as faithfully as a Dutch uncle to a rich relative. I don't think that she was fully aware of what she was doing or saying. After I had finished the second course, the waitress made her appearance again and wanted to know what further would be wanted. I told her, nothing, whereupon she began to gather up the dishes and her manner proclaimed that the cabinet might be wanted for the next customer. I took the hint and withdrew and the lassie followed me out. Outside of the restaurant the lassie gave me a gentle hint that she knew of a snug place where we could have "a little smile" together, but I wasn't drinking just then and told her so. I was leery of her, in fact. How did I know who she was or what her little game was. I didn't know the language of the country, the laws, the customs or anything, so I proposed to proceed carefully. I shook the lassie firmly but politely as soon as I could and went my way. CHAPTER X. GLASGOW GREEN (or Common.) I concluded to go down toward the Clyde again but had some difficulty finding my way, for the streets were tortuous and winding, though quaint and old-fashioned. I had seen pictures of such streets on the stage and in plays. After much walking I came upon a thoroughfare called Stockwell Street which led direct to the quays. I walked to the Albert Bridge and contemplated its strength and solidity, and then walked in the direction of a park which I saw not far distant. I was informed by someone whom I asked that this was the Glasgow Common, or Green. The park, I should judge, is about two miles long by about half a mile wide, and is almost destitute of trees or plants. It is, in fact, nothing more than a bare public playground fitted up with tennis courts, cricket grounds, apparatus for gymnastic exercises, swings, a music-stand, etc. It surely is an interesting spot. The walks are long and numerous, resting-places are plentiful and near the river is a building used by the Humane Society--a hospital, most likely. A little way in from the entrance is a fountain that is worth describing. The "Glesgie" people seem to have a grudge against it for some reason or other, but it is a nice and elaborate work of art for all that. It is a large structure with a broad basin and many other basins that diminish in diameter as they near the top. The top basin is quite small. Around the largest basin are groups of life-sized figures representing the various races of man, such as Africans, Asiatics, Europeans, Australians and Americans. The figures are exceedingly well done. On the topmost pinnacle of the fountain is a heroic image of Lord Nelson, the great English Admiral. I thought the whole work was a most elaborate and fine one. Being tired, I sat down on a bench to rest. There were not very many people in the park just then and I had a good view of everything. Clear over on the other side of the park there wasn't a single person to be seen except a couple that sat on a bench making love in strenuous fashion. It was a workingman and a lassie. Did you ever watch a calf when it sucks its mother, how it makes a grab for a teat, rest awhile, then make another grab? That is the way that man made love. Suddenly he would throw his arm around the girl's waist, press her to him, then let go and take a breathing spell. The lassie sat quiet taking it all in and saying never a word. In a few minutes the man would make another grab, take a fresh hold and then let go again. It was a queer way of making love, I thought. The couple wasn't bashful a bit and evidently didn't care who saw them. I thought to myself that I would have to find some lassie to give me a few lessons in the art of making love in Scotch fashion, for I wasn't on to the game at all. After a good long rest I strolled through the city to see some more of it. It was quiet in the park just then and nothing doing. I came upon the old Glasgow Cathedral which is by far the oldest structure in the city and the most thought of by Glasgowites, but I was not much impressed by it. It is a thousand years old or more, is great in extent, is surrounded by ample grounds and is made of stone. It contains flying buttresses and some other gim-crackery but the whole thing is rather plain, black and dull. Sir Walter Scott in one of his novels describes it faithfully, and if any one wants to know more about it I politely request them to look up Sir Walter Scott. I ain't equal to the task of describing architecture in detail and such things. Not far from the Cathedral is the Necropolis, a very ancient burial ground right in the heart of the city, almost. It is as ancient as the Cathedral, maybe. It is a pretty spot and I went all through it. It is built around a hillside and is of considerable extent. Along the street level are walks bordered by trees, shrubs and flowers, and as you ascend the hillside you will see elaborate tombs, monuments, shady nooks and bosky bowers. On the highest portion of the rather steep and lofty hill a fine view of Glasgow may be had, and here lies buried, beneath a fine monument, John Knox, the Reformer. The Scotch think a heap about Mr. Knox, but as I don't know much about him I can't say much. He must have been a wonderful man and he surely lies buried in a grand spot. As a rule I don't like to wander about in bone-yards, but as this one was so pretty I was impelled to do so. Let me say a few words about Glasgow in a general way before I continue my story. Glasgow is the commercial metropolis of Scotland. It contains about 800,000 people, and in most respects is a modern city. It is the center of art, finance and trade, and what New York is to the United States, Glasgow is to Scotland. There is much wealth, style and fashion there, the people are workers and full of business. Wholesale and retail establishments abound, ship-building yards are numerous, as are foundries and manufacturing shops of many kinds. Chief of all the great industries in Glasgow is the ship-building. The business of the port of Glasgow is great and the volume of the shipping immense. These few pointers will reveal to you that Glasgow is not a jay town by any means. CHAPTER XI. HUNTING FOR A FURNISHED ROOM. As I said before, when I landed in Glasgow I had only a few dollars in my possession, therefore I deemed it wise to make them go as far as possible, for I didn't know what I was up against or how I would get along. The country was strange and new to me, I didn't know a soul this side the water, I knew nothing of the ways of the country or the people, and hadn't the faintest idea as yet how I was going to get through the country. That I could not beat my way I had already learned, and as I am not very partial to hiking it over long distances, I cogitated. But what was the use of thinking or worrying? Didn't I have some money in my inside pocket? Of course I had, and it was time enough to worry when I was broke. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," has always been my motto, and I had been on the turf long enough to know that there is always some way out of a scrape when one gets into it. What was the next event on the program? I had dined and seen considerable of the city and it was "more better" that I go and look up a furnished room. I had to have some place to sleep and the cheapest and most comfortable way, I thought, was to rent a room in a private family. I have slept in lodging houses time without number but they are too public and sometimes too noisy. For a good, honest sleep give me a private dwelling. I knew that I was looking shabby but good clean money looks good to a whole lot of people. I wandered through Buchanan and Argyle Streets, the Trongate and Gallowgate Street, but couldn't find a "To Let" sign anywhere. This kind of stumped me. I asked some one if there were no furnished rooms to let in Glasgow and he informed me that there were lots of them but that I would have to look in the upper stories of the houses for the signs. I did so but saw very few of them. I tackled the first place where I saw one. It was in a three-story building along the Trongate and the structure didn't look good to me. There was a narrow, stone-paved hallway leading through the building and at the rear of it was a cork-screw-like stairway that wound upward. The hallway was as dim and dark as a dungeon and made me feel funny. But I was there for a purpose so there was no use getting scared of bugaboos. Up the stairway I went, slowly and cautiously, keeping my eyes peeled for obstructions. I came to the first landing, where there was a single strongly made wooden door. I saw a knocker on the door and rapped at it rather faintly for admittance. An elderly woman came to the door and demanded to know what I wanted. I told her I was looking for a furnished room. From my accent she gathered that I was a foreigner for she asked at once: "Yer a furriner, ain't ye?" I can't describe the Scotch accent just right for it ain't my language, but I will try to set down what the lady said to me as well as I can. "Yes, ma'am," said I; "I arrived from New York today." "Yer a Yankee, I believe." "No, ma'am," responded I, "I'm a Westerner." This evidently puzzled the lady for she murmured "Ooh eye! ooh eye!" in the same tone somewhat as the boozy lassie at the Workingman's Restaurant had done. "What will ye be doin' in Glasgie?" asked the lady. I was stumped for a moment. I assured her I was going to look for a job. "What's yer trade?" "Oh, I work at anything," I answered. "Ah, then yer jack of all trades and maister of none." I assured the lady that was about the size of it and she then asked me how much I wanted to pay for a room. I told her about a dollar a week. As things were cheaper on this side of the water than on the other side, I figured it out that I ought to get things at about half price. Evidently the lady didn't think so, for she scanned me scornfully and wanted to know if I took her place for a tramp's lodging house. That was putting it rather plain which caused me to kind of wilt. I assured the landlady I had no such idea. I asked her what she charged for a room and she said two dollars and a half per week. Too much for yours truly, I thought, and told her so. We couldn't make a deal so I groped my way down stairs and tried my luck elsewhere. Rents probably were high in that part of the city so I crossed the Clyde and wandered into the Gorbals district. This is a section of the city inhabited by the poorer classes of working people and I had my eye on it while wandering along the Broomielaw. I saw warehouses along the waterfront over there and stone-paved streets full of houses. The houses were ancient-looking and grimy but I would probably find what I sought there. The first house I entered in that district had the same kind of a hallway with a spiral stairway at the end of it as the house I had been in on the other side of the river, and when I rapped at the door on the first floor a lady answered the summons. When I told her that I wanted a furnished room she wanted to know how much I was willing to pay. She did not tell me her price but wanted to size up my pile. Her little racket wouldn't work. I told her that if she had a room that suited me and if the price was right we could make a deal, otherwise not. Whereupon she opened her hall door, let me in and led me to a fair-sized room and asked me how I liked it. It contained a table, sofa and two chairs, but nothing else. I told her I wanted a bed-room, not a sitting-room. "This is a bed-room," said she, opening a closet in the room in which was a bunk. Holy Jerusalem! What did the lady take me for; a Chinaman, to put me in a china closet? Nay, nay, Pauline! I'm no Chinaman. Here was another case where the deal fell through. I like plenty of fresh air and light where I sleep when I can get it, and enough room to kick in. Here there was none of these things. I kept a-moving. I came to a house opposite a theater where I met two young ladies who occupied a flat and had a spare room. I believe they were actresses. They told me that their vacant room was rented by an actor who was now making a tour of the cities and that they didn't know just when he would be home. In the meanwhile I could occupy his room if I wished and when the actor returned I could share the room with him. I did not feel as if I would like to sleep with an actor, for he might have been a snorer or a high kicker, and I didn't know when he would be back anyway. That sort of an arrangement did not suit me. No deal was made here, either. The next place I went to and where I finally located, was a flat occupied by an old man and his daughter. The father was over seventy years of age and the daughter about thirty. They rented me a neat room for one dollar a week which contained an ample bed, chairs, rocker, a wash-stand, soap, towel, a window, lace curtains and a shade. My patience and perseverance had been rewarded at last. As soon as my landlady left me I stripped and took a wash from head to foot, the first good clean-up I had since I left New York. It was great. I rented the room for a week and concluded to hike out of town when the week was up. During the week that I remained in this house I became quite well acquainted with the old man and his daughter and learned that he was from the north of Ireland and that his wife who was dead had been Scotch. The daughter, therefore, was half-and-half. She was an amiable, good-tempered young woman, though far from pretty, and the devotion she showed to her father astonished me. He wasn't in the best of health and often was crabbed and cross, but no matter how crusty he was the daughter petted and humored him, and crowed and goo-ed and gaa-ed to him and never got out of patience. She treated him as a mother does her child and never wearied of soothing him. The old man didn't seem to appreciate these attentions for his daughter got no thanks from him and not even a kind word. One day when the daughter had gone out on an errand the father suspected that she was in my room, so he rushed into my room, looked under the bed and into the corners to see if she were there. The old man had not the slightest reason or cause to suspect his daughter and I watched his maneuvers with anger but said nothing. He deserved a good tongue-lashing and I felt like giving it to him but his great age held me back. Had he been a younger man I would have told him what I thought of him in short order. CHAPTER XII. DANCING IN THE GREEN. I slept well that night, better than I had slept since I left New York, for there was nothing to disturb me. A good rub down and a good night's rest had done me a world of good. Those who have traveled know what my feelings were. After a cheap breakfast in a Municipal Restaurant, where I had two big, thick slices of bread with excellent butter and a cup of good coffee for two cents, I bummed around the Clyde again, taking in the sights. I liked Glasgow first rate. The people were as friendly and sociable as they were out West, and their accent and ways were a never-ending source of interest to me. Everything that I saw interested me, for it was all so new and strange. No one can have the faintest idea what there is to be seen abroad unless he or she goes there and hears and sees for himself. Word-pictures are inadequate to give one a proper idea, for there is something even in a foreign _atmosphere_ that must be felt before it can be appreciated. I bought a morning paper and sat down on a bench along the embankment to read it. It was interesting from start to finish with nothing "yellow" about it. The articles were written in an able, scholarly way, and besides giving the news there were columns devoted to giving useful hints, such as "Master and Man," "Husbands and Wives," and such like things, that were well to know. They were in the shape of "Answers and Queries," somewhat. Even the advertisements were interesting to me but "The Want" ads were mostly incomprehensible, for there were too many Scotch colloquialisms in them. I saw an announcement in the paper stating that there would be dancing in the Green that afternoon, and I concluded instantly that I would take it in. It was to be a free show and when there is anything of that sort going on you may count me in, every time. In the meanwhile I just loafed around the banks of the Clyde, watching them load and unload vessels, taking in the foreigners' ways of doing things, peering into the shop-windows along the water-front, etc. The time passed quickly enough. I wasn't homesick a bit but felt right at home. There was something about the people and the place that made me feel quite at home. After dinner, at about two o'clock, I strolled into the Green. People were slowly sauntering into it in groups, and walking up toward the music stand where the dancing was to be done. The music stand was about half a mile from the park entrance. It was early, so I sat down on a bench and made myself comfortable. Little boys came along handing out programs and I secured one of them. Here is what it said: _Glasgow Green._ No. 1--March; Glendaurel Highlanders. No. 2--Strathspey; Marquis of Huntley. No. 3--Reel; The Auld Wife Ayont the Fire. No. 4--March; Brian Boru. No. 5--Strathspey; Sandy King. No. 6--Reel; Abercairney Highlanders. No. 7--Dance; Reel o' Tullock. No. 8--Waltz; The Pride of Scotland. No. 9--Highland Fling. No. 10--March; Loch Katrine Highlanders. No. 11--Strathspey; When You Go to the Hill. No. 12--Reel; Over the Isles to America. No. 13--Dance; Sword Dance. No. 14--March; 93d's Farewell to Edinburgh. No. 15--Strathspey; Kessock Ferry. No. 16--Reel; Mrs. McLeod's. No. 17--Slow March; Lord Leven. _Choir._ No. 1--Glee; Hail, Smiling Morn. No. 2--Part Song; Rhine Raft Song. No. 3--Part Song; Maggie Lauder. No. 4--Part Song; Let the Hills Resound. No. 5--Scottish Medley, introducing favorite airs. No. 6--We'll Hae Nane But Hielan Bonnets Here. No. 7--Part Song; Hail to the Chief. No. 8--Part Song; The Auld Man. No. 9--Part Song; Awake Aeolian Lyre. No. 10--Part Song; Night, Lovely Night. No. 11--God Save the King. The program was a good long one and sure looked good to me. I imagined there would be something doing. At about half past two there was a big crowd congregated about the music stand but as there were few seats near it most of the people had to stand. As I wanted to see all I could I mingled with the throng and patiently waited for the performance to begin. The band hadn't made its appearance yet and there was no one on the band stand. To relieve the tedium some of the young fellows who were in the crowd began to chaff some of the lassies in a flirty way. Three pretty girls in a group were the especial target of the laddies. If I could only get off the Scotch right I would jot down some of their badinage for it was very amusing, to me, at least, but I couldn't do the theme justice. After what to me seemed an interminable long wait we heard some yelling and snarling away down toward the entrance of the park I took to be dog-fighting. Too bad it was so far away, for anything would have been agreeable just then to relieve the monotony, even a dog-fight. I noticed the people near the entrance scattering to either side of the walk and forming a lane through which to give the dogs a show. The yelping and snarling came nearer and finally I perceived that it was a band of men approaching dressed in Highland costume and playing the bagpipes. I had heard the bagpipes played many a time and knew what they were but I had never heard a whole lot of them played at once. I now knew that it wasn't a dog-fight that had caused the noise. The bag-pipers came along quickly with long strides, their heads erect, stern of visage with petticoats flying from side to side like those of a canteen-girl when she marches with her regiment. The men were husky fellows, broad-shouldered, lithe and active, but they wore no pants. The whole lot of them were bare-legged and upon their heads was perched a little plaid cap with a feather in it, and over their shoulders was thrown a plaid shawl. Stockings came up to their knees, but their legs a little way further up beyond the stockings were entirely bare. Although there were lots of the girls present I didn't notice any of them blush at this exposure of the person. Maybe they were used to such spectacles. What tune do you think these Highlanders were playing as they marched along? Nothing more nor less than-- "Where, oh where has my little dog gone, Where, oh where can he be? With his hair cut short and his tail cut long, Where, oh where can he be?" This was a mighty nice little tune and I had heard it before, but I had never heard it played by such instruments. The people liked the tune and seemed to like the Highlanders too, for when they went by, the people closed in after them in a solid body, and marched behind them, a pushing, elbowing, struggling mass. When the music stand was reached the band did not go upon it but marched around it playing that same little old tune. I wondered why they didn't change it and play something else but as the crowd didn't kick there was no use of me kicking. They kept a marching and a marching around the stand for quite a little while but the tune never changed. The musicians took a good fresh hold on the air every minute or two, some note rising a little shriller than the others but that is all the variation there was. Do you want to know the honest truth? Well I wasn't stuck on the tune or the bagpipes either. The noise they made would have made a dog howl. It was nothing but a shrieking, yelling, and squeaking. Call that music? From the pleased faces of the people you would have judged it was fine. After what seemed a coon's age the band quit playing and marching, and mounted the platform, upon which they had been preceded by a lot of boys and girls who formed the choir. Number one on the program was a march, the Glendaurel Highlanders. I couldn't see anything in it except more marching to a different tune. The crowd seemed to like it and applauded frantically. There was a whole lot of pushing and shoving by the crowd in my neighborhood and I wasn't comfortable at all. A sturdy dame behind me made herself especially obnoxious by wanting to get right up front and she didn't seem to care how she got there or who she shoved out of the way to accomplish her purpose. She dug her elbow into my side in no gentle fashion, and was bent on getting in front of me, whether I was agreeable or not. Well, she didn't make the riffle. I planted my elbow in her rib to see how she liked it. She scuttled away from me then quickly enough. Number two on the program was Marquis of Huntley. I didn't know who the Marquis of Huntley was but evidently the crowd did for they went wild over the tune and dancing. The dancing was fine, tip-top, but I can't say as much for the tune. The way them Highlanders could dance was a caution, for they were graceful and supple as eels. No flies on them. Number three was a corker, a reel called "The Auld Wife Ayont the Fire." There was something doing this time. The Highlanders turned themselves loose and they hopped, skipped, jumped and yelled like a tribe of Sioux Indians on the war path. How they did carry on and how the crowd whooped it up in sympathy! The whole push was frantic, Highlanders and all. My hair riz but I don't know why. If any one tells me that those bare-legged Highlanders can't dance I will surely tell them they are mistaken. They were artists and no mistake, every one of them. Brian Boru was the next event on the program, a march. I was getting tired of marches but the mob wasn't. They applauded the Brian Boru wildly and saw a whole lot in it that I couldn't see. Number five was another strathspey, Sandy King. I was wondering who Sandy was and if he were a king, but I didn't like to ask questions. No use letting the "hoi-polloi" get on to it that I was a greenhorn. There might have been something doing had they known it, for it takes but a little thing to set a mob a-going. Next came a reel, Abercairney Highlanders. I wondered how many different clans of Highlanders there were in Scotland. The woods seemed full of them. This was another wild Indian affair, worse than the first reel. Them chaps were good yellers and jumpers, and I think could hold their own with any wild Indian, no matter what tribe he belonged to. Their lungs were leathery, their limbs tireless, and their wind excellent. The Reel of Tullock came next and then a waltz, "The Pride of Scotland." Both were excellent. Number nine was a Highland Fling. That was a great number. It aroused everyone to enthusiasm. I could not help but admire the grace of the dancers. So quick they were, so unerring. Their wind was so good that I felt I would have hated to tackle any one of them in a scrap. Number thirteen was a sword-dance, danced by one man only. Crossed swords were laid on the platform and the highlander danced between them slowly, rapidly, any old way, and never touched. He never looked down while dancing, and how he managed to avoid these swords was a marvel to me. The sword blades were placed close together and the dance was kept up a long time. That chap was an artist of a high class, and could have made a whole lot of money on the stage had he chosen to do so. Maybe he was a celebrity in Glasgow and Scotland. He never touched a sword. His dancing was marvelous. It was evident these Highlanders could do something besides squeezing wind out of a bag and playing "where, oh where." Yes, they were all right. Their performance was a good one and worth anyone's while to see. When I returned to my lodgings that evening I told my landlady that I had attended the dance in the Green and she wanted to know how I liked it. I told her truly that it was the best I had ever seen. And it was, by long odds. CHAPTER XIII. TAKING IN A GLASGOW SHOW. The evening of my second day's stay in Glasgow I put in by taking in a show at the theater. It was the Gayety Theater I intended to go to, where vaudeville plays were given, but as the theater was a long distance from the Gorbals District, I had some trouble finding it. The theatrical performances in Glasgow begin early, some at half-past five and some at six o'clock, and let out at about nine o'clock, which gives those so inclined a chance to go to bed early. The days were long at that season of the year, so that I arrived in front of the theater while the evening sun was still high in the heavens. The theater building was an immense one of stone and very lofty. In front of it was a long line of people waiting to make a rush for good seats in the gallery, and I joined the throng. There was a good deal of rough horse-play among some of the fellows waiting there and a whole lot of chaffing. A chap behind me gave me a kick in the rump and tipped my hat over my eyes, which he deemed a very good joke. I didn't think it was and told him not to get too gay, whereupon he roared with laughter. He told his neighbors that they had a greenhorn among them, whereupon many in the crowd made life a burden for me for a while. They made all kinds of chaffing remarks, they jeered me, they hooted me and groaned. They were having a whole lot of fun at my expense but I never said another word, for what was the use? I was mad clear through, though. Had I only had a gang with me there might have been a different tale to tell. I was alone and friendless. A fellow thinks all kinds of things when a crowd gets after him. The line was growing longer rapidly, and before the doors were opened a couple of hundred people must have been on the street waiting. As soon as the doors were opened there was a grand rush and scramble to secure tickets. I held my own in the push, though I was nearly suffocated and squeezed flat, but managed to secure a ticket after a little while, for which I paid twelve cents--six pence. Cheap enough if the show is any good. I rushed up the spiral stairway after the crowd, but before I got half way up I was obliged to stop and blow off steam. The steps were many and winding. I did not notice anyone else stopping for a breather which led me to conclude that the Scots are a long-winded race. Two or three times did I have to stop before I reached nigger-heaven, my destination. The gallery was so high up and so close to the ceiling that I could have touched the ceiling with my hand when standing up. Below, clear to the orchestra seats, or "pit," as it is called, was gallery after gallery. Some of these were divided off into queer contrivances called "stalls." To me the stalls seemed like huge dry-goods boxes, with the part facing outward, toward the stage, open, from the middle to the top. The lower part was boarded in. They were queer-looking contrivances, and the people in them looked as if they were caged. The stalls were supposed to be private and exclusive--in a word, private boxes. Some little boys in livery were wandering about on the various floors crying out "Program" with the accent on the first syllable, and as I wanted one, I hailed a boy who gave me one and charged me a penny for it (two cents). Printing must be dear in Glasgow, I thought, to charge a fellow two cents for a printed piece of paper. I said nothing but scanned the program. Here is what it said: No. 1--La Puits d'Amour, Balfe; Band. No. 2--Mr. John Robertson, Baritone Vocalist. No. 3--Drew and Richards in their specialty act, Old Fashioned Times. No. 4--Mr. Billy Ford, Negro Comedian. No. 5--The Alaskas--Ben and Frank--Comic Horizontal Bar Experts. No. 6--Mr. Edward Harris, London Comedian. No. 7--Miss Josie Trimmer, Child Actress, and the Forget-me-nots, Vocalists and Dancers. No. 8--Selection, Yeoman of the Guard. No. 9--Sallie Adams, American Serpentine Dancer. No. 10--The Gees, in their Musical Oddity, Invention. No. 11--Collins and Dickens, in their Refined Specialty act. No. 12--Mr. Charles Russell, Comedian and descriptive Vocalist. No. 13--National Anthem. Quite a lengthy program this and it looked to me as if it might be good, especially the Serpentine Dancer, who was a countrywoman of mine, and the darkies, who were probably countrymen. After a moderate wait the lights were turned up, the orchestra tuned up and soon the band gave us a selection by Balfe called "La Puits d'Amour." I didn't know what "La Puits d'Amour" was but it didn't make any difference to me. It was some kind of music. The selection was a long one and the band sawed away at it as if they were never going to stop. It was so long drawn out in fact that my wits went a wool gathering and I nearly fell asleep, for tedious music is apt to make me snooze. When the music stopped I woke up and was ready for business. The first event on the program was Mr. John Robertson, Baritone Vocalist. The band played a preliminary flourish when out walked Mr. Robertson dressed in a spike-tail coat, black vest and biled shirt. Hanging in front of his vest was a long, thick watch-chain which must have been a valuable one, for it looked like gold. Mr. Robertson sang a song and kept a hold on his watch chain. The song was hum-drum and so was Mr. Robertson's voice. Mr. Robertson made no great hit and when he left us he took his chain with him. Number two was Drew and Richards in their specialty act, "Old Fashioned Times." A lady and gent came upon the stage dressed in very old-fashioned garb, and sang. Just as soon as the lady opened her mouth to sing I knew she was a gentleman and she couldn't sing any more like a lady than I could. I have seen female impersonators on the stage many a time and they carried out the illusion perfectly, but this chap wasn't in it at all. He gave me a pain. I wasn't sorry when this couple made their exit. Mr. Billy Ford, the Negro Comedian, next came to the front. Now there'll be a little something doing, anyway, thought I. Mr. Billy Ford was not a negro at all but a Britisher with a cockney accent. Maybe I wasn't astonished! Holy Smoke! He sang out bold as you please just as if he were singing like a darkey and the gallery gods went into ecstacies over him. They laughed, roared, and chirruped. They seemed to think a heap of Mr. Ford, but I felt like going somewhere to lay off and die. A nigger with a cockney accent! Oh my! Oh my! Will wonders never cease? The comic horizontal bar experts, the Alaskas, were very tame turners, and to my view, anything but funny. I had seen better stunts than they performed in free shows on the Bowery at Coney Island. The sixth number on the program was Mr. Edward Harris, London Comedian. Here at last was someone who could sing and act. Mr. Harris was from the London Music Halls and was evidently a favorite, for he was given a great reception. He was greeted with roars of welcome and shouts and calls from the gallery gods that seemed unfamiliar and queer to me. Even the people in the pit and stalls applauded loudly. Mr. Harris turned himself loose and impersonated London characters in a way that brought forth the wildest enthusiasm. Some of the gods nearly died laughing at his comicalities and a man away down in the pit laughed out loud in such a way that it made me think of a dream I once had when I saw ghosts playing leap-frog over a graveyard fence and having an elegant time of it. The noise this man made was a high sepulchral shriek, like theirs. It was wild and weird. The comedian was first class and the audience was loath to let him go. They recalled him several times and he responded. Number seven was Miss Josie Trimmer, child actress, and the two Forget-Me-Nots, vocalists and dancers. This was another tame affair for the two Forget-Me-Nots were Scottish lassies who got off coon songs with a Scotch accent and had acquired an improper idea of coon dancing. Their act was a caricature and a-- well, never mind. It isn't right to be too critical. They were doing the best they could and were appreciated by the audience, so it may be well for me not to say too much. The next number was a selection by the band, "Yeoman of the Guard," which was played after a long intermission. I was getting rather weary by this time and had half a mind to go home, but I wanted to see the serpentine dancer, Sallie Adams, who was a countrywoman of mine. It seemed to me I hadn't seen a countryman or countrywoman for a coon's age, and I felt as if I just couldn't go until I saw Sallie. When the time came for Miss Adams to appear on the stage, all the lights in the theater were turned out and a strong calcium light was thrown upon the stage. Sallie hopped into view chipper as you please, never caring a whoop who saw her, countryman or foreigner, and she began to throw diaphanous folds of cheese-cloth all over herself and around herself. Different colored lights were thrown upon her draperies as she danced, and the effect was thrilling and made my hair stand up. Sallie was all right. She was onto her job in good shape. Maybe I didn't applaud? I roared, I stamped and whistled, and my neighbors must have thought I was clean off. The gorgeous spectacle reminded me of the Fourth of July at home, when sky-rockets go up with a hiss and a roar, Roman candles color the black skies, sissers chase through the air like snakes, bombs explode and fall in stars of all colors. Siss! Boom! Ah! When Sallie made her exit I made mine, for I had got my money's worth and was satisfied. CHAPTER XIV. MR. ROBERT BURNS, THE POET. One thing that struck me very forcibly before I had been in Glasgow any length of time was the fact that the people thought a great deal of Mr. Burns, the poet. Streets and lanes were named after him, inns and taverns, shoes, hats, caps, clothing, tobacco, bum-looking cigars, bad whiskey, in fact his name was attached to all kinds of articles to make them sell, and in some cases merely as a mark of respect or affection. It was plain to the most casual observer that Mr. Burns was thought a great deal of. He had been dead a hundred years or more, yet his personality pervaded the place, and his picture was to be seen on signs, posters, in the stores and elsewhere. For Mr. Burns most Scotchmen will die, Scotch ladies sigh, Scotch babies cry, Scotch dogs ki-yi. He was a good-looking chap, and highly gifted, but the poor fellow died before he had reached his thirty-eighth year, which was a national calamity. Had he lived there is no telling what he might have accomplished, for during the short span of his life he did wonderful things. He took the old Scotch songs that had been written before his day and gave them a twist of his own which improved them vastly, and made them immortal; he portrayed Scottish life in a way that no poet has ever imitated or will imitate maybe, and he loved his country deeply and fervently. His father was a rancher, and a poverty-stricken one at that, and the poet was born in a shack on the farm. The house was a little old one of stone, and a rich man of the day would have used it for a chicken house. In this house and in a china closet in the kitchen was born the greatest poet Scotland ever produced. When Bobbie grew up the old man set him a-plowing, and while at this work the boy composed rhymes which were so good that some of his friends induced him to print them. Old man Burns didn't see any good in the verses, for he knew more about poultry than he did about poetry, and told his son to cut it out. Bobbie couldn't, for it just came natural. Before he was twenty-one the boy had written lots of good poetry and it was put in book form and printed at Kilmarnock, a town not far from his birthplace. The birthplace of the poet was on the farm near the town of Ayr, in Ayrshire, and that whole county (or shire) is now called "The Burns Country," because it was the poet's stamping-ground. The poet knew lots of people throughout the county and his writings have immortalized many a place in it. After his book had been printed he sprang into fame at once and was made much of by man, woman and child. Being a good-looking chap, the girls began to run after him, and poor Burnsie had the time of his life. He wanted to steer clear of 'em, but he couldn't, for the girls liked and admired him too much. The result was that a few of them got into trouble, and soon some wild-eyed fathers and brothers went gunning for him. The fault was not the poet's wholly, for he couldn't have kept these girls away from him with a cannon. To avoid such troubles in the future he finally married a blond, buxom young lassie called Jean Armour, by whom he had twins, the first rattle out of the box. Not long after that he had two at a throw again. Bobbie could do something besides write poetry, evidently. He was a thoroughbred any way you took him, though the people at that time did not know it and did not fully appreciate his great qualities. It was only after he had been dead a long time that the world fully realized his worth. At the present day they estimate him properly and their affection and reverence for him are boundless. Some of his countrymen call him simply Burns, others call him Rabbie, and still others, "puir Rabbie," puir meaning poor. The country that he lived in, Ayrshire, is visited by a million strangers or more every year, who visit the shack he was born in and the places he made immortal by his writings. The shack has been fixed up and improved somewhat since he lived in it, and is now a sort of museum where are displayed various editions of the books, manuscripts and other things, that once were his. Among the things is a walking-cane that a New York lawyer named Kennedy somehow got hold of. How Kennedy got the cane I don't know, but he returned it to the Burns collection in the cottage. Mr. Kennedy is a rare exception to New York lawyers in general, for they rarely return anything that they once get their hands on. Mr. Kennedy must have had a whole lot of regard for the great poet. Lots of people have never read any of Burns' poems. I wonder would they appreciate it if I showed them a few samples? I will not print the long ones, but only the shorter ones, for even they will show, I am sure, the greatness of "Puir Rabbie." As I said in a previous chapter, when I first set foot in Scotland it was at Greenock, about 25 miles from Glasgow, where a tender took us ashore from the Furnessia. Greenock is quite a city, for it contains a good many factories and other establishments, but the city has become famous the world over just because of one little circumstance connected with the great poet, namely: A young girl named Highland Mary lived there who loved, and was beloved by the poet, and they were engaged to be married. Sad to relate, the young girl died while she was engaged to the poet, which saddened him considerably. Years afterward he married Jean Armour. The poet wrote some lines to the memory of Highland Mary which almost any Scotchman or Scotch lady can recite by heart. Here they are: HIGHLAND MARY. Ye banks and braes and streams around The Castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie; There Summer first unfauld her robes, And there the langest tarry; For there I took the last farewell O' my sweet Highland Mary. How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk How rich the hawthorn's blossom! As, underneath their fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom! The golden hours, on angels' wings Flew o'er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary. Wi' mony a vow and locked embrace Our parting was fu' tender; And pledging oft to meet again We tore oursels asunder; But, O! fell Death's untimely frost, That nipt my flower sae early! Now green's the sod and cauld's the clay That wraps my Highland Mary. O pale, pale now those rosy lips I oft ha'e kissed sae fondly! And closed for aye the sparkling glance, That dwelt on me sae kindly! And mouldering now in silent dust That heart that lo'ed me dearly! But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary. Was there anything ever written more sad, pathetic and sweet? Following is a little poem written in a different vein which may serve as a sort of temperance lesson to some husbands who stay out late at night having a good time. The recreant husband's name in the poem is Mr. Jo, and Mrs. Jo sends it in to him good and hard. Says Mr. Jo: O let me in this ae night, This ae, ae, ae night; For pity's sake this ae night, O rise and let me in, Jo! Thou hear'st the winter wind and weet; Nae star blinks thro' the driving sleet. Tak' pity on my weary feet, And shield me frae the rain, Jo. The bitter blast that 'round me blaws Unheeded howls, unheeded fa's; The cauldness o' thine heart's the cause Of a' my grief and pain, Jo. O let me in this ae, ae night, This ae, ae, ae night; For pity's sake this ae night O rise and let me in, Jo. Mr. Jo's pleadings were in vain, to judge from Mrs. Jo's answer, which is as follows: O tell na me o' wind and rain! Upbraid na me wi' cauld disdain! Gae back the gate ye came again-- I winna let you in, Jo. I haven't the least idea where Jo spent the night, but it surely wasn't with Mrs. Jo. There are lots of husbands who get full and don't know when to go home. Let them paste this poem in their hats. It may do them good. Here is an old song revised by Puir Rabbie, whose magic touch has made it better and more famous than it ever was before. It is entitled: "Will ye go to the Highlands, Leezie Lindsay?" Will ye go to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay, Will ye go to the Hielands wi' me? Will ye go to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay, My pride and my darling to be? To gang to the Hielands wi' you, sir, I dinna ken how that may be; For I ken na the land that ye live in, Nor ken I the lad I'm gaun wi'. O Leezie, lass, ye maun ken little, If sae that ye dinna ken me; My name is Lord Ronald McDonald, A chieftain o' high degree. She has kilted her coats o' green satin, She has kilted them up to the knee; And she's off wi' Lord Ronald McDonald His bride and his darling to be. A whole lot of human nature about this little poem and a fine swing to it. Burns had a touch that no one has ever imitated or ever can imitate. It is a twist, which for want of a better name, I would call "a French Twist." Imitate it, ye who can! Everyone knows "Auld Lang Syne." It is an old song that didn't amount to much until Burns got a hold of it and put his twist to it. Here it is: AULD LANG SYNE. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Should auld acquaintance be forgot And days o' auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, Well tak' a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. We twa ha'e run about the braes And pu'd the gowans fine; But we've wandered many a weary foot Sin' auld lang syne; We two ha'e paid'lt i' the burn Frae mornin' sun till dine; But seas between us braid ha'e roar'd Sin auld lang syne. Chorus. And here's a hand, my trusty fren, And gie us a hand o' thine; And we'll take a right good wallie-waught For auld lang syne. Chorus. And surely ye'll be your pint stoup, And surely I'll be mine; And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. Following is a composition that is famous the world over and is used as a recitation, not only in this country but in every other English-speaking country. It is entitled: "Bruce at Bannockburn": BRUCE AT BANNOCKBURN. Scots, wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled; Scots, whom Bruce has often led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to glorious victorie! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lower; See approach proud Edward's power-- Edward! chains and slaverie! Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Traitor! Coward! turn and flee. Wha for Scotland's king and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Freemen stand or freemen fa', Caledonian! on wi' me! By oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall--they shall be free! Lay the proud usurper low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Forward! Let us do or die. Here is a love song to Jennie, entitled, "Come, Let Me Take Thee!" COME, LET ME TAKE THEE. Come, let me take thee to my breast And pledge we ne'er shall sunder; And I shall spurn as vilest dust The world's wealth and grandeur; And do I hear my Jennie own That equal transports move her? I ask for dearest life alone That I may live to love her. Thus in my arms, wi' a' thy charms, I clasp my countless treasure; I'll seek nae mair o' heaven to share Than sic a moment's pleasure; And by thy een sae bonnie blue I swear I'm thine forever! And on thy lips I seal my vow, And break it I shall never. One day Burns was called upon for a toast during a dinner which was given by the Dumfries Volunteers, in honor of their anniversary. The poet got up and spoke the following lines extempore: Instead of a song, boys, I'll give you a toast-- Here is the memory of those on the 12th that we lost! That we lost, did I say; nay, by heaven, that we found; For their fame it shall last while the world goes around. The next in succession I'll give you--the King! Whoe'er would betray him, on high may he swing! And here's the grand fabric, our Free Constitution, As built on the base of the great Revolution. And longer with politics not to be crammed, Be anarchy cursed and be tyranny damned; And who would to Liberty e'er be disloyal, May his son be a hangman and he his first trial. A GRACE BEFORE MEAT. Some ha'e meat and canna eat it, And some wad eat that want it; But we ha'e meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit. TO A HEN-PECKED COUNTRY SQUIRE. As father Adam first was fooled, A case that's still too common, Here lies a man a woman ruled-- The devil ruled the woman. The poet's father, William Burness, lies buried in a graveyard at Alloway. The following lines were written by his son to his memory: LINES TO HIS FATHER. O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near with pious reverence and attend. Here lie the loving husband's dear remains, The tender father and the generous friend. The pitying heart that felt for human woe; The dauntless heart that feared no human pride; The friend of man, to vice alone a foe; "For e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side." I believe there are some husbands who grow tired of the married state after they have been in it a while. They came to find out that it isn't all "beer and skittles," as they first imagined it would be. Even "Puir Rabbie" had troubles of his own, as the following will show, for it is written about himself: "Oh, that I had n'er been married! I would never had nae care; Now I've gotten wife and bairns, And they cry crowdie ev'ry mair; Ance crowdie, twice crowdie, Three times crowdie in a day; Gin ye crowdie ony mair, Ye'll crowdie a' my meal away. Waefu' want and hunger fley me, Glowrin' by the hallan en'; Sair I fecht them at the door, But aye I'm eerie the come ben." The poet had lots of cronies and friends, and he was as loyal to some of them as they were to him. He was a good boon companion and liked "a wee drappie" (nip) himself as well as anyone. Many an alehouse proudly proclaims that he visited it and preserves the chair or bench that he sat on, the glass he drank out of or the table he sat at, to this day, and any and every thing that is familiar with his presence is sacred and treasured. William Muir of Tarbolton is the friend to whom the following lines were written: ON A FRIEND. An honest man here lies at rest, As e'er God with his image blest; The friend of man, the friend of truth; The friend of age, the guide of youth; Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, Few heads with knowledge so informed; If there's another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none he made the best of this. Mr. John Dove kept an inn at Mauchline called the "Whiteford Arms," and the poet pays his respects to him in the following fashion: ON JOHN DOVE, INNKEEPER. Here lies Johnny Pidgeon; What was his religion? Whae'er desires to ken, To some other warl' Maun follow the carl, For here Johnny Pidgeon had nane. Strong ale was ablution-- Small beer persecution-- A dram was momento mori; But a full flowing bowl Was the saving his soul, And port was celestial glory. To judge from the following, the poet did not have a great respect for all ruling elders of the church. Souter Hood was a miserly one. TO A CELEBRATED RULING ELDER. Here Souter Hood in death doth sleep; To hell, if he's gone thither; Satan, gie him thy gear to keep, He'll hand it weel thegither. TO ANOTHER HEN-PECKED HUSBAND. O Death, hadst thou but spared his life Whom we this day lament, We freely wad exchanged the wife An' a' been weel content. The poet was hospitably entertained at a place one day called for short and sweet Dahna Cardoch. In appreciation he got off the following: When death's dark stream I ferry o'er, A time that surely shall come-- In heaven itself I'll ask no more Than just a Highland Welcome. One Sunday while in the northern part of Scotland with Nicol, a friend of his, he visited the Carron Works which they had traveled some distance to see. There was a sign on the gate: "No Admittance to Strangers," which barred the poet and his friend. Here is an apostrophe by Burns in regard to the matter: NO ADMITTANCE TO STRANGERS. We cam' na here to view your warks In hopes to be mair wise, But only, lest we gang to hell, It may be nae surprise; But when we tirled at your door, Your porter dought na hear us; Sae may, should we to hell's yetts come, Your billy Satan serve us. LORD GREGORY. O, mirk, mirk is this midnight hour, And loud the tempest roar; A waeful wanderer seeks thy tower-- Lord Gregory, ope the door. An exile frae her father's ha', And a' for loving thee; At least some pity on me show, If love it may na be. Lord Gregory, mind'st thou not the grove By bonnie Irwine side, Where first I owned that virgin love I lang, lang had denied! How often didst thou pledge and vow Thou wad for aye be mine; And my fond heart, itself sae true, It ne'er mistrusted thine. Hard is thy heart, Lord Gregory, And flinty is thy breast-- Thou dart of heaven that flashed by, O, wilt thou give me rest! Ye mustering thunders from above, Your willing victim see! But spare and pardon my fause love His wrangs to Heaven and me! MARY MORISON. O, Mary, at thy window be, It is the wished, the trysted hour! Those smiles and glances let me see That makes the miser's treasure poor. How blithely wad I bide the stoure A weary slave frae sun to sun, Could I the rich reward secure-- The lovely Mary Morison. Jestreen, when to the trembling string The dance gaed through the lighted ha', To thee my fancy took its wing-- I sat, but neither heard nor saw; Though this was fair, and that was braw, And you the toast of a' the town, I sighed and said amang them a' "Ye are na Mary Morison." O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die; Or canst thou break that heart of his Whose only faut is loving thee? If love for love thou wilt na gi'e At least be pity to me shown, A thought ungentle canna be The thought o' Mary Morison. TO A LAIRD. When ---- deceased to the devil went down 'Twas nothing would serve him but Satan's own crown; Thy fool's head, quoth Satan, that crown shall wear never, Grant thou'rt wicked but not quite so clever. OPEN THE DOOR TO ME, O! O, open the door some pity to show, O, open the door to me, O! Though thou has been fause, I'll ever prove true, O, open the door to me, O! Cauld is the blast upon my pale cheek, But caulder thy love for me, O! The frost that freezes the life at my heart Is naught to my pains frae thee, O! The wan moon is setting behind the white wave, And time is setting with me, O! False friends, false love, farewell! for mair I'll ne'er trouble them nor thee, O! She has opened the door, she has opened it wide; She sees his pale corse on the plain, O! My true love! she cried, and sank down by his side Never to rise again, O! TO CARDONESS. Bless the Redeemer, Cardoness, With grateful lifted eyes; Who said that not the soul alone But body, too, must rise. For had he said, "The soul alone From death I shall deliver," Alas! alas! O Cardoness, Then thou hadst slept forever. YOUNG JESSIE. True hearted was he, the said swain o' the Yarrow, And fair are the maids on the banks o' the Ayr, But by the sweet side of the Nith's winding river Are lovers as faithful and maidens as fair; To equal young Jessie seek Scotland all over, To equal young Jessie you seek it in vain; Grace, beauty and elegance fetter her lover, And maidenly modesty fixes the chain. O, fresh is the rose in the gay dewy morning, And sweet is the lily at evening close; But in the fair presence o' lovely young Jessie Unseen is the lily, unheeded the rose. Love sits in her smile, a wizard ensnaring, Enthroned in her een, he delivers his law; And still to her charms she alone is a stranger, Her modest demeanor's the jewel of a'. DOWN THE BURN, DAVIE. As down the burn they took their way And thro' the flowery dale, His cheek to hers he aft did lay, And love was aye the tale. "O, Mary, when shall we return Sic pleasure to renew?" Quoth Mary, "Love, I like the burn, And aye shall follow you." A BIT OF ADVICE. Deluded swain, the pleasure The fickle Fair can give thee Is but a fairy treasure-- Thy hopes will soon deceive thee. The billows on the ocean, The breezes idly roaming, The clouds' uncertain motion-- They are bu t types of women. O! art thou not ashamed To doat upon a feature? If man thou wouldst be named, Despise the silly creature. Go, find an honest fellow-- Good claret set before thee-- Hold on till thou'rt mellow-- And then to bed in glory. MY SPOUSE NANCY. Husband, husband, cease your strife, No longer idly rave, sir; Though I am your wedded wife, Yet I am not your slave, sir. "One of two must still obey, Nancy, Nancy; Is it man or woman, say? My spouse Nancy!" "If it is still the lordly word, Service and obedience; I'll desert my sovereign lord-- And so, good by, allegiance!" "Sad will I be, so bereft; Nancy, Nancy! Yet I'll try to make a shift, My spouse Nancy!" "My poor heart, then break it must, My last hour I am near it; When you lay me in the dust, Think, think how you will bear it." O, CAN YE SEW CUSHIONS? O, can ye sew cushions and can ye sew sheets, And can ye sing bal-lu-loo when the bairn greets? And hee and baw birdie, and hee and baw lamb! And hee and baw birdie, my bonnie wee lamb! Hee, O, wee! O, what would I do wi' you; Black is the life that I lead wi' you! Money o' you--little for to gie you! Hee, O, wee! O, what would I do wi' you? WOMAN, COMPLAIN NOT! Let not woman e'er complain Of inconstancy in love; Let not woman e'er complain Fickle man is apt to rove. Look abroad through Nature's range-- Nature's mighty law is change; Ladies, would it not be strange, Man should then a monster prove? Mark the winds and mark the skies, Ocean's ebb and ocean's flow; Sun and moon but set to rise-- Round and round the seasons go. Why, then, ask of silly man To oppose great Nature's plan? We'll be constant while we can-- You can be no more, you know. JENNIE. The following was written to Jean Jeffrey, daughter of a minister, who afterward became Mrs. Renwick, and emigrated to New York with her husband: When first I saw fair Jennie's face I couldna tell what ailed me; My heart went fluttering pit-a-pat-- My een, they almost failed me. She's aye sae neat, sae trim, sae tight All grace does 'round her hover, Ae look deprived me o' my heart And I became a lover. Had I Dundas' whole estate Or Hopetown's wealth to shine in-- Did warlike laurels crown my brow Or humbler bays entwining-- I'd lay them a' at Jennie's feet, Could I but hope to move her And prouder than a belted knight, I'd be my Jennie's lover. But sair I fear some happier swain Has gained sweet Jennie's favor; If so, may every bliss be hers, Tho' I maun never have her. But gang she east or gang she west, 'Twixt Forth and Tweed all over, While men have eyes, or ears, or taste She'll always find a lover. The poet one day was taking a ride through the country on horseback and when he got to the town of Carlisle became thirsty and stopped at a tavern for a drink. He tethered his horse outside in the village green where it was espied by the poundmaster, who took it to the pound. When Burnsie came out he was mad clear through and this is what he wrote: Was e'er puir poet sae befitted? The maister drunk--the horse committed, Puir harmless beast, tak thee nae care, Thou'lt be a horse when he's nae mair (mare). Andrew Turner was not highly appreciated by the poet, if we may judge from the following: In seventeen hundred and forty-nine Satan took stuff to make a swine And cuist it in a corner; But wilely he changed his plan And shaped it something like a man And called it Andrew Turner. A MOTHERS ADDRESS TO HER INFANT. My blessing upon thy sweet wee lippie, My blessing upon thy bonnie e'e brie! Thy smiles are sae like my blithe sodger laddie Thou's aye the dearer and dearer to me. NATIONAL THANKSGIVING ON A NAVAL VICTORY. Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks, To murder men and gi'e God thanks? For shame gi'e o'er! proceed no further-- God won't accept your thanks for murther. TO FOLLY. The graybeard, Old Wisdom, may boast of his treasures-- Give me with gay Folly to live; Grant him calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures But Folly has raptures to give. TO LORD GALLOWAY. What dost thou in that mansion fair? Flit, Galloway, and find Some narrow, dirty dungeon cave, The picture of thy mind! No Stewart art thou, Galloway-- The Stewarts all were brave; Besides, the Stewarts were but fools, Not one of them a knave. Bright ran thy line, O Galloway! Through many a far-famed sire; So ran the far-famed Roman way-- So ended--in a mire! Spare me thy vengeance, Galloway-- In quiet let me live; I ask no kindness at thy hand, For thou hast none to give. The poet subscribed for a paper which he didn't receive regularly, so he told the editor about it in this fashion: Dear Peter, dear Peter, We poor sons of meter Are aften negleckit, ye ken; For instance, your sheet, man, Tho' glad I'm to see it, man, I get no ae day in ten. HONEST POVERTY. Is there for honest poverty, That hangs its head and a' that; The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that; For a' that and a' that! Our toil's obscure and a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp The man's the gowd for a' that. What though on hamely fare we dine Wear hoddin grey and a' that; Give fools their silks and knaves their wine A man's a man for a' that! For a' that and a' that, Their tinsel show and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that! Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha' struts and stares and a' that? Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that; For a' that and a' that; His riband, star and a' that, The man of independent mind He looks and laughs at a' that! A prince can mak' a belted knight, A marquis, duke and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might-- Guid faith he maunna fa' that; For a' that and a' that, Their dignities and a' that. The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, Are higher ranks than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth May bear the gree, and a' that! For a' that and a' that It's coming yet for a' that, That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that. Here are a few facts concerning the personal and family history of the poet: His father's name was William Burness, and was born November 11, 1721, at Clockenhill, Scotland. I suppose that Burness was the old-fashioned way of spelling Burns, hence the difference in the names of the son and father. The poet's name was Robert Burns and the father's William Burness, or Burns. His mother's name was Agnes Brown and she was born in the Carrick district, Scotland, March 17, 1732. Robert Burns, the great poet, was born January 25, 1759, and died July 21, 1796, being therefore not thirty-eight years of age at the time of his death. He was the eldest of seven children who were named consecutively Robert, Gilbert, Agnes, Arabella, William, John and Isabel. The wife of the poet, as I have previously stated in this volume, was Jean Armour, and she was born at Mauchline in 1763 and died at Dumfries in 1834. She survived the poet many years and died at the ripe old age of 71. She was a national character and was made much of, as was everyone else intimately or even remotely connected with the National Bard. This is the reward of greatness, and thus any man or woman who achieves honorable greatness, leaves distinction behind them and throws a halo of glory over those with whom they have been connected or associated. The following children were born to the great poet and his wife: Twins in 1786. The boy, Robert, lived, but the girl died in infancy. Twins in 1788. Both died in infancy. Francis Wallace died at the age of 14. William Nicol, born in 1791. Elizabeth Riddell, born in 1792. Died at the age of two years. James Glencairne, born in 1794, died in 1865. Maxwell, born in 1796, died at the age of two. It will be seen that the poet was the father of quite a number of children, some of whom lived to a ripe old age. Whether he was the father of any more children I am sure I don't know. If he was, almost any Scot will know it and can tell you more about it than I can. Bobbie was a very handsome man and was greatly admired by almost everyone, including the ladies. Some of his poems would lead one to believe that, like Byron, He was unskilled to cozen, And shared his love among a dozen. but that may be mere poetic license. Poets, you know, have an eye for the _beautiful_, whether it be in landscape scenery, flowers, architecture, painting, statuary, the human form or what not. At any rate "Puir Rabbie" was the daddy of the children whose names I have given, for that is a matter of history. To show that the poet loved a joke himself, no matter on what subject, I here quote a little rhyme of his gotten off on a friend named James Smith who lived at Mauchline: Lament him, Mauchline husbands a' He aften did assist ye; For had ye stayed whole weeks awa' Your wives they n'er had missed ye. In my short career I have run up against lots of folks who cannot take a joke or see the point of one and these poor people I pity, but do not blame, for they were born that way. I have always been poor but never proud and could take a joke--that is, when I could see the point of it. When I couldn't see the point of it I did not get angry. Burnsie was a farmer and lived on ranches the most of his life. He was a hayseed from way back but as soon as he got celebrated high society began to run after him and the poor fellow couldn't keep away from it if he tried. It didn't take him long to learn how to make a bow without upsetting the table, but he was out of his element among the grand folks. Did he need polish to make him shine? I trow not. Wasn't his genius just as great before he struck society? Sure! But just to please folks he hobnobbed with them though he was as much out of his element as a fish when out of water. No doubt he wore a biled shirt and black claw-hammer coat and made his coat tails fly around pretty lively as he skipped around in a dance, but as society wanted him it got him. Had he lived long enough he might have been a baron, marquis, duke or count. Who can tell? While a plowman he scorned titles, but I wonder whether he would have rejected a patent of nobility had it been tendered him. Genius is a complex quality. Samuel Smiles in his great work, "Self Help," says that genius is nothing more nor less than a capacity for taking infinite pains, and the world in general seems to have accepted his definition or explanation, but I, Windy Bill, an untutored savage from the Wild West, beg to differ wholly from Sam and I will "show you" why, and permit you to judge for yourself. Had Samuel defined _art_ instead of genius as "an infinite capacity for taking pains" he might have been nearer the truth. Let us take the case of Burns. While plowing he wrote rhymes, but as he knew little or nothing of the art of versification he set his thoughts in mellifluous language of his own. Was it his thoughts or their setting that captivated people? His thoughts, of course, though the jingle made them more harmonious. Genius is the thought; art the setting. Tell me then that genius is a capacity for taking pains. Nary time. It comes forth spontaneous, natural, can't help itself. It is a God-given quality which lots of people possess to a greater or less degree. Musicians have it, as have painters, architects, writers, sculptors and people in all walks of life. Lots of poets in Scotland had genius long before our great friend Rabbie was born, and lots since them have had more or less of a share of the "divine afflatus," as some writers call it, but were any of them gifted as highly as Puir Rabbie? Not a one. Will another like him arise? Search me! There hasn't yet. Notwithstanding that Rabbie was so highly gifted, he didn't know it. Don't you believe me? If you don't you needn't take my word for it, for I have evidence here that will prove it. I quote the preface that he wrote to the first book of his that ever was printed. Here it is: "The following trifles are not the production of the poet, who, with all the advantages of learned art and perhaps amid the elegancies and idleness of upper life looks down for a rural theme with an eye to Theocritus or Virgil. Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing poetry by rule, he sings the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him, in his and their native language. Though a rhymer from his earlier years it was not till very lately that the applause (perhaps the partiality) of friendship awakened his vanity so as to make him think anything of his worth showing, for none of the poems were composed with a view to the press. To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy amid the toil and fatigue of a laborious life, these were his motives for courting the muses. Now that he appears in the public character of an author, he does it with fear and trembling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe that even he, an obscure, nameless bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and because he can make shift to jingle a few doggerel Scottish rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small consequence, forsooth! If any critic catches at the word Genius, the author tells him, once for all, that he certainly looks upon himself as possessed of some poetic abilities, otherwise the publishing, in the manner he has done, would be a maneuver below the worst character his worst enemy will ever give him. But to the genius of an Allan Ramsay or a Robert Ferguson he has not the least pretension, nor ever had, even in his highest pulse of vanity. These two justly admired Scottish poets he has often had in his eye but rather to kindle in their flame than for servile imitation. "To his subscribers the author returns his most sincere thanks--not the mercenary bow over a counter, but the heart-throbbing gratitude of the bard, conscious how much he owes to benevolence and friendship for gratifying him, if he deserves it, in that dearest wish of every poetic bosom--to be distinguished. He begs his readers, particularly the learned and the polite who may honor him with a perusal, that they will make every allowance for education and circumstances of life; but if, after a fair, candid and impartial criticism he shall stand convicted of dullness and nonsense let him be done by as he would in that case do by others--let him be condemned without mercy, to contempt and oblivion." It is a queer fact that those mortals who possessed the greatest genius were always the most simple and diffident, and dubious about their own powers. They had a feeling in them that they were born to soar but they were hesitating, doubtful and did not know their very simplicity was a part of their greatness. They didn't appreciate their own capacities at first any more than are their capabilities appreciated by less gifted mortals. Before Burns' time Allan Ramsay and Robert Ferguson were looked upon as the greatest poets Scotland had ever produced, and so great were they that even Burns looked upon them with awe; and yet, unknown to himself, he was far greater than they. His generation may not have known it, but this generation does. Was Shakespeare appreciated in his generation? He was not. Was any truly great man? Hardly. The earliest book of Burns that ever was put in print consisted of his minor poems which were written while he was in the fields plowing. Of course he wasn't plowing always, so some were written while he was outdoors, here, there and everywhere in the vicinity of his country home. They were put into book-form by the advice of his friends and John Wilson at Kilmarnock, was the man who volunteered to do the printing. The book was a thin one, about half as thick as the ordinary novel of to-day, and it was agreed that only 612 books be struck off as a first edition. Mr. John Wilson was a long-headed printer and would not agree to print a single volume until at least 300 of the books had been subscribed for beforehand. He figured it out this way: "Suppose the book fails, where do I get off at? I set it up in type, do the binding, furnish the paper, pay the devil and the compositors, do the press work, make-up and all, so can I afford to take all the chances of getting any money out of this blooming poetry?" Mr. Wilson was a canny Scot and didn't propose to take any chances. He surely didn't lose anything in this venture, but whether he made anything I am unable to say. Now, all of this is a very imperfect sketch of my old pard Burnsie, and if you care to know more about him I can refer you to quite a few biographies that have been written about him and are still being written about him by the score to this day. No less a personage than Sir Walter Scott has written a life history of him and so has the poet's own brother, Gilbert. Here is a list you can choose from: Appeared 1. Robert Heron (Life of Burns) 1797 2. Dr. James Currie (Life and Works, 4 vols 1800 Works and Sketch of Life) 3. James Stover and John Grieg (Illustrated) 1804 4. Robert Hartley Cromek (Reliques of Burns) 1808 5. Lord Francis Jeffrey (Edinburgh Review) 1808 6. Sir Walter Scott (Quarterly Review) 1808 7. Dr. David Irving (Life of Burns) 1810 8. Prof. Josiah Walker (Life and Poems, 2 vols) 1811 9. Rev. Hamilton Paul (Life and Poems) 1819 10. Gilbert Burns 1820 11. Hugh Ainslie (Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns) 1822 12. Archibald Constable (Life and Works, 3 vols) 1823 13. Alex. Peterkin (Life and Works, 4 vols) 1824 14. John G. Lockhart (Life of Burns) 1828 15. Thomas Carlyle (Edinburgh Review) 1828 16. Allan Cunningham (Life and Works, 8 vols) 1834 17. James Hogg and William Motherwell (Memoirs and Works, 5 vols.) 1854 18. Prof. John Wilson (Essay on Genius) 1840 19. W. C. McLehose (Correspondence) 1843 20. Samuel Tyler (Burns as a Poet and Man) 1849 21. Robert Chambers (Life and Works) 1851 22. George Gilfillan (Memoirs and Works, 2 vols) 1856 23. Rev. James White (Burns and Scott) 1858 24. Rev. P. H. Waddell (Life and Works) 1859 25. William Michael (Life and Works) 1871 CHAPTER XV. SIR WALTER SCOTT. Although Robert Burns is the idol of the Scotch people nowadays, it must not be supposed that he is the only one worshipped, for there is another man who is greatly revered, honored and loved. This man is Sir Walter Scott. The Scotch people affectionately call him Sir Walter and he did as much for his country as did Puir Rabbie. Both were Scotch to the backbone and loved their country as fondly and devotedly as any patriot can, but in their work they were totally dissimilar. Sir Walter started out as a writer of ballads, and chose for his themes historical subjects, mainly those connected with the ancient and modern history of his country. Burns, as I said before, remodeled and improved the old Scotch folk songs and in his democratic way described life around him in tuneful periods. Had he not been cut off in the flower of his prime he, too, might have been a great novelist for his great genius was capable of anything. He sprang from the masses and his heart was with the masses, but Sir Walter, who came from the classes had a heart for all, and described the lowly and humble as well as the great. Sir Walter's delineations of human character stand unrivalled today. He surely was proud of the fact that he was of gentle birth, which well he might have been, for that was no disgrace to him, any more than it is disgraceful to be of lowly birth, although in the old country blood counts for something. To show what Sir Walter thought of himself I here quote an extract from one of his works which he wrote himself: "My birth was neither distinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country, it was esteemed gentle, as I am connected, though remotely, with ancient families both by my father's and mother's side. My father's grandfather was Walter Scott, well known by the name of Beardie. He was the second son of Walter Scott, first lord of Raeburn, who was the third son of Sir Walter Scott and the grandson of Walter Scott, commonly called in tradition Auld Watt of Harden. I am therefore lineally descended from that chieftain, whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair dame, the Flower of Yarrow, no bad genealogy for a Border Minstrel." Well, my poor friend Rabbie didn't spring from any border minstrel, but he was a born minstrel himself and could concoct a tune with the best of them. Mind you, I am not decrying Sir Walter, for that would be sacrilege, but Burnsie had nothing to brag of in the way of ancestry. Would Sir Walter have been less great had he sprung from common stock or would Robbie have been greater had he been blue-blooded? I am an American, an ex-member of Coxey's unwashed army, so I don't want to say yes or nay to this question. Let others decide. Sir Walter's earliest success as a writer was won by discarding the conventionalities of art and creating a style of art his own. It takes a genius to do that. His style was simple, plain, and direct and won followers very quickly because it gained favor. This goes to show that if one has anything to say it is not necessary to say it in involved language, but just simply. Sir Walter's good common sense told him this was the fact and he acted accordingly. To say the honest truth some of Sir Walter's novels here and there are a little prolix, but there was a reason for it. Sir Walter was getting paid for space-writing. You don't believe me? I'll prove it. He went broke and to pay his debts--or rather those of the publishing house he unfortunately was connected with--he ground out "copy" as fast as he could, for every word of his was worth money. He begged his financial friends not to treat him like "a milch cow" but like a man, but as he was a money-maker they staid with him until all his money and property were gone and all he could earn until he died was swallowed up, too. His was another case like General Ulysses Simpson Grant. Sir Walter was the ninth child in a very large family. His father was a methodical and industrious lawyer, and his mother a woman of much culture, refinement and imagination. Of delicate health and lame from his second year, Sir Walter spent much of his childhood in the country with his relatives. At the fireside of neighbors he listened to the old ballads and stories of border warfare, which caused him at a very early age to acquire a taste for reading ancient history and to become imbued with a love for antiquarian research. When seven years of age he entered the High School of Edinburgh and attended it until twelve. When thirteen he entered the University of Edinburgh and decided on the profession of law. At the age of 21 he was admitted to the bar. He didn't like his profession, however, and spent much of his time in antiquarian research. When about 26 years of age he married Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, the daughter of a French Royalist, whose family after the death of the father had removed to England. Sir Walter and his wife lived first at Edinburgh and three years later rented a cottage at Lasswade. They remained at Lasswade six years and then took up their abode at Ashestiel. In 1799, when about 28 years of age, Sir Walter was made Deputy Sheriff of Selkirkshire to which was attached a salary of $1,500 per annum, and seven years afterward he was appointed a Clerk of Session with a salary of $3,500. He held down both jobs for 25 years, which proved he was a stayer. As his income was $5000 for 25 years it can be figured out about how much he earned. But Sir Walter wasn't a money-saver; he was a spender and a good provider. He kept open house and anyone who called received an old-fashioned Scotch welcome, and I know from my sojourn in Scotland what that means. It means you're welcome to stay or welcome to go, but while you do stay the best is none too good for you. Sir Walter's hospitality was of that sort and while holding down both jobs he was doing a little literary work on the side. First came ballads, then poems of romance and later novels. He was getting along first rate financially so he concluded to take up his residence at Abbottsford, a palatial mansion. By this time he had already gained fame and much lucre and was run after by the "hoi-polloi," the "would-be could-be's" and the Great. The doors of Abbottsford opened wide for all. Even the poor were given "a hand-out" of some kind. Too bad Billy and me wasn't alive then. But this was before our time, about a hundred years or so. Oh what a place for grafters Abbottsford must have been! Sir Walter was easy. So easy was he, in fact, that the publishing house of Ballantyne & Co., which roped him in as a side partner, went flewy and left Sir Walter to foot all the bills. Sir Walter was an honorable man and prized honor above wealth, so he turned over everything he had, including Abbottsford, to the alleged creditors, but there was not enough to satisfy claims. The debt amounted to several hundred thousand dollars. Thereupon he continued writing novels and wrote as he never wrote before. He ground out ten novels in six years and had paid up about $200,000, when his health began to fail. The pace was too swift for a man sixty years of age, which he was then. The creditors were insatiable and were greedy for the last farthing. Business is business, said they. When a little over sixty years of age Sir Walter had a stroke of paralysis caused by overwork and worry, and was recommended by his physicians to take a sea voyage. He embarked for Italy in a frigate which was placed at his disposal by the English government, but sad to relate, the trip benefited him but little. He visited Rome, Venice and other places, but came home a few months afterward to die. "Man's inhumanity to man" killed Sir Walter before his time. Sir Walter's manner was that of a gentleman and he was amiable, unaffected and polished. He was simple and kindly and approachable by all. Much of his literary work was done at Ashestiel, but more at Abbottsford. He kept open house everywhere. He arose at five o'clock in the morning and wrote until eight o'clock. He then breakfasted with his family and after putting in an hour or so with them returned to his writings. He worked until noon and then was his own man, to do as he liked. During the afternoon he put in some time with his guests, gave reporters interviews, was snap-shotted by cameras, saw that the dogs got enough to eat, gave orders to the servants that if too many 'bos came around to sick the dogs on them and then he went a horseback or a carriage riding. In the evening there was some social chat, after which Sir Walter retired early. That was the routine. This master in the art of novel writing was fully six feet in height, well proportioned and well built with the exception of a slight deformity in the ankle, which I have alluded to before. His face was of a Scotch cast, heavy and full; the forehead was high and broad, the head lofty, the nose short, the upper lip long, and the expression of his features kindly. I have seen dead loads of pictures, images and statues of Sir Walter, yet hardly two of them were alike. I consider Sir Walter a handsome man and to me there seems to be something grand and noble in the cast of his countenance. I _know_ the light of genius was there, and maybe that is why he so impresses me, but with it all his features have a noble cast. He is goodly to look upon, surely. To tell the truth, I don't read much poetry, but some competent critic who has read Sir Walter's has this to say of it: "The distinctive features of the poetry of Scott are ease, rapidity of movement, a spirited flow of narrative that holds our attention, an out-of-door atmosphere and power of natural description, an occasional intrusion of a gentle personal sadness and but little more. The subtle and mystic element so characteristic of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge is not to be found in that of Scott, while in lyrical power he does not approach Shelley. We find instead an intense sense of reality in all his natural descriptions; it surrounds them with an indefinable atmosphere, because they are so transparently true. Scott's first impulse in the direction of poetry was given to him from the study of the German ballads, especially Burger's Lenore, of which he made a translation. As his ideas widened, he wished to do for Scottish Border life what Goethe had done for the ancient feudalism of the Rhine. He was at first undecided whether to choose prose or verse as the medium; but a legend was sent him by the Countess of Dalkeith with a request that he would put it in ballad form. Having thus the framework for his purpose, he went to work, and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was the result. The battle scene in Marmion has been called the most Homeric passage in modern literature, and his description of the Battle of Beal au Duine from "The Lady of the Lake" is an exquisite piece of narration from the gleam of the spears in the thicket to the death of Roderick Dhu at its close. In the deepest sense Scott is one with the spirit of his time in his grasp of fact, in that steadily looking at the object which Wordsworth had fought for in poetry, which Carlyle had advocated in philosophy. He is allied, too, to that broad sympathy for man which lay closest to the heart of the age's literary expression. Wordsworth's part is to inspire an interest in the lives of men and women about us; Scott's to enlarge the bounds of our sympathy beyond the present, and to people the silent centuries. Shelley's inspiration is hope for the future; Scott's is reverence for the past." I have read a few of Sir Walter's novels, and some of them several times, and every time I read them it is with renewed interest. His delineation of human character is so true to nature and so graphic that I feel the living, speaking person before me as I read. If that ain't writing I would like to know what is. Whether it be peasant, servant, knight, esquire, king, lord, lady or girl, all are shown up on the screen so plainly that I take it all as a matter of course and say nothing. It is all so plain and simple that there is nothing to say. That is art and the highest form of it. It is next to nature. Art and genius are closely allied. It is not everyone who loves the "altogether" or the "realistic," which may be well. Were it not so, many poets, painters, sculptors, musicians and other handicraftsmen would be left out in the cold, with none to do him reverence. All tastes happily are catered to, so everyone is happy. As I am neither a critic nor a biographer I shall endeavor to give my readers an idea what Sir Walter was thought of by others and will quote the language they used. George Tichnor, the author, says that Scott repeated to him the English translations of two long Spanish ballads which he had never seen, but which had been read to him twice. Scott's college friend, John Irving, in writing of himself and Scott, says: "The number of books we thus devoured was very great. I forgot a great part of what I read; but my friend, notwithstanding he read with such rapidity, remained, to my surprise, master of it all, and could even, weeks and months afterwards, repeat a whole page in which anything had particularly struck him at the moment." Washington Irving remarked: "During the time of my visit he inclined to the comic rather than to the grave in his anecdotes and stories; and such, I was told, was his general inclination. He relished a joke or a trait of humor in social intercourse, and laughed with right good will.... His humor in conversation, as in his works, was genial and free from causticity. He had a quick perception of faults and foibles, but he looked upon human nature with an indulgent eye, relishing what was good and pleasant, tolerating what was frail and pitying what was evil.... I do not recollect a sneer throughout his conversation, any more than there is throughout his works." Lord Byron said: "I think that Scott is the only very successful genius that could be cited as being as generally beloved as a man as he is admired as an author; and I must add, he deserves it, for he is so thoroughly good-natured, sincere and honest, that he disarms the envy and jealousy his extraordinary genius must excite." Leslie Stephen remarked: "Scott could never see an old tower, or a bank, or a rush of a stream without instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by those who would explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He is the _poet of association_." Lockhart, who married the daughter of Sir Walter and who was therefore his son-in-law, wrote a biography of his father-in-law wherein he says that: "The love of his country became indeed a passion; no knight ever tilted for his mistress more willingly than he would have bled and died to preserve even the airiest surviving nothing of her antique pretensions for Scotland. But the Scotland of his affections had the clan _Scott_ for her kernel." I believe the son-in-law is inclined to be facetious, but is he _just_ to his immortal father-in-law? I don't believe he is--therefore his criticisms are not worth a whoop. Thomas Carlyle, the cynical philosopher and mugwump, condescended to give Sir Walter a sort of recommendation of character, which it renders me extremely happy to quote. Here it is. Read it carefully and ponder: "The surliest critic must allow that Scott was a genuine man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation, fantasticality or distortion dwelt in him; no shadow of cant. Nay, withal, was he not a right brave and strong man according to his kind? What a load of toil, what a measure of felicity he quietly bore along with him! With what quiet strength he both worked on this earth and enjoyed in it, invincible to evil fortune and to good!" This cynic, this philosopher, this mugwump says Sir Walter was a _genuine man_. Good for Mr. Carlyle. Everyone was proud to call Sir Walter "friend," and he was just great enough to be happy to call those who were worthy, his friend. Among his great friends were the following: John Irving, who was an intimate college friend. I have quoted him in regard to the number of books read by Sir Walter. Robert Burns came to Edinburgh when Sir Walter was fifteen years of age, and Sir Walter's boyish admiration for the National Bard was great. In after life, when Sir Walter became great, he wrote a great deal concerning Puir Rabbie. And it is worth reading. James Ballantyne, Sir Walter's partner in the publishing business, was a good friend. So was James Hogg, the poet peasant, sometimes called "The Ettrick Shepherd." And so was Thomas Campbell, the poet, author of "The Pleasures of Hope." The poet William Wordsworth was a lifelong friend. Robert Southey, the poet, visited Sir Walter at Ashestiel and was admired by him greatly. Joanna Baillie, the poetess, was a warm friend. So was Lord Byron. Sir Humphry Davy, the philosopher, visited Sir Walter and was well liked by him. Goethe, the German poet, was a warm admirer and friend of Sir Walter. So was Henry Hallam, the historian; Crabbe, the poet; Maria Edgeworth, the novelist; George Ticknor, the author; Dugald Stewart, Archibald Alison, Sydney Smith, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Thomas Erskine, William Clerk, Sir William Hamilton, etc., etc. Last but not least among those who regarded Sir Walter as a friend and who were so regarded by him was our own countryman, Washington Irving. Our own "Washy" was an author, too, and one not to be sneezed at. Sir Walter regarded him highly and Washy dropped in on him, casual like, at Abbottsford. Washy had written some good things himself, but had found it difficult to win recognition. Sir Walter stood sponsor for him and told the world it ought to be ashamed of itself not to recognize merit of so high an order. Thereupon the world promptly did recognize our Washy. Did our Washy need a sponsor? Well, hardly. No American ever lived who was an abler or more polished writer than he. Will you please show me a man who can beat our Washy. You can't do it. Smile at me if you will, but I doubt if even Sir Walter himself was so much superior to him. Have you read Irving's Astoria, a true and lifelike history of the Northwest? or his Rip Van Winkle, or his sketches, the Alhambra, etc.? Irving's is another case where a great man failed of appreciation at first. Well, my countrymen, our Washy is dead, but we appreciate him now just the same. The United States never produced a writer more polished and able than he, and it is rather humiliating to think that a great foreigner had to apprise us of his merits. To wind up this chapter on Sir Walter Scott I will give you a list of his writings, arranged in chronological order: BALLADS. Glenfinlas, 1799. Eve of St. John, 1799. The Grey Brothers, 1799. Border Minstrelsy, 1802-1803. Cadyow Castle, 1810. English Minstrelsy, 1810. The Battle of Sempach, 1818. The Noble Moringer, 1819. The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805. Marmion, 1808. The Lady of the Lake, 1810. Vision of Don Roderick, 1811. Rokeby, 1812. The Bridal of Triermain, 1813. The Lord of the Isles, 1815. PROSE WORKS. Waverley, 1814. Guy Mannering, 1815. The Antiquary, 1816. The Black Dwarf, 1816. Old Mortality, 1816. Rob Roy, 1818. The Heart of Mid-Lothian, 1818. The Bride of Lammermoor, 1819. The Legend of Montrose, 1819. Ivanhoe, 1820. The Monastery, 1820. The Abbott, 1820. Kenilworth, 1821. The Pirate, 1822. The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822. Peveril of the Peak, 1823. Quentin Durward, 1823. St. Ronan's Well, 1824. Red Gauntlet, 1824. The Betrothed, 1825. The Talisman, 1825. Woodstock, 1826. The Two Drovers, 1827. The Highland Widow, 1827. The Surgeon's Daughter, 1827. The Fair Maid of Perth, 1828. Anne of Geierstein, 1829. Count Robert of Paris, 1831. Castle Dangerous, 1831. 43520 ---- Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed. Archaic spellings, such as antient, expence, shew, inrolment, chearfully & encrease, have been retained. Illustrations have been moved from mid-paragraph for ease of reading. (etext transcriber's note) THE WORKS OF HENRY FIELDING EDITED BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY IN TWELVE VOLUMES VOL. XI. MISCELLANIES VOL. I. [Illustration: frontispiece] A JOURNEY FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT AND A VOYAGE TO LISBON BY HENRY FIELDING ESQ [Illustration: text decoration] EDITED BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HERBERT RAILTON & F. J. WHEELER. LONDON PUBLISHED BY J. M. DENT & CO. AT ALDINE HOUSE IN GREAT EASTERN STREET MDCCCXCIII CONTENTS OF VOL. I. PAGE INTRODUCTION xi A JOURNEY FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT, ETC. ETC. INTRODUCTION 1 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. _The author dies, meets with Mercury, and is by him conducted to the stage which sets out for the other world_ 4 CHAPTER II. _In which the author first refutes some idle opinions concerning spirits, and then the passengers relate their several deaths_ 7 CHAPTER III. _The adventures we met with in the City of Diseases_ 12 CHAPTER IV. _Discourses on the road, and a description of the palace of Death_ 20 CHAPTER V. _The travellers proceed on their journey, and meet several spirits who are coming into the flesh_ 23 CHAPTER VI. _An account of the wheel of fortune, with a method of preparing a spirit for this world_ 28 CHAPTER VII. _The proceedings of judge Minos at the gate of Elysium_ 31 CHAPTER VIII. _The adventures which the author met on his first entrance into Elysium_ 37 CHAPTER IX. _More adventures in Elysium_ 40 CHAPTER X. _The author is surprised at meeting Julian the apostate in Elysium; but is satisfied by him by what means he procured his entrance there. Julian relates his adventures in the character of a slave_ 44 CHAPTER XI. _In which Julian relates his adventures in the character of an avaricious Jew_ 52 CHAPTER XII. _What happened to Julian in the characters of a general, an heir, a carpenter, and a beau_ 56 CHAPTER XIII. _Julian passes into a fop_ 61 CHAPTER XIV _Adventures in the person of a monk_ 62 CHAPTER XV. _Julian passes into the character of a fidler_ 64 CHAPTER XVI. _The history of the wise man_ 69 CHAPTER XVII. _Julian enters into the person of a king_ 77 CHAPTER XVIII. _Julian passes into a fool_ 84 CHAPTER XIX. _Julian appears in the character of a beggar_ 89 CHAPTER XX. _Julian performs the part of a statesman_ 95 CHAPTER XXI. _Julian's adventures in the post of a soldier_ 102 CHAPTER XXII. _What happened to Julian in the person of a taylor_ 108 CHAPTER XXIII. _The life of alderman Julian_ 112 CHAPTER XXIV. _Julian recounts what happened to him while he was a poet_ 118 CHAPTER XXV. _Julian performs the parts of a knight and a dancing-master_ 122 BOOK XIX. CHAPTER VII. _Wherein Anna Boleyn relates the history of her life_ 125 THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON. PAGE DEDICATION TO THE PUBLIC 145 PREFACE 147 INTRODUCTION 156 THE VOYAGE 169 [Illustration: text decoration] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIELDING'S TOMB AT LISBON _Frontispiece_ I DESIRED HIM MUCH TO NAME A PRICE _Page 3_ HE ABJECTLY IMPLORED FOR MERCY _" 258_ [Illustration: text decoration] INTRODUCTION. When it was determined to extend the present edition of Fielding, not merely by the addition of _Jonathan Wild_ to the three universally popular novels, but by two volumes of _Miscellanies_, there could be no doubt about at least one of the contents of these latter. The _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_, if it does not rank in my estimation anywhere near to _Jonathan Wild_ as an example of our author's genius, is an invaluable and delightful document for his character and memory. It is indeed, as has been pointed out in the General Introduction to this series, our main source of indisputable information as to Fielding _dans son naturel_, and its value, so far as it goes, is of the very highest. The gentle and unaffected stoicism which the author displays under a disease which he knew well was probably, if not certainly, mortal, and which, whether mortal or not, must cause him much actual pain and discomfort of a kind more intolerable than pain itself; his affectionate care for his family; even little personal touches, less admirable, but hardly less pleasant than these, showing an Englishman's dislike to be "done" and an Englishman's determination to be treated with proper respect, are scarcely less noticeable and important on the biographical side than the unimpaired brilliancy of his satiric and yet kindly observation of life and character is on the side of literature. There is, as is now well known since Mr Dobson's separate edition of the _Voyage_, a little bibliographical problem about the first appearance of this _Journal_ in 1755. The best known issue of that year is much shorter than the version inserted by Murphy and reprinted here, the passages omitted being chiefly those reflecting on the captain, &c., and so likely to seem invidious in a book published just after the author's death, and for the benefit, as was expressly announced, of his family. But the curious thing is that there is _another_ edition, of date so early that some argument is necessary to determine the priority, which does give these passages and is identical with the later or standard version. For satisfaction on this point, however, I must refer readers to Mr Dobson himself. There might have been a little, but not much, doubt as to a companion piece for the _Journal_; for indeed, after we close this (with or without its "Fragment on Bolingbroke"), the remainder of Fielding's work lies on a distinctly lower level of interest. It is still interesting, or it would not be given here. It still has--at least that part which here appears seems to its editor to have--interest intrinsic and "simple of itself." But it is impossible for anybody who speaks critically to deny that we now get into the region where work is more interesting because of its authorship than it would be if its authorship were different or unknown. To put the same thing in a sharper antithesis, Fielding is interesting, first of all, because he is the author of _Joseph Andrews_, of _Tom Jones_, of _Amelia_, of _Jonathan Wild_, of the _Journal_. His plays, his essays, his miscellanies generally are interesting, first of all, because they were written by Fielding. Yet of these works, the _Journey from this World to the Next_ (which, by a grim trick of fortune, might have served as a title for the more interesting _Voyage_ with which we have yoked it) stands clearly first both in scale and merit. It is indeed very unequal, and as the author was to leave it unfinished, it is a pity that he did not leave it unfinished much sooner than he actually did. The first ten chapters, if of a kind of satire which has now grown rather obsolete for the nonce, are of a good kind and good in their kind; the history of the metempsychoses of Julian is of a less good kind, and less good in that kind. The date of composition of the piece is not known, but it appeared in the _Miscellanies_ of 1743, and may represent almost any period of its author's development prior to that year. Its form was a very common form at the time, and continued to be so. I do not know that it is necessary to assign any very special origin to it, though Lucian, its chief practitioner, was evidently and almost avowedly a favourite study of Fielding's. The Spanish romancers, whether borrowing it from Lucian or not, had been fond of it; their French followers, of whom the chief were Fontenelle and Le Sage, had carried it northwards; the English essayists had almost from the beginning continued the process of acclimatisation. Fielding therefore found it ready to his hand, though the present condition of this example would lead us to suppose that he did not find his hand quite ready to it. Still, in the actual "journey," there are touches enough of the master--not yet quite in his stage of mastery. It seemed particularly desirable not to close the series without some representation of the work to which Fielding gave the prime of his manhood, and from which, had he not, fortunately for English literature, been driven decidedly against his will, we had had in all probability no _Joseph Andrews_ and pretty certainly no _Tom Jones_. Fielding's periodical and dramatic work has been comparatively seldom reprinted, and has never yet been reprinted as a whole. The dramas indeed are open to two objections--the first, that they are not very "proper;" the second, and much more serious, that they do not redeem this want of propriety by the possession of any remarkable literary merit. Three (or two and part of a third) seemed to escape this double censure--the first two acts of the _Author's Farce_ (practically a piece to themselves, for the _Puppet Show_ which follows is almost entirely independent); the famous burlesque of _Tom Thumb_, which stands between the _Rehearsal_ and the _Critic_, but nearer to the former; and _Pasquin_, the maturest example of Fielding's satiric work in drama. These accordingly have been selected; the rest I have read, and he who likes may read. I have read many worse things than even the worst of them, but not often worse things by so good a writer as Henry Fielding. The next question concerned the selection of writings more miscellaneous still, so as to give in little a complete idea of Fielding's various powers and experiments. Two difficulties beset this part of the task--want of space and the absence of anything so markedly good as absolutely to insist on inclusion. The _Essay on Conversation_, however, seemed pretty peremptorily to challenge a place. It is in a style which Fielding was very slow to abandon, which indeed has left strong traces even on his great novels; and if its mannerism is not now very attractive, the separate traits in it are often sharp and well-drawn. The book would not have been complete without a specimen or two of Fielding's journalism. _The Champion_, his first attempt of this kind, has not been drawn upon in consequence of the extreme difficulty of fixing with absolute certainty on Fielding's part in it. I do not know whether political prejudice interferes, more than I have usually found it interfere, with my judgement of the two Hanoverian-partisan papers of the '45 time. But they certainly seem to me to fail in redeeming their dose of rancour and misrepresentation by any sufficient evidence of genius such as, to my taste, saves not only the party journalism in verse and prose of Swift and Canning and Praed on one side, but that of Wolcot and Moore and Sydney Smith on the other. Even the often-quoted journal of events in London under the Chevalier is overwrought and tedious. The best thing in the _True Patriot_ seems to me to be Parson Adams' letter describing his adventure with a young "bowe" of his day; and this I select, together with one or two numbers of the _Covent Garden Journal_. I have not found in this latter anything more characteristic than Murphy's selection, though Mr Dobson, with his unfailing kindness, lent me an original and unusually complete set of the _Journal_ itself. It is to the same kindness that I owe the opportunity of presenting the reader with something indisputably Fielding's and very characteristic of him, which Murphy did not print, and which has not, so far as I know, ever appeared either in a collection or a selection of Fielding's work. After the success of _David Simple_, Fielding gave his sister, for whom he had already written a preface to that novel, another preface for a set of _Familiar Letters_ between the characters of _David Simple_ and others. This preface Murphy reprinted; but he either did not notice, or did not choose to attend to, a note towards the end of the book attributing certain of the letters to the author of the preface, the attribution being accompanied by an agreeably warm and sisterly denunciation of those who ascribed to Fielding matter unworthy of him. From these the letter which I have chosen, describing a row on the Thames, seems to me not only characteristic, but, like all this miscellaneous work, interesting no less for its weakness than for its strength. In hardly any other instance known to me can we trace so clearly the influence of a suitable medium and form on the genius of the artist. There are some writers--Dryden is perhaps the greatest of them--to whom form and medium seem almost indifferent, their all-round craftsmanship being such that they can turn any kind and every style to their purpose. There are others, of whom I think our present author is the chief, who are never really at home but in one kind. In Fielding's case that kind was narrative of a peculiar sort, half-sentimental, half-satirical, and almost wholly sympathetic--narrative which has the singular gift of portraying the liveliest character and yet of admitting the widest digression and soliloquy. Until comparatively late in his too short life, when he found this special path of his (and it is impossible to say whether the actual finding was in the case of _Jonathan_ or in the case of _Joseph_), he did but flounder and slip. When he had found it, and was content to walk in it, he strode with as sure and steady a step as any other, even the greatest, of those who carry and hand on the torch of literature through the ages. But it is impossible to derive full satisfaction from his feats in this part of the race without some notion of his performances elsewhere; and I believe that such a notion will be supplied to the readers of his novels by the following volumes, in a very large number of cases, for the first time. [Illustration: text decoration] A Journey from This World to the Next, _ETC. ETC._ INTRODUCTION. Whether the ensuing pages were really the dream or vision of some very pious and holy person; or whether they were really written in the other world, and sent back to this, which is the opinion of many (though I think too much inclining to superstition); or lastly, whether, as infinitely the greatest part imagine, they were really the production of some choice inhabitant of New Bethlehem, is not necessary nor easy to determine. It will be abundantly sufficient if I give the reader an account by what means they came into my possession. Mr Robert Powney, stationer, who dwells opposite to Catherine-street in the Strand, a very honest man and of great gravity of countenance; who, among other excellent stationary commodities, is particularly eminent for his pens, which I am abundantly bound to acknowledge, as I owe to their peculiar goodness that my manuscripts have by any means been legible: this gentleman, I say, furnished me some time since with a bundle of those pens, wrapped up with great care and caution, in a very large sheet of paper full of characters, written as it seemed in a very bad hand. Now, I have a surprising curiosity to read everything which is almost illegible; partly perhaps from the sweet remembrance of the dear Scrawls, Skrawls, or Skrales (for the word is variously spelt), which I have in my youth received from that lovely part of the creation for which I have the tenderest regard; and partly from that temper of mind which makes men set an immense value on old manuscripts so effaced, bustoes so maimed, and pictures so black that no one can tell what to make of them. I therefore perused this sheet with wonderful application, and in about a day's time discovered that I could not understand it. I immediately repaired to Mr Powney, and inquired very eagerly whether he had not more of the same manuscript? He produced about one hundred pages, acquainting me that he had saved no more; but that the book was originally a huge folio, had been left in his garret by a gentleman who lodged there, and who had left him no other satisfaction for nine months' lodging. He proceeded to inform me that the manuscript had been hawked about (as he phrased it) among all the booksellers, who refused to meddle; some alledged that they could not read, others that they could not understand it. Some would have it to be an atheistical book, and some that it was a libel on the government; for one or other of which reasons they all refused to print it. That it had been likewise shewn to the R--l Society, but they shook their heads, saying, there was nothing in it wonderful enough for them. That, hearing the gentleman was gone to the West-Indies, and believing it to be good for nothing else, he had used it as waste paper. He said I was welcome to what remained, and he was heartily sorry for what was missing, as I seemed to set some value on it. [Illustration: '_I desired him to name a price_'] I desired him much to name a price: but he would receive no consideration farther than the payment of a small bill I owed him, which at that time he said he looked on as so much money given him. I presently communicated this manuscript to my friend parson Abraham Adams, who, after a long and careful perusal, returned it me with his opinion that there was more in it than at first appeared; that the author seemed not entirely unacquainted with the writings of Plato; but he wished he had quoted him sometimes in his margin, that I might be sure (said he) he had read him in the original: for nothing, continued the parson, is commoner than for men now-a-days to pretend to have read Greek authors, who have met with them only in translations, and cannot conjugate a verb in _mi_. To deliver my own sentiments on the occasion, I think the author discovers a philosophical turn of thinking, with some little knowledge of the world, and no very inadequate value of it. There are some indeed who, from the vivacity of their temper and the happiness of their station, are willing to consider its blessings as more substantial, and the whole to be a scene of more consequence than it is here represented: but, without controverting their opinions at present, the number of wise and good men who have thought with our author are sufficient to keep him in countenance: nor can this be attended with any ill inference, since he everywhere teaches this moral: That the greatest and truest happiness which this world affords, is to be found only in the possession of goodness and virtue; a doctrine which, as it is undoubtedly true, so hath it so noble and practical a tendency, that it can never be too often or too strongly inculcated on the minds of men. [Illustration: text decoration] BOOK I. Chapter i. _The author dies, meets with Mercury, and is by him conducted to the stage which sets out for the other world._ On the first day of December 1741[A] I departed this life at my lodgings in Cheapside. My body had been some time dead before I was at liberty to quit it, lest it should by any accident return to life: this is an injunction imposed on all souls by the eternal law of fate, to prevent the inconveniences which would follow. As soon as the destined period was expired (being no longer than till the body is become perfectly cold and stiff) I began to move; but found myself under a difficulty of making my escape, for the mouth or door was shut, so that it was impossible for me to go out at it; and the windows, vulgarly called the eyes, were so closely pulled down by the fingers of a nurse, that I could by no means open them. At last I perceived a beam of light glimmering at the top of the house (for such I may call the body I had been inclosed in), whither ascending, I gently let myself down through a kind of chimney, and issued out at the nostrils. No prisoner discharged from a long confinement ever tasted the sweets of liberty with a more exquisite relish than I enjoyed in this delivery from a dungeon wherein I had been detained upwards of forty years, and with much the same kind of regard I cast my eyes[B] backwards upon it. My friends and relations had all quitted the room, being all (as I plainly overheard) very loudly quarrelling below stairs about my will; there was only an old woman left above to guard the body, as I apprehend. She was in a fast sleep, occasioned, as from her savour it seemed, by a comfortable dose of gin. I had no pleasure in this company, and, therefore, as the window was wide open, I sallied forth into the open air: but, to my great astonishment, found myself unable to fly, which I had always during my habitation in the body conceived of spirits; however, I came so lightly to the ground that I did not hurt myself; and, though I had not the gift of flying (owing probably to my having neither feathers nor wings), I was capable of hopping such a prodigious way at once, that it served my turn almost as well. I had not hopped far before I perceived a tall young gentleman in a silk waistcoat, with a wing on his left heel, a garland on his head, and a caduceus in his right hand.[C] I thought I had seen this person before, but had not time to recollect where, when he called out to me and asked me how long I had been departed. I answered I was just come forth. "You must not stay here," replied he, "unless you had been murdered: in which case, indeed, you might have been suffered to walk some time; but if you died a natural death you must set out for the other world immediately." I desired to know the way. "O," cried the gentleman, "I will show you to the inn whence the stage proceeds; for I am the porter. Perhaps you never heard of me--my name is Mercury." "Sure, sir," said I, "I have seen you at the playhouse." Upon which he smiled, and, without satisfying me as to that point, walked directly forward, bidding me hop after him. I obeyed him, and soon found myself in Warwick-lane; where Mercury, making a full stop, pointed at a particular house, where he bad me enquire for the stage, and, wishing me a good journey, took his leave, saying he must go seek after other customers. I arrived just as the coach was setting out, and found I had no reason for enquiry; for every person seemed to know my business the moment I appeared at the door: the coachman told me his horses were to, but that he had no place left; however, though there were already six, the passengers offered to make room for me. I thanked them, and ascended without much ceremony. We immediately began our journey, being seven in number; for, as the women wore no hoops, three of them were but equal to two men. Perhaps, reader, thou mayest be pleased with an account of this whole equipage, as peradventure thou wilt not, while alive, see any such. The coach was made by an eminent toyman, who is well known to deal in immaterial substance, that being the matter of which it was compounded. The work was so extremely fine, that it was entirely invisible to the human eye. The horses which drew this extraordinary vehicle were all spiritual, as well as the passengers. They had, indeed, all died in the service of a certain post-master; and as for the coachman, who was a very thin piece of immaterial substance, he had the honour while alive of driving the Great Peter, or Peter the Great, in whose service his soul, as well as body, was almost starved to death. Such was the vehicle in which I set out, and now, those who are not willing to travel on with me may, if they please, stop here; those who are, must proceed to the subsequent chapters, in which this journey is continued. Chapter ii. _In which the author first refutes some idle opinions concerning spirits, and then the passengers relate their several deaths._ It is the common opinion that spirits, like owls, can see in the dark; nay, and can then most easily be perceived by others. For which reason, many persons of good understanding, to prevent being terrified with such objects, usually keep a candle burning by them, that the light may prevent their seeing. Mr Locke, in direct opposition to this, hath not doubted to assert that you may see a spirit in open daylight full as well as in the darkest night. It was very dark when we set out from the inn, nor could we see any more than if every soul of us had been alive. We had travelled a good way before any one offered to open his mouth; indeed, most of the company were fast asleep,[D] but, as I could not close my own eyes, and perceived the spirit who sat opposite to me to be likewise awake, I began to make overtures of conversation, by complaining _how dark it was_. "And extremely cold too," answered my fellow-traveller; "though, I thank God, as I have no body, I feel no inconvenience from it: but you will believe, sir, that this frosty air must seem very sharp to one just issued forth out of an oven; for such was the inflamed habitation I am lately departed from." "How did you come to your end, sir?" said I. "I was murdered, sir," answered the gentleman. "I am surprized then," replied I, "that you did not divert yourself by walking up and down and playing some merry tricks with the murderer." "Oh, sir," returned he, "I had not that privilege, I was lawfully put to death. In short, a physician set me on fire, by giving me medicines to throw out my distemper. I died of a hot regimen, as they call it, in the small-pox." One of the spirits at that word started up and cried out, "The small-pox! bless me! I hope I am not in company with that distemper, which I have all my life with such caution avoided, and have so happily escaped hitherto!" This fright set all the passengers who were awake into a loud laughter; and the gentleman, recollecting himself, with some confusion, and not without blushing, asked pardon, crying, "I protest I dreamt that I was alive." "Perhaps, sir," said I, "you died of that distemper, which therefore made so strong an impression on you." "No, sir," answered he, "I never had it in my life; but the continual and dreadful apprehension it kept me so long under cannot, I see, be so immediately eradicated. You must know, sir, I avoided coming to London for thirty years together, for fear of the small-pox, till the most urgent business brought me thither about five days ago. I was so dreadfully afraid of this disease that I refused the second night of my arrival to sup with a friend whose wife had recovered of it several months before, and the same evening got a surfeit by eating too many muscles, which brought me into this good company." "I will lay a wager," cried the spirit who sat next him, "there is not one in the coach able to guess my distemper." I desired the favour of him to acquaint us with it, if it was so uncommon. "Why, sir," said he, "I died of honour."--"Of honour, sir!" repeated I, with some surprize. "Yes, sir," answered the spirit, "of honour, for I was killed in a duel." "For my part," said a fair spirit, "I was inoculated last summer, and had the good fortune to escape with a very few marks on my face. I esteemed myself now perfectly happy, as I imagined I had no restraint to a full enjoyment of the diversions of the town; but within a few days after my coming up I caught cold by overdancing myself at a ball, and last night died of a violent fever." After a short silence which now ensued, the fair spirit who spoke last, it being now daylight, addressed herself to a female who sat next her, and asked her to what chance they owed the happiness of her company. She answered, she apprehended to a consumption, but the physicians were not agreed concerning her distemper, for she left two of them in a very hot dispute about it when she came out of her body. "And pray, madam," said the same spirit to the sixth passenger, "How came you to leave the other world?" But that female spirit, screwing up her mouth, answered, she wondered at the curiosity of some people; that perhaps persons had already heard some reports of her death, which were far from being true; that, whatever was the occasion of it, she was glad at being delivered from a world in which she had no pleasure, and where there was nothing but nonsense and impertinence; particularly among her own sex, whose loose conduct she had long been entirely ashamed of. The beauteous spirit, perceiving her question gave offence, pursued it no farther. She had indeed all the sweetness and good-humour which are so extremely amiable (when found) in that sex which tenderness most exquisitely becomes. Her countenance displayed all the cheerfulness, the good-nature, and the modesty, which diffuse such brightness round the beauty of Seraphina,[E] awing every beholder with respect, and, at the same time, ravishing him with admiration. Had it not been indeed for our conversation on the small-pox, I should have imagined we had been honoured with her identical presence. This opinion might have been heightened by the good sense she uttered whenever she spoke, by the delicacy of her sentiments, and the complacence of her behaviour, together with a certain dignity which attended every look, word, and gesture; qualities which could not fail making an impression on a heart[F] so capable of receiving it as mine, nor was she long in raising in me a very violent degree of seraphic love. I do not intend by this, that sort of love which men are very properly said to make to women in the lower world, and which seldom lasts any longer than while it is making. I mean by seraphic love an extreme delicacy and tenderness of friendship, of which, my worthy reader, if thou hast no conception, as it is probable thou mayest not, my endeavour to instruct thee would be as fruitless as it would be to explain the most difficult problems of Sir Isaac Newton to one ignorant of vulgar arithmetic. To return therefore to matters comprehensible by all understandings: the discourse now turned on the vanity, folly, and misery of the lower world, from which every passenger in the coach expressed the highest satisfaction in being delivered; though it was very remarkable that, notwithstanding the joy we declared at our death, there was not one of us who did not mention the accident which occasioned it as a thing we would have avoided if we could. Nay, the very grave lady herself, who was the forwardest in testifying her delight, confessed inadvertently that she left a physician by her bedside; and the gentleman who died of honour very liberally cursed both his folly and his fencing. While we were entertaining ourselves with these matters, on a sudden a most offensive smell began to invade our nostrils. This very much resembled the savour which travellers in summer perceive at their approach to that beautiful village of the Hague, arising from those delicious canals which, as they consist of standing water, do at that time emit odours greatly agreeable to a Dutch taste, but not so pleasant to any other. Those perfumes, with the assistance of a fair wind, begin to affect persons of quick olfactory nerves at a league's distance, and increase gradually as you approach. In the same manner did the smell I have just mentioned, more and more invade us, till one of the spirits, looking out of the coach-window, declared we were just arrived at a very large city; and indeed he had scarce said so before we found ourselves in the suburbs, and, at the same time, the coachman, being asked by another, informed us that the name of this place was the City of Diseases. The road to it was extremely smooth, and, excepting the above-mentioned savour, delightfully pleasant. The streets of the suburbs were lined with bagnios, taverns, and cooks' shops: in the first we saw several beautiful women, but in tawdry dresses, looking out at the windows; and in the latter were visibly exposed all kinds of the richest dainties; but on our entering the city we found, contrary to all we had seen in the other world, that the suburbs were infinitely pleasanter than the city itself. It was indeed a very dull, dark, and melancholy place. Few people appeared in the streets, and these, for the most part, were old women, and here and there a formal grave gentleman, who seemed to be thinking, with large tie-wigs on, and amber-headed canes in their hands. We were all in hopes that our vehicle would not stop here; but, to our sorrow, the coach soon drove into an inn, and we were obliged to alight. Chapter iii. _The adventures we met with in the City of Diseases._ We had not been long arrived in our inn, where it seems we were to spend the remainder of the day, before our host acquainted us that it was customary for all spirits, in their passage through that city, to pay their respects to that lady Disease, to whose assistance they had owed their deliverance from the lower world. We answered we should not fail in any complacence which was usual to others; upon which our host replied he would immediately send porters to conduct us. He had not long quitted the room before we were attended by some of those grave persons whom I have before described in large tie-wigs with amber-headed canes. These gentlemen are the ticket-porters in the city, and their canes are the _insignia_, or tickets, denoting their office. We informed them of the several ladies to whom we were obliged, and were preparing to follow them, when on a sudden they all stared at one another, and left us in a hurry, with a frown on every countenance. We were surprized at this behaviour, and presently summoned the host, who was no sooner acquainted with it than he burst into an hearty laugh, and told us the reason was, because we did not fee the gentlemen the moment they came in, according to the custom of the place. We answered, with some confusion, we had brought nothing with us from the other world, which we had been all our lives informed was not lawful to do. "No, no, master," replied the host; "I am apprized of that, and indeed it was my fault. I should have first sent you to my lord Scrape,[G] who would have supplied you with what you want." "My lord Scrape supply us!" said I, with astonishment: "sure you must know we cannot give him security; and I am convinced he never lent a shilling without it in his life." "No, sir," answered the host, "and for that reason he is obliged to do it here, where he is sentenced to keep a bank, and to distribute money _gratis_ to all passengers. This bank originally consisted of just that sum, which he had miserably hoarded up in the other world, and he is to perceive it decrease visibly one shilling a-day, till it is totally exhausted; after which he is to return to the other world, and perform the part of a miser for seventy years; then, being purified in the body of a hog, he is to enter the human species again, and take a second trial." "Sir," said I, "you tell me wonders: but if his bank be to decrease only a shilling a day, how can he furnish all passengers?" "The rest," answered the host, "is supplied again; but in a manner which I cannot easily explain to you." "I apprehend," said I, "this distribution of his money is inflicted on him as a punishment; but I do not see how it can answer that end, when he knows it is to be restored to him again. Would it not serve the purpose as well if he parted only with the single shilling, which it seems is all he is really to lose?" "Sir," cries the host, "when you observe the agonies with which he parts with every guinea, you will be of another opinion. No prisoner condemned to death ever begged so heartily for transportation as he, when he received his sentence, did to go to hell, provided he might carry his money with him. But you will know more of these things when you arrive at the upper world; and now, if you please, I will attend you to my lord's, who is obliged to supply you with whatever you desire." We found his lordship sitting at the upper end of a table, on which was an immense sum of money, disposed in several heaps, every one of which would have purchased the honour of some patriots and the chastity of some prudes. The moment he saw us he turned pale, and sighed, as well apprehending our business. Mine host accosted him with a familiar air, which at first surprized me, who so well remembered the respect I had formerly seen paid this lord by men infinitely superior in quality to the person who now saluted him in the following manner: "Here, you lord, and be dam--d to your little sneaking soul, tell out your money, and supply your betters with what they want. Be quick, sirrah, or I'll fetch the beadle to you. Don't fancy yourself in the lower world again, with your privilege at your a--." He then shook a cane at his lordship, who immediately began to tell out his money, with the same miserable air and face which the miser on our stage wears while he delivers his bank-bills. This affected some of us so much that we had certainly returned with no more than what would have been sufficient to fee the porters, had not our host, perceiving our compassion, begged us not to spare a fellow who, in the midst of immense wealth, had always refused the least contribution to charity. Our hearts were hardened with this reflection, and we all filled our pockets with his money. I remarked a poetical spirit, in particular, who swore he would have a hearty gripe at him: "For," says he, "the rascal not only refused to subscribe to my works, but sent back my letter unanswered, though I am a better gentleman than himself." We now returned from this miserable object, greatly admiring the propriety as well as justice of his punishment, which consisted, as our host informed us, merely in the delivering forth his money; and, he observed, we could not wonder at the pain this gave him, since it was as reasonable that the bare parting with money should make him miserable as that the bare having money without using it should have made him happy. Other tie-wig porters (for those we had summoned before refused to visit us again) now attended us; and we having fee'd them the instant they entered the room, according to the instructions of our host, they bowed and smiled, and offered to introduce us to whatever disease we pleased. We set out several ways, as we were all to pay our respects to different ladies. I directed my porter to shew me to the Fever on the Spirits, being the disease which had delivered me from the flesh. My guide and I traversed many streets, and knocked at several doors, but to no purpose. At one, we were told, lived the Consumption; at another, the Maladie Alamode, a French lady; at the third, the Dropsy; at the fourth, the Rheumatism; at the fifth, Intemperance; at the sixth, Misfortune. I was tired, and had exhausted my patience, and almost my purse; for I gave my porter a new fee at every blunder he made: when my guide, with a solemn countenance, told me he could do no more; and marched off without any farther ceremony. He was no sooner gone than I met another gentleman with a ticket, _i.e._, an amber-headed cane in his hand. I first fee'd him, and then acquainted him with the name of the disease. He cast himself for two or three minutes into a thoughtful posture, then pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, on which he writ something in one of the Oriental languages, I believe, for I could not read a syllable: he bade me carry it to such a particular shop, and, telling me it would do my business, he took his leave. Secure, as I now thought myself, of my direction, I went to the shop, which very much resembled an apothecary's. The person who officiated, having read the paper, took down about twenty different jars, and, pouring something out of every one of them, made a mixture, which he delivered to me in a bottle, having first tied a paper round the neck of it, on which were written three or four words, the last containing eleven syllables. I mentioned the name of the disease I wanted to find out, but received no other answer than that he had done as he was ordered, and the drugs were excellent. I began now to be enraged, and, quitting the shop with some anger in my countenance, I intended to find out my inn, but, meeting in the way a porter whose countenance had in it something more pleasing than ordinary, I resolved to try once more, and clapped a fee into his hand. As soon as I mentioned the disease to him he laughed heartily, and told me I had been imposed on, for in reality no such disease was to be found in that city. He then enquired into the particulars of my case, and was no sooner acquainted with them than he informed me that the Maladie Alamode was the lady to whom I was obliged. I thanked him, and immediately went to pay my respects to her. The house, or rather palace, of this lady was one of the most beautiful and magnificent in the city. The avenue to it was planted with sycamore-trees, with beds of flowers on each side; it was extremely pleasant but short. I was conducted through a magnificent hall, adorned with several statues and bustoes, most of them maimed, whence I concluded them all to be true antiques; but was informed they were the figures of several modern heroes, who had died martyrs to her ladyship's cause. I next mounted through a large painted staircase, where several persons were depictured in caricatura; and, upon enquiry, was told they were the portraits of those who had distinguished themselves against the lady in the lower world. I suppose I should have known the faces of many physicians and surgeons, had they not been so violently distorted by the painter. Indeed, he had exerted so much malice in his work, that I believe he had himself received some particular favours from the lady of this mansion: it is difficult to conceive a group of stranger figures. I then entered a long room, hung round with the pictures of women of such exact shapes and features that I should have thought myself in a gallery of beauties, had not a certain sallow paleness in their complexions given me a more distasteful idea. Through this I proceeded to a second apartment, adorned, if I may so call it, with the figures of old ladies. Upon my seeming to admire at this furniture, the servant told me with a smile that these had been very good friends of his lady, and had done her eminent service in the lower world. I immediately recollected the faces of one or two of my acquaintance, who had formerly kept bagnios; but was very much surprized to see the resemblance of a lady of great distinction in such company. The servant, upon my mentioning this, made no other answer than that his lady had pictures of all degrees. I was now introduced into the presence of the lady herself. She was a thin, or rather meagre, person, very wan in the countenance, had no nose, and many pimples in her face. She offered to rise at my entrance, but could not stand. After many compliments, much congratulation on her side, and the most fervent expressions of gratitude on mine, she asked me many questions concerning the situation of her affairs in the lower world; most of which I answered to her intire satisfaction. At last, with a kind of forced smile, she said, "I suppose the pill and drop go on swimmingly?" I told her they were reported to have done great cures. She replied she could apprehend no danger from any person who was not of regular practice; "for, however simple mankind are," said she, "or however afraid they are of death, they prefer dying in a regular manner to being cured by a nostrum." She then expressed great pleasure at the account I gave her of the beau monde. She said she had herself removed the hundreds of Drury to the hundreds of Charing-cross, and was very much delighted to find they had spread into St James's; that she imputed this chiefly to several of her dear and worthy friends, who had lately published their excellent works, endeavouring to extirpate all notions of religion and virtue; and particularly to the deserving author of the Bachelor's Estimate; "to whom," said she, "if I had not reason to think he was a surgeon, and had therefore written from mercenary views, I could never sufficiently own my obligations." She spoke likewise greatly in approbation of the method, so generally used by parents, of marrying children very young, and without the least affection between the parties; and concluded by saying that, if these fashions continued to spread, she doubted not but she should shortly be the only disease who would ever receive a visit from any person of considerable rank. While we were discoursing her three daughters entered the room. They were all called by hard names; the eldest was named Lepra, the second Chæras, and the third Scorbutia.[H] They were all genteel, but ugly. I could not help observing the little respect they paid their parent, which the old lady remarking in my countenance, as soon as they quitted the room, which soon happened, acquainted me with her unhappiness in her offspring, every one of which had the confidence to deny themselves to be her children, though she said she had been a very indulgent mother and had plentifully provided for them all. As family complaints generally as much tire the hearer as they relieve him who makes them, when I found her launching farther into this subject I resolved to put an end to my visit, and, taking my leave with many thanks for the favour she had done me, I returned to the inn, where I found my fellow-travellers just mounting into their vehicle. I shook hands with my host and accompanied them into the coach, which immediately after proceeded on its journey. Chapter iv. _Discourses on the road, and a description of the palace of Death._ We were all silent for some minutes, till, being well shaken into our several seats, I opened my mouth first, and related what had happened to me after our separation in the city we had just left. The rest of the company, except the grave female spirit whom our reader may remember to have refused giving an account of the distemper which occasioned her dissolution, did the same. It might be tedious to relate these at large; we shall therefore only mention a very remarkable inveteracy which the Surfeit declared to all the other diseases, especially to the Fever, who, she said, by the roguery of the porters, received acknowledgments from numberless passengers which were due to herself. "Indeed," says she, "those cane-headed fellows" (for so she called them, alluding, I suppose, to their ticket) "are constantly making such mistakes; there is no gratitude in those fellows; for I am sure they have greater obligations to me than to any other disease, except the Vapours." These relations were no sooner over than one of the company informed us we were approaching to the most noble building he had ever beheld, and which we learnt from our coachman was the palace of Death. Its outside, indeed, appeared extremely magnificent. Its structure was of the Gothic order; vast beyond imagination, the whole pile consisting of black marble. Rows of immense yews form an amphitheatre round it of such height and thickness that no ray of the sun ever perforates this grove, where black eternal darkness would reign was it not excluded by innumerable lamps which are placed in pyramids round the grove; so that the distant reflection they cast on the palace, which is plentifully gilt with gold on the outside, is inconceivably solemn. To this I may add the hollow murmur of winds constantly heard from the grove, and the very remote sound of roaring waters. Indeed, every circumstance seems to conspire to fill the mind with horrour and consternation as we approach to this palace, which we had scarce time to admire before our vehicle stopped at the gate, and we were desired to alight in order to pay our respects to his most mortal majesty (this being the title which it seems he assumes). The outward court was full of soldiers, and, indeed, the whole very much resembled the state of an earthly monarch, only more magnificent. We past through several courts into a vast hall, which led to a spacious staircase, at the bottom of which stood two pages, with very grave countenances, whom I recollected afterwards to have formerly been very eminent undertakers, and were in reality the only dismal faces I saw here; for this palace, so awful and tremendous without, is all gay and sprightly within; so that we soon lost all those dismal and gloomy ideas we had contracted in approaching it. Indeed, the still silence maintained among the guards and attendants resembled rather the stately pomp of eastern courts; but there was on every face such symptoms of content and happiness that diffused an air of chearfulness all round. We ascended the staircase and past through many noble apartments whose walls were adorned with various battle-pieces in tapistry, and which we spent some time in observing. These brought to my mind those beautiful ones I had in my lifetime seen at Blenheim, nor could I prevent my curiosity from enquiring where the Duke of Marlborough's victories were placed (for I think they were almost the only battles of any eminence I had read of which I did not meet with); when the skeleton of a beef-eater, shaking his head, told me a certain gentleman, one Lewis XIV., who had great interest with his most mortal majesty, had prevented any such from being hung up there. "Besides," says he, "his majesty hath no great respect for that duke, for he never sent him a subject he could keep from him, nor did he ever get a single subject by his means but he lost 1000 others for him." We found the presence-chamber at our entrance very full, and a buz ran through it, as in all assemblies, before the principal figure enters; for his majesty was not yet come out. At the bottom of the room were two persons in close conference, one with a square black cap on his head, and the other with a robe embroidered with flames of fire. These, I was informed, were a judge long since dead, and an inquisitor-general. I overheard them disputing with great eagerness whether the one had hanged or the other burnt the most. While I was listening to this dispute, which seemed to be in no likelihood of a speedy decision, the emperor entered the room and placed himself between two figures, one of which was remarkable for the roughness, and the other for the beauty of his appearance. These were, it seems, Charles XII. of Sweden and Alexander of Macedon. I was at too great a distance to hear any of the conversation, so could only satisfy my curiosity by contemplating the several personages present, of whose names I informed myself by a page, who looked as pale and meagre as any court-page in the other world, but was somewhat more modest. He shewed me here two or three Turkish emperors, to whom his most mortal majesty seemed to express much civility. Here were likewise several of the Roman emperors, among whom none seemed so much caressed as Caligula, on account, as the page told me, of his pious wish that he could send all the Romans hither at one blow. The reader may be perhaps surprized that I saw no physicians here; as indeed I was myself, till informed that they were all departed to the city of Diseases, where they were busy in an experiment to purge away the immortality of the soul. It would be tedious to recollect the many individuals I saw here, but I cannot omit a fat figure, well drest in the French fashion, who was received with extraordinary complacence by the emperor, and whom I imagined to be Lewis XIV. himself; but the page acquainted me he was a celebrated French cook. We were at length introduced to the royal presence, and had the honour to kiss hands. His majesty asked, us a few questions, not very material to relate, and soon after retired. When we returned into the yard we found our caravan ready to set out, at which we all declared ourselves well pleased; for we were sufficiently tired with the formality of a court, notwithstanding its outward splendour and magnificence. Chapter v. _The travellers proceed on their journey, and meet several spirits who are coming into the flesh._ We now came to the banks of the great river Cocytus, where we quitted our vehicle, and past the water in a boat, after which we were obliged to travel on foot the rest of our journey; and now we met, for the first time, several passengers travelling to the world we had left, who informed us they were souls going into the flesh. The two first we met were walking arm-in-arm, in very close and friendly conference; they informed us that one of them was intended for a duke, and the other for a hackney-coachman. As we had not yet arrived at the place where we were to deposit our passions, we were all surprized at the familiarity which subsisted between persons of such different degrees; nor could the grave lady help expressing her astonishment at it. The future coachman then replied, with a laugh, that they had exchanged lots; for that the duke had with his dukedom drawn a shrew for a wife, and the coachman only a single state. As we proceeded on our journey we met a solemn spirit walking alone with great gravity in his countenance: our curiosity invited us, notwithstanding his reserve, to ask what lot he had drawn. He answered, with a smile, he was to have the reputation of a wise man with £100,000 in his pocket, and was practising the solemnity which he was to act in the other world. A little farther we met a company of very merry spirits, whom we imagined by their mirth to have drawn some mighty lot, but, on enquiry, they informed us they were to be beggars. The farther we advanced, the greater numbers we met; and now we discovered two large roads leading different ways, and of very different appearance; the one all craggy with rocks, full as it seemed of boggy grounds, and everywhere beset with briars, so that it was impossible to pass through it without the utmost danger and difficulty; the other, the most delightful imaginable, leading through the most verdant meadows, painted and perfumed with all kinds of beautiful flowers; in short, the most wanton imagination could imagine nothing more lovely. Notwithstanding which, we were surprized to see great numbers crowding into the former, and only one or two solitary spirits chusing the latter. On enquiry, we were acquainted that the bad road was the way to greatness, and the other to goodness. When we expressed our surprize at the preference given to the former we were acquainted that it was chosen for the sake of the music of drums and trumpets, and the perpetual acclamations of the mob, with which those who travelled this way were constantly saluted. We were told likewise that there were several noble palaces to be seen, and lodged in, on this road, by those who had past through the difficulties of it (which indeed many were not able to surmount), and great quantities of all sorts of treasure to be found in it; whereas the other had little inviting more than the beauty of the way, scarce a handsome building, save one greatly resembling a certain house by the Bath, to be seen during that whole journey; and, lastly, that it was thought very scandalous and mean-spirited to travel through this, and as highly honourable and noble to pass by the other. We now heard a violent noise, when, casting our eyes forwards, we perceived a vast number of spirits advancing in pursuit of one whom they mocked and insulted with all kinds of scorn. I cannot give my reader a more adequate idea of this scene than by comparing it to an English mob conducting a pickpocket to the water; or by supposing that an incensed audience at a playhouse had unhappily possessed themselves of the miserable damned poet. Some laughed, some hissed, some squawled, some groaned, some bawled, some spit at him, some threw dirt at him. It was impossible not to ask who or what the wretched spirit was whom they treated in this barbarous manner; when, to our great surprize, we were informed that it was a king: we were likewise told that this manner of behaviour was usual among the spirits to those who drew the lots of emperors, kings, and other great men, not from envy or anger, but mere derision and contempt of earthly grandeur; that nothing was more common than for those who had drawn these great prizes (as to us they seemed) to exchange them with taylors and coblers; and that Alexander the Great and Diogenes had formerly done so; he that was afterwards Diogenes having originally fallen on the lot of Alexander. And now, on a sudden, the mockery ceased, and the king-spirit, having obtained a hearing, began to speak as follows; for we were now near enough to hear him distinctly:-- "GENTLEMEN,--I am justly surprized at your treating me in this manner, since whatever lot I have drawn, I did not chuse: if, therefore, it be worthy of derision, you should compassionate me, for it might have fallen to any of your shares. I know in how low a light the station to which fate hath assigned me is considered here, and that, when ambition doth not support it, it becomes generally so intollerable, that there is scarce any other condition for which it is not gladly exchanged: for what portion, in the world to which we are going, is so miserable as that of care? Should I therefore consider myself as become by this lot essentially your superior, and of a higher order of being than the rest of my fellow-creatures; should I foolishly imagine myself without wisdom superior to the wise, without knowledge to the learned, without courage to the brave, and without goodness and virtue to the good and virtuous; surely so preposterous, so absurd a pride, would justly render me the object of ridicule. But far be it from me to entertain it. And yet, gentlemen, I prize the lot I have drawn, nor would I exchange it with any of yours, seeing it is in my eye so much greater than the rest. Ambition, which I own myself possest of, teaches me this; ambition, which makes me covet praise, assures me that I shall enjoy a much larger proportion of it than can fall within your power either to deserve or obtain. I am then superior to you all, when I am able to do more good, and when I execute that power. What the father is to the son, the guardian to the orphan, or the patron to his client, that am I to you. You are my children, to whom I will be a father, a guardian, and a patron. Not one evening in my long reign (for so it is to be) will I repose myself to rest without the glorious, the heartwarming consideration, that thousands that night owe their sweetest rest to me. What a delicious fortune is it to him whose strongest appetite is doing good, to have every day the opportunity and the power of satisfying it! If such a man hath ambition, how happy is it for him to be seated so on high, that every act blazes abroad, and attracts to him praises tainted with neither sarcasm nor adulation, but such as the nicest and most delicate mind may relish! Thus, therefore, while you derive your good from me, I am your superior. If to my strict distribution of justice you owe the safety of your property from domestic enemies; if by my vigilance and valour you are protected from foreign foes; if by my encouragement of genuine industry, every science, every art which can embellish or sweeten life, is produced and flourishes among you; will any of you be so insensible or ungrateful as to deny praise and respect to him by whose care and conduct you enjoy these blessings? I wonder not at the censure which so frequently falls on those in my station; but I wonder that those in my station so frequently deserve it. What strange perverseness of nature! What wanton delight in mischief must taint his composition, who prefers dangers, difficulty, and disgrace, by doing evil, to safety, ease, and honour, by doing good! who refuses happiness in the other world, and heaven in this, for misery there and hell here! But, be assured, my intentions are different. I shall always endeavour the ease, the happiness, and the glory of my people, being confident that, by so doing, I take the most certain method of procuring them all to myself."--He then struck directly into the road of goodness, and received such a shout of applause as I never remember to have heard equalled. He was gone a little way when a spirit limped after him, swearing he would fetch him back. This spirit, I was presently informed, was one who had drawn the lot of his prime minister. Chapter vi. _An account of the wheel of fortune, with a method of preparing a spirit for this world._ We now proceeded on our journey, without staying to see whether he fulfilled his word or no; and without encountering anything worth mentioning, came to the place where the spirits on their passage to the other world were obliged to decide by lot the station in which every one was to act there. Here was a monstrous wheel, infinitely larger than those in which I had formerly seen lottery-tickets deposited. This was called the WHEEL OF FORTUNE. The goddess herself was present. She was one of the most deformed females I ever beheld; nor could I help observing the frowns she expressed when any beautiful spirit of her own sex passed by her, nor the affability which smiled in her countenance on the approach of any handsome male spirits. Hence I accounted for the truth of an observation I had often made on earth, that nothing is more fortunate than handsome men, nor more unfortunate than handsome women. The reader may be perhaps pleased with an account of the whole method of equipping a spirit for his entrance into the flesh. First, then, he receives from a very sage person, whose look much resembled that of an apothecary (his warehouse likewise bearing an affinity to an apothecary's shop), a small phial inscribed, THE PATHETIC POTION, to be taken just before you are born. This potion is a mixture of all the passions, but in no exact proportion, so that sometimes one predominates, and sometimes another; nay, often in the hurry of making up, one particular ingredient is, as we were informed, left out. The spirit receiveth at the same time another medicine called the NOUSPHORIC DECOCTION, of which he is to drink _ad libitum_. This decoction is an extract from the faculties of the mind, sometimes extremely strong and spirituous, and sometimes altogether as weak; for very little care is taken in the preparation. This decoction is so extremely bitter and unpleasant, that, notwithstanding its wholesomeness, several spirits will not be persuaded to swallow a drop of it, but throw it away, or give it to any other who will receive it; by which means some who were not disgusted by the nauseousness drank double and treble portions. I observed a beautiful young female, who, tasting it immediately from curiosity, screwed up her face and cast it from her with great disdain, whence advancing presently to the wheel, she drew a coronet, which she clapped up so eagerly that I could not distinguish the degree; and indeed I observed several of the same sex, after a very small sip, throw the bottles away. As soon as the spirit is dismissed by the operator, or apothecary, he is at liberty to approach the wheel, where he hath a right to extract a single lot: but those whom Fortune favours she permits sometimes secretly to draw three or four. I observed a comical kind of figure who drew forth a handful, which, when he opened, were a bishop, a general, a privy-counsellor, a player, and a poet-laureate, and, returning the three first, he walked off, smiling, with the two last. Every single lot contained two more articles, which were generally disposed so as to render the lots as equal as possible to each other; on one was written, _earl_, _riches_, _health_, _disquietude_; on another, _cobbler_, _sickness_, _good-humour_; on a third, _poet_, _contempt_, _self-satisfaction_; on a fourth, _general_, _honour_, _discontent_; on a fifth, _cottage_, _happy love_; on a sixth, _coach and six_, _impotent jealous husband_; on a seventh, _prime minister_, _disgrace_; on an eighth, _patriot_, _glory_; on a ninth, _philosopher_, _poverty_, _ease_; on a tenth, _merchant_, _riches_, _care_. And indeed the whole seemed to contain such a mixture of good and evil, that it would have puzzled me which to chuse. I must not omit here that in every lot was directed whether the drawer should marry or remain in celibacy, the married lots being all marked with a large pair of horns. We were obliged, before we quitted this place, to take each of us an emetic from the apothecary, which immediately purged us of all our earthly passions, and presently the cloud forsook our eyes, as it doth those of Ã�neas in Virgil, when removed by Venus; and we discerned things in a much clearer light than before. We began to compassionate those spirits who were making their entry into the flesh, whom we had till then secretly envied, and to long eagerly for those delightful plains which now opened themselves to our eyes, and to which we now hastened with the utmost eagerness. On our way we met with several spirits with very dejected countenances; but our expedition would not suffer us to ask any questions. At length we arrived at the gate of Elysium. Here was a prodigious crowd of spirits waiting for admittance, some of whom were admitted, and some were rejected; for all were strictly examined by the porter, whom I soon discovered to be the celebrated judge Minos. Chapter vii. _The proceedings of judge Minos at the gate of Elysium._ I now got near enough to the gate to hear the several claims of those who endeavoured to pass. The first, among other pretensions, set forth that he had been very liberal to an hospital; but Minos answered, "Ostentation," and repulsed him. The second exhibited that he had constantly frequented his church, been a rigid observer of fast-days: he likewise represented the great animosity he had shewn to vice in others, which never escaped his severest censure; and as to his own behaviour, he had never been once guilty of whoring, drinking, gluttony, or any other excess. He said he had disinherited his son for getting a bastard. "Have you so?" said Minos; "then pray return into the other world and beget another; for such an unnatural rascal shall never pass this gate." A dozen others, who had advanced with very confident countenances, seeing him rejected, turned about of their own accord, declaring, if he could not pass, they had no expectation, and accordingly they followed him back to earth; which was the fate of all who were repulsed, they being obliged to take a further purification, unless those who were guilty of some very heinous crimes, who were hustled in at a little back gate, whence they tumbled immediately into the bottomless pit. The next spirit that came up declared he had done neither good nor evil in the world; for that since his arrival at man's estate he had spent his whole time in search of curiosities; and particularly in the study of butterflies, of which he had collected an immense number. Minos made him no answer, but with great scorn pushed him back. There now advanced a very beautiful spirit indeed. She began to ogle Minos the moment she saw him. She said she hoped there was some merit in refusing a great number of lovers, and dying a maid, though she had had the choice of a hundred. Minos told her she had not refused enow yet, and turned her back. She was succeeded by a spirit who told the judge he believed his works would speak for him. "What works?" answered Minos. "My dramatic works," replied the other, "which have done so much good in recommending virtue and punishing vice." "Very well," said the judge; "if you please to stand by, the first person who passes the gate by your means shall carry you in with him; but, if you will take my advice, I think, for expedition sake, you had better return, and live another life upon earth." The bard grumbled at this, and replied that, besides his poetical works, he had done some other good things: for that he had once lent the whole profits of a benefit-night to a friend, and by that means had saved him and his family from destruction. Upon this the gate flew open, and Minos desired him to walk in, telling him, if he had mentioned this at first, he might have spared the remembrance of his plays. The poet answered, he believed, if Minos had read his works, he would set a higher value on them. He was then beginning to repeat, but Minos pushed him forward, and, turning his back to him, applied himself to the next passenger, a very genteel spirit, who made a very low bow to Minos, and then threw himself into an erect attitude, and imitated the motion of taking snuff with his right hand. Minos asked him what he had to say for himself. He answered, he would dance a minuet with any spirit in Elysium: that he could likewise perform all his other exercises very well, and hoped he had in his life deserved the character of a perfect fine gentleman. Minos replied it would be great pity to rob the world of so fine a gentleman, and therefore desired him to take the other trip. The beau bowed, thanked the judge, and said he desired no better. Several spirits expressed much astonishment at this his satisfaction; but we were afterwards informed he had not taken the emetic above mentioned. A miserable old spirit now crawled forwards, whose face I thought I had formerly seen near Westminster Abbey. He entertained Minos with a long harangue of what he had done when in the HOUSE; and then proceeded to inform him how much he was worth, without attempting to produce a single instance of any one good action. Minos stopt the career of his discourse, and acquainted him he must take a trip back again. "What! to S---- house?" said the spirit in an ecstasy; but the judge, without making him any answer, turned to another, who, with a very solemn air and great dignity, acquainted him he was a duke. "To the right-about, Mr Duke," cried Minos, "you are infinitely too great a man for Elysium;" and then, giving him a kick on the b--- ch, he addressed himself to a spirit who, with fear and trembling, begged he might not go to the bottomless pit: he said he hoped Minos would consider that, though he had gone astray, he had suffered for it--that it was necessity which drove him to the robbery of eighteenpence, which he had committed, and for which he was hanged--that he had done some good actions in his life--that he had supported an aged parent with his labour--that he had been a very tender husband and a kind father--and that he had ruined himself by being bail for his friend. At which words the gate opened, and Minos bid him enter, giving him a slap on the back as he passed by him. A great number of spirits now came forwards, who all declared they had the same claim, and that the captain should speak for them. He acquainted the judge that they had been all slain in the service of their country. Minos was going to admit them, but had the curiosity to ask who had been the invader, in order, as he said, to prepare the back gate for him. The captain answered they had been the invaders themselves--that they had entered the enemy's country, and burnt and plundered several cities. "And for what reason?" said Minos. "By the command of him who paid us," said the captain; "that is the reason of a soldier. We are to execute whatever we are commanded, or we should be a disgrace to the army, and very little deserve our pay." "You are brave fellows indeed," said Minos; "but be pleased to face about, and obey my command for once, in returning back to the other world: for what should such fellows as you do where there are no cities to be burnt, nor people to be destroyed? But let me advise you to have a stricter regard to truth for the future, and not call the depopulating other countries the service of your own." The captain answered in a rage, "D--n me! do you give me the lie?" and was going to take Minos by the nose, had not his guards prevented him, and immediately turned him and all his followers back the same road they came. Four spirits informed the judge that they had been starved to death through poverty--being the father, mother, and two children; that they had been honest and as industrious as possible, till sickness had prevented the man from labour. "All that is very true," cried a grave spirit who stood by. "I know the fact; for these poor people were under my cure." "You was, I suppose, the parson of the parish," cries Minos; "I hope you had a good living, sir." "That was but a small one," replied the spirit; "but I had another a little better."--"Very well," said Minos; "let the poor people pass." At which the parson was stepping forwards with a stately gait before them; but Minos caught hold of him and pulled him back, saying, "Not so fast, doctor--you must take one step more into the other world first; for no man enters that gate without charity." A very stately figure now presented himself, and, informing Minos he was a patriot, began a very florid harangue on public virtue and the liberties of his country. Upon which Minos shewed him the utmost respect, and ordered the gate to be opened. The patriot was not contented with this applause; he said he had behaved as well in place as he had done in the opposition; and that, though he was now obliged to embrace the court measures, yet he had behaved very honestly to his friends, and brought as many in as was possible. "Hold a moment," says Minos: "on second consideration, Mr Patriot, I think a man of your great virtue and abilities will be so much missed by your country, that, if I might advise you, you should take a journey back again. I am sure you will not decline it; for I am certain you will, with great readiness, sacrifice your own happiness to the public good." The patriot smiled, and told Minos he believed he was in jest; and was offering to enter the gate, but the judge laid fast hold of him and insisted on his return, which the patriot still declining, he at last ordered his guards to seize him and conduct him back. A spirit now advanced, and the gate was immediately thrown open to him before he had spoken a word. I heard some whisper, "That is our last lord mayor." It now came to our company's turn. The fair spirit which I mentioned with so much applause in the beginning of my journey passed through very easily; but the grave lady was rejected on her first appearance, Minos declaring there was not a single prude in Elysium. The judge then addressed himself to me, who little expected to pass this fiery trial. I confessed I had indulged myself very freely with wine and women in my youth, but had never done an injury to any man living, nor avoided an opportunity of doing good; that I pretended to very little virtue more than general philanthropy and private friendship. I was proceeding, when Minos bid me enter the gate, and not indulge myself with trumpeting forth my virtues. I accordingly passed forward with my lovely companion, and, embracing her with vast eagerness, but spiritual innocence, she returned my embrace in the same manner, and we both congratulated ourselves on our arrival in this happy region, whose beauty no painting of the imagination can describe. [Illustration: text decoration] Chapter viii. _The adventures which the author met on his first entrance into Elysium._ We pursued our way through a delicious grove of orange-trees, where I saw infinite numbers of spirits, every one of whom I knew, and was known by them (for spirits here know one another by intuition). I presently met a little daughter whom I had lost several years before. Good gods! what words can describe the raptures, the melting passionate tenderness, with which we kissed each other, continuing in our embrace, with the most ecstatic joy, a space which, if time had been measured here as on earth, could not be less than half a year. The first spirit with whom I entered into discourse was the famous Leonidas of Sparta. I acquainted him with the honours which had been done him by a celebrated poet of our nation; to which he answered he was very much obliged to him. We were presently afterwards entertained with the most delicious voice I had ever heard, accompanied by a violin, equal to Signior Piantinida. I presently discovered the musician and songster to be Orpheus and Sappho. Old Homer was present at this concert (if I may so call it), and Madam Dacier sat in his lap. He asked much after Mr Pope, and said he was very desirous of seeing him; for that he had read his Iliad in his translation with almost as much delight as he believed he had given others in the original. I had the curiosity to enquire whether he had really writ that poem in detached pieces, and sung it about as ballads all over Greece, according to the report which went of him. He smiled at my question, and asked me whether there appeared any connexion in the poem; for if there did he thought I might answer myself. I then importuned him to acquaint me in which of the cities which contended for the honour of his birth he was really born? To which he answered, "Upon my soul I can't tell." Virgil then came up to me, with Mr Addison under his arm. "Well, sir," said he, "how many translations have these few last years produced of my Ã�neid?" I told him I believed several, but I could not possibly remember; for that I had never read any but Dr Trapp's. "Ay," said he, "that is a curious piece indeed!" I then acquainted him with the discovery made by Mr Warburton of the Elusinian mysteries couched in his sixth book. "What mysteries?" said Mr Addison. "The Elusinian," answered Virgil, "which I have disclosed in my sixth book." "How!" replied Addison. "You never mentioned a word of any such mysteries to me in all our acquaintance." "I thought it was unnecessary," cried the other, "to a man of your infinite learning: besides, you always told me you perfectly understood my meaning." Upon this I thought the critic looked a little out of countenance, and turned aside to a very merry spirit, one Dick Steele, who embraced him, and told him he had been the greatest man upon earth; that he readily resigned up all the merit of his own works to him. Upon which Addison gave him a gracious smile, and, clapping him on the back with much solemnity, cried out, "Well said, Dick!" I then observed Shakspeare standing between Betterton and Booth, and deciding a difference between those two great actors concerning the placing an accent in one of his lines: this was disputed on both sides with a warmth which surprized me in Elysium, till I discovered by intuition that every soul retained its principal characteristic, being, indeed, its very essence. The line was that celebrated one in Othello-- _Put out the light, and then put out the light._ according to Betterton. Mr Booth contended to have it thus:-- _Put out the light, and then put out_ THE _light._ I could not help offering my conjecture on this occasion, and suggested it might perhaps be-- _Put out the light, and then put out_ THY _light._ Another hinted a reading very sophisticated in my opinion-- _Put out the light, and then put out_ THEE, _light._ making light to be the vocative case. Another would have altered the last word, and read-- _Put out thy light, and then put out thy sight._ But Betterton said, if the text was to be disturbed, he saw no reason why a word might not be changed as well as a letter, and, instead of "put out thy light," you may read "put out thy eyes." At last it was agreed on all sides to refer the matter to the decision of Shakspeare himself, who delivered his sentiments as follows: "Faith, gentlemen, it is so long since I wrote the line, I have forgot my meaning. This I know, could I have dreamt so much nonsense would have been talked and writ about it, I would have blotted it out of my works; for I am sure, if any of these be my meaning, it doth me very little honour." He was then interrogated concerning some other ambiguous passages in his works; but he declined any satisfactory answer; saying, if Mr Theobald had not writ about it sufficiently, there were three or four more new editions of his plays coming out, which he hoped would satisfy every one: concluding, "I marvel nothing so much as that men will gird themselves at discovering obscure beauties in an author. Certes the greatest and most pregnant beauties are ever the plainest and most evidently striking; and when two meanings of a passage can in the least ballance our judgments which to prefer, I hold it matter of unquestionable certainty that neither of them is worth a farthing." From his works our conversation turned on his monument; upon which, Shakspeare, shaking his sides, and addressing himself to Milton, cried out, "On my word, brother Milton, they have brought a noble set of poets together; they would have been hanged erst have [ere they had] convened such a company at their tables when alive." "True, brother," answered Milton, "unless we had been as incapable of eating then as we are now." Chapter ix. _More adventures in Elysium._ A crowd of spirits now joined us, whom I soon perceived to be the heroes, who here frequently pay their respects to the several bards the recorders of their actions. I now saw Achilles and Ulysses addressing themselves to Homer, and Ã�neas and Julius Caesar to Virgil: Adam went up to Milton, upon which I whispered Mr Dryden that I thought the devil should have paid his compliments there, according to his opinion. Dryden only answered, "I believe the devil was in me when I said so." Several applied themselves to Shakspeare, amongst whom Henry V. made a very distinguishing appearance. While my eyes were fixed on that monarch a very small spirit came up to me, shook me heartily by the hand, and told me his name was THOMAS THUMB. I expressed great satisfaction in seeing him, nor could I help speaking my resentment against the historian, who had done such injustice to the stature of this great little man, which he represented to be no bigger than a span, whereas I plainly perceived at first sight he was full a foot and a half (and the 37th part of an inch more, as he himself informed me), being indeed little shorter than some considerable beaus of the present age. I asked this little hero concerning the truth of those stories related of him, viz., of the pudding, and the cow's belly. As to the former, he said it was a ridiculous legend, worthy to be laughed at; but as to the latter, he could not help owning there was some truth in it: nor had he any reason to be ashamed of it, as he was swallowed by surprize; adding, with great fierceness, that if he had had any weapon in his hand the cow should have as soon swallowed the devil. He spoke the last word with so much fury, and seemed so confounded, that, perceiving the effect it had on him, I immediately waved the story, and, passing to other matters, we had much conversation touching giants. He said, so far from killing any, he had never seen one alive; that he believed those actions were by mistake recorded of him, instead of Jack the giant-killer, whom he knew very well, and who had, he fancied, extirpated the race. I assured him to the contrary, and told him I had myself seen a huge tame giant, who very complacently stayed in London a whole winter, at the special request of several gentlemen and ladies; though the affairs of his family called him home to Sweden. I now beheld a stern-looking spirit leaning on the shoulder of another spirit, and presently discerned the former to be Oliver Cromwell, and the latter Charles Martel. I own I was a little surprized at seeing Cromwell here, for I had been taught by my grandmother that he was carried away by the devil himself in a tempest; but he assured me, on his honour, there was not the least truth in that story. However, he confessed he had narrowly escaped the bottomless pit; and, if the former part of his conduct had not been more to his honour than the latter, he had been certainly soused into it. He was, nevertheless, sent back to the upper world with this lot:--_Army_, _cavalier_, _distress_. He was born, for the second time, the day of Charles II.'s restoration, into a family which had lost a very considerable fortune in the service of that prince and his father, for which they received the reward very often conferred by princes on real merit, viz.--000. At 16 his father bought a small commission for him in the army, in which he served without any promotion all the reigns of Charles II. and of his brother. At the Revolution he quitted his regiment, and followed the fortunes of his former master, and was in his service dangerously wounded at the famous battle of the Boyne, where he fought in the capacity of a private soldier. He recovered of this wound, and retired after the unfortunate king to Paris, where he was reduced to support a wife and seven children (for his lot had horns in it) by cleaning shoes and snuffing candles at the opera. In which situation, after he had spent a few miserable years, he died half-starved and broken-hearted. He then revisited Minos, who, compassionating his sufferings by means of that family, to whom he had been in his former capacity so bitter an enemy, suffered him to enter here. My curiosity would not refrain asking him one question, _i.e._, whether in reality he had any desire to obtain the crown? He smiled, and said, "No more than an ecclesiastic hath to the mitre, when he cries _Nolo episcopari_." Indeed, he seemed to express some contempt at the question, and presently turned away. A venerable spirit appeared next, whom I found to be the great historian Livy. Alexander the Great, who was just arrived from the palace of death, past by him with a frown. The historian, observing it, said, "Ay, you may frown; but those troops which conquered the base Asiatic slaves would have made no figure against the Romans." We then privately lamented the loss of the most valuable part of his history; after which he took occasion to commend the judicious collection made by Mr Hook, which, he said, was infinitely preferable to all others; and at my mentioning Echard's he gave a bounce, not unlike the going off of a squib, and was departing from me, when I begged him to satisfy my curiosity in one point--whether he was really superstitious or no? For I had always believed he was till Mr Leibnitz had assured me to the contrary. He answered sullenly, "Doth Mr Leibnitz know my mind better than myself?" and then walked away. [Illustration: text decoration] Chapter x. _The author is surprised at meeting Julian the apostate in Elysium; but is satisfied by him by what means he procured his entrance there. Julian relates his adventures in the character of a slave._ As he was departing I heard him salute a spirit by the name of Mr Julian the apostate. This exceedingly amazed me; for I had concluded that no man ever had a better title to the bottomless pit than he. But I soon found that this same Julian the apostate was also the very individual archbishop Latimer. He told me that several lies had been raised on him in his former capacity, nor was he so bad a man as he had been represented. However, he had been denied admittance, and forced to undergo several subsequent pilgrimages on earth, and to act in the different characters of a slave, a Jew, a general, an heir, a carpenter, a beau, a monk, a fiddler, a wise man, a king, a fool, a beggar, a prince, a statesman, a soldier, a taylor, an alderman, a poet, a knight, a dancing-master, and three times a bishop, before his martyrdom, which, together with his other behaviour in this last character, satisfied the judge, and procured him a passage to the blessed regions. I told him such various characters must have produced incidents extremely entertaining; and if he remembered all, as I supposed he did, and had leisure, I should be obliged to him for the recital. He answered he perfectly recollected every circumstance; and as to leisure, the only business of that happy place was to contribute to the happiness of each other. He therefore thanked me for adding to his, in proposing to him a method of increasing mine. I then took my little darling in one hand, and my favourite fellow-traveller in the other, and, going with him to a sunny bank of flowers, we all sat down, and he began as follows:-- "I suppose you are sufficiently acquainted with my story during the time I acted the part of the emperor Julian, though I assure you all which hath been related of me is not true, particularly with regard to the many prodigies forerunning my death. However, they are now very little worth disputing; and if they can serve any purpose of the historian they are extremely at his service. "My next entrance into the world was at Laodicea, in Syria, in a Roman family of no great note; and, being of a roving disposition, I came at the age of seventeen to Constantinople, where, after about a year's stay, I set out for Thrace, at the time when the emperor Valens admitted the Goths into that country. I was there so captivated with the beauty of a Gothic lady, the wife of one Rodoric, a captain, whose name, out of the most delicate tenderness for her lovely sex, I shall even at this distance conceal; since her behaviour to me was more consistent with good-nature than with that virtue which women are obliged to preserve against every assailant. In order to procure an intimacy with this woman I sold myself a slave to her husband, who, being of a nation not over-inclined to jealousy, presented me to his wife, for those very reasons which would have induced one of a jealous complexion to have withheld me from her, namely, for that I was young and handsome. "Matters succeeded so far according to my wish, and the sequel answered those hopes which this beginning had raised. I soon perceived my service was very acceptable to her; I often met her eyes, nor did she withdraw them without a confusion which is scarce consistent with entire purity of heart. Indeed, she gave me every day fresh encouragement; but the unhappy distance which circumstances had placed between us deterred me long from making any direct attack; and she was too strict an observer of decorum to violate the severe rules of modesty by advancing first; but passion at last got the better of my respect, and I resolved to make one bold attempt, whatever was the consequence. Accordingly, laying hold of the first kind opportunity, when she was alone and my master abroad, I stoutly assailed the citadel and carried it by storm. Well may I say by storm; for the resistance I met was extremely resolute, and indeed as much as the most perfect decency would require. She swore often she would cry out for help; but I answered it was in vain, seeing there was no person near to assist her; and probably she believed me, for she did not once actually cry out, which if she had, I might very likely have been prevented. "When she found her virtue thus subdued against her will she patiently submitted to her fate, and quietly suffered me a long time to enjoy the most delicious fruits of my victory; but envious fortune resolved to make me pay a dear price for my pleasure. One day in the midst of our happiness we were suddenly surprized by the unexpected return of her husband, who, coming directly into his wife's apartment, just allowed me time to creep under the bed. The disorder in which he found his wife might have surprized a jealous temper; but his was so far otherwise, that possibly no mischief might have happened had he not by a cross accident discovered my legs, which were not well hid. He immediately drew me out by them, and then, turning to his wife with a stern countenance, began to handle a weapon he wore by his side, with which I am persuaded he would have instantly despatched her, had I not very gallantly, and with many imprecations, asserted her innocence and my own guilt; which, however, I protested had hitherto gone no farther than design. She so well seconded my plea (for she was a woman of wonderful art), that he was at length imposed upon; and now all his rage was directed against me, threatening all manner of tortures, which the poor lady was in too great a fright and confusion to dissuade him from executing; and perhaps, if her concern for me had made her attempt it, it would have raised a jealousy in him not afterwards to be removed. "After some hesitation Rodoric cried out he had luckily hit on the most proper punishment for me in the world, by a method which would at once do severe justice on me for my criminal intention, and at the same time prevent me from any danger of executing my wicked purpose hereafter. This cruel resolution was immediately executed, and I was no longer worthy the name of a man. "Having thus disqualified me from doing him any future injury, he still retained me in his family; but the lady, very probably repenting of what she had done, and looking on me as the author of her guilt, would never for the future give me either a kind word or look: and shortly after, a great exchange being made between the Romans and the Goths of dogs for men, my lady exchanged me with a Roman widow for a small lap-dog, giving a considerable sum of money to boot. "In this widow's service I remained seven years, during all which time I was very barbarously treated. I was worked without the least mercy, and often severely beat by a swinging maid-servant, who never called me by any other names than those of the Thing and the Animal. Though I used my utmost industry to please, it never was in my power. Neither the lady nor her woman would eat anything I touched, saying they did not believe me wholesome. It is unnecessary to repeat particulars; in a word, you can imagine no kind of ill usage which I did not suffer in this family. "At last an heathen priest, an acquaintance of my lady's, obtained me of her for a present. The scene was now totally changed, and I had as much reason to be satisfied with my present situation as I had to lament my former. I was so absolutely my master's favourite, that the rest of the slaves paid me almost as much regard as they shewed to him, well knowing that it was entirely in my power to command and treat them as I pleased. I was intrusted with all my master's secrets, and used to assist him in privately conveying away by night the sacrifices from the altars, which the people believed the deities themselves devoured. Upon these we feasted very elegantly, nor could invention suggest a rarity which we did not pamper ourselves with. Perhaps you may admire at the close union between this priest and his slave, but we lived in an intimacy which the Christians thought criminal; but my master, who knew the will of the gods, with whom he told me he often conversed, assured me it was perfectly innocent. "This happy life continued about four years, when my master's death, occasioned by a surfeit got by overfeeding on several exquisite dainties, put an end to it. "I now fell into the hands of one of a very different disposition, and this was no other than the celebrated St Chrysostom, who dieted me with sermons instead of sacrifices, and filled my ears with good things, but not my belly. Instead of high food to fatten and pamper my flesh, I had receipts to mortify and reduce it. With these I edified so well, that within a few months I became a skeleton. However, as he had converted me to his faith, I was well enough satisfied with this new manner of living, by which he taught me I might ensure myself an eternal reward in a future state. The saint was a good-natured man, and never gave me an ill word but once, which was occasioned by my neglecting to place Aristophanes, which was his constant bedfellow, on his pillow. He was, indeed, extremely fond of that Greek poet, and frequently made me read his comedies to him. When I came to any of the loose passages he would smile, and say. 'It was pity his matter was not as pure as his style;' of which latter he was so immoderately fond that, notwithstanding the detestation he expressed for obscenity, he hath made me repeat those passages ten times over. The character of this good man hath been very unjustly attacked by his heathen contemporaries, particularly with regard to women; but his severe invectives against that sex are his sufficient justification. "From the service of this saint, from whom I received manumission, I entered into the family of Timasius, a leader of great eminence in the imperial army, into whose favour I so far insinuated myself that he preferred me to a good command, and soon made me partaker of both his company and his secrets. I soon grew intoxicated with this preferment, and the more he loaded me with benefits the more he raised my opinion of my own merit, which, still outstripping the rewards he conferred on me, inspired me rather with dissatisfaction than gratitude. And thus, by preferring me beyond my merit or first expectation, he made me an envious aspiring enemy, whom perhaps a more moderate bounty would have preserved a dutiful servant. "I fell now acquainted with one Lucilius, a creature of the prime minister Eutropius, who had by his favour been raised to the post of a tribune; a man of low morals, and eminent only in that meanest of qualities, cunning. This gentleman, imagining me a fit tool for the minister's purpose, having often sounded my principles of honour and honesty, both which he declared to me were words without meaning, and finding my ready concurrence in his sentiments, recommended me to Eutropius as very proper to execute some wicked purposes he had contrived against my friend Timasius. The minister embraced this recommendation, and I was accordingly acquainted by Lucilius (after some previous accounts of the great esteem Eutropius entertained of me, from the testimony he had borne of my parts) that he would introduce me to him; adding that he was a great encourager of merit, and that I might depend upon his favour. "I was with little difficulty prevailed on to accept of this invitation. A late hour therefore the next evening being appointed, I attended my friend Lucilius to the minister's house. He received me with the utmost civility and chearfulness, and affected so much regard to me, that I, who knew nothing of these high scenes of life, concluded I had in him a most disinterested friend, owing to the favourable report which Lucilius had made of me. I was however soon cured of this opinion; for immediately after supper our discourse turned on the injustice which the generality of the world were guilty of in their conduct to great men, expecting that they should reward their private merit, without ever endeavouring to apply it to their use. 'What avail,' said Eutropius, 'the learning, wit, courage, or any virtue which a man may be possest of, to me, unless I receive some benefit from them? Hath he not more merit to me who doth my business and obeys my commands, without any of these qualities?' I gave such entire satisfaction in my answers on this head, that both the minister and his creature grew bolder, and after some preface began to accuse Timasius. At last, finding I did not attempt to defend him, Lucilius swore a great oath that he was not fit to live, and that he would destroy him. Eutropius answered that it would be too dangerous a task: 'Indeed' says he, 'his crimes are of so black a die, and so well known to the emperor, that his death must be a very acceptable service, and could not fail meeting a proper reward: but I question whether you are capable of executing it.' 'If he is not,' cried I, 'I am; and surely no man can have greater motives to destroy him than myself: for, besides his disloyalty to my prince, for whom I have so perfect a duty, I have private disobligations to him. I have had fellows put over my head, to the great scandal of the service in general, and to my own prejudice and disappointment in particular.' I will not repeat you my whole speech; but, to be as concise as possible, when we parted that evening the minister squeezed me heartily by the hand, and with great commendation of my honesty and assurances of his favour, he appointed me the next evening to come to him alone; when, finding me, after a little more scrutiny, ready for his purpose, he proposed to me to accuse Timasius of high treason, promising me the highest rewards if I would undertake it. The consequence to him, I suppose you know, was ruin; but what was it to me? Why, truly, when I waited on Eutropius for the fulfilling his promises, he received me with great distance and coldness; and, on my dropping some hints of my expectations from him, he affected not to understand me; saying he thought impunity was the utmost I could hope for on discovering my accomplice, whose offence was only greater than mine, as he was in a higher station; and telling me he had great difficulty to obtain a pardon for me from the emperor, which, he said, he had struggled very hardly for, as he had worked the discovery out of me. He turned away, and addressed himself to another person. "I was so incensed at this treatment, that I resolved revenge, and should certainly have pursued it, had he not cautiously prevented me by taking effectual means to despatch me soon after out of the world. "You will, I believe, now think I had a second good chance for the bottomless pit, and indeed Minos seemed inclined to tumble me in, till he was informed of the revenge taken on me by Rodoric, and my seven years' subsequent servitude to the widow; which he thought sufficient to make atonement for all the crimes a single life could admit of, and so sent me back to try my fortune a third time." Chapter xi. _In which Julian relates his adventures in the character of an avaricious Jew._ "The next character in which I was destined to appear in the flesh was that of an avaricious Jew. I was born in Alexandria in Egypt. My name was Balthazar. Nothing very remarkable happened to me till the year of the memorable tumult in which the Jews of that city are reported in history to have massacred more Christians than at that time dwelt in it. Indeed, the truth is, they did maul the dogs pretty handsomely; but I myself was not present, for as all our people were ordered to be armed, I took that opportunity of selling two swords, which probably I might otherwise never have disposed of, they being extremely old and rusty; so that, having no weapon left, I did not care to venture abroad. Besides, though I really thought it an act meriting salvation to murder the Nazarenes, as the fact was to be committed at midnight, at which time, to avoid suspicion, we were all to sally from our own houses, I could not persuade myself to consume so much oil in sitting up to that hour: for these reasons therefore I remained at home that evening. "I was at this time greatly enamoured with one Hypatia, the daughter of a philosopher; a young lady of the greatest beauty and merit: indeed, she had every imaginable ornament both of mind and body. She seemed not to dislike my person; but there were two obstructions to our marriage, viz., my religion and her poverty: both which might probably have been got over, had not those dogs the Christians murdered her; and, what is worse, afterwards burned her body: worse, I say, because I lost by that means a jewel of some value, which I had presented to her, designing, if our nuptials did not take place, to demand it of her back again. "Being thus disappointed in my love, I soon after left Alexandria and went to the imperial city, where I apprehended I should find a good market for jewels on the approaching marriage of the emperor with Athenais. I disguised myself as a beggar on this journey, for these reasons: first, as I imagined I should thus carry my jewels with greater safety; and, secondly, to lessen my expenses; which latter expedient succeeded so well, that I begged two oboli on my way more than my travelling cost me, my diet being chiefly roots, and my drink water. "But, perhaps, it had been better for me if I had been more lavish and more expeditious; for the ceremony was over before I reached Constantinople; so that I lost that glorious opportunity of disposing of my jewels with which many of our people were greatly enriched. "The life of a miser is very little worth relating, as it is one constant scheme of getting or saving money. I shall therefore repeat to you some few only of my adventures, without regard to any order. "A Roman Jew, who was a great lover of Falernian wine, and who indulged himself very freely with it, came to dine at my house; when, knowing he should meet with little wine, and that of the cheaper sort, sent me in half-a-dozen jars of Falernian. Can you believe I would not give this man his own wine? Sir, I adulterated it so that I made six jars of [them] three, which he and his friend drank; the other three I afterwards sold to the very person who originally sent them me, knowing he would give a better price than any other. "A noble Roman came one day to my house in the country, which I had purchased, for half the value, of a distressed person. My neighbours paid him the compliment of some music, on which account, when he departed, he left a piece of gold with me to be distributed among them. I pocketed this money, and ordered them a small vessel of sour wine, which I could not have sold for above two drachms, and afterwards made them pay in work three times the value of it. "As I was not entirely void of religion, though I pretended to infinitely more than I had, so I endeavoured to reconcile my transactions to my conscience as well as possible. Thus I never invited any one to eat with me, but those on whose pockets I had some design. After our collation it was constantly my method to set down in a book I kept for that purpose, what I thought they owed me for their meal. Indeed, this was generally a hundred times as much as they could have dined elsewhere for; but, however, it was _quid pro quo_, if not _ad valorem_. Now, whenever the opportunity offered of imposing on them I considered it only as paying myself what they owed me: indeed, I did not always confine myself strictly to what I had set down, however extravagant that was; but I reconciled taking the overplus to myself as usance. "But I was not only too cunning for others--I sometimes overreached myself. I have contracted distempers for want of food and warmth, which have put me to the expence of a physician; nay, I once very narrowly escaped death by taking bad drugs, only to save one seven-eighth per cent. in the price. "By these and such like means, in the midst of poverty and every kind of distress, I saw myself master of an immense fortune, the casting up and ruminating on which was my daily and only pleasure. This was, however, obstructed and embittered by two considerations, which against my will often invaded my thoughts. One, which would have been intolerable (but that indeed seldom troubled me), was, that I must one day leave my darling treasure. The other haunted me continually, viz., that my riches were no greater. However, I comforted myself against this reflection by an assurance that they would increase daily: on which head my hopes were so extensive that I may say with Virgil-- '_His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono._' Indeed I am convinced that, had I possessed the whole globe of earth, save one single drachma, which I had been certain never to be master of--I am convinced, I say, that single drachma would have given me more uneasiness than all the rest could afford me pleasure. "To say the truth, between my solicitude in contriving schemes to procure money and my extreme anxiety in preserving it, I never had one moment of ease while awake nor of quiet when in my sleep. In all the characters through which I have passed, I have never undergone half the misery I suffered in this; and, indeed, Minos seemed to be of the same opinion; for while I stood trembling and shaking in expectation of my sentence he bid me go back about my business, for that nobody was to be d----n'd in more worlds than one. And, indeed, I have since learnt that the devil will not receive a miser." Chapter xii. _What happened to Julian in the characters of a general, an heir, a carpenter, and a beau._ "The next step I took into the world was at Apollonia, in Thrace, where I was born of a beautiful Greek slave, who was the mistress of Eutyches, a great favourite of the emperor Zeno. That prince, at his restoration, gave me the command of a cohort, I being then but fifteen years of age; and a little afterwards, before I had even seen an army, preferred me, over the heads of all the old officers, to be a tribune. "As I found an easy access to the emperor, by means of my father's intimacy with him, he being a very good courtier--or, in other words, a most prostitute flatterer--so I soon ingratiated myself with Zeno, and so well imitated my father in flattering him, that he would never part with me from about his person. So that the first armed force I ever beheld was that with which Marcian surrounded the palace, where I was then shut up with the rest of the court. "I was afterwards put at the head of a legion and ordered to march into Syria with Theodoric the Goth; that is, I mean my legion was so ordered; for, as to myself, I remained at court, with the name and pay of a general, without the labour or the danger. "As nothing could be more gay, _i.e._, debauched, than Zeno's court, so the ladies of gay disposition had great sway in it; particularly one, whose name was Fausta, who, though not extremely handsome, was by her wit and sprightliness very agreeable to the emperor. With her I lived in good correspondence, and we together disposed of all kinds of commissions in the army, not to those who had most merit, but who would purchase at the highest rate. My levee was now prodigiously thronged by officers who returned from the campaigns, who, though they might have been convinced by daily example how ineffectual a recommendation their services were, still continued indefatigable in attendance, and behaved to me with as much observance and respect as I should have been entitled to for making their fortunes, while I suffered them and their families to starve. "Several poets, likewise, addressed verses to me, in which they celebrated my achievements; and what, perhaps, may seem strange to us at present, I received all this incense with most greedy vanity, without once reflecting that, as I did not deserve these compliments, they should rather put me in mind of my defects. "My father was now dead, and I became so absolute in the emperor's grace that one unacquainted with courts would scarce believe the servility with which all kinds of persons who entered the walls of the palace behaved towards me. A bow, a smile, a nod from me, as I past through cringing crouds, were esteemed as signal favours; but a gracious word made any one happy; and, indeed, had this real benefit attending it, that it drew on the person on whom it was bestowed a very great degree of respect from all others; for these are of current value in courts, and, like notes in trading communities, are assignable from one to the other. The smile of a court favourite immediately raises the person who receives it, and gives a value to his smile when conferred on an inferior: thus the smile is transferred from one to the other, and the great man at last is the person to discount it. For instance, a very low fellow hath a desire for a place. To whom is he to apply? Not to the great man; for to him he hath no access. He therefore applies to A, who is the creature of B, who is the tool of C, who is the flatterer of D, who is the catamite of E, who is the pimp of F, who is the bully of G, who is the buffoon of I, who is the husband of K, who is the whore of L, who is the bastard of M, who is the instrument of the great man. Thus the smile, descending regularly from the great man to A, is discounted back again, and at last paid by the great man. "It is manifest that a court would subsist as difficultly without this kind of coin as a trading city without paper credit. Indeed, they differ in this, that their value is not quite so certain, and a favourite may protest his smile without the danger of bankruptcy. "In the midst of all this glory the emperor died, and Anastasius was preferred to the crown. As it was yet uncertain whether I should not continue in favour, I was received as usual at my entrance into the palace to pay my respects to the new emperor; but I was no sooner rumped by him than I received the same compliment from all the rest; the whole room, like a regiment of soldiers, turning their backs to me all at once: my smile now was become of equal value with the note of a broken banker, and every one was as cautious not to receive it. "I made as much haste as possible from the court, and shortly after from the city, retreating to the place of my nativity, where I spent the remainder of my days in a retired life in husbandry, the only amusement for which I was qualified, having neither learning nor virtue. "When I came to the gate Minos again seemed at first doubtful, but at length dismissed me; saying though I had been guilty of many heinous crimes, in as much as I had, though a general, never been concerned in spilling human blood, I might return again to earth. "I was now again born in Alexandria, and, by great accident, entring into the womb of my daughter-in-law, came forth my own grandson, inheriting that fortune which I had before amassed. "Extravagance was now as notoriously my vice as avarice had been formerly; and I spent in a very short life what had cost me the labour of a very long one to rake together. Perhaps you will think my present condition was more to be envied than my former: but upon my word it was very little so; for, by possessing everything almost before I desired it, I could hardly ever say I enjoyed my wish: I scarce ever knew the delight of satisfying a craving appetite. Besides, as I never once thought, my mind was useless to me, and I was an absolute stranger to all the pleasures arising from it. Nor, indeed, did my education qualify me for any delicacy in other enjoyments; so that in the midst of plenty I loathed everything. Taste for elegance I had none; and the greatest of corporeal blisses I felt no more from than the lowest animal. In a word, as while a miser I had plenty without daring to use it, so now I had it without appetite. "But if I was not very happy in the height of my enjoyment, so I afterwards became perfectly miserable; being soon overtaken by disease, and reduced to distress, till at length, with a broken constitution and broken heart, I ended my wretched days in a gaol: nor can I think the sentence of Minos too mild, who condemned me, after having taken a large dose of avarice, to wander three years on the banks of Cocytus, with the knowledge of having spent the fortune in the person of the grandson which I had raised in that of the grandfather. "The place of my birth, on my return to the world, was Constantinople, where my father was a carpenter. The first thing I remember was, the triumph of Belisarius, which was, indeed, a most noble shew; but nothing pleased me so much as the figure of Gelimer, king of the African Vandals, who, being led captive on this occasion, reflecting with disdain on the mutation of his own fortune, and on the ridiculous empty pomp of the conqueror, cried out, 'VANITY, VANITY, ALL IS MERE VANITY.' "I was bred up to my father's trade, and you may easily believe so low a sphere could produce no adventures worth your notice. However, I married a woman I liked, and who proved a very tolerable wife. My days were past in hard labour, but this procured me health, and I enjoyed a homely supper at night with my wife with more pleasure than I apprehend greater persons find at their luxurious meals. My life had scarce any variety in it, and at my death I advanced to Minos with great confidence of entering the gate: but I was unhappily obliged to discover some frauds I had been guilty of in the measure of my work when I worked by the foot, as well as my laziness when I was employed by the day. On which account, when I attempted to pass, the angry judge laid hold on me by the shoulders, and turned me back so violently, that, had I had a neck of flesh and bone, I believe he would have broke it." Chapter xiii. _Julian passes into a fop._ "My scene of action was Rome. I was born into a noble family, and heir to a considerable fortune. On which my parents, thinking I should not want any talents, resolved very kindly and wisely to throw none away upon me. The only instructors of my youth were therefore one Saltator, who taught me several motions for my legs; and one Ficus, whose business was to shew me the cleanest way (as he called it) of cutting off a man's head. When I was well accomplished in these sciences, I thought nothing more wanting, but what was to be furnished by the several mechanics in Rome, who dealt in dressing and adorning the pope. Being therefore well equipped with all which their art could produce, I became at the age of twenty a complete finished beau. And now during forty-five years I drest, I sang and danced, and danced and sang, I bowed and ogled, and ogled and bowed, till, in the sixty-sixth year of my age, I got cold by overheating myself with dancing, and died. "Minos told me, as I was unworthy of Elysium, so I was too insignificant to be damned, and therefore bad me walk back again." Chapter xiv. _Adventures in the person of a monk._ "Fortune now placed me in the character of a younger brother of a good house, and I was in my youth sent to school; but learning was now at so low an ebb, that my master himself could hardly construe a sentence of Latin; and as for Greek, he could not read it. With very little knowledge therefore, and with altogether as little virtue, I was set apart for the church, and at the proper age commenced monk. I lived many years retired in a cell, a life very agreeable to the gloominess of my temper, which was much inclined to despise the world; that is, in other words, to envy all men of superior fortune and qualifications, and in general to hate and detest the human species. Notwithstanding which, I could, on proper occasions, submit to flatter the vilest fellow in nature, which I did one Stephen, an eunuch, a favourite of the emperor Justinian II., one of the wickedest wretches whom perhaps the world ever saw. I not only wrote a panegyric on this man, but I commended him as a pattern to all others in my sermons; by which means I so greatly ingratiated myself with him, that he introduced me to the emperor's presence, where I prevailed so far by the same methods, that I was shortly taken from my cell, and preferred to a place at court. I was no sooner established in the favour of Justinian than I prompted him to all kind of cruelty. As I was of a sour morose temper, and hated nothing more than the symptoms of happiness appearing in any countenance, I represented all kind of diversion and amusement as the most horrid sins. I inveighed against chearfulness as levity, and encouraged nothing but gravity, or, to confess the truth to you, hypocrisy. The unhappy emperor followed my advice, and incensed the people by such repeated barbarities, that he was at last deposed by them and banished. "I now retired again to my cell (for historians mistake in saying I was put to death), where I remained safe from the danger of the irritated mob, whom I cursed in my own heart as much as they could curse me. "Justinian, after three years of his banishment, returned to Constantinople in disguise, and paid me a visit. I at first affected not to know him, and without the least compunction of gratitude for his former favours, intended not to receive him, till a thought immediately suggesting itself to me how I might convert him to my advantage, I pretended to recollect him; and, blaming the shortness of my memory and badness of my eyes, I sprung forward and embraced him with great affection. "My design was to betray him to Apsimar, who, I doubted not, would generously reward such a service. I therefore very earnestly requested him to spend the whole evening with me; to which he consented. I formed an excuse for leaving him a few minutes, and ran away to the palace to acquaint Apsimar with the guest whom I had then in my cell. He presently ordered a guard to go with me and seize him; but, whether the length of my stay gave him any suspicion, or whether he changed his purpose after my departure, I know not; for at my return we found he had given us the slip; nor could we with the most diligent search discover him. "Apsimar, being disappointed of his prey, now raged at me; at first denouncing the most dreadful vengeance if I did not produce the deposed monarch. However, by soothing his passion when at the highest, and afterwards by canting and flattery, I made a shift to escape his fury. "When Justinian was restored I very confidently went to wish him joy of his restoration: but it seems he had unfortunately heard of my treachery, so that he at first received me coldly, and afterwards upbraided me openly with what I had done. I persevered stoutly in denying it, as I knew no evidence could be produced against me; till, finding him irreconcilable, I betook myself to reviling him in my sermons, and on every other occasion, as an enemy to the church and good men, and as an infidel, a heretic, an atheist, a heathen, and an Arian. This I did immediately on his return, and before he gave those flagrant proofs of his inhumanity which afterwards sufficiently verified all I had said. "Luckily I died on the same day when a great number of those forces which Justinian had sent against the Thracian Bosphorus, and who had executed such unheard-of cruelties there, perished. As every one of these was cast into the bottomless pit, Minos was so tired with condemnation, that he proclaimed that all present who had not been concerned in that bloody expedition might, if they pleased, return to the other world. I took him at his word, and, presently turning about, began my journey." Chapter xv. _Julian passes into the character of a fidler._ "Rome was now the seat of my nativity. My mother was an African, a woman of no great beauty, but a favourite, I suppose from her piety, of pope Gregory II. Who was my father I know not, but I believe no very considerable man; for after the death of that pope, who was, out of his religion, a very good friend of my mother, we fell into great distress, and were at length reduced to walk the streets of Rome; nor had either of us any other support but a fiddle, on which I played with pretty tolerable skill; for, as my genius turned naturally to music, so I had been in my youth very early instructed at the expense of the good pope. This afforded us but a very poor livelihood: for, though I had often a numerous croud of hearers, few ever thought themselves obliged to contribute the smallest pittance to the poor starving wretch who had given them pleasure. Nay, some of the graver sort, after an hour's attention to my music, have gone away shaking their heads, and crying it was a shame such vagabonds were suffered to stay in the city. "To say the truth, I am confident the fiddle would not have kept us alive had we entirely depended on the generosity of my hearers. My mother therefore was forced to use her own industry; and while I was soothing the ears of the croud, she applied to their pockets, and that generally with such good success that we now began to enjoy a very comfortable subsistence; and indeed, had we had the least prudence or forecast, might have soon acquired enough to enable us to quit this dangerous and dishonourable way of life: but I know not what is the reason that money got with labour and safety is constantly preserved, while the produce of danger and ease is commonly spent as easily, and often as wickedly, as acquired. Thus we proportioned our expenses rather by what we had than what we wanted or even desired; and on obtaining a considerable booty we have even forced nature into the most profligate extravagance, and have been wicked without inclination. "We carried on this method of thievery for a long time without detection: but, as Fortune generally leaves persons of extraordinary ingenuity in the lurch at last, so did she us; for my poor mother was taken in the fact, and, together with myself, as her accomplice, hurried before a magistrate. "Luckily for us, the person who was to be our judge was the greatest lover of music in the whole city, and had often sent for me to play to him, for which, as he had given me very small rewards, perhaps his gratitude now moved him: but, whatever was his motive, he browbeat the informers against us, and treated their evidence with so little favour, that their mouths were soon stopped, and we dismissed with honour; acquitted, I should rather have said, for we were not suffered to depart till I had given the judge several tunes on the fiddle. "We escaped the better on this occasion because the person robbed happened to be a poet; which gave the judge, who was a facetious person, many opportunities of jesting. He said poets and musicians should agree together, seeing they had married sisters; which he afterwards explained to be the sister arts. And when the piece of gold was produced he burst into a loud laugh, and said it must be the golden age, when poets had gold in their pockets, and in that age there could be no robbers. He made many more jests of the same kind, but a small taste will suffice. "It is a common saying that men should take warning by any signal delivery; but I cannot approve the justice of it; for to me it seems that the acquittal of a guilty person should rather inspire him with confidence, and it had this effect on us: for we now laughed at the law, and despised its punishments, which we found were to be escaped even against positive evidence. We imagined the late example was rather a warning to the accuser than the criminal, and accordingly proceeded in the most impudent and flagitious manner. "Among other robberies, one night, being admitted by the servants into the house of an opulent priest, my mother took an opportunity, whilst the servants were dancing to my tunes, to convey away a silver vessel; this she did without the least sacrilegious intention; but it seems the cup, which was a pretty large one, was dedicated to holy uses, and only borrowed by the priest on an entertainment which he made for some of his brethren. We were immediately pursued upon this robbery (the cup being taken in our possession), and carried before the same magistrate, who had before behaved to us with so much gentleness: but his countenance was now changed, for the moment the priest appeared against us, his severity was as remarkable as his candour had been before, and we were both ordered to be stript and whipt through the streets. "This sentence was executed with great severity, the priest himself attending and encouraging the executioner, which he said he did for the good of our souls; but, though our backs were both flead, neither my mother's torments nor my own afflicted me so much as the indignity offered to my poor fiddle, which was carried in triumph before me, and treated with a contempt by the multitude, intimating a great scorn for the science I had the honour to profess; which, as it is one of the noblest inventions of men, and as I had been always in the highest degree proud of my excellence in it, I suffered so much from the ill-treatment my fiddle received, that I would have given all my remainder of skin to have preserved it from this affront. "My mother survived the whipping a very short time; and I was now reduced to great distress and misery, till a young Roman of considerable rank took a fancy to me, received me into his family, and conversed with me in the utmost familiarity. He had a violent attachment to music, and would learn to play on the fiddle; but, through want of genius for the science, he never made any considerable progress. However, I flattered his performance, and he grew extravagantly fond of me for so doing. Had I continued this behaviour I might possibly have reaped the greatest advantages from his kindness; but I had raised his own opinion of his musical abilities so high, that he now began to prefer his skill to mine, a presumption I could not bear. One day as we were playing in concert he was horribly out; nor was it possible, as he destroyed the harmony, to avoid telling him of it. Instead of receiving my correction, he answered it was my blunder and not his, and that I had mistaken the key. Such an affront from my own scholar was beyond human patience; I flew into a violent passion, I flung down my instrument in a rage, and swore I was not to be taught music at my age. He answered, with as much warmth, nor was he to be instructed by a stroling fiddler. The dispute ended in a challenge to play a prize before judges. This wager was determined in my favour; but the purchase was a dear one, for I lost my friend by it, who now, twitting me with all his kindness, with my former ignominious punishment, and the destitute condition from which I had been by his bounty relieved, discarded me for ever. "While I lived with this gentleman I became known, among others, to Sabina, a lady of distinction, and who valued herself much on her taste for music. She no sooner heard of my being discarded than she took me into her house, where I was extremely well cloathed and fed. Notwithstanding which, my situation was far from agreeable; for I was obliged to submit to her constant reprehensions before company, which gave me the greater uneasiness because they were always wrong; nor am I certain that she did not by these provocations contribute to my death: for, as experience had taught me to give up my resentment to my bread, so my passions, for want of outward vent, preyed inwardly on my vitals, and perhaps occasioned the distemper of which I sickened. "The lady, who, amidst all the faults she found, was very fond of me, nay, probably was the fonder of me the more faults she found, immediately called in the aid of three celebrated physicians. The doctors (being well fee'd) made me seven visits in three days, and two of them were at the door to visit me the eighth time, when, being acquainted that I was just dead, they shook their heads and departed. "When I came to Minos he asked me with a smile whether I had brought my fiddle with me; and, receiving an answer in the negative, he bid me get about my business, saying it was well for me that the devil was no lover of music." Chapter xvi. _The history of the wise man._ "I now returned to Rome, but in a very different character. Fortune had now allotted me a serious part to act. I had even in my infancy a grave disposition, nor was I ever seen to smile, which infused an opinion into all about me that I was a child of great solidity; some foreseeing that I should be a judge, and others a bishop. At two years old my father presented me with a rattle, which I broke to pieces with great indignation. This the good parent, being extremely wise, regarded as an eminent symptom of my wisdom, and cried out in a kind of extasy, 'Well said, boy! I warrant thou makest a great man.' "At school I could never be persuaded to play with my mates; not that I spent my hours in learning, to which I was not in the least addicted, nor indeed had I any talents for it. However, the solemnity of my carriage won so much on my master, who was a most sagacious person, that I was his chief favourite, and my example on all occasions was recommended to the other boys, which filled them with envy, and me with pleasure; but, though they envied me, they all paid me that involuntary respect which it is the curse attending this passion to bear towards its object. "I had now obtained universally the character of a very wise young man, which I did not altogether purchase without pains; for the restraint I laid on myself in abstaining from the several diversions adapted to my years cost me many a yearning; but the pride which I inwardly enjoyed in the fancied dignity of my character made me some amends. "Thus I past on, without anything very memorable happening to me, till I arrived at the age of twenty-three, when unfortunately I fell acquainted with a young Neapolitan lady whose name was Ariadne. Her beauty was so exquisite that her first sight made a violent impression on me; this was again improved by her behaviour, which was most genteel, easy, and affable: lastly, her conversation compleated the conquest. In this she discovered a strong and lively understanding, with the sweetest and most benign temper. This lovely creature was about eighteen when I first unhappily beheld her at Rome, on a visit to a relation with whom I had great intimacy. As our interviews at first were extremely frequent, my passions were captivated before I apprehended the least danger; and the sooner probably, as the young lady herself, to whom I consulted every method of recommendation, was not displeased with my being her admirer. "Ariadne, having spent three months at Rome, now returned to Naples, bearing my heart with her: on the other hand, I had all the assurances consistent with the constraint under which the most perfect modesty lays a young woman, that her own heart was not entirely unaffected. I soon found her absence gave me an uneasiness not easy to be borne or to remove. I now first applied to diversions (of the graver sort, particularly to music), but in vain; they rather raised my desires and heightened my anguish. My passion at length grew so violent, that I began to think of satisfying it. As the first step to this, I cautiously enquired into the circumstances of Ariadne's parents, with which I was hitherto unacquainted: though, indeed, I did not apprehend they were extremely great, notwithstanding the handsome appearance of their daughter at Rome. Upon examination, her fortune exceeded my expectation, but was not sufficient to justify my marriage with her, in the opinion of the wise and prudent. I had now a violent struggle between wisdom and happiness, in which, after several grievous pangs, wisdom got the better. I could by no means prevail with myself to sacrifice that character of profound wisdom, which I had with such uniform conduct obtained, and with such caution hitherto preserved. I therefore resolved to conquer my affection, whatever it cost me; and indeed it did not cost me a little. "While I was engaged in this conflict (for it lasted a long time) Ariadne returned to Rome: her presence was a terrible enemy to my wisdom, which even in her absence had with great difficulty stood its ground. It seems (as she hath since told me in Elysium with much merriment) I had made the same impressions on her which she had made on me. Indeed, I believe my wisdom would have been totally subdued by this surprize, had it not cunningly suggested to me a method of satisfying my passion without doing any injury to my reputation. This was by engaging her privately as a mistress, which was at that time reputable enough at Rome, provided the affair was managed with an air of slyness and gravity, though the secret was known to the whole city. "I immediately set about this project, and employed every art and engine to effect it. I had particularly bribed her priest, and an old female acquaintance and distant relation of her's, into my interest: but all was in vain; her virtue opposed the passion in her breast as strongly as wisdom had opposed it in mine. She received my proposals with the utmost disdain, and presently refused to see or hear from me any more. "She returned again to Naples, and left me in a worse condition than before. My days I now passed with the most irksome uneasiness, and my nights were restless and sleepless. The story of our amour was now pretty public, and the ladies talked of our match as certain; but my acquaintance denied their assent, saying, 'No, no, he is too wise to marry so imprudently.' This their opinion gave me, I own, very great pleasure; but, to say the truth, scarce compensated the pangs I suffered to preserve it. "One day, while I was balancing with myself, and had almost resolved to enjoy my happiness at the price of my character, a friend brought me word that Ariadne was married. This news struck me to the soul; and though I had resolution enough to maintain my gravity before him (for which I suffered not a little the more), the moment I was alone I threw myself into the most violent fit of despair, and would willingly have parted with wisdom, fortune, and everything else, to have retrieved her; but that was impossible, and I had now nothing but time to hope a cure from. This was very tedious in performing it, and the longer as Ariadne had married a Roman cavalier, was now become my near neighbour, and I had the mortification of seeing her make the best of wives, and of having the happiness which I had lost, every day before my eyes. "If I suffered so much on account of my wisdom in having refused Ariadne, I was not much more obliged to it for procuring me a rich widow, who was recommended to me by an old friend as a very prudent match; and, indeed, so it was, her fortune being superior to mine in the same proportion as that of Ariadne had been inferior. I therefore embraced this proposal, and my character of wisdom soon pleaded so effectually for me with the widow, who was herself a woman of great gravity and discretion, that I soon succeeded; and as soon as decency would permit (of which this lady was the strictest observer) we were married, being the second day of the second week of the second year after her husband's death; for she said she thought some period of time above the year had a great air of decorum. "But, prudent as this lady was, she made me miserable. Her person was far from being lovely, but her temper was intolerable. During fifteen years' habitation, I never passed a single day without heartily cursing her, and the hour in which we came together. The only comfort I received, in the midst of the highest torments, was from continually hearing the prudence of my match commended by all my acquaintance. "Thus you see, in the affairs of love, I bought the reputation of wisdom pretty dear. In other matters I had it somewhat cheaper; not that hypocrisy, which was the price I gave for it, gives one no pain. I have refused myself a thousand little amusements with a feigned contempt, while I have really had an inclination to them. I have often almost choaked myself to restrain from laughing at a jest, and (which was perhaps to myself the least hurtful of all my hypocrisy) have heartily enjoyed a book in my closet which I have spoken with detestation of in public. To sum up my history in short, as I had few adventures worth remembering, my whole life was one constant lie; and happy would it have been for me if I could as thoroughly have imposed on myself as I did on others: for reflection, at every turn, would often remind me I was not so wise as people thought me; and this considerably embittered the pleasure I received from the public commendation of my wisdom. This self-admonition, like a _memento mori_ or _mortalis es_, must be, in my opinion, a very dangerous enemy to flattery: indeed, a weight sufficient to counterbalance all the false praise of the world. But whether it be that the generality of wise men do not reflect at all, or whether they have, from a constant imposition on others, contracted such a habit of deceit as to deceive themselves, I will not determine: it is, I believe, most certain that very few wise men know themselves what fools they are, more than the world doth. Good gods! could one but see what passes in the closet of wisdom! how ridiculous a sight must it be to behold the wise man, who despises gratifying his palate, devouring custard; the sober wise man with his dram-bottle; or, the anti-carnalist (if I may be allowed the expression) chuckling over a b--dy book or picture, and perhaps caressing his housemaid! "But to conclude a character in which I apprehend I made as absurd a figure as in any in which I trod the stage of earth, my wisdom at last put an end to itself, that is, occasioned my dissolution. "A relation of mine in the eastern part of the empire disinherited his son, and left me his heir. This happened in the depth of winter, when I was in my grand climacteric, and had just recovered of a dangerous disease. As I had all the reason imaginable to apprehend the family of the deceased would conspire against me, and embezzle as much as they could, I advised with a grave and wise friend what was proper to be done; whether I should go myself, or employ a notary on this occasion, and defer my journey to the spring. To say the truth, I was most inclined to the latter; the rather as my circumstances were extremely flourishing, as I was advanced in years, and had not one person in the world to whom I should with pleasure bequeath any fortune at my death. "My friend told me he thought my question admitted of no manner of doubt or debate; that common prudence absolutely required my immediate departure; adding, that if the same good luck had happened to him he would have been already on his journey; 'for,' continued he, 'a man who knows the world so well as you, would be inexcusable to give persons such an opportunity of cheating you, who, you must be assured, will be too well inclined; and as for employing a notary, remember that excellent maxim, _Ne facias per alium, quod fieri potest per te_. I own the badness of the season and your very late recovery are unlucky circumstances; but a wise man must get over difficulties when necessity obliges him to encounter them.' "I was immediately determined by this opinion. The duty of a wise man made an irresistible impression, and I took the necessity for granted without examination. I accordingly set forward the next morning; very tempestuous weather soon overtook me; I had not travelled three days before I relapsed into my fever, and died. "I was now as cruelly disappointed by Minos as I had formerly been happily so. I advanced with the utmost confidence to the gate, and really imagined I should have been admitted by the wisdom of my countenance, even without any questions asked: but this was not my case; and, to my great surprize, Minos, with a menacing voice, called out to me, 'You Mr there, with the grave countenance, whither so fast, pray? Will you please, before you move any farther forwards, to give me a short account of your transactions below?' I then began, and recounted to him my whole history, still expecting at the end of every period that the gate would be ordered to fly open; but I was obliged to go quite through with it, and then Minos after some little consideration spoke to me as follows:-- "'You, Mr Wiseman, stand forth if you please. Believe me, sir, a trip back again to earth will be one of the wisest steps you ever took, and really more to the honour of your wisdom than any you have hitherto taken. On the other side, nothing could be simpler than to endeavour at Elysium; for who but a fool would carry a commodity, which is of such infinite value in one place, into another where it is of none? But, without attempting to offend your gravity with a jest, you must return to the place from whence you came, for Elysium was never designed for those who are too wise to be happy.' "This sentence confounded me greatly, especially as it seemed to threaten me with carrying my wisdom back again to earth. I told the judge, though he would not admit me at the gate, I hoped I had committed no crime while alive which merited my being wise any longer. He answered me, I must take my chance as to that matter, and immediately we turned our backs to each other." Chapter xvii. _Julian enters into the person of a king._ "I was now born at Oviedo in Spain. My father's name was Veremond, and I was adopted by my uncle king Alphonso the chaste. I don't recollect in all the pilgrimages I have made on earth that I ever past a more miserable infancy than now; being under the utmost confinement and restraint, and surrounded with physicians who were ever dosing me, and tutors who were continually plaguing me with their instructions; even those hours of leisure which my inclination would have spent in play were allotted to tedious pomp and ceremony, which, at an age wherein I had no ambition to enjoy the servility of courtiers, enslaved me more than it could the meanest of them. However, as I advanced towards manhood, my condition made me some amends; for the most beautiful women of their own accord threw out lures for me, and I had the happiness, which no man in an inferior degree can arrive at, of enjoying the most delicious creatures, without the previous and tiresome ceremonies of courtship, unless with the most simple, young, and unexperienced. As for the court ladies, they regarded me rather as men do the most lovely of the other sex; and, though they outwardly retained some appearance of modesty, they in reality rather considered themselves as receiving than conferring favours. "Another happiness I enjoyed was in conferring favours of another sort; for, as I was extremely good-natured and generous, so I had daily opportunities of satisfying those passions. Besides my own princely allowance, which was very bountiful, and with which I did many liberal and good actions, I recommended numberless persons of merit in distress to the king's notice, most of whom were provided for. Indeed, had I sufficiently known my blest situation at this time, I should have grieved at nothing more than the death of Alphonso, by which the burden of government devolved upon me; but, so blindly fond is ambition, and such charms doth it fancy in the power and pomp and splendour of a crown, that, though I vehemently loved that king, and had the greatest obligations to him, the thoughts of succeeding him obliterated my regret at his loss, and the wish for my approaching coronation dried my eyes at his funeral. "But my fondness for the name of king did not make me forgetful of those over whom I was to reign. I considered them in the light in which a tender father regards his children, as persons whose wellbeing God had intrusted to my care; and again, in that in which a prudent lord respects his tenants, as those on whose wealth and grandeur he is to build his own. Both these considerations inspired me with the greatest care for their welfare, and their good was my first and ultimate concern. "The usurper Mauregas had impiously obliged himself and his successors to pay to the Moors every year an infamous tribute of an hundred young virgins: from this cruel and scandalous imposition I resolved to relieve my country. Accordingly, when their emperor Abderames the second had the audaciousness to make this demand of me, instead of complying with it I ordered his ambassadors to be driven away with all imaginable ignominy, and would have condemned them to death, could I have done it without a manifest violation of the law of nations. "I now raised an immense army; at the levying of which I made a speech from my throne, acquainting my subjects with the necessity and the reasons of the war in which I was going to engage: which I convinced them I had undertaken for their ease and safety, and not for satisfying any wanton ambition, or revenging any private pique of my own. They all declared unanimously that they would venture their lives and everything dear to them in my defence, and in the support of the honour of my crown. Accordingly, my levies were instantly complete, sufficient numbers being only left to till the land; churchmen, even bishops themselves, enlisting themselves under my banners. "The armies met at Alvelda, where we were discomfited with immense loss, and nothing but the lucky intervention of the night could have saved our whole army. "I retreated to the summit of a hill, where I abandoned myself to the highest agonies of grief, not so much for the danger in which I then saw my crown, as for the loss of those miserable wretches who had exposed their lives at my command. I could not then avoid this reflection--that, if the deaths of these people in a war undertaken absolutely for their protection could give me such concern, what horror must I have felt if, like princes greedy of dominion, I had sacrificed such numbers to my own pride, vanity, and ridiculous lust of power. "After having vented my sorrows for some time in this manner, I began to consider by what means I might possibly endeavour to retrieve this misfortune; when, reflecting on the great number of priests I had in my army, and on the prodigious force of superstition, a thought luckily suggested itself to me, to counterfeit that St James had appeared to me in a vision, and had promised me the victory. While I was ruminating on this the bishop of Najara came opportunely to me. As I did not intend to communicate the secret to him, I took another method, and, instead of answering anything the bishop said to me, I pretended to talk to St James, as if he had been really present; till at length, after having spoke those things which I thought sufficient, and thanked the saint aloud for his promise of the victory, I turned about to the bishop, and, embracing him with a pleased countenance, protested I did not know he was present; and then, informing him of this supposed vision, I asked him if he had not himself seen the saint? He answered me he had; and afterwards proceeded to assure me that this appearance of St James was entirely owing to his prayers; for that he was his tutelar saint. He added he had a vision of him a few hours before, when he promised him a victory over the infidels, and acquainted him at the same time of the vacancy of the see of Toledo. Now, this news being really true, though it had happened so lately that I had not heard of it (nor, indeed, was it well possible I should, considering the great distance of the way), when I was afterwards acquainted with it, a little staggered me, though far from being superstitious; till being informed that the bishop had lost three horses on a late expedition, I was satisfied. "The next morning, the bishop, at my desire, mounted the rostrum, and trumpeted forth this vision so effectually, which he said he had that evening twice seen with his own eyes, that a spirit began to be infused through the whole army which rendered them superior to almost any force: the bishop insisted that the least doubt of success was giving the lie to the saint, and a damnable sin, and he took upon him in his name to promise them victory. "The army being drawn out, I soon experienced the effect of enthusiasm, for, having contrived another stratagem[I] to strengthen what the bishop had said, the soldiers fought more like furies than men. My stratagem was this: I had about me a dexterous fellow, who had been formerly a pimp in my amours. Him I drest up in a strange antick dress, with a pair of white colours in his right hand, a red cross in his left, and having disguised him so that no one could know him, I placed him on a white horse, and ordered him to ride to the head of the army, and cry out, 'Follow St James!' These words were reiterated by all the troops, who attacked the enemy with such intrepidity, that, notwithstanding our inferiority of numbers, we soon obtained a complete victory. "The bishop was come up by the time that the enemy was routed, and, acquainting us that he had met St James by the way, and that he had informed him of what had past, he added that he had express orders from the saint to receive a considerable sum for his use, and that a certain tax on corn and wine should be settled on his church for ever; and lastly, that a horseman's pay should be allowed for the future to the saint himself, of which he and his successors were appointed receivers. The army received these demands with such acclamations that I was obliged to comply with them, as I could by no means discover the imposition, nor do I believe I should have gained any credit if I had. "I had now done with the saint, but the bishop had not; for about a week afterwards lights were seen in a wood near where the battle was fought; and in a short time afterwards they discovered his tomb at the same place. Upon this the bishop made me a visit, and forced me to go thither, to build a church to him, and largely endow it. In a word, the good man so plagued me with miracle after miracle, that I was forced to make interest with the pope to convey him to Toledo, to get rid of him. "But to proceed to other matters.--There was an inferior officer, who had behaved very bravely in the battle against the Moors, and had received several wounds, who solicited me for preferment; which I was about to confer on him, when one of my ministers came to me in a fright, and told me that he had promised the post I designed for this man to the son of count Alderedo; and that the count, who was a powerful person, would be greatly disobliged at the refusal, as he had sent for his son from school to take possession of it. I was obliged to agree with my minister's reasons, and at the same time recommended the wounded soldier to be preferred by him, which he faithfully promised he would; but I met the poor wretch since in Elysium, who informed me he was afterwards starved to death. "None who hath not been himself a prince, nor any prince till his death, can conceive the impositions daily put on them by their favourites and ministers; so that princes are often blamed for the faults of others. The count of Saldagne had been long confined in prison, when his son D. Bernard del Carpio, who had performed the greatest actions against the Moors, entreated me, as a reward for his service, to grant him his father's liberty. The old man's punishment had been so tedious, and the services of the young one so singularly eminent, that I was very inclinable to grant the request; but my ministers strongly opposed it; they told me my glory demanded revenge for the dishonour offered to my family; that so positive a demand carried with it rather the air of menace than entreaty; that the vain detail of his services, and the recompense due to them, was an injurious reproach; that to grant what had been so haughtily demanded would argue in the monarch both weakness and timidity; in a word, that to remit the punishment inflicted by my predecessors would be to condemn their judgment. Lastly, one told me in a whisper, 'His whole family are enemies to your house.' By these means the ministers prevailed. The young lord took the refusal so ill, that he retired from court, and abandoned himself to despair, whilst the old one languished in prison. By which means, as I have since discovered, I lost the use of two of my best subjects. "To confess the truth, I had, by means of my ministers, conceived a very unjust opinion of my whole people, whom I fancied to be daily conspiring against me, and to entertain the most disloyal thoughts, when, in reality (as I have known since my death), they held me in universal respect and esteem. This is a trick, I believe, too often played with sovereigns, who, by such means, are prevented from that open intercourse with their subjects which, as it would greatly endear the person of the prince to the people, so might it often prove dangerous to a minister who was consulting his own interest only at the expense of both. I believe I have now recounted to you the most material passages of my life; for I assure you there are some incidents in the lives of kings not extremely worth relating. Everything which passes in their minds and families is not attended with the splendour which surrounds their throne--indeed, there are some hours wherein the naked king and the naked cobbler can scarce be distinguished from each other. "Had it not been, however, for my ingratitude to Bernard del Carpio, I believe this would have been my last pilgrimage on earth; for, as to the story of St James, I thought Minos would have burst his sides at it; but he was so displeased with me on the other account, that, with a frown, he cried out, 'Get thee back again, king.' Nor would he suffer me to say another word." Chapter xviii. _Julian passes into a fool._ "The next visit I made to the world was performed in France, where I was born in the court of Lewis III., and had afterwards the honour to be preferred to be fool to the prince, who was surnamed Charles the Simple. But, in reality, I know not whether I might so properly be said to have acted the fool in his court as to have made fools of all others in it. Certain it is, I was very far from being what is generally understood by that word, being a most cunning, designing, arch knave. I knew very well the folly of my master, and of many others, and how to make my advantage of this knowledge. "I was as dear to Charles the Simple as the player Paris was to Domitian, and, like him, bestowed all manner of offices and honours on whom I pleased. This drew me a great number of followers among the courtiers, who really mistook me for a fool, and yet flattered my understanding. There was particularly in the court a fellow who had neither honour, honesty, sense, wit, courage, beauty, nor indeed any one good quality, either of mind or body, to recommend him; but was at the same time, perhaps, as cunning a monster as ever lived. This gentleman took it into his head to list under my banner, and pursued me so very assiduously with flattery, constantly reminding me of my good sense, that I grew immoderately fond of him; for though flattery is not most judiciously applied to qualities which the persons flattered possess, yet as, notwithstanding my being well assured of my own parts, I past in the whole court for a fool, this flattery was a very sweet morsel to me. I therefore got this fellow preferred to a bishopric, but I lost my flatterer by it; for he never afterwards said a civil thing to me. "I never baulked my imagination for the grossness of the reflection on the character of the greatest noble--nay, even the king himself; of which I will give you a very bold instance. One day his simple majesty told me he believed I had so much power that his people looked on me as the king, and himself as my fool. At this I pretended to be angry, as with an affront. 'Why, how now?' says the king; 'are you ashamed of being a king?' 'No, sir,' says I, 'but I am devilishly ashamed of my fool.' "Herbert, earl of Vermandois, had by my means been restored to the favour of the Simple (for so I used always to call Charles). He afterwards prevailed with the king to take the city of Arras from earl Baldwin, by which means, Herbert, in exchange for this city, had Peronne restored to him by count Altmar. Baldwin came to court in order to procure the restoration of his city; but, either through pride or ignorance, neglected to apply to me. As I met him at court during his solicitation, I told him he did not apply the right way; he answered roughly he should not ask a fool's advice. I replied I did not wonder at his prejudice, since he had miscarried already by following a fool's advice; but I told him there were fools who had more interest than that he had brought with him to court. He answered me surlily he had no fool with him, for that he travelled alone. 'Ay, my lord,' says I, 'I often travel alone, and yet they will have it I always carry a fool with me.' This raised a laugh among the bystanders, on which he gave me a blow. I immediately complained of this usage to the Simple, who dismissed the earl from court with very hard words, instead of granting him the favour he solicited. "I give you these rather as a specimen of my interest and impudence than of my wit--indeed, my jests were commonly more admired than they ought to be; for perhaps I was not in reality much more a wit than a fool. But, with the latitude of unbounded scurrility, it is easy enough to attain the character of wit, especially in a court, where, as all persons hate and envy one another heartily, and are at the same time obliged by the constrained behaviour of civility to profess the greatest liking, so it is, and must be, wonderfully pleasant to them to see the follies of their acquaintance exposed by a third person. Besides, the opinion of the court is as uniform as the fashion, and is always guided by the will of the prince or of the favourite. I doubt not that Caligula's horse was universally held in his court to be a good and able consul. In the same manner was I universally acknowledged to be the wittiest fool in the world. Every word I said raised laughter, and was held to be a jest, especially by the ladies, who sometimes laughed before I had discovered my sentiment, and often repeated that as a jest which I did not even intend as one. "I was as severe on the ladies as on the men, and with the same impunity; but this at last cost me dear: for once having joked on the beauty of a lady whose name was Adelaide, a favourite of the Simple's, she pretended to smile and be pleased at my wit with the rest of the company; but in reality she highly resented it, and endeavoured to undermine me with the king. In which she so greatly succeeded (for what cannot a favourite woman do with one who deserves the surname of Simple?) that the king grew every day more reserved to me, and when I attempted any freedom gave me such marks of his displeasure, that the courtiers who have all hawks' eyes at a slight from the sovereign, soon discerned it: and indeed, had I been blind enough not to have discovered that I had lost ground in the Simple's favour by his own change in his carriage towards me, I must have found it, nay even felt it, in the behaviour of the courtiers: for, as my company was two days before solicited with the utmost eagerness, it was now rejected with as much scorn. I was now the jest of the ushers and pages; and an officer of the guards, on whom I was a little jocose, gave me a box on the ear, bidding me make free with my equals. This very fellow had been my butt for many years, without daring to lift his hand against me. "But though I visibly perceived the alteration in the Simple, I was utterly unable to make any guess at the occasion. I had not the least suspicion of Adelaide; for, besides her being a very good-humoured woman, I had often made severe jests on her reputation, which I had all the reason imaginable to believe had given her no offence. But I soon perceived that a woman will bear the most bitter censures on her morals easier than the smallest reflection on her beauty; for she now declared publicly, that I ought to be dismissed from court, as the stupidest of fools, and one in whom there was no diversion; and that she wondered how any person could have so little taste as to imagine I had any wit. This speech was echoed through the drawing-room, and agreed to by all present. Every one now put on an unusual gravity on their countenance whenever I spoke; and it was as much out of my power to raise a laugh as formerly it had been for me to open my mouth without one. "While my affairs were in this posture I went one day into the circle without my fool's dress. The Simple, who would still speak to me, cried out, 'So, fool, what's the matter now?' 'Sir,' answered I, 'fools are like to be so common a commodity at court, that I am weary of my coat.' 'How dost thou mean?' answered the Simple; 'what can make them commoner now than usual?'--'O, sir,' said I, 'there are ladies here make your majesty a fool every day of their lives.' The Simple took no notice of my jest, and several present said my bones ought to be broke for my impudence; but it pleased the queen, who, knowing Adelaide, whom she hated, to be the cause of my disgrace, obtained me of the king, and took me into her service; so that I was henceforth called the queen's fool, and in her court received the same honour, and had as much wit, as I had formerly had in the king's. But as the queen had really no power unless over her own domestics, I was not treated in general with that complacence, nor did I receive those bribes and presents, which had once fallen to my share. "Nor did this confined respect continue long: for the queen, who had in fact no taste for humour, soon grew sick of my foolery, and, forgetting the cause for which she had taken me, neglected me so much, that her court grew intolerable to my temper, and I broke my heart and died. "Minos laughed heartily at several things in my story, and then, telling me no one played the fool in Elysium, bid me go back again." Chapter xix. _Julian appears in the character of a beggar._ "I now returned to Rome, and was born into a very poor and numerous family, which, to be honest with you, procured its livelyhood by begging. This, if you was never yourself of the calling, you do not know, I suppose, to be as regular a trade as any other; to have its several rules and secrets, or mysteries, which to learn require perhaps as tedious an apprenticeship as those of any craft whatever. "The first thing we are taught is the countenance miserable. This indeed nature makes much easier to some than others; but there are none who cannot accomplish it, if they begin early enough in youth, and before the muscles are grown too stubborn. "The second thing is the voice lamentable. In this qualification too, nature must have her share in producing the most consummate excellence: however, art will here, as in every other instance, go a great way with industry and application, even without the assistance of genius, especially if the student begins young. "There are many other instructions, but these are the most considerable. The women are taught one practice more than the men, for they are instructed in the art of crying, that is, to have their tears ready on all occasions: but this is attained very easily by most. Some indeed arrive at the utmost perfection in this art with incredible facility. "No profession requires a deeper insight into human nature than the beggar's. Their knowledge of the passions of men is so extensive, that I have often thought it would be of no little service to a politician to have his education among them. Nay, there is a much greater analogy between these two characters than is imagined; for both concur in their first and grand principle, it being equally their business to delude and impose on mankind. It must be confessed that they differ widely in the degree of advantage which they make by their deceit; for, whereas the beggar is contented with a little, the politician leaves but a little behind. "A very great English philosopher hath remarked our policy, in taking care never to address any one with a title inferior to what he really claims. My father was of the same opinion; for I remember when I was a boy, the pope happening to pass by, I tended him with 'Pray, sir;' 'For God's sake, sir;' 'For the Lord's sake, sir;'--To which he answered gravely, 'Sirrah, sirrah, you ought to be whipt for taking the Lord's name in vain;' and in vain it was indeed, for he gave me nothing. My father, overhearing this, took his advice, and whipt me very severely. While I was under correction I promised often never to take the Lord's name in vain any more. My father then said, 'Child, I do not whip you for taking his name in vain; I whip you for not calling the pope his holiness.' "If all men were so wise and good to follow the clergy's example, the nuisance of beggars would soon be removed. I do not remember to have been above twice relieved by them during my whole state of beggary. Once was by a very well-looking man, who gave me a small piece of silver, and declared he had given me more than he had left himself; the other was by a spruce young fellow, who had that very day first put on his robes, whom I attended with 'Pray, reverend sir, good reverend sir, consider your cloth.' He answered, 'I do, child, consider my office, and I hope all our cloth do the same.' He then threw down some money, and strutted off with great dignity. "With the women I had one general formulary: 'Sweet pretty lady,' 'God bless your ladyship,' 'God bless your handsome face.' This generally succeeded; but I observed the uglier the woman was, the surer I was of success. "It was a constant maxim among us, that the greater retinue any one travelled with the less expectation we might promise ourselves from them; but whenever we saw a vehicle with a single or no servant we imagined our booty sure, and were seldom deceived. "We observed great difference introduced by time and circumstance in the same person; for instance, a losing gamester is sometimes generous, but from a winner you will as easily obtain his soul as a single groat. A lawyer travelling from his country seat to his clients at Rome, and a physician going to visit a patient, were always worth asking; but the same on their return were (according to our cant phrase) untouchable. "The most general, and indeed the truest, maxim among us was, that those who possessed the least were always the readiest to give. The chief art of a beggar-man is, therefore, to discern the rich from the poor, which, though it be only distinguishing substance from shadow, is by no means attainable without a pretty good capacity and a vast degree of attention; for these two are eternally industrious in endeavouring to counterfeit each other. In this deceit the poor man is more heartily in earnest to deceive you than the rich, who, amidst all the emblems of poverty which he puts on, still permits some mark of his wealth to strike the eye. Thus, while his apparel is not worth a groat, his finger wears a ring of value, or his pocket a gold watch. In a word, he seems rather to affect poverty to insult than impose on you. Now the poor man, on the contrary, is very sincere in his desire of passing for rich; but the eagerness of this desire hurries him to over-act his part, and he betrays himself as one who is drunk by his overacted sobriety. Thus, instead of being attended by one servant well mounted, he will have two; and, not being able to purchase or maintain a second horse of value, one of his servants at least is mounted on a hired rascallion. He is not contented to go plain and neat in his cloathes; he therefore claps on some tawdry ornament, and what he adds to the fineness of his vestment he detracts from the fineness of his linnen. Without descending into more minute particulars, I believe I may assert it as an axiom of indubitable truth, that whoever shews you he is either in himself or his equipage as gaudy as he can, convinces you he is more so than he can afford. Now, whenever a man's expence exceeds his income, he is indifferent in the degree; we had therefore nothing more to do with such than to flatter them with their wealth and splendour, and were always certain of success. "There is, indeed, one kind of rich man who is commonly more liberal, namely, where riches surprize him, as it were, in the midst of poverty and distress, the consequence of which is, I own, sometimes excessive avarice, but oftener extreme prodigality. I remember one of these who, having received a pretty large sum of money, gave me, when I begged an obolus, a whole talent; on which his friend having reproved him, he answered, with an oath, 'Why not? Have I not fifty left?' "The life of a beggar, if men estimated things by their real essence, and not by their outward false appearance, would be, perhaps, a more desirable situation than any of those which ambition persuades us, with such difficulty, danger, and often villany, to aspire to. The wants of a beggar are commonly as chimerical as the abundance of a nobleman; for besides vanity, which a judicious beggar will always apply to with wonderful efficacy, there are in reality very few natures so hardened as not to compassionate poverty and distress, when the predominancy of some other passion doth not prevent them. "There is one happiness which attends money got with ease, namely, that it is never hoarded; otherwise, as we have frequent opportunities of growing rich, that canker care might prey upon our quiet, as it doth on others; but our money stock we spend as fast as we acquire it; usually at least, for I speak not without exception; thus it gives us mirth only, and no trouble. Indeed, the luxury of our lives might introduce diseases, did not our daily exercise prevent them. This gives us an appetite and relish for our dainties, and at the same time an antidote against the evil effects which sloth, united with luxury, induces on the habit of a human body. Our women we enjoy with ecstasies at least equal to what the greatest men feel in their embraces. I can, I am assured, say of myself, that no mortal could reap more perfect happiness from the tender passion than my fortune had decreed me. I married a charming young woman for love; she was the daughter of a neighbouring beggar, who, with an improvidence too often seen, spent a very large income which he procured by his profession, so that he was able to give her no fortune down; however, at his death he left her a very well accustomed begging-hut, situated on the side of a steep hill, where travellers could not immediately escape from us, and a garden adjoining, being the twenty-eighth part of an acre, well planted. She made the best of wives, bore me nineteen children, and never failed, unless on her lying-in, which generally lasted three days, to get my supper ready against my return home in an evening; this being my favourite meal, and at which I, as well as my whole family, greatly enjoyed ourselves; the principal subject of our discourse being generally the boons we had that day obtained, on which occasions, laughing at the folly of the donors made no inconsiderable part of the entertainment; for, whatever might be their motive for giving, we constantly imputed our success to our having flattered their vanity, or overreached their understanding. "But perhaps I have dwelt too long on this character; I shall conclude, therefore, with telling you that after a life of 102 years' continuance, during all which I had never known any sickness or infirmity but that which old age necessarily induced, I at last, without the least pain, went out like the snuff of a candle. "Minos, having heard my history, bid me compute, if I could, how many lies I had told in my life. As we are here, by a certain fated necessity, obliged to confine ourselves to truth, I answered, I believed about 50,000,000. He then replied, with a frown, 'Can such a wretch conceive any hopes of entering Elysium?' I immediately turned about, and, upon the whole, was rejoiced at his not calling me back." [Illustration: text decoration] Chapter xx. _Julian performs the part of a statesman._ "It was now my fortune to be born of a German princess; but a man-midwife, pulling my head off in delivering my mother, put a speedy end to my princely life. "Spirits who end their lives before they are at the age of five years are immediately ordered into other bodies; and it was now my fortune to perform several infancies before I could again entitle myself to an examination of Minos. "At length I was destined once more to play a considerable part on the stage. I was born in England, in the reign of Ethelred II. My father's name was Ulnoth: he was earl or thane of Sussex. I was afterwards known by the name of earl Goodwin, and began to make a considerable figure in the world in the time of Harold Harefoot, whom I procured to be made king of Wessex, or the West Saxons, in prejudice of Hardicanute, whose mother Emma endeavoured afterwards to set another of her sons on the throne; but I circumvented her, and, communicating her design to the king, at the same time acquainted him with a project which I had formed for the murder of these two young princes. Emma had sent for these her sons from Normandy, with the king's leave, whom she had deceived by her religious behaviour, and pretended neglect of all worldly affairs; but I prevailed with Harold to invite these princes to his court, and put them to death. The prudent mother sent only Alfred, retaining Edward to herself, as she suspected my ill designs, and thought I should not venture to execute them on one of her sons, while she secured the other; but she was deceived, for I had no sooner Alfred in my possession than I caused him to be conducted to Ely, where I ordered his eyes to be put out, and afterwards to be confined in a monastery. "This was one of those cruel expedients which great men satisfy themselves well in executing, by concluding them to be necessary to the service of their prince, who is the support of their ambition. "Edward, the other son of Emma, escaped again to Normandy; whence, after the death of Harold and Hardicanute, he made no scruple of applying to my protection and favour, though he had before prosecuted me with all the vengeance he was able, for the murder of his brother; but in all great affairs private relation must yield to public interest. Having therefore concluded very advantageous terms for myself with him, I made no scruple of patronizing his cause, and soon placed him on the throne. Nor did I conceive the least apprehension from his resentment, as I knew my power was too great for him to encounter. "Among other stipulated conditions, one was to marry my daughter Editha. This Edward consented to with great reluctance, and I had afterwards no reason to be pleased with it; for it raised her, who had been my favourite child, to such an opinion of greatness, that, instead of paying me the usual respect, she frequently threw in my teeth (as often at least as I gave her any admonition), that she was now a queen, and that the character and title of father merged in that of subject. This behaviour, however, did not cure me of my affection towards her, nor lessen the uneasiness which I afterwards bore on Edward's dismissing her from his bed. "One thing which principally induced me to labour the promotion of Edward was the simplicity or weakness of that prince, under whom I promised myself absolute dominion under another name. Nor did this opinion deceive me; for, during his whole reign, my administration was in the highest degree despotic: I had everything of royalty but the outward ensigns; no man ever applying for a place, or any kind of preferment, but to me only. A circumstance which, as it greatly enriched my coffers, so it no less pampered my ambition, and satisfied my vanity with a numerous attendance; and I had the pleasure of seeing those who only bowed to the king prostrating themselves before me. "Edward the Confessor, or St Edward, as some have called him, in derision I suppose, being a very silly fellow, had all the faults incident, and almost inseparable, to fools. He married my daughter Editha from his fear of disobliging me; and afterwards, out of hatred to me, refused even to consummate his marriage, though she was one of the most beautiful women of her age. He was likewise guilty of the basest ingratitude to his mother (a vice to which fools are chiefly, if not only, liable); and, in return for her endeavours to procure him a throne in his youth, confined her in a loathsome prison in her old age. This, it is true, he did by my advice; but as to her walking over nine ploughshares red-hot, and giving nine manors, when she had not one in her possession, there is not a syllable of veracity in it. "The first great perplexity I fell into was on the account of my son Swane, who had deflowered the abbess of Leon, since called Leominster, in Herefordshire. After this fact he retired into Denmark, whence he sent to me to obtain his pardon. The king at first refused it, being moved thereto, as I afterwards found, by some churchmen, particularly by one of his chaplains, whom I had prevented from obtaining a bishopric. Upon this my son Swane invaded the coasts with several ships, and committed many outrageous cruelties; which, indeed, did his business, as they served me to apply to the fear of this king, which I had long since discovered to be his predominant passion. And, at last, he who had refused pardon to his first offence submitted to give it him after he had committed many other more monstrous crimes; by which his pardon lost all grace to the offended, and received double censure from all others. "The king was greatly inclined to the Normans, had created a Norman archbishop of Canterbury, and had heaped extraordinary favours on him. I had no other objection to this man than that he rose without my assistance; a cause of dislike which, in the reign of great and powerful favourites, hath often proved fatal to the persons who have given it, as the persons thus raised inspire us constantly with jealousies and apprehensions. For when we promote any one ourselves, we take effectual care to preserve such an ascendant over him, that we can at any time reduce him to his former degree, should he dare to act in opposition to our wills; for which reason we never suffer any to come near the prince but such as we are assured it is impossible should be capable of engaging or improving his affection; no prime minister, as I apprehend, esteeming himself to be safe while any other shares the ear of his prince, of whom we are as jealous as the fondest husband can be of his wife. Whoever, therefore, can approach him by any other channel than that of ourselves, is, in our opinion, a declared enemy, and one whom the first principles of policy oblige us to demolish with the utmost expedition. For the affection of kings is as precarious as that of women, and the only way to secure either to ourselves is to keep all others from them. "But the archbishop did not let matters rest on suspicion. He soon gave open proofs of his interest with the Confessor in procuring an office of some importance for one Rollo, a Roman of mean extraction and very despicable parts. When I represented to the king the indecency of conferring such an honour on such a fellow, he answered me that he was the archbishop's relation. 'Then, sir,' replied I, 'he is related to your enemy.' Nothing more past at that time; but I soon perceived, by the archbishop's behaviour, that the king had acquainted him with our private discourse; a sufficient assurance of his confidence in him and neglect of me. "The favour of princes, when once lost, is recoverable only by the gaining a situation which may make you terrible to them. As I had no doubt of having lost all credit with this king, which indeed had been originally founded and constantly supported by his fear, so I took the method of terror to regain it. "The earl of Boulogne coming over to visit the king gave me an opportunity of breaking out into open opposition; for, as the earl was on his return to France, one of his servants, who was sent before to procure lodgings at Dover, and insisted on having them in the house of a private man in spite of the owner's teeth, was, in a fray which ensued, killed on the spot; and the earl himself, arriving there soon after, very narrowly escaped with his life. The earl, enraged at this affront, returned to the king at Gloucester with loud complaints and demands of satisfaction. Edward consented to his demands, and ordered me to chastise the rioters, who were under my government as earl of Kent: but, instead of obeying these orders, I answered, with some warmth, that the English were not used to punish people unheard, nor ought their rights and privileges to be violated; that the accused should be first summoned--if guilty, should make satisfaction both with body and estate, but, if innocent, should be discharged. Adding, with great ferocity, that as earl of Kent it was my duty to protect those under my government against the insults of foreigners. "This accident was extremely lucky, as it gave my quarrel with the king a popular colour, and so ingratiated me with the people, that when I set up my standard, which I soon after did, they readily and chearfully listed under my banners and embraced my cause, which I persuaded them was their own; for that it was to protect them against foreigners that I had drawn my sword. The word foreigners with an Englishman hath a kind of magical effect, they having the utmost hatred and aversion to them, arising from the cruelties they suffered from the Danes and some other foreign nations. No wonder therefore they espoused my cause in a quarrel which had such a beginning. "But what may be somewhat more remarkable is, that when I afterwards returned to England from banishment, and was at the head of an army of the Flemish, who were preparing to plunder the city of London, I still persisted that I was come to defend the English from the danger of foreigners, and gained their credit. Indeed, there is no lie so gross but it may be imposed on the people by those whom they esteem their patrons and defenders. "The king saved his city by being reconciled to me, and taking again my daughter, whom he had put away from him; and thus, having frightened the king into what concessions I thought proper, I dismissed my army and fleet, with which I intended, could I not have succeeded otherwise, to have sacked the city of London and ravaged the whole country. "I was no sooner re-established in the king's favour, or, what was as well for me, the appearance of it, than I fell violently on the archbishop. He had of himself retired to his monastery in Normandy; but that did not content me: I had him formally banished, the see declared vacant, and then filled up by another. "I enjoyed my grandeur a very short time after my restoration to it; for the king, hating and fearing me to a very great degree, and finding no means of openly destroying me, at last effected his purpose by poison, and then spread abroad a ridiculous story, of my wishing the next morsel might choak me if I had had any hand in the death of Alfred; and, accordingly, that the next morsel, by a divine judgment, stuck in my throat and performed that office. "This of a statesman was one of my worst stages in the other world. It is a post subjected daily to the greatest danger and inquietude, and attended with little pleasure and less ease. In a word, it is a pill which, was it not gilded over by ambition, would appear nauseous and detestable in the eye of every one; and perhaps that is one reason why Minos so greatly compassionates the case of those who swallow it: for that just judge told me he always acquitted a prime minister who could produce one single good action in his whole life, let him have committed ever so many crimes. Indeed, I understood him a little too largely, and was stepping towards the gate; but he pulled me by the sleeve, and, telling me no prime minister ever entered there, bid me go back again; saying, he thought I had sufficient reason to rejoice in my escaping the bottomless pit, which half my crimes committed in any other capacity would have entitled me to." [Illustration: text decoration] Chapter xxi. _Julian's adventures in the post of a soldier._ "I was born at Caen, in Normandy. My mother's name was Matilda; as for my father, I am not so certain, for the good woman on her deathbed assured me she herself could bring her guess to no greater certainty than to five of duke William's captains. When I was no more than thirteen (being indeed a surprising stout boy of my age) I enlisted into the army of duke William, afterwards known by the name of William the Conqueror, landed with him at Pemesey or Pemsey, in Sussex, and was present at the famous battle of Hastings. "At the first onset it was impossible to describe my consternation, which was heightened by the fall of two soldiers who stood by me; but this soon abated, and by degrees, as my blood grew warm, I thought no more of my own safety, but fell on the enemy with great fury, and did a good deal of execution; till, unhappily, I received a wound in my thigh, which rendered me unable to stand any longer, so that I now lay among the dead, and was constantly exposed to the danger of being trampled to death, as well by my fellow-soldiers as by the enemy. However, I had the fortune to escape it, and continued the remaining part of the day and the night following on the ground. "The next morning, the duke sending out parties to bring off the wounded, I was found almost expiring with loss of blood: notwithstanding which, as immediate care was taken to dress my wounds, youth and a robust constitution stood my friends, and I recovered after a long and tedious indisposition, and was again able to use my limbs and do my duty. "As soon as Dover was taken I was conveyed thither with all the rest of the sick and wounded. Here I recovered of my wound; but fell afterwards into a violent flux, which, when it departed, left me so weak that it was long before I could regain my strength. And what most afflicted me was, that during my whole illness, when I languished under want as well as sickness, I had daily the mortification to see and hear the riots and excess of my fellow-soldiers, who had happily escaped safe from the battle. "I was no sooner well than I was ordered into garrison at Dover Castle. The officers here fared very indifferently, but the private men much worse. We had great scarcity of provisions, and, what was yet more intolerable, were so closely confined for want of room (four of us being obliged to lie on the same bundle of straw), that many died, and most sickened. "Here I had remained about four months, when one night we were alarmed with the arrival of the earl of Boulogne, who had come over privily from France, and endeavoured to surprize the castle. The design proved ineffectual; for the garrison making a brisk sally, most of his men were tumbled down the precipice, and he returned with a very few back to France. In this action, however, I had the misfortune to come off with a broken arm; it was so shattered, that, besides a great deal of pain and misery which I endured in my cure, I was disabled for upwards of three months. "Soon after my recovery I had contracted an amour with a young woman whose parents lived near the garrison, and were in much better circumstances than I had reason to expect should give their consent to the match. However, as she was extremely fond of me (as I was indeed distractedly enamoured of her), they were prevailed on to comply with her desires, and the day was fixed for our marriage. "On the evening preceding, while I was exulting with the eager expectation of the happiness I was the next day to enjoy, I received orders to march early in the morning towards Windsor, where a large army was to be formed, at the head of which the king intended to march into the west. Any person who hath ever been in love may easily imagine what I felt in my mind on receiving those orders; and what still heightened my torments was, that the commanding officer would not permit any one to go out of the garrison that evening; so that I had not even an opportunity of taking leave of my beloved. "The morning came which was to have put me in the possession of my wishes; but, alas! the scene was now changed, and all the hopes which I had raised were now so many ghosts to haunt, and furies to torment me. "It was now the midst of winter, and very severe weather for the season; when we were obliged to make very long and fatiguing marches, in which we suffered all the inconveniences of cold and hunger. The night in which I expected to riot in the arms of my beloved mistress I was obliged to take up with a lodging on the ground, exposed to the inclemencies of a rigid frost; nor could I obtain the least comfort of sleep, which shunned me as its enemy. In short, the horrors of that night are not to be described, or perhaps imagined. They made such an impression on my soul, that I was forced to be dipped three times in the river Lethe to prevent my remembering it in the characters which I afterwards performed in the flesh." Here I interrupted Julian for the first time, and told him no such dipping had happened to me in my voyage from one world to the other: but he satisfied me by saying "that this only happened to those spirits which returned into the flesh, in order to prevent that reminiscence which Plato mentions, and which would otherwise cause great confusion in the other world." He then proceeded as follows: "We continued a very laborious march to Exeter, which we were ordered to besiege. The town soon surrendered, and his majesty built a castle there, which he garrisoned with his Normans, and unhappily I had the misfortune to be one of the number. "Here we were confined closer than I had been at Dover; for, as the citizens were extremely disaffected, we were never suffered to go without the walls of the castle; nor indeed could we, unless in large bodies, without the utmost danger. We were likewise kept to continual duty, nor could any solicitations prevail with the commanding officer to give me a month's absence to visit my love, from whom I had no opportunity of hearing in all my long absence. "However, in the spring, the people being more quiet, and another officer of a gentler temper succeeding to the principal command, I obtained leave to go to Dover; but alas! what comfort did my long journey bring me? I found the parents of my darling in the utmost misery at her loss; for she had died, about a week before my arrival, of a consumption, which they imputed to her pining at my sudden departure. "I now fell into the most violent and almost raving fit of despair. I cursed myself, the king, and the whole world, which no longer seemed to have any delight for me. I threw myself on the grave of my deceased love, and lay there without any kind of sustenance for two whole days. At last hunger, together with the persuasions of some people who took pity on me, prevailed with me to quit that situation, and refresh myself with food. They then persuaded me to return to my post, and abandon a place where almost every object I saw recalled ideas to my mind which, as they said, I should endeavour with my utmost force to expel from it. This advice at length succeeded; the rather, as the father and mother of my beloved refused to see me, looking on me as the innocent but certain cause of the death of their only child. "The loss of one we tenderly love, as it is one of the most bitter and biting evils which attend human life, so it wants the lenitive which palliates and softens every other calamity; I mean that great reliever, hope. No man can be so totally undone, but that he may still cherish expectation: but this deprives us of all such comfort, nor can anything but time alone lessen it. This, however, in most minds, is sure to work a slow but effectual remedy; so did it in mine: for within a twelvemonth I was entirely reconciled to my fortune, and soon after absolutely forgot the object of a passion from which I had promised myself such extreme happiness, and in the disappointment of which I had experienced such inconceivable misery. "At the expiration of the month I returned to my garrison at Exeter; where I was no sooner arrived than I was ordered to march into the north, to oppose a force there levied by the earls of Chester and Northumberland. We came to York, where his majesty pardoned the heads of the rebels, and very severely punished some who were less guilty. It was particularly my lot to be ordered to seize a poor man who had never been out of his house, and convey him to prison. I detested this barbarity, yet was obliged to execute it; nay, though no reward would have bribed me in a private capacity to have acted such a part, yet so much sanctity is there in the commands of a monarch or general to a soldier, that I performed it without reluctance, nor had the tears of his wife and family any prevalence with me. "But this, which was a very small piece of mischief in comparison with many of my barbarities afterwards, was however the only one which ever gave me any uneasiness; for when the king led us afterwards into Northumberland to revenge those people's having joined with Osborne the Dane in his invasion, and orders were given us to commit what ravages we could, I was forward in fulfilling them, and, among some lesser cruelties (I remember it yet with sorrow), I ravished a woman, murdered a little infant playing in her lap, and then burnt her house. In short, for I have no pleasure in this part of my relation, I had my share in all the cruelties exercised on those poor wretches; which were so grievous, that for sixty miles together, between York and Durham, not a single house, church, or any other public or private edifice, was left standing. "We had pretty well devoured the country, when we were ordered to march to the Isle of Ely, to oppose Hereward, a bold and stout soldier, who had under him a very large body of rebels, who had the impudence to rise against their king and conqueror (I talk now in the same style I did then) in defence of their liberties, as they called them. These were soon subdued; but as I happened (more to my glory than my comfort) to be posted in that part through which Hereward cut his way, I received a dreadful cut on the forehead, a second on the shoulder, and was run through the body with a pike. "I languished a long time with these wounds, which made me incapable of attending the king into Scotland. However, I was able to go over with him afterwards into Normandy, in his expedition against Philip, who had taken the opportunity of the troubles in England to invade that province. Those few Normans who had survived their wounds, and had remained in the Isle of Ely, were all of our nation who went, the rest of his army being all composed of English. In a skirmish near the town of Mans my leg was broke and so shattered that it was forced to be cut off. "I was now disabled from serving longer in the army; and accordingly, being discharged from the service, I retired to the place of my nativity, where, in extreme poverty, and frequent bad health from the many wounds I had received, I dragged on a miserable life to the age of sixty-three; my only pleasure being to recount the feats of my youth, in which narratives I generally exceeded the truth. "It would be tedious and unpleasant to recount to you the several miseries I suffered after my return to Caen; let it suffice, they were so terrible that they induced Minos to compassionate me, and, notwithstanding the barbarities I had been guilty of in Northumberland, to suffer me to go once more back to earth." Chapter xxii. _What happened to Julian in the person of a taylor._ "Fortune now stationed me in a character which the ingratitude of mankind hath put them on ridiculing, though they owe to it not only a relief from the inclemencies of cold, to which they would otherwise be exposed, but likewise a considerable satisfaction of their vanity. The character I mean was that of a taylor; which, if we consider it with due attention, must be confessed to have in it great dignity and importance. For, in reality, who constitutes the different degrees between men but the taylor? the prince indeed gives the title, but it is the taylor who makes the man. To his labours are owing the respect of crouds, and the awe which great men inspire into their beholders, though these are too often unjustly attributed to other motives. Lastly, the admiration of the fair is most commonly to be placed to his account. "I was just set up in my trade when I made three suits of fine clothes for king Stephen's coronation. I question whether the person who wears the rich coat hath so much pleasure and vanity in being admired in it, as we taylors have from that admiration; and perhaps a philosopher would say he is not so well entitled to it. I bustled on the day of the ceremony through the croud, and it was with incredible delight I heard several say, as my cloaths walked by, 'Bless me, was ever anything so fine as the earl of Devonshire? Sure he and Sir Hugh Bigot are the two best drest men I ever saw.' Now both those suits were of my making. "There would indeed be infinite pleasure in working for the courtiers, as they are generally genteel men, and shew one's clothes to the best advantage, was it not for one small discouragement; this is, that they never pay. I solemnly protest, though I lost almost as much by the court in my life as I got by the city, I never carried a suit into the latter with half the satisfaction which I have done to the former; though from that I was certain of ready money, and from this almost as certain of no money at all. "Courtiers may, however, be divided into two sorts, very essentially different from each other; into those who never intend to pay for their clothes; and those who do intend to pay for them, but never happen to be able. Of the latter sort are many of those young gentlemen whom we equip out for the army, and who are, unhappily for us, cut off before they arrive at preferment. This is the reason that taylors, in time of war, are mistaken for politicians by their inquisitiveness into the event of battles, one campaign very often proving the ruin of half-a-dozen of us. I am sure I had frequent reason to curse that fatal battle of Cardigan, where the Welsh defeated some of king Stephen's best troops, and where many a good suit of mine, unpaid for, fell to the ground. "The gentlemen of this honourable calling have fared much better in later ages than when I was of it; for now it seems the fashion is, when they apprehend their customer is not in the best circumstances, if they are not paid as soon as they carry home the suit, they charge him in their book as much again as it is worth, and then send a gentleman with a small scrip of parchment to demand the money. If this be not immediately paid the gentleman takes the beau with him to his house, where he locks him up till the taylor is contented: but in my time these scrips of parchment were not in use; and if the beau disliked paying for his clothes, as very often happened, we had no method of compelling him. "In several of the characters which I have related to you, I apprehend I have sometimes forgot myself, and considered myself as really interested as I was when I personated them on earth. I have just now caught myself in the fact; for I have complained to you as bitterly of my customers as I formerly used to do when I was the taylor: but in reality, though there were some few persons of very great quality, and some others, who never paid their debts, yet those were but a few, and I had a method of repairing this loss. My customers I divided under three heads: those who paid ready money, those who paid slow, and those who never paid at all. The first of these I considered apart by themselves, as persons by whom I got a certain but small profit. The two last I lumped together, making those who paid slow contribute to repair my losses by those who did not pay at all. Thus, upon the whole, I was a very inconsiderable loser, and might have left a fortune to my family, had I not launched forth into expenses which swallowed up all my gains. I had a wife and two children. These indeed I kept frugally enough, for I half starved them; but I kept a mistress in a finer way, for whom I had a country-house, pleasantly situated on the Thames, elegantly fitted up and neatly furnished. This woman might very properly be called my mistress, for she was most absolutely so; and though her tenure was no higher than by my will, she domineered as tyrannically as if my chains had been riveted in the strongest manner. To all this I submitted, not through any adoration of her beauty, which was indeed but indifferent. Her charms consisted in little wantonnesses, which she knew admirably well to use in hours of dalliance, and which, I believe, are of all things the most delightful to a lover. "She was so profusely extravagant, that it seemed as if she had an actual intent to ruin me. This I am sure of, if such had been her real intention, she could have taken no properer way to accomplish it; nay, I myself might appear to have had the same view: for, besides this extravagant mistress and my country-house, I kept likewise a brace of hunters, rather for that it was fashionable so to do than for any great delight I took in the sport, which I very little attended; not for want of leisure, for few noblemen had so much. All the work I ever did was taking measure, and that only of my greatest and best customers. I scarce ever cut a piece of cloth in my life, nor was indeed much more able to fashion a coat than any gentleman in the kingdom. This made a skilful servant too necessary to me. He knew I must submit to any terms with, or any treatment from, him. He knew it was easier for him to find another such a taylor as me than for me to procure such another workman as him: for this reason he exerted the most notorious and cruel tyranny, seldom giving me a civil word; nor could the utmost condescension on my side, though attended with continual presents and rewards, and raising his wages, content or please him. In a word, he was as absolutely my master as was ever an ambitious, industrious prime minister over an indolent and voluptuous king. All my other journeymen paid more respect to him than to me; for they considered my favour as a necessary consequence of obtaining his. "These were the most remarkable occurrences while I acted this part. Minos hesitated a few moments, and then bid me get back again, without assigning any reason." Chapter xxiii. _The life of alderman Julian._ "I now revisited England, and was born at London. My father was one of the magistrates of that city. He had eleven children, of whom I was the eldest. He had great success in trade, and grew extremely rich, but the largeness of his family rendered it impossible for him to leave me a fortune sufficient to live well on independent of business. I was accordingly brought up to be a fishmonger, in which capacity I myself afterwards acquired very considerable wealth. "The same disposition of mind which in princes is called ambition is in subjects named faction. To this temper I was greatly addicted from my youth. I was, while a boy, a great partisan of prince John's against his brother Richard, during the latter's absence in the holy war and in his captivity. I was no more than one-and-twenty when I first began to make political speeches in publick, and to endeavour to foment disquietude and discontent in the city. As I was pretty well qualified for this office, by a great fluency of words, an harmonious accent, a graceful delivery, and above all an invincible assurance, I had soon acquired some reputation among the younger citizens, and some of the weaker and more inconsiderate of a riper age. This, co-operating with my own natural vanity, made me extravagantly proud and supercilious. I soon began to esteem myself a man of some consequence, and to overlook persons every way my superiors. "The famous Robin Hood, and his companion Little John, at this time made a considerable figure in Yorkshire. I took upon me to write a letter to the former, in the name of the city, inviting him to come to London, where I assured him of very good reception, signifying to him my own great weight and consequence, and how much I had disposed the citizens in his favour. Whether he received this letter or no I am not certain; but he never gave me any answer to it. "A little afterwards one William Fitz-Osborn, or, as he was nicknamed, William Long-Beard, began to make a figure in the city. He was a bold and an impudent fellow, and had raised himself to great popularity with the rabble, by pretending to espouse their cause against the rich. I took this man's part, and made a public oration in his favour, setting him forth as a patriot, and one who had embarked in the cause of liberty: for which service he did not receive me with the acknowledgments I expected. However, as I thought I should easily gain the ascendant over this fellow, I continued still firm on his side, till the archbishop of Canterbury, with an armed force, put an end to his progress: for he was seized in Bow-church, where he had taken refuge, and with nine of his accomplices hanged in chains. "I escaped narrowly myself; for I was seized in the same church with the rest, and, as I had been very considerably engaged in the enterprize, the archbishop was inclined to make me an example; but my father's merit, who had advanced a considerable sum to queen Eleanor towards the king's ransom, preserved me. "The consternation my danger had occasioned kept me some time quiet, and I applied myself very assiduously to my trade. I invented all manner of methods to enhance the price of fish, and made use of my utmost endeavours to engross as much of the business as possible in my own hands. By these means I acquired a substance which raised me to some little consequence in the city, but far from elevating me to that degree which I had formerly flattered myself with possessing at a time when I was totally insignificant; for, in a trading society, money must at least lay the foundation of all power and interest. "But as it hath been remarked that the same ambition which sent Alexander into Asia brings the wrestler on the green; and as this same ambition is as incapable as quicksilver of lying still; so I, who was possessed perhaps of a share equal to what hath fired the blood of any of the heroes of antiquity, was no less restless and discontented with ease and quiet. My first endeavours were to make myself head of my company, which Richard I. had just published, and soon afterwards I procured myself to be chosen alderman. "Opposition is the only state which can give a subject an opportunity of exerting the disposition I was possessed of. Accordingly, king John was no sooner seated on his throne than I began to oppose his measures, whether right or wrong. It is true that monarch had faults enow. He was so abandoned to lust and luxury, that he addicted himself to the most extravagant excesses in both, while he indolently suffered the king of France to rob him of almost all his foreign dominions: my opposition therefore was justifiable enough, and if my motive from within had been as good as the occasion from without I should have had little to excuse; but, in truth, I sought nothing but my own preferment, by making myself formidable to the king, and then selling to him the interest of that party by whose means I had become so. Indeed, had the public good been my care, however zealously I might have opposed the beginning of his reign, I should not have scrupled to lend him my utmost assistance in the struggle between him and pope Innocent the third, in which he was so manifestly in the right; nor have suffered the insolence of that pope, and the power of the king of France, to have compelled him in the issue, basely to resign his crown into the hands of the former, and receive it again as a vassal; by means of which acknowledgment the pope afterwards claimed this kingdom as a tributary fief to be held of the papal chair; a claim which occasioned great uneasiness to many subsequent princes, and brought numberless calamities on the nation. "As the king had, among other concessions, stipulated to pay an immediate sum of money to Pandulph, which he had great difficulty to raise, it was absolutely necessary for him to apply to the city, where my interest and popularity were so high that he had no hopes without my assistance. As I knew this, I took care to sell myself and country as high as possible. The terms I demanded, therefore, were a place, a pension, and a knighthood. All those were immediately consented to. I was forthwith knighted, and promised the other two. "I now mounted the hustings, and, without any regard to decency or modesty, made as emphatical a speech in favour of the king as before I had done against him. In this speech I justified all those measures which I had before condemned, and pleaded as earnestly with my fellow-citizens to open their purses, as I had formerly done to prevail with them to keep them shut. But, alas! my rhetoric had not the effect I proposed. The consequence of my arguments was only contempt to myself. The people at first stared on one another, and afterwards began unanimously to express their dislike. An impudent fellow among them, reflecting on my trade, cryed out, 'Stinking fish;' which was immediately reiterated through the whole croud. I was then forced to slink away home; but I was not able to accomplish my retreat without being attended by the mob, who huzza'd me along the street with the repeated cries of 'Stinking fish.' "I now proceeded to court, to inform his majesty of my faithful service, and how much I had suffered in his cause. I found by my first reception he had already heard of my success. Instead of thanking me for my speech, he said the city should repent of their obstinacy, for that he would shew them who he was: and so saying, he immediately turned that part to me to which the toe of man hath so wonderful an affection, that it is very difficult, whenever it presents itself conveniently, to keep our toes from the most violent and ardent salutation of it. "I was a little nettled at this behaviour, and with some earnestness claimed the king's fulfilling his promise; but he retired without answering me. I then applied to some of the courtiers, who had lately professed great friendship to me, had eat at my house, and invited me to theirs: but not one would return me any answer, all running away from me as if I had been seized with some contagious distemper. I now found by experience that, as none can be so civil, so none can be ruder than a courtier. "A few moments after the king's retiring I was left alone in the room to consider what I should do or whither I should turn myself. My reception in the city promised itself to be equal at least with what I found at court. However, there was my home, and thither it was necessary I should retreat for the present. "But, indeed, bad as I apprehended my treatment in the city would be, it exceeded my expectation. I rode home on an ambling pad through crouds who expressed every kind of disregard and contempt; pelting me not only with the most abusive language, but with dirt. However, with much difficulty I arrived at last at my own house, with my bones whole, but covered over with filth. "When I was got within my doors, and had shut them against the mob, who had pretty well vented their spleen, and seemed now contented to retire, my wife, whom I found crying over her children, and from whom I had hoped some comfort in my afflictions, fell upon me in the most outrageous manner. She asked me why I would venture on such a step, without consulting her; she said her advice might have been civilly asked, if I was resolved not to have been guided by it. That, whatever opinion I might have conceived of her understanding, the rest of the world thought better of it. That I had never failed when I had asked her counsel, nor ever succeeded without it;--with much more of the same kind, too tedious to mention; concluding that it was a monstrous behaviour to desert my party and come over to the court. An abuse which I took worse than all the rest, as she had been constantly for several years assiduous in railing at the opposition, in siding with the court-party, and begging me to come over to it; and especially after my mentioning the offer of knighthood to her, since which time she had continually interrupted my repose with dinning in my ears the folly of refusing honours and of adhering to a party and to principles by which I was certain of procuring no advantage to myself and my family. "I had now entirely lost my trade, so that I had not the least temptation to stay longer in a city where I was certain of receiving daily affronts and rebukes. I therefore made up my affairs with the utmost expedition, and, scraping together all I could, retired into the country, where I spent the remainder of my days in universal contempt, being shunned by everybody, perpetually abused by my wife, and not much respected by my children. "Minos told me, though I had been a very vile fellow, he thought my sufferings made some atonement, and so bid me take the other trial." Chapter xxiv. _Julian recounts what happened to him while he was a poet._ "Rome was now the seat of my nativity, where I was born of a family more remarkable for honour than riches. I was intended for the church, and had a pretty good education; but my father dying while I was young, and leaving me nothing, for he had wasted his whole patrimony, I was forced to enter myself in the order of mendicants. "When I was at school I had a knack of rhiming, which I unhappily mistook for genius, and indulged to my cost; for my verses drew on me only ridicule, and I was in contempt called the poet. "This humour pursued me through my life. My first composition after I left school was a panegyric on pope Alexander IV., who then pretended a project of dethroning the king of Sicily. On this subject I composed a poem of about fifteen thousand lines, which with much difficulty I got to be presented to his holiness, of whom I expected great preferment as my reward; but I was cruelly disappointed: for when I had waited a year, without hearing any of the commendations I had flattered myself with receiving, and being now able to contain no longer, I applied to a Jesuit who was my relation, and had the pope's ear, to know what his holiness's opinion was of my work: he coldly answered me that he was at that time busied in concerns of too much importance to attend the reading of poems. "However dissatisfied I might be, and really was, with this reception, and however angry I was with the pope, for whose understanding I entertained an immoderate contempt, I was not yet discouraged from a second attempt. Accordingly, I soon after produced another work, entitled, The Trojan Horse. This was an allegorical work, in which the church was introduced into the world in the same manner as that machine had been into Troy. The priests were the soldiers in its belly, and the heathen superstition the city to be destroyed by them. This poem was written in Latin. I remember some of the lines:-- Mundanos scandit fatalis machina muros, Farta sacerdotum turmis: exinde per alvum Visi exire omnes, magno cum murmure olentes. Non aliter quà m cum humanis furibundus ab antris It sonus et nares simul aura invadit hiantes. Mille scatent et mille alii; trepidare timore Ethnica gens coepit: falsi per inane volantes Effugere Dei--Desertaque templa relinquunt. Jam magnum crepitavit equus, mox orbis et alti Ingemuere poli: tunc tu pater, ultimus omnium Maxime Alexander, ventrem maturus equinum Deseris, heu proles meliori digne parente." I believe Julian, had I not stopt him, would have gone through the whole poem (for, as I observed in most of the characters he related, the affections he had enjoyed while he personated them on earth still made some impression on him); but I begged him to omit the sequel of the poem, and proceed with his history. He then recollected himself, and, smiling at the observation which by intuition he perceived I had made, continued his narration as follows:-- "I confess to you," says he, "that the delight in repeating our own works is so predominant in a poet, that I find nothing can totally root it out of the soul. Happy would it be for those persons if their hearers could be delighted in the same manner: but alas! hence that _ingens solitudo_ complained of by Horace: for the vanity of mankind is so much greedier and more general than their avarice, that no beggar is so ill received by them as he who solicits their praise. "This I sufficiently experienced in the character of a poet; for my company was shunned (I believe on this account chiefly) by my whole house: nay, there were few who would submit to hearing me read my poetry, even at the price of sharing in my provisions. The only person who gave me audience was a brother poet; he indeed fed me with commendation very liberally: but, as I was forced to hear and commend in my turn, I perhaps bought his attention dear enough. "Well, sir, if my expectations of the reward I hoped from my first poem had baulked me, I had now still greater reason to complain; for, instead of being preferred or commended for the second, I was enjoined a very severe penance by my superior, for ludicrously comparing the pope to a f--t. My poetry was now the jest of every company, except some few who spoke of it with detestation; and I found that, instead of recommending me to preferment, it had effectually barred me from all probability of attaining it. "These discouragements had now induced me to lay down my pen and write no more. But, as Juvenal says, --Si discedas, Laqueo tenet ambitiosi Consuetudo mali. I was an example of the truth of this assertion, for I soon betook myself again to my muse. Indeed, a poet hath the same happiness with a man who is dotingly fond of an ugly woman. The one enjoys his muse, and the other his mistress, with a pleasure very little abated by the esteem of the world, and only undervalues their taste for not corresponding with his own. "It is unnecessary to mention any more of my poems; they had all the same fate; and though in reality some of my latter pieces deserved (I may now speak it without the imputation of vanity) a better success, as I had the character of a bad writer, I found it impossible ever to obtain the reputation of a good one. Had I possessed the merit of Homer I could have hoped for no applause; since it must have been a profound secret; for no one would now read a syllable of my writings. "The poets of my age were, as I believe you know, not very famous. However, there was one of some credit at that time, though I have the consolation to know his works are all perished long ago. The malice, envy, and hatred I bore this man are inconceivable to any but an author, and an unsuccessful one; I never could bear to hear him well spoken of, and writ anonymous satires against him, though I had received obligations from him; indeed I believe it would have been an absolute impossibility for him at any rate to have made me sincerely his friend. "I have heard an observation which was made by some one of later days, that there are no worse men than bad authors. A remark of the same kind hath been made on ugly women, and the truth of both stands on one and the same reason, viz., that they are both tainted with that cursed and detestable vice of envy; which, as it is the greatest torment to the mind it inhabits, so is it capable of introducing into it a total corruption, and of inspiring it to the commission of the most horrid crimes imaginable. "My life was but short; for I soon pined myself to death with the vice I just now mentioned. Minos told me I was infinitely too bad for Elysium; and as for the other place, the devil had sworn he would never entertain a poet for Orpheus's sake: so I was forced to return again to the place from whence I came." Chapter xxv. _Julian performs the parts of a knight and a dancing-master._ "I now mounted the stage in Sicily, and became a knight-templar; but, as my adventures differ so little from those I have recounted you in the character of a common soldier, I shall not tire you with repetition. The soldier and the captain differ in reality so little from one another, that it requires an accurate judgment to distinguish them; the latter wears finer cloaths, and in times of success lives somewhat more delicately; but as to everything else, they very nearly resemble one another. "My next step was into France, where fortune assigned me the part of a dancing-master. I was so expert in my profession that I was brought to court in my youth, and had the heels of Philip de Valois, who afterwards succeeded Charles the Fair, committed to my direction. "I do not remember that in any of the characters in which I appeared on earth I ever assumed to myself a greater dignity, or thought myself of more real importance, than now. I looked on dancing as the greatest excellence of human nature, and on myself as the greatest proficient in it. And, indeed, this seemed to be the general opinion of the whole court; for I was the chief instructor of the youth of both sexes, whose merit was almost entirely defined by the advances they made in that science which I had the honour to profess. As to myself, I was so fully persuaded of this truth, that I not only slighted and despised those who were ignorant of dancing, but I thought the highest character I could give any man was that he made a graceful bow: for want of which accomplishment I had a sovereign contempt for most persons of learning; nay, for some officers in the army, and a few even of the courtiers themselves. "Though so little of my youth had been thrown away in what they call literature that I could hardly write and read, yet I composed a treatise on education; the first rudiments of which, as I taught, were to instruct a child in the science of coming handsomely into a room. In this I corrected many faults of my predecessors, particularly that of being too much in a hurry, and instituting a child in the sublimer parts of dancing before they are capable of making their honours. "But as I have not now the same high opinion of my profession which I had then, I shall not entertain you with a long history of a life which consisted of borées and coupées. Let it suffice that I lived to a very old age and followed my business as long as I could crawl. At length I revisited my old friend Minos, who treated me with very little respect and bade me dance back again to earth. "I did so, and was now once more born an Englishman, bred up to the church, and at length arrived to the station of a bishop. "Nothing was so remarkable in this character as my always voting----[J]." [Illustration: text decoration] BOOK XIX. Chapter vii. _Wherein Anna Boleyn relates the history of her life._ "I am going now truly to recount a life which from the time of its ceasing has been, in the other world, the continual subject of the cavils of contending parties; the one making me as black as hell, the other as pure and innocent as the inhabitants of this blessed place; the mist of prejudice blinding their eyes, and zeal for what they themselves profess, making everything appear in that light which they think most conduces to its honour. "My infancy was spent in my father's house, in those childish plays which are most suitable to that state, and I think this was one of the happiest parts of my life; for my parents were not among the number of those who look upon their children as so many objects of a tyrannic power, but I was regarded as the dear pledge of a virtuous love, and all my little pleasures were thought from their indulgence their greatest delight. At seven years old I was carried into France with the king's sister, who was married to the French king, where I lived with a person of quality, who was an acquaintance of my father's. I spent my time in learning those things necessary to give young persons of fashion a polite education, and did neither good nor evil, but day passed after day in the same easy way till I was fourteen; then began my anxiety, my vanity grew strong, and my heart fluttered with joy at every compliment paid to my beauty: and as the lady with whom I lived was of a gay, chearful disposition, she kept a great deal of company, and my youth and charms made me the continual object of their admiration. I passed some little time in those exulting raptures which are felt by every woman perfectly satisfied with herself and with the behaviour of others towards her: I was, when very young, promoted to be maid of honour to her majesty. The court was frequented by a young nobleman whose beauty was the chief subject of conversation in all assemblies of ladies. The delicacy of his person, added to a great softness in his manner, gave everything he said and did such an air of tenderness, that every woman he spoke to flattered herself with being the object of his love. I was one of those who was vain enough of my own charms to hope to make a conquest of him whom the whole court sighed for. I now thought every other object below my notice; yet the only pleasure I proposed to myself in this design was, the triumphing over that heart which I plainly saw all the ladies of the highest quality and the greatest beauty would have been proud of possessing. I was yet too young to be very artful; but nature, without any assistance, soon discovers to a man who is used to gallantry a woman's desire to be liked by him, whether that desire arises from any particular choice she makes of him, or only from vanity. He soon perceived my thoughts, and gratified my utmost wishes by constantly preferring me before all other women, and exerting his utmost gallantry and address to engage my affections. This sudden happiness, which I then thought the greatest I could have had, appeared visible in all my actions; I grew so gay and so full of vivacity, that it made my person appear still to a better advantage, all my acquaintance pretending to be fonder of me than ever: though, young as I was, I plainly saw it was but pretence, for through all their endeavours to the contrary envy would often break forth in sly insinuations and malicious sneers, which gave me fresh matter of triumph, and frequent opportunities of insulting them, which I never let slip, for now first my female heart grew sensible of the spiteful pleasure of seeing another languish for what I enjoyed. Whilst I was in the height of my happiness her majesty fell ill of a languishing distemper, which obliged her to go into the country for the change of air: my place made it necessary for me to attend her, and which way he brought it about I can't imagine, but my young hero found means to be one of that small train that waited on my royal mistress, although she went as privately as possible. Hitherto all the interviews I had ever had with him were in public, and I only looked on him as the fitter object to feed that pride which had no other view but to shew its power; but now the scene was quite changed. My rivals were all at a distance: the place we went to was as charming as the most agreeable natural situation, assisted by the greatest art, could make it; the pleasant solitary walks, the singing of birds, the thousand pretty romantic scenes this delightful place afforded, gave a sudden turn to my mind; my whole soul was melted into softness, and all my vanity was fled. My spark was too much used to affairs of this nature not to perceive this change; at first the profuse transports of his joy made me believe him wholly mine, and this belief gave me such happiness that no language affords words to express it, and can be only known to those who have felt it. But this was of a very short duration, for I soon found I had to do with one of those men whose only end in the pursuit of a woman is to make her fall a victim to an insatiable desire to be admired. His designs had succeeded, and now he every day grew colder, and, as if by infatuation, my passion every day increased; and, notwithstanding all my resolutions and endeavours to the contrary, my rage at the disappointment at once both of my love and pride, and at the finding a passion fixed in my breast I knew not how to conquer, broke out into that inconsistent behaviour which must always be the consequence of violent passions. One moment I reproached him, the next I grew to tenderness and blamed myself, and thought I fancied what was not true: he saw my struggle and triumphed in it; but, as he had not witnesses enough there of his victory to give him the full enjoyment of it, he grew weary of the country and returned to Paris, and left me in a condition it is utterly impossible to describe. My mind was like a city up in arms, all confusion; and every new thought was a fresh disturber of my peace. Sleep quite forsook me, and the anxiety I suffered threw me into a fever which had like to have cost me my life. With great care I recovered, but the violence of the distemper left such a weakness on my body that the disturbance of my mind was greatly assuaged; and now I began to comfort myself in the reflection that this gentleman's being a finished coquet was very likely the only thing could have preserved me; for he was the only man from whom I was ever in any danger. By that time I was got tolerably well we returned to Paris; and I confess I both wished and feared to see this cause of all my pain: however, I hoped, by the help of my resentment, to be able to meet him with indifference. This employed my thoughts till our arrival. The next day there was a very full court to congratulate the queen on her recovery; and amongst the rest my love appeared dressed and adorned as if he designed some new conquest. Instead of seeing a woman he despised and slighted, he approached me with that assured air which is common to successful coxcombs. At the same time I perceived I was surrounded by all those ladies who were on his account my greatest enemies, and, in revenge, wished for nothing more than to see me make a ridiculous figure. This situation so perplexed my thoughts, that when he came near enough to speak to me, I fainted away in his arms. Had I studied which way I could gratify him most, it was impossible to have done anything to have pleased him more. Some that stood by brought smelling-bottles, and used means for my recovery; and I was welcomed to returning life by all those repartees which women enraged by envy are capable of venting. One cried, 'Well, I never thought my lord had anything so frightful in his person or so fierce in his manner as to strike a young lady dead at the sight of him.' 'No, no,' says another, 'some ladies' senses are more apt to be hurried by agreeable than disagreeable objects.' With many more such sort of speeches which shewed more malice than wit. This not being able to bear, trembling, and with but just strength enough to move, I crawled to my coach and hurried home. When I was alone, and thought on what had happened to me in a public court, I was at first driven to the utmost despair; but afterwards, when I came to reflect, I believe this accident contributed more to my being cured of my passion than any other could have done. I began to think the only method to pique the man who had used me so barbarously, and to be revenged on my spightful rivals, was to recover that beauty which was then languid and had lost its lustre, to let them see I had still charms enough to engage as many lovers as I could desire, and that I could yet rival them who had thus cruelly insulted me. These pleasing hopes revived my sinking spirits, and worked a more effectual cure on me than all the philosophy and advice of the wisest men could have done. I now employed all my time and care in adorning my person, and studying the surest means of engaging the affections of others, while I myself continued quite indifferent; for I resolved for the future, if ever one soft thought made its way to my heart, to fly the object of it, and by new lovers to drive the image from my breast. I consulted my glass every morning, and got such a command of my countenance that I could suit it to the different tastes of variety of lovers; and though I was young, for I was not yet above seventeen, yet my public way of life gave me such continual opportunities of conversing with men, and the strong desire I now had of pleasing them led me to make such constant observations on everything they said or did, that I soon found out the different methods of dealing with them. I observed that most men generally liked in women what was most opposite to their own characters; therefore to the grave solid man of sense I endeavoured to appear sprightly and full of spirit; to the witty and gay, soft and languishing; to the amorous (for they want no increase of their passions), cold and reserved; to the fearful and backward, warm and full of fire; and so of all the rest. As to beaus, and all those sort of men, whose desires are centred in the satisfaction of their vanity, I had learned by sad experience the only way to deal with them was to laugh at them and let their own good opinion of themselves be the only support of their hopes. I knew, while I could get other followers, I was sure of them; for the only sign of modesty they ever give is that of not depending on their own judgments, but following the opinions of the greatest number. Thus furnished with maxims, and grown wise by past errors, I in a manner began the world again: I appeared in all public places handsomer and more lively than ever, to the amazement of every one who saw me and had heard of the affair between me and my lord. He himself was much surprized and vexed at this sudden change, nor could he account how it was possible for me so soon to shake off those chains he thought he had fixed on me for life; nor was he willing to lose his conquest in this manner. He endeavoured by all means possible to talk to me again of love, but I stood fixed to my resolution (in which I was greatly assisted by the croud of admirers that daily surrounded me) never to let him explain himself: for, notwithstanding all my pride, I found the first impression the heart receives of love is so strong that it requires the most vigilant care to prevent a relapse. Now I lived three years in a constant round of diversions, and was made the perfect idol of all the men that came to court of all ages and all characters. I had several good matches offered me, but I thought none of them equal to my merit; and one of my greatest pleasures was to see those women who had pretended to rival me often glad to marry those whom I had refused. Yet, notwithstanding this great success of my schemes, I cannot say I was perfectly happy; for every woman that was taken the least notice of, and every man that was insensible to my arts, gave me as much pain as all the rest gave me pleasure; and sometimes little underhand plots which were laid against my designs would succeed in spite of my care: so that I really began to grow weary of this manner of life, when my father, returning from his embassy in France, took me home with him, and carried me to a little pleasant country-house, where there was nothing grand or superfluous, but everything neat and agreeable. There I led a life perfectly solitary. At first the time hung very heavy on my hands, and I wanted all kind of employment, and I had very like to have fallen into the height of the vapours, from no other reason but from want of knowing what to do with myself. But when I had lived here a little time I found such a calmness in my mind, and such a difference between this and the restless anxieties I had experienced in a court, that I began to share the tranquillity that visibly appeared in everything round me. I set myself to do works of fancy, and to raise little flower-gardens, with many such innocent rural amusements; which, although they are not capable of affording any great pleasure, yet they give that serene turn to the mind which I think much preferable to anything else human nature is made susceptible of. I now resolved to spend the rest of my days here, and that nothing should allure me from that sweet retirement, to be again tossed about with tempestuous passions of any kind. Whilst I was in this situation my lord Percy, the earl of Northumberland's eldest son, by an accident of losing his way after a fox-chase, was met by my father about a mile from our house; he came home with him, only with a design of dining with us, but was so taken with me that he stayed three days. I had too much experience in all affairs of this kind not to see presently the influence I had on him; but I was at that time so intirely free from all ambition, that even the prospect of being a countess had no effect on me; and I then thought nothing in the world could have bribed me to have changed my way of life. This young lord, who was just in his bloom, found his passion so strong, he could not endure a long absence, but returned again in a week, and endeavoured, by all the means he could think of, to engage me to return his affection. He addressed me with that tenderness and respect which women on earth think can flow from nothing but real love; and very often told me that, unless he could be so happy as by his assiduity and care to make himself agreeable to me, although he knew my father would eagerly embrace any proposal from him, yet he would suffer that last of miseries of never seeing me more rather than owe his own happiness to anything that might be the least contradiction to my inclinations. This manner of proceeding had something in it so noble and generous, that by degrees it raised a sensation in me which I know not how to describe, nor by what name to call it: it was nothing like my former passion: for there was no turbulence, no uneasy waking nights attending it, but all I could with honour grant to oblige him appeared to me to be justly due to his truth and love, and more the effect of gratitude than of any desire of my own. The character I had heard of him from my father at my first returning to England, in discoursing of the young nobility, convinced me that if I was his wife I should have the perpetual satisfaction of knowing every action of his must be approved by all the sensible part of mankind; so that very soon I began to have no scruple left but that of leaving my little scene of quietness, and venturing again into the world. But this, by his continual application and submissive behaviour, by degrees entirely vanished, and I agreed he should take his own time to break it to my father, whose consent he was not long in obtaining; for such a match was by no means to be refused. There remained nothing now to be done but to prevail with the earl of Northumberland to comply with what his son so ardently desired; for which purpose he set out immediately for London, and begged it as the greatest favour that I would accompany my father, who was also to go thither the week following. I could not refuse his request, and as soon as we arrived in town he flew to me with the greatest raptures to inform me his father was so good that, finding his happiness depended on his answer, he had given him free leave to act in this affair as would best please himself, and that he had now no obstacle to prevent his wishes. It was then the beginning of the winter, and the time for our marriage was fixed for the latter end of March: the consent of all parties made his access to me very easy, and we conversed together both with innocence and pleasure. As his fondness was so great that he contrived all the methods possible to keep me continually in his sight, he told me one morning he was commanded by his father to attend him to court that evening, and begged I would be so good as to meet him there. I was now so used to act as he would have me that I made no difficulty of complying with his desire. Two days after this, I was very much surprized at perceiving such a melancholy in his countenance, and alteration in his behaviour, as I could no way account for; but, by importunity, at last I got from him that cardinal Wolsey, for what reason he knew not, had peremptorily forbid him to think any more of me: and, when he urged that his father was not displeased with it, the cardinal, in his imperious manner, answered him, he should give his father such convincing reasons why it would be attended with great inconveniences, that he was sure he could bring him to be of his opinion. On which he turned from him, and gave him no opportunity of replying. I could not imagine what design the cardinal could have in intermeddling in this match, and I was still more perplexed to find that my father treated my lord Percy with much more coldness than usual; he too saw it, and we both wondered what could possibly be the cause of all this. But it was not long before the mystery was all made clear by my father, who, sending for me one day into his chamber, let me into a secret which was as little wished for as expected. He began with the surprizing effects of youth and beauty, and the madness of letting go those advantages they might procure us till it was too late, when we might wish in vain to bring them back again. I stood amazed at this beginning; he saw my confusion, and bid me sit down and attend to what he was going to tell me, which was of the greatest consequence; and he hoped I would be wise enough to take his advice, and act as he should think best for my future welfare. He then asked me if I should not be much pleased to be a queen? I answered, with the greatest earnestness, that, so far from it, I would not live in a court again to be the greatest queen in the world; that I had a lover who was both desirous and able to raise my station even beyond my wishes. I found this discourse was very displeasing; my father frowned, and called me a romantic fool, and said if I would hearken to him he could make me a queen; for the cardinal had told him that the king, from the time he saw me at court the other night, liked me, and intended to get a divorce from his wife, and to put me in her place; and ordered him to find some method to make me a maid of honour to her present majesty, that in the meantime he might have an opportunity of seeing me. It is impossible to express the astonishment these words threw me into; and, notwithstanding that the moment before, when it appeared at so great a distance, I was very sincere in my declaration how much it was against my will to be raised so high, yet now the prospect came nearer, I confess my heart fluttered, and my eyes were dazzled with a view of being seated on a throne. My imagination presented before me all the pomp, power, and greatness that attend a crown; and I was so perplexed I knew not what to answer, but remained as silent as if I had lost the use of my speech. My father, who guessed what it was that made me in this condition, proceeded to bring all the arguments he thought most likely to bend me to his will; at last I recovered from this dream of grandeur, and begged him, by all the most endearing names I could think of, not to urge me dishonourably to forsake the man who I was convinced would raise me to an empire if in his power, and who had enough in his power to give me all I desired. But he was deaf to all I could say, and insisted that by next week I should prepare myself to go to court: he bid me consider of it, and not prefer a ridiculous notion of honour to the real interest of my whole family; but, above all things, not to disclose what he had trusted me with. On which he left me to my own thoughts. When I was alone I reflected how little real tenderness this behaviour shewed to me, whose happiness he did not at all consult, but only looked on me as a ladder, on which he could climb to the height of his own ambitious desires: and when I thought on his fondness for me in my infancy I could impute it to nothing but either the liking me as a plaything or the gratification of his vanity in my beauty. But I was too much divided between a crown and my engagement to lord Percy to spend much time in thinking of anything else; and, although my father had positively forbid me, yet, when he came next, I could not help acquainting him with all that had passed, with the reserve only of the struggle in my own mind on the first mention of being a queen. I expected he would have received the news with the greatest agonies; but he shewed no vast emotion: however, he could not help turning pale, and, taking me by the hand, looked at me with an air of tenderness, and said, 'If being a queen would make you happy, and it is in your power to be so, I would not for the world prevent it, let me suffer what I will.' This amazing greatness of mind had on me quite the contrary effect from what it ought to have had; for, instead of increasing my love for him it almost put an end to it, and I began to think, if he could part with me, the matter was not much. And I am convinced, when any man gives up the possession of a woman whose consent he has once obtained, let his motive be ever so generous, he will disoblige her. I could not help shewing my dissatisfaction, and told him I was very glad this affair sat so easily on him. He had not power to answer, but was so suddenly struck with this unexpected ill-natured turn I gave his behaviour, that he stood amazed for some time, and then bowed and left me. Now I was again left to my own reflections; but to make anything intelligible out of them is quite impossible: I wished to be a queen, and wished I might not be one: I would have my lord Percy happy without me; and yet I would not have the power of my charms be so weak that he could bear the thought of life after being disappointed in my love. But the result of all these confused thoughts was a resolution to obey my father. I am afraid there was not much duty in the case, though at that time I was glad to take hold of that small shadow to save me from looking on my own actions in the true light. When my lover came again I looked on him with that coldness that he could not bear, on purpose to rid myself of all importunity: for since I had resolved to use him ill I regarded him as the monument of my shame, and his every look appeared to me to upbraid me. My father soon carried me to court; there I had no very hard part to act; for, with the experience I had had of mankind, I could find no great difficulty in managing a man who liked me, and for whom I not only did not care but had an utter aversion to: but this aversion he believed to be virtue; for how credulous is a man who has an inclination to believe! And I took care sometimes to drop words of cottages and love, and how happy the woman was who fixed her affections on a man in such a station of life that she might show her love without being suspected of hypocrisy or mercenary views. All this was swallowed very easily by the amorous king, who pushed on the divorce with the utmost impetuosity, although the affair lasted a good while, and I remained most part of the time behind the curtain. Whenever the king mentioned it to me I used such arguments against it as I thought the most likely to make him the more eager for it; begging that, unless his conscience was really touched, he would not on my account give any grief to his virtuous queen; for in being her handmaid I thought myself highly honoured; and that I would not only forego a crown, but even give up the pleasure of ever seeing him more, rather than wrong my royal mistress. This way of talking, joined to his eager desire to possess my person, convinced the king so strongly of my exalted merit, that he thought it a meritorious act to displace the woman (whom he could not have so good an opinion of, because he was tired of her), and to put me in her place. After about a year's stay at court, as the king's love to me began to be talked of, it was thought proper to remove me, that there might be no umbrage given to the queen's party. I was forced to comply with this, though greatly against my will; for I was very jealous that absence might change the king's mind. I retired again with my father to his country-seat, but it had no longer those charms for me which I once enjoyed there; for my mind was now too much taken up with ambition to make room for any other thoughts. During my stay here, my royal lover often sent gentlemen to me with messages and letters, which I always answered in the manner I thought would best bring about my designs, which were to come back again to court. In all the letters that passed between us there was something so kingly and commanding in his, and so deceitful and submissive in mine, that I sometimes could not help reflecting on the difference betwixt this correspondence and that with lord Percy; yet I was so pressed forward by the desire of a crown, I could not think of turning back. In all I wrote I continually praised his resolution of letting me be at a distance from him, since at this time it conduced indeed to my honour; but, what was of ten times more weight with me, I thought it was necessary for his; and I would sooner suffer anything in the world than be any means of hurt to him, either in his interest or reputation. I always gave some hints of ill health, with some reflections how necessary the peace of the mind was to that of the body. By these means I brought him to recal me again by the most absolute command, which I, for a little time, artfully delayed (for I knew the impatience of his temper would not bear any contradictions), till he made my father in a manner force me to what I most wished, with the utmost appearance of reluctance on my side. When I had gained this point I began to think which way I could separate the king from the queen, for hitherto they lived in the same house. The lady Mary, the queen's daughter, being then about sixteen, I sought for emissaries of her own age that I could confide in, to instil into her mind disrespectful thoughts of her father, and make a jest of the tenderness of his conscience about the divorce. I knew she had naturally strong passions, and that young people of that age are apt to think those that pretend to be their friends are really so, and only speak their minds freely. I afterwards contrived to have every word she spoke of him carried to the king, who took it all as I could wish, and fancied those things did not come at first from the young lady, but from her mother. He would often talk of it to me, and I agreed with him in his sentiments; but then, as a great proof of my goodness, I always endeavoured to excuse her, by saying a lady so long time used to be a royal queen might naturally be a little exasperated with those she fancied would throw her from that station she so justly deserved. By these sort of plots I found the way to make the king angry with the queen; for nothing is easier than to make a man angry with a woman he wants to be rid of, and who stands in the way between him and his pleasure; so that now the king, on the pretence of the queen's obstinacy in a point where his conscience was so tenderly concerned, parted with her. Everything was now plain before me; I had nothing farther to do but to let the king alone to his own desires; and I had no reason to fear, since they had carried him so far, but that they would urge him on to do everything I aimed at. I was created marchioness of Pembroke. This dignity sat very easy on me; for the thoughts of a much higher title took from me all feeling of this; and I looked upon being a marchioness as a trifle, not that I saw the bauble in its true light, but because it fell short of what I had figured to myself I should soon obtain. The king's desires grew very impatient, and it was not long before I was privately married to him. I was no sooner his wife than I found all the queen come upon me; I felt myself conscious of royalty, and even the faces of my most intimate acquaintance seemed to me to be quite strange. I hardly knew them: height had turned my head, and I was like a man placed on a monument, to whose sight all creatures at a great distance below him appear like so many little pigmies crawling about on the earth; and the prospect so greatly delighted me, that I did not presently consider that in both cases descending a few steps erected by human hands would place us in the number of those very pigmies who appeared so despicable. Our marriage was kept private for some time, for it was not thought proper to make it public (the affair of the divorce not being finished) till the birth of my daughter Elizabeth made it necessary. But all who saw me knew it; for my manner of speaking and acting was so much changed with my station, that all around me plainly perceived I was sure I was a queen. While it was a secret I had yet something to wish for; I could not be perfectly satisfied till all the world was acquainted with my fortune: but when my coronation was over, and I was raised to the height of my ambition, instead of finding myself happy, I was in reality more miserable than ever; for, besides that the aversion I had naturally to the king was much more difficult to dissemble after marriage than before, and grew into a perfect detestation, my imagination, which had thus warmly pursued a crown, grew cool when I was in the possession of it, and gave me time to reflect what mighty matter I had gained by all this bustle; and I often used to think myself in the case of the fox-hunter, who, when he has toiled and sweated all day in the chase as if some unheard-of blessing was to crown his success, finds at last all he has got by his labour is a stinking nauseous animal. But my condition was yet worse than his; for he leaves the loathsome wretch to be torn by his hounds, whilst I was obliged to fondle mine, and meanly pretend him to be the object of my love. For the whole time I was in this envied, this exalted state, I led a continual life of hypocrisy, which I now know nothing on earth can compensate. I had no companion but the man I hated. I dared not disclose my sentiments to any person about me, nor did any one presume to enter into any freedom of conversation with me; but all who spoke to me talked to the queen, and not to me; for they would have said just the same things to a dressed-up puppet, if the king had taken a fancy to call it his wife. And as I knew every woman in the court was my enemy, from thinking she had much more right than I had to the place I filled, I thought myself as unhappy as if I had been placed in a wild wood, where there was no human creature for me to speak to, in a continual fear of leaving any traces of my footsteps, lest I should be found by some dreadful monster, or stung by snakes and adders; for such are spiteful women to the objects of their envy. In this worst of all situations I was obliged to hide my melancholy and appear chearful. This threw me into an error the other way, and I sometimes fell into a levity in my behaviour that was afterwards made use of to my disadvantage. I had a son dead-born, which I perceived abated something of the king's ardour; for his temper could not brook the least disappointment. This gave me no uneasiness; for, not considering the consequences, I could not help being best pleased when I had least of his company. Afterwards I found he had cast his eyes on one of my maids of honour; and, whether it was owing to any art of hers, or only to the king's violent passions, I was in the end used even worse than my former mistress had been by my means. The decay of the king's affection was presently seen by all those court-sycophants who continually watch the motions of royal eyes; and the moment they found they could be heard against me they turned my most innocent actions and words, nay, even my very looks, into proofs of the blackest crimes. The king, who was impatient to enjoy his new love, lent a willing ear to all my accusers, who found ways of making him jealous that I was false to his bed. He would not so easily have believed anything against me before, but he was now glad to flatter himself that he had found a reason to do just what he had resolved upon without a reason; and on some slight pretences and hearsay evidence I was sent to the Tower, where the lady who was my greatest enemy was appointed to watch me and lie in the same chamber with me. This was really as bad a punishment as my death, for she insulted me with those keen reproaches and spiteful witticisms, which threw me into such vapours and violent fits that I knew not what I uttered in this condition. She pretended I had confessed talking ridiculous stuff with a set of low fellows whom I had hardly ever taken notice of, as could have imposed on none but such as were resolved to believe. I was brought to my trial, and, to blacken me the more, accused of conversing criminally with my own brother, whom indeed I loved extremely well, but never looked on him in any other light than as my friend. However, I was condemned to be beheaded, or burnt, as the king pleased; and he was graciously pleased, from the great remains of his love, to chuse the mildest sentence. I was much less shocked at this manner of ending my life than I should have been in any other station: but I had had so little enjoyment from the time I had been a queen, that death was the less dreadful to me. The chief things that lay on my conscience were the arts I made use of to induce the king to part with the queen, my ill usage of lady Mary, and my jilting lord Percy. However, I endeavoured to calm my mind as well as I could, and hoped these crimes would be forgiven me; for in other respects I had led a very innocent life, and always did all the good-natured actions I found any opportunity of doing. From the time I had it in my power, I gave a great deal of money amongst the poor; I prayed very devoutly, and went to my execution very composedly. Thus I lost my life at the age of twenty-nine, in which short time I believe I went through more variety of scenes than many people who live to be very old. I had lived in a court, where I spent my time in coquetry and gaiety; I had experienced what it was to have one of those violent passions which makes the mind all turbulence and anxiety; I had had a lover whom I esteemed and valued, and at the latter part of my life I was raised to a station as high as the vainest woman could wish. But in all these various changes I never enjoyed any real satisfaction, unless in the little time I lived retired in the country free from all noise and hurry, and while I was conscious I was the object of the love and esteem of a man of sense and honour." On the conclusion of this history Minos paused for a small time, and then ordered the gate to be thrown open for Anna Boleyn's admittance on the consideration that whoever had suffered being the queen for four years, and been sensible during all that time of the real misery which attends that exalted station, ought to be forgiven whatever she had done to obtain it.[K] [Illustration: text decoration] THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON. DEDICATION TO THE PUBLIC. Your candour is desired on the perusal of the following sheets, as they are the product of a genius that has long been your delight and entertainment. It must be acknowledged that a lamp almost burnt out does not give so steady and uniform a light as when it blazes in its full vigour; but yet it is well known that by its wavering, as if struggling against its own dissolution, it sometimes darts a ray as bright as ever. In like manner, a strong and lively genius will, in its last struggles, sometimes mount aloft, and throw forth the most striking marks of its original lustre. Wherever these are to be found, do you, the genuine patrons of extraordinary capacities, be as liberal in your applauses of him who is now no more as you were of him whilst he was yet amongst you. And, on the other hand, if in this little work there should appear any traces of a weakened and decayed life, let your own imaginations place before your eyes a true picture in that of a hand trembling in almost its latest hour, of a body emaciated with pains, yet struggling for your entertainment; and let this affecting picture open each tender heart, and call forth a melting tear, to blot out whatever failings may be found in a work begun in pain, and finished almost at the same period with life. It was thought proper by the friends of the deceased that this little piece should come into your hands as it came from the hands of the author, it being judged that you would be better pleased to have an opportunity of observing the faintest traces of a genius you have long admired, than have it patched by a different hand, by which means the marks of its true author might have been effaced. That the success of the last written, though first published, volume of the author's posthumous pieces may be attended with some convenience to those innocents he hath left behind, will no doubt be a motive to encourage its circulation through the kingdom, which will engage every future genius to exert itself for your pleasure. The principles and spirit which breathe in every line of the small fragment begun in answer to Lord Bolingbroke will unquestionably be a sufficient apology for its publication, although vital strength was wanting to finish a work so happily begun and so well designed. [Illustration: text decoration] PREFACE. There would not, perhaps, be a more pleasant or profitable study, among those which have their principal end in amusement, than that of travels or voyages, if they were writ, as they might be and ought to be, with a joint view to the entertainment and information of mankind. If the conversation of travellers be so eagerly sought after as it is, we may believe their books will be still more agreeable company, as they will in general be more instructive and more entertaining. But when I say the conversation of travellers is usually so welcome, I must be understood to mean that only of such as have had good sense enough to apply their peregrinations to a proper use, so as to acquire from them a real and valuable knowledge of men and things, both which are best known by comparison. If the customs and manners of men were everywhere the same, there would be no office so dull as that of a traveller, for the difference of hills, valleys, rivers, in short, the various views of which we may see the face of the earth, would scarce afford him a pleasure worthy of his labour; and surely it would give him very little opportunity of communicating any kind of entertainment or improvement to others. To make a traveller an agreeable companion to a man of sense, it is necessary, not only that he should have seen much, but that he should have overlooked much of what he hath seen. Nature is not, any more than a great genius, always admirable in her productions, and therefore the traveller, who may be called her commentator, should not expect to find everywhere subjects worthy of his notice. It is certain, indeed, that one may be guilty of omission, as well as of the opposite extreme; but a fault on that side will be more easily pardoned, as it is better to be hungry than surfeited; and to miss your dessert at the table of a man whose gardens abound with the choicest fruits, than to have your taste affronted with every sort of trash that can be picked up at the green-stall or the wheelbarrow. If we should carry on the analogy between the traveller and the commentator, it is impossible to keep one's eye a moment off from the laborious much-read doctor Zachary Gray, of whose redundant notes on Hudibras I shall only say that it is, I am confident, the single book extant in which above five hundred authors are quoted, not one of which could be found in the collection of the late doctor Mead. As there are few things which a traveller is to record, there are fewer on which he is to offer his observations: this is the office of the reader; and it is so pleasant a one, that he seldom chuses to have it taken from him, under the pretence of lending him assistance. Some occasions, indeed, there are, when proper observations are pertinent, and others when they are necessary; but good sense alone must point them out. I shall lay down only one general rule; which I believe to be of universal truth between relator and hearer, as it is between author and reader; this is, that the latter never forgive any observation of the former which doth not convey some knowledge that they are sensible they could not possibly have attained of themselves. But all his pains in collecting knowledge, all his judgment in selecting, and all his art in communicating it, will not suffice, unless he can make himself, in some degree, an agreeable as well as an instructive companion. The highest instruction we can derive from the tedious tale of a dull fellow scarce ever pays us for our attention. There is nothing, I think, half so valuable as knowledge, and yet there is nothing which men will give themselves so little trouble to attain; unless it be, perhaps, that lowest degree of it which is the object of curiosity, and which hath therefore that active passion constantly employed in its service. This, indeed, it is in the power of every traveller to gratify; but it is the leading principle in weak minds only. To render his relation agreeable to the man of sense, it is therefore necessary that the voyager should possess several eminent and rare talents; so rare indeed, that it is almost wonderful to see them ever united in the same person. And if all these talents must concur in the relator, they are certainly in a more eminent degree necessary to the writer; for here the narration admits of higher ornaments of stile, and every fact and sentiment offers itself to the fullest and most deliberate examination. It would appear, therefore, I think, somewhat strange if such writers as these should be found extremely common; since nature hath been a most parsimonious distributor of her richest talents, and hath seldom bestowed many on the same person. But, on the other hand, why there should scarce exist a single writer of this kind worthy our regard; and, whilst there is no other branch of history (for this is history) which hath not exercised the greatest pens, why this alone should be overlooked by all men of great genius and erudition, and delivered up to the Goths and Vandals as their lawful property, is altogether as difficult to determine. And yet that this is the case, with some very few exceptions, is most manifest. Of these I shall willingly admit Burnet and Addison; if the former was not, perhaps, to be considered as a political essayist, and the latter as a commentator on the classics, rather than as a writer of travels; which last title, perhaps, they would both of them have been least ambitious to affect. Indeed, if these two and two or three more should be removed from the mass, there would remain such a heap of dulness behind, that the appellation of voyage-writer would not appear very desirable. I am not here unapprized that old Homer himself is by some considered as a voyage-writer; and, indeed, the beginning of his Odyssey may be urged to countenance that opinion, which I shall not controvert. But, whatever species of writing the Odyssey is of, it is surely at the head of that species, as much as the Iliad is of another; and so far the excellent Longinus would allow, I believe, at this day. But, in reality, the Odyssey, the Telemachus, and all of that kind, are to the voyage-writing I here intend, what romance is to true history, the former being the confounder and corrupter of the latter. I am far from supposing that Homer, Hesiod, and the other antient poets and mythologists, had any settled design to pervert and confuse the records of antiquity; but it is certain they have effected it; and for my part I must confess I should have honoured and loved Homer more had he written a true history of his own times in humble prose, than those noble poems that have so justly collected the praise of all ages; for, though I read these with more admiration and astonishment, I still read Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon with more amusement and more satisfaction. The original poets were not, however, without excuse. They found the limits of nature too strait for the immensity of their genius, which they had not room to exert without extending fact by fiction: and that especially at a time when the manners of men were too simple to afford that variety which they have since offered in vain to the choice of the meanest writers. In doing this they are again excusable for the manner in which they have done it. Ut speciosa dehinc miracula promant. They are not, indeed, so properly said to turn reality into fiction, as fiction into reality. Their paintings are so bold, their colours so strong, that everything they touch seems to exist in the very manner they represent it; their portraits are so just, and their landscapes so beautiful, that we acknowledge the strokes of nature in both, without enquiring whether Nature herself, or her journeyman the poet, formed the first pattern of the piece. But other writers (I will put Pliny at their head) have no such pretensions to indulgence; they lye for lying sake, or in order insolently to impose the most monstrous improbabilities and absurdities upon their readers on their own authority; treating them as some fathers treat children, and as other fathers do laymen, exacting their belief of whatever they relate, on no other foundation than their own authority, without ever taking the pains of adapting their lies to human credulity, and of calculating them for the meridian of a common understanding; but, with as much weakness as wickedness, and with more impudence often than either, they assert facts contrary to the honour of God, to the visible order of the creation, to the known laws of nature, to the histories of former ages, and to the experience of our own, and which no man can at once understand and believe. If it should be objected (and it can nowhere be objected better than where I now write,[L] as there is nowhere more pomp of bigotry) that whole nations have been firm believers in such most absurd suppositions, I reply, the fact is not true. They have known nothing of the matter, and have believed they knew not what. It is, indeed, with me no matter of doubt but that the pope and his clergy might teach any of those Christian heterodoxies, the tenets of which are the most diametrically opposite to their own; nay, all the doctrines of Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mahomet, not only with certain and immediate success, but without one Catholick in a thousand knowing he had changed his religion. What motive a man can have to sit down, and to draw forth a list of stupid, senseless, incredible lies upon paper, would be difficult to determine, did not Vanity present herself so immediately as the adequate cause. The vanity of knowing more than other men is, perhaps, besides hunger, the only inducement to writing, at least to publishing, at all. Why then should not the voyage-writer be inflamed with the glory of having seen what no man ever did or will see but himself? This is the true source of the wonderful in the discourse and writings, and sometimes, I believe, in the actions of men. There is another fault, of a kind directly opposite to this, to which these writers are sometimes liable, when, instead of filling their pages with monsters which nobody hath ever seen, and with adventures which never have, nor could possibly have, happened to them, waste their time and paper with recording things and facts of so common a kind, that they challenge no other right of being remembered than as they had the honour of having happened to the author, to whom nothing seems trivial that in any manner happens to himself. Of such consequence do his own actions appear to one of this kind, that he would probably think himself guilty of infidelity should he omit the minutest thing in the detail of his journal. That the fact is true is sufficient to give it a place there, without any consideration whether it is capable of pleasing or surprising, of diverting or informing, the reader. I have seen a play (if I mistake not it is one of Mrs Behn's or of Mrs Centlivre's) where this vice in a voyage-writer is finely ridiculed. An ignorant pedant, to whose government, for I know not what reason, the conduct of a young nobleman in his travels is committed, and who is sent abroad to shew my lord the world, of which he knows nothing himself, before his departure from a town, calls for his journal to record the goodness of the wine and tobacco, with other articles of the same importance, which are to furnish the materials of a voyage at his return home. The humour, it is true, is here carried very far; and yet, perhaps, very little beyond what is to be found in writers who profess no intention of dealing in humour at all. Of one or other, or both of these kinds, are, I conceive, all that vast pile of books which pass under the names of voyages, travels, adventures, lives, memoirs, histories, &c., some of which a single traveller sends into the world in many volumes, and others are, by judicious booksellers, collected into vast bodies in folio, and inscribed with their own names, as if they were indeed their own travels: thus unjustly attributing to themselves the merit of others. Now, from both these faults we have endeavoured to steer clear in the following narrative; which, however the contrary may be insinuated by ignorant, unlearned, and fresh-water critics, who have never travelled either in books or ships, I do solemnly declare doth, in my own impartial opinion, deviate less from truth than any other voyage extant; my lord Anson's alone being, perhaps, excepted. Some few embellishments must be allowed to every historian; for we are not to conceive that the speeches in Livy, Sallust, or Thucydides, were literally spoken in the very words in which we now read them. It is sufficient that every fact hath its foundation in truth, as I do seriously aver is the case in the ensuing pages; and when it is so, a good critic will be so far from denying all kind of ornament of stile or diction, or even of circumstance, to his author, that he would be rather sorry if he omitted it; for he could hence derive no other advantage than the loss of an additional pleasure in the perusal. Again, if any merely common incident should appear in this journal, which will seldom I apprehend be the case, the candid reader will easily perceive it is not introduced for its own sake, but for some observations and reflexions naturally resulting from it; and which, if but little to his amusement, tend directly to the instruction of the reader or to the information of the public; to whom if I chuse to convey such instruction or information with an air of joke and laughter, none but the dullest of fellows will, I believe, censure it; but if they should, I have the authority of more than one passage in Horace to alledge in my defence. Having thus endeavoured to obviate some censures, to which a man without the gift of foresight, or any fear of the imputation of being a conjurer, might conceive this work would be liable, I might now undertake a more pleasing task, and fall at once to the direct and positive praises of the work itself; of which, indeed, I could say a thousand good things; but the task is so very pleasant that I shall leave it wholly to the reader, and it is all the task that I impose on him. A moderation for which he may think himself obliged to me when he compares it with the conduct of authors, who often fill a whole sheet with their own praises, to which they sometimes set their own real names, and sometimes a fictitious one. One hint, however, I must give the kind reader; which is, that if he should be able to find no sort of amusement in the book, he will be pleased to remember the public utility which will arise from it. If entertainment, as Mr Richardson observes, be but a secondary consideration in a romance; with which Mr Addison, I think, agrees, affirming the use of the pastry cook to be the first; if this, I say, be true of a mere work of invention, sure it may well be so considered in a work founded, like this, on truth; and where the political reflexions form so distinguishing a part. But perhaps I may hear, from some critic of the most saturnine complexion, that my vanity must have made a horrid dupe of my judgment, if it hath flattered me with an expectation of having anything here seen in a grave light, or of conveying any useful instruction to the public, or to their guardians. I answer, with the great man whom I just now quoted, that my purpose is to convey instruction in the vehicle of entertainment; and so to bring about at once, like the revolution in the Rehearsal, a perfect reformation of the laws relating to our maritime affairs: an undertaking, I will not say more modest, but surely more feasible, than that of reforming a whole people, by making use of a vehicular story, to wheel in among them worse manners than their own. [Illustration: text decoration] INTRODUCTION. In the beginning of August, 1753, when I had taken the duke of Portland's medicine, as it is called, near a year, the effects of which had been the carrying off the symptoms of a lingering imperfect gout, I was persuaded by Mr Ranby, the king's premier serjeant-surgeon, and the ablest advice, I believe, in all branches of the physical profession, to go immediately to Bath. I accordingly writ that very night to Mrs Bowden, who, by the next post, informed me she had taken me a lodging for a month certain. Within a few days after this, whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost fatigued to death with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed within the space of a week, by different gangs of street-robbers, I received a message from his grace the duke of Newcastle, by Mr Carrington, the king's messenger, to attend his grace the next morning, in Lincoln's-inn-fields, upon some business of importance; but I excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill with the great fatigues I had lately undergone added to my distemper. His grace, however, sent Mr Carrington, the very next morning, with another summons; with which, though in the utmost distress, I immediately complied; but the duke, happening, unfortunately for me, to be then particularly engaged, after I had waited some time, sent a gentleman to discourse with me on the best plan which could be invented for putting an immediate end to those murders and robberies which were every day committed in the streets; upon which I promised to transmit my opinion, in writing, to his grace, who, as the gentleman informed me, intended to lay it before the privy council. Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set myself down to work; and in about four days sent the duke as regular a plan as I could form, with all the reasons and arguments I could bring to support it, drawn out in several sheets of paper; and soon received a message from the duke by Mr Carrington, acquainting me that my plan was highly approved of, and that all the terms of it would be complied with. The principal and most material of those terms was the immediately depositing six hundred pounds in my hands; at which small charge I undertook to demolish the then reigning gangs, and to put the civil policy into such order, that no such gangs should ever be able, for the future, to form themselves into bodies, or at least to remain any time formidable to the public. I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the repeated advice of my physical acquaintance, and to the ardent desire of my warmest friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice; in which case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire of demolishing this gang of villains and cut-throats, which I was sure of accomplishing the moment I was enabled to pay a fellow who had undertaken, for a small sum, to betray them into the hands of a set of thief-takers whom I had enlisted into the service, all men of known and approved fidelity and intrepidity. After some weeks the money was paid at the treasury, and within a few days after two hundred pounds of it had come to my hands, the whole gang of cut-throats was entirely dispersed, seven of them were in actual custody, and the rest driven, some out of the town, and others out of the kingdom. Though my health was now reduced to the last extremity, I continued to act with the utmost vigour against these villains; in examining whom, and in taking the depositions against them, I have often spent whole days, nay, sometimes whole nights, especially when there was any difficulty in procuring sufficient evidence to convict them; which is a very common case in street-robberies, even when the guilt of the party is sufficiently apparent to satisfy the most tender conscience. But courts of justice know nothing of a cause more than what is told them on oath by a witness; and the most flagitious villain upon earth is tried in the same manner as a man of the best character who is accused of the same crime. Meanwhile, amidst all my fatigues and distresses, I had the satisfaction to find my endeavours had been attended with such success that this hellish society were almost utterly extirpated, and that, instead of reading of murders and street-robberies in the news almost every morning, there was, in the remaining part of the month of November, and in all December, not only no such thing as a murder, but not even a street-robbery committed. Some such, indeed, were mentioned in the public papers; but they were all found, on the strictest enquiry, to be false. In this entire freedom from street-robberies, during the dark months, no man will, I believe, scruple to acknowledge that the winter of 1753 stands unrivaled, during a course of many years; and this may possibly appear the more extraordinary to those who recollect the outrages with which it began. Having thus fully accomplished my undertaking, I went into the country, in a very weak and deplorable condition, with no fewer or less diseases than a jaundice, a dropsy, and an asthma, altogether uniting their forces in the destruction of a body so entirely emaciated that it had lost all its muscular flesh. Mine was now no longer what was called a Bath case; nor, if it had been so, had I strength remaining sufficient to go thither, a ride of six miles only being attended with an intolerable fatigue. I now discharged my lodgings at Bath, which I had hitherto kept. I began in earnest to look on my case as desperate, and I had vanity enough to rank myself with those heroes who, of old times, became voluntary sacrifices to the good of the public. But, lest the reader should be too eager to catch at the word _vanity_, and should be unwilling to indulge me with so sublime a gratification, for I think he is not too apt to gratify me, I will take my key a pitch lower, and will frankly own that I had a stronger motive than the love of the public to push me on: I will therefore confess to him that my private affairs at the beginning of the winter had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public or the poor of those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking: on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been universally practised), and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about five hundred pounds[M] a-year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more than three hundred pounds; a considerable proportion of which remained with my clerk; and, indeed, if the whole had done so, as it ought, he would be but ill paid for sitting almost sixteen hours in the twenty-four in the most unwholesome, as well as nauseous air in the universe, and which hath in his case corrupted a good constitution without contaminating his morals. But, not to trouble the reader with anecdotes, contrary to my own rule laid down in my preface, I assure him I thought my family was very slenderly provided for; and that my health began to decline so fast that I had very little more of life left to accomplish what I had thought of too late. I rejoiced therefore greatly in seeing an opportunity, as I apprehended, of gaining such merit in the eye of the public, that, if my life were the sacrifice to it, my friends might think they did a popular act in putting my family at least beyond the reach of necessity, which I myself began to despair of doing. And though I disclaim all pretence to that Spartan or Roman patriotism which loved the public so well that it was always ready to become a voluntary sacrifice to the public good, I do solemnly declare I have that love for my family. After this confession therefore, that the public was not the principal deity to which my life was offered a sacrifice, and when it is farther considered what a poor sacrifice this was, being indeed no other than the giving up what I saw little likelihood of being able to hold much longer, and which, upon the terms I held it, nothing but the weakness of human nature could represent to me as worth holding at all; the world may, I believe, without envy, allow me all the praise to which I have any title. My aim, in fact, was not praise, which is the last gift they care to bestow; at least, this was not my aim as an end, but rather as a means of purchasing some moderate provision for my family, which, though it should exceed my merit, must fall infinitely short of my service, if I succeeded in my attempt. To say the truth, the public never act more wisely than when they act most liberally in the distribution of their rewards; and here the good they receive is often more to be considered than the motive from which they receive it. Example alone is the end of all public punishments and rewards. Laws never inflict disgrace in resentment, nor confer honour from gratitude. "For it is very hard, my lord," said a convicted felon at the bar to the late excellent judge Burnet, "to hang a poor man for stealing a horse." "You are not to be hanged, sir," answered my ever-honoured and beloved friend, "for stealing a horse, but you are to be hanged that horses may not be stolen." In like manner it might have been said to the late duke of Marlborough, when the parliament was so deservedly liberal to him, after the battle of Blenheim, "You receive not these honours and bounties on account of a victory past, but that other victories may be obtained." I was now, in the opinion of all men, dying of a complication of disorders; and, were I desirous of playing the advocate, I have an occasion fair enough; but I disdain such an attempt. I relate facts plainly and simply as they are; and let the world draw from them what conclusions they please, taking with them the following facts for their instruction: the one is, that the proclamation offering one hundred pounds for the apprehending felons for certain felonies committed in certain places, which I prevented from being revived, had formerly cost the government several thousand pounds within a single year. Secondly, that all such proclamations, instead of curing the evil, had actually encreased it; had multiplied the number of robberies; had propagated the worst and wickedest of perjuries; had laid snares for youth and ignorance, which, by the temptation of these rewards, had been sometimes drawn into guilt; and sometimes, which cannot be thought on without the highest horror, had destroyed them without it. Thirdly, that my plan had not put the government to more than three hundred pound expence, and had produced none of the ill consequences above mentioned; but, lastly, had actually suppressed the evil for a time, and had plainly pointed out the means of suppressing it for ever. This I would myself have undertaken, had my health permitted, at the annual expense of the above-mentioned sum. After having stood the terrible six weeks which succeeded last Christmas, and put a lucky end, if they had known their own interests, to such numbers of aged and infirm valetudinarians, who might have gasped through two or three mild winters more, I returned to town in February, in a condition less despaired of by myself than by any of my friends. I now became the patient of Dr Ward, who wished I had taken his advice earlier. By his advice I was tapped, and fourteen quarts of water drawn from my belly. The sudden relaxation which this caused, added to my enervate, emaciated habit of body, so weakened me that within two days I was thought to be falling into the agonies of death. I was at the worst on that memorable day when the public lost Mr Pelham. From that day I began slowly, as it were, to draw my feet out of the grave; till in two months' time I had again acquired some little degree of strength, but was again full of water. During this whole time I took Mr Ward's medicines, which had seldom any perceptible operation. Those in particular of the diaphoretic kind, the working of which is thought to require a great strength of constitution to support, had so little effect on me, that Mr Ward declared it was as vain to attempt sweating me as a deal board. In this situation I was tapped a second time. I had one quart of water less taken from me now than before; but I bore all the consequences of the operation much better. This I attributed greatly to a dose of laudanum prescribed by my surgeon. It first gave me the most delicious flow of spirits, and afterwards as comfortable a nap. The month of May, which was now begun, it seemed reasonable to expect would introduce the spring, and drive off that winter which yet maintained its footing on the stage. I resolved therefore to visit a little house of mine in the country, which stands at Ealing, in the county of Middlesex, in the best air, I believe, in the whole kingdom, and far superior to that of Kensington Gravel-pits; for the gravel is here much wider and deeper, the place higher and more open towards the south, whilst it is guarded from the north wind by a ridge of hills, and from the smells and smoak of London by its distance; which last is not the fate of Kensington, when the wind blows from any corner of the east. Obligations to Mr Ward I shall always confess; for I am convinced that he omitted no care in endeavouring to serve me, without any expectation or desire of fee or reward. The powers of Mr Ward's remedies want indeed no unfair puffs of mine to give them credit; and though this distemper of the dropsy stands, I believe, first in the list of those over which he is always certain of triumphing, yet, possibly, there might be something particular in my case capable of eluding that radical force which had healed so many thousands. The same distemper, in different constitutions, may possibly be attended with such different symptoms, that to find an infallible nostrum for the curing any one distemper in every patient may be almost as difficult as to find a panacea for the cure of all. But even such a panacea one of the greatest scholars and best of men did lately apprehend he had discovered. It is true, indeed, he was no physician; that is, he had not by the forms of his education acquired a right of applying his skill in the art of physic to his own private advantage; and yet, perhaps, it may be truly asserted that no other modern hath contributed so much to make his physical skill useful to the public; at least, that none hath undergone the pains of communicating this discovery in writing to the world. The reader, I think, will scarce need to be informed that the writer I mean is the late bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, and the discovery that of the virtues of tar-water. I then happened to recollect, upon a hint given me by the inimitable and shamefully-distressed author of the Female Quixote, that I had many years before, from curiosity only, taken a cursory view of bishop Berkeley's treatise on the virtues of tar-water, which I had formerly observed he strongly contends to be that real panacea which Sydenham supposes to have an existence in nature, though it yet remains undiscovered, and perhaps will always remain so. Upon the reperusal of this book I found the bishop only asserting his opinion that tar-water might be useful in the dropsy, since he had known it to have a surprising success in the cure of a most stubborn anasarca, which is indeed no other than, as the word implies, the dropsy of the flesh; and this was, at that time, a large part of my complaint. After a short trial, therefore, of a milk diet, which I presently found did not suit with my case, I betook myself to the bishop's prescription, and dosed myself every morning and evening with half a pint of tar-water. It was no more than three weeks since my last tapping, and my belly and limbs were distended with water. This did not give me the worse opinion of tar-water; for I never supposed there could be any such virtue in tar-water as immediately to carry off a quantity of water already collected. For my delivery from this I well knew I must be again obliged to the trochar; and that if the tar-water did me any good at all it must be only by the slowest degrees; and that if it should ever get the better of my distemper it must be by the tedious operation of undermining, and not by a sudden attack and storm. Some visible effects, however, and far beyond what my most sanguine hopes could with any modesty expect, I very soon experienced; the tar-water having, from the very first, lessened my illness, increased my appetite, and added, though in a very slow proportion, to my bodily strength. But if my strength had increased a little my water daily increased much more. So that, by the end of May, my belly became again ripe for the trochar, and I was a third time tapped; upon which, two very favourable symptoms appeared. I had three quarts of water taken from me less than had been taken the last time; and I bore the relaxation with much less (indeed with scarce any) faintness. Those of my physical friends on whose judgment I chiefly depended seemed to think my only chance of life consisted in having the whole summer before me; in which I might hope to gather sufficient strength to encounter the inclemencies of the ensuing winter. But this chance began daily to lessen. I saw the summer mouldering away, or rather, indeed, the year passing away without intending to bring on any summer at all. In the whole month of May the sun scarce appeared three times. So that the early fruits came to the fulness of their growth, and to some appearance of ripeness, without acquiring any real maturity; having wanted the heat of the sun to soften and meliorate their juices. I saw the dropsy gaining rather than losing ground; the distance growing still shorter between the tappings. I saw the asthma likewise beginning again to become more troublesome. I saw the midsummer quarter drawing towards a close. So that I conceived, if the Michaelmas quarter should steal off in the same manner, as it was, in my opinion, very much to be apprehended it would, I should be delivered up to the attacks of winter before I recruited my forces, so as to be anywise able to withstand them. I now began to recall an intention, which from the first dawnings of my recovery I had conceived, of removing to a warmer climate; and, finding this to be approved of by a very eminent physician, I resolved to put it into immediate execution. Aix in Provence was the place first thought on; but the difficulties of getting thither were insuperable. The journey by land, beside the expence of it, was infinitely too long and fatiguing; and I could hear of no ship that was likely to set out from London, within any reasonable time, for Marseilles, or any other port in that part of the Mediterranean. Lisbon was presently fixed on in its room. The air here, as it was near four degrees to the south of Aix, must be more mild and warm, and the winter shorter and less piercing. It was not difficult to find a ship bound to a place with which we carry on so immense a trade. Accordingly, my brother soon informed me of the excellent accommodations for passengers which were to be found on board a ship that was obliged to sail for Lisbon in three days. I eagerly embraced the offer, notwithstanding the shortness of the time; and, having given my brother full power to contract for our passage, I began to prepare my family for the voyage with the utmost expedition. But our great haste was needless; for the captain having twice put off his sailing, I at length invited him to dinner with me at Fordhook, a full week after the time on which he had declared, and that with many asseverations, he must and would weigh anchor. He dined with me according to his appointment; and when all matters were settled between us, left me with positive orders to be on board the Wednesday following, when he declared he would fall down the river to Gravesend, and would not stay a moment for the greatest man in the world. He advised me to go to Gravesend by land, and there wait the arrival of his ship, assigning many reasons for this, every one of which was, as I well remember, among those that had before determined me to go on board near the Tower. [Illustration: text decoration] THE VOYAGE. _Wednesday, June 26, 1754._--On this day the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom I doated with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and passion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school where I had learned to bear pains and to despise death. In this situation, as I could not conquer Nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she made as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever; under pretence of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me in to suffer, the company of my little ones during eight hours; and I doubt not whether, in that time, I did not undergo more than in all my distemper. At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no sooner told me than I kissed my children round, and went into it with some little resolution. My wife, who behaved more like a heroine and philosopher, though at the same time the tenderest mother in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me; some friends went with us, and others here took their leave; and I heard my behaviour applauded, with many murmurs and praises to which I well knew I had no title; as all other such philosophers may, if they have any modesty, confess on the like occasions. In two hours we arrived in Rotherhithe, and immediately went on board, and were to have sailed the next morning; but, as this was the king's proclamation-day, and consequently a holiday at the custom-house, the captain could not clear his vessel till the Thursday; for these holidays are as strictly observed as those in the popish calendar, and are almost as numerous. I might add that both are opposite to the genius of trade, and consequently _contra bonum publicum_. To go on board the ship it was necessary first to go into a boat; a matter of no small difficulty, as I had no use of my limbs, and was to be carried by men who, though sufficiently strong for their burthen, were, like Archimedes, puzzled to find a steady footing. Of this, as few of my readers have not gone into wherries on the Thames, they will easily be able to form to themselves an idea. However, by the assistance of my friend Mr Welch, whom I never think or speak of but with love and esteem, I conquered this difficulty, as I did afterwards that of ascending the ship, into which I was hoisted with more ease by a chair lifted with pulleys. I was soon seated in a great chair in the cabin, to refresh myself after a fatigue which had been more intolerable, in a quarter of a mile's passage from my coach to the ship, than I had before undergone in a land-journey of twelve miles, which I had travelled with the utmost expedition. This latter fatigue was, perhaps, somewhat heightened by an indignation which I could not prevent arising in my mind. I think, upon my entrance into the boat, I presented a spectacle of the highest horror. The total loss of limbs was apparent to all who saw me, and my face contained marks of a most diseased state, if not of death itself. Indeed, so ghastly was my countenance, that timorous women with child had abstained from my house, for fear of the ill consequences of looking at me. In this condition I ran the gauntlope (so I think I may justly call it) through rows of sailors and watermen, few of whom failed of paying their compliments to me by all manner of insults and jests on my misery. No man who knew me will think I conceived any personal resentment at this behaviour; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of men which I have often contemplated with concern, and which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy thoughts. It may be said that this barbarous custom is peculiar to the English, and of them only to the lowest degree; that it is an excrescence of an uncontrouled licentiousness mistaken for liberty, and never shews itself in men who are polished and refined in such manner as human nature requires to produce that perfection of which it is susceptible, and to purge away that malevolence of disposition of which, at our birth, we partake in common with the savage creation. This may be said, and this is all that can be said; and it is, I am afraid, but little satisfactory to account for the inhumanity of those who, while they boast of being made after God's own image, seem to bear in their minds a resemblance of the vilest species of brutes; or rather, indeed, of our idea of devils; for I don't know that any brutes can be taxed with such malevolence. A surloin of beef was now placed on the table, for which, though little better than carrion, as much was charged by the master of the little paltry ale-house who dressed it as would have been demanded for all the elegance of the King's Arms, or any other polite tavern or eating-house! for, indeed, the difference between the best house and the worst is, that at the former you pay largely for luxury, at the latter for nothing. _Thursday, June 27._--This morning the captain, who lay on shore at his own house, paid us a visit in the cabin, and behaved like an angry bashaw, declaring that, had he known we were not to be pleased, he would not have carried us for five hundred pounds. He added many asseverations that he was a gentleman, and despised money; not forgetting several hints of the presents which had been made him for his cabin, of twenty, thirty, and forty guineas, by several gentlemen, over and above the sum for which they had contracted. This behaviour greatly surprised me, as I knew not how to account for it, nothing having happened since we parted from the captain the evening before in perfect good-humour; and all this broke forth on the first moment of his arrival this morning. He did not, however, suffer my amazement to have any long continuance before he clearly shewed me that all this was meant only as an apology to introduce another procrastination (being the fifth) of his weighing anchor, which was now postponed till Saturday, for such was his will and pleasure. Besides the disagreeable situation in which we then lay, in the confines of Wapping and Rotherhithe, tasting a delicious mixture of the air of both these sweet places, and enjoying the concord of sweet sounds of seamen, watermen, fish-women, oyster-women, and of all the vociferous inhabitants of both shores, composing altogether a greater variety of harmony than Hogarth's imagination hath brought together in that print of his, which is enough to make a man deaf to look at--I had a more urgent cause to press our departure, which was, that the dropsy, for which I had undergone three tappings, seemed to threaten me with a fourth discharge before I should reach Lisbon, and when I should have nobody on board capable of performing the operation; but I was obliged to hearken to the voice of reason, if I may use the captain's own words, and to rest myself contented. Indeed, there was no alternative within my reach but what would have cost me much too dear. There are many evils in society from which people of the highest rank are so entirely exempt, that they have not the least knowledge or idea of them; nor indeed of the characters which are formed by them. Such, for instance, is the conveyance of goods and passengers from one place to another. Now there is no such thing as any kind of knowledge contemptible in itself; and, as the particular knowledge I here mean is entirely necessary to the well understanding and well enjoying this journal; and, lastly, as in this case the most ignorant will be those very readers whose amusement we chiefly consult, and to whom we wish to be supposed principally to write, we will here enter somewhat largely into the discussion of this matter; the rather, for that no antient or modern author (if we can trust the catalogue of doctor Mead's library) hath ever undertaken it, but that it seems (in the style of Don Quixote) a task reserved for my pen alone. When I first conceived this intention I began to entertain thoughts of enquiring into the antiquity of travelling; and, as many persons have performed in this way (I mean have travelled) at the expence of the public, I flattered myself that the spirit of improving arts and sciences, and of advancing useful and substantial learning, which so eminently distinguishes this age, and hath given rise to more speculative societies in Europe than I at present can recollect the names of--perhaps, indeed, than I or any other, besides their very near neighbours, ever heard mentioned--would assist in promoting so curious a work; a work begun with the same views, calculated for the same purposes, and fitted for the same uses, with the labours which those right honourable societies have so chearfully undertaken themselves, and encouraged in others; sometimes with the highest honours, even with admission into their colleges, and with inrolment among their members. From these societies I promised myself all assistance in their power, particularly the communication of such valuable manuscripts and records as they must be supposed to have collected from those obscure ages of antiquity when history yields us such imperfect accounts of the residence, and much more imperfect of the travels, of the human race; unless, perhaps, as a curious and learned member of the young Society of Antiquarians is said to have hinted his conjectures, that their residence and their travels were one and the same; and this discovery (for such it seems to be) he is said to have owed to the lighting by accident on a book, which we shall have occasion to mention presently, the contents of which were then little known to the society. The king of Prussia, moreover, who, from a degree of benevolence and taste which in either case is a rare production in so northern a climate, is the great encourager of art and science, I was well assured would promote so useful a design, and order his archives to be searched on my behalf. But after well weighing all these advantages, and much meditation on the order of my work, my whole design was subverted in a moment by hearing of the discovery just mentioned to have been made by the young antiquarian, who, from the most antient record in the world (though I don't find the society are all agreed on this point), one long preceding the date of the earliest modern collections, either of books or butterflies, none of which pretend to go beyond the flood, shews us that the first man was a traveller, and that he and his family were scarce settled in Paradise before they disliked their own home, and became passengers to another place. Hence it appears that the humour of travelling is as old as the human race, and that it was their curse from the beginning. By this discovery my plan became much shortened, and I found it only necessary to treat of the conveyance of goods and passengers from place to place; which, not being universally known, seemed proper to be explained before we examined into its original. There are indeed two different ways of tracing all things used by the historian and the antiquary; these are upwards and downwards. The former shews you how things are, and leaves to others to discover when they began to be so. The latter shews you how things were, and leaves their present existence to be examined by others. Hence the former is more useful, the latter more curious. The former receives the thanks of mankind; the latter of that valuable part, the virtuosi. In explaining, therefore, this mystery of carrying goods and passengers from one place to another, hitherto so profound a secret to the very best of our readers, we shall pursue the historical method, and endeavour to shew by what means it is at present performed, referring the more curious enquiry either to some other pen or to some other opportunity. Now there are two general ways of performing (if God permit) this conveyance, viz., by land and water, both of which have much variety; that by land being performed in different vehicles, such as coaches, caravans, waggons, &c.; and that by water in ships, barges, and boats, of various sizes and denominations. But, as all these methods of conveyance are formed on the same principles, they agree so well together, that it is fully sufficient to comprehend them all in the general view, without descending to such minute particulars as would distinguish one method from another. Common to all of these is one general principle, that, as the goods to be conveyed are usually the larger, so they are to be chiefly considered in the conveyance; the owner being indeed little more than an appendage to his trunk, or box, or bale, or at best a small part of his own baggage, very little care is to be taken in stowing or packing them up with convenience to himself; for the conveyance is not of passengers and goods, but of goods and passengers. Secondly, from this conveyance arises a new kind of relation, or rather of subjection, in the society, by which the passenger becomes bound in allegiance to his conveyer. This allegiance is indeed only temporary and local, but the most absolute during its continuance of any known in Great Britain, and, to say truth, scarce consistent with the liberties of a free people, nor could it be reconciled with them, did it not move downwards; a circumstance universally apprehended to be incompatible to all kinds of slavery; for Aristotle in his Politicks hath proved abundantly to my satisfaction that no men are born to be slaves, except barbarians; and these only to such as are not themselves barbarians; and indeed Mr Montesquieu hath carried it very little farther in the case of the Africans; the real truth being that no man is born to be a slave, unless to him who is able to make him so. Thirdly, this subjection is absolute, and consists of a perfect resignation both of body and soul to the disposal of another; after which resignation, during a certain time, his subject retains no more power over his own will than an Asiatic slave, or an English wife, by the laws of both countries, and by the customs of one of them. If I should mention the instance of a stage-coachman, many of my readers would recognise the truth of what I have here observed; all, indeed, that ever have been under the dominion of that tyrant, who in this free country is as absolute as a Turkish bashaw. In two particulars only his power is defective; he cannot press you into his service, and if you enter yourself at one place, on condition of being discharged at a certain time at another, he is obliged to perform his agreement, if God permit, but all the intermediate time you are absolutely under his government; he carries you how he will, when he will, and whither he will, provided it be not much out of the road; you have nothing to eat or to drink, but what, and when, and where he pleases. Nay, you cannot sleep unless he pleases you should; for he will order you sometimes out of bed at midnight and hurry you away at a moment's warning: indeed, if you can sleep in his vehicle he cannot prevent it; nay, indeed, to give him his due, this he is ordinarily disposed to encourage: for the earlier he forces you to rise in the morning, the more time he will give you in the heat of the day, sometimes even six hours at an ale-house, or at their doors, where he always gives you the same indulgence which he allows himself; and for this he is generally very moderate in his demands. I have known a whole bundle of passengers charged no more than half-a-crown for being suffered to remain quiet at an ale-house door for above a whole hour, and that even in the hottest day in summer. But as this kind of tyranny, though it hath escaped our political writers, hath been I think touched by our dramatic, and is more trite among the generality of readers; and as this and all other kinds of such subjection are alike unknown to my friends, I will quit the passengers by land, and treat of those who travel by water; for whatever is said on this subject is applicable to both alike, and we may bring them together as closely as they are brought in the liturgy, when they are recommended to the prayers of all Christian congregations; and (which I have often thought very remarkable) where they are joined with other miserable wretches, such as women in labour, people in sickness, infants just born, prisoners and captives. Goods and passengers are conveyed by water in divers vehicles, the principal of which being a ship, it shall suffice to mention that alone. Here the tyrant doth not derive his title, as the stage-coachman doth, from the vehicle itself in which he stows his goods and passengers, but he is called the captain--a word of such various use and uncertain signification, that it seems very difficult to fix any positive idea to it: if, indeed, there be any general meaning which may comprehend all its different uses, that of the head or chief of any body of men seems to be most capable of this comprehension; for whether they be a company of soldiers, a crew of sailors, or a gang of rogues, he who is at the head of them is always stiled the captain. The particular tyrant whose fortune it was to stow us aboard laid a farther claim to this appellation than the bare command of a vehicle of conveyance. He had been the captain of a privateer, which he chose to call being in the king's service, and thence derived a right of hoisting the military ornament of a cockade over the button of his hat. He likewise wore a sword of no ordinary length by his side, with which he swaggered in his cabin, among the wretches his passengers, whom he had stowed in cupboards on each side. He was a person of a very singular character. He had taken it into his head that he was a gentleman, from those very reasons that proved he was not one; and to shew himself a fine gentleman, by a behaviour which seemed to insinuate he had never seen one. He was, moreover, a man of gallantry; at the age of seventy he had the finicalness of Sir Courtly Nice, with the roughness of Surly; and, while he was deaf himself, had a voice capable of deafening all others. Now, as I saw myself in danger by the delays of the captain, who was, in reality, waiting for more freight, and as the wind had been long nested, as it were, in the south-west, where it constantly blew hurricanes, I began with great reason to apprehend that our voyage might be long, and that my belly, which began already to be much extended, would require the water to be let out at a time when no assistance was at hand; though, indeed, the captain comforted me with assurances that he had a pretty young fellow on board who acted as his surgeon, as I found he likewise did as steward, cook, butler, sailor. In short, he had as many offices as Scrub in the play, and went through them all with great dexterity; this of surgeon was, perhaps, the only one in which his skill was somewhat deficient, at least that branch of tapping for the dropsy; for he very ingenuously and modestly confessed he had never seen the operation performed, nor was possessed of that chirurgical instrument with which it is performed. _Friday, June 28._--By way of prevention, therefore, I this day sent for my friend Mr Hunter, the great surgeon and anatomist of Covent-garden; and, though my belly was not yet very full and tight, let out ten quarts of water; the young sea-surgeon attended the operation, not as a performer, but as a student. I was now eased of the greatest apprehension which I had from the length of the passage; and I told the captain I was become indifferent as to the time of his sailing. He expressed much satisfaction in this declaration, and at hearing from me that I found myself, since my tapping, much lighter and better. In this, I believe, he was sincere; for he was, as we shall have occasion to observe more than once, a very good-natured man; and, as he was a very brave one too, I found that the heroic constancy with which I had borne an operation that is attended with scarce any degree of pain had not a little raised me in his esteem. That he might adhere, therefore, in the most religious and rigorous manner to his word, when he had no longer any temptation from interest to break it, as he had no longer any hopes of more goods or passengers, he ordered his ship to fall down to Gravesend on Sunday morning, and there to wait his arrival. _Sunday, June 30._--Nothing worth notice passed till that morning, when my poor wife, after passing a night in the utmost torments of the toothache, resolved to have it drawn. I despatched therefore a servant into Wapping to bring in haste the best tooth-drawer he could find. He soon found out a female of great eminence in the art; but when he brought her to the boat, at the water-side, they were informed that the ship was gone; for indeed she had set out a few minutes after his quitting her; nor did the pilot, who well knew the errand on which I had sent my servant, think fit to wait a moment for his return, or to give me any notice of his setting out, though I had very patiently attended the delays of the captain four days, after many solemn promises of weighing anchor every one of the three last. But of all the petty bashaws or turbulent tyrants I ever beheld, this sour-faced pilot was the worst tempered; for, during the time that he had the guidance of the ship, which was till we arrived in the Downs, he complied with no one's desires, nor did he give a civil word, or indeed a civil look, to any on board. The tooth-drawer, who, as I said before, was one of great eminence among her neighbours, refused to follow the ship; so that my man made himself the best of his way, and with some difficulty came up with us before we were got under full sail; for after that, as we had both wind and tide with us, he would have found it impossible to overtake the ship till she was come to an anchor at Gravesend. The morning was fair and bright, and we had a passage thither, I think, as pleasant as can be conceived: for, take it with all its advantages, particularly the number of fine ships you are always sure of seeing by the way, there is nothing to equal it in all the rivers of the world. The yards of Deptford and of Woolwich are noble sights, and give us a just idea of the great perfection to which we are arrived in building those floating castles, and the figure which we may always make in Europe among the other maritime powers. That of Woolwich, at least, very strongly imprinted this idea on my mind; for there was now on the stocks there the Royal Anne, supposed to be the largest ship ever built, and which contains ten carriage-guns more than had ever yet equipped a first-rate. It is true, perhaps, that there is more of ostentation than of real utility in ships of this vast and unwieldy burthen, which are rarely capable of acting against an enemy; but if the building such contributes to preserve, among other nations, the notion of the British superiority in naval affairs, the expence, though very great, is well incurred, and the ostentation is laudable and truly political. Indeed, I should be sorry to allow that Holland, France, or Spain, possessed a vessel larger and more beautiful than the largest and most beautiful of ours; for this honour I would always administer to the pride of our sailors, who should challenge it from all their neighbours with truth and success. And sure I am that not our honest tars alone, but every inhabitant of this island, may exult in the comparison, when he considers the king of Great Britain as a maritime prince, in opposition to any other prince in Europe; but I am not so certain that the same idea of superiority will result from comparing our land forces with those of many other crowned heads. In numbers they all far exceed us, and in the goodness and splendour of their troops many nations, particularly the Germans and French, and perhaps the Dutch, cast us at a distance; for, however we may flatter ourselves with the Edwards and Henrys of former ages, the change of the whole art of war since those days, by which the advantage of personal strength is in a manner entirely lost, hath produced a change in military affairs to the advantage of our enemies. As for our successes in later days, if they were not entirely owing to the superior genius of our general, they were not a little due to the superior force of his money. Indeed, if we should arraign marshal Saxe of ostentation when he shewed his army, drawn up, to our captive general, the day after the battle of La Val, we cannot say that the ostentation was entirely vain; since he certainly shewed him an army which had not been often equalled, either in the number or goodness of the troops, and which, in those respects, so far exceeded ours, that none can ever cast any reflexion on the brave young prince who could not reap the lawrels of conquest in that day; but his retreat will be always mentioned as an addition to his glory. In our marine the case is entirely the reverse, and it must be our own fault if it doth not continue so; for continue so it will as long as the flourishing state of our trade shall support it, and this support it can never want till our legislature shall cease to give sufficient attention to the protection of our trade, and our magistrates want sufficient power, ability, and honesty, to execute the laws; a circumstance not to be apprehended, as it cannot happen till our senates and our benches shall be filled with the blindest ignorance, or with the blackest corruption. Besides the ships in the docks, we saw many on the water: the yatchts are sights of great parade, and the king's body yatcht is, I believe, unequalled in any country for convenience as well as magnificence; both which are consulted in building and equipping her with the most exquisite art and workmanship. We saw likewise several Indiamen just returned from their voyage. These are, I believe, the largest and finest vessels which are anywhere employed in commercial affairs. The colliers, likewise, which are very numerous, and even assemble in fleets, are ships of great bulk; and if we descend to those used in the American, African, and European trades, and pass through those which visit our own coasts, to the small craft that lie between Chatham and the Tower, the whole forms a most pleasing object to the eye, as well as highly warming to the heart of an Englishman who has any degree of love for his country, or can recognise any effect of the patriot in his constitution. Lastly, the Royal Hospital at Greenwich, which presents so delightful a front to the water, and doth such honour at once to its builder and the nation, to the great skill and ingenuity of the one, and to the no less sensible gratitude of the other, very properly closes the account of this scene; which may well appear romantic to those who have not themselves seen that, in this one instance, truth and reality are capable, perhaps, of exceeding the power of fiction. When we had past by Greenwich we saw only two or three gentlemen's houses, all of very moderate account, till we reached Gravesend: these are all on the Kentish shore, which affords a much drier, wholesomer, and pleasanter situation, than doth that of its opposite, Essex. This circumstance, I own, is somewhat surprising to me, when I reflect on the numerous villas that crowd the river from Chelsea upwards as far as Shepperton, where the narrower channel affords not half so noble a prospect, and where the continual succession of the small craft, like the frequent repetition of all things, which have nothing in them great, beautiful, or admirable, tire the eye, and give us distaste and aversion, instead of pleasure. With some of these situations, such as Barnes, Mortlake, &c., even the shore of Essex might contend, not upon very unequal terms; but on the Kentish borders there are many spots to be chosen by the builder which might justly claim the preference over almost the very finest of those in Middlesex and Surrey. How shall we account for this depravity in taste? for surely there are none so very mean and contemptible as to bring the pleasure of seeing a number of little wherries, gliding along after one another, in competition with what we enjoy in viewing a succession of ships, with all their sails expanded to the winds, bounding over the waves before us. And here I cannot pass by another observation on the deplorable want of taste in our enjoyments, which we shew by almost totally neglecting the pursuit of what seems to me the highest degree of amusement; this is, the sailing ourselves in little vessels of our own, contrived only for our ease and accommodation, to which such situations of our villas as I have recommended would be so convenient, and even necessary. This amusement, I confess, if enjoyed in any perfection, would be of the expensive kind; but such expence would not exceed the reach of a moderate fortune, and would fall very short of the prices which are daily paid for pleasures of a far inferior rate. The truth, I believe, is, that sailing in the manner I have just mentioned is a pleasure rather unknown, or unthought of, than rejected by those who have experienced it; unless, perhaps, the apprehension of danger or sea-sickness may be supposed, by the timorous and delicate, to make too large deductions--insisting that all their enjoyments shall come to them pure and unmixed, and being ever ready to cry out, ----Nocet empta dolore voluptas. This, however, was my present case; for the ease and lightness which I felt from my tapping, the gaiety of the morning, the pleasant sailing with wind and tide, and the many agreeable objects with which I was constantly entertained during the whole way, were all suppressed and overcome by the single consideration of my wife's pain, which continued incessantly to torment her till we came to an anchor, when I dispatched a messenger in great haste for the best reputed operator in Gravesend. A surgeon of some eminence now appeared, who did not decline tooth-drawing, though he certainly would have been offended with the appellation of tooth-drawer no less than his brethren, the members of that venerable body, would be with that of barber, since the late separation between those long-united companies, by which, if the surgeons have gained much, the barbers are supposed to have lost very little. This able and careful person (for so I sincerely believe he is) after examining the guilty tooth, declared that it was such a rotten shell, and so placed at the very remotest end of the upper jaw, where it was in a manner covered and secured by a large fine firm tooth, that he despaired of his power of drawing it. He said, indeed, more to my wife, and used more rhetoric to dissuade her from having it drawn, than is generally employed to persuade young ladies to prefer a pain of three moments to one of three months' continuance, especially if those young ladies happen to be past forty and fifty years of age, when, by submitting to support a racking torment, the only good circumstance attending which is, it is so short that scarce one in a thousand can cry out "I feel it," they are to do a violence to their charms, and lose one of those beautiful holders with which alone Sir Courtly Nice declares a lady can ever lay hold of his heart. He said at last so much, and seemed to reason so justly, that I came over to his side, and assisted him in prevailing on my wife (for it was no easy matter) to resolve on keeping her tooth a little longer, and to apply palliatives only for relief. These were opium applied to the tooth, and blisters behind the ears. Whilst we were at dinner this day in the cabin, on a sudden the window on one side was beat into the room with a crash as if a twenty-pounder had been discharged among us. We were all alarmed at the suddenness of the accident, for which, however, we were soon able to account, for the sash, which was shivered all to pieces, was pursued into the middle of the cabin by the bowsprit of a little ship called a cod-smack, the master of which made us amends for running (carelessly at best) against us, and injuring the ship, in the sea-way; that is to say, by damning us all to hell, and uttering several pious wishes that it had done us much more mischief. All which were answered in their own kind and phrase by our men, between whom and the other crew a dialogue of oaths and scurrility was carried on as long as they continued in each other's hearing. It is difficult, I think, to assign a satisfactory reason why sailors in general should, of all others, think themselves entirely discharged from the common bands of humanity, and should seem to glory in the language and behaviour of savages! They see more of the world, and have, most of them, a more erudite education than is the portion of landmen of their degree. Nor do I believe that in any country they visit (Holland itself not excepted) they can ever find a parallel to what daily passes on the river Thames. Is it that they think true courage (for they are the bravest fellows upon earth) inconsistent with all the gentleness of a humane carriage, and that the contempt of civil order springs up in minds but little cultivated, at the same time and from the same principles with the contempt of danger and death? Is it----? in short, it is so; and how it comes to be so I leave to form a question in the Robin Hood Society, or to be propounded for solution among the ænigmas in the Woman's Almanac for the next year. _Monday, July 1._--This day Mr Welch took his leave of me after dinner, as did a young lady of her sister, who was proceeding with my wife to Lisbon. They both set out together in a post-chaise for London. Soon after their departure our cabin, where my wife and I were sitting together, was visited by two ruffians, whose appearance greatly corresponded with that of the sheriffs, or rather the knight-marshal's bailiffs. One of these especially, who seemed to affect a more than ordinary degree of rudeness and insolence, came in without any kind of ceremony, with a broad gold lace on his hat, which was cocked with much military fierceness on his head. An inkhorn at his button-hole and some papers in his hand sufficiently assured me what he was, and I asked him if he and his companion were not custom-house officers: he answered with sufficient dignity that they were, as an information which he seemed to conclude would strike the hearer with awe, and suppress all further enquiry; but, on the contrary, I proceeded to ask of what rank he was in the custom-house, and, receiving an answer from his companion, as I remember, that the gentleman was a riding surveyor, I replied that he might be a riding surveyor, but could be no gentleman, for that none who had any title to that denomination would break into the presence of a lady without an apology or even moving his hat. He then took his covering from his head and laid it on the table, saying, he asked pardon, and blamed the mate, who should, he said, have informed him if any persons of distinction were below. I told him he might guess by our appearance (which, perhaps, was rather more than could be said with the strictest adherence to truth) that he was before a gentleman and lady, which should teach him to be very civil in his behaviour, though we should not happen to be of that number whom the world calls people of fashion and distinction. However, I said, that as he seemed sensible of his error, and had asked pardon, the lady would permit him to put his hat on again if he chose it. This he refused with some degree of surliness, and failed not to convince me that, if I should condescend to become more gentle, he would soon grow more rude. I now renewed a reflexion, which I have often seen occasion to make, that there is nothing so incongruous in nature as any kind of power with lowness of mind and of ability, and that there is nothing more deplorable than the want of truth in the whimsical notion of Plato, who tells us that "Saturn, well knowing the state of human affairs, gave us kings and rulers, not of human but divine original; for, as we make not shepherds of sheep, nor oxherds of oxen, nor goatherds of goats, but place some of our own kind over all as being better and fitter to govern them; in the same manner were demons by the divine love set over us as a race of beings of a superior order to men, and who, with great ease to themselves, might regulate our affairs and establish peace, modesty, freedom, and justice, and, totally destroying all sedition, might complete the happiness of the human race. So far, at least, may even now be said with truth, that in all states which are under the government of mere man, without any divine assistance, there is nothing but labour and misery to be found. From what I have said, therefore, we may at least learn, with our utmost endeavours, to imitate the Saturnian institution; borrowing all assistance from our immortal part, while we pay to this the strictest obedience, we should form both our private oeconomy and public policy from its dictates. By this dispensation of our immortal minds we are to establish a law and to call it by that name. But if any government be in the hands of a single person, of the few, or of the many, and such governor or governors shall abandon himself or themselves to the unbridled pursuit of the wildest pleasures or desires, unable to restrain any passion, but possessed with an insatiable bad disease; if such shall attempt to govern, and at the same time to trample on all laws, there can be no means of preservation left for the wretched people" Plato de Leg., lib. iv. p. 713, c. 714, edit. Serrani. It is true that Plato is here treating of the highest or sovereign power in a state, but it is as true that his observations are general and may be applied to all inferior powers; and, indeed, every subordinate degree is immediately derived from the highest; and, as it is equally protected by the same force and sanctified by the same authority, is alike dangerous to the well-being of the subject. Of all powers, perhaps, there is none so sanctified and protected as this which is under our present consideration. So numerous, indeed, and strong, are the sanctions given to it by many acts of parliament, that, having once established the laws of customs on merchandize, it seems to have been the sole view of the legislature to strengthen the hands and to protect the persons of the officers who became established by those laws, many of whom are so far from bearing any resemblance to the Saturnian institution, and to be chosen from a degree of beings superior to the rest of human race, that they sometimes seem industriously picked out of the lowest and vilest orders of mankind. There is, indeed, nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade. This is that _alma mater_ at whose plentiful breast all mankind are nourished. It is true, like other parents, she is not always equally indulgent to all her children, but, though she gives to her favourites a vast proportion of redundancy and superfluity, there are very few whom she refuses to supply with the conveniences, and none with the necessaries, of life. Such a benefactress as this must naturally be beloved by mankind in general; it would be wonderful, therefore, if her interest was not considered by them, and protected from the fraud and violence of some of her rebellious offspring, who, coveting more than their share or more than she thinks proper to allow them, are daily employed in meditating mischief against her, and in endeavouring to steal from their brethren those shares which this great _alma mater_ had allowed them. At length our governor came on board, and about six in the evening we weighed anchor, and fell down to the Nore, whither our passage was extremely pleasant, the evening being very delightful, the moon just past the full, and both wind and tide favourable to us. _Tuesday, July 2._--This morning we again set sail, under all the advantages we had enjoyed the evening before. This day we left the shore of Essex and coasted along Kent, passing by the pleasant island of Thanet, which is an island, and that of Sheppy, which is not an island, and about three o'clock, the wind being now full in our teeth, we came to an anchor in the Downs, within two miles of Deal.--My wife, having suffered intolerable pain from her tooth, again renewed her resolution of having it drawn, and another surgeon was sent for from Deal, but with no better success than the former. He likewise declined the operation, for the same reason which had been assigned by the former: however, such was her resolution, backed with pain, that he was obliged to make the attempt, which concluded more in honour of his judgment than of his operation; for, after having put my poor wife to inexpressible torment, he was obliged to leave her tooth in _statu quo_; and she had now the comfortable prospect of a long fit of pain, which might have lasted her whole voyage, without any possibility of relief. In these pleasing sensations, of which I had my just share, nature, overcome with fatigue, about eight in the evening resigned her to rest--a circumstance which would have given me some happiness, could I have known how to employ those spirits which were raised by it; but, unfortunately for me, I was left in a disposition of enjoying an agreeable hour without the assistance of a companion, which has always appeared to me necessary to such enjoyment; my daughter and her companion were both retired sea-sick to bed; the other passengers were a rude school-boy of fourteen years old and an illiterate Portuguese friar, who understood no language but his own, in which I had not the least smattering. The captain was the only person left in whose conversation I might indulge myself; but unluckily, besides a total ignorance of everything in the world but a ship, he had the misfortune of being so deaf, that to make him hear, I will not say understand, my words, I must run the risque of conveying them to the ears of my wife, who, though in another room (called, I think, the state-room--being, indeed, a most stately apartment, capable of containing one human body in length, if not very tall, and three bodies in breadth), lay asleep within a yard of me. In this situation necessity and choice were one and the same thing; the captain and I sat down together to a small bowl of punch, over which we both soon fell fast asleep, and so concluded the evening. _Wednesday, July 3._--This morning I awaked at four o'clock, for my distemper seldom suffered me to sleep later. I presently got up, and had the pleasure of enjoying the sight of a tempestuous sea for four hours before the captain was stirring; for he loved to indulge himself in morning slumbers, which were attended with a wind-music, much more agreeable to the performers than to the hearers, especially such as have, as I had, the privilege of sitting in the orchestra. At eight o'clock the captain rose, and sent his boat on shore. I ordered my man likewise to go in it, as my distemper was not of that kind which entirely deprives us of appetite. Now, though the captain had well victualled his ship with all manner of salt provisions for the voyage, and had added great quantities of fresh stores, particularly of vegetables, at Gravesend, such as beans and peas, which had been on board only two days, and had possibly not been gathered above two more, I apprehended I could provide better for myself at Deal than the ship's ordinary seemed to promise. I accordingly sent for fresh provisions of all kinds from the shore, in order to put off the evil day of starving as long as possible. My man returned with most of the articles I sent for, and I now thought myself in a condition of living a week on my own provisions. I therefore ordered my own dinner, which I wanted nothing but a cook to dress and a proper fire to dress it at; but those were not to be had, nor indeed any addition to my roast mutton, except the pleasure of the captain's company, with that of the other passengers; for my wife continued the whole day in a state of dozing, and my other females, whose sickness did not abate by the rolling of the ship at anchor, seemed more inclined to empty their stomachs than to fill them. Thus I passed the whole day (except about an hour at dinner) by myself, and the evening concluded with the captain as the preceding one had done; one comfortable piece of news he communicated to me, which was, that he had no doubt of a prosperous wind in the morning; but as he did not divulge the reasons of this confidence, and as I saw none myself besides the wind being directly opposite, my faith in this prophecy was not strong enough to build any great hopes upon. _Thursday, July 4._--This morning, however, the captain seemed resolved to fulfil his own predictions, whether the wind would or no; he accordingly weighed anchor, and, taking the advantage of the tide when the wind was not very boisterous, he hoisted his sails; and, as if his power had been no less absolute over Ã�olus than it was over Neptune, he forced the wind to blow him on in its own despight. But as all men who have ever been at sea well know how weak such attempts are, and want no authorities of Scripture to prove that the most absolute power of a captain of a ship is very contemptible in the wind's eye, so did it befal our noble commander, who, having struggled with the wind three or four hours, was obliged to give over, and lost in a few minutes all that he had been so long a-gaining; in short, we returned to our former station, and once more cast anchor in the neighbourhood of Deal. Here, though we lay near the shore, that we might promise ourselves all the emolument which could be derived from it, we found ourselves deceived; and that we might with as much conveniency be out of the sight of land; for, except when the captain launched forth his own boat, which he did always with great reluctance, we were incapable of procuring anything from Deal, but at a price too exorbitant, and beyond the reach even of modern luxury--the fair of a boat from Deal, which lay at two miles' distance, being at least three half-crowns, and, if we had been in any distress for it, as many half-guineas; for these good people consider the sea as a large common appendant to their manor, in which when they find any of their fellow-creatures impounded, they conclude that they have a full right of making them pay at their own discretion for their deliverance: to say the truth, whether it be that men who live on the sea-shore are of an amphibious kind, and do not entirely partake of human nature, or whatever else may be the reason, they are so far from taking any share in the distresses of mankind, or of being moved with any compassion for them, that they look upon them as blessings showered down from above, and which the more they improve to their own use, the greater is their gratitude and piety. Thus at Gravesend a sculler requires a shilling for going less way than he would row in London for threepence; and at Deal a boat often brings more profit in a day than it can produce in London in a week, or perhaps in a month; in both places the owner of the boat founds his demand on the necessity and distress of one who stands more or less in absolute want of his assistance, and with the urgency of these always rises in the exorbitancy of his demand, without ever considering that, from these very circumstances, the power or ease of gratifying such demand is in like proportion lessened. Now, as I am unwilling that some conclusions, which may be, I am aware, too justly drawn from these observations, should be imputed to human nature in general, I have endeavoured to account for them in a way more consistent with the goodness and dignity of that nature. However it be, it seems a little to reflect on the governors of such monsters that they do not take some means to restrain these impositions, and prevent them from triumphing any longer in the miseries of those who are, in many circumstances at least, their fellow-creatures, and considering the distresses of a wretched seaman, from his being wrecked to his being barely wind-bound, as a blessing sent among them from above, and calling it by that blasphemous name. _Friday, July 5._--This day I sent a servant on board a man-of-war that was stationed here, with my compliments to the captain, to represent to him the distress of the ladies, and to desire the favour of his long-boat to conduct us to Dover, at about seven miles' distance; and at the same time presumed to make use of a great lady's name, the wife of the first lord commissioner of the admiralty, who would, I told him, be pleased with any kindness shewn by him towards us in our miserable condition. And this I am convinced was true, from the humanity of the lady, though she was entirely unknown to me. The captain returned a verbal answer to a long letter acquainting me that what I desired could not be complied with, it being a favour not in his power to grant. This might be, and I suppose was, true; but it is as true that, if he was able to write, and had pen, ink, and paper on board, he might have sent a written answer, and that it was the part of a gentleman so to have done; but this is a character seldom maintained on the watery element, especially by those who exercise any power on it. Every commander of a vessel here seems to think himself entirely free from all those rules of decency and civility which direct and restrain the conduct of the members of a society on shore; and each, claiming absolute dominion in his little wooden world, rules by his own laws and his own discretion. I do not, indeed, know so pregnant an instance of the dangerous consequences of absolute power, and its aptness to intoxicate the mind, as that of those petty tyrants, who become such in a moment, from very well-disposed and social members of that communion in which they affect no superiority, but live in an orderly state of legal subjection with their fellow-citizens. _Saturday, July 6._--This morning our commander, declaring he was sure the wind would change, took the advantage of an ebbing tide, and weighed his anchor. His assurance, however, had the same completion, and his endeavours the same success, with his formal trial; and he was soon obliged to return once more to his old quarters. Just before we let go our anchor, a small sloop, rather than submit to yield us an inch of way, ran foul of our ship, and carried off her bowsprit. This obstinate frolic would have cost those aboard the sloop very dear, if our steersman had not been too generous to exert his superiority, the certain consequence of which would have been the immediate sinking of the other. This contention of the inferior with a might capable of crushing it in an instant may seem to argue no small share of folly or madness, as well as of impudence; but I am convinced there is very little danger in it: contempt is a port to which the pride of man submits to fly with reluctance, but those who are within it are always in a place of the most assured security; for whosoever throws away his sword prefers, indeed, a less honourable but much safer means of avoiding danger than he who defends himself with it. And here we shall offer another distinction, of the truth of which much reading and experience have well convinced us, that as in the most absolute governments there is a regular progression of slavery downwards, from the top to the bottom, the mischief of which is seldom felt with any great force and bitterness but by the next immediate degree; so in the most dissolute and anarchical states there is as regular an ascent of what is called rank or condition, which is always laying hold of the head of him who is advanced but one step higher on the ladder, who might, if he did not too much despise such efforts, kick his pursuer headlong to the bottom. We will conclude this digression with one general and short observation, which will, perhaps, set the whole matter in a clearer light than the longest and most laboured harangue. Whereas envy of all things most exposes us to danger from others, so contempt of all things best secures us from them. And thus, while the dung-cart and the sloop are always meditating mischief against the coach and the ship, and throwing themselves designedly in their way, the latter consider only their own security, and are not ashamed to break the road and let the other pass by them. _Monday, July 8._--Having past our Sunday without anything remarkable, unless the catching a great number of whitings in the afternoon may be thought so, we now set sail on Monday at six o'clock, with a little variation of wind; but this was so very little, and the breeze itself so small, that the tide was our best and indeed almost our only friend. This conducted us along the short remainder of the Kentish shore. Here we past that cliff of Dover which makes so tremendous a figure in Shakspeare, and which whoever reads without being giddy, must, according to Mr Addison's observation, have either a very good head or a very bad one; but which, whoever contracts any such ideas from the sight of, must have at least a poetic if not a Shaksperian genius. In truth, mountains, rivers, heroes, and gods owe great part of their existence to the poets; and Greece and Italy do so plentifully abound in the former, because they furnish so glorious a number of the latter; who, while they bestowed immortality on every little hillock and blind stream, left the noblest rivers and mountains in the world to share the same obscurity with the eastern and western poets, in which they are celebrated. This evening we beat the sea of Sussex in sight of Dungeness, with much more pleasure than progress; for the weather was almost a perfect calm, and the moon, which was almost at the full, scarce suffered a single cloud to veil her from our sight. _Tuesday, Wednesday, July 9, 10._--These two days we had much the same fine weather, and made much the same way; but in the evening of the latter day a pretty fresh gale sprung up at N.N.W., which brought us by the morning in sight of the Isle of Wight. _Thursday, July 11._--This gale continued till towards noon; when the east end of the island bore but little ahead of us. The captain swaggered and declared he would keep the sea; but the wind got the better of him, so that about three he gave up the victory, and making a sudden tack stood in for the shore, passed by Spithead and Portsmouth, and came to an anchor at a place called Ryde on the island. A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was under sail, but making as will appear no great way, a kitten, one of four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into the water: an alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then upon deck, and received it with the utmost concern and many bitter oaths. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favour of the poor thing, as he called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands, as the phrase is, employed to recover the poor animal. I was, I own, extremely surprised at all this; less indeed at the captain's extreme tenderness than at his conceiving any possibility of success; for if puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded they had been all lost. The boatswain, however, had more sanguine hopes, for, having stripped himself of his jacket, breeches, and shirt, he leaped boldly into the water, and to my great astonishment in a few minutes returned to the ship, bearing the motionless animal in his mouth. Nor was this, I observed, a matter of such great difficulty as it appeared to my ignorance, and possibly may seem to that of my fresh-water reader. The kitten was now exposed to air and sun on the deck, where its life, of which it retained no symptoms, was despaired of by all. The captain's humanity, if I may so call it, did not so totally destroy his philosophy as to make him yield himself up to affliction on this melancholy occasion. Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved to shew he could bear it like one; and, having declared he had rather have lost a cask of rum or brandy, betook himself to threshing at backgammon with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they had passed about two-thirds of their time. But as I have, perhaps, a little too wantonly endeavoured to raise the tender passions of my readers in this narrative, I should think myself unpardonable if I concluded it without giving them the satisfaction of hearing that the kitten at last recovered, to the great joy of the good captain, but to the great disappointment of some of the sailors, who asserted that the drowning a cat was the very surest way of raising a favourable wind; a supposition of which, though we have heard several plausible accounts, we will not presume to assign the true original reason. _Friday, July 12._--This day our ladies went ashore at Ryde, and drank their afternoon tea at an ale-house there with great satisfaction: here they were regaled with fresh cream, to which they had been strangers since they left the Downs. _Saturday, July 13._--The wind seeming likely to continue in the same corner where it had been almost constantly for two months together, I was persuaded by my wife to go ashore and stay at Ryde till we sailed. I approved the motion much; for though I am a great lover of the sea, I now fancied there was more pleasure in breathing the fresh air of the land; but how to get thither was the question; for, being really that dead luggage which I considered all passengers to be in the beginning of this narrative, and incapable of any bodily motion without external impulse, it was in vain to leave the ship, or to determine to do it, without the assistance of others. In one instance, perhaps, the living luggage is more difficult to be moved or removed than an equal or much superior weight of dead matter; which, if of the brittle kind, may indeed be liable to be broken through negligence; but this, by proper care, may be almost certainly prevented; whereas the fractures to which the living lumps are exposed are sometimes by no caution avoidable, and often by no art to be amended. I was deliberating on the means of conveyance, not so much out of the ship to the boat as out of a little tottering boat to the land; a matter which, as I had already experienced in the Thames, was not extremely easy, when to be performed by any other limbs than your own. Whilst I weighed all that could suggest itself on this head, without strictly examining the merit of the several schemes which were advanced by the captain and sailors, and, indeed, giving no very deep attention even to my wife, who, as well as her friend and my daughter, were exerting their tender concern for my ease and safety, Fortune, for I am convinced she had a hand in it, sent me a present of a buck; a present welcome enough of itself, but more welcome on account of the vessel in which it came, being a large hoy, which in some places would pass for a ship, and many people would go some miles to see the sight. I was pretty easily conveyed on board this hoy; but to get from hence to the shore was not so easy a task; for, however strange it may appear, the water itself did not extend so far; an instance which seems to explain those lines of Ovid, Omnia pontus erant, deerant quoque littora ponto, in a less tautological sense than hath generally been imputed to them. In fact, between the sea and the shore there was, at low water, an impassable gulph, if I may so call it, of deep mud, which could neither be traversed by walking nor swimming; so that for near one half of the twenty-four hours Ryde was inaccessible by friend or foe. But as the magistrates of this place seemed more to desire the company of the former than to fear that of the latter, they had begun to make a small causeway to the low-water mark, so that foot passengers might land whenever they pleased; but as this work was of a public kind, and would have cost a large sum of money, at least ten pounds, and the magistrates, that is to say, the churchwardens, the overseers, constable, and tithing-man, and the principal inhabitants, had every one of them some separate scheme of private interest to advance at the expence of the public, they fell out among themselves; and, after having thrown away one half of the requisite sum, resolved at least to save the other half, and rather be contented to sit down losers themselves than to enjoy any benefit which might bring in a greater profit to another. Thus that unanimity which is so necessary in all public affairs became wanting, and every man, from the fear of being a bubble to another, was, in reality, a bubble to himself. However, as there is scarce any difficulty to which the strength of men, assisted with the cunning of art, is not equal, I was at last hoisted into a small boat, and, being rowed pretty near the shore, was taken up by two sailors, who waded with me through the mud, and placed me in a chair on the land, whence they afterwards conveyed me a quarter of a mile farther, and brought me to a house which seemed to bid the fairest for hospitality of any in Ryde. We brought with us our provisions from the ship, so that we wanted nothing but a fire to dress our dinner, and a room in which we might eat it. In neither of these had we any reason to apprehend a disappointment, our dinner consisting only of beans and bacon; and the worst apartment in his majesty's dominions, either at home or abroad, being fully sufficient to answer our present ideas of delicacy. Unluckily, however, we were disappointed in both; for when we arrived about four at our inn, exulting in the hopes of immediately seeing our beans smoking on the table, we had the mortification of seeing them on the table indeed, but without that circumstance which would have made the sight agreeable, being in the same state in which we had dispatched them from our ship. In excuse for this delay, though we had exceeded, almost purposely, the time appointed, and our provision had arrived three hours before, the mistress of the house acquainted us that it was not for want of time to dress them that they were not ready, but for fear of their being cold or overdone before we should come; which she assured us was much worse than waiting a few minutes for our dinner; an observation so very just, that it is impossible to find any objection in it; but, indeed, it was not altogether so proper at this time, for we had given the most absolute orders to have them ready at four, and had been ourselves, not without much care and difficulty, most exactly punctual in keeping to the very minute of our appointment. But tradesmen, inn-keepers, and servants, never care to indulge us in matters contrary to our true interest, which they always know better than ourselves; nor can any bribes corrupt them to go out of their way whilst they are consulting our good in our own despight. Our disappointment in the other particular, in defiance of our humility, as it was more extraordinary, was more provoking. In short, Mrs Francis (for that was the name of the good woman of the house) no sooner received the news of our intended arrival than she considered more the gentility than the humanity of her guests, and applied herself not to that which kindles but to that which extinguishes fire, and, forgetting to put on her pot, fell to washing her house. As the messenger who had brought my venison was impatient to be despatched, I ordered it to be brought and laid on the table in the room where I was seated; and the table not being large enough, one side, and that a very bloody one, was laid on the brick floor. I then ordered Mrs Francis to be called in, in order to give her instructions concerning it; in particular, what I would have roasted and what baked; concluding that she would be highly pleased with the prospect of so much money being spent in her house as she might have now reason to expect, if the wind continued only a few days longer to blow from the same points whence it had blown for several weeks past. I soon saw good cause, I must confess, to despise my own sagacity. Mrs Francis, having received her orders, without making any answer, snatched the side from the floor, which remained stained with blood, and, bidding a servant to take up that on the table, left the room with no pleasant countenance, muttering to herself that, "had she known the litter which was to have been made, she would not have taken such pains to wash her house that morning. If this was gentility, much good may it do such gentlefolks; for her part she had no notion of it." From these murmurs I received two hints. The one, that it was not from a mistake of our inclination that the good woman had starved us, but from wisely consulting her own dignity, or rather perhaps her vanity, to which our hunger was offered up as a sacrifice. The other, that I was now sitting in a damp room, a circumstance, though it had hitherto escaped my notice from the colour of the bricks, which was by no means to be neglected in a valetudinary state. My wife, who, besides discharging excellently well her own and all the tender offices becoming the female character; who, besides being a faithful friend, an amiable companion, and a tender nurse, could likewise supply the wants of a decrepit husband, and occasionally perform his part, had, before this, discovered the immoderate attention to neatness in Mrs Francis, and provided against its ill consequences. She had found, though not under the same roof, a very snug apartment belonging to Mr Francis, and which had escaped the mop by his wife's being satisfied it could not possibly be visited by gentlefolks. This was a dry, warm, oaken-floored barn, lined on both sides with wheaten straw, and opening at one end into a green field and a beautiful prospect. Here, without hesitation, she ordered the cloth to be laid, and came hastily to snatch me from worse perils by water than the common dangers of the sea. Mrs Francis, who could not trust her own ears, or could not believe a footman in so extraordinary a phenomenon, followed my wife, and asked her if she had indeed ordered the cloth to be laid in the barn? She answered in the affirmative; upon which Mrs Francis declared she would not dispute her pleasure, but it was the first time she believed that quality had ever preferred a barn to a house. She shewed at the same time the most pregnant marks of contempt, and again lamented the labour she had undergone, through her ignorance of the absurd taste of her guests. At length, we were seated in one of the most pleasant spots I believe in the kingdom, and were regaled with our beans and bacon, in which there was nothing deficient but the quantity. This defect was however so deplorable that we had consumed our whole dish before we had visibly lessened our hunger. We now waited with impatience the arrival of our second course, which necessity, and not luxury, had dictated. This was a joint of mutton which Mrs Francis had been ordered to provide; but when, being tired with expectation, we ordered our servants _to see for something else_, we were informed that there was nothing else; on which Mrs Francis, being summoned, declared there was no such thing as mutton to be had at Ryde. When I expressed some astonishment at their having no butcher in a village so situated, she answered they had a very good one, and one that killed all sorts of meat in season, beef two or three times a year, and mutton the whole year round; but that, it being then beans and peas time, he killed no meat, by reason he was not sure of selling it. This she had not thought worthy of communication, any more than that there lived a fisherman at next door, who was then provided with plenty of soles, and whitings, and lobsters, far superior to those which adorn a city feast. This discovery being made by accident, we completed the best, the pleasantest, and the merriest meal, with more appetite, more real solid luxury, and more festivity, than was ever seen in an entertainment at White's. It may be wondered at, perhaps, that Mrs Francis should be so negligent of providing for her guests, as she may seem to be thus inattentive to her own interest; but this was not the case; for, having clapped a poll-tax on our heads at our arrival, and determined at what price to discharge our bodies from her house, the less she suffered any other to share in the levy the clearer it came into her own pocket; and that it was better to get twelve pence in a shilling than ten pence, which latter would be the case if she afforded us fish at any rate. Thus we past a most agreeable day owing to good appetites and good humour; two hearty feeders which will devour with satisfaction whatever food you place before them; whereas, without these, the elegance of St James's, the charde, the perigord-pie, or the ortolan, the venison, the turtle, or the custard, may titillate the throat, but will never convey happiness to the heart or chearfulness to the countenance. As the wind appeared still immovable, my wife proposed my lying on shore. I presently agreed, though in defiance of an act of parliament, by which persons wandering abroad and lodging in ale-houses are decreed to be rogues and vagabonds; and this too after having been very singularly officious in putting that law in execution. My wife, having reconnoitred the house, reported that there was one room in which were two beds. It was concluded, therefore, that she and Harriot should occupy one and myself take possession of the other. She added likewise an ingenious recommendation of this room to one who had so long been in a cabin, which it exactly resembled, as it was sunk down with age on one side, and was in the form of a ship with gunwales too. For my own part, I make little doubt but this apartment was an ancient temple, built with the materials of a wreck, and probably dedicated to Neptune in honour of THE BLESSING sent by him to the inhabitants; such blessings having in all ages been very common to them. The timber employed in it confirms this opinion, being such as is seldom used by any but ship-builders. I do not find indeed any mention of this matter in Hearn; but perhaps its antiquity was too modern to deserve his notice. Certain it is that this island of Wight was not an early convert to Christianity; nay, there is some reason to doubt whether it was ever entirely converted. But I have only time to touch slightly on things of this kind, which, luckily for us, we have a society whose peculiar profession it is to discuss and develop. _Sunday, July 19._--This morning early I summoned Mrs Francis, in order to pay her the preceding day's account. As I could recollect only two or three articles I thought there was no necessity of pen and ink. In a single instance only we had exceeded what the law allows gratis to a foot-soldier on his march, viz., vinegar, salt, &c., and dressing his meat. I found, however, I was mistaken in my calculation; for when the good woman attended with her bill it contained as follows:-- £ _s._ _d._ Bread and beer 0 2 4 Wind 0 2 0 Rum 0 2 0 Dressing dinner 0 3 0 Tea 0 1 6 Firing 0 1 0 Lodging 0 1 6 Servants' lodging 0 0 6 __________ £0 13 10 Now that five people and two servants should live a day and night at a public-house for so small a sum will appear incredible to any person in London above the degree of a chimney-sweeper; but more astonishing will it seem that these people should remain so long at such a house without tasting any other delicacy than bread, small beer, a teacupfull of milk called cream, a glass of rum converted into punch by their own materials, and one bottle of _wind_, of which we only tasted a single glass, though possibly, indeed, our servants drank the remainder of the bottle. This _wind_ is a liquor of English manufacture, and its flavour is thought very delicious by the generality of the English, who drink it in great quantities. Every seventh year is thought to produce as much as the other six. It is then drank so plentifully that the whole nation are in a manner intoxicated by it; and consequently very little business is carried on at that season. It resembles in colour the red wine which is imported from Portugal, as it doth in its intoxicating quality; hence, and from this agreement in the orthography, the one is often confounded with the other, though both are seldom esteemed by the same person. It is to be had in every parish of the kingdom, and a pretty large quantity is consumed in the metropolis, where several taverns are set apart solely for the vendition of this liquor, the masters never dealing in any other. The disagreement in our computation produced some small remonstrance to Mrs Francis on my side; but this received an immediate answer: "She scorned to overcharge gentlemen; her house had been always frequented by the very best gentry of the island; and she had never had a bill found fault with in her life, though she had lived upwards of forty years in the house, and within that time the greatest gentry in Hampshire had been at it; and that lawyer Willis never went to any other when he came to those parts. That for her part she did not get her livelihood by travellers, who were gone and away, and she never expected to see them more, but that her neighbours might come again; wherefore, to be sure, they had the only right to complain." She was proceeding thus, and from her volubility of tongue seemed likely to stretch the discourse to an immoderate length, when I suddenly cut all short by paying the bill. This morning our ladies went to church, more, I fear, from curiosity than religion; they were attended by the captain in a most military attire, with his cockade in his hat and his sword by his side. So unusual an appearance in this little chapel drew the attention of all present, and probably disconcerted the women, who were in dishabille, and wished themselves drest, for the sake of the curate, who was the greatest of their beholders. While I was left alone I received a visit from Mr Francis himself, who was much more considerable as a farmer than as an inn-holder. Indeed, he left the latter entirely to the care of his wife, and he acted wisely, I believe, in so doing. As nothing more remarkable past on this day I will close it with the account of these two characters, as far as a few days' residence could inform me of them. If they should appear as new to the reader as they did to me, he will not be displeased at finding them here. This amiable couple seemed to border hard on their grand climacteric; nor indeed were they shy of owning enough to fix their ages within a year or two of that time. They appeared to be rather proud of having employed their time well than ashamed of having lived so long; the only reason which I could ever assign why some fine ladies, and fine gentlemen too, should desire to be thought younger than they really are by the contemporaries of their grandchildren. Some, indeed, who too hastily credit appearances, might doubt whether they had made so good a use of their time as I would insinuate, since there was no appearance of anything but poverty, want, and wretchedness, about their house; nor could they produce anything to a customer in exchange for his money but a few bottles of _wind_, and spirituous liquors, and some very bad ale, to drink; with rusty bacon and worse cheese to eat. But then it should be considered, on the other side, that whatever they received was almost as entirely clear profit as the blessing of a wreck itself; such an inn being the very reverse of a coffee-house; for here you can neither sit for nothing nor have anything for your money. Again, as many marks of want abounded everywhere, so were the marks of antiquity visible. Scarce anything was to be seen which had not some scar upon it, made by the hand of Time; not an utensil, it was manifest, had been purchased within a dozen years last past; so that whatever money had come into the house during that period at least must have remained in it, unless it had been sent abroad for food, or other perishable commodities; but these were supplied by a small portion of the fruits of the farm, in which the farmer allowed he had a very good bargain. In fact, it is inconceivable what sums may be collected by starving only, and how easy it is for a man to die rich if he will but be contented to live miserable. Nor is there in this kind of starving anything so terrible as some apprehend. It neither wastes a man's flesh nor robs him of his chearfulness. The famous Cornaro's case well proves the contrary; and so did farmer Francis, who was of a round stature, had a plump round face, with a kind of smile on it, and seemed to borrow an air of wretchedness rather from his coat's age than from his own. The truth is, there is a certain diet which emaciates men more than any possible degree of abstinence; though I do not remember to have seen any caution against it, either in Cheney, Arbuthnot, or in any other modern writer or regimen. Nay, the very name is not, I believe, in the learned Dr James's Dictionary; all which is the more extraordinary as it is a very common food in this kingdom, and the college themselves were not long since very liberally entertained with it by the present attorney and other eminent lawyers in Lincoln's-inn-hall, and were all made horribly sick by it. But though it should not be found among our English physical writers, we may be assured of meeting with it among the Greeks; for nothing considerable in nature escapes their notice, though many things considerable in them, it is to be feared, have escaped the notice of their readers. The Greeks, then, to all such as feed too voraciously on this diet, give the name of HEAUTOFAGI, which our physicians will, I suppose, translate _men that eat themselves_. As nothing is so destructive to the body as this kind of food, so nothing is so plentiful and cheap; but it was perhaps the only cheap thing the farmer disliked. Probably living much on fish might produce this disgust; for Diodorus Siculus attributes the same aversion in a people of Ã�thiopia to the same cause; he calls them the fish-eaters, and asserts that they cannot be brought to eat a single meal with the Heautofagi by any persuasion, threat, or violence whatever, not even though they should kill their children before their faces. What hath puzzled our physicians, and prevented them from setting this matter in the clearest light, is possibly one simple mistake, arising from a very excusable ignorance; that the passions of men are capable of swallowing food as well as their appetites; that the former, in feeding, resemble the state of those animals who chew the cud; and therefore, such men, in some sense, may be said to prey on themselves, and as it were to devour their own entrails. And hence ensues a meagre aspect and thin habit of body, as surely as from what is called a consumption. Our farmer was one of these. He had no more passion than an Ichthuofagus or Ã�thiopian fisher. He wished not for anything, thought not of anything; indeed, he scarce did anything or said anything. Here I cannot be understood strictly; for then I must describe a nonentity, whereas I would rob him of nothing but that free agency which is the cause of all the corruption and of all the misery of human nature. No man, indeed, ever did more than the farmer, for he was an absolute slave to labour all the week; but in truth, as my sagacious reader must have at first apprehended, when I said he resigned the care of the house to his wife, I meant more than I then expressed, even the house and all that belonged to it; for he was really a farmer only under the direction of his wife. In a word, so composed, so serene, so placid a countenance, I never saw; and he satisfied himself by answering to every question he was asked, "I don't know anything about it, sir; I leaves all that to my wife." Now, as a couple of this kind would, like two vessels of oil, have made no composition in life, and for want of all savour must have palled every taste; nature or fortune, or both of them, took care to provide a proper quantity of acid in the materials that formed the wife, and to render her a perfect helpmate for so tranquil a husband. She abounded in whatsoever he was defective; that is to say, in almost everything. She was indeed as vinegar to oil, or a brisk wind to a standing-pool, and preserved all from stagnation and corruption. Quin the player, on taking a nice and severe survey of a fellow-comedian, burst forth into this exclamation:--"If that fellow be not a rogue, God Almighty doth not write a legible hand." Whether he guessed right or no is not worth my while to examine; certain it is that the latter, having wrought his features into a proper harmony to become the characters of Iago, Shylock, and others of the same cast, gave us a semblance of truth to the observation that was sufficient to confirm the wit of it. Indeed, we may remark, in favour of the physiognomist, though the law has made him a rogue and vagabond, that Nature is seldom curious in her works within, without employing some little pains on the outside; and this more particularly in mischievous characters, in forming which, as Mr Derham observes, in venomous insects, as the sting or saw of a wasp, she is sometimes wonderfully industrious. Now, when she hath thus completely armed our hero to carry on a war with man, she never fails of furnishing that innocent lambkin with some means of knowing his enemy, and foreseeing his designs. Thus she hath been observed to act in the case of a rattlesnake, which never meditates a human prey without giving warning of his approach. This observation will, I am convinced, hold most true, if applied to the most venomous individuals of human insects. A tyrant, a trickster, and a bully, generally wear the marks of their several dispositions in their countenances; so do the vixen, the shrew, the scold, and all other females of the like kind. But, perhaps, nature hath never afforded a stronger example of all this than in the case of Mrs Francis. She was a short, squat woman; her head was closely joined to her shoulders, where it was fixed somewhat awry; every feature of her countenance was sharp and pointed; her face was furrowed with the small-pox; and her complexion, which seemed to be able to turn milk to curds, not a little resembled in colour such milk as had already undergone that operation. She appeared, indeed, to have many symptoms of a deep jaundice in her look; but the strength and firmness of her voice overbalanced them all; the tone of this was a sharp treble at a distance, for I seldom heard it on the same floor, but was usually waked with it in the morning, and entertained with it almost continually through the whole day. Though vocal be usually put in opposition to instrumental music, I question whether this might not be thought to partake of the nature of both; for she played on two instruments, which she seemed to keep for no other use from morning till night; these were two maids, or rather scolding-stocks, who, I suppose, by some means or other, earned their board, and she gave them their lodging _gratis_, or for no other service than to keep her lungs in constant exercise. She differed, as I have said, in every particular from her husband; but very remarkably in this, that, as it was impossible to displease him, so it was as impossible to please her; and as no art could remove a smile from his countenance, so could no art carry it into hers. If her bills were remonstrated against she was offended with the tacit censure of her fair-dealing; if they were not, she seemed to regard it as a tacit sarcasm on her folly, which might have set down larger prices with the same success. On this latter hint she did indeed improve, for she daily raised some of her articles. A pennyworth of fire was to-day rated at a shilling, to-morrow at eighteen-pence; and if she dressed us two dishes for two shillings on the Saturday, we paid half-a-crown for the cookery of one on the Sunday; and, whenever she was paid, she never left the room without lamenting the small amount of her bill, saying, "she knew not how it was that others got their money by gentlefolks, but for her part she had not the art of it." When she was asked why she complained, when she was paid all she demanded, she answered, "she could not deny that, nor did she know she had omitted anything; but that it was but a poor bill for gentlefolks to pay." I accounted for all this by her having heard, that it is a maxim with the principal inn-holders on the continent, to levy considerable sums on their guests, who travel with many horses and servants, though such guests should eat little or nothing in their houses; the method being, I believe, in such cases, to lay a capitation on the horses, and not on their masters. But she did not consider that in most of these inns a very great degree of hunger, without any degree of delicacy, may be satisfied; and that in all such inns there is some appearance, at least, of provision, as well as of a man-cook to dress it, one of the hostlers being always furnished with a cook's cap, waistcoat, and apron, ready to attend gentlemen and ladies on their summons; that the case therefore of such inns differed from hers, where there was nothing to eat or to drink, and in reality no house to inhabit, no chair to sit upon, nor any bed to lie in; that one third or fourth part therefore of the levy imposed at inns was, in truth, a higher tax than the whole was when laid on in the other, where, in order to raise a small sum, a man is obliged to submit to pay as many various ways for the same thing as he doth to the government for the light which enters through his own window into his own house, from his own estate; such are the articles of bread and beer, firing, eating and dressing dinner. The foregoing is a very imperfect sketch of this extraordinary couple; for everything is here lowered instead of being heightened. Those who would see them set forth in more lively colours, and with the proper ornaments, may read the descriptions of the Furies in some of the classical poets, or of the Stoic philosophers in the works of Lucian. _Monday, July 20._--This day nothing remarkable passed; Mrs Francis levied a tax of fourteen shillings for the Sunday. We regaled ourselves at dinner with venison and good claret of our own; and, in the afternoon, the women, attended by the captain, walked to see a delightful scene two miles distant, with the beauties of which they declared themselves most highly charmed at their return, as well as with the goodness of the lady of the mansion, who had slipt out of the way, that my wife and their company might refresh themselves with the flowers and fruits with which her garden abounded. _Tuesday, July 21._--This day, having paid our taxes of yesterday, we were permitted to regale ourselves with more venison. Some of this we would willingly have exchanged for mutton; but no such flesh was to be had nearer than Portsmouth, from whence it would have cost more to convey a joint to us than the freight of a Portugal ham from Lisbon to London amounts to; for though the water-carriage be somewhat cheaper here than at Deal, yet can you find no waterman who will go on board his boat, unless by two or three hours' rowing he can get drunk for the residue of the week. And here I have an opportunity, which possibly may not offer again, of publishing some observations on that political oeconomy of this nation, which, as it concerns only the regulation of the mob, is below the notice of our great men; though on the due regulation of this order depend many emoluments, which the great men themselves, or at least many who tread close on their heels, may enjoy, as well as some dangers which may some time or other arise from introducing a pure state of anarchy among them. I will represent the case, as it appears to me, very fairly and impartially between the mob and their betters. The whole mischief which infects this part of our oeconomy arises from the vague and uncertain use of a word called liberty, of which, as scarce any two men with whom I have ever conversed seem to have one and the same idea, I am inclined to doubt whether there be any simple universal notion represented by this word, or whether it conveys any clearer or more determinate idea than some of those old Punic compositions of syllables preserved in one of the comedies of Plautus, but at present, as I conceive, not supposed to be understood by any one. By liberty, however, I apprehend, is commonly understood the power of doing what we please; not absolutely, for then it would be inconsistent with law, by whose control the liberty of the freest people, except only the Hottentots and wild Indians, must always be restrained. But, indeed, however largely we extend, or however moderately we confine, the sense of the word, no politician will, I presume, contend that it is to pervade in an equal degree, and be, with the same extent, enjoyed by, every member of society; no such polity having been ever found, unless among those vile people just before commemorated. Among the Greeks and Romans the servile and free conditions were opposed to each other; and no man who had the misfortune to be enrolled under the former could lay any claim to liberty till the right was conveyed to him by that master whose slave he was, either by the means of conquest, of purchase, or of birth. This was the state of all the free nations in the world; and this, till very lately, was understood to be the case of our own. I will not indeed say this is the case at present, the lowest class of our people having shaken off all the shackles of their superiors, and become not only as free, but even freer, than most of their superiors. I believe it cannot be doubted, though perhaps we have no recent instance of it, that the personal attendance of every man who hath three hundred pounds per annum, in parliament, is indispensably his duty; and that, if the citizens and burgesses of any city or borough shall chuse such a one, however reluctant he appear, he may be obliged to attend, and be forcibly brought to his duty by the serjeant-at-arms. Again, there are numbers of subordinate offices, some of which are of burthen, and others of expence, in the civil government--all of which persons who are qualified are liable to have imposed on them, may be obliged to undertake and properly execute, notwithstanding any bodily labour, or even danger, to which they may subject themselves, under the penalty of fines and imprisonment; nay, and what may appear somewhat hard, may be compelled to satisfy the losses which are eventually incident, to that of sheriff in particular, out of their own private fortunes; and though this should prove the ruin of a family, yet the public, to whom the price is due, incurs no debt or obligation to preserve its officer harmless, let his innocence appear ever so clearly. I purposely omit the mention of those military or militiary duties which our old constitution laid upon its greatest members. These might, indeed, supply their posts with some other able-bodied men; but if no such could have been found, the obligation nevertheless remained, and they were compellable to serve in their own proper persons. The only one, therefore, who is possessed of absolute liberty is the lowest member of the society, who, if he prefers hunger, or the wild product of the fields, hedges, lanes, and rivers, with the indulgence of ease and laziness, to a food a little more delicate, but purchased at the expence of labour, may lay himself under a shade; nor can be forced to take the other alternative from that which he hath, I will not affirm whether wisely or foolishly, chosen. Here I may, perhaps, be reminded of the last Vagrant Act, where all such persons are compellable to work for the usual and accustomed wages allowed in the place; but this is a clause little known to the justices of the peace, and least likely to be executed by those who do know it, as they know likewise that it is formed on the antient power of the justices to fix and settle these wages every year, making proper allowances for the scarcity and plenty of the times, the cheapness and dearness of the place; and that _the usual and accustomed wages_ are words without any force or meaning, when there are no such; but every man spunges and raps whatever he can get; and will haggle as long and struggle as hard to cheat his employer of twopence in a day's labour as an honest tradesman will to cheat his customers of the same sum in a yard of cloth or silk. It is a great pity then that this power, or rather this practice, was not revived; but, this having been so long omitted that it is become obsolete, will be best done by a new law, in which this power, as well as the consequent power of forcing the poor to labour at a moderate and reasonable rate, should be well considered and their execution facilitated; for gentlemen who give their time and labour _gratis_, and even voluntarily, to the public, have a right to expect that all their business be made as easy as possible; and to enact laws without doing this is to fill our statute-books, much too full already, still fuller with dead letter, of no use but to the printer of the acts of parliament. That the evil which I have here pointed at is of itself worth redressing, is, I apprehend, no subject of dispute; for why should any persons in distress be deprived of the assistance of their fellow-subjects, when they are willing amply to reward them for their labour? or, why should the lowest of the people be permitted to exact ten times the value of their work? For those exactions encrease with the degrees of necessity in their object, insomuch that on the former side many are horribly imposed upon, and that often in no trifling matters. I was very well assured that at Deal no less than ten guineas was required, and paid by the supercargo of an Indiaman, for carrying him on board two miles from the shore when she was just ready to sail; so that his necessity, as his pillager well understood, was absolute. Again, many others, whose indignation will not submit to such plunder, are forced to refuse the assistance, though they are often great sufferers by so doing. On the latter side, the lowest of the people are encouraged in laziness and idleness; while they live by a twentieth part of the labour that ought to maintain them, which is diametrically opposite to the interest of the public; for that requires a great deal to be done, not to be paid, for a little. And moreover, they are confirmed in habits of exaction, and are taught to consider the distresses of their superiors as their own fair emolument. But enough of this matter, of which I at first intended only to convey a hint to those who are alone capable of applying the remedy, though they are the last to whom the notice of those evils would occur, without some such monitor as myself, who am forced to travel about the world in the form of a passenger. I cannot but say I heartily wish our governors would attentively consider this method of fixing the price of labour, and by that means of compelling the poor to work, since the due execution of such powers will, I apprehend, be found the true and only means of making them useful, and of advancing trade from its present visibly declining state to the height to which Sir William Petty, in his Political Arithmetic, thinks it capable of being carried. In the afternoon the lady of the above-mentioned mansion called at our inn, and left her compliments to us with Mrs Francis, with an assurance that while we continued wind-bound in that place, where she feared we could be but indifferently accommodated, we were extremely welcome to the use of anything which her garden or her house afforded. So polite a message convinced us, in spite of some arguments to the contrary, that we were not on the coast of Africa, or on some island where the few savage inhabitants have little of human in them besides their form. And here I mean nothing less than to derogate from the merit of this lady, who is not only extremely polite in her behaviour to strangers of her own rank, but so extremely good and charitable to all her poor neighbours who stand in need of her assistance, that she hath the universal love and praises of all who live near her. But, in reality, how little doth the acquisition of so valuable a character, and the full indulgence of so worthy a disposition, cost those who possess it! Both are accomplished by the very offals which fall from a table moderately plentiful. That they are enjoyed therefore by so few arises truly from there being so few who have any such disposition to gratify, or who aim at any such character. _Wednesday, July 22._--This morning, after having been mulcted as usual, we dispatched a servant with proper acknowledgments of the lady's goodness; but confined our wants entirely to the productions of her garden. He soon returned, in company with the gardener, both richly laden with almost every particular which a garden at this most fruitful season of the year produces. While we were regaling ourselves with these, towards the close of our dinner, we received orders from our commander, who had dined that day with some inferior officers on board a man-of-war, to return instantly to the ship; for that the wind was become favourable, and he should weigh that evening. These orders were soon followed by the captain himself, who was still in the utmost hurry, though the occasion of it had long since ceased; for the wind had, indeed, a little shifted that afternoon, but was before this very quietly set down in its old quarters. This last was a lucky hit for me; for, as the captain, to whose orders we resolved to pay no obedience, unless delivered by himself, did not return till past six, so much time seemed requisite to put up the furniture of our bed-chamber or dining-room, for almost every article, even to some of the chairs, were either our own or the captain's property; so much more in conveying it as well as myself, as dead a luggage as any, to the shore, and thence to the ship, that the night threatened first to overtake us. A terrible circumstance to me, in my decayed condition; especially as very heavy showers of rain, attended with a high wind, continued to fall incessantly; the being carried through which two miles in the dark, in a wet and open boat, seemed little less than certain death. However, as my commander was absolute, his orders peremptory, and my obedience necessary, I resolved to avail myself of a philosophy which hath been of notable use to me in the latter part of my life, and which is contained in this hemistich of Virgil:-- ----Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est. The meaning of which, if Virgil had any, I think I rightly understood, and rightly applied. As I was therefore to be entirely passive in my motion, I resolved to abandon myself to the conduct of those who were to carry me into a cart when it returned from unloading the goods. But before this, the captain, perceiving what had happened in the clouds, and that the wind remained as much his enemy as ever, came upstairs to me with a reprieve till the morning. This was, I own, very agreeable news, and I little regretted the trouble of refurnishing my apartment, by sending back for the goods. Mrs Francis was not well pleased with this. As she understood the reprieve to be only till the morning, she saw nothing but lodging to be possibly added, out of which she was to deduct fire and candle, and the remainder, she thought, would scarce pay her for her trouble. She exerted therefore all the ill-humour of which she was mistress, and did all she could to thwart and perplex everything during the whole evening. _Thursday, July 23._--Early in the morning the captain, who had remained on shore all night, came to visit us, and to press us to make haste on board. "I am resolved," says he, "not to lose a moment now the wind is coming about fair: for my own part, I never was surer of a wind in all my life." I use his very words; nor will I presume to interpret or comment upon them farther than by observing that they were spoke in the utmost hurry. We promised to be ready as soon as breakfast was over, but this was not so soon as was expected; for, in removing our goods the evening before, the tea-chest was unhappily lost. Every place was immediately searched, and many where it was impossible for it to be; for this was a loss of much greater consequence than it may at first seem to many of my readers. Ladies and valetudinarians do not easily dispense with the use of this sovereign cordial in a single instance; but to undertake a long voyage, without any probability of being supplied with it the whole way, was above the reach of patience. And yet, dreadful as this calamity was, it seemed unavoidable. The whole town of Ryde could not supply a single leaf; for, as to what Mrs Francis and the shop called by that name, it was not of Chinese growth. It did not indeed in the least resemble tea, either in smell or taste, or in any particular, unless in being a leaf; for it was in truth no other than a tobacco of the mundungus species. And as for the hopes of relief in any other port, they were not to be depended upon, for the captain had positively declared he was sure of a wind, and would let go his anchor no more till he arrived in the Tajo. When a good deal of time had been spent, most of it indeed wasted on this occasion, a thought occurred which every one wondered at its not having presented itself the first moment. This was to apply to the good lady, who could not fail of pitying and relieving such distress. A messenger was immediately despatched with an account of our misfortune, till whose return we employed ourselves in preparatives for our departure, that we might have nothing to do but to swallow our breakfast when it arrived. The tea-chest, though of no less consequence to us than the military-chest to a general, was given up as lost, or rather as stolen; for though I would not, for the world, mention any particular name, it is certain we had suspicions, and all, I am afraid, fell on the same person. The man returned from the worthy lady with much expedition, and brought with him a canister of tea, despatched with so true a generosity, as well as politeness, that if our voyage had been as long again we should have incurred no danger of being brought to a short allowance in this most important article. At the very same instant likewise arrived William the footman with our own tea-chest. It had been, indeed, left in the hoy, when the other goods were re-landed, as William, when he first heard it was missing, had suspected; and whence, had not the owner of the hoy been unluckily out of the way, he had retrieved it soon enough to have prevented our giving the lady an opportunity of displaying some part of her goodness. To search the hoy was, indeed, too natural a suggestion to have escaped any one, nor did it escape being mentioned by many of us; but we were dissuaded from it by my wife's maid, who perfectly well remembered she had left the chest in the bed-chamber; for that she had never given it out of her hand in her way to or from the hoy; but William perhaps knew the maid better, and best understood how far she was to be believed; for otherwise he would hardly of his own accord, after hearing her declaration, have hunted out the hoy-man, with much pains and difficulty. Thus ended this scene, which begun with such appearance of distress, and ended with becoming the subject of mirth and laughter. Nothing now remained but to pay our taxes, which were indeed laid with inconceivable severity. Lodging was raised sixpence, fire in the same proportion, and even candles, which had hitherto escaped, were charged with a wantonness of imposition, from the beginning, and placed under the stile of oversight. We were raised a whole pound, whereas we had only burned ten, in five nights, and the pound consisted of twenty-four. Lastly, an attempt was made which almost as far exceeds human credulity to believe as it did human patience to submit to. This was to make us pay as much for existing an hour or two as for existing a whole day; and dressing dinner was introduced as an article, though we left the house before either pot or spit had approached the fire. Here I own my patience failed me, and I became an example of the truth of the observation, "That all tyranny and oppression may be carried too far, and that a yoke may be made too intolerable for the neck of the tamest slave." When I remonstrated, with some warmth, against this grievance, Mrs Francis gave me a look, and left the room without making any answer. She returned in a minute, running to me with pen, ink, and paper, in her hand, and desired me to make my own bill; "for she hoped," she said, "I did not expect that her house was to be dirtied, and her goods spoiled and consumed, for nothing. The whole is but thirteen shillings. Can gentlefolks lie a whole night at a public-house for less? If they can I am sure it is time to give off being a landlady: but pay me what you please; I would have people know that I value money as little as other folks. But I was always a fool, as I says to my husband, and never knows which side my bread is buttered of. And yet, to be sure, your honour shall be my warning not to be bit so again. Some folks knows better than other some how to make their bills. Candles! why yes, to be sure; why should not travellers pay for candles? I am sure I pays for my candles, and the chandler pays the king's majesty for them; and if he did not I must, so as it comes to the same thing in the end. To be sure I am out of sixteens at present, but these burn as white and as clear, though not quite so large. I expects my chandler here soon, or I would send to Portsmouth, if your honour was to stay any time longer. But when folks stays only for a wind, you knows there can be no dependence on such!" Here she put on a little slyness of aspect, and seemed willing to submit to interruption. I interrupted her accordingly by throwing down half a guinea, and declared I had no more English money, which was indeed true; and, as she could not immediately change the thirty-six shilling pieces, it put a final end to the dispute. Mrs Francis soon left the room, and we soon after left the house; nor would this good woman see us or wish us a good voyage. I must not, however, quit this place, where we had been so ill-treated, without doing it impartial justice, and recording what may, with the strictest truth, be said in its favour. First, then, as to its situation, it is, I think, most delightful, and in the most pleasant spot in the whole island. It is true it wants the advantage of that beautiful river which leads from Newport to Cowes; but the prospect here extending to the sea, and taking in Portsmouth, Spithead, and St Helen's, would be more than a recompence for the loss of the Thames itself, even in the most delightful part of Berkshire or Buckinghamshire, though another Denham, or another Pope, should unite in celebrating it. For my own part, I confess myself so entirely fond of a sea prospect, that I think nothing on the land can equal it; and if it be set off with shipping, I desire to borrow no ornament from the _terra firma_. A fleet of ships is, in my opinion, the noblest object which the art of man hath ever produced; and far beyond the power of those architects who deal in brick, in stone, or in marble. When the late Sir Robert Walpole, one of the best of men and of ministers, used to equip us a yearly fleet at Spithead, his enemies of taste must have allowed that he, at least, treated the nation with a fine sight for their money. A much finer, indeed, than the same expence in an encampment could have produced. For what indeed is the best idea which the prospect of a number of huts can furnish to the mind, but of a number of men forming themselves into a society before the art of building more substantial houses was known? This, perhaps, would be agreeable enough; but, in truth, there is a much worse idea ready to step in before it, and that is of a body of cut-throats, the supports of tyranny, the invaders of the just liberties and properties of mankind, the plunderers of the industrious, the ravishers of the chaste, the murderers of the innocent, and, in a word, the destroyers of the plenty, the peace, and the safety, of their fellow-creatures. And what, it may be said, are these men-of-war which seem so delightful an object to our eyes? Are they not alike the support of tyranny and oppression of innocence, carrying with them desolation and ruin wherever their masters please to send them? This is indeed too true; and however the ship of war may, in its bulk and equipment, exceed the honest merchantman, I heartily wish there was no necessity for it; for, though I must own the superior beauty of the object on one side, I am more pleased with the superior excellence of the idea which I can raise in my mind on the other, while I reflect on the art and industry of mankind engaged in the daily improvements of commerce to the mutual benefit of all countries, and to the establishment and happiness of social life. This pleasant village is situated on a gentle ascent from the water, whence it affords that charming prospect I have above described. Its soil is a gravel, which, assisted with its declivity, preserves it always so dry that immediately after the most violent rain a fine lady may walk without wetting her silken shoes. The fertility of the place is apparent from its extraordinary verdure, and it is so shaded with large and flourishing elms, that its narrow lanes are a natural grove or walk, which, in the regularity of its plantation, vies with the power of art, and in its wanton exuberancy greatly exceeds it. In a field in the ascent of this hill, about a quarter of a mile from the sea, stands a neat little chapel. It is very small, but adequate to the number of inhabitants; for the parish doth not seem to contain above thirty houses. At about two miles distant from this parish lives that polite and good lady to whose kindness we were so much obliged. It is placed on a hill whose bottom is washed by the sea, and which, from its eminence at top, commands a view of great part of the island as well as it does that of the opposite shore. This house was formerly built by one Boyce, who, from a blacksmith at Gosport, became possessed, by great success in smuggling, of forty thousand pound. With part of this he purchased an estate here, and, by chance probably, fixed on this spot for building a large house. Perhaps the convenience of carrying on his business, to which it is so well adapted, might dictate the situation to him. We can hardly, at least, attribute it to the same taste with which he furnished his house, or at least his library, by sending an order to a bookseller in London to pack him up five hundred pounds' worth of his handsomest books. They tell here several almost incredible stories of the ignorance, the folly, and the pride, which this poor man and his wife discovered during the short continuance of his prosperity; for he did not long escape the sharp eyes of the revenue solicitors, and was, by extents from the court of Exchequer, soon reduced below his original state to that of confinement in the Fleet. All his effects were sold, and among the rest his books, by an auction at Portsmouth, for a very small price; for the bookseller was now discovered to have been perfectly a master of his trade, and, relying on Mr Boyce's finding little time to read, had sent him not only the most lasting wares of his shop, but duplicates of the same, under different titles. His estate and house were purchased by a gentleman of these parts, whose widow now enjoys them, and who hath improved them, particularly her gardens, with so elegant a taste, that the painter who would assist his imagination in the composition of a most exquisite landscape, or the poet who would describe an earthly paradise, could nowhere furnish themselves with a richer pattern. We left this place about eleven in the morning, and were again conveyed, with more sunshine than wind, aboard our ship. Whence our captain had acquired his power of prophecy, when he promised us and himself a prosperous wind, I will not determine; it is sufficient to observe that he was a false prophet, and that the weathercocks continued to point as before. He would not, however, so easily give up his skill in prediction. He persevered in asserting that the wind was changed, and, having weighed his anchor, fell down that afternoon to St Helen's, which was at about the distance of five miles; and whither his friend the tide, in defiance of the wind, which was most manifestly against him, softly wafted him in as many hours. Here, about seven in the evening, before which time we could not procure it, we sat down to regale ourselves with some roasted venison, which was much better drest than we imagined it would be, and an excellent cold pasty which my wife had made at Ryde, and which we had reserved uncut to eat on board our ship, whither we all chearfully exulted in being returned from the presence of Mrs Francis, who, by the exact resemblance she bore to a fury, seemed to have been with no great propriety settled in paradise. _Friday, July 24._--As we passed by Spithead on the preceding evening we saw the two regiments of soldiers who were just returned from Gibraltar and Minorca; and this day a lieutenant belonging to one of them, who was the captain's nephew, came to pay a visit to his uncle. He was what is called by some a very pretty fellow; indeed, much too pretty a fellow at his years; for he was turned of thirty-four, though his address and conversation would have become him more before he had reached twenty. In his conversation, it is true, there was something military enough, as it consisted chiefly of oaths, and of the great actions and wise sayings of Jack, and Will, and Tom of our regiment, a phrase eternally in his mouth; and he seemed to conclude that it conveyed to all the officers such a degree of public notoriety and importance that it intitled him, like the head of a profession, or a first minister, to be the subject of conversation among those who had not the least personal acquaintance with him. This did not much surprise me, as I have seen several examples of the same; but the defects in his address, especially to the women, were so great that they seemed absolutely inconsistent with the behaviour of a pretty fellow, much less of one in a red coat; and yet, besides having been eleven years in the army, he had had, as his uncle informed me, an education in France. This, I own, would have appeared to have been absolutely thrown away had not his animal spirits, which were likewise thrown away upon him in great abundance, borne the visible stamp of the growth of that country. The character to which he had an indisputable title was that of a merry fellow; so very merry was he that he laughed at everything he said, and always before he spoke. Possibly, indeed, he often laughed at what he did not utter, for every speech begun with a laugh, though it did not always end with a jest. There was no great analogy between the characters of the uncle and the nephew, and yet they seemed intirely to agree in enjoying the honour which the red-coat did to his family. This the uncle expressed with great pleasure in his countenance, and seemed desirous of shewing all present the honour which he had for his nephew, who, on his side, was at some pains to convince us of his concurring in this opinion, and at the same time of displaying the contempt he had for the parts, as well as the occupation, of his uncle, which he seemed to think reflected some disgrace on himself, who was a member of that profession which makes every man a gentleman. Not that I would be understood to insinuate that the nephew endeavoured to shake off or disown his uncle, or indeed to keep him at any distance. On the contrary, he treated him with the utmost familiarity, often calling him Dick, and dear Dick, and old Dick, and frequently beginning an oration with D----n me, Dick. All this condescension on the part of the young man was received with suitable marks of complaisance and obligation by the old one; especially when it was attended with evidences of the same familiarity with general officers and other persons of rank; one of whom, in particular, I know to have the pride and insolence of the devil himself, and who, without some strong bias of interest, is no more liable to converse familiarly with a lieutenant than of being mistaken in his judgment of a fool; which was not, perhaps, so certainly the case of the worthy lieutenant, who, in declaring to us the qualifications which recommended men to his countenance and conversation, as well as what effectually set a bar to all hopes of that honour, exclaimed, "No, sir, by the d--I hate all fools--No, d----n me, excuse me for that. That's a little too much, old Dick. There are two or three officers of our regiment whom I know to be fools; but d----n me if I am ever seen in their company. If a man hath a fool of a relation, Dick, you know he can't help that, old boy." Such jokes as these the old man not only took in good part, but glibly gulped down the whole narrative of his nephew; nor did he, I am convinced, in the least doubt of our as readily swallowing the same. This made him so charmed with the lieutenant, that it is probable we should have been pestered with him the whole evening, had not the north wind, dearer to our sea-captain even than this glory of his family, sprung suddenly up, and called aloud to him to weigh his anchor. While this ceremony was performing, the sea-captain ordered out his boat to row the land-captain to shore; not indeed on an uninhabited island, but one which, in this part, looked but little better, not presenting us the view of a single house. Indeed, our old friend, when his boat returned on shore, perhaps being no longer able to stifle his envy of the superiority of his nephew, told us with a smile that the young man had a good five mile to walk before he could be accommodated with a passage to Portsmouth. It appeared now that the captain had been only mistaken in the date of his prediction, by placing the event a day earlier than it happened; for the wind which now arose was not only favourable but brisk, and was no sooner in reach of our sails than it swept us away by the back of the Isle of Wight, and, having in the night carried us by Christchurch and Peveral-point, brought us the next noon, _Saturday, July 25_, off the island of Portland, so famous for the smallness and sweetness of its mutton, of which a leg seldom weighs four pounds. We would have bought a sheep, but our captain would not permit it; though he needed not have been in such a hurry, for presently the wind, I will not positively assert in resentment of his surliness, shewed him a dog's trick, and slily slipt back again to his summer-house in the south-west. The captain now grew outrageous, and, declaring open war with the wind, took a resolution, rather more bold than wise, of sailing in defiance of it, and in its teeth. He swore he would let go his anchor no more, but would beat the sea while he had either yard or sail left. He accordingly stood from the shore, and made so large a tack that before night, though he seemed to advance but little on his way, he was got out of sight of land. Towards the evening the wind began, in the captain's own language, and indeed it freshened so much, that before ten it blew a perfect hurricane. The captain having got, as he supposed, to a safe distance, tacked again towards the English shore; and now the wind veered a point only in his favour, and continued to blow with such violence, that the ship ran above eight knots or miles an hour during this whole day and tempestuous night till bed-time. I was obliged to betake myself once more to my solitude, for my women were again all down in their sea-sickness, and the captain was busy on deck; for he began to grow uneasy, chiefly, I believe, because he did not well know where he was, and would, I am convinced, have been very glad to have been in Portland-road, eating some sheep's-head broth. Having contracted no great degree of good-humour by living a whole day alone, without a single soul to converse with, I took but ill physic to purge it off, by a bed-conversation with the captain, who, amongst many bitter lamentations of his fate, and protesting he had more patience than a Job, frequently intermixed summons to the commanding officer on the deck, who now happened to be one Morrison, a carpenter, the only fellow that had either common sense or common civility in the ship. Of Morrison he enquired every quarter of an hour concerning the state of affairs: the wind, the care of the ship, and other matters of navigation. The frequency of these summons, as well as the solicitude with which they were made, sufficiently testified the state of the captain's mind; he endeavoured to conceal it, and would have given no small alarm to a man who had either not learnt what it is to die, or known what it is to be miserable. And my dear wife and child must pardon me, if what I did not conceive to be any great evil to myself I was not much terrified with the thoughts of happening to them; in truth, I have often thought they are both too good and too gentle to be trusted to the power of any man I know, to whom they could possibly be so trusted. Can I say then I had no fear? indeed I cannot. Reader, I was afraid for thee, lest thou shouldst have been deprived of that pleasure thou art now enjoying; and that I should not live to draw out on paper that military character which thou didst peruse in the journal of yesterday. From all these fears we were relieved, at six in the morning, by the arrival of Mr Morrison, who acquainted us that he was sure he beheld land very near; for he could not see half a mile, by reason of the haziness of the weather. This land he said was, he believed, the Berry-head, which forms one side of Torbay: the captain declared that it was impossible, and swore, on condition he was right, he would give him his mother for a maid. A forfeit which became afterwards strictly due and payable; for the captain, whipping on his night-gown, ran up without his breeches, and within half an hour returning into the cabin, wished me joy of our lying safe at anchor in the bay. _Sunday, July 26._--Things now began to put on an aspect very different from what they had lately worn; the news that the ship had almost lost its mizen, and that we had procured very fine clouted cream and fresh bread and butter from the shore, restored health and spirits to our women, and we all sat down to a very chearful breakfast. But, however pleasant our stay promised to be here, we were all desirous it should be short: I resolved immediately to despatch my man into the country to purchase a present of cider, for my friends of that which is called Southam, as well as to take with me a hogshead of it to Lisbon; for it is, in my opinion, much more delicious than that which is the growth of Herefordshire. I purchased three hogsheads for five pounds ten shillings, all which I should have scarce thought worth mentioning, had I not believed it might be of equal service to the honest farmer who sold it me, and who is by the neighbouring gentlemen reputed to deal in the very best; and to the reader, who, from ignorance of the means of providing better for himself, swallows at a dearer rate the juice of Middlesex turnip, instead of that Vinum Pomonæ which Mr Giles Leverance of Cheeshurst, near Dartmouth in Devon, will, at the price of forty shillings per hogshead, send in double casks to any part of the world. Had the wind been very sudden in shifting, I had lost my cider by an attempt of a boatman to exact, according to custom. He required five shillings for conveying my man a mile and a half to the shore, and four more if he staid to bring him back. This I thought to be such insufferable impudence that I ordered him to be immediately chased from the ship, without any answer. Indeed, there are few inconveniences that I would not rather encounter than encourage the insolent demands of these wretches, at the expence of my own indignation, of which I own they are not the only objects, but rather those who purchase a paultry convenience by encouraging them. But of this I have already spoken very largely. I shall conclude, therefore, with the leave which this fellow took of our ship; saying he should know it again, and would not put off from the shore to relieve it in any distress whatever. It will, doubtless, surprise many of my readers to hear that, when we lay at anchor within a mile or two of a town several days together, and even in the most temperate weather, we should frequently want fresh provisions and herbage, and other emoluments of the shore, as much as if we had been a hundred leagues from land. And this too while numbers of boats were in our sight, whose owners get their livelihood by rowing people up and down, and could be at any time summoned by a signal to our assistance, and while the captain had a little boat of his own, with men always ready to row it at his command. This, however, hath been partly accounted for already by the imposing disposition of the people, who asked so much more than the proper price of their labour. And as to the usefulness of the captain's boat, it requires to be a little expatiated upon, as it will tend to lay open some of the grievances which demand the utmost regard of our legislature, as they affect the most valuable part of the king's subjects--those by whom the commerce of the nation is carried into execution. Our captain then, who was a very good and experienced seaman, having been above thirty years the master of a vessel, part of which he had served, so he phrased it, as commander of a privateer, and had discharged himself with great courage and conduct, and with as great success, discovered the utmost aversion to the sending his boat ashore whenever we lay wind-bound in any of our harbours. This aversion did not arise from any fear of wearing out his boat by using it, but was, in truth, the result of experience, that it was easier to send his men on shore than to recal them. They acknowledged him to be their master while they remained on shipboard, but did not allow his power to extend to the shores, where they had no sooner set their foot than every man became _sui juris_, and thought himself at full liberty to return when he pleased. Now it is not any delight that these fellows have in the fresh air or verdant fields on the land. Every one of them would prefer his ship and his hammock to all the sweets of Arabia the Happy; but, unluckily for them, there are in every seaport in England certain houses whose chief livelihood depends on providing entertainment for the gentlemen of the jacket. For this purpose they are always well furnished with those cordial liquors which do immediately inspire the heart with gladness, banishing all careful thoughts, and indeed all others, from the mind, and opening the mouth with songs of chearfulness and thanksgiving for the many wonderful blessings with which a sea-faring life overflows. For my own part, however whimsical it may appear, I confess I have thought the strange story of Circe in the Odyssey no other than an ingenious allegory, in which Homer intended to convey to his countrymen the same kind of instruction which we intend to communicate to our own in this digression. As teaching the art of war to the Greeks was the plain design of the Iliad, so was teaching them the art of navigation the no less manifest intention of the Odyssey. For the improvement of this, their situation was most excellently adapted; and accordingly we find Thucydides, in the beginning of his history, considers the Greeks as a sett of pirates or privateers, plundering each other by sea. This being probably the first institution of commerce before the Ars Cauponaria was invented, and merchants, instead of robbing, began to cheat and outwit each other, and by degrees changed the Metabletic, the only kind of traffic allowed by Aristotle in his Politics, into the Chrematistic. By this allegory then I suppose Ulysses to have been the captain of a merchant-ship, and Circe some good ale-wife, who made his crew drunk with the spirituous liquors of those days. With this the transformation into swine, as well as all other incidents of the fable, will notably agree; and thus a key will be found out for unlocking the whole mystery, and forging at least some meaning to a story which, at present, appears very strange and absurd. Hence, moreover, will appear the very near resemblance between the sea-faring men of all ages and nations; and here perhaps may be established the truth and justice of that observation, which will occur oftener than once in this voyage, that all human flesh is not the same flesh, but that there is one kind of flesh of landmen, and another of seamen. Philosophers, divines, and others, who have treated the gratification of human appetites with contempt, have, among other instances, insisted very strongly on that satiety which is so apt to overtake them even in the very act of enjoyment. And here they more particularly deserve our attention, as most of them may be supposed to speak from their own experience, and very probably gave us their lessons with a full stomach. Thus hunger and thirst, whatever delight they may afford while we are eating and drinking, pass both away from us with the plate and the cup; and though we should imitate the Romans, if, indeed, they were such dull beasts, which I can scarce believe, to unload the belly like a dung-pot, in order to fill it again with another load, yet would the pleasure be so considerably lessened that it would scarce repay us the trouble of purchasing it with swallowing a bason of camomile tea. A second haunch of venison, or a second dose of turtle, would hardly allure a city glutton with its smell. Even the celebrated Jew himself, when well filled with calipash and calipee, goes contentedly home to tell his money, and expects no more pleasure from his throat during the next twenty-four hours. Hence I suppose Dr South took that elegant comparison of the joys of a speculative man to the solemn silence of an Archimedes over a problem, and those of a glutton to the stillness of a sow at her wash. A simile which, if it became the pulpit at all, could only become it in the afternoon. Whereas in those potations which the mind seems to enjoy, rather than the bodily appetite, there is happily no such satiety; but the more a man drinks, the more he desires; as if, like Mark Anthony in Dryden, his appetite encreased with feeding, and this to such an immoderate degree, _ut nullus sit desiderio aut pudor aut modus_. Hence, as with the gang of Captain Ulysses, ensues so total a transformation, that the man no more continues what he was. Perhaps he ceases for a time to be at all; or, though he may retain the same outward form and figure he had before, yet is his nobler part, as we are taught to call it, so changed, that, instead of being the same man, he scarce remembers what he was a few hours before. And this transformation, being once obtained, is so easily preserved by the same potations, which induced no satiety, that the captain in vain sends or goes in quest of his crew. They know him no longer; or, if they do, they acknowledge not his power, having indeed as entirely forgotten themselves as if they had taken a large draught of the river of Lethe. Nor is the captain always sure of even finding out the place to which Circe hath conveyed them. There are many of those houses in every port-town. Nay, there are some where the sorceress doth not trust only to her drugs; but hath instruments of a different kind to execute her purposes, by whose means the tar is effectually secreted from the knowledge and pursuit of his captain. This would, indeed, be very fatal, was it not for one circumstance; that the sailor is seldom provided with the proper bait for these harpies. However, the contrary sometimes happens, as these harpies will bite at almost anything, and will snap at a pair of silver buttons, or buckles, as surely as at the specie itself. Nay, sometimes they are so voracious, that the very naked hook will go down, and the jolly young sailor is sacrificed for his own sake. In vain, at such a season as this, would the vows of a pious heathen have prevailed over Neptune, Ã�olus, or any other marine deity. In vain would the prayers of a Christian captain be attended with the like success. The wind may change how it pleases while all hands are on shore; the anchor would remain firm in the ground, and the ship would continue in durance, unless, like other forcible prison-breakers, it forcibly got loose for no good purpose. Now, as the favour of winds and courts, and such like, is always to be laid hold on at the very first motion, for within twenty-four hours all may be changed again; so, in the former case, the loss of a day may be the loss of a voyage: for, though it may appear to persons not well skilled in navigation, who see ships meet and sail by each other, that the wind sometimes east and west, north and south, backwards and forwards, at the same instant; yet, certain it is that the land is so contrived, that even the same wind will not, like the same horse, always bring a man to the end of his journey; but, that the gale which the mariner prayed heartily for yesterday, he may as heartily deprecate to-morrow; while all use and benefit which would have arisen to him from the westerly wind of to-morrow may be totally lost and thrown away by neglecting the offer of the easterly blast which blows to-day. Hence ensues grief and disreputation to the innocent captain, loss and disappointment to the worthy merchant, and not seldom great prejudice to the trade of a nation whose manufactures are thus liable to lie unsold in a foreign warehouse, the market being forestalled by some rival whose sailors are under a better discipline. To guard against these inconveniences the prudent captain takes every precaution in his power; he makes the strongest contracts with his crew, and thereby binds them so firmly, that none but the greatest or least of men can break through them with impunity; but for one of these two reasons, which I will not determine, the sailor, like his brother fish the eel, is too slippery to be held, and plunges into his element with perfect impunity. To speak a plain truth, there is no trusting to any contract with one whom the wise citizens of London call a bad man; for, with such a one, though your bond be ever so strong, it will prove in the end good for nothing. What then is to be done in this case? What, indeed, but to call in the assistance of that tremendous magistrate, the justice of peace, who can, and often doth, lay good and bad men in equal durance; and, though he seldom cares to stretch his bonds to what is great, never finds anything too minute for their detention, but will hold the smallest reptile alive so fast in his noose, that he can never get out till he is let drop through it. Why, therefore, upon the breach of those contracts, should not an immediate application be made to the nearest magistrate of this order, who should be empowered to convey the delinquent either to ship or to prison, at the election of the captain, to be fettered by the leg in either place? But, as the case now stands, the condition of this poor captain without any commission, and of this absolute commander without any power, is much worse than we have hitherto shewn it to be; for, notwithstanding all the aforesaid contracts to sail in the good ship the Elizabeth, if the sailor should, for better wages, find it more his interest to go on board the better ship the Mary, either before their setting out or on their speedy meeting in some port, he may prefer the latter without any other danger than that of "doing what he ought not to have done," contrary to a rule which he is seldom Christian enough to have much at heart, while the captain is generally too good a Christian to punish a man out of revenge only, when he is to be at a considerable expense for so doing. There are many other deficiencies in our laws relating to maritime affairs, and which would probably have been long since corrected, had we any seamen in the House of Commons. Not that I would insinuate that the legislature wants a supply of many gentlemen in the sea-service; but, as these gentlemen are by their attendance in the house unfortunately prevented from ever going to sea, and there learning what they might communicate to their landed brethren, these latter remain as ignorant in that branch of knowledge as they would be if none but courtiers and fox-hunters had been elected into parliament, without a single fish among them. The following seems to me to be an effect of this kind, and it strikes me the stronger as I remember the case to have happened, and remember it to have been dispunishable. A captain of a trading vessel, of which he was part owner, took in a large freight of oats at Liverpool, consigned to the market at Bearkey: this he carried to a port in Hampshire, and there sold it as his own, and, freighting his vessel with wheat for the port of Cadiz, in Spain, dropt it at Oporto in his way; and there, selling it for his own use, took in a lading of wine, with which he sailed again, and, having converted it in the same manner, together with a large sum of money with which he was intrusted, for the benefit of certain merchants, sold the ship and cargo in another port, and then wisely sat down contented with the fortune he had made, and returned to London to enjoy the remainder of his days, with the fruits of his former labours and a good conscience. The sum he brought home with him consisted of near six thousand pounds, all in specie, and most of it in that coin which Portugal distributes so liberally over Europe. He was not yet old enough to be past all sense of pleasure, nor so puffed up with the pride of his good fortune as to overlook his old acquaintances the journeymen taylors, from among whom he had been formerly pressed into the sea-service, and, having there laid the foundation of his future success by his shares in prizes, had afterwards become captain of a trading vessel, in which he purchased an interest, and had soon begun to trade in the honourable manner above mentioned. The captain now took up his residence at an ale-house in Drury-lane, where, having all his money by him in a trunk, he spent about five pounds a day among his old friends the gentlemen and ladies of those parts. The merchant of Liverpool, having luckily had notice from a friend during the blaze of his fortune, did, by the assistance of a justice of peace, without the assistance of the law, recover his whole loss. The captain, however, wisely chose to refund no more; but, perceiving with what hasty strides Envy was pursuing his fortune, he took speedy means to retire out of her reach, and to enjoy the rest of his wealth in an inglorious obscurity; nor could the same justice overtake him time enough to assist a second merchant as he had done the first. This was a very extraordinary case, and the more so as the ingenious gentleman had steered entirely clear of all crimes in our law. Now, how it comes about that a robbery so very easy to be committed, and to which there is such immediate temptation always before the eyes of these fellows, should receive the encouragement of impunity, is to be accounted for only from the oversight of the legislature, as that oversight can only be, I think, derived from the reasons I have assigned for it. But I will dwell no longer on this subject. If what I have here said should seem of sufficient consequence to engage the attention of any man in power, and should thus be the means of applying any remedy to the most inveterate evils, at least, I have obtained my whole desire, and shall have lain so long wind-bound in the ports of this kingdom to some purpose. I would, indeed, have this work--which, if I should live to finish it, a matter of no great certainty, if indeed of any great hope to me, will be probably the last I shall ever undertake--to produce some better end than the mere diversion of the reader. _Monday._--This day our captain went ashore, to dine with a gentleman who lives in these parts, and who so exactly resembles the character given by Homer of Axylus, that the only difference I can trace between them is, the one, living by the highway, erected his hospitality chiefly in favour of land-travellers; and the other, living by the water-side, gratified his humanity by accommodating the wants of the mariner. In the evening our commander received a visit from a brother bashaw, who lay wind-bound in the same harbour. This latter captain was a Swiss. He was then master of a vessel bound to Guinea, and had formerly been a privateering, when our own hero was employed in the same laudable service. The honesty and freedom of the Switzer, his vivacity, in which he was in no respect inferior to his near neighbours the French, the aukward and affected politeness, which was likewise of French extraction, mixed with the brutal roughness of the English tar--for he had served under the colours of this nation and his crew had been of the same--made such an odd variety, such a hotchpotch of character, that I should have been much diverted with him, had not his voice, which was as loud as a speaking-trumpet, unfortunately made my head ach. The noise which he conveyed into the deaf ears of his brother captain, who sat on one side of him, the soft addresses with which, mixed with aukward bows, he saluted the ladies on the other, were so agreeably contrasted, that a man must not only have been void of all taste of humour, and insensible of mirth, but duller than Cibber is represented in the Dunciad, who could be unentertained with him a little while; for, I confess, such entertainments should always be very short, as they are very liable to pall. But he suffered not this to happen at present; for, having given us his company a quarter of an hour only, he retired, after many apologies for the shortness of his visit. _Tuesday._--The wind being less boisterous than it had hitherto been since our arrival here, several fishing-boats, which the tempestuous weather yesterday had prevented from working, came on board us with fish. This was so fresh, so good in kind, and so very cheap, that we supplied ourselves in great numbers, among which were very large soles at fourpence a pair, and whitings of almost a preposterous size at ninepence a score. The only fish which bore any price was a john dorée, as it is called. I bought one of at least four pounds weight for as many shillings. It resembles a turbot in shape, but exceeds it in firmness and flavour. The price had the appearance of being considerable when opposed to the extraordinary cheapness of others of value, but was, in truth, so very reasonable when estimated by its goodness, that it left me under no other surprise than how the gentlemen of this country, not greatly eminent for the delicacy of their taste, had discovered the preference of the dorée to all other fish: but I was informed that Mr Quin, whose distinguishing tooth hath been so justly celebrated, had lately visited Plymouth, and had done those honours to the dorée which are so justly due to it from that sect of modern philosophers who, with Sir Epicure Mammon, or Sir Epicure Quin, their head, seem more to delight in a fish-pond than in a garden, as the old Epicureans are said to have done. Unfortunately for the fishmongers of London, the dorée resides only in those seas; for, could any of this company but convey one to the temple of luxury under the Piazza, where Macklin the high-priest daily serves up his rich offerings to that goddess, great would be the reward of that fishmonger, in blessings poured down upon him from the goddess, as great would his merit be towards the high-priest, who could never be thought to overrate such valuable incense. And here, having mentioned the extreme cheapness of fish in the Devonshire sea, and given some little hint of the extreme dearness with which this commodity is dispensed by those who deal in it in London, I cannot pass on without throwing forth an observation or two, with the same view with which I have scattered my several remarks through this voyage, sufficiently satisfied in having finished my life, as I have probably lost it, in the service of my country, from the best of motives, though it should be attended with the worst of success. Means are always in our power; ends are very seldom so. Of all the animal foods with which man is furnished, there are none so plenty as fish. A little rivulet, that glides almost unperceived through a vast tract of rich land, will support more hundreds with the flesh of its inhabitants than the meadow will nourish individuals. But if this be true of rivers, it is much truer of the seashores, which abound with such immense variety of fish that the curious fisherman, after he hath made his draught, often culls only the daintiest part and leaves the rest of his prey to perish on the shore. If this be true it would appear, I think, that there is nothing which might be had in such abundance, and consequently so cheap, as fish, of which Nature seems to have provided such inexhaustible stores with some peculiar design. In the production of terrestrial animals she proceeds with such slowness, that in the larger kind a single female seldom produces more than one a-year, and this again requires three, four, or five years more to bring it to perfection. And though the lesser quadrupeds, those of the wild kind particularly, with the birds, do multiply much faster, yet can none of these bear any proportion with the aquatic animals, of whom every female matrix is furnished with an annual offspring almost exceeding the power of numbers, and which, in many instances at least, a single year is capable of bringing to some degree of maturity. What then ought in general to be so plentiful, what so cheap, as fish? What then so properly the food of the poor? So in many places they are, and so might they always be in great cities, which are always situated near the sea, or on the conflux of large rivers. How comes it then, to look no farther abroad for instances, that in our city of London the case is so far otherwise that, except that of sprats, there is not one poor palate in a hundred that knows the taste of fish? It is true indeed that this taste is generally of such excellent flavour that it exceeds the power of French cookery to treat the palates of the rich with anything more exquisitely delicate; so that was fish the common food of the poor it might put them too much upon an equality with their betters in the great article of eating, in which, at present, in the opinion of some, the great difference in happiness between man and man consists. But this argument I shall treat with the utmost disdain: for if ortolans were as big as bustards, and at the same time as plenty as sparrows, I should hold it yet reasonable to indulge the poor with the dainty, and that for this cause especially, that the rich would soon find a sparrow, if as scarce as an ortolan, to be much the greater, as it would certainly be the rarer, dainty of the two. Vanity or scarcity will be always the favourite of luxury; but honest hunger will be satisfied with plenty. Not to search deeper into the cause of the evil, I should think it abundantly sufficient to propose the remedies of it. And, first, I humbly submit the absolute necessity of immediately hanging all the fishmongers within the bills of mortality; and, however it might have been some time ago the opinion of mild and temporizing men that the evil complained of might be removed by gentler methods, I suppose at this day there are none who do not see the impossibility of using such with any effect. _Cuncta prius tentanda_ might have been formerly urged with some plausibility, but _cuncta prius tentata_ may now be replied: for surely, if a few monopolizing fishmongers could defeat that excellent scheme of the Westminster market, to the erecting which so many justices of peace, as well as other wise and learned men, did so vehemently apply themselves, that they might be truly said not only to have laid the whole strength of their heads, but of their shoulders too, to the business, it would be a vain endeavour for any other body of men to attempt to remove so stubborn a nusance. If it should be doubted whether we can bring this case within the letter of any capital law now subsisting, I am ashamed to own it cannot; for surely no crime better deserves such punishment; but the remedy may, nevertheless, be immediate; and if a law was made at the beginning of next session, to take place immediately, by which the starving thousands of poor was declared to be felony, without benefit of clergy, the fishmongers would be hanged before the end of the session. A second method of filling the mouths of the poor, if not with loaves at least with fishes, is to desire the magistrates to carry into execution one at least out of near a hundred acts of parliament, for preserving the small fry of the river of Thames, by which means as few fish would satisfy thousands as may now be devoured by a small number of individuals. But while a fisherman can break through the strongest meshes of an act of parliament, we may be assured he will learn so to contrive his own meshes that the smallest fry will not be able to swim through them. Other methods may, we doubt not, be suggested by those who shall attentively consider the evil here hinted at; but we have dwelt too long on it already, and shall conclude with observing that it is difficult to affirm whether the atrocity of the evil itself, the facility of curing it, or the shameful neglect of the cure, be the more scandalous or more astonishing. After having, however, gloriously regaled myself with this food, I was washing it down with some good claret with my wife and her friend, in the cabin, when the captain's valet-de-chambre, head cook, house and ship steward, footman in livery and out on't, secretary and fore-mast man, all burst into the cabin at once, being, indeed, all but one person, and, without saying by your leave, began to pack half a hogshead of small beer in bottles, the necessary consequence of which must have been either a total stop to conversation at that chearful season when it is most agreeable, or the admitting that polyonymous officer aforesaid to the participation of it. I desired him therefore to delay his purpose a little longer, but he refused to grant my request; nor was he prevailed on to quit the room till he was threatened with having one bottle to pack more than his number, which then happened to stand empty within my reach. With these menaces he retired at last, but not without muttering some menaces on his side, and which, to our great terror, he failed not to put into immediate execution. Our captain was gone to dinner this day with his Swiss brother; and, though he was a very sober man, was a little elevated with some champagne, which, as it cost the Swiss little or nothing, he dispensed at his table more liberally than our hospitable English noblemen put about those bottles, which the ingenious Peter Taylor teaches a led captain to avoid by distinguishing by the name of that generous liquor, which all humble companions are taught to postpone to the flavour of methuen, or honest port. While our two captains were thus regaling themselves, and celebrating their own heroic exploits with all the inspiration which the liquor, at least, of wit could afford them, the polyonymous officer arrived, and, being saluted by the name of Honest Tom, was ordered to sit down and take his glass before he delivered his message; for every sailor is by turns his captain's mate over a cann, except only that captain bashaw who presides in a man-of-war, and who upon earth has no other mate, unless it be another of the same bashaws. Tom had no sooner swallowed his draught than he hastily began his narrative, and faithfully related what had happened on board our ship; we say faithfully, though from what happened it may be suspected that Tom chose to add perhaps only five or six immaterial circumstances, as is always I believe the case, and may possibly have been done by me in relating this very story, though it happened not many hours ago. No sooner was the captain informed of the interruption which had been given to his officer, and indeed to his orders, for he thought no time so convenient as that of his absence for causing any confusion in the cabin, than he leapt with such haste from his chair that he had like to have broke his sword, with which he always begirt himself when he walked out of his ship, and sometimes when he walked about in it; at the same time, grasping eagerly that other implement called a cockade, which modern soldiers wear on their helmets with the same view as the antients did their crests--to terrify the enemy, he muttered something, but so inarticulately that the word _damn_ was only intelligible; he then hastily took leave of the Swiss captain, who was too well bred to press his stay on such an occasion, and leapt first from the ship to his boat, and then from his boat to his own ship, with as much fierceness in his looks as he had ever expressed on boarding his defenceless prey in the honourable calling of a privateer. Having regained the middle deck, he paused a moment while Tom and others loaded themselves with bottles, and then descending into the cabin exclaimed with a thundering voice, "D--n me, why arn't the bottles stoed in, according to my orders?" I answered him very mildly that I had prevented his man from doing it, as it was at an inconvenient time to me, and as in his absence, at least, I esteemed the cabin to be my own. "Your cabin!" repeated he many times; "no, d----n me! 'tis my cabin. Your cabin! d----n me! I have brought my hogs to a fair market. I suppose indeed you think it your cabin, and your ship, by your commanding in it; but I will command in it, d----n me! I will shew the world I am the commander, and nobody but I! Did you think I sold you the command of my ship for that pitiful thirty pounds? I wish I had not seen you nor your thirty pounds aboard of her." He then repeated the words thirty pounds often, with great disdain, and with a contempt which I own the sum did not seem to deserve in my eye, either in itself or on the present occasion; being, indeed, paid for the freight of ---- weight of human flesh, which is above fifty per cent. dearer than the freight of any other luggage, whilst in reality it takes up less room; in fact, no room at all. In truth, the sum was paid for nothing more than for a liberty to six persons (two of them servants) to stay on board a ship while she sails from one port to another, every shilling of which comes clear into the captain's pocket. Ignorant people may perhaps imagine, especially when they are told that the captain is obliged to sustain them, that their diet at least is worth something, which may probably be now and then so far the case as to deduct a tenth part from the neat profits on this account; but it was otherwise at present; for when I had contracted with the captain at a price which I by no means thought moderate, I had some content in thinking I should have no more to pay for my voyage; but I was whispered that it was expected the passengers should find themselves in several things; such as tea, wine, and such like; and particularly that gentlemen should stowe of the latter a much larger quantity than they could use, in order to leave the remainder as a present to the captain at the end of the voyage; and it was expected likewise that gentlemen should put aboard some fresh stores, and the more of such things were put aboard the welcomer they would be to the captain. I was prevailed with by these hints to follow the advice proposed; and accordingly, besides tea and a large hamper of wine, with several hams and tongues, I caused a number of live chickens and sheep to be conveyed aboard; in truth, treble the quantity of provisions which would have supported the persons I took with me, had the voyage continued three weeks, as it was supposed, with a bare possibility, it might. Indeed it continued much longer; but as this was occasioned by our being wind-bound in our own ports, it was by no means of any ill consequence to the captain, as the additional stores of fish, fresh meat, butter, bread, &c., which I constantly laid in, greatly exceeded the consumption, and went some way in maintaining the ship's crew. It is true I was not obliged to do this; but it seemed to be expected; for the captain did not think himself obliged to do it, and I can truly say I soon ceased to expect it of him. He had, I confess, on board a number of fowls and ducks sufficient for a West India voyage; all of them, as he often said, "Very fine birds, and of the largest breed." This I believe was really the fact, and I can add that they were all arrived at the full perfection of their size. Nor was there, I am convinced, any want of provisions of a more substantial kind; such as dried beef, pork, and fish; so that the captain seemed ready to perform his contract, and amply to provide for his passengers. What I did then was not from necessity, but, perhaps, from a less excusable motive, and was by no means chargeable to the account of the captain. But, let the motive have been what it would, the consequence was still the same; and this was such that I am firmly persuaded the whole pitiful thirty pounds came pure and neat into the captain's pocket, and not only so, but attended with the value of ten pound more in sundries into the bargain. I must confess myself therefore at a loss how the epithet _pitiful_ came to be annexed to the above sum; for, not being a pitiful price for what it was given, I cannot conceive it to be pitiful in itself; nor do I believe it is thought by the greatest men in the kingdom; none of whom would scruple to search for it in the dirtiest kennel, where they had only a reasonable hope of success. How, therefore, such a sum should acquire the idea of pitiful in the eyes of the master of a ship seems not easy to be accounted for; since it appears more likely to produce in him ideas of a different kind. Some men, perhaps, are no more sincere in the contempt for it which they express than others in their contempt of money in general; and I am the rather inclined to this persuasion, as I have seldom heard of either who have refused or refunded this their despised object. Besides, it is sometimes impossible to believe these professions, as every action of the man's life is a contradiction to it. Who can believe a tradesman who says he would not tell his name for the profit he gets by he selling such a parcel of goods, when he hath told a thousand lies in order to get it? Pitiful, indeed, is often applied to an object not absolutely, but comparatively with our expectations, or with a greater object: in which sense it is not easy to set any bounds to the use of the word. Thus, a handful of halfpence daily appear pitiful to a porter, and a handful of silver to a drawer. The latter, I am convinced, at a polite tavern, will not tell his name (for he will not give you any answer) under the price of gold. And in this sense thirty pound may be accounted pitiful by the lowest mechanic. One difficulty only seems to occur, and that is this, how comes it that, if the profits of the meanest arts are so considerable, the professors of them are not richer than we generally see them? One answer to this shall suffice. Men do not become rich by what they get, but by what they keep. He who is worth no more than his annual wages or salary, spends the whole; he will be always a beggar let his income be what it will, and so will be his family when he dies. This we see daily to be the case of ecclesiastics, who, during their lives, are extremely well provided for, only because they desire to maintain the honour of the cloth by living like gentlemen, which would, perhaps, be better maintained by living unlike them. But, to return from so long a digression, to which the use of so improper an epithet gave occasion, and to which the novelty of the subject allured, I will make the reader amends by concisely telling him that the captain poured forth such a torrent of abuse that I very hastily and very foolishly resolved to quit the ship. I gave immediate orders to summon a hoy to carry me that evening to Dartmouth, without considering any consequence. Those orders I gave in no very low voice, so that those above stairs might possibly conceive there was more than one master in the cabin. In the same tone I likewise threatened the captain with that which, he afterwards said, he feared more than any rock or quicksand. Nor can we wonder at this when we are told he had been twice obliged to bring to and cast anchor there before, and had neither time escaped without the loss of almost his whole cargo. The most distant sound of law thus frightened a man who had often, I am convinced, heard numbers of cannon roar round him with intrepidity. Nor did he sooner see the hoy approaching the vessel than he ran down again into the cabin, and, his rage being perfectly subsided, he tumbled on his knees, and a little too abjectly implored for mercy. I did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in this posture, but I immediately forgave him. And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own praises, I do utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. Neither did the greatness of my mind dictate, nor the force of my Christianity exact, this forgiveness. To speak truth, I forgave him from a motive which would make men much more forgiving if they were much wiser than they are, because it was convenient for me so to do. _Wednesday._--This morning the captain drest himself in scarlet in order to pay a visit to a Devonshire squire, to whom a captain of a ship is a guest of no ordinary consequence, as he is a stranger and a gentleman, who hath seen a great deal of the world in foreign parts, and knows all the news of the times. [Illustration: _He abjectly implored for mercy_] The squire, therefore, was to send his boat for the captain, but a most unfortunate accident happened; for, as the wind was extremely rough and against the hoy, while this was endeavouring to avail itself of great seamanship in hawling up against the wind, a sudden squall carried off sail and yard, or at least so disabled them that they were no longer of any use and unable to reach the ship; but the captain, from the deck, saw his hopes of venison disappointed, and was forced either to stay on board his ship, or to hoist forth his own long-boat, which he could not prevail with himself to think of, though the smell of the venison had had twenty times its attraction. He did, indeed, love his ship as his wife, and his boats as children, and never willingly trusted the latter, poor things! to the dangers of the seas. To say truth, notwithstanding the strict rigour with which he preserved the dignity of his station, and the hasty impatience with which he resented any affront to his person or orders, disobedience to which he could in no instance brook in any person on board, he was one of the best natured fellows alive. He acted the part of a father to his sailors; he expressed great tenderness for any of them when ill, and never suffered any the least work of supererogation to go unrewarded by a glass of gin. He even extended his humanity, if I may so call it, to animals, and even his cats and kittens had large shares in his affections. An instance of which we saw this evening, when the cat, which had shewn it could not be drowned, was found suffocated under a feather-bed in the cabin. I will not endeavour to describe his lamentations with more prolixity than barely by saying they were grievous, and seemed to have some mixture of the Irish howl in them. Nay, he carried his fondness even to inanimate objects, of which we have above set down a pregnant example in his demonstration of love and tenderness towards his boats and ship. He spoke of a ship which he had commanded formerly, and which was long since no more, which he had called the Princess of Brazil, as a widower of a deceased wife. This ship, after having followed the honest business of carrying goods and passengers for hire many years, did at last take to evil courses and turn privateer, in which service, to use his own words, she received many dreadful wounds, which he himself had felt as if they had been his own. _Thursday._--As the wind did not yesterday discover any purpose of shifting, and the water in my belly grew troublesome and rendered me short-breathed, I began a second time to have apprehensions of wanting the assistance of a trochar when none was to be found; I therefore concluded to be tapped again by way of precaution, and accordingly I this morning summoned on board a surgeon from a neighbouring parish, one whom the captain greatly recommended, and who did indeed perform his office with much dexterity. He was, I believe, likewise a man of great judgment and knowledge in the profession; but of this I cannot speak with perfect certainty, for, when he was going to open on the dropsy at large and on the particular degree of the distemper under which I laboured, I was obliged to stop him short, for the wind was changed, and the captain in the utmost hurry to depart; and to desire him, instead of his opinion, to assist me with his execution. I was now once more delivered from my burthen, which was not indeed so great as I had apprehended, wanting two quarts of what was let out at the last operation. While the surgeon was drawing away my water the sailors were drawing up the anchor; both were finished at the same time; we unfurled our sails and soon passed the Berry-head, which forms the mouth of the bay. We had not however sailed far when the wind, which had, though with a slow pace, kept us company about six miles, suddenly turned about, and offered to conduct us back again; a favour which, though sorely against the grain, we were obliged to accept. Nothing remarkable happened this day; for as to the firm persuasion of the captain that he was under the spell of witchcraft, I would not repeat it too often, though indeed he repeated it an hundred times every day; in truth, he talked of nothing else, and seemed not only to be satisfied in general of his being bewitched, but actually to have fixed with good certainty on the person of the witch, whom, had he lived in the days of Sir Matthew Hale, he would have infallibly indicted, and very possibly have hanged, for the detestable sin of witchcraft; but that law, and the whole doctrine that supported it, are now out of fashion; and witches, as a learned divine once chose to express himself, are put down by act of parliament. This witch, in the captain's opinion, was no other than Mrs Francis of Ryde, who, as he insinuated, out of anger to me for not spending more money in her house than she could produce anything to exchange for, or any pretence to charge for, had laid this spell on his ship. Though we were again got near our harbour by three in the afternoon, yet it seemed to require a full hour or more before we could come to our former place of anchoring, or berth, as the captain called it. On this occasion we exemplified one of the few advantages which the travellers by water have over the travellers by land. What would the latter often give for the sight of one of those hospitable mansions where he is assured _that there is good entertainment for man and horse_; and where both may consequently promise themselves to assuage that hunger which exercise is so sure to raise in a healthy constitution. At their arrival at this mansion, how much happier is the state of the horse than that of the master! The former is immediately led to his repast, such as it is, and, whatever it is, he falls to it with appetite. But the latter is in a much worse situation. His hunger, however violent, is always in some degree delicate, and his food must have some kind of ornament, or, as the more usual phrase is, of dressing, to recommend it. Now all dressing requires time, and therefore, though perhaps the sheep might be just killed before you came to the inn, yet in cutting him up, fetching the joint, which the landlord by mistake said he had in the house, from the butcher at two miles' distance, and afterwards warming it a little by the fire, two hours at least must be consumed, while hunger, for want of better food, preys all the time on the vitals of the man. How different was the case with us! we carried our provision, our kitchen, and our cook with us, and we were at one and the same time travelling on our road, and sitting down to a repast of fish, with which the greatest table in London can scarce at any rate be supplied. _Friday._--As we were disappointed of our wind, and obliged to return back the preceding evening, we resolved to extract all the good we could out of our misfortune, and to add considerably to our fresh stores of meat and bread, with which we were very indifferently provided when we hurried away yesterday. By the captain's advice we likewise laid in some stores of butter, which we salted and potted ourselves, for our use at Lisbon, and we had great reason afterwards to thank him for his advice. In the afternoon I persuaded my wife, whom it was no easy matter for me to force from my side, to take a walk on shore, whither the gallant captain declared he was ready to attend her. Accordingly the ladies set out, and left me to enjoy a sweet and comfortable nap after the operation of the preceding day. Thus we enjoyed our separate pleasures full three hours, when we met again, and my wife gave the foregoing account of the gentleman whom I have before compared to Axylus, and of his habitation, to both which she had been introduced by the captain, in the stile of an old friend and acquaintance, though this foundation of intimacy seemed to her to be no deeper laid than in an accidental dinner, eaten many years before, at this temple of hospitality, when the captain lay wind-bound in the same bay. _Saturday._--Early this morning the wind seemed inclined to change in our favour. Our alert captain snatched its very first motion, and got under sail with so very gentle a breeze that, as the tide was against him, he recommended to a fishing hoy to bring after him a vast salmon and some other provisions which lay ready for him on shore. Our anchor was up at six, and before nine in the morning we had doubled the Berry-head, and were arrived off Dartmouth, having gone full three miles in as many hours, in direct opposition to the tide, which only befriended us out of our harbour; and though the wind was perhaps our friend, it was so very silent, and exerted itself so little in our favour, that, like some cool partisans, it was difficult to say whether it was with us or against us. The captain, however, declared the former to be the case during the whole three hours; but at last he perceived his error, or rather, perhaps, this friend, which had hitherto wavered in chusing his side, became now more determined. The captain then suddenly tacked about, and, asserting that he was bewitched, submitted to return to the place from whence he came. Now, though I am as free from superstition as any man breathing, and never did believe in witches, notwithstanding all the excellent arguments of my lord chief-justice Hale in their favour, and long before they were put down by act of parliament, yet by what power a ship of burthen should sail three miles against both wind and tide, I cannot conceive, unless there was some supernatural interposition in the case; nay, could we admit that the wind stood neuter, the difficulty would still remain. So that we must of necessity conclude that the ship was either bewinded or bewitched. The captain, perhaps, had another meaning. He imagined himself, I believe, bewitched, because the wind, instead of persevering in its change in his favour, for change it certainly did that morning, should suddenly return to its favourite station, and blow him back towards the bay. But, if this was his opinion, he soon saw cause to alter; for he had not measured half the way back when the wind again declared in his favour, and so loudly, that there was no possibility of being mistaken. The orders for the second tack were given, and obeyed with much more alacrity than those had been for the first. We were all of us indeed in high spirits on the occasion; though some of us a little regretted the good things we were likely to leave behind us by the fisherman's neglect; I might give it a worse name, for he faithfully promised to execute the commission, which he had had abundant opportunity to do; but _nautica fides_ deserves as much to be proverbial as ever _Punica fides_ could formerly have done. Nay, when we consider that the Carthaginians came from the Phenicians, who are supposed to have produced the first mariners, we may probably see the true reason of the adage, and it may open a field of very curious discoveries to the antiquarian. We were, however, too eager to pursue our voyage to suffer anything we left behind us to interrupt our happiness, which, indeed, many agreeable circumstances conspired to advance. The weather was inexpressibly pleasant, and we were all seated on the deck, when our canvas began to swell with the wind. We had likewise in our view above thirty other sail around us, all in the same situation. Here an observation occurred to me, which, perhaps, though extremely obvious, did not offer itself to every individual in our little fleet: when I perceived with what different success we proceeded under the influence of a superior power, which, while we lay almost idle ourselves, pushed us forward on our intended voyage, and compared this with the slow progress which we had made in the morning, of ourselves, and without any such assistance, I could not help reflecting how often the greatest abilities lie wind-bound as it were in life; or, if they venture out and attempt to beat the seas, they struggle in vain against wind and tide, and, if they have not sufficient prudence to put back, are most probably cast away on the rocks and quicksands which are every day ready to devour them. It was now our fortune to set out _melioribus avibus_. The wind freshened so briskly in our poop that the shore appeared to move from us as fast as we did from the shore. The captain declared he was sure of a wind, meaning its continuance; but he had disappointed us so often that he had lost all credit. However, he kept his word a little better now, and we lost sight of our native land as joyfully, at least, as it is usual to regain it. _Sunday._--The next morning the captain told me he thought himself thirty miles to the westward of Plymouth, and before evening declared that the Lizard Point, which is the extremity of Cornwall, bore several leagues to leeward. Nothing remarkable passed this day, except the captain's devotion, who, in his own phrase, summoned all hands to prayers, which were read by a common sailor upon deck, with more devout force and address than they are commonly read by a country curate, and received with more decency and attention by the sailors than are usually preserved in city congregations. I am indeed assured, that if any such affected disregard of the solemn office in which they were engaged, as I have seen practised by fine gentlemen and ladies, expressing a kind of apprehension lest they should be suspected of being really in earnest in their devotion, had been shewn here, they would have contracted the contempt of the whole audience. To say the truth, from what I observed in the behaviour of the sailors in this voyage, and on comparing it with what I have formerly seen of them at sea and on shore, I am convinced that on land there is nothing more idle and dissolute; in their own element there are no persons near the level of their degree who live in the constant practice of half so many good qualities. They are, for much the greater part, perfect masters of their business, and always extremely alert, and ready in executing it, without any regard to fatigue or hazard. The soldiers themselves are not better disciplined nor more obedient to orders than these whilst aboard; they submit to every difficulty which attends their calling with chearfulness, and no less virtues and patience and fortitude are exercised by them every day of their lives. All these good qualities, however, they always leave behind them on shipboard; the sailor out of water is, indeed, as wretched an animal as the fish out of water; for though the former hath, in common with amphibious animals, the bare power of existing on the land, yet if he be kept there any time he never fails to become a nuisance. The ship having had a good deal of motion since she was last under sail, our women returned to their sickness, and I to my solitude; having, for twenty-four hours together, scarce opened my lips to a single person. This circumstance of being shut up within the circumference of a few yards, with a score of human creatures, with not one of whom it was possible to converse, was perhaps so rare as scarce ever to have happened before, nor could it ever happen to one who disliked it more than myself, or to myself at a season when I wanted more food for my social disposition, or could converse less wholesomely and happily with my own thoughts. To this accident, which fortune opened to me in the Downs, was owing the first serious thought which I ever entertained of enrolling myself among the voyage-writers; some of the most amusing pages, if, indeed, there be any which deserve that name, were possibly the production of the most disagreeable hours which ever haunted the author. _Monday._--At noon the captain took an observation, by which it appeared that Ushant bore some leagues northward of us, and that we were just entering the bay of Biscay. We had advanced a very few miles in this bay before we were entirely becalmed: we furled our sails, as being of no use to us while we lay in this most disagreeable situation, more detested by the sailors than the most violent tempest: we were alarmed with the loss of a fine piece of salt beef, which had been hung in the sea to freshen it; this being, it seems, the strange property of salt-water. The thief was immediately suspected, and presently afterwards taken by the sailors. He was, indeed, no other than a huge shark, who, not knowing when he was well off, swallowed another piece of beef, together with a great iron crook on which it was hung, and by which he was dragged into the ship. I should scarce have mentioned the catching this shark, though so exactly conformable to the rules and practice of voyage-writing, had it not been for a strange circumstance that attended it. This was the recovery of the stolen beef out of the shark's maw, where it lay unchewed and undigested, and whence, being conveyed into the pot, the flesh, and the thief that had stolen it, joined together in furnishing variety to the ship's crew. During this calm we likewise found the mast of a large vessel, which the captain thought had lain at least three years in the sea. It was stuck all over with a little shell-fish or reptile, called a barnacle, and which probably are the prey of the rock-fish, as our captain calls it, asserting that it is the finest fish in the world; for which we are obliged to confide entirely to his taste; for, though he struck the fish with a kind of harping-iron, and wounded him, I am convinced, to death, yet he could not possess himself of his body; but the poor wretch escaped to linger out a few hours with probably great torments. In the evening our wind returned, and so briskly, that we ran upwards of twenty leagues before the next day's [_Tuesday's_] observation, which brought us to lat. 47° 42´. The captain promised us a very speedy passage through the bay; but he deceived us, or the wind deceived him, for it so slackened at sunset, that it scarce carried us a mile in an hour during the whole succeeding night. _Wednesday._--A gale struck up a little after sun-rising, which carried us between three and four knots or miles an hour. We were this day at noon about the middle of the bay of Biscay, when the wind once more deserted us, and we were so entirely becalmed, that we did not advance a mile in many hours. My fresh-water reader will perhaps conceive no unpleasant idea from this calm; but it affected us much more than a storm could have done; for, as the irascible passions of men are apt to swell with indignation long after the injury which first raised them is over, so fared it with the sea. It rose mountains high, and lifted our poor ship up and down, backwards and forwards, with so violent an emotion, that there was scarce a man in the ship better able to stand than myself. Every utensil in our cabin rolled up and down, as we should have rolled ourselves, had not our chairs been fast lashed to the floor. In this situation, with our tables likewise fastened by ropes, the captain and myself took our meal with some difficulty, and swallowed a little of our broth, for we spilt much the greater part. The remainder of our dinner being an old, lean, tame duck roasted, I regretted but little the loss of, my teeth not being good enough to have chewed it. Our women, who began to creep out of their holes in the morning, retired again within the cabin to their beds, and were no more heard of this day, in which my whole comfort was to find by the captain's relation that the swelling was sometimes much worse; he did, indeed, take this occasion to be more communicative than ever, and informed me of such misadventures that had befallen him within forty-six years at sea as might frighten a very bold spirit from undertaking even the shortest voyage. Were these, indeed, but universally known, our matrons of quality would possibly be deterred from venturing their tender offspring at sea; by which means our navy would lose the honour of many a young commodore, who at twenty-two is better versed in maritime affairs than real seamen are made by experience at sixty. And this may, perhaps, appear the more extraordinary, as the education of both seems to be pretty much the same; neither of them having had their courage tried by Virgil's description of a storm, in which, inspired as he was, I doubt whether our captain doth not exceed him. In the evening the wind, which continued in the N.W., again freshened, and that so briskly that Cape Finisterre appeared by this day's observation to bear a few miles to the southward. We now indeed sailed, or rather flew, near ten knots an hour; and the captain, in the redundancy of his good-humour, declared he would go to church at Lisbon on Sunday next, for that he was sure of a wind; and, indeed, we all firmly believed him. But the event again contradicted him; for we were again visited by a calm in the evening. But here, though our voyage was retarded, we were entertained with a scene, which as no one can behold without going to sea, so no one can form an idea of anything equal to it on shore. We were seated on the deck, women and all, in the serenest evening that can be imagined. Not a single cloud presented itself to our view, and the sun himself was the only object which engrossed our whole attention. He did indeed set with a majesty which is incapable of description, with which, while the horizon was yet blazing with glory, our eyes were called off to the opposite part to survey the moon, which was then at full, and which in rising presented us with the second object that this world hath offered to our vision. Compared to these the pageantry of theatres, or splendour of courts, are sights almost below the regard of children. We did not return from the deck till late in the evening; the weather being inexpressibly pleasant, and so warm that even my old distemper perceived the alteration of the climate. There was indeed a swell, but nothing comparable to what we had felt before, and it affected us on the deck much less than in the cabin. _Friday._--The calm continued till sun-rising, when the wind likewise arose, but unluckily for us it came from a wrong quarter; it was S.S.E., which is that very wind which Juno would have solicited of Ã�olus, had Ã�neas been in our latitude bound for Lisbon. The captain now put on his most melancholy aspect, and resumed his former opinion that he was bewitched. He declared with great solemnity that this was worse and worse, for that a wind directly in his teeth was worse than no wind at all. Had we pursued the course which the wind persuaded us to take we had gone directly for Newfoundland, if we had not fallen in with Ireland in our way. Two ways remained to avoid this; one was to put into a port of Galicia; the other, to beat to the westward with as little sail as possible: and this was our captain's election. As for us, poor passengers, any port would have been welcome to us; especially, as not only our fresh provisions, except a great number of old ducks and fowls, but even our bread was come to an end, and nothing but sea-biscuit remained, which I could not chew. So that now for the first time in my life I saw what it was to want a bit of bread. The wind however was not so unkind as we had apprehended; but, having declined with the sun, it changed at the approach of the moon, and became again favourable to us, though so gentle that the next day's observation carried us very little to the southward of Cape Finisterre. This evening at six the wind, which had been very quiet all day, rose very high, and continuing in our favour drove us seven knots an hour. This day we saw a sail, the only one, as I heard of, we had seen in our whole passage through the bay. I mention this on account of what appeared to me somewhat extraordinary. Though she was at such a distance that I could only perceive she was a ship, the sailors discovered that she was a snow, bound to a port in Galicia. _Sunday._--After prayers, which our good captain read on the deck with an audible voice, and with but one mistake, of a lion for Elias, in the second lesson for this day, we found ourselves far advanced in 42°, and the captain declared we should sup off Porte. We had not much wind this day; but, as this was directly in our favour, we made it up with sail, of which we crowded all we had. We went only at the rate of four miles an hour, but with so uneasy a motion, continually rolling from side to side, that I suffered more than I had done in our whole voyage; my bowels being almost twisted out of my belly. However, the day was very serene and bright, and the captain, who was in high spirits, affirmed he had never passed a pleasanter at sea. The wind continued so brisk that we ran upward of six knots an hour the whole night. _Monday._--In the morning our captain concluded that he was got into lat. 40°, and was very little short of the Burlings, as they are called in the charts. We came up with them at five in the afternoon, being the first land we had distinctly seen since we left Devonshire. They consist of abundance of little rocky islands, a little distant from the shore, three of them only shewing themselves above the water. Here the Portuguese maintain a kind of garrison, if we may allow it that name. It consists of malefactors, who are banished hither for a term, for divers small offences--a policy which they may have copied from the Egyptians, as we may read in Diodorus Siculus. That wise people, to prevent the corruption of good manners by evil communication, built a town on the Red Sea, whither they transported a great number of their criminals, having first set an indelible mark on them, to prevent their returning and mixing with the sober part of their citizens. These rocks lie about fifteen leagues north-west of Cape Roxent, or, as it is commonly called, the Rock of Lisbon, which we past early the next morning. The wind, indeed, would have carried us thither sooner; but the captain was not in a hurry, as he was to lose nothing by his delay. _Tuesday._--This is a very high mountain, situated on the northern side of the mouth of the river Tajo, which, rising about Madrid, in Spain, and soon becoming navigable for small craft, empties itself, after a long course, into the sea, about four leagues below Lisbon. On the summit of the rock stands a hermitage, which is now in the possession of an Englishman, who was formerly master of a vessel trading to Lisbon; and, having changed his religion and his manners, the latter of which, at least, were none of the best, betook himself to this place, in order to do penance for his sins. He is now very old, and hath inhabited this hermitage for a great number of years, during which he hath received some countenance from the royal family, and particularly from the present queen dowager, whose piety refuses no trouble or expence by which she may make a proselyte, being used to say that the saving one soul would repay all the endeavours of her life. Here we waited for the tide, and had the pleasure of surveying the face of the country, the soil of which, at this season, exactly resembles an old brick-kill, or a field where the green sward is pared up and set a burning, or rather a smoaking, in little heaps to manure the land. This sight will, perhaps, of all others, make an Englishman proud of, and pleased with, his own country, which in verdure excels, I believe, every other country. Another deficiency here is the want of large trees, nothing above a shrub being here to be discovered in the circumference of many miles. At this place we took a pilot on board, who, being the first Portuguese we spoke to, gave us an instance of that religious observance which is paid by all nations to their laws; for, whereas it is here a capital offence to assist any person in going on shore from a foreign vessel before it hath been examined, and every person in it viewed by the magistrates of health, as they are called, this worthy pilot, for a very small reward, rowed the Portuguese priest to shore at this place, beyond which he did not dare to advance, and in venturing whither he had given sufficient testimony of love for his native country. We did not enter the Tajo till noon, when, after passing several old castles and other buildings which had greatly the aspect of ruins, we came to the castle of Bellisle, where we had a full prospect of Lisbon, and were, indeed, within three miles of it. Here we were saluted with a gun, which was a signal to pass no farther till we had complied with certain ceremonies which the laws of this country require to be observed by all ships which arrive in this port. We were obliged then to cast anchor, and expect the arrival of the officers of the customs, without whose passport no ship must proceed farther than this place. Here likewise we received a visit from one of those magistrates of health before mentioned. He refused to come on board the ship till every person in her had been drawn up on deck and personally viewed by him. This occasioned some delay on my part, as it was not the work of a minute to lift me from the cabin to the deck. The captain thought my particular case might have been excused from this ceremony, and that it would be abundantly sufficient if the magistrate, who was obliged afterwards to visit the cabin, surveyed me there. But this did not satisfy the magistrate's strict regard to his duty. When he was told of my lameness, he called out, with a voice of authority, "Let him be brought up," and his orders were presently complied with. He was, indeed, a person of great dignity, as well as of the most exact fidelity in the discharge of his trust. Both which are the more admirable as his salary is less than thirty pounds English per annum. Before a ship hath been visited by one of those magistrates no person can lawfully go on board her, nor can any on board depart from her. This I saw exemplified in a remarkable instance. The young lad whom I have mentioned as one of our passengers was here met by his father, who, on the first news of the captain's arrival, came from Lisbon to Bellisle in a boat, being eager to embrace a son whom he had not seen for many years. But when he came alongside our ship neither did the father dare ascend nor the son descend, as the magistrate of health had not yet been on board. Some of our readers will, perhaps, admire the great caution of this policy, so nicely calculated for the preservation of this country from all pestilential distempers. Others will as probably regard it as too exact and formal to be constantly persisted in, in seasons of the utmost safety, as well as in times of danger. I will not decide either way, but will content myself with observing that I never yet saw or heard of a place where a traveller had so much trouble given him at his landing as here. The only use of which, as all such matters begin and end in form only, is to put it into the power of low and mean fellows to be either rudely officious or grossly corrupt, as they shall see occasion to prefer the gratification of their pride or of their avarice. Of this kind, likewise, is that power which is lodged with other officers here, of taking away every grain of snuff and every leaf of tobacco brought hither from other countries, though only for the temporary use of the person during his residence here. This is executed with great insolence, and, as it is in the hands of the dregs of the people, very scandalously; for, under pretence of searching for tobacco and snuff, they are sure to steal whatever they can find, insomuch that when they came on board our sailors addressed us in the Covent-garden language: "Pray, gentlemen and ladies, take care of your swords and watches." Indeed, I never yet saw anything equal to the contempt and hatred which our honest tars every moment expressed for these Portuguese officers. At Bellisle lies buried Catharine of Arragon, widow of prince Arthur, eldest son of our Henry VII., afterwards married to, and divorced from, Henry VIII. Close by the church where her remains are deposited is a large convent of Geronymites, one of the most beautiful piles of building in all Portugal. In the evening, at twelve, our ship, having received previous visits from all the necessary parties, took the advantage of the tide, and having sailed up to Lisbon cast anchor there, in a calm and moonshiny night, which made the passage incredibly pleasant to the women, who remained three hours enjoying it, whilst I was left to the cooler transports of enjoying their pleasures at second-hand; and yet, cooler as they may be, whoever is totally ignorant of such sensation is, at the same time, void of all ideas of friendship. _Wednesday._--Lisbon, before which we now lay at anchor, is said to be built on the same number of hills with old Rome; but these do not all appear to the water; on the contrary, one sees from thence one vast high hill and rock, with buildings arising above one another, and that in so steep and almost perpendicular a manner, that they all seem to have but one foundation. As the houses, convents, churches, &c., are large, and all built with white stone, they look very beautiful at a distance; but as you approach nearer, and find them to want every kind of ornament, all idea of beauty vanishes at once. While I was surveying the prospect of this city, which bears so little resemblance to any other that I have ever seen, a reflexion occurred to me that, if a man was suddenly to be removed from Palmyra hither, and should take a view of no other city, in how glorious a light would the antient architecture appear to him! and what desolation and destruction of arts and sciences would he conclude had happened between the several æras of these cities! I had now waited full three hours upon deck for the return of my man, whom I had sent to bespeak a good dinner (a thing which had been long unknown to me) on shore, and then to bring a Lisbon chaise with him to the sea-shore; but it seems the impertinence of the providore was not yet brought to a conclusion. At three o'clock, when I was, from emptiness, rather faint than hungry, my man returned, and told me there was a new law lately made that no passenger should set his foot on shore without a special order from the providore, and that he himself would have been sent to prison for disobeying it, had he not been protected as the servant of the captain. He informed me likewise that the captain had been very industrious to get this order, but that it was then the providore's hour of sleep, a time when no man, except the king himself, durst disturb him. To avoid prolixity, though in a part of my narrative which may be more agreeable to my reader than it was to me, the providore, having at last finished his nap, dispatched this absurd matter of form, and gave me leave to come, or rather to be carried, on shore. What it was that gave the first hint of this strange law is not easy to guess. Possibly, in the infancy of their defection, and before their government could be well established, they were willing to guard against the bare possibility of surprise, of the success of which bare possibility the Trojan horse will remain for ever on record, as a great and memorable example. Now the Portuguese have no walls to secure them, and a vessel of two or three hundred tons will contain a much larger body of troops than could be concealed in that famous machine, though Virgil tells us (somewhat hyperbolically, I believe) that it was as big as a mountain. About seven in the evening I got into a chaise on shore, and was driven through the nastiest city in the world, though at the same time one of the most populous, to a kind of coffee-house, which is very pleasantly situated on the brow of a hill, about a mile from the city, and hath a very fine prospect of the river Tajo from Lisbon to the sea. Here we regaled ourselves with a good supper, for which we were as well charged as if the bill had been made on the Bath-road, between Newbury and London. And now we could joyfully say, Egressi optata Troes potiuntur arena. Therefore, in the words of Horace, --hic Finis chartæque viæque. END OF VOL. I. BALLANTYNE PRESS: EDINBURGH AND LONDON * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [A] Some doubt whether this should not be rather 1641, which is a date more agreeable to the account given of it in the introduction: but then there are some passages which seem to relate to transactions infinitely later, even within this year or two. To say the truth there are difficulties attending either conjecture; so the reader may take which he pleases [B] Eyes are not perhaps so properly adapted to a spiritual substance; but we are here, as in many other places, obliged to use corporeal terms to make ourselves the better understood. [C] This is the dress in which the god appears to mortals at the theatres. One of the offices attributed to this god by the ancients, was to collect the ghosts as a shepherd doth a flock of sheep, and drive them with his wand into the other world. [D] Those who have read of the gods sleeping in Homer will not be surprized at this happening to spirits. [E] A particular lady of quality is meant here; but every lady of quality, or no quality, are welcome to apply the character to themselves. [F] We have before made an apology for this language, which we here repeat for the last time; though the heart may, we hope, be metaphorically used here with more propriety than when we apply those passions to the body which belong to the soul. [G] That we may mention it once for all, in the panegyrical part of this work some particular person is always meant: but, in the satirical, nobody. [H] These ladies, I believe, by their names, presided over the _leprosy_, _king's-evil_, and _scurvy_. [I] This silly story is told as a solemn truth (_i.e._, that St James really appeared in the manner this fellow is described) by Mariana, I. 7, §78. [J] Here part of the manuscript is lost, and that a very considerable one, as appears by the number of the next book and chapter, which contains, I find, the history of Anna Boleyn; but as to the manner in which it was introduced, or to whom the narrative is told, we are totally left in the dark. I have only to remark, that this chapter is, in the original, writ in a woman's hand: and, though the observations in it are, I think, as excellent as any in the whole volume, there seems to be a difference in style between this and the preceding chapters; and, as it is the character of a woman which is related, I am inclined to fancy it was really written by one of that sex. [K] Here ends this curious manuscript; the rest being destroyed in rolling up pens, tobacco, &c. It is to be hoped heedless people will henceforth be more cautious what they burn, or use to other vile purposes; especially when they consider the fate which had likely to have befallen the divine Milton, and that the works of Homer were probably discovered in some chandler's shop in Greece. [L] At Lisbon. [M] A predecessor of mine used to boast that he made one thousand pounds a-year in his office; but how he did this (if indeed he did it) is to me a secret. His clerk, now mine, told me I had more business than he had ever known there; I am sure I had as much as any man could do. The truth is, the fees are so very low, when any are due, and so much is done for nothing, that, if a single justice of peace had business enough to employ twenty clerks, neither he nor they would get much by their labour. The public will not, therefore, I hope, think I betray a secret when I inform them that I received from the Government a yearly pension out of the public service-money; which, I believe, indeed, would have been larger had my great patron been convinced of an error, which I have heard him utter more than once, that he could not indeed say that the acting as a principal justice of peace in Westminster was on all accounts very desirable, but that all the world knew it was a very lucrative office. Now, to have shewn him plainly that a man must be a rogue to make a very little this way, and that he could not make much by being as great a rogue as he could be, would have required more confidence than, I believe, he had in me, and more of his conversation than he chose to allow me; I therefore resigned the office and the farther execution of my plan to my brother, who had long been my assistant. And now, lest the case between me and the reader should be the same in both instances as it was between me and the great man, I will not add another word on the subject. 46597 ---- (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available by HathiTrust Digital Library (http://www.hathitrust.org/digital_library) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original 170 engravings. See 46597-h.htm or 46597-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46597/46597-h/46597-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46597/46597-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through HathiTrust Digital Library. See http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008613392 A Voyage Round the World. IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS: A Romantic Narrative of the Loss of Captain Grant of the Brig Britannia and of the Adventures of His Children and Friends in His Discovery and Rescue. [Illustration] by JULES VERNE, Author of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," etc., etc. Illustrated with One Hundred and Seventy Engravings Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874. CONTENTS. I. The Shark II. The Three Documents III. The Captain's Children IV. Lady Glenarvan's Proposal V. The Departure of the Duncan VI. An Unexpected Passenger VII. Jacques Paganel is Undeceived VIII. The Geographer's Resolution IX. Through the Strait of Magellan X. The Course Decided XI. Traveling in Chili XII. Eleven Thousand Feet Aloft XIII. A Sudden Descent XIV. Providentially Rescued XV. Thalcave XVI. News of the Lost Captain XVII. A Serious Necessity XVIII. In Search of Water XIX. The Red Wolves XX. Strange Signs XXI. A False Trail XXII. The Flood XXIII. A Singular Abode XXIV. Paganel's Disclosure XXV. Between Fire and Water XXVI. The Return on Board XXVII. A New Destination XXVIII. Tristan d'Acunha and the Isle of Amsterdam XXIX. The Storm on the Indian Ocean XXX. A Hospitable Colonist XXXI. The Quartermaster of the Britannia XXXII. Preparations for the Journey XXXIII. An Accident XXXIV. Australian Explorers XXXV. Crime or Calamity? XXXVI. Fresh Faces XXXVII. A Warning XXXVIII. Wealth in the Wilderness XXXIX. Suspicious Occurrences XL. A Startling Discovery XLI. The Plot Unveiled XLII. Four Days of Anguish XLIII. Helpless and Hopeless XLIV. A Rough Captain XLV. The Wreck of the Macquarie XLVI. Vain Efforts XLVII. A Dreaded Country XLVIII. Introduction to the Cannibals XLIX. A Momentous Interview L. The Chief's Funeral LI. Strangely Liberated LII. The Sacred Mountain LIII. A Bold Stratagem LIV. From Peril to Safety LV. Why the Duncan went to New Zealand LVI. Ayrton's Obstinacy LVII. A Discouraging Confession LVIII. A Cry in the Night LIX. Captain Grant's Story LX. Paganel's Last Entanglement [Illustration] IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS. CHAPTER I. THE SHARK. On the 26th of July, 1864, under a strong gale from the northeast, a magnificent yacht was steaming at full speed through the waves of the North Channel. The flag of England fluttered at her yard-arm, while at the top of the mainmast floated a blue pennon, bearing the initials E. G., worked in gold and surmounted by a ducal coronet. The yacht was called the Duncan, and belonged to Lord Glenarvan, one of the sixteen Scottish peers sitting in the House of Lords, and also a most distinguished member of the "Royal Thames Yacht Club," so celebrated throughout the United Kingdom. Lord Edward Glenarvan was on board with his young wife, Lady Helena, and one of his cousins, Major MacNabb. The Duncan, newly constructed, had just been making a trial voyage several miles beyond the Frith of Clyde, and was now on her return to Glasgow. Already Arran Island was appearing on the horizon, when the look-out signaled an enormous fish that was sporting in the wake of the yacht. The captain, John Mangles, at once informed Lord Glenarvan of the fact, who mounted on deck with Major MacNabb, and asked the captain what he thought of the animal. "Indeed, your lordship," replied Captain Mangles, "I think it is a shark of large proportions." "A shark in these regions!" exclaimed Glenarvan. "Without doubt," replied the captain. "This fish belongs to a species of sharks that are found in all seas and latitudes. It is the 'balance-fish,' and, if I am not greatly mistaken, we shall have an encounter with one of these fellows. If your lordship consents, and it pleases Lady Helena to witness such a novel chase, we will soon see what we have to deal with." "What do you think, MacNabb?" said Lord Glenarvan to the major; "are you of a mind to try the adventure?" "I am of whatever opinion pleases you," answered the major, calmly. "Besides," continued Captain Mangles, "we cannot too soon exterminate these terrible monsters. Let us improve the opportunity, and, if your lordship pleases, it shall be an exciting scene as well as a good action." "Very well, captain," said Lord Glenarvan. He then summoned Lady Helena, who joined him on deck, tempted by the exciting sport. The sea was magnificent. You could easily follow along its surface the rapid motions of the fish, as it plunged and rose again with surprising agility. Captain Mangles gave his orders, and the sailors threw over the starboard ratling a stout rope, to which was fastened a hook baited with a thick piece of pork. [Sidenote: THE LAST MOUTHFUL.] The shark, although still at a distance of fifty yards, scented the bait offered to his voracity. He rapidly approached the yacht. You could see his fins, gray at their extremity and black at their base, beat the waves with violence, while his "caudal appendage" kept him in a rigorously straight line. As he advanced, his great glaring eyes seemed inflamed with eagerness, and his yawning jaws, when he turned, disclosed a quadruple row of teeth. His head was large, and shaped like a double-headed hammer. Captain Mangles was right. It was a very large specimen of the most rapacious family of sharks,--the "balance fish" of the English and the "jew-fish" of the Provençals. [Illustration] All on board of the Duncan followed the movements of the shark with lively attention. The animal was soon within reach of the hook; he turned upon his back, in order to seize it better, and the enormous bait disappeared down his vast gullet. At the same time he hooked himself, giving the line a violent shake, whereupon the sailors hoisted the huge creature by means of a pulley at the end of the yard-arm. The shark struggled violently at feeling himself drawn from his natural element, but his struggles were of no avail. A rope with a slip-noose confined his tail and paralyzed his movements. A few moments afterward he was hauled over the ratlings, and precipitated upon the deck of the yacht. One of the sailors at once approached him, not without caution, and with a vigorous blow of the hatchet cut off the formidable tail of the animal. The chase was ended, and there was nothing more to fear from the monster. The vengeance of the sailors was satisfied, but not their curiosity. Indeed, it is customary on board of every vessel to carefully examine the stomachs of sharks. The men, knowing the inordinate voracity of the creature, wait with some anxiety, and their expectation is not always in vain. Lady Glenarvan, not wishing to witness this strange "exploration," retired to the cabin. The shark was still panting. He was ten feet long, and weighed more than six hundred pounds. These dimensions are nothing extraordinary; for if the balance-fish is not classed among the giants of this species, at least he belongs to the most formidable of their family. The enormous fish was soon cut open by a blow of the hatchet, without further ceremony. The hook had penetrated to the stomach, which was absolutely empty. Evidently the animal had fasted a long time, and the disappointed seamen were about to cast the remains into the sea, when the attention of the mate was attracted by a bulky object firmly imbedded in the viscera. "Ha! what is this?" he exclaimed. "That," replied one of the sailors, "is a piece of rock that the creature has taken in for ballast." "Good!" said another; "it is probably a bullet that this fellow has received in the stomach, and could not digest." [Illustration: "Good," said Glenarvan; "wash the dirty thing, and bring it into the cabin."] "Be still, all of you!" cried Tom Austin, the mate; "do you not see that the animal was a great drunkard? and to lose nothing, has drank not only the wine, but the bottle too!" "What!" exclaimed Lord Glenarvan, "is it a bottle that this shark has in his stomach?" "A real bottle!" replied the mate, "but you can easily see that it does not come from the wine-cellar." "Well, Tom," said Glenarvan, "draw it out carefully. Bottles found in the sea frequently contain precious documents." "Do you think so?" said Major MacNabb. "I do; at least, that it may happen so." "Oh! I do not contradict you," replied the major. "Perhaps there may be a secret in this." "We shall see," said Glenarvan. "Well, Tom?" "Here it is," said the mate, displaying the shapeless object that he had just drawn with difficulty from the interior of the shark. "Good," said Glenarvan; "wash the dirty thing, and bring it into the cabin." Tom obeyed; and the bottle found under such singular circumstances was placed on the cabin-table, around which Lord Glenarvan, Major MacNabb, and Captain John Mangles took their seats, together with Lady Helena; for a woman, they say, is always a little inquisitive. Everything causes excitement at sea. For a moment there was silence. Each gazed wonderingly at this strange waif. Did it contain the secret of a disaster, or only an insignificant message confided to the mercy of the waves by some idle navigator? [Sidenote: "OLD IN BOTTLE."] However, they must know what it was, and Glenarvan, without waiting longer, proceeded to examine the bottle. He took, moreover, all necessary precautions. You would have thought a coroner was pointing out the particulars of a suspicious quest. And Glenarvan was right, for the most insignificant mark in appearance may often lead to an important discovery. Before examining it internally, the bottle was inspected externally. It had a slender neck, the mouth of which was protected by an iron wire considerably rusted. Its sides were very thick, and capable of supporting a pressure of several atmospheres, betraying evidently previous connection with champagne. With these bottles the wine-dressers of Aï and Epernay block carriage-wheels without their showing the slightest fracture. This one could, therefore, easily bear the hardships of a long voyage. [Illustration] "A bottle of the Maison Cliquot," said the major quietly; and, as if he ought to know, his affirmation was accepted without contradiction. "My dear major," said Lady Helena, "it matters little what this bottle is, provided we know whence it comes." "We shall know, my dear," said Lord Edward, "and already we can affirm that it has come from a distance. See the petrified particles that cover it, these substances mineralized, so to speak, under the action of the sea-water. This waif had already taken a long voyage in the ocean, before being engulfed in the stomach of a shark." "I cannot but be of your opinion," replied the major; "this fragile vase, protected by its strong envelope, must have made a long journey." "But whence does it come?" inquired Lady Glenarvan. "Wait, my dear Helena, wait. We must be patient with bottles. If I am not greatly mistaken, this one will itself answer all our questions." And so saying, Glenarvan began to scrape off the hard particles that protected the neck. Soon the cork appeared, but very much damaged with the salt water. "This is a pity," said Glenarvan; "for if there is any paper in it, it will be in a bad condition." "That's what I fear," replied the major. "I will add," continued Glenarvan, "that this badly-corked bottle would soon have sunk; and it is fortunate that this shark swallowed it, and brought it on board of the Duncan." "Certainly," interposed Captain Mangles; "it would have been better, however, had it been caught in the open sea on a well-known latitude and longitude. We could then, by studying the atmospheric and marine currents, have discovered the course traversed; but with a guide like one of these sharks, that travel against wind and tide, we cannot know whence it comes." "We shall soon see," answered Glenarvan. At the same time he drew out the cork with the greatest care, and a strong saline odor permeated the cabin. "Well?" said Lady Helena, with a truly feminine impatience. "Yes," said Glenarvan; "I am not mistaken! Here are papers!" "Documents! documents!" cried Lady Helena. "Only," replied Glenarvan, "they appear to be damaged by the water. It is impossible to remove them, for they adhere to the sides of the bottle." "Let us break it," said MacNabb. "I would rather keep it whole," replied Glenarvan. [Illustration: The fragments soon strewed the table, and several pieces of paper were perceived adhering to each other. Glenarvan drew them out carefully.] "I should, too," said the major. "Very true," added Lady Helena; "but the contents are more valuable than that which contains them, and it is better to sacrifice one than the other." "Let your lordship only break off the neck," said the captain, "and that will enable you to draw them out without injury." "Yes, yes, my dear Edward!" cried Lady Glenarvan. It was difficult to proceed in any other way, and, at all hazards, Glenarvan determined to break the neck of the precious bottle. It was necessary to use a hammer, for the stony covering had acquired the hardness of granite. The fragments soon strewed the table, and several pieces of paper were perceived adhering to each other. Glenarvan drew them out carefully, separating and examining them closely, while Lady Helena, the major, and the captain crowded around him. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. THE THREE DOCUMENTS. These pieces of paper, half destroyed by the sea-water, exhibited only a few words, the traces of handwriting almost entirely effaced. For several minutes Lord Glenarvan examined them attentively, turned them about in every way, and exposed them to the light of day, observing the least traces of writing spared by the sea. Then he looked at his friends, who were regarding him with anxious eyes. "There are here," said he, "three distinct documents, probably three copies of the same missive, translated into three different languages: one English, another French, and the third German. The few words that remain leave no doubt on this point." "But these words have at least a meaning?" said Lady Glenarvan. "That is difficult to say, my dear Helena. The words traced on these papers are very imperfect." "Perhaps they will complete each other," said the major. "That may be," replied Captain Mangles. "It is not probable that the water has obliterated these lines in exactly the same places on each, and by comparing these remains of phrases we shall arrive at some intelligible meaning." "We will do so," said Lord Glenarvan; "but let us proceed systematically. And, first, here is the English document." It showed the following arrangement of lines and words: [Illustration] "That does not mean much," said the major, with an air of disappointment. "Whatever it may mean," replied the captain, "it is good English." "There is no doubt of that," said his lordship. "The words _wreck, aland, this, and, lost_, are perfect. _Cap_ evidently means _captain_, referring to the captain of a shipwrecked vessel." "Let us add," said the captain, "the portions of the words _docu_ and _ssistance_, the meaning of which is plain." "Well, something is gained already!" added Lady Helena. "Unfortunately," replied the major, "entire lines are wanting. How can we find the name of the lost vessel, or the place of shipwreck?" "We shall find them," said Lord Edward. "Very likely," answered the major, who was invariably of the opinion of every one else; "but how?" "By comparing one document with another." "Let us see!" cried Lady Helena. The second piece of paper, more damaged than the former, exhibited only isolated words, arranged thus: [Sidenote: COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.] [Illustration] "This is written in German," said Captain Mangles, when he had cast his eyes upon it. "And do you know that language?" asked Glenarvan. "Perfectly, your lordship." "Well, tell us what these few words mean." The captain examined the document closely, and expressed himself as follows: "First, the date of the event is determined. _7 Juni_ means June 7th, and by comparing this figure with the figures '62,' furnished by the English document, we have the date complete,--June 7th, 1862." "Very well!" exclaimed Lady Helena. "Go on." "On the same line," continued the young captain, "I find the word _Glas_, which, united with the word _gow_ of the first document, gives _Glasgow_. It is plainly a ship from the port of Glasgow." "That was my opinion," said the major. "The second line is missing entirely," continued Captain Mangles; "but on the third I meet with two important words _zwei_, which means _two_, and _atrosen_, or rather _matrosen_, which signifies _sailors_ in German." "There were a captain and two sailors, then?" said Lady Helena. "Probably," replied her husband. "I will confess, your lordship," said the captain, "that the next word, _graus_, puzzles me. I do not know how to translate it. Perhaps the third document will enable us to understand it. As to the two last words, they are easily explained. _Bringt ihnen_ means _bring to them_, and if we compare these with the English word, which is likewise on the sixth line of the first document (I mean the word _assistance_), we shall have the phrase _bring them assistance_." "Yes, bring them assistance," said Glenarvan. "But where are the unfortunates? We have not yet a single indication of the place, and the scene of the catastrophe is absolutely unknown." "Let us hope that the French document will be more explicit," said Lady Helena. "Let us look at it, then," replied Glenarvan; "and, as we all know this language, our examination will be more easy." Here is an exact fac-simile of the third document: [Illustration] "There are figures!" cried Lady Helena. "Look, gentlemen, look!" "Let us proceed in order," said Lord Glenarvan, "and start at the beginning. Permit me to point out one by one these scattered and incomplete words. I see from the first letters _troi_ _ats_ (_trois-mats_), that it is a brig, the name of which, thanks to the English and French documents, is entirely preserved: _The Britannia_. Of the two following words, _gonie_ and _austral_, only the last has an intelligible meaning." [Sidenote: THE PUZZLE EXPLAINED.] "That is an important point," replied Captain Mangles; "the shipwreck took place in the southern hemisphere." "That is indefinite," said the major. "I will continue," resumed Glenarvan. "The word _abor_ is the trace of the verb _aborder_ (to land). These unfortunates have landed somewhere. But where? _Contin!_ Is it on a continent? _Cruel!_" "'Cruel!'" cried Mangles; "that explains the German word _graus, grausam, cruel_!" "Go on, go on!" cried Glenarvan, whose interest was greatly excited as the meaning of these incomplete words was elucidated. "_Indi_! Is it India, then, where these sailors have been cast? What is the meaning of the word _ongit_? Ha, longitude! And here is the latitude, 37° 11'. In short, we have a definite indication." "But the longitude is wanting," said MacNabb. "We cannot have everything, my dear major," replied Glenarvan; "and an exact degree of latitude is something. This French document is decidedly the most complete of the three. Each of them was evidently a literal translation of the others, for they all convey the same information. We must, therefore, unite and translate them into one language, and seek their most probable meaning, the one that is most logical and explicit." "Shall we make this translation in French, English, or German?" asked the major. "In English," answered Glenarvan, "since that is our own language." "Your lordship is right," said Captain Mangles, "besides, it was also theirs." "It is agreed, then. I will write this document, uniting these parts of words and fragments of phrases, leaving the gaps that separate them, and filling up those the meaning of which is not ambiguous. Then we will compare them and form an opinion." Glenarvan at once took a pen, and, in a few moments, presented to his friends a paper on which were written the following lines: [Illustration] At this moment a sailor informed the captain that the Duncan was entering the Frith of Clyde, and asked his orders. "What are your lordship's wishes?" said the captain, addressing Lord Glenarvan. "Reach Dumbarton as quickly as possible, captain. Then, while Lady Helena returns to Malcolm Castle, I will go to London and submit this document to the authorities." The captain gave his orders in pursuance of this, and the mate executed them. "Now, my friends," said Glenarvan, "we will continue our investigations. We are on the track of a great catastrophe. The lives of several men depend upon our sagacity. Let us use therefore all our ingenuity to divine the secret of this enigma." "We are ready, my dear Edward," replied Lady Helena. "First of all," continued Glenarvan, "we must consider three distinct points in this document. First, what is known; second, what can be conjectured; and third, what is unknown. What do we know? That on the 7th of June, 1862, a brig, the Britannia, of Glasgow, was wrecked; that two sailors and the captain threw this document into the sea in latitude 37° 11', and in it ask for assistance." "Exactly," replied the major. [Sidenote: "LINE UPON LINE."] "What can we conjecture?" resumed Glenarvan. "First, that the shipwreck took place in the South Seas; and now I call your attention to the word _gonia_. Does it not indicate the name of the country which they reached?" "Patagonia!" cried Lady Helena. "Probably." "But is Patagonia crossed by the thirty-seventh parallel?" asked the major. "That is easily seen," said the captain, taking out a map of South America. "It is so: Patagonia is bisected by the thirty-seventh parallel, which crosses Araucania, over the Pampas, north of Patagonia, and is lost in the Atlantic." "Well, let us continue our conjectures. The two sailors and the captain _abor, land_. Where? _Contin_,--the _continent_, you understand; a continent, not an island. What becomes of them? We have fortunately two letters, _pr_, which inform us of their fate. These unfortunates, in short, are _captured_ (pris) or _prisoners_. By whom? The _cruel Indians_. Are you convinced? Do not the words fit naturally into the vacant places? Does not the document grow clear to your eyes? Does not light break in upon your mind?" Glenarvan spoke with conviction. His looks betokened an absolute confidence; and his enthusiasm was communicated to his hearers. Like him they cried, "It is plain! it is plain!" A moment after Lord Edward resumed, in these terms: "All these hypotheses, my friends, seem to me extremely plausible. In my opinion, the catastrophe took place on the shores of Patagonia. However, I will inquire at Glasgow what was the destination of the Britannia, and we shall know whether she could have been led to these regions." "We do not need to go so far," replied the captain; "I have here the shipping news of the _Mercantile and Shipping Gazette_, which will give us definite information." "Let us see! let us see!" said Lady Glenarvan. Captain Mangles took a file of papers of the year 1862, and began to turn over the leaves rapidly. His search was soon ended; as he said, in a tone of satisfaction,-- "May 30, 1862, Callao, Peru, _Britannia_, Captain Grant, bound for Glasgow." "Grant!" exclaimed Lord Glenarvan; "that hardy Scotchman who wished to found a new Scotland in the waters of the Pacific?" "Yes," answered the captain, "the very same, who, in 1861, embarked in the Britannia at Glasgow, and of whom nothing has since been heard." "Exactly! exactly!" said Glenarvan; "it is indeed he. The Britannia left Callao the 30th of May, and on the 7th of June, eight days after her departure, she was lost on the shores of Patagonia. This is the whole story elucidated from the remains of these words that seemed undecipherable. You see, my friends, that what we can conjecture is very important. As to what we do not know, this is reduced to one item, the missing degree of longitude." "It is of no account," added Captain Mangles, "since the country is known; and with the latitude alone, I will undertake to go straight to the scene of the shipwreck." "We know all, then?" said Lady Glenarvan. "All, my dear Helena: and these blanks that the sea has made between the words of the document, I can as easily fill out as though I were writing at the dictation of Captain Grant." Accordingly Lord Glenarvan took the pen again, and wrote, without hesitation, the following note: "June 7, 1862.--The brig Britannia of Glasgow was wrecked on the shores of Patagonia, in the Southern Hemisphere. Directing their course to land, two sailors and Captain Grant attempted to reach the continent, where they will be prisoners of the cruel Indians. They have thrown this document into the sea, at longitude ----, latitude 37° 11'. Bring them assistance or they are lost." [Sidenote: A NOBLE RESOLVE.] "Good! good! my dear Edward!" said Lady Glenarvan; "and if these unfortunates see their native country again, they will owe this happiness to you." "And they shall see it again," replied Glenarvan. "This document is too explicit, too clear, too certain, for Englishmen to hesitate. What has been done for Sir John Franklin, and so many others, will also be done for the shipwrecked of the Britannia." "But these unfortunates," answered Lady Helena, "have, without doubt, a family that mourns their loss. Perhaps this poor Captain Grant has a wife, children----" [Illustration: Dumbarton Castle.] "You are right, my dear lady; and I charge myself with informing them that all hope is not yet lost. And now, my friends, let us go on deck, for we must be approaching the harbor." Indeed, the Duncan had forced on steam, and was now skirting the shores of Bute Island. Rothesay, with its charming little village nestling in its fertile valley, was left on the starboard, and the vessel entered the narrow inlets of the frith, passed Greenock, and, at six in the evening, was anchored at the foot of the basaltic rocks of Dumbarton, crowned by the celebrated castle. Here a coach was waiting to take Lady Helena and Major MacNabb back to Malcolm Castle. Lord Glenarvan, after embracing his young wife, hurried to take the express train for Glasgow. But before going, he confided an important message to a more rapid agent, and a few moments after the electric telegraph conveyed to the _Times_ and _Morning Chronicle_ an advertisement in the following terms: "For any information concerning the brig Britannia of Glasgow, Captain Grant, address Lord Glenarvan, Malcolm Castle, Luss, County of Dumbarton, Scotland." CHAPTER III. THE CAPTAIN'S CHILDREN. [Sidenote: THE GLENARVAN ANCESTRY.] The castle of Malcolm, one of the most romantic in Scotland, is situated near the village of Luss, whose pretty valley it crowns. The limpid waters of Loch Lomond bathe the granite of its walls. From time immemorial it has belonged to the Glenarvan family, who have preserved in the country of Rob Roy and Fergus MacGregor the hospitable customs of the ancient heroes of Walter Scott. At the epoch of the social revolution in Scotland, a great number of vassals were expelled, because they could not pay the great rents to the ancient chiefs of the clans. Some died of hunger, others became fishermen, others emigrated. There was general despair. [Illustration] Among all these the Glenarvans alone believed that fidelity bound the high as well as the low, and they remained faithful to their tenants. Not one left the roof under which he was born; not one abandoned the soil where his ancestors reposed; all continued in the clan of their ancient lords. Thus at this epoch, in this age of disaffection and disunion, the Glenarvan family considered the Scots at Malcolm Castle as their own people. All were descended from the vassals of their kinsmen; were children of the counties of Stirling and Dumbarton, and honestly devoted, body and estate, to their master. Lord Glenarvan possessed an immense fortune, which he employed in doing much good. His kindness exceeded even his generosity, for one was boundless, while the other was necessarily limited. The lord of Luss, the "laird" of Malcolm, represented his fellows in the House of Lords; but with true Scottish ideas, little pleasing to the southrons, he was disliked by many of them especially because he adhered to the traditions of his ancestors, and energetically opposed some dicta of modern political economy. He was not, however, a backward man, either in wit or shrewdness; but while ready to enter every door of progress, he remained Scotch at heart, and it was for the glory of his native land that he contended with his racing yachts in the matches of the Royal Thames Yacht Club. Lord Edward Glenarvan was thirty-two years old. His form was erect and his features sharp, but his look was mild, and his character thoroughly imbued with the poetry of the Highlands. He was known to be brave to excess, enterprising, chivalrous, a Fergus of the nineteenth century; but good above all, better than Saint Martin himself, for he would have given his very cloak to the poor people of the Highlands. He had been married scarcely three months, having espoused Miss Helena Tuffnel, daughter of the great traveler, William Tuffnel, one of the numerous victims to the great passion for geographical discoveries. Miss Helena did not belong to a noble family, but she was Scotch, which equaled all nobilities in the eyes of Lord Glenarvan. This charming young creature, high-minded and devoted, the lord of Luss had made the companion of his life. He found her one day living alone, an orphan, almost without fortune, in the house of her father at Kilpatrick. He saw that the poor girl would make a noble wife, and he married her. Miss Tuffnel was twenty-two, a youthful blonde, with eyes as blue as the waters of the Scotch lakes on a beautiful morning in spring. Her love for her husband exceeded even her gratitude. She loved him as if she had been the rich heiress, and he the friendless orphan. As to their tenants and servants, they were ready to lay down their lives for her whom they called "our good lady of Luss." [Sidenote: LIFE IN THE SCOTTISH HOME.] Lord and Lady Glenarvan lived happily at Malcolm Castle, in the midst of the grand and wild scenery of the Highlands, rambling in the shady alleys of horse-chestnuts and sycamores, along the shores of the lake, where still resounded the war cries of ancient times, or in the depths of those uncultivated gorges in which the history of Scotland lies written in ruins from age to age. One day they would wander in the forests of beeches and larches, and in the midst of the masses of heather; another, they would scale the precipitous summits of Ben Lomond, or traverse on horseback the solitary glens, studying, comprehending, and admiring this poetic country, still called "the land of Rob Roy," and all those celebrated sites so grandly sung by Walter Scott. In the sweet, still evening, when the "lantern of Mac Farlane" illumined the horizon, they would stroll along the "bartizans," an old circular balcony that formed a chain of battlements to Malcolm Castle, and there, pensive, oblivious, and as if alone in the world, seated on some detached rock, under the pale rays of the moon, while night gradually enveloped the rugged summits of the mountains, they would continue wrapt in that pure ecstasy and inward delight known only to loving hearts. [Illustration] Thus passed the first months of their married life. But Lord Glenarvan did not forget that his wife was the daughter of a great traveler. He thought that Lady Helena must have in her heart all the aspirations of her father, and he was not mistaken. The Duncan was constructed, and was designed to convey Lord and Lady Glenarvan to the most beautiful countries of the world, along the waves of the Mediterranean, and to the isles of the Archipelago. Imagine the joy of Lady Helena when her husband placed the Duncan at her disposal! Indeed, can there be a greater happiness than to lead your love towards those charming "isles where Sappho sung," and behold the enchanting scenes of the Orient, with all their spirit-stirring memories? [Illustration] Meantime Lord Glenarvan had started for London. The safety of the unfortunate shipwrecked men was at stake. Thus, in his temporary absence, Lady Helena showed herself more anxious than sad. The next day a dispatch from her husband made her hope for a speedy return; in the evening a letter hinted at its postponement. His proposal had to encounter some difficulties, and the following day a second letter came, in which Lord Glenarvan did not conceal his indignation against the authorities. [Illustration: "Please, madam, speak! I am strong against grief, and can hear all."] On that day Lady Helena began to be uneasy. At evening she was alone in her chamber, when the steward of the castle, Mr. Halbert, came to ask if she would see a young girl and boy who desired to speak with Lord Glenarvan. "People of the country?" asked Lady Helena. "No, madam," replied the steward, "for I do not know them. They have just arrived by the Balloch railway, and from Balloch to Luss they tell me they have made the journey on foot." "Bid them come up, steward," said Lady Glenarvan. The steward withdrew. Some moments afterward the young girl and boy were ushered into Lady Helena's chamber. They were brother and sister; you could not doubt it by their resemblance. The sister was sixteen. Her pretty face showed weariness, her eyes must have shed many tears; her resigned, but courageous, countenance, and her humble, but neat, attire, all prepossessed one in her favor. She held by the hand a boy of twelve years, of determined look, who seemed to take his sister under his protection. Indeed, whoever had insulted the young girl would have had to settle with this little gentleman. The sister stopped, a little surprised at seeing herself before Lady Helena; but the latter hastened to open the conversation. "You wish to speak with me?" said she, with an encouraging look at the young girl. [Sidenote: "ONE TOUCH OF NATURE."] "No," answered the boy, in a decided tone; "not with you, but with Lord Glenarvan himself." "Excuse him, madam," said the sister, looking at her brother. "Lord Glenarvan is not at the castle," replied Lady Helena; "but I am his wife, and if I can supply his place with you----" "You are Lady Glenarvan?" said the young girl. "Yes, miss." "The wife of Lord Glenarvan, of Malcolm Castle, who published an advertisement in the _Times_ in regard to the shipwreck of the Britannia?" "Yes, yes!" answered Lady Helena, with alacrity. "And you?" "I am Miss Grant, and this is my brother." "Miss Grant! Miss Grant!" cried Lady Helena, drawing the young girl towards her, and taking her hands, while she also drew the boy towards her. "Madam," replied the young girl, "what do you know of the shipwreck of my father? Is he living? Shall we ever see him again? Speak! oh, please tell me!" "My dear child," said Lady Helena, "God forbid that I should answer you lightly on such a subject; I would not give you a vain hope----" "Please, madam, speak! I am strong against grief, and can hear all." "My dear child," answered Lady Helena, "the hope is very slight, but with the help of God who can do everything, it is possible that you will one day see your father again." "Alas, alas!" exclaimed Miss Grant, who could not restrain her tears, while Robert covered the hands of Lady Glenarvan with kisses. When the first paroxysm of this mournful joy was past, the young girl began to ask innumerable questions. Lady Helena related the story of the document, how that the Britannia had been lost on the shores of Patagonia; in what way, after the shipwreck, the captain and two sailors, the only survivors, must have reached the continent; and, at last, how they implored the assistance of the whole world in this document, written in three languages, and abandoned to the caprices of the ocean. During this recital Robert Grant devoured Lady Helena with his eyes; his life seemed to hang on her lips. In his childish imagination he reviewed the terrible scenes of which his father must have been the victim. He saw him on the deck of the Britannia; he followed him to the bosom of the waves; he clung with him to the rocks of the shore; he dragged himself panting along the beach, out of reach of the waves. Often during the course of this narration words escaped his lips. "Oh, papa! my poor papa!" he cried, pressing close to his sister. As for Miss Grant, she listened with clasped hands, and did not utter a word until the story was ended, when she said,-- "Oh, madam, the document! the document!" "I no longer have it, my dear child," replied Lady Helena. "You no longer have it?" "No; for the very sake of your father, Lord Glenarvan had to take it to London; but I have told you all it contained, word for word, and how we succeeded in discovering the exact meaning. Among these remains of the almost effaced words the water had spared some characters. Unfortunately the record of the longitude had altogether been destroyed, but that was the only missing point. Thus you see, Miss Grant, the minutest details of this document are known to you as well as me." "Yes, madam," replied the young girl; "but I would like to have seen my father's writing." [Sidenote: WAITING FOR THE VERDICT.] "Well, to-morrow, perhaps, Lord Glenarvan will return. My husband desired to submit this indisputable document to the authorities in London, to induce them to send a vessel immediately in search of Captain Grant." "Is it possible, madam!" cried the young girl. "Did you do this for us?" "Yes, my dear miss, and I expect Lord Glenarvan every moment." "Madam," said the young girl, in a deep tone of gratitude, and with fervency, "may Heaven bless Lord Glenarvan and you!" "Dear child," answered Lady Helena, "we deserve no thanks. Any other person in our place would have done the same. May the hopes that are kindled be realized! Till Lord Glenarvan's return you will remain at the castle." "Madam," said the young girl, "I would not presume on the sympathy you show to us strangers----" "Strangers! Dear child, neither your brother nor you are strangers in this house; and I desire that Lord Glenarvan on his arrival should inform the children of Captain Grant of what is to be attempted to save their father." It was not possible to refuse an invitation made with so much cordiality. It was, therefore, decided that Miss Grant and her brother should await at Malcolm Castle the return of Lord Glenarvan. CHAPTER IV. LADY GLENARVAN'S PROPOSAL. During this conversation, Lady Helena had not spoken of the fears expressed in her husband's letters concerning the reception of his petition by the London officials; nor was a word said in regard to the probable captivity of Captain Grant among the Indians of South America. Why afflict these poor children with their father's situation, and check the hopes they had just conceived? It would not change matters. Lady Helena was, therefore, silent on this point, and, after satisfying all Miss Grant's inquiries, she questioned her concerning her life, and situation in the world in which she seemed to be the sole protectress of her brother. It was a simple and touching story, which still more increased Lady Glenarvan's sympathy for the young girl. Mary and Robert Grant were the only children of Captain Harry Grant, whose wife had died at the birth of Robert, and during his long voyages his children were left to the care of his good old cousin. Captain Grant was a hardy sailor, a man well acquainted with his profession, and a good negotiator, combining thus a twofold aptitude for his calling commercially. His home was at Dundee, in the county of Forfar, and he was moreover, by birth, a child of that "bonnie" place. His father, a minister of Saint Catherine's Church, had given him a thorough education, knowing that it would be sure to help all, even a sea-captain. [Sidenote: IDEAS AND REALITIES.] During his early voyages, first as mate, and afterwards in the capacity of skipper, Harry Grant prospered, and some years after the birth of his son Robert, he found himself the possessor of a considerable fortune. Then a great idea entered his mind which made his name popular throughout Scotland. Like the Glenarvans and several other great families of the Highlands, he was opposed in heart, if not in deed, to the advance and prevalence of English thought and feeling. The interests of his country could not be in his eyes the same as those of the Anglo-Saxons, and, in order to give the former a peculiar and national development, he resolved to found a Scottish colony in some part of the Southern World. Did he dream of that independence in the future of which the United States had set the example, and which the Indies and Australia cannot fail one day to acquire? Very likely; but he allowed his secret hopes to be divined. It was, therefore, known that the Government refused to lend their aid in his project of colonization; nay, they even raised obstacles which in any other country would have overcome the project. But Harry Grant would not be discouraged. He appealed to the patriotism of his countrymen, gave his fortune to serve the cause, built a vessel and furnished it with a fine crew, confided his children to the care of his old cousin, and set sail to explore the great islands of the Pacific. It was the year 1861. Until May, 1862, they had received news of him, but since his departure from Callao, in the month of June, no one had heard anything of the Britannia, and the marine intelligencers became silent concerning the fate of the captain. At this juncture of affairs the old cousin of Harry Grant died, and the two children were left alone in the world. Mary Grant was then fourteen. Her courageous soul did not flinch at the situation that was presented, but she devoted herself entirely to her brother, who was still a child. She must bring him up and instruct him. By dint of economy, prudence, and sagacity, laboring night and day, sacrificing all for him, denying herself everything, the sister succeeded in educating her brother and bravely fulfilled her sisterly duties. The two children lived thus at Dundee, and valiantly overcame their sorrowful and lonely circumstances. Mary thought only of her brother, and dreamed of a happy future for him. As for herself, alas! the Britannia was lost forever, and her father dead! We must not, therefore, attempt to depict her emotion when the advertisement in the _Times_ accidentally met her eye, and suddenly raised her from her despair. It was no time to hesitate. Her resolution was immediately taken. Even if she should learn that her father's dead body had been found on a desert coast, or in the hull of a shipwrecked vessel, it was better than this continual doubt, this eternal torment of uncertainty. She told her brother all; and the same day the two children took the Perth Railroad, and at evening arrived at Malcolm Castle, where Mary, after so many harassing thoughts, began to hope. Such was the sorrowful story that the young girl related to Lady Glenarvan, in an artless manner, without thinking that through all those long years of trial she had behaved herself like an heroic daughter. But Lady Helena thought of this, and several times, without hiding her tears, she clasped in her arms the two children of Captain Grant. As for Robert, it seemed as if he heard this story for the first time: for he opened his eyes in astonishment, as he listened to his sister; comprehended what she had done, what she had suffered; and at last, encircling her with his arms, he exclaimed, unable longer to restrain the cry that came from the very depths of his heart,-- "Oh, mamma! my dear mamma!" [Illustration: "My father, my poor father!" cried Mary Grant, throwing herself at the feet of Lord Glenarvan.] Night had now fully set in; and Lady Helena, remembering the fatigue of the two children, would not longer continue the conversation. Mary and Robert were conducted to their chambers, and fell asleep dreaming of a brighter future. After they had retired, Lady Helena saw the major, and told him all the events of the day. "That Mary Grant is a brave girl," said MacNabb, when he had heard his cousin's story. "May Heaven grant my husband success in his enterprise!" replied Lady Helena; "for the situation of the two children would be terrible!" "He will succeed," answered MacNabb, "or the hearts of the authorities must be harder than the stone of Portland." In spite of the major's assurance, Lady Helena passed the night in the greatest anxiety, and could scarce gain an hour's repose. [Sidenote: "BROKEN CISTERNS."] The next morning Mary and her brother rose at daybreak, and were walking in the galleries and water terraces of the castle, when the sound of a coach was heard in the great court-yard. It was Lord Glenarvan returning to Malcolm Castle at the full speed of his horses. Almost immediately Lady Helena, accompanied by the major, appeared in the court-yard, and flew to meet her husband. But he seemed sad, disappointed, and angry. He clasped his wife in his arms, and was silent. [Illustration] "Well, Edward!" she exclaimed. "Well, my dear Helena," he replied, "those people have no hearts!" "They refused?" "Yes, they refused me a vessel: they spoke of the millions vainly spent in searching for Franklin; they declared the document was vague and unintelligible; they said that the shipwreck of these unfortunates had happened two years ago, and that there was little chance of finding them. They maintained too, that, if prisoners of the Indians, they must have been carried into the interior of the country; that they could not ransack all Patagonia to find three men,--three Scotchmen; the search would be vain and perilous, and would cost the lives of more men than it would save. In short, they gave all the absurd reasons of people who mean to refuse. They remembered the captain's projects, and I fear that the unfortunate man is forever lost!" "My father, my poor father!" cried Mary Grant, throwing herself at the feet of Lord Glenarvan. "Your father! What, Miss----?" said he, surprised at seeing a young girl at his feet. "Yes, Edward, Miss Grant and her brother," replied Lady Helena; "the two children of Captain Grant, who have thus been condemned to remain orphans." "Ah, miss!" answered Lord Glenarvan, "if I had known of your presence----" He said no more. A painful silence, interrupted only by sobs, reigned in the court-yard. No one raised his voice, neither Lord Glenarvan, Lady Helena, the major, nor the servants of the castle, who were standing about even at this early hour. But by their attitude they all protested against the conduct of the officials. After several moments the major resumed the conversation, and, addressing Lord Glenarvan, said,-- "Then you have no more hope?" "None." "Well," cried young Robert, "I will go to these people, and--we shall see----" He did not finish his threat, for his sister stopped him; but his clinched hands indicated his intentions. "No, Robert," said she, "no; let us thank these kind people for what they have done for us. Let us always keep them in remembrance; but now we must take our departure." "Mary!" cried Lady Helena. "Miss, where would you go?" said Lord Glenarvan. "I am going to throw myself at the feet of the Queen," replied the young girl, "and we shall see if she will be deaf to the prayers of two children imploring help for their father." Lord Glenarvan shook his head; not that he doubted the clemency of Her Gracious Majesty, but he doubted whether Mary Grant would gain access to her; for but few suppliants reach the steps of a throne. Lady Helena understood her husband's thoughts. She knew that the young girl might make a fruitless journey, and she pictured to herself these two children leading henceforth a cheerless existence. Then it was that she conceived a grand and noble idea. "Mary Grant," she exclaimed, "wait, my child; listen to what I am about to say." The young girl held her brother by the hand, and was preparing to go. She stopped. Then Lady Helena, with tearful eye, but firm voice and animated features, advanced towards her husband. [Sidenote: "NOBLY PLANNED."] "Edward," said she, "when Captain Grant wrote that letter, and cast it into the sea, he confided it to the care of God himself, who has brought it to us. Without doubt He designed to charge us with the safety of these unfortunates." "What do you mean, Helena?" inquired Lord Glenarvan, whilst all waited in silence. "I mean," replied Lady Helena, "that we ought to consider ourselves happy in beginning our married life with a good action. You, my dear Edward, to please me, have planned a pleasure voyage. But what pleasure can be more genuine or more beneficent than to save these unfortunates whom hope has almost abandoned?" "Helena!" cried Lord Glenarvan. "Yes, you understand me, Edward. The Duncan is a good, staunch vessel. It can brave the Southern seas; it can make the tour of the world,--and it will, if necessary! Let us start, Edward,--let us go in search of Captain Grant!" At these courageous words Lord Glenarvan had extended his arms to his wife. He smiled. He pressed her to his heart, while Mary and Robert kissed her hands. And during this touching scene the servants of the castle, affected and enthusiastic, uttered from their hearts this cry of gratitude,-- "Hurrah for the lady of Luss! Hurrah! three times hurrah, for Lord and Lady Glenarvan!" CHAPTER V. THE DEPARTURE OF THE DUNCAN. It has been already said that Lady Helena had a brave and generous soul. What she had just done was an undeniable proof of it, and Lord Glenarvan had good reason to trust in this noble woman, who was capable of comprehending and following him. The idea of sailing to the rescue of Captain Grant had already taken possession of him when he saw his petition rejected at London; but he could not have thought of separating from her. Yet, since she desired to go herself, all hesitation was at an end. The servants of the castle had received her proposal with cries of joy; the safety of their brother Scots was at stake, and Lord Glenarvan joined heartily in the hurrahs that greeted the lady of Luss. The scheme once resolved upon, there was not an hour to lose. That very day Lord Glenarvan sent to Captain Mangles orders to bring the Duncan to Glasgow, and make every preparation for a voyage to the South Seas, which might become one of circumnavigation. Moreover, in her plans Lady Helena had not overestimated the qualities of the Duncan: of first-class construction with regard to strength and swiftness, she could without injury sustain a long voyage. [Sidenote: FITTING FOR SEA.] The Duncan was a steam yacht of one hundred and ten tons burden. She had two masts,--a foremast with fore-sail, main-sail, foretop and foretop-gallant sails; and a mainmast, carrying a main-sail and fore-staff. Her rigging was, therefore, sufficient, and she could profit by the wind like a simple clipper; but she relied especially upon her mechanical power. Her engine was of an effective force of one hundred and sixty horse power, and was constructed on a new plan. It possessed apparatus for overheating, which gave its steam a very great tension. It was a high-pressure engine, and produced motion by a double screw. The Duncan under full steam could acquire a speed equal to any vessel of that day. Indeed, during her trial trip in the Frith of Clyde, she had made, according to the log, seventeen knots an hour. She was, therefore, fully capable of circumnavigating the world; and her captain had only to occupy himself with the internal arrangement. His first care was to increase his store-room, and take in the greatest possible quantity of coal, for it would be difficult to renew their supplies on the voyage. The same precaution was taken with the steward's room, and provisions for two years were stowed away. Money, of course, was not wanting, and a pivot-gun was furnished, which was fixed at the forecastle. You do not know what may happen, and it is always best to have the means of defense in your reach. Captain Mangles, we must say, understood his business. Although he commanded only a pleasure yacht, he was ranked among the ablest of the Glasgow captains. He was thirty years of age, with rather rough features, indicating courage and kindness. When a child, the Glenarvan family had taken him under their care, and made him an excellent seaman. He had often given proofs of skill, energy, and coolness during his long voyages, and when Lord Glenarvan offered him the command of the Duncan, he accepted it with pride and pleasure, for he loved the lord of Malcolm Castle as a brother, and until then had vainly sought an opportunity to devote himself to his service. The mate, Tom Austin, was an old sailor worthy of all confidence; and the crew of the Duncan was composed of twenty-five men, including the captain and mate. They all belonged to the county of Dumbarton, were all tried seamen, sons of the tenants of the family, and formed on shipboard a genuine clan of honest people, who of course were not without the national bagpipe. Lord Glenarvan had, in them, a band of faithful subjects, happy in their avocation, devoted, courageous, and skillful in the use of arms, as well as in the management of a ship, while they were ready to follow him on the most perilous expeditions. When they learned where they were going, they could not restrain their joyous emotion, and the echoes of the rocks of Dumbarton awoke to their cries of enthusiasm. Captain Mangles, while occupied in lading and provisioning his craft, did not forget to prepare Lord and Lady Glenarvan's apartments for a long voyage. He likewise provided cabins for Captain Grant's children, for Lady Helena could not refuse Mary permission to accompany her on the expedition. As for young Robert, he would have hidden in the hold sooner than not go; even if he had been compelled to serve as cabin-boy, like Lord Nelson and Sir John Franklin, he would have embarked on board the Duncan. To think of opposing such a little gentleman! It was not attempted. They were even obliged to take him other than as passenger, for as cabin-boy or sailor he _would serve_. The captain was accordingly commissioned to teach him the duties of a seaman. "Good!" said Robert; "and let him not spare a few blows of the rope's end if I do not walk straight." "Be easy, my boy," replied Glenarvan, without adding that the use of the "cat-o'-nine-tails" was prohibited, and moreover quite needless, on board the Duncan. [Sidenote: GLASGOW GOSSIP.] To complete the roll of the passengers, it will be sufficient to describe Major MacNabb. The major was a man of fifty, of calm, regular features, who did as he was bid; of an excellent and superior character, modest, taciturn, peaceable, and mild; always agreeing with anything or any one, disputing nothing, and neither contradicting himself nor exaggerating. He would mount with measured step the staircase to his bed-chamber, even were a cannon-ball behind him; and probably to his dying day would never find an opportunity to fly into a passion. This man possessed, in a high degree, not only the common courage of the battle-field (that physical bravery due only to nervous strength), but, better still, moral courage, that is to say, firmness of soul. If he had a fault, it was that of being absolutely Scotch from head to foot, a pure-blooded Caledonian, an infatuated observer of the ancient customs of his country. Through his relationship to the Glenarvans he lived at Malcolm Castle; and as major and military man it was very natural that he should be found on board the Duncan. Such, then, were the passengers of this yacht, summoned by unforeseen circumstances to accomplish one of the most surprising voyages of modern times. Since her arrival at the wharf at Glasgow, she had monopolized the public attention. A considerable number came every day to visit her. They were interested in her alone, and spoke only of her, to the great umbrage of the other captains of the port, among others Captain Burton, commanding the Scotia, a magnificent steamer, moored beside the Duncan, and bound for Calcutta. The Scotia, from her size, had a right to consider the Duncan as a mere fly-boat. Nevertheless, all the attraction centred in Lord Glenarvan's yacht, and increased from day to day. The time of departure approached. Captain Mangles had shown himself skillful and expeditious. A month after her trial trip in the Frith of Clyde, the Duncan, laden, provisioned, and equipped, was ready to put to sea. The 25th of August was appointed for the time of departure, which would enable the yacht to reach the southern latitudes by the beginning of spring. Lord Glenarvan, when his plan was matured, did not neglect to make investigations into the hardships and perils of the voyage; yet he did not hesitate on this account, but prepared to leave Malcolm Castle. On the 24th of August, Lord and Lady Glenarvan, Major MacNabb, Mary and Robert Grant, Mr. Olbinett, the steward of the yacht, and his wife, who was in the service of Lady Glenarvan, left the castle, after taking an affectionate farewell of their family servants. Several hours afterward they found themselves on board. Many of the population of Glasgow welcomed with sympathetic admiration the young and courageous lady who renounced the pleasures of a life of luxury, and sailed to the rescue of the shipwrecked sailors. The apartments of Lord Glenarvan and his wife occupied the entire stern of the vessel. They consisted of two bed-chambers, a parlor, and two dressing-rooms, adjoining which was an open square inclosed by six cabins, five of which were occupied by Mary and Robert Grant, Mr. and Mrs. Olbinett, and Major MacNabb. As for the cabins of the captain and the mate, they were situated in the forecastle, and opened on the deck. The crew were lodged between-decks very comfortably, for the yacht of course carried nothing but her coal, provisions, and armament. The Duncan was to start on the night of the 24th, as the tide fell at three o'clock in the morning. But first those who were present were witness to a touching scene. At eight in the evening Lord Glenarvan and his companions, the entire crew, from the firemen to the captain, all who were to take part in this voyage of sacrifice, left the yacht, and betook themselves to Saint Mungo, the ancient cathedral of Glasgow. This antique church, an uninjured relic in the midst of the ruins caused by the Reformation, and so marvelously described by Walter Scott, received beneath its massive arches the owners and sailors of the Duncan. [Sidenote: PRAYER, AND PROGRESS.] A numerous throng accompanied them. There in the spacious aisle, filled with tombs of the great and good, the Rev. Mr. Morton implored the blessing of Heaven, and commended the expedition to the care of Providence. For a moment the voice of Mary Grant arose in the old church. The young girl was praying for her benefactors, and shedding before God the sweet tears of gratitude. The assembly retired under the influence of a deep emotion. At eleven, every one was on board. The captain and the crew occupied themselves with the final preparations. At midnight the fires were kindled, and soon clouds of black smoke mingled with the vapors of the night; the sails of the Duncan had been carefully reefed in a canvas sheathing, which served to protect them from injury. The wind blew from the southeast, and did not favor the progress of the vessel; but at two o'clock the ship began to heave under the action of her boilers. The manometer indicated a pressure of four atmospheres, and the overheated steam whistled through the escape-valves. The sea was tranquil, and soon daylight enabled them to distinguish the passes of the Clyde between the buoys and beacons, whose lights were gradually extinguished as the morning dawned. Captain Mangles informed Lord Glenarvan, who at once came on deck. Very soon the ebb-tide was felt. The Duncan gave a few shrill whistles, slackened her cables, and separated from the surrounding vessels. Her screw was set in motion, which propelled her into the channel of the river. The captain had taken no pilot. He was perfectly acquainted with the navigation of the Clyde, and no one could have commanded better. At a sign from him the yacht started. With his right hand he controlled the engine, and with his left the tiller, with silent but unerring skill. [Illustration: The Rev. Mr. Morton implored the blessing of Heaven, and commended the expedition to the care of Providence.] [Sidenote: A CHANGE OF SCENE.] Soon the last workshops on the shore gave place to villas, built here and there upon the hills, and the sounds of the city died away in the distance. An hour afterwards, the Duncan passed the rocks of Dumbarton; two hours later she was in the Frith of Clyde; and at six o'clock in the morning she doubled Cantyre Point, emerged from the North Channel, and gained the open sea. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. AN UNEXPECTED PASSENGER. During the first day's voyage the sea was quite rough, and the wind freshened towards evening. The Duncan rolled considerably, so that the ladies did not appear on deck, but very wisely remained in their cabins. The next day the wind changed a point, and the captain set the main-, fore-, and foretop-sails, thus causing less perception of the rolling and pitching motion. Lady Helena and Mary Grant were able before daybreak to join Lord Glenarvan, the major, and the captain, on deck. The sunrise was magnificent. The orb of day, like a gilded metal disk, rose from the ocean, as from an immense and silvery basin. The ship glided in the midst of a splendid iridescence, and you would truly have thought that her sails expanded under the influence of the sun's rays, whilst even the crew of the yacht silently admired this reappearance of the orb of day. "What a magnificent spectacle!" said Lady Helena, at last. "This is the beginning of a beautiful day. May the wind not prove contrary, but favor the progress of the Duncan!" "No better weather could be desired, my dear Helena," replied Lord Glenarvan; "we have no reason to complain of the commencement of the voyage." "Will it be a long one, my dear Edward?" "That is for the captain to answer," said he. "Are we progressing well? Are you satisfied with your vessel, captain?" "Very well indeed," was the answer. "She is a marvelous craft, and a sailor likes to feel her under his feet. Never were hull and engine more in unison. See how smooth her wake is, and how easily she rides the waves. We are moving at the rate of seventeen knots an hour. If this continues, we shall cross the line in ten days, and in five weeks shall double Cape Horn." "You hear, Mary," said Lady Helena: "in five weeks!" "Yes," replied the young girl, "I hear; and my heart beat quickly at the words of the captain." "And how do you bear this voyage, Miss Mary?" inquired Lord Glenarvan. "Very well, my lord; I do not experience very many discomforts. Besides, I shall soon be accustomed to it." "And young Robert?" [Sidenote: COMPLIMENTS AND CONGRATULATIONS.] "Oh, Robert!" replied Captain Mangles: "when he is not engaged with the engine he is perched at mast-head. I tell you he is a boy who mocks sea-sickness. Only look at him!" At a gesture of the captain, all eyes were turned towards the mainmast, and every one could perceive Robert, suspended by the stays of the foretop-gallant sail, a hundred feet aloft. Mary could not restrain a motion of fear. "Oh, be easy, miss!" said Captain Mangles. "I will answer for him, and promise you I will present, in a short time, a famous sailor to Captain Grant; for we shall find that worthy captain." "May Heaven hear you, sir!" replied the young girl. "My dear child," said Lord Glenarvan, "there is in all this something providential, which ought to give us hope. We are not merely going, we are led; we are not seeking blindly, we are guided. And then see all these brave people enrolled in the service of so good a cause. Not only shall we succeed in our enterprise, but it will be accomplished without difficulty. I have promised Lady Helena a pleasure voyage; and, if I am not mistaken, I shall keep my word." "Edward," said Lady Glenarvan, "you are the best of men." "Not so; but I have the best of crews, on the best of ships. Do you not wonder at our Duncan, Miss Mary?" "On the contrary, my lord," answered the young girl, "I don't so much wonder as admire; for I am well acquainted with ships." "Ah! indeed!" "When a mere child, I played on my father's ships. He ought to have made a sailor of me. If it were necessary, perhaps I should not now be embarrassed in taking a reef or twisting a gasket." "What is that you're saying, miss?" exclaimed the captain. "If you talk so," continued Lord Glenarvan, "you will make a great friend of Captain John; for he thinks nothing in the world can equal the life of a sailor. He sees no other, even for a woman. Is it not so, John?" "Undoubtedly, your lordship," replied the young captain; "and yet, I confess, Miss Grant is better in her place on deck, than taking a reef in the top-sail. But still I am very much flattered to hear her speak so." "And especially when she admires the Duncan!" added Glenarvan. "Right, my lord; for she deserves it." "Upon my word," said Lady Helena, "since you are so proud of your yacht, you make me anxious to examine her to the very hold, and see how our brave sailors are quartered between-decks." "Admirably," replied the captain; "they are quite at home there." "Indeed they are, my dear Helena," said Lord Glenarvan. "This yacht is a part of our old Caledonia,--a detached portion of the county of Dumbarton, traveling by special favor, so that we have not left our country. The Duncan is Malcolm Castle, and the ocean is Loch Lomond." "Well, then, my dear Edward, do the honors of the castle," said Lady Helena. "I am at your disposal, madam," answered her husband; "but first let me inform Olbinett." The steward of the yacht was an excellent manager, a Scotchman, who deserved to have been a Frenchman from his self-importance, and, moreover, fulfilled his duties with zeal and intelligence. He was at once ready for his master's commands. "Olbinett, we are going to make a tour of the vessel before breakfast," said Glenarvan, as if a journey to Tarbet or Loch Katrine was in question. "I hope we shall find the table ready on our return." Olbinett bowed gravely. [Illustration: This man, tall, lank, and shriveled, might have been forty years old. He resembled a long, broad-headed nail, for his head was large and thick, his forehead high, his nose prominent, his mouth wide, and his chin blunt.] "Do you accompany us, major?" asked Lady Helena. "If you order it," replied MacNabb. "Oh!" said Lord Glenarvan, "the major is absorbed in the smoke of his cigar; we must not disturb him, for I assure you he is an inveterate smoker, Miss Mary; he smokes all the time, even in his sleep." The major made a sign of assent, and the passengers descended between-decks. MacNabb remained alone, talking to himself, according to his custom, but never contradicting himself. Enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke, he stood motionless, gazing back at the wake of the yacht. After a few moments of contemplation, he turned and found himself face to face with a new character. If _anything_ could have surprised him, it must have been this meeting, for the passenger was absolutely unknown to him. [Sidenote: A TELESCOPIC APPARITION.] This man, tall, lank, and shriveled, might have been forty years old. He resembled a long, broad-headed nail, for his head was large and thick, his forehead high, his nose prominent, his mouth wide, and his chin blunt. As for his eyes, they were hidden behind enormous eye-glasses, and his look seemed to have that indecision peculiar to nyctalops. His countenance indicated an intelligent and lively person, while it had not the crabbed air of those stern people who from principle never laugh, and whose stupidity is hidden beneath a serious guise. The nonchalance and amiable freedom of this unknown nonentity clearly proved that he knew how to take men and things at their best advantage. Even without his speaking you felt that he was a talker; but he was abstracted, after the manner of those who do not see what they are looking at or hear what they are listening to. He wore a traveling cap, stout yellow buskins and leather gaiters, pantaloons of maroon velvet, and a jacket of the same material, whose innumerable pockets seemed stuffed with note-books, memoranda, scraps, portfolios, and a thousand articles as inconvenient as they were useless, not to speak of a telescope which he carried in a sling. The curiosity of this unknown being was a singular contrast to the calmness of the major. He walked around MacNabb, and gazed at him questioningly, whilst the latter did not trouble himself whence the stranger came, whither he was going, or why he was on board the Duncan. When this enigmatical character saw his approaches mocked by the indifference of the major, he seized his telescope, which at its full length measured four feet; and motionless, with legs straddled, like a sign-post on a highway, he pointed his instrument to the line where sky and water met. After a few moments of examination, he lowered it, and resting it on the deck, leaned upon it as upon a cane. But immediately the joints of the instrument closed, and the newly discovered passenger, whose point of support suddenly failed, was stretched at the foot of the mainmast. [Illustration] Any one else in the major's place would at least have smiled, but he did not even wink. The unknown then assumed his rôle. "Steward!" he cried, with an accent that betokened a foreigner. He waited. No one appeared. "Steward!" he repeated, in a louder tone. Mr. Olbinett was passing just then on his way to the kitchen under the forecastle. What was his astonishment to hear himself thus addressed by this tall individual, who was utterly unknown to him! "Where did this person come from?" said he to himself. "A friend of Lord Glenarvan? It is impossible." However, he came on deck, and approached the stranger. "Are you the steward of the vessel?" the latter asked him. "Yes, sir," replied Olbinett; "but I have not the honor----" "I am the passenger of cabin number six." "Number six?" repeated the steward. "Certainly; and your name is----?" "Olbinett." "Well, Olbinett, my friend," answered the stranger of cabin number six, "I must think of dinner, and acutely, too. For thirty-six hours I have eaten nothing, or, rather, have slept, which is pardonable in a man come all the way from Paris to Glasgow. What hour do you dine, if you please?" "At nine o'clock," answered Olbinett, mechanically. The stranger attempted to consult his watch; but this took some time, for he did not find it till he came to his ninth pocket. [Sidenote: CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED.] "Well," said he, "it is not yet eight o'clock; therefore, Olbinett, a biscuit and a glass of sherry for the present; for I am fainting with hunger." Olbinett listened without understanding. Moreover, the unknown kept talking, and passed from one subject to another with extreme volubility. "Well," said he, "has not the captain risen yet? And the mate? What is he doing? Is he asleep, too? Fortunately, the weather is beautiful, the wind favorable, and the ship goes on quite by herself----" Just as he said this, Captain Mangles appeared at the companion-way. "Here is the captain," said Olbinett. "Ah, I am delighted," cried the stranger, "delighted to make your acquaintance, Captain Burton!" If any one was ever astounded, John Mangles certainly was, not less at hearing himself called "Captain Burton," than at seeing this stranger on board his vessel. The latter continued, with more animation: "Permit me to shake hands with you, and if I did not do so day before yesterday, it was that no one might be embarrassed at the moment of departure. But to-day, captain, I am truly happy to meet you." Captain Mangles opened his eyes in measureless astonishment, looking first at Olbinett, and then at the new comer. "Now," continued the latter, "the introduction is over, and we are old friends. Let us have a talk; and tell me, are you satisfied with the Scotia?" "What do you mean by the Scotia?" asked the captain, at last. "Why, the Scotia that carries us: a good ship, whose commander, the brave Captain Burton, I have heard praised no less for his physical than his moral qualities. Are you the father of the great African traveler of that name? If so, my compliments!" "Sir," replied Captain Mangles, "not only am I not the father of the traveler Burton, but I am not even Captain Burton." "Ah!" said the unknown, "it is the mate of the Scotia then, Mr. Burdness, whom I am addressing at this moment?" "Mr. Burdness?" replied Captain Mangles, who began to suspect the truth. But was he talking to a fool, or a rogue? This was a question in his mind, and he was about to explain himself intelligibly, when Lord Glenarvan, his wife, and Miss Grant came on deck. The stranger perceived them, and cried,-- "Ah! passengers! passengers! excellent! I hope, Mr. Burdness, you are going to introduce me----" And advancing with perfect ease, without waiting for the captain,-- "Madam" said he to Miss Grant, "Miss" to Lady Helena, "Sir" he added, addressing Lord Glenarvan. "Lord Glenarvan," said Captain Mangles. "My lord," continued the unknown, "I beg your pardon for introducing myself, but at sea we must relax a little from etiquette. I hope we shall soon be acquainted, and that, in the society of these ladies, the passage of the Scotia will seem as short to us as agreeable." Lady Helena and Miss Grant could not find a word to answer. They were completely bewildered by the presence of this intruder. "Sir," said Glenarvan, at length, "whom have I the honor of addressing?" "Jacques Eliacim François Marie Paganel, secretary of the Geographical Society of Paris; corresponding member of the societies of Berlin, Bombay, Darmstadt, Leipsic, London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and New York; honorary member of the Royal Geographical and Ethnographical Institute of the East Indies, who, after passing twenty years of his life in studying geography, designs now to enter upon a roving life, and is directing his course to India to continue there the labors of the great travelers." CHAPTER VII. JACQUES PAGANEL IS UNDECEIVED. The secretary of the Geographical Society must have been an agreeable person, for all this was said with much modesty. Lord Glenarvan, moreover, knew perfectly whom he had met. The name and merit of Jacques Paganel were well known to him. His geographical labors, his reports on modern discoveries, published in the bulletins of the Society, his correspondence with the entire world, had made him one of the most distinguished scientific men of France. Thus Glenarvan extended his hand very cordially to his unexpected guest. "And now that our introduction is over," added he, "will you permit me, Monsieur Paganel, to ask you a question?" "Twenty, my lord," replied Jacques Paganel; "it will always be a pleasure to converse with you." "You arrived on board this vessel the day before yesterday?" "Yes, my lord, day before yesterday, at eight o'clock in the evening. I took a cab from the Caledonian Railway to the Scotia, in which I had engaged cabin number six at Paris. The night was dark. I saw no one on board. Feeling fatigued by thirty hours of travel, and knowing that a good way to avoid sea-sickness is to go to bed on embarking, and not stir from your bunk for the first days of the voyage, I retired immediately, and have conscientiously slept thirty-six hours, I assure you." Jacques Paganel's hearers now knew the reason of his presence on board. The Frenchman, mistaking the vessel, had embarked while the crew of the Duncan were engaged in the ceremony at Saint Mungo. Everything was explained. But what would the geographer say, when he learned the name and destination of the vessel on which he had taken passage? "So, Monsieur Paganel," said Glenarvan, "you have chosen Calcutta as your centre of action?" "Yes, my lord. To see India is an idea that I have cherished all my life. It is my brightest dream, which shall be realized at last in the country of the elephants and the Thugs." "Then you would not care to visit another country?" "No, my lord; it would be even disagreeable, for I have letters from Lord Somerset to the governor-general of India, and a mission from the Geographical Society which I must fulfil." "Ah! you have a mission?" "Yes, a useful and curious voyage to undertake, the programme of which has been arranged by my scientific friend and colleague, M. Vivien de Saint Martin. It is to follow in the steps of the brothers Schlagintweit, and many other celebrated travelers. I hope to succeed where Missionary Krick unfortunately failed in 1846. In a word, I wish to discover the course of the Yaroo-tsang-bo-tsoo, which waters Thibet, and finally to settle whether this river does not join the Brahmapootra in the northeast part of Assam. A gold medal is promised to that traveler who shall succeed in supplying this much-needed information on Indian geography." Paganel was grandiloquent. He spoke with a lofty animation, and was carried away in the rapid flight of imagination. It would have been as impossible to check him as to stay the Rhine at the Falls of Schaffhausen. "Monsieur Jacques Paganel," said Lord Glenarvan, after a moment of silence, "that is certainly a fine voyage, and one for which science would be very grateful; but I will not further prolong your ignorance. For the present, you must give up the pleasure of seeing India." "Give it up! And why?" "Because you are turning your back upon the Indian peninsula." "How? Captain Burton----" "I am not Captain Burton," replied John Mangles. "But the Scotia?" "This vessel is not the Scotia." Paganel's amazement cannot be depicted. He looked first at Lord Glenarvan, always serious; then at Lady Helena and Miss Grant, whose features expressed a sympathetic disappointment; and finally at Captain Mangles, who was smiling, and the imperturbable major. Then, raising his shoulders and drawing down his glasses from his forehead to his eyes, he exclaimed,-- "What a joke!" But at that his eyes fell upon the steering wheel, on which were inscribed these two words, thus: [Illustration] "The Duncan! the Duncan!" he cried in a tone of real despair; and, leaping down the companion-way, he rushed to his cabin. When the unfortunate geographer had disappeared, no one on board, except the major, could retain gravity, and the laugh was communicated even to the sailors. To mistake the railroad was not so bad; to take the train to Dumbarton, instead of Edinburgh, would do. But to mistake the vessel, and be sailing to Chili, when he wished to go to India, was the height of absent-mindedness. [Sidenote: ABSENT-MINDEDNESS.] "On the whole, I am not astonished at this on the part of Jacques Paganel," said Glenarvan; "he is noted for such blunders. He once published a celebrated map of America, in which he located Japan. However, he is a distinguished scholar, and one of the best geographers of France." [Illustration] "But what are we going to do with the poor gentleman?" asked Lady Helena. "We cannot take him to Patagonia." "Why not?" replied MacNabb gravely. "We are not responsible for his errors. Suppose he were in a railroad car, would it stop for him?" "No; but he could get out at the first station," answered Lady Helena. "Well," said Glenarvan, "he can do so now, if he pleases, at our first landing." At this moment Paganel, woeful and humble, reappeared on deck, after convincing himself that his baggage was on board. He kept repeating those fatal words: "The Duncan! the Duncan!" He could find no others in his vocabulary. He went to and fro, examining the rigging of the yacht, and questioning the mute horizon of the open sea. At last he returned to Lord Glenarvan. [Illustration] "And this Duncan is going----?" he asked. "To America, Monsieur Paganel." "And where especially?" "To Concepcion." "To Chili! to Chili!" cried the unfortunate geographer. "And my mission to India! But what will M. de Quatrefages say, the President of the Central Commission? How shall I represent myself at the sessions of the Society?" [Sidenote: COURTESY AND CONVERSE.] "Come, monsieur," said Glenarvan, "do not despair. Everything can be arranged, and you will only have to submit to a delay of little consequence. The Yaroo-tsang-bo-tsoo will wait for you in the mountains of Thibet. We shall soon reach Madeira, and there you will find a vessel to take you back to Europe." "I thank you, my lord, and must be resigned. But we can say this is an extraordinary adventure, which would not have happened but for me. And my cabin which is engaged on board the Scotia?" "Oh, as for the Scotia, I advise you to give her up for the present." "But," said Paganel after examining the vessel again, "the Duncan is a pleasure yacht." "Yes, sir," replied Captain Mangles, "and belongs to his lordship, Lord Glenarvan----" "Who begs you to make free use of his hospitality," said Glenarvan. "A thousand thanks, my lord," replied Paganel; "I am truly sensible to your courtesy. But permit me to make a simple remark. India is a beautiful country. It offers marvelous surprises to travelers. These ladies have probably never visited it. Well, the man at the helm needs only to give a turn to the wheel, and the Duncan will go as easily to Calcutta as Concepcion. Now, since this is a pleasure voyage----" The negative reception that met Paganel's proposal did not permit him to develop it. He paused. "Monsieur Paganel," said Lady Helena at length, "if this were only a pleasure voyage, I would answer: 'Let us all go to India,' and Lord Glenarvan would not disapprove. But the Duncan is going to recover some shipwrecked sailors, abandoned on the coast of Patagonia; and she cannot change so humane a course." In a few moments the Frenchman was acquainted with the situation of affairs, and learned, not without emotion, the providential discovery of the documents, the story of Captain Grant, and Lady Helena's generous proposal. "Madam," said he, "permit me to admire your conduct in all this, and to admire it without reserve. May your yacht continue on her course; I would reproach myself for delaying her a single day." "Will you then join in our search?" asked Lady Helena. "It is impossible, madam; I must fulfil my mission. I shall disembark at your first landing." "At Madeira then," said Captain Mangles. "At Madeira let it be. I shall be only one hundred and eighty leagues from Lisbon, and will wait there for means of further conveyance." "Well, Monsieur Paganel," said Glenarvan, "it shall be as you desire; and, for my part, I am happy that I can offer you for a few days the hospitalities of my vessel. May you not grow weary of our company." "Oh, my lord," exclaimed the geographer, "I am still too happy in being so agreeably disappointed. However, it is a very ludicrous situation for a man who takes passage for India, and is sailing to America." In spite of this mortifying reflection, Paganel made the best use of a delay that he could not avoid. He showed himself amiable, and even gay; he enchanted the ladies with his good humor, and before the end of the day he was the friend of every one. At his request the famous document was shown to him. He studied it carefully, long and minutely. No other interpretation appeared to him possible. Mary Grant and her brother inspired him with the liveliest interest. He gave them good hopes. His way of distinguishing the events, and the undeniable success that he predicted for the Duncan, elicited a smile from the young girl. [Sidenote: THIS, OR THAT, OR NEITHER.] As to Lady Helena, when he learned that she was the daughter of William Tuffnel, there was an outburst of surprise and admiration. He had known her father. What a bold discoverer! How many letters they had exchanged when the latter was corresponding member of the Society! He it was who had introduced him to M. Malte-Brun. What a meeting! and how much pleasure to travel with the daughter of such a man! Finally, he asked Lady Helena's permission to kiss her, to which she consented, although it was perhaps a little "improper." CHAPTER VIII. THE GEOGRAPHER'S RESOLUTION. Meanwhile the yacht, favored by the currents, was advancing rapidly towards the equator. In a few days the island of Madeira came in view. Glenarvan, faithful to his promise, offered to land his new guest here. "My dear lord," replied Paganel, "I will not be formal with you. Before my arrival on board, did you intend to stop at Madeira?" "No," said Glenarvan. "Well, permit me to profit by the consequences of my unlucky blunder. Madeira is an island too well known. Everything has been said and written about it; and it is, moreover, rapidly declining in point of civilization. If, then, it is all the same to you, let us land at the Canaries." "Very well, at the Canaries," replied Glenarvan. "That will not take us out of our way." "I know it, my dear lord. At the Canaries, you see, there are three groups to study, not to speak of the Peak of Teneriffe, which I have always desired to see. This is a fine opportunity. I will profit by it; and, while waiting for a vessel, will attempt the ascent of this celebrated mountain." "As you please, my dear Paganel," replied Glenarvan, who could not help smiling, and with good reason. The Canaries are only a short distance from Madeira, scarcely two hundred and fifty miles, a mere trifle for so good a vessel as the Duncan. The same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Captain Mangles and Paganel were walking on the deck. The Frenchman pressed his companion with lively questions concerning Chili. All at once the captain interrupted him, and pointing towards the southern horizon, said,-- "Mr. Paganel!" "My dear captain," replied the geographer. "Please cast your eyes in that direction. Do you see nothing?" "Nothing." "You are not looking right. It is not on the horizon, but above, in the clouds." "In the clouds? I look in vain." "Stop, now, just on a line with the end of the bowsprit." "I see nothing." "You do not wish to see. However that may be, although we are forty miles distant, you understand, the Peak of Teneriffe is visible above the horizon." Whether Paganel wished to see or not, he had to yield to the evidence some hours afterwards, or, at least, confess himself blind. "You perceive it now?" said his companion. "Yes, yes, perfectly!" replied Paganel. "And that," added he in a contemptuous tone, "is what you call the Peak of Teneriffe?" "The same." "It appears to be of very moderate height." "Yet it is eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea." "Not so high as Mont Blanc." "Very possibly; but when you come to climb it, you will find it, perhaps, high enough." [Illustration: They could scarcely see the city, which was on an elevated plain in the form of a terrace, resting on volcanic rocks three hundred feet in height. The appearance of the island through this rainy curtain was misty.] "Oh! climb it, my dear captain? What is the use, I ask you, after Humboldt and Bonpland? What can I do after these great men?" [Illustration: Peak of Teneriffe.] "Indeed," replied Captain Mangles, "there is nothing left but to wander about. It is a pity, for you would be very tired waiting for a vessel at Teneriffe. You cannot look for many distractions there." "Except my own," said Paganel, laughing. "But, my dear captain, have not the Cape Verd Islands important landings?" "Certainly. Nothing is easier than to land at Villa-Praïa." "Not to speak of an advantage that is not to be despised," answered Paganel; "that the Cape Verd Islands are not far from Senegal, where I shall find fellow-countrymen." "As you please, Mr. Paganel," replied Captain Mangles. "I am certain that geographical science will gain by your sojourn in these islands. We must land there to take in coal; you will, therefore, cause us no delay." [Sidenote: DECLINED, WITH THANKS.] So saying, the captain gave the order to pass to the southeast of the Canaries. The celebrated peak was soon left on the larboard; and the Duncan, continuing her rapid course, cut the Tropic of Cancer the next morning at five o'clock. The weather there changed. The atmosphere had the moisture and oppressiveness of the rainy season, disagreeable to travelers, but beneficial to the inhabitants of the African islands, who have no trees, and consequently need water. The sea was boisterous, and prevented the passengers from remaining on deck; but the conversation in the cabin was not less animated. The next day Paganel began to collect his baggage preparatory to his approaching departure. In a short time they entered the bay of Villa-Praïa, and anchored opposite the city in eight fathoms of water. The weather was stormy and the surf high, although the bay was sheltered from the winds. The rain fell in torrents so that they could scarcely see the city, which was on an elevated plain in the form of a terrace, resting on volcanic rocks three hundred feet in height. The appearance of the island through this rainy curtain was misty. Shipping the coal was not accomplished without great difficulty, and the passengers saw themselves confined to the cabin, while sea and sky mingled their waters in an indescribable tumult. The weather was, therefore, the topic of conversation on board. Each one had his say except the major, who would have witnessed the deluge itself with perfect indifference. Paganel walked to and fro, shaking his head. "It is an imperative fact," said he. "It is certain," replied Glenarvan, "that the elements declare themselves against you." "I will see about that." "You cannot face such a storm," said Lady Helena. "I, madam? Certainly. I fear only for my baggage and instruments. They will all be lost." "Our landing is the only thing doubtful," resumed Glenarvan. "Once at Villa-Praïa, you will not have very uncomfortable quarters; rather uncleanly, to be sure, in the company of monkeys and swine, whose surroundings are not always agreeable; but a traveler does not regard that so critically. Besides, you can hope in seven or eight months to embark for Europe." "Seven or eight months!" exclaimed Paganel. "At least that. The Cape Verd Islands are very rarely frequented during the rainy season. But you can employ your time profitably. This archipelago is still little known. There is much to do, even now." "But," replied Paganel in a pitiful tone, "what could I do after the investigations of the geologist Deville?" "That is really a pity," said Lady Helena. "What will become of you, Monsieur Paganel?" Paganel was silent for a few moments. "You had decidedly better have landed at Madeira," rejoined Glenarvan, "although there is no wine there." "My dear Glenarvan," continued Paganel at last, "where shall you land next?" "At Concepcion." "Alas! but that would bring me directly away from India!" "No; for when you have passed Cape Horn you approach the Indies." "I very much doubt it." "Besides," continued Glenarvan with the greatest gravity, "as long as you are at the Indies, what difference does it make whether they are the East or the West?" "'What difference does it make'?" "The inhabitants of the Pampas of Patagonia are Indians as well as the natives of the Punjab." "Eh! my lord," exclaimed Paganel, "that is a reason I should never have imagined!" [Sidenote: BAIT FOR A TRAVELLER.] "And then, my dear Paganel, you know that you can gain the gold medal in any country whatever. There is something to do, to seek, to discover, everywhere, in the chains of the Cordilleras as well as the mountains of Thibet." "But the course of the Yaroo-tsang-bo-tsoo?" "Certainly. You can replace that by the Rio Colorado. This is a river very little known, and one of those which flow on the map too much according to the fancy of the geographer." "I know it, my dear lord; there are errors of several degrees. I do not doubt that at my request the Society would have sent me to Patagonia as well as to India; but I did not think of it." "The result of your continual abstraction." "Well, Monsieur Paganel, shall you accompany us?" asked Lady Helena in her most persuasive tone. "And my mission, madam?" "I inform you that we shall pass through the Strait of Magellan," continued Glenarvan. "My lord, you are a tempter." "I add that we shall visit Port Famine." "Port Famine!" cried the Frenchman, assailed on all sides; "that port so celebrated in geographical fasts!" "Consider also, Monsieur Paganel," continued Lady Helena, "that in this enterprise you will have the right to associate the name of France with that of Scotland." "Yes; doubtless." "A geographer may be very serviceable to our expedition; and what is more noble than for science to enlist in the service of humanity?" "That is well said, madam." "Believe me, try chance, or rather Providence. Imitate us. It has sent us this document; we have started. It has cast you on board the Duncan; do not leave her." "And do you, indeed, wish me, my good friends?" replied Paganel. "Well, you desire me to stay very much?" "And you, Paganel, you are dying to stay," retorted Glenarvan. "Truly," cried the geographer, "but I fear I am very indiscreet." Thus far the Duncan had acquitted herself admirably: in every way her powers for steaming or sailing had been sufficiently tested, and her captain and passengers were alike satisfied with her performance and with one another. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. THROUGH THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. The joy on board was general, when Paganel's resolution was known. Young Robert threw himself on his neck with very demonstrative delight. The worthy geographer almost fell backwards. "A rough little gentleman," said he; "I will teach him geography." As Captain Mangles had engaged to make him a sailor, Glenarvan a man of honor, the major a boy of coolness, Lady Helena a noble and generous being, and Mary Grant a pupil grateful towards such patrons, Robert was evidently to become one day an accomplished gentleman. The Duncan soon finished shipping her coal, and then leaving these gloomy regions she gained the current from the southeast coast of Brazil, and, after crossing the equator with a fine breeze from the north, she entered the southern hemisphere. The passage was effected without difficulty, and every one had good hopes. On this voyage in search of Captain Grant, the probabilities increased every day. Their captain was one of the most confident on board; but his confidence proceeded especially from the desire that he cherished so strongly at heart, of seeing Miss Mary happy and consoled. He was particularly interested in this young girl; and this feeling he concealed so well, that, except Miss Grant and himself, no one on board the Duncan had perceived it. As for the learned geographer, he was probably the happiest man in the southern hemisphere. He passed his time in studying the maps with which he covered the cabin-table; and then followed daily discussions with Mr. Olbinett, so that he could scarcely set the table. But Paganel had all the passengers on his side except the major, who was very indifferent to geographical questions, especially at dinner-time. Having discovered a whole cargo of odd books in the mate's chests, and among them a number of Cervantes' works, the Frenchman resolved to learn Spanish, which nobody on board knew, and which would facilitate his search on the shores of Chili. Thanks to his love for philology, he did not despair of speaking this new tongue fluently on arriving at Concepcion. He therefore studied assiduously, and was heard incessantly muttering heterogeneous syllables. During his leisure hours he did not fail to give young Robert practical instruction, and taught him the history of the country they were rapidly approaching. In the meantime the Duncan was proceeding at a remarkable rate. She cut the Tropic of Capricorn, and her prow was headed toward the strait of the celebrated geographer. Now and then the low shores of Patagonia were seen, but like an almost invisible line on the horizon. They sailed along the coast for more than ten miles, but Paganel's famous telescope gave him only a vague idea of these American shores. The vessel soon found herself at the head of the strait, and entered without hesitation. This way is generally preferred by steam-vessels bound for the Pacific. Its exact length is three hundred and seventy-six miles. Ships of the greatest tonnage can always find deep water, even near its shores, an excellent bottom, and many springs of water. The rivers abound in fish, the forest in game, there are safe and easy landings at twenty places, and, in short, a thousand resources that are wanting in the Strait of Lemaire, and off the terrible rocks of Cape Horn, which are continually visited by storms and tempests. [Illustration: Sometimes the tips of her yards would graze the branches of the beeches that hung over the waves.] During the first hours of the passage, till you reach Cape Gregory, the shores are low and sandy. The entire passage lasted scarcely thirty-six hours, and this moving panorama of the two shores well rewarded the pains the geographer took to admire it under the radiant beams of the southern sun. No inhabitant appeared on the shores of the continent; and only a few Fuegians wandered along the barren rocks of Terra del Fuego. At one moment the Duncan rounded the peninsula of Brunswick between two magnificent sights. Just here the strait cuts between stupendous masses of granite. The base of the mountains was hidden in the heart of immense forests, while their summits, whitened with eternal snow, were lost in the clouds. Towards the southeast Mount Taru towered six thousand five hundred feet aloft. Night came, preceded by a long twilight, the light melting away insensibly by gentle degrees, while the sky was studded with brilliant stars. In the midst of this partial obscurity, the yacht boldly continued on her course, without casting anchor in the safe bays with which the shores abound. Sometimes the tips of her yards would graze the branches of the beeches that hung over the waves. At others her propeller would beat the waters of the great rivers, starting geese, ducks, snipe, teal, and all the feathered tribes of the marshes. Soon deserted ruins appeared, and fallen monuments, to which the night lent a grand aspect; these were the mournful remains of an abandoned colony, whose name will be an eternal contradiction to the fertility of the coasts and the rich game of the forests. It was Port Famine, the place that the Spaniard Sarmiento colonized in 1581 with four hundred emigrants. Here he founded the city of San Felipe. But the extreme severity of the cold weakened the colony; famine devoured those whom the winter had spared, and in 1587 the explorer Cavendish found the last of these four hundred unfortunates dying of hunger amid the ruins of a city only six years in existence. [Sidenote: CHEERLESS MEMORIES.] The vessel coasted along these deserted shores. At daybreak she sailed in the midst of the narrow passes, between beeches, ash-trees, and birches, from the bosom of which emerged ivy-clad domes, cupolas tapestried with the hardy holly, and lofty spires, among which the obelisk of Buckland rose to a great height. Far out in the sea sported droves of seals and whales of great size, judging by their spouting, which could be seen at a distance of four miles. At last they doubled Cape Froward, still bristling with the ices of winter. On the other side of the strait, on Terra del Fuego, rose Mount Sarmiento to the height of six thousand feet, an enormous mass of rock broken by bands of clouds which formed as it were an aerial archipelago in the sky. [Illustration: Port Famine.] Cape Froward is the real end of the American continent, for Cape Horn is only a lone rock in the sea. Passing this point the strait narrowed between Brunswick Peninsula, and Desolation Island. Then to fertile shores succeeded a line of wild barren coast, cut by a thousand inlets of this tortuous labyrinth. The Duncan unerringly and unhesitatingly pursued its capricious windings, mingling her columns of smoke with the mists on the rocks. Without lessening her speed, she passed several Spanish factories established on these deserted shores. At Cape Tamar the strait widened. The yacht rounded the Narborough Islands, and approached the southern shores. At last, thirty-six hours after entering the strait, the rocks of Cape Pilares were discerned at the extreme point of Desolation Island. An immense open glittering sea extended before her prow, and Jacques Paganel, hailing it with an enthusiastic gesture, felt moved like Ferdinand Magellan himself, when the sails of the Trinidad swelled before the breezes of the Pacific. CHAPTER X. THE COURSE DECIDED. Eight days after doubling Cape Pilares the Duncan entered at full speed the Bay of Talcahuana, a magnificent estuary, twelve miles long and nine broad. The weather was beautiful. Not a cloud is seen in the sky of this country from November to March, and the wind from the south blows continually along these coasts, which are protected by the chain of the Andes. Captain Mangles, according to Lord Glenarvan's orders, had kept close to the shore of the continent, examining the numerous wrecks that lined it. A waif, a broken spar, a piece of wood fashioned by the hand of man, might guide the Duncan to the scene of the shipwreck. But nothing was seen, and the yacht continued her course and anchored in the harbor of Talcahuana forty-two days after her departure from the waters of the Clyde. [Sidenote: LEARNING SPANISH!] Glenarvan at once lowered the boat, and, followed by Paganel, landed at the foot of the palisade. The learned geographer, profiting by the circumstance, would have made use of the language which he had studied so conscientiously; but, to his great astonishment, he could not make himself understood by the natives. "The accent is what I need," said he. "Let us go to the Custom-house," replied Glenarvan. There they were informed by means of several English words, accompanied by expressive gestures, that the British consul resided at Concepcion. It was only an hour's journey. Glenarvan easily found two good horses, and, a short time after, Paganel and he entered the walls of this great city, which was built by the enterprising genius of Valdivia, the valiant companion of Pizarro. How greatly it had declined from its ancient splendor! Often pillaged by the natives, burnt in 1819, desolate, ruined, its walls still blackened with the flames of devastation, eclipsed by Talcahuana, it now scarcely numbered eight thousand souls. Under the feet of its idle inhabitants the streets had grown into prairies. There was no commerce, no activity, no business. The mandolin resounded from every balcony, languishing songs issued from the lattices of the windows, and Concepcion, the ancient city of men, had become a village of women and children. Glenarvan appeared little desirous of seeking the causes of this decline--though Jacques Paganel attacked him on this subject--and, without losing an instant, betook himself to the house of J. R. Bentock, Esq., consul of Her Britannic Majesty. This individual received him very courteously, and when he learned the story of Captain Grant undertook to search along the entire coast. The question whether the Britannia had been wrecked on the shores of Chili or Araucania was decided in the negative. No report of such an event had come either to the consul, or his colleagues in other parts of the country. But Glenarvan was not discouraged. He returned to Talcahuana, and, sparing neither fatigue, trouble, or money, he sent men to the coast, but their search was in vain. The most minute inquiries among the people of the vicinity were of no avail. They were forced to conclude that the Britannia had left no trace of her shipwreck. [Illustration: In Concepcion.] [Sidenote: "TRY AGAIN!"] Glenarvan then informed his companions of the failure of his endeavors. Mary Grant and her brother could not restrain their grief. It was now six days since the arrival of the Duncan at Talcahuana. The passengers were together in the cabin. Lady Helena was consoling, not by her words--for what could she say?--but by her caresses, the two children of the captain. Jacques Paganel had taken up the document again, and was regarding it with earnest attention, as if he would have drawn from it new secrets. For an hour he had examined it thus, when Glenarvan, addressing him, said,-- "Paganel, I appeal to your sagacity. Is the interpretation we have made of this document incorrect? Is the sense of these words illogical?" Paganel did not answer. He was reflecting. "Are we mistaken as to the supposed scene of the shipwreck?" continued Glenarvan. "Does not the name Patagonia suggest itself at once to the mind?" Paganel was still silent. "In short," said Glenarvan, "does not the word _Indian_ justify us still more?" "Perfectly," replied MacNabb. "And therefore, is it not evident that these shipwrecked men, when they wrote these lines, expected to be prisoners of the Indians?" "There you are wrong, my dear lord," said Paganel, at last; "and if your other conclusions are just, the last at least does not seem to me rational." "What do you mean?" asked Lady Helena, while all eyes were turned towards the geographer. "I mean," answered Paganel, emphasizing his words, "that Captain Grant is _now prisoner of the Indians_: and I will add that the document leaves no doubt on this point." "Explain yourself, sir," said Miss Grant. "Nothing is easier, my dear Mary. Instead of reading _they will be prisoners_, read _they are prisoners_, and all will be clear." "But that is impossible," replied Glenarvan. "Impossible? And why, my noble friend?" asked Paganel, smiling. "Because the bottle must have been thrown when the vessel was breaking on the rocks. Hence the degrees of longitude and latitude apply to the very place of shipwreck." "Nothing proves it," said Paganel, earnestly; "and I do not see why the shipwrecked sailors, after being carried by the Indians into the interior of the country, could not have sought to make known by means of this bottle the place of their captivity." "Simply, my dear Paganel, because to throw a bottle into the sea it is necessary, at least, that the sea should be before you." "Or, in the absence of the sea," added Paganel, "the rivers which flow into it." An astonished silence followed this unexpected, yet reasonable, answer. By the flash that brightened the eyes of his hearers Paganel knew that each of them had conceived a new hope. Lady Helena was the first to resume the conversation. "What an idea!" she exclaimed. "What a _good_ idea!" added the geographer, simply. "Your advice then?" asked Glenarvan. "My advice is to find the thirty-seventh parallel, just where it meets the American coast, and follow it, without deviating half a degree, to the point where it strikes the Atlantic. Perhaps we shall find on its course the survivors of the Britannia." "A feeble chance," replied the major. "However feeble it may be," continued Paganel, "we ought not to neglect it. If I am right that this bottle reached the sea by following the current of a river, we cannot fail to come upon the traces of the prisoners. Look, my friends, look at the map of this country, and I will convince you beyond a doubt." [Sidenote: NIL DESPERANDUM!] So saying, Paganel spread out before them upon the table a large map of Chili and the Argentine Provinces. "Look," said he, "and follow me in this passage across the American continent. Let us pass over the narrow strip of Chili and the Cordilleras of the Andes, and descend into the midst of the Pampas. Are rivers, streams, water-courses, wanting in these regions? No. Here are the Rio Negro, the Rio Colorado, and their affluents, cut by the thirty-seventh parallel, all of which might have served to transport the document. There, perhaps, in the midst of a tribe, in the hands of settled Indians, on the shores of these unknown rivers, in the gorges of the sierras, those whom I have the right to call our friends are awaiting an interposition of Providence. Ought we, then, to disappoint their hopes? Do you not think we should follow across these countries an unswerving course? And if, contrary to all expectation, I am still mistaken, is it not our duty to trace this parallel to the very end, and, if necessary, make upon it the tour of the world?" These words, spoken with a noble enthusiasm, excited a deep emotion among Paganel's hearers. All rose to shake hands with him. "Yes, my father is there!" cried Robert Grant, devouring the map with his eyes. "And wherever he is," replied Glenarvan, "we shall find him, my child. Nothing is more consistent than our friend Paganel's interpretation, and we must follow without hesitation the course he has indicated. Either Captain Grant is in the hands of countless Indians, or is prisoner in a feeble tribe. In the latter case, we will rescue him. In the former, after ascertaining his situation, we will join the Duncan on the eastern coast, sail to Buenos Ayres, and with a detachment, organized by the major, can overcome all the Indians of the Argentine Plains." "Yes, yes, your lordship," answered Captain Mangles; "and I will add that this passage of the continent will be without peril." "Without peril, or fatigue," continued Paganel. "How many have already accomplished it who had scarcely our means for success, and whose courage was not sustained by the grandeur of the undertaking!" "Sir, sir," exclaimed Mary Grant, in a voice broken with emotion, "how can I thank a devotion that exposes you to so many dangers?" "Dangers!" cried Paganel. "Who uttered the word _danger_?" "Not I!" replied Robert Grant, with flashing eye and determined look. "Danger!" repeated Paganel; "does such a thing exist? Moreover, what is the question? A journey of scarcely three hundred and fifty leagues, since we shall proceed in a straight line; a journey which will be accomplished in a favorable latitude and climate; in short, a journey whose duration will be only a month at most. It is a mere walk." "Monsieur Paganel," asked Lady Helena at last, "do you think that, if the shipwrecked sailors have fallen into the power of the Indians, their lives have been spared?" "Certainly I do, madam. The Indians are not cannibals; far from that, one of my countrymen whom I knew in the Society was three years prisoner among the Indians of the Pampas. He suffered, was ill-treated, but at last gained the victory in this trying ordeal. A European is a useful person in these countries. The Indians know his value, and esteem him very highly." "Well then, there is no more hesitation," said Glenarvan; "we must start, and that, too, without delay. What course shall we take?" "An easy and agreeable one," replied Paganel. "A few mountains to begin with; then a gentle descent on the eastern slope of the Andes; and at last a level, grassy, sandy plain, a real garden." "Let us see the map," said the major. "Here it is, my dear MacNabb. We shall begin at the end of the thirty-seventh parallel on the coast of Chili. After passing through the capital of Araucania, we shall strike the Cordilleras, and descending their steep declivities across the Rio Colorado, we shall reach the Pampas. Passing the frontiers of Buenos Ayres, we shall continue our search until we reach the shores of the Atlantic." [Sidenote: A STROLL ACROSS THE COUNTRY.] Thus speaking and developing the programme of the expedition, Paganel did not even take the trouble to look at the map spread before him. And he had no need to; educated in the schools of Frézier, Molina, Humboldt, and Miers, his unerring memory could neither be deceived nor baffled. After finishing his plan, he added: "Therefore, my dear friends, the course is straight. In thirty days we shall accomplish it, and arrive before the Duncan on the eastern shore, since the westerly winds will delay her progress." "The Duncan then," said Captain Mangles, "will cross the thirty-seventh parallel between Cape Corrientes and Cape St. Antonio?" "Exactly." "And whom would you constitute the members of such an expedition?" asked Glenarvan. "The fewer the better. The only point is to ascertain the situation of Captain Grant, and not to engage in combat with the Indians. I think that Lord Glenarvan, as our chief, the major, who would yield his place to no one, your servant Jacques Paganel----" "And I!" cried Robert Grant. "Robert?" said Mary. "And why not?" answered Paganel. "Travels develop youth. We four, then, and three sailors of the Duncan----" "What," exclaimed Captain Mangles, "your lordship does not intercede for me?" "My dear fellow," replied Glenarvan, "we shall leave the ladies on board, the dearest objects we have in the world. Who would watch over them, if not the devoted captain of the Duncan?" "We cannot accompany you, then," said Lady Helena, whose eyes were dimmed by a mist of sadness. "My dear wife," replied Glenarvan, "our journey will be performed with unusual rapidity, our separation will be short, and----" [Illustration: The mate, Tom Austin, Wilson, a powerful fellow, and Mulready, were the fortunate ones.] [Sidenote: GOOD AFTERNOON!] "Yes, yes; I understand you," answered Lady Helena. "Go, then, and may you succeed in your enterprise." "Besides, this is not a journey," added Paganel. "What is it, then?" asked Lady Helena. "A passage, nothing more. We shall pass, that is all, like honest men, over the country and do all the good possible. '_Transire benefaciendo_' is our motto." With these words the discussion ended. The preparations were begun that very day, and it was resolved to keep the expedition secret, in order not to alarm the Indians. The 14th of October was fixed for the day of departure. When they came to choose the sailors who were to go, they all offered their services, and Glenarvan was forced to make a choice. He preferred to have them draw lots, that he might not mortify such brave men. This was accordingly done; and the mate, Tom Austin, Wilson, a powerful fellow, and Mulready, were the fortunate ones. Lord Glenarvan had displayed great energy in his preparations, for he wished to be ready at the day appointed; and he was. Captain Mangles likewise supplied his ship with coal, that he might put to sea at any moment. He wished to gain the Argentine shore before the travelers. Hence there was a real rivalry between Glenarvan and the captain, which was of advantage to both. At last, on the 14th of October, at the time agreed upon, every one was ready. At the moment of departure the passengers of the yacht assembled in the cabin. The Duncan was on the point of starting, and already her propeller was agitating the quiet waters of Talcahuana Bay. Glenarvan, Paganel, MacNabb, Robert Grant, Tom Austin, Wilson and Mulready, armed with carbines and Colt's revolvers, were preparing to leave the vessel. Guides and mules were waiting for them on shore. "It is time," said Lord Glenarvan at last. "Go, then, my husband!" replied Lady Helena, restraining her emotion. He pressed her to his breast, while Robert threw himself upon the neck of his sister. "And now, dear companions," said Jacques Paganel, "one last clasp of the hand to last us till we reach the shores of the Atlantic." It was not asking much, but these were clasps which would strengthen the hopes of the worthy geographer. They then returned to the deck, and the seven travelers left the vessel. They soon reached the wharf, which the yacht approached within less than half a cable's length. Lady Helena cried for the last time,-- "My friends, God help you!" "And he will help us, madam," answered Jacques Paganel; "for, I assure you, we shall help ourselves." "Forward!" shouted Captain Mangles to his engineer. "_En route_!" returned Glenarvan; and at the same instant that the travelers, giving reins to their animals, followed the road along the shore, the Duncan started again at full speed on the highway of the ocean. CHAPTER XI. TRAVELING IN CHILI. The native troop engaged by Glenarvan consisted of three men and a boy. The leader of the muleteers was an Englishman who had lived in the country for twenty years. His occupation was to let mules to travelers, and guide them across the passes of the Andes. Then he consigned them to the care of a "laqueano" (Argentine guide), who was familiar with the road over the Pampas. [Sidenote: THE PROCESSION FORMED.] This Englishman had not so forgotten his native tongue, in the company of mules and Indians, that he could not converse with the travelers. Hence it was easy for Glenarvan to make known his wishes, and for the muleteer to execute his orders, of which circumstance the former availed himself, since Paganel had not yet succeeded in making himself understood. This leader, or "catapaz," in the language of Chili, was assisted by two native peons and a boy of twelve. The peons had charge of the mules laden with the baggage of the party, and the boy led the madrina (little mare), which wore small bells, and went in advance of the other ten mules. The travelers were mounted on seven, and the catapaz on one, of these animals, while the two others carried the provisions and a few rolls of cloth designed to insure the good-will of the chiefs of the plains. The peons traveled on foot according to their custom. This journey in South America was, therefore, to be performed under the most favorable conditions of safety and speed. [Illustration] Crossing the Andes is not an ordinary journey. It cannot be undertaken without employing those hardy mules, of which the most preferable belong to the Argentine Republic. These excellent animals have attained in that country a development superior to their pristine quality and strength. They are not very particular about their food, drink only once a day, and easily make ten leagues in eight hours. There are no taverns on this route, from one ocean to the other. You eat dried meat, rice seasoned with allspice, and whatever game can be captured on the way. In the mountains the torrents, and in the plains the rivers, furnish water, generally flavored with a few drops of rum, of which each has a supply in an ox-horn called "chiffle." However, care must be taken not to indulge too much in alcoholic drinks, which are specially injurious in a region where the nervous system is peculiarly excited. As for your bedding, it consists merely of the native saddle called "recado." This saddle is made of sheep-skins tanned on one side and covered with wool on the other, and is supported by broad girths elaborately embroidered. A traveler wrapped in one of these warm coverings can brave with impunity the dampness of the nights, and enjoy the soundest repose. Glenarvan, who knew how to travel and conform to the customs of different countries, had adopted the Chilian costume for himself and his friends. Paganel and Robert, two children (a large and a small one), felt no pleasure in introducing their heads into the national poncho (a large blanket with a hole in the centre), and their legs into leathern stirrups. They would rather have seen their mules richly caparisoned, with the Arab bit in their mouths, a long bridle of braided leather for a whip, and their heads adorned with metal ornaments and the "alforjas" (double saddle-bags containing the provisions). [Sidenote: LAND AND WATER.] Paganel, always absent-minded, received three or four kicks from his excellent animal just as he was mounting. Once in the saddle, however, with his inseparable telescope in a sling and his feet confined in the stirrups, he confided himself to the sagacity of his beast, and had no reason to repent. As for young Robert, he showed from the first a remarkable capacity for becoming an excellent horseman. [Illustration] They started. The day was magnificent, the sky was perfectly clear, and the atmosphere sufficiently refreshed by the sea-breezes in spite of the heat of the sun. The little party followed at a rapid pace the winding shores of the bay, and made good progress the first day across the reeds of old dried marshes. Little was said. The parting farewells had left a deep impression upon the minds of all. They could still see the smoke of the Duncan as she gradually disappeared on the horizon. All were silent, except Paganel; this studious geographer kept asking himself questions, and answering them, in his new language. The catapaz was, moreover, quite a taciturn man, whose avocation had not made him loquacious. He scarcely spoke to his peons, for they understood their duty very well. Whenever a mule stopped, they urged him with a guttural cry. If this did not suffice, a good pebble thrown with sure aim overcame his obstinacy. If a girth gave way or a bridle was loosened, the peon, taking off his poncho, enveloped the head of the animal, which, when the injury was repaired, resumed its pace. The custom of the muleteers is to set out at eight o'clock in the morning after breakfast, and travel thus till it is time to rest at four o'clock in the afternoon. Glenarvan, accordingly, conformed to this custom. Precisely when the signal to halt was given by the catapaz, the travelers arrived at the city of Arauco, situated at the southern extremity of the bay, without having left the foam-washed shore of the ocean. They would have had to proceed twenty miles farther to the west to reach the limits of the thirty-seventh parallel; but Glenarvan's agents had already traversed that part of the coast without meeting with any signs of shipwreck. A new exploration became, therefore, useless, and it was decided that the city of Arauco should be chosen as their point of departure. From this their course was to be directed towards the east in a rigorously straight line. The little party entered the city and took up their quarters in the open court of a tavern, whose accommodations were still in a rudimentary state. While supper was preparing, Glenarvan, Paganel and the catapaz took a walk among the thatch-roofed houses. Except a church and the remains of a convent of Franciscans, Arauco presented nothing interesting. Glenarvan attempted to make some inquiries, but failed, while Paganel was in despair at not being able to make himself understood by the inhabitants. But, since they spoke Araucanian, his Spanish served him as little as Hebrew. [Sidenote: ONWARD, AND ONWARD STILL.] The next day, the madrina at the head, and the peons in the rear, the little troop resumed the line of the thirty-seventh parallel towards the east. They now crossed the fertile territory of Araucania, rich in vineyards and flocks. But gradually solitude ensued. Scarcely, from mile to mile, was there a hut of "rastreadores" (Indian horse-tamers). Now and then they came upon an abandoned relay-station, that only served as a shelter to some wanderer on the plains; and, by means of a ford, they crossed the Rio Tubal, the mountains visible in the distance. At four o'clock in the afternoon, after a journey of thirty-five miles, they halted in the open country under a group of giant myrtles. The mules were unharnessed, and left to graze at will upon the rich herbage of the prairie. The saddle-bags furnished the usual meat and rice, the pelions spread on the ground served as covering, the saddles as pillows, and each one found on these improvised beds a ready repose, while the peons and the catapaz watched in turn. As the weather continued pleasant, all the travelers, not excepting Robert, were still in good health; and, since the journey had begun under such favorable auspices, they thought it best to profit by it, and push on. The following day they advanced rapidly, crossed without accident Bell Rapids, and at evening encamped on the banks of the Rio Biobio. There were thirty-five miles more to travel before they were out of Chili. The country had not changed. It was still rich in amaryllis, violets, date-trees, and golden-flowered cactuses. A few animals, among others the ocelot, inhabited the thickets. A heron, a solitary owl, thrushes and snipes wary of the talons of the hawk, were the only representatives of the feathered tribe. Of the natives few were seen; only some "guassos" (degenerate children of the Indians and Spanish), galloping on horses which they lacerated with the gigantic spurs that adorned their naked feet, and passing like shadows. They met on the way no one who could inform them, and inquiries were therefore utterly impossible. [Sidenote: AN ASTONISHED CATAPAZ.] Glenarvan thought that Captain Grant, if prisoner of the Indians, must have been carried by them beyond the Andes. Their search could be successful only in the Pampas. They must be patient, and travel on swiftly and continuously. [Illustration: By means of a ford, they crossed the Rio Tubal, the mountains visible in the distance.] They advanced in the same order as before, which Robert with difficulty kept, for his eagerness led him to press forward, to the great annoyance of his animal. Nothing but a command from Glenarvan would keep the young boy at his place in the line. The country now became more uneven; and several hillocks indicated that they were approaching the mountains. Paganel still continued his study of Spanish. "What a language it is!" exclaimed he; "so full and sonorous!" "But you are making progress, of course?" replied Glenarvan. "Certainly, my dear lord. Ah! if there were only no accent! But, alas! there is one!" In studying this language, Paganel did not, however, neglect his geographical observations. In these, indeed, he was astonishingly clever, and could not have found his superior. When Glenarvan questioned the catapaz about some peculiarity of the country, his learned companion would always anticipate the answer of the guide, who then gazed at him with a look of amazement. That same day they met a road which crossed the line that they had hitherto pursued. Lord Glenarvan naturally asked its name of their guide, and Paganel as naturally answered,-- "The road from Yumbel to Los Angelos." Glenarvan looked at the catapaz. "Exactly," replied he. Then, addressing the geographer, he said,-- "You have traveled in this country?" "Certainly," replied Paganel gravely. "On a mule?" "No; in an arm-chair." The catapaz did not understand, for he shrugged his shoulders and returned to the head of the troop. At five o'clock in the afternoon they stopped in a shallow gorge, a few miles above the little town of Loja; and that night the travelers encamped at the foot of the first slopes of the Andes. CHAPTER XII. ELEVEN THOUSAND FEET ALOFT. The route through Chili had as yet presented no serious obstacles; but now the dangers that attend a journey across the mountains suddenly increased, the struggle with the natural difficulties was about to begin in earnest. An important question had to be decided before starting. By what pass could they cross the Andes with the least departure from the prescribed course? The catapaz was questioned on this subject. "I know," he replied, "of but two passes that are practicable in this part of the Andes." "Doubtless the pass of Arica," said Paganel, "which was discovered by Valdivia Mendoza." "Exactly." "And that of Villarica, situated to the south of Nevado." "You are right." "Well, my friend, these two passes have only one difficulty; they will carry us to the south, or the north, farther than we wish." "Have you another pass to propose?" asked the major. "Yes," replied Paganel; "the pass of Antuco." "Well," said Glenarvan; "but do you know this pass, catapaz?" [Sidenote: ATTAINING TO EMINENCE.] "Yes, my lord, I have crossed it, and did not propose it because it is only a cattle-track for the Indian herdsmen of the eastern slopes." "Never mind, my friend," continued Glenarvan; "where the herds of the Indians pass, we can also; and, since this will keep us in our course, let us start for the pass of Antuco." The signal for departure was immediately given, and they entered the valley of Los Lejos between great masses of crystalized limestone, and ascended a very gradual slope. Towards noon they had to pass around the shores of a small lake, the picturesque reservoir of all the neighboring streams which flowed into it. Above the lake extended vast "llanos," lofty plains, covered with grass, where the herds of the Indians grazed. Then they came upon a swamp which extended to the south and north, but which the instinct of the mules enabled them to avoid. Soon Fort Ballenare appeared on a rocky peak which it crowned with its dismantled walls. The ascent had already become abrupt and stony, and the pebbles, loosened by the hoofs of the mules, rolled under their feet in a rattling torrent. The road now became difficult, and even perilous. The steepness increased, the walls on either side approached each other more and more, while the precipices yawned frightfully. The mules advanced cautiously in single file, with their noses to the ground, scenting the way. Now and then, at a sudden turn, the madrina disappeared, and the little caravan was then guided by the distant tinkling of her bell. Sometimes, too, the capricious windings of the path would bend the column into two parallel lines, and the catapaz could talk to the peons, while a crevasse, scarcely two fathoms wide, but two hundred deep, formed an impassable abyss between them. Under these conditions it was difficult to distinguish the course. The almost incessant action of subterranean and volcanic agency changes the road, and the landmarks are never the same. Therefore the catapaz hesitated, stopped, looked about him, examined the form of the rocks, and searched on the crumbling stones for the tracks of Indians. [Illustration] Glenarvan followed in the steps of his guide. He perceived, he _felt_, his embarrassment, increasing with the difficulties of the way. He did not dare to question him, but thought that it was better to trust to the instinct of the muleteers and mules. For an hour longer the catapaz wandered at a venture, but always seeking the more elevated parts of the mountain. At last he was forced to stop short. They were at the bottom of a narrow valley,--one of those ravines that the Indians call "quebradas." A perpendicular wall of porphyry barred their exit. [Sidenote: CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN.] The catapaz, after searching vainly for a passage, dismounted, folded his arms, and waited. Glenarvan approached him. "Have you lost your way?" he asked. "No, my lord," replied the catapaz. "But we are not at the pass of Antuco?" "We are." "Are you not mistaken?" "I am not. Here are the remains of a fire made by the Indians, and the tracks left by their horses." "Well, they passed this way?" "Yes; but we cannot. The last earthquake has made it impracticable." "For mules," replied the major; "but not for men." "That is for you to decide," said the catapaz. "I have done what I could. My mules and I are ready to turn back, if you please, and search for the other passes of the Andes." "But that will cause a delay." "Of three days, at least." Glenarvan listened in silence to the words of the catapaz, who had evidently acted in accordance with his engagement. His mules could go no farther; but when the proposal was made to retrace their steps, Glenarvan turned towards his companions, and said,-- "Do you wish to go on?" "We will follow you," replied Tom Austin. "And even precede you," added Paganel. "What is it, after all? To scale a chain of mountains whose opposite slopes afford an unusually easy descent. This accomplished, we can find the Argentine laqueanos, who will guide us across the Pampas, and swift horses accustomed to travel over the plains. Forward, then, without hesitation." "Forward!" cried his companions. "You do not accompany us?" said Glenarvan to the catapaz. "I am the muleteer," he replied. "As you say." "Never mind," said Paganel; "on the other side of this wall we shall find the pass of Antuco again, and I will lead you to the foot of the mountain as directly as the best guide of the Andes." Glenarvan accordingly settled with the catapaz, and dismissed him, his peons, and his mules. The arms, the instruments, and the remaining provisions, were divided among the seven travelers. By common consent it was decided that the ascent should be undertaken immediately, and that, if necessary, they should travel part of the night. Around the precipice to the left wound a steep path that mules could not ascend. The difficulties were great; but, after two hours of fatigue and wandering, Glenarvan and his companions found themselves again in the pass of Antuco. They were now in that part of the Andes properly so called, not far from the main ridge of the mountains; but of the path traced out, of the pass, nothing could be seen. All this region had just been thrown into confusion by the recent earthquakes. They ascended all night, climbed almost inaccessible plateaus, and leaped over broad and deep crevasses. Their arms took the place of ropes, and their shoulders served as steps. The strength of Mulready and the skill of Wilson were often called into requisition. Many times, without their devotion and courage, the little party could not have advanced. Glenarvan never lost sight of young Robert, whose youth and eagerness led him to acts of rashness, while Paganel pressed on with all the ardor of a Frenchman. As for the major, he only moved as much as was necessary, no more, no less, and mounted the path by an almost insensible motion. Did he perceive that he had been ascending for several hours? It is not certain. Perhaps he imagined he was descending. [Sidenote: PRACTICING "EXCELSIOR."] At five o'clock in the morning the travelers had attained a height of seven thousand five hundred feet. They were now on the lower ridges, the last limit of arborescent vegetation. At this hour the aspect of these regions was entirely changed. Great blocks of glittering ice, of a bluish color in certain parts, rose on all sides, and reflected the first rays of the sun. [Illustration] The ascent now became very perilous. They no longer advanced without carefully examining the ice. Wilson had taken the lead, and with his foot tested the surface of the glaciers. His companions followed exactly in his footsteps, and avoided uttering a word, for the least sound might have caused the fall of the snowy masses suspended eight hundred feet above their heads. They had reached the region of shrubs, which, four hundred and fifty feet higher, gave place to grass and cactuses. At eleven thousand feet all traces of vegetation disappeared. The travelers had stopped only once to recruit their strength by a hasty repast, and with superhuman courage they resumed the ascent in the face of the ever-increasing dangers. [Illustration: Two hours more of terrible exertion followed. They kept ascending, in order to reach the highest summit of this part of the mountain.] [Sidenote: SOMEWHAT SERIOUS.] The strength of the little troop, however, in spite of their courage, was almost gone. Glenarvan, seeing the exhaustion of his companions, regretted having engaged in the undertaking. Young Robert struggled against fatigue, but could go no farther. Glenarvan stopped. "We must take a rest," said he, for he clearly saw that no one else would make this proposal. "Take a rest?" replied Paganel; "how? where? we have no shelter." "It is indispensable, if only for Robert." "No, my lord," replied the courageous child; "I can still walk--do not stop." "We will carry you, my boy," said Paganel, "but we must, at all hazards, reach the eastern slope. There, perhaps, we shall find some hut in which we can take refuge. I ask for two hours more of travel." "Do you all agree?" asked Glenarvan. "Yes," replied his companions. "I will take charge of the brave boy," added the equally brave Mulready. They resumed their march towards the east. Two hours more of terrible exertion followed. They kept ascending, in order to reach the highest summit of this part of the mountain. Whatever were the desires of these courageous men, the moment now came when the most valiant failed, and dizziness, that terrible malady of the mountains, exhausted not only their physical strength but their moral courage. It is impossible to struggle with impunity against fatigues of this kind. Soon falls became frequent, and those who fell could only advance by dragging themselves on their knees. Exhaustion was about to put an end to this too prolonged ascent; and Glenarvan was considering with terror the extent of the snow, the cold which in this fatal region was so much to be dreaded, the shadows that were deepening on the solitary peaks, and the absence of a shelter for the night, when the major stopped him, and, in a calm tone, said,-- "A hut!" [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII. A SUDDEN DESCENT. Any one but MacNabb would have passed by, around, or even over this hut a hundred times without suspecting its existence. A projection on the surface of the snow scarcely distinguished it from the surrounding rocks. It was necessary to uncover it; after half an hour of persistent labor, Wilson and Mulready had cleared away the entrance to the "casucha," and the little party stepped in. [Sidenote: A "RESTAURANT" REOPENED.] This casucha, constructed by the Indians, was made of adobes, a kind of bricks dried in the sun. Ten persons could easily find room inside, and, if its walls had not been sufficiently water-tight in the rainy season, at this time, at least, they were some protection against the severity of the cold. There was, besides, a sort of fireplace with a flue of bricks very poorly laid, which enabled them to kindle a fire, and thus withstand the external temperature. "Here is a shelter, at least," said Glenarvan, "even if it is not comfortable. Providence has led us hither, and we cannot do better than accept this fortune." "Why," replied Paganel, "it is a palace. It only wants sentries and courtiers. We shall get along admirably here." "Especially when a good fire is blazing on the hearth," said Tom Austin; "for, if we are hungry, we are none the less cold it seems to me; and, for my part, a good fagot would delight me more than a slice of venison." "Well, Tom," said Paganel, "we will try to find something combustible." "Something combustible on the top of the Andes?" said Mulready, shaking his head doubtfully. "Since a chimney has been made in this hut," replied the major, "there is probably something here to burn." "Our friend is right," added Glenarvan. "Prepare everything for supper; and I will play the part of wood-cutter." "I will accompany you with Wilson," said Paganel. "If you need me----," said Robert, rising. "No, rest yourself, my brave boy," replied Glenarvan. "You will be a man when others are only children." Glenarvan, Paganel, and Wilson went out of the hut. It was six o'clock in the evening. The cold was keen and cutting, in spite of the calmness of the air. The azure of the sky was already fading, and the sun shedding his last rays on the lofty peaks of the mountains. Reaching a hillock of porphyry, they scanned the horizon in every direction. They had now gained the summit of the Andes, which commanded an extended prospect. To the east the sides of the mountains declined by gentle gradations, down which they could see the peons sliding several hundred feet below. In the distance extended long lines of scattered rocks and stones that had been crowded back by glacial avalanches. The valley of the Colorado was already growing dim in the increasing twilight; the elevations of land, the crags and the peaks, illumined by the rays of the sun, gradually faded, and darkness covered the whole eastern slope of the Andes. Towards the north undulated a succession of ridges that mingled together insensibly. To the south, however, the view was magnificent; and, as night descended, the grandeur was inimitable. Looking down into the wild valley of Torbido, you saw Mount Antuco, whose yawning crater was two miles distant. The volcano, like some enormous monster, belched forth glowing smoke mingled with torrents of bright flame. The circle of the mountains that inclosed it seemed to be on fire. Showers of incandescent stones, clouds of reddish vapors, and streams of lava, united in glittering columns. A loud rumbling that increased every moment, and was followed by a dazzling flash, filled this vast circuit with its sharp reverberations, while the sun, his light gradually fading, disappeared as a star is extinguished in the shadows of the horizon. [Sidenote: FOOD BROUGHT TO THE DOOR.] Paganel and Glenarvan would have remained a long time to contemplate this magnificent struggle of the fires of earth with those of heaven, and the improvised wood-cutters were becoming admirers of nature; but Wilson, less enthusiastic, reminded them of their situation. Wood was wanting, it is true, but fortunately a scanty and dry moss clothed the rocks. An ample supply was taken, as well as of a plant whose roots were quite combustible. This precious fuel was brought to the hut, and piled in the fire-place; but it was difficult to kindle the fire, and especially to keep it burning. When the viands were prepared, each one drank several mouthfuls of hot coffee with delight. As for the dried meat, it appeared a little unsatisfactory, which provoked on the part of Paganel a remark as useless as it was true. "Indeed," said he, "I must confess a llama-steak would not be bad just now." "What!" cried the major, "are you not content with our supper, Paganel?" "Enchanted, my good major; but I acknowledge a plate of venison would be welcome." "You are a sybarite," said MacNabb. "I accept the title, major; but you yourself, whatever you may say, would not be displeased with a beefsteak." "Probably not." "And if you were asked to take your post at the cannon, you would go without a word." "Certainly: and, although it pleases you----" His companions had not heard any more, when distant and prolonged howls were heard. They were not the cries of scattered animals, but those of a herd approaching with rapidity. Would Providence, after furnishing them with shelter, give them their supper? Such was the thought of the geographer. But Glenarvan humbled his joy somewhat by observing that the animals of the Andes were never met with in so elevated a region. "Whence comes the noise, then?" asked Tom Austin. "Hear how it approaches!" "An avalanche!" said Mulready. "Impossible! these are real howls!" replied Paganel. "Let us see," cried Glenarvan. "Let us see like hunters," answered the major, as he took his rifle. All rushed out of the hut. Night had come. It was dark, but the sky was studded with stars. The moon had not yet shown her disk. The peaks on the north and east were lost in the darkness, and the eye only perceived the grotesque outlines of a few towering rocks. The howls--those of terrified animals--were redoubled. They came from the dark side of the mountain. What was going on? Suddenly there came a furious avalanche, but one of living creatures, mad with terror. The whole plateau seemed to tremble. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these animals. Were they wild beasts of the Pampas, or only llamas? The whole party had only time to throw themselves to the earth, while this living whirlwind passed a few feet above them. At this moment the report of a fire-arm was heard. The major had shot at a venture. He thought that a large animal fell a few paces from him, while the whole herd, carried along by their resistless motion, disappeared down the slopes illumined by the volcano. "Ah, I have them!" cried a voice, that of Paganel. "What have you?" asked Glenarvan. "My glasses, to be sure!" "You are not wounded?" "No, a little kick,--but by what?" "By this," replied the major, dragging after him the animal he had shot. Each one hastened to gain the hut; and by the light of the fire MacNabb's prize was examined. It was a pretty animal, resembling a little camel without a hump. It had a small head, flat body, long legs and claws, fine coffee-colored hair, and its breast was spotted with white. Scarcely had Paganel looked at it when he exclaimed,-- "It is a guanaco!" "What is that?" asked Glenarvan. "An animal that eats itself." "And is it good?" [Sidenote: "A DISH FOR THE GODS."] "Delicious! a dish for the gods! I knew well that you would like fresh meat for supper. And what meat this is! But who will dress the animal?" "I will," said Wilson. "Well, I will engage to broil it," replied Paganel. "You are a cook, then, Monsieur Paganel?" said Robert. "Certainly, my boy. A Frenchman is always a cook." In a little while Paganel placed large slices of meat on the coals, and, in a short time, served up to his companions this appetizing viand. No one hesitated, but each attacked it ravenously. To the great amazement of the geographer, a general grimace accompanied by a "pwah!" followed the first mouthful. "It is horrible!" said one. "It is not eatable!" replied another. The poor geographer, whatever was the difficulty, was forced to agree that this steak was not acceptable even to starving men. They therefore began to launch jokes at him, and deride his "dish for the gods," while he himself sought a reason for this unaccountable result. "I have it!" he cried. "I have it!" "Is the meat too old?" asked MacNabb, calmly. "No, my intolerant major; but it has traveled too much. How could I forget that?" "What do you mean?" asked Tom Austin. "I mean that the animal is not good unless killed when at rest. I can affirm from the taste that it has come from a distance, and, consequently, the whole herd." "You are certain of this?" said Glenarvan. "Absolutely so." "But what event could have terrified these animals so, and driven them at a time when they ought to be peacefully sleeping in their lairs." "As to that, my dear Glenarvan," said Paganel, "it is impossible for me to say. If you believe me, let us search no farther. For my part I am dying for want of sleep. Let us retire, major!" "Very well, Paganel." Thereupon each wrapped himself in his poncho, the fuel was replenished for the night, and soon all but Glenarvan were buried in profound repose. He alone did not sleep. A secret uneasiness held him in a state of wakeful fatigue. He could not help thinking of that herd, flying in one common direction, of their inexplicable terror. They could not have been pursued by wild beasts: at that height there were scarcely any, and yet fewer hunters. What fright had driven them over the abysses of Antuco, and what was the cause of it? He thought of their strange situation, and felt a presentiment of coming danger. However, under the influence of a partial drowsiness, his ideas gradually modified, and fear gave place to hope. He saw himself in anticipation, on the morrow, on the plain at the foot of the Andes. There his actual search was to begin; and success was not, perhaps, far distant. He thought of Captain Grant and his two sailors, delivered from a cruel slavery. These images passed rapidly before his mind, every instant interrupted by a flash of fire, a spark, a flame, illumining the faces of his sleeping companions, and casting a flickering shadow over the walls of the hut. Then his presentiments returned with more vividness, while he listened vaguely to the external sounds so difficult to explain on these solitary summits. At one moment he thought he heard distant rumblings, dull and threatening like the rollings of thunder. These sounds could be caused only by a tempest, raging on the sides of the mountain. He wished to convince himself, and left the hut. The moon had risen, and the sky was clear and calm. Not a cloud was to be seen either above or below, only now and then the moving shadows of the flames of the volcano. At the zenith twinkled thousands of stars, while the rumblings still continued. They seemed to approach, and run along the chain of the mountains. [Illustration: The internal rumblings, the din of the avalanche, the crash of the blocks of granite, and the whirlwinds of snow, rendered all communication with each other impossible.] Glenarvan returned more uneasy than before, seeking to divine what relation there was between these subterranean noises and the flight of the guanacos. He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock. However, having no certain knowledge of immediate danger, he did not wake his companions, whom fatigue held in a deep repose, but fell himself into a heavy sleep that lasted several hours. All at once a violent crash startled him to his feet. It was a deafening roar, like the irregular noise of innumerable artillery wagons rolling over a hollow pavement. Glenarvan suddenly felt the earth tremble beneath his feet. He saw the hut sway and start open. "Look out!" he cried. His companions, awakened and thrown into confusion, were hurried down a rapid descent. The day was breaking, and the scene was terrible. The form of the mountains suddenly changed, their tops were truncated, the tottering peaks disappeared, as if a pitfall had opened at their base. A mass, several miles in extent, became detached entire, and slid towards the plain. "An earthquake!" cried Paganel. He was not mistaken. It was one of those phenomena frequent on the mountain frontier of Chili. This portion of the globe is disturbed by subterranean fires, and the volcanoes of this chain afford only insufficient outlets for the confined vapors. In the meantime the plateau, to which seven stunned and terrified men clung by the tufts of moss, glided with the rapidity of an express. Not a cry was possible, not a movement of escape. They could not hear each other. The internal rumblings, the din of the avalanche, the crash of the blocks of granite, and the whirlwinds of snow, rendered all communication with each other impossible. [Sidenote: A STEEP GRADIENT.] At one time the mass would slide without jolts or jars; at another, seized with a pitching and rolling motion like the deck of a vessel shaken by the billows, it would run along the edge of the abysses into which the fragments of the mountain fell, uproot the trees of centuries, and level with the precision of an enormous scythe all the inequalities of the eastern slope. How long this indescribable scene lasted, no one could tell; in what abyss all were to be engulfed, no one was able to foresee. Whether they were all there alive, or whether one of them was lying at the bottom of a crevasse, no one could say. Stunned by the swiftness of the descent, chilled by the keenness of the cold, blinded by the whirlwinds of snow, they panted, exhausted and almost inanimate, and only clung to the rocks by the supreme instinct of preservation. All at once a shock of unusual violence arrested their gliding vehicle. They were thrown forward and rolled upon the last declivities of the mountains. The plateau had stopped short. [Illustration] For a few moments no one stirred. At last one rose, deafened by the shock, but yet firm. It was the major. He shook off the snow that blinded him, and looked around. His companions were not very far from one another. He counted them. All but one lay on the ground. The missing one was Robert Grant. CHAPTER XIV. PROVIDENTIALLY RESCUED. The eastern side of the Andes consists of long slopes, declining gradually to the plain upon which a portion of the mass had suddenly stopped. In this new country, garnished with rich pastures and adorned with magnificent vegetation, an incalculable number of apple-trees, planted at the time of the conquest, glowed with their golden fruit and formed true forests. It seemed as if a part of beautiful Normandy had been cast into these monotonous regions, and under any other circumstances the eye of a traveler would have been struck with this sudden transition from desert to oasis, from snowy peak to verdant prairie, from winter to summer. The earth had regained an absolute immobility, and the earthquake had ceased. But without doubt the subterranean forces were still exerting their devastating action at a distance, for the chain of the Andes is always agitated or trembling in some part. This time, however, the commotion had been of extreme violence. The outline of the mountains was entirely changed; a new view of summits, crests, and peaks was defined against the azure of the sky; and the guide of the Pampas would have sought in vain for his accustomed landmarks. [Sidenote: COMEDY CHANGED TO TRAGEDY.] A wonderfully beautiful day was breaking. The rays of the sun, issuing from their watery bed in the Atlantic, glittered over the Argentine plains and were already silvering the waves of the other ocean. It was eight o'clock in the morning. Glenarvan and his companions, revived by the aid of the major, gradually recovered consciousness. Indeed, they had only undergone a severe giddiness. The mountain was descended, and they would have applauded a means of locomotion which had been entirely at nature's expense, if one of the feeblest, Robert Grant, had not been missing. Every one loved the courageous boy: Paganel was particularly attached to him; the major, too, in spite of his coldness; but especially Glenarvan. When the latter learned of Robert's disappearance, he was desperate. He pictured to himself the poor child engulfed in some abyss, and calling vainly for him whom he considered his second father. "My friends," said he, scarcely restraining his tears, "we must search for him, we must find him! We cannot abandon him thus! Every valley, every precipice, every abyss must be explored to the very bottom! You shall tie a rope around me and let me down! I will do it, you hear me, I will! May Heaven grant that Robert is still living! Without him, how could we dare find his father? What right have we to save Captain Grant, if his rescue costs the life of his child?" His companions listened without speaking. They felt that he was seeking in their looks some ray of hope, and they lowered their eyes. "Well," continued Glenarvan, "you understand me; you are silent! You have no more hope!" A few moments of silence ensued, when MacNabb inquired: "Who of you, my friends, remembers when Robert disappeared?" To this question no answer was given. "At least," continued the major, "you can tell with whom the boy was during the descent." "With me," replied Wilson. "Well, at what moment did you last see him with you? Recall the circumstances. Speak." "This is all that I remember. Robert Grant was at my side, his hand grasping a tuft of moss, less than two minutes before the shock that caused our descent." "Less than two minutes? Remember, Wilson, the minutes may have seemed long to you. Are you not mistaken?" "I think not--yes, it is so, less than two minutes." "Well," said MacNabb; "and was Robert on your right, or on your left?" "On my left. I remember that his poncho flapped in my face." "And where were you situated in reference to us?" "On the left also." "Then Robert could have disappeared only on this side," said the major, turning towards the mountain, and pointing to the right. "And also considering the time that has elapsed since his disappearance, the child must have fallen at a high part of the mountain. There we must search, and, by taking different ways, we shall find him." Not a word more was said. The six men, scaling the declivities of the mountain, stationed themselves at different heights along the ridge, and began their search. They kept always to the right of their line of descent, sounding the smallest fissures, descending to the bottom of precipices half filled with fragments of the mass; and more than one came forth with his garments in shreds, his feet and hands lacerated, at the peril of his life. [Sidenote: A SLEEPLESS NIGHT.] All this portion of the Andes, except a few inaccessible plateaus, was carefully explored for many hours without one of these brave men thinking of rest. But it was a vain search. The child had not only found death in the mountains, but also a tomb, the stone of which, made of some enormous rock, was forever closed over him. Towards noon Glenarvan and his companions, bruised and exhausted, found themselves again in the valley. The former was a prey to the most violent grief. He scarcely spoke, and from his lips issued only these words, broken by sighs,--"I will not go; I will not go!" Each understood this determination, and respected it. "We will wait," said Paganel to the major and Tom Austin. "Let us take some rest, and recruit our strength. We shall need it, whether to begin our search or continue our journey." "Yes," replied MacNabb, "let us remain, since Edward wishes it. He hopes: but what does he hope?" "God knows!" said Tom Austin. "Poor Robert!" replied Paganel, wiping his eyes. Trees thronged the valley in great numbers. The major chose a group of lofty carob-trees, under which was established a temporary encampment. A few blankets, the arms, a little dried meat, and some rice, was all that remained to the travelers. A stream, which flowed not far off, furnished water, still muddy from the effects of the avalanche. Mulready kindled a fire on the grass, and soon presented to his master a warm and comforting repast. But Glenarvan refused it, and remained stretched on his poncho in profound prostration. Thus the day passed. Night came, clear and calm as the preceding. While his companions lay motionless, although wakeful, Glenarvan reascended the mountain. He listened closely, still hoping that a last cry might reach him. He ventured alone and afar, pressing his ear to the ground, listening, restraining the beatings of his heart, and calling in a voice of despair. The whole night long he wandered on the mountain. Sometimes Paganel, sometimes the major, followed him, ready to help him on the slippery summits, or on the edge of the chasms, where his rashness led him. But his last efforts were fruitless; and to the cry of "Robert! Robert!" a thousand times repeated, echo alone replied. Day dawned, and it was necessary to go in search of Glenarvan on the mountain, and bring him in spite of his reluctance back to the encampment. His despair was terrible. Who would now dare to speak to him of departure, and propose leaving this fatal valley? But the provisions were failing. They would soon meet the Argentine guides and horses to take them across the Pampas. To retrace their steps was more difficult than to advance. Besides, the Atlantic was the place appointed to meet the Duncan. All these reasons did not permit a longer delay, and it was for the interest of all that the hour for departure should be no longer deferred. MacNabb attempted to draw Glenarvan from his grief. For a long time he spoke without his friend appearing to hear him. Glenarvan shook his head. At length, words escaped his lips. "Go?" said he. "Yes, go." "One hour more!" "Well, one hour more," replied the worthy major. When it had passed, Glenarvan asked for another. You would have thought a condemned man was praying for his life. Thus it continued till about noon, when MacNabb, by the advice of all, would no longer hesitate, and told Glenarvan that they must go, the lives of his companions depended upon a prompt decision. "Yes, yes," replied Glenarvan, "we will go, we will go!" But as he spoke his eyes were turned away from MacNabb. His gaze was fixed upon a black speck in the air. Suddenly his hand rose, and remained immovable, as if petrified. "There! there!" cried he. "See! see!" [Illustration: The bird had raised him by his garments, and was now hovering in mid-air at least one hundred and fifty feet above the encampment. He had perceived the travelers, and was violently striving to escape with his heavy prey.] All eyes were raised towards the sky, in the direction so imperatively indicated. At that moment the black speck visibly increased. It was a bird hovering at a measureless height. "A condor," said Paganel. "Yes, a condor," replied Glenarvan. "Who knows? He is coming, he is descending! Let us wait." What did Glenarvan hope? Was his reason wandering? He had said, "Who knows?" Paganel was not mistaken. The condor became more distinct every moment. This magnificent bird, long revered by the Incas, is the king of the southern Andes. In these regions he attains an extraordinary development. His strength is prodigious; and he often precipitates oxen to the bottom of the abysses. He attacks sheep, goats, and calves wandering on the plain, and carries them in his talons to a great height. Sometimes he hovers at an elevation beyond the limit of human vision, and there this king of the air surveys, with a piercing look, the regions below, and distinguishes the faintest objects with a power of sight that is the astonishment of naturalists. What had the condor seen? A corpse,--that of Robert Grant? "Who knows?" repeated Glenarvan, without losing sight of him. The enormous bird approached, now hovering, now falling with the swiftness of inert bodies. He soon described circles of larger extent, and could be perfectly distinguished. He measured fifteen feet across his wings, which supported him in the air almost without motion, for it is the peculiarity of these great birds to sail with a majestic calmness unlike all others of the winged tribes. The major and Wilson had seized their rifles, but Glenarvan stopped them with a gesture. The condor was approaching in the circles of his flight a sort of inaccessible plateau a quarter of a mile distant. He was turning with a vertical rapidity, opening and closing his formidable claws, and shaking his cartilaginous neck. [Sidenote: SOMETHING WORSE.] "There! there!" cried Glenarvan. Then suddenly a thought flashed through his mind. "If Robert is still living!" exclaimed he, with a cry of terror, "this bird! Fire, my friends, fire!" But he was too late. The condor had disappeared behind the lofty boulders. A second passed that seemed an eternity. Then the enormous bird reappeared, heavily laden, and rising slowly. A cry of horror was uttered. In the claws of the condor an inanimate body was seen suspended and dangling. It was Robert Grant. The bird had raised him by his garments, and was now hovering in mid-air at least one hundred and fifty feet above the encampment. He had perceived the travelers, and was violently striving to escape with his heavy prey. [Illustration] "May Robert's body be dashed upon these rocks," cried Glenarvan, "rather than serve----" He did not finish, but, seizing Wilson's rifle, attempted to take aim at the condor. But his arm trembled; he could not sight the piece. His eyes were dimmed. "Let me try," said the major. With clear eye, steady hand, and motionless body, he aimed at the bird, that was already three hundred feet above him. But he had not pressed the trigger, when a report resounded in the valley. A light smoke curled up between two rocks, and the condor, shot in the head, fell, slowly turning, sustained by his broad outspread wings. He had not released his prey, and at last reached the ground, ten paces from the banks of the stream. "Quick! quick!" said Glenarvan; and without seeking whence this providential shot had come, he rushed towards the condor. His companions closely followed him. [Illustration] [Sidenote: "THE LOST IS FOUND."] When they arrived the bird was dead, and the body of Robert was hidden under its great wings. Glenarvan threw himself upon the child, released him from the talons of the condor, stretched him on the grass, and pressed his ear to his breast. Never did a wilder cry of joy issue from human lips than when Glenarvan rose, exclaiming: "He lives! he lives!" In an instant Robert was stripped of his garments, and his face bathed with fresh water. He made a movement, opened his eyes, looked around, and uttered a few words: "You, my lord--my father!----" Glenarvan could not speak. Emotion stifled him, and, kneeling, he wept beside this child so miraculously saved. CHAPTER XV. THALCAVE. After the great danger that he had just escaped, Robert incurred another, no less great,--that of being overwhelmed with caresses. However feeble he was still, not one of these good people could refrain from pressing him to his heart. But it must be confessed that these well-meant embraces are not fatal, for the boy did not die. When his rescue was certain, thought reverted to his rescuer, and the major very naturally thought of looking around him. Fifty paces from the stream, a man of lofty stature was standing, motionless, on one of the first ledges of the mountain. A long gun lay at his feet. This individual, who had so suddenly appeared, had broad shoulders, and long hair tied with leathern thongs. His height exceeded six feet, and his bronzed face was red between his eyes and mouth, black below his eyelids, and white on his forehead. After the manner of the Patagonians of the frontiers, the native wore a splendid cloak, decorated with red arabesques, made of the skin of a guanaco, its silky fur turned outward, and sewed with ostrich-tendons. Under his cloak a tippet of fox-skin encircled his neck and terminated in a point in front. At his girdle hung a little bag containing the colors with which he painted his face. His leggings were of ox-hide, and fastened to the ankle with straps regularly crossed. The figure of this Patagonian was fine, and his face denoted real intelligence in spite of the colors that adorned (!) it. He waited in an attitude full of dignity, and, seeing him so motionless and stern on his pedestal of rocks, you would have taken him for a statue. The major, as soon as he perceived him, pointed him out to Glenarvan, who hastened towards him. The Patagonian took two steps forward; Glenarvan took his hand, and pressed it. There was in the latter's look, in his physiognomy, such a feeling, such an expression of gratitude, that the native could not mistake it. He inclined his head gently, and uttered a few words that neither the major nor his friend could understand. The Patagonian, after regarding the strangers attentively, now changed the language; but whatever it was, this new idiom was no better understood than the first. However, certain expressions which he used struck Glenarvan. They seemed to belong to the Spanish language, of which he knew several common words. "Spanish?" said he. The Patagonian nodded. "Well," said the major, "this is our friend Paganel's business. It is fortunate that he thought of learning Spanish." Paganel was called. He came at once and with all the grace of a Frenchman saluted the Patagonian, to which the latter paid no attention. The geographer was informed of the state of affairs, and was only too glad to use his diligently-acquired knowledge. [Sidenote: SOMETHING WRONG.] "Exactly," said he. And opening his mouth widely in order to articulate better, he said, in his best Spanish,-- "You--are--a--brave--man." The native listened, but did not answer. "He does not understand," said the geographer. "Perhaps you do not pronounce well," replied the major. "Very true! Curse the pronunciation!" And again Paganel began, but with no better success. "I will change the expression," said he. And pronouncing with magisterial slowness, he uttered these words,-- "A--Patagonian,--doubtless?" The native remained mute as before. "Answer!" added Paganel. The Patagonian did not reply. "Do--you--understand?" cried Paganel, violently enough to damage his organs of speech. It was evident that the Indian did not understand, for he answered, but in Spanish,-- "I do not understand." It was Paganel's turn now to be astonished, and he hastily put on his glasses, like one irritated. "May I be hanged," said he, "if I understand a word of this infernal jargon! It is certainly Araucanian." "No," replied Glenarvan; "this man answered in Spanish." And, turning to the Patagonian, he repeated,-- "Spanish?" "Yes," replied the native. Paganel's surprise became amazement. The major and Glenarvan looked at him quizzingly. "Ah, my learned friend!" said the major, while a half smile played about his lips, "you have committed one of those blunders peculiar to you." "What!" cried the geographer, starting. "Yes, it is plain that this Patagonian speaks Spanish." "He?" [Illustration: A man of lofty stature was standing, motionless, on one of the first ledges of the mountain. This individual had broad shoulders, and long hair tied with leathern thongs.] [Sidenote: A PENINSULAR BABEL.] "Yes. By mistake you have learnt another language, while thinking that you studied----" MacNabb did not finish. A loud "Oh!" from the geographer, accompanied by shrugs of the shoulders, cut him short. "Major, you are going a little too far," said Paganel in a very dry tone. "To be sure, since you do not understand." "I do not understand because this native speaks so badly!" answered the geographer, who began to be impatient. "That is to say, he speaks badly, because you do not understand," returned the major, calmly. "MacNabb," said Glenarvan, "that is not a probable supposition. However abstracted our friend Paganel may be, we cannot suppose that his blunder was to learn one language for another." "Now, my dear Edward, or rather you, my good Paganel, explain to me what the difficulty is." "I will not explain," replied Paganel, "I insist. Here is the book in which I practice daily the difficulties of the Spanish language! Examine it, major, and you will see whether I impose upon you." So saying, Paganel groped in his numerous pockets. After searching a few moments, he drew forth a volume in a very bad state, and presented it with an air of assurance. The major took the book, and looked at it. "Well, what work is this?" he asked. "The Lusiad," replied Paganel; "an admirable poem which----" "The Lusiad!" cried Glenarvan. "Yes, my friend, the Lusiad of the immortal Camoëns, nothing more or less." "Camoëns!" repeated Glenarvan; "but, unfortunate friend, Camoëns was a Portuguese! It is Portuguese that you have been studying for six weeks." "Camoëns! Lusiad! Portuguese!" Paganel could say no more. His eyes wandered, while a peal of Homeric laughter rang in his ears. The Patagonian did not wink; he waited patiently for the explanation of this event, which was totally incomprehensible to him. "Insensate! fool!" cried Paganel, at last. "What! is it so? Is it not a mere joke? Have I done this? It is the confusion of languages, as at Babel. My friends! my friends! to start for India and arrive at Chili! to learn Spanish and speak Portuguese! this is too much, and, if it continues, I shall some day throw myself out of the window instead of my cigar." To hear Paganel take his blunder thus, to see his comical actions, it was impossible to keep serious. Besides, he set the example himself. "Laugh, my friends," said he, "laugh with a will! you cannot laugh as much as I do at myself." And he uttered the most formidable peal of laughter that ever issued from the mouth of a geographer. "But we are none the less without an interpreter," said the major. "Oh, do not be troubled," replied Paganel. "The Portuguese and Spanish resemble each other so much that I made a mistake. However, this very resemblance will soon enable me to rectify my error, and in a short time I will thank this worthy Patagonian in the language he speaks so well." Paganel was right, for he could soon exchange a few words with the native. He even learned that his name was Thalcave, a word which signifies in Araucanian "the thunderer." This surname was doubtless given to him for his skill in the use of fire-arms. [Sidenote: BETTER PROSPECTS.] But Glenarvan was particularly rejoiced to discover that the Patagonian was a guide, and, moreover, a guide of the Pampas. There was, therefore, something so providential in this meeting that the success of the enterprise seemed already an accomplished fact, and no one any longer doubted the rescue of Captain Grant. In the meantime the travelers and the Patagonian had returned to Robert. The latter stretched his arms towards the native, who, without a word, placed his hand upon his head. He examined the child and felt his wounded limbs. Then, smiling, he went and gathered on the banks of the stream a few handfuls of wild celery, with which he rubbed the boy's body. Under this treatment, performed with an extreme gentleness, the child felt his strength revive, and it was plain that a few hours would suffice to restore him. It was therefore decided that that day and the following night should be passed at the encampment. Besides, two important questions remained to be settled--food, and means of conveyance. Provisions and mules were both wanting. Fortunately Thalcave solved the difficulty. This guide, who was accustomed to conduct travelers along the Patagonian frontiers, and was one of the most intelligent baqueanos of the country, engaged to furnish Glenarvan all that his little party needed. He offered to take him to a "tolderia" (encampment) of Indians, about four miles distant, where they would find everything necessary for the expedition. This proposal was made partly by gestures, partly by Spanish words which Paganel succeeded in understanding. It was accepted, and Glenarvan and his learned friend, taking leave of their companions, reascended the stream under the guidance of the Patagonian. They proceeded at a good pace for an hour and a half, taking long strides to keep up to the giant Thalcave. All the region was charming, and of a rich fertility. The grassy pastures succeeded each other, and could easily have fed thousands of cattle. Large ponds, united by a winding chain of streams, gave these plains a verdant moisture. Black-headed swans sported on the mirror-like surface, and disputed the empire of the waters with numberless ostriches that gamboled over the plains, while the brilliant feathered tribes were in wonderful variety. [Illustration] Jacques Paganel proceeded from admiration to ecstasy. Exclamations of delight continually escaped his lips, to the astonishment of the Patagonian, who thought it very natural that there should be birds in the air, swans on the lakes, and grass on the prairies. The geographer had no reason to regret his walk, or complain of its length. He scarcely believed himself started, or that the encampment would soon come in sight. This tolderia was at the bottom of a narrow valley among the mountains. Here in huts of branches lived thirty wandering natives, grazing large herds of milch cows, sheep, cattle and horses. Thus they roamed from one pasture to another, always finding a repast ready for their four-footed companions. [Sidenote: GLENARVAN GOING TO MARKET.] Thalcave took upon himself the negotiation, which was not long. In return for seven small Argentine horses, all saddled, a hundred pounds of dried meat, a few measures of rice, and some leathern bottles for water, the Indians received twenty ounces of gold, the value of which they perfectly understood. Glenarvan would have bought another horse for the Patagonian, but he intimated that it was unnecessary. [Illustration] The bargain concluded, Glenarvan took leave of his new "providers," as Paganel expressed it, and returned to the encampment. His arrival was welcomed by cries of joy at sight of the provisions and horses. Every one ate with avidity. Robert partook of some nourishment; he had almost entirely regained his strength, and the remainder of the day was passed in perfect rest. Various subjects were alluded to: the absent dear ones, the Duncan, Captain Mangles, his brave crew, and Harry Grant who was, perhaps, not far distant. As for Paganel, he did not leave the Indian. He became Thalcave's shadow, and could not remain quiet in the presence of a real Patagonian, in comparison with whom he would have passed for a dwarf. He overwhelmed the grave Indian with Spanish phrases, to which the latter quietly listened. The geographer studied this time without a book, and was often heard repeating words aloud. "If I do not get the accent," said he to the major, "you must not be angry with me. Who would have thought that one day a Patagonian would teach me Spanish!" CHAPTER XVI. NEWS OF THE LOST CAPTAIN. At eight o'clock the next morning Thalcave gave the signal for departure. The slope was gradual, and the travelers had only to descend a gentle declivity to the sea. When the Patagonian declined the horse that Glenarvan offered him, the latter thought that he preferred to go on foot, according to the custom of certain guides; and indeed, his long legs ought to have made walking easy. But he was mistaken. At the moment of departure Thalcave whistled in a peculiar manner. Immediately a magnificent Argentine horse, of superb form, issued from a small wood near by, and approached at the call of his master. The animal was perfectly beautiful. His brown color indicated a sound, spirited and courageous beast. He had a small and elegantly poised head, widely opening nostrils, a fiery eye, large hams, swelling withers, broad breast, long pasterns, in short, all the qualities that constitute strength and suppleness. The major, like a perfect horseman, admired unreservedly this specimen of the horses of the plains. This beautiful creature was called Thaouka, which means "bird" in the Patagonian language, and he justly merited this appellation. [Sidenote: A FRESH START.] When Thalcave was in the saddle, the horse pranced with spirited grace, and the Patagonian, a skillful rider, was magnificent to behold. His outfit comprised two weapons of the chase, the "bolas" and the lasso. The bolas consists of three balls tied together by a leathern string, which are fastened to the front of the saddle. The Indians frequently throw them the distance of a hundred paces at the animal or enemy that they are pursuing, and with such precision that they twist about their legs and bring them to the ground. It is, therefore, in their hands a formidable instrument, and they handle it with surprising dexterity. The lasso, on the contrary, does not leave the hand that wields it. It consists simply of a leathern thong thirty feet in length, terminating in a slip-noose which works upon an iron ring. The right hand throws the slip-noose, while the left hand holds the remainder of the lasso, the end of which is firmly tied to the saddle. A long carbine in a sling completed the Patagonian's armament. Thalcave, without observing the admiration caused by his natural grace, ease and courage, took the lead, and the party advanced, now at a gallop, and now at a walk, for their horses seemed entirely unaccustomed to trotting. Robert mounted with much boldness, and speedily convinced Glenarvan of his ability to keep his seat. On issuing from the gorges of the Andes, they encountered a great number of sand-ridges, called "medanos," real waves incessantly agitated by the wind, when the roots of the herbage did not confine them to the earth. This sand is of an extreme fineness; and, at the least breath, they saw it float away in light clouds, or form regular sand-columns which rose to a considerable height. This spectacle caused pleasure as well as annoyance to the eyes. Pleasure, for nothing was more curious than these columns, wandering over the plain, struggling, mingling, sinking and rising in inexpressible confusion; and annoyance, since an impalpable dust emanated from these innumerable medanos and penetrated the eyelids, however tightly they were closed. [Illustration] This phenomenon continued during a great part of the day. Nevertheless, they advanced rapidly, and towards six o'clock the Andes, forty miles distant, presented a darkish aspect already fading in the mists of the evening. The travelers were a little fatigued with their journey, and, therefore, saw with pleasure the approach of the hour for retiring. They encamped on the shores of a turbulent stream, enclosed by lofty red cliffs. Toward noon of the next day, the sun's rays became very oppressive, and at evening a line of clouds on the horizon indicated a change in the weather. The Patagonian could not be deceived, and pointed out to the geographer the western portion of the sky. "Good, I know," said Paganel, and addressing his companions: "A change in the weather is about to take place. We shall have a 'pampero.'" [Sidenote: TALKING LIKE A BOOK.] He explained that this pampero is frequent on the Argentine Plains. It is a very dry wind from the southwest. Thalcave was not mistaken, and during the night, which was quite uncomfortable for people sheltered with a simple poncho, the wind blew with great violence. The horses lay down on the ground, and the men near them in a close group. Glenarvan feared they would be delayed if the storm continued; but Paganel reassured him after consulting his barometer. "Ordinarily," said he, "this wind creates tempests, which last for three days; but when the barometer rises as it does now, you are free from these furious hurricanes in a few hours. Be assured, then, my dear friend; at break of day the sky will have resumed its usual clearness." "You talk like a book, Paganel," replied Glenarvan. "And I am one," replied Paganel, "which you are free to consult as much as you please." He was not mistaken. At one o'clock in the morning the wind suddenly subsided, and every one was able to enjoy an invigorating sleep. The next morning they rose bright and fresh, especially Paganel, who displayed great cheerfulness and animation. During this passage across the continent, Lord Glenarvan watched with scrupulous attention for the approach of the natives. He wished to question them concerning Captain Grant, by the aid of the Patagonian, with whom Paganel had begun to converse considerably. But they followed a path little frequented by the Indians, for the trails over the Pampas, which lead from the Argentine Republic to the Andes, are situated too far to the north. If by chance a wandering horseman appeared in the distance, he fled rapidly away, little caring to come in contact with strangers. However, although Glenarvan, in the interest of his search, regretted the absence of the Indians, an incident took place which singularly justified the interpretation of the document. Several times the course pursued by the expedition crossed paths on the Pampas, among others quite an important road--that from Carmen to Mendoza--distinguishable by the bones of such animals as mules, horses, sheep and oxen, whose remains were scattered by the birds of prey, and lay bleaching in the sun. There were thousands of them, and, without doubt, more than one human skeleton had added its bones to those of these humbler animals. Hitherto Thalcave had made no remark concerning the line so rigorously followed. He understood, however, that if they kept no definite course over the Pampas, they would not come to cities or villages. Every morning they advanced towards the rising sun, without deviating from the straight line, and every evening the setting sun was behind them. In his capacity of guide, Thalcave must, therefore, have been astonished to see that not only he did not guide them, but that they guided him. Nevertheless, if he was astonished, with the reserve natural to the Indians he made no remark. But to-day arriving at the above-mentioned road, he stopped his horse, and turned towards Paganel. "Road to Carmen," said he. "Yes, my good Patagonian," replied the geographer, in his purest Spanish; "road to Carmen and Mendoza." "We do not take it?" resumed Thalcave. "No," answered Paganel. "And we are going----?" "Always to the east." "That is going nowhere." "Who knows?" Thalcave was silent, and gazed at the geographer with profound surprise. He did not admit, however, that Paganel was joking the least in the world. An Indian, with his natural seriousness, never imagines that you are not speaking in earnest. "You are not going to Carmen then?" he added, after an instant of silence. [Sidenote: A PROFESSORIAL DIFFICULTY.] "No," replied Paganel. "Nor to Mendoza?" "No." At this moment Glenarvan, rejoining Paganel, asked what Thalcave said, and why he had stopped. When he had told him, Glenarvan said,-- "Could you not explain to him the object of our expedition, and why we must always proceed toward the east?" "That would be very difficult," answered Paganel, "for an Indian understands nothing of geography." "But," said the major seriously, "is it the history, or the historian, that he cannot understand?" "Ah, MacNabb," said Paganel, "you still doubt my Spanish!" "Try, my worthy friend." "Very well." Paganel turned to the Patagonian, and began a discourse, frequently interrupted for want of words and from the difficulty of explaining to a half-ignorant savage details which were rather incomprehensible to him. The geographer was just then a curious sight. He gesticulated, articulated, and exerted himself in a hundred ways, while great drops of sweat rolled down his face. When his tongue could no longer move, his arm came to his aid. He dismounted, and traced on the sand a geographical map, with lines of latitude and longitude, the two oceans, and the road to Carmen. Never was professor in such embarrassment. Thalcave watched these manoeuvres without showing whether he comprehended or not. The lesson in geography lasted more than half an hour. At last Paganel ceased, wiped his face, which was wet with perspiration, and looked at the Patagonian. "Did he understand?" inquired Glenarvan. "We shall see," replied Paganel; "but, if he did not, I give it up." [Sidenote: "PERHAPS!"] Thalcave did not stir. He no longer spoke. His eyes were fixed upon the figures traced on the sand, which the wind was gradually effacing. [Illustration: An important road--that from Carmen to Mendoza--distinguishable by the bones of such animals as mules, horses, sheep and oxen, whose remains were scattered by the birds of prey, and lay bleaching in the sun.] "Well?" asked Paganel. Thalcave did not appear to hear him. Paganel already saw an ironical smile forming upon the lips of the major, and, wishing to save his reputation, had begun with renewed energy his geographical demonstrations, when the Patagonian stopped him with a gesture. "You are searching for a prisoner?" he said. "Yes," replied Paganel. "And exactly on the line from the setting to the rising sun?" said Thalcave, indicating by a comparison, in the Indian manner, the course from west to east. "Yes, yes, that is it!" "And it is your God," said the Patagonian, "who has confided to the waves of the vast ocean the secrets of the prisoner?" "God himself." "May his will be accomplished then!" replied Thalcave, with a certain solemnity. "We will go to the east, and, if necessary, even to the sun." Paganel, in his exultation over his pupil, immediately translated to his companions the replies of the Indian. Glenarvan requested Paganel to ask the Patagonian if he had heard of any strangers falling into the hands of the Indians, which was accordingly done. "Perhaps," replied the Patagonian. As soon as this word was translated, Thalcave was surrounded by the seven travelers, who gazed at him with questioning looks. Paganel, excited and scarcely finding his words, resumed these interesting interrogatories, while his eyes, fixed upon the grave Indian, strove to anticipate his reply before it issued from his lips. Every word the Patagonian said he repeated in English, so that his companions heard the Indian speak, as it were, in their own language. "And this prisoner?" inquired Paganel. "He was a stranger," replied Thalcave slowly; "a European." "You have seen him?" "No, but he is mentioned in the accounts of the Indians. He was a brave man." "You understand, my friends," said Paganel; "a courageous man!" "My father!" cried Robert Grant. Then, addressing Paganel: "How do you say 'It is my father,' in Spanish?" he asked. "_Es mio padre_," answered the geographer. Immediately Robert, taking Thalcave's hands, said in a sweet voice,-- "_Es mio padre!_" "_Suo padre!_" replied the Patagonian, whose look brightened. He took the boy in his arms, lifted him from his horse, and gazed at him with the most curious sympathy. His intelligent countenance became suffused with a peaceful emotion. But Paganel had not finished his inquiries. Where was this prisoner? What was he doing? When had Thalcave heard of him? All these questions thronged his mind at once. He did not have to wait long for answers, but learnt that the European was a slave of one of the Indian tribes that scour the plains. "But where was he last?" asked Paganel. "With the cazique Calfoucoura," answered Thalcave. "On the line we have been following?" "Yes." "And who is this cazique?" "The chief of the Poyuches Indians; a man with two tongues and two hearts." [Sidenote: A SCIENTIFIC BATH.] "That is to say, false in word and in deed," said Paganel, after translating to his companions this beautiful metaphor of the Indian language. "And can we rescue our friend?" he added. "Perhaps so, if your friend is still in the hands of the Indians." "And when did you hear of him?" "A long time ago, and, since then, the sun has brought back two summers to the sky." Glenarvan's joy could not be described. This answer coincided exactly with the date of the document. But one question remained to be asked. "You speak of a prisoner," said Paganel; "but were there not three?" "I do not know," replied Thalcave. "And you know nothing of their actual situation?" "Nothing." This last word ended the conversation. It was possible that the three prisoners had been separated a long time. But the substance of the Patagonian's information was that the Indians spoke of a European who had fallen into their power. The date of his captivity, the place where he must have been, everything, even to the Patagonian phrase used to express his courage, related evidently to Captain Harry Grant. Their progress was now somewhat slow and difficult; their next object being to reach and cross the river Colorado, to which at length their horses brought them. Here Paganel's first care was to bathe "geographically" in its waters, which are colored by a reddish clay. He was surprised to find the depth so great as it really was, this being the result of the snow having melted rapidly under the first heat of summer. The width likewise of this stream was so considerable that it was almost impossible for their horses to swim across; but they happily discovered a sort of weir-bridge, of wattles looped and fastened together, which the Indians were in the habit of using; and by its aid the little troop was enabled to pass over to the left bank, where they rested for the night. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. A SERIOUS NECESSITY. They set out at daybreak. The horses advanced at a brisk pace among the tufts of "paja-brava," a kind of grass that serves the Indians as a shelter during the storms. At certain distances, but less and less frequent, pools of shallow water contributed to the growth of willows and a certain plant which is found in the neighborhood of fresh water. Here the horses drank their fill, to fortify themselves for the journey. Thalcave, who rode in advance, beat the bushes, and thus frightened away the "cholinas" (vipers), while the agile Thaouka bounded over all obstacles, and aided his master in clearing a passage for the horses that followed. [Illustration: They set out at daybreak. The horses advanced at a brisk pace among the tufts of "paja-brava," a kind of grass that serves the Indians as a shelter during the storms.] Early in the afternoon, the first traces of animals were encountered--the bones of an innumerable drove of cattle, in whitened heaps. These fragments did not extend in a winding line, such as animals exhausted and falling one by one would leave behind them. Thus no one, not even Paganel, knew how to explain this chain of skeletons in a space comparatively circumscribed. He therefore questioned Thalcave, who was not at a loss for a reply. "What is this?" they asked, after Paganel had inquired of the Indian. "The fire of heaven," replied the geographer. "What! the lightning could not have produced such a disaster," said Tom Austin, "and stretched five hundred head of cattle on the earth!" But Thalcave reaffirmed it, and he was not mistaken; for the storms of the Pampas are noted for their violence. At evening they stopped at an abandoned rancho, made of interlaced branches plastered with mud and covered with thatch. This structure stood within an inclosure of half-rotten stakes which, however, sufficed to protect the horses during the night against the attacks of the foxes. Not that they had anything to fear personally from these animals, but the malicious beasts gnawed the halters, so that the horses could escape. A few paces from the rancho, a hole was dug which served as a kitchen and contained half-cooled embers. Within, there was a bench, a bed of ox-hide, a saucepan, a spit, and a pot for boiling maté. The maté is a drink very much in use in South America. It is the Indian's tea, consisting of a decoction of leaves dried in the fire, and is imbibed through a straw. At Paganel's request, Thalcave prepared several cups of this beverage, which very agreeably accompanied the ordinary eatables, and was declared excellent. [Sidenote: A CHANGE FOR THE WORSE.] The next day they resumed their journey towards the east. About noon a change took place in the appearance of the Pampas, which could not escape eyes wearied with its monotony. The grass became more and more scanty, and gave place to sickly burdocks and gigantic thistles; while stunted nettles and other thorny shrubs grew here and there. Heretofore, a certain moisture, preserved by the clay of the prairie, freshened the meadows; the vegetation was thick and luxuriant. But now a patchy growth, bare in many places, exposed the earth, and indicated the poverty of the soil. These signs of increasing dryness could not be mistaken, and Thalcave called attention to them. [Illustration] "I am not sorry at this change," said Tom Austin; "to see always grass, nothing but grass, becomes tiresome before long." "But where there is grass there is water," replied the major. "Oh, we are not in want," said Wilson, "and shall find some river on our course." However, when Wilson said that the supply of water would not fail he had not calculated for the unquenchable thirst that consumed his companions all that day; and, when he added that they would meet with some stream in their journey he had anticipated too much. Indeed, not only were rivers wanting, but even the artificial wells dug by the Indians were empty. On seeing these indications of dryness increase from mile to mile, Paganel asked Thalcave where he expected to find water. "At Lake Salinas," replied the Indian. "And when shall we arrive there?" "To-morrow evening." The natives ordinarily, when they travel on the Pampas, dig wells, and find water a few feet below the surface; but the travelers, destitute of the necessary implements, could not employ this expedient. It was therefore necessary to obtain a supply in some other way, for, if they did not absolutely suffer from the tormenting desire for drink, no one could entirely allay his thirst. At evening they halted, after a journey of thirty miles. Every one relied upon a good night to recruit himself after the fatigues of the day; but they were greatly annoyed by a very persistent swarm of mosquitoes, which disappeared, however, after the wind changed. If the major preserved his calmness in the midst of the petty annoyances of life, Paganel, on the contrary, could not treat the matter so indifferently. He fought the mosquitoes, and sadly regretted the absence of his acid-water, which would have soothed the pain of their bites. Although the major endeavored to console him, he awoke in a very bad humor. However, he was very easily persuaded to set out at daybreak, for it was important to arrive at Lake Salinas the same day. The horses were very much exhausted: they were dying of thirst; and, although their riders had denied themselves on their account, still their share of water had been very limited. The dryness was to-day even greater, and the heat no less intolerable, with the dusty wind, the simoom of the Pampas. [Sidenote: INDIANS AHEAD!] During the day the monotony of the journey was interrupted. Mulready, who rode in advance, turned back, signaling the approach of a party of Indians. This meeting elicited different opinions. Glenarvan thought of the information that these natives might furnish concerning the shipwrecked seamen of the Britannia. Thalcave, for his part, scarcely enjoyed meeting in his journey the wandering Indians of the plains. He considered them plunderers and robbers, and only sought to avoid them. According to his orders, the little party collected together, and made ready their fire-arms. It was necessary to be prepared for any emergency. The Indian detachment was soon perceived. It consisted of only ten men, which fact reassured the Patagonian. They approached within a hundred paces, so that they could be easily distinguished. Their high foreheads, prominent rather than receding, their tall forms, and their olive color, showed them to be magnificent types of the Indian race. They were clad in the skins of guanacos, and carried various weapons of war and the chase, while their dexterity in horsemanship was remarkable. [Illustration] Having halted, they appeared to hold a conference, crying and gesticulating. Glenarvan advanced toward them; but he had not proceeded two yards, when the detachment wheeled about and disappeared with incredible swiftness. The tired horses of the travelers could never have overtaken them. "The cowards!" cried Paganel. "They fly too fast for honest men," said MacNabb. "What are these Indians?" inquired Paganel of Thalcave. "Gauchos!" replied the Patagonian. "Gauchos!" repeated Paganel, turning toward his companions, "Gauchos! We had no need, then, to take such precautions. There was nothing to fear!" "Why?" asked the major. "Because the Gauchos are inoffensive peasants." "Do you think so, Paganel?" "Certainly. They took us for robbers, and fled." Glenarvan was quite disappointed in not speaking with them, as he expected to obtain additional tidings of the lost sailors; but it was necessary to push on, if they would reach their destination that evening. At eight o'clock Thalcave, who had gone a little in advance, announced that the lake so long desired was in sight. A quarter of an hour afterward the little party descended the high banks. But here a serious disappointment awaited them,--the lake was dry! CHAPTER XVIII. IN SEARCH OF WATER. Lake Salinas terminates the cluster of lagoons that adjoin the Ventana and Guamini mountains. Numerous expeditions are made to this place to obtain supplies of salt, with which these waters are strongly impregnated. But now the water had evaporated under the heat of the sun, and the lake was only a vast glittering basin. When Thalcave announced the presence of a drinkable liquid at Lake Salinas, he meant the streams of fresh water that flow from it in many places. But at this time its affluents were as dry as itself. The burning sun had absorbed everything. Hence, the consternation was general when the thirsty party arrived at the parched shores of Lake Salinas. It was necessary to take counsel. The little water in the leathern bottles was half spoiled, and could not quench their thirst, which began to make itself acutely felt. Hunger and fatigue gave place to this imperative want. A "roukah," a kind of upright tent, of leather, which stood in a hollow, and had been abandoned by the natives, served as a refuge for the travelers, while their horses, stretched on the muddy shores of the lake, ate the saline plants and dry reeds, although reluctantly. When each had sat down in the roukah, Paganel asked Thalcave's advice as to what was best to be done. A rapid conversation, of which Glenarvan caught a few words, ensued between the geographer and the Indian. Thalcave spoke calmly, while Paganel gesticulated for both. This consultation lasted a few minutes, and then the Patagonian folded his arms. "What did he say?" inquired Glenarvan. "I thought I understood him to advise us to separate." "Yes, into two parties," replied Paganel. "Those of us whose horses are so overcome with fatigue and thirst that they can scarcely move will continue the journey as well as possible. Those who are better mounted, on the contrary, will ride in advance, and reconnoitre the Guamini River, which empties into Lake San Lucas. If there is sufficient water there, they will wait for their companions on the banks of the stream; if not, they will return to save the rest a useless journey." "And then?" asked Tom Austin. "Then we must go southward to the first branches of the Ventana mountains, where the rivers are numerous." "The plan is good," replied Glenarvan, "and we will follow it without delay. My horse has not suffered so much yet from want of water, and I offer to accompany Thalcave." "Oh, my lord, take me!" cried Robert, as if a pleasure excursion were in question. "But can you keep up with us, my child?" "Yes, I have a good beast that asks nothing better than to go in advance. Will you, my lord? I beseech you!" "Come then, my boy," said Glenarvan, delighted not to be separated from Robert. "And we three," he added, "will be very stupid if we do not discover some clear and fresh stream." "And I?" said Paganel. "Oh, you, my dear Paganel!" replied the major, "you will remain with the reserve detachment. You know the course, the Guamini River, and the Pampas, too well to abandon us. Neither Wilson, Mulready, nor myself are capable of rejoining Thalcave at his rendezvous, unless we advance confidently under the guidance of the brave Jacques Paganel." [Illustration: "Poor father!" exclaimed Robert; "how he will thank you when you have found him!" And, so saying, he took his lordship's hand and pressed it to his lips.] "I resign," said the geographer, very much flattered to obtain a higher command. "But no distractions!" added the major. "Do not lead us where we have nothing to do, and bring us back to the shores of the Pacific!" "You would deserve it, my intolerable major," said Paganel, smiling. "But tell me, my dear Glenarvan, how will you understand Thalcave's language?" "I suppose," answered Glenarvan, "that the Patagonian and I will not need to talk. Besides, with the few Spanish words that I know, I shall succeed well enough on an emergency in giving him my opinion and understanding his." "Go then, my worthy friend," replied Paganel. "Let us eat first," said Glenarvan, "and sleep till the hour of departure." They ate supper without drink, which was rather unrefreshing, and then fell asleep. Paganel dreamed of torrents, cascades, streams, rivers, ponds, brooks, nay even full bottles, in short, of everything which generally contains water. It was a real nightmare. The next morning at six o'clock the horses were saddled. They gave them the last drink of water left, which they took with more dislike than pleasure, for it was very nauseating. The three horsemen then mounted. "_Au revoir!_" said the major, Austin, Wilson, and Mulready. Soon the Patagonian, Glenarvan, and Robert (not without a certain throbbing of the heart) lost sight of the detachment confided to the sagacity of the geographer. [Sidenote: THE YOUNG SAILOR ON HORSEBACK.] Thalcave was right in first proceeding towards the Guamini, since this stream lay on the prescribed course, and was the nearest. The three horses galloped briskly forward. These excellent beasts perceived, doubtless, by instinct, whither their masters were guiding them. Thaouka, especially, showed a spirit that neither fatigue nor thirst could overcome. The other horses followed, at a slower pace, but incited by his example. The Patagonian frequently turned his head to look at Robert Grant, and, seeing the young boy firm and erect, in an easy and graceful position, testified his satisfaction by a word of encouragement. "Bravo, Robert!" said Glenarvan. "Thalcave seems to congratulate you. He praises you, my boy!" "And why, my lord?" "Because of the way you ride." "Oh, I merely keep firm; that is all," replied Robert, who blushed with pleasure at hearing himself complimented. "That is the main point, Robert," said Glenarvan; "but you are too modest, and I am sure you cannot fail to become an accomplished equestrian." "Well," said Robert, "but what will papa say, who wishes to make a sailor of me?" "The one does not interfere with the other. If all horsemen do not make good sailors, all sailors may certainly make good horsemen. To ride on the yards, you must learn to keep yourself firm. As for knowing how to manage your horse, that comes more easily." "Poor father!" exclaimed Robert; "how he will thank you when you have found him!" And, so saying, he took his lordship's hand and pressed it to his lips. "You love him well, Robert?" "Yes, my lord; he was so kind to sister and me. He thought only of us, and every voyage brought us a memento of the countries he visited, and, what was better, tender caresses and kind words, on his return. Ah! you will love him too, when you know him! Mary resembles him. He has a sweet voice like her. It is singular for a sailor, is it not?" "Yes, very singular, Robert," said Glenarvan. "I see him still," replied the boy, as if speaking to himself. "Good and brave papa! He rocked me to sleep on his knees, when I was little, and kept humming an old Scottish song which is sung around the lakes of our country. I sometimes recall the air, but indistinctly. How we loved him, my lord! Well, I think one must be very young to love his father well." "And old to reverence him, my child," replied Glenarvan, quite moved by the words that came from this young heart. During this conversation, their horses had relaxed their pace and fallen behind the other; but Thalcave called them, and they resumed their former gait. It was soon evident, however, that, with the exception of Thaouka, the horses could not long maintain this speed. At noon it was necessary to give them an hour's rest. Glenarvan grew uneasy. The signs of dryness did not diminish, and the want of water might result in disastrous consequences. Thalcave said nothing, but probably thought that if the Guamini was dry it would then be time to despair, if indeed an Indian's heart has ever experienced such an emotion. They therefore kept on, and by use of whip and spur the horses were induced to continue their journey, but they could not quicken their pace. Thalcave might easily have gone ahead, for in a few hours Thaouka could have carried him to the banks of the stream. He doubtless thought of it, but probably did not like to leave his two companions alone in the midst of this desert, and, that he might not outstrip them, he forced Thaouka to lessen his speed. It was not, however, without much resistance, prancing and neighing, that Thalcave's horse consented to keep pace with the others. It was not so much the strength as the voice of his master which restrained him; the Indian actually talked to his horse; and the animal, if he did not answer, at least comprehended him. The Patagonian must have used excellent arguments, for, after "discussing" some time, Thaouka yielded, and obeyed his master's commands. [Sidenote: GAINED AT LAST.] But, if Thaouka understood Thalcave, Thalcave had none the less understood Thaouka. The intelligent animal, through his superior instincts, had perceived a moisture in the air. He inhaled it eagerly, and kept moving his tongue, as if it were steeped in a grateful liquid. The Patagonian could not be deceived; water was not far distant. He therefore encouraged his companions by explaining the impatience of his horse, which the others were not long in understanding. They made a final effort, and galloped after the Indian. About three o'clock a bright line appeared in a hollow of the plain. It trembled under the rays of the sun. "Water!" cried Glenarvan. "Water, yes, water!" cried Robert. They had no more need to urge their horses. The poor beasts, feeling their strength renewed, rushed forward with an irresistible eagerness. In a few moments they had reached the Guamini River, and, saddled as they were, plunged to their breasts into the cooling stream. Their masters imitated their example, without reluctance, and took an afternoon bath which was as healthful as it was pleasant. [Illustration] "Ah, how good it is!" said Robert, as he quenched his thirst in the middle of the river. "Be moderate, my boy," said Glenarvan, who did not set a good example. Nothing was heard but the sound of rapid drinking. As for Thalcave, he drank quietly, without hurrying, long and deeply, till they might perhaps fear that the stream would be drained. "Well," said Glenarvan, "our friends will not be disappointed in their expectations. They are sure, on arriving at the Guamini, to find an abundance of clear water, if Thalcave leaves any!" "But could we not go to meet them?" asked Robert. "We could spare them several hours of anxiety." "Doubtless, my boy; but how carry the water? Wilson has charge of the water-bottles. No, it is better to wait, as we agreed. Calculating the necessary time, and the slow pace of the horses, our friends will be here at night. Let us, then, prepare them a safe shelter and a good repast." Thalcave had not waited for Glenarvan's orders to search for a place to encamp. He had very fortunately found on the banks of the river a "ramada," a kind of inclosure designed for a cattle-fold and shut in on three sides. The situation was excellent for the purpose, so long as one did not fear to sleep in the open air; and that was the least anxiety of Thalcave's companions. Thus they did not seek a better retreat, but stretched themselves on the ground in the sun to dry their water-soaked garments. "Well, since here is shelter," said Glenarvan, "let us think of supper. Our friends must be satisfied with the couriers whom they have sent forward; and, if I am not greatly mistaken, they will have no reason to complain. I think an hour's hunting will not be time lost. Are you ready, Robert?" "Yes, my lord," replied he, with gun in hand. [Sidenote: AN EVENING'S SPORT.] Glenarvan had conceived this idea because the banks of the Guamini seemed to be the haunt of the game of the surrounding plains. "Tinamous," a kind of partridge, plovers called "teru-teru," yellow rails, and water-fowl of magnificent green were seen rising in flocks. As for quadrupeds, they did not make their appearance; but Thalcave, pointing to the tall grass and thick coppice, explained that they were hidden there. The hunters had only to take a few steps to find themselves in one of the best game-coverts in the world. [Illustration] They began to hunt, therefore, and, disdaining the feathered tribe, their first attempts were made upon the large game of the Pampas. Soon hares and guanacos, like those that had attacked them so violently on the Andes, started up before them by hundreds; but these very timid animals fled with such swiftness that it was impossible to come within gun-shot. The hunters, therefore, attacked other game that was less fleet. A dozen partridges and rails were brought down, and Glenarvan shot a peccary, which was very good eating. In less than half an hour they had obtained without difficulty all the game they needed. Robert captured a curious animal called an armadillo, which was covered with a sort of helmet of movable bony pieces and measured a foot and a half in length. It was very fat, and would be an excellent dish, as the Patagonian said; while Robert was proud of his success. As for Thalcave, he showed his companions a "nandou" hunt. This bird, peculiar to the Pampas, is a kind of ostrich, whose swiftness is marvelous. The Indian did not try to decoy so nimble an animal, but urged his horse to a gallop, straight towards the bird, so as to overtake it at once, for, if the first attack should fail, the nandou would soon fatigue both horse and rider with its giddy backward and forward movements. Thalcave, arriving at a proper distance, launched his "bolas" with a strong hand, and so skillfully that they twisted about the legs of the ostrich and paralyzed its efforts. In a few moments it lay on the ground. The Indian soon captured his prize and contributed it to the common repast. The string of partridges, Thalcave's ostrich, Glenarvan's peccary, and Robert's armadillo were brought back to camp. The ostrich and the peccary were immediately stripped of their skin and cut into small slices. As for the armadillo, it is a dainty animal which carries its roasting dish with it, and it was, accordingly, placed in its own bony covering on the glowing embers. The three hunters were satisfied with the partridges for supper, and kept the rounds of beef for their friends. This repast was washed down with clear water, which was then considered superior to all the wines in the world. The horses were not forgotten. A great quantity of dry fodder, piled in the ramada, served them for food and bedding. [Sidenote: DESERT SILENCE.] When everything was ready, Glenarvan, Robert, and the Indian wrapped themselves in their ponchos, and stretched their limbs on a bundle of alfafares, the usual bed of the hunters of the Pampas. CHAPTER XIX. THE RED WOLVES. Night came,--the night of the new moon, only the uncertain light of the stars illumined the plain. On the horizon the zodiacal light faded away in a dark mist. The waters of the Guamini flowed without a murmur, while birds, quadrupeds, and reptiles reposed after the fatigues of the day. The silence of the desert reigned on the vast expanse of the Pampas. Glenarvan, Robert, and Thalcave had yielded to the common law, and, stretched on their thick beds of grass, they enjoyed a refreshing sleep. The horses, overcome with fatigue, had lain down on the ground: Thaouka alone, like a true blooded horse, slept standing, spirited in repose as in action, and ready to start at the least sign from his master. Perfect tranquillity reigned within the inclosure, and the embers of the night-fire, as they gradually died out, cast their last rays over the silent obscurity. About ten o'clock, after a short sleep, the Indian awoke. His eyes became fixed beneath his lowered eyebrows, and his head was turned in a listening attitude towards the plain. He seemed endeavoring to detect some scarcely perceptible sound. A vague uneasiness was soon expressed on his face, usually so calm. Had he perceived the approach of prowling Indians, or the coming of jaguars, water-tigers, and other formidable beasts which are numerous in the neighborhood of rivers? This last possibility doubtless appeared plausible to him, for he cast a rapid glance over the combustible materials piled in the inclosure, and his anxiety increased. In fact, all this dry bedding would quickly be consumed, and could not long intimidate the audacious animals. According to this conjecture, Thalcave had only to await the progress of events, which he did, half reclining, his head resting on his hands, his elbows on his knees, his eyes motionless, in the attitude of a man whom a sudden anxiety has awakened from sleep. An hour passed. Any other person but Thalcave, reassured by the outward silence, would have lain down again. But where a stranger would have suspected nothing, the highly-trained senses and natural instinct of the Indian foresaw the coming danger. While he was listening and watching, Thaouka gave a low neigh. His nose was stretched towards the entrance to the ramada. The Patagonian suddenly started. "Thaouka has scented some enemy," said he. He arose and scanned the plain attentively. Silence still reigned, but not tranquillity. Thalcave discerned shadows moving noiselessly among the tufts of grass. Here and there glittered luminous points, which spread on all sides, now fading away, and now gleaming forth again. You would have thought fantastic elves were dancing on the surface of an immense lagoon. A stranger would doubtless have taken these flitting sparks for glow-worms, which shine, when night comes, in many parts of the Pampas. But Thalcave was not deceived; he knew with what enemies he had to deal. He loaded his carbine, and took a position near the first stakes of the inclosure. He did not wait long. A strange cry, a mingling of barks and howls, resounded over the plain. The report of the carbine answered it, and was followed by a hundred frightful yelps. Glenarvan and Robert suddenly awoke. [Sidenote: FEARFUL ODDS.] "What is the matter?" asked Robert. "Indians?" said Glenarvan. "No," replied Thalcave, "aguaras." Robert looked at Glenarvan. "Aguaras?" said he. "Yes," replied Glenarvan, "the red wolves of the Pampas." Both seized their weapons, and joined the Indian. The latter pointed to the plain, from which arose a series of formidable howls. Robert involuntarily took a step backward. "You are not afraid of the wolves, my boy?" said Glenarvan. "No, my lord," replied Robert, in a firm tone. "With you I fear nothing." "So much the better. These aguaras are not very formidable beasts; and were it not for their numbers I should not even think of them." "What does it matter?" replied Robert. "We are well armed. Let them come." "And they shall be well received." Speaking thus, Glenarvan endeavored to reassure the lad; but he did not think without a secret terror of that dense horde of exasperated beasts. Perhaps there were hundreds of them; and these three, however well armed, could not advantageously contend against so many and such antagonists. By the howls that resounded over the Pampas, and by the multitude of shadows that flitted about the plain, Glenarvan could not be mistaken as to the number. These animals had scented a sure prey, horse-flesh or human flesh, and not one among them would return to his lair without having his portion. The situation was, therefore, very alarming. Meanwhile the circle of wolves grew gradually narrower. The horses, awakened, gave signs of the liveliest terror. Thaouka alone pawed the ground, seeking to break his halter, and ready to rush out. His master succeeded in calming him only by whistling continually. Glenarvan and Robert had stationed themselves so as to defend the entrance of the ramada, and with their loaded rifles were about to fire at the first ranks of wolves, when Thalcave turned aside their weapons already poised for a shot. "What does Thalcave wish?" asked Robert. "He prohibits us from firing," answered Glenarvan. "Why?" "Perhaps he does not consider it the proper time." This was not, however, the motive which actuated the Indian, but a graver reason, which Glenarvan understood when Thalcave, raising his powder-flask and inverting it, showed that it was almost empty. "Well?" said Robert. "We must economize our ammunition. Our hunt to-day has cost us dear, and we are deficient in powder and shot. We have not twenty charges left." The boy answered nothing. "You are not afraid, Robert?" "No, my lord." "Very well, my boy." At this moment another report resounded. Thalcave had brought down a too bold enemy. The wolves that were advancing in close ranks recoiled, and gathered together again a hundred paces from the inclosure. [Sidenote: THE LAST HOUR.] Glenarvan, at a sign from the Indian, took his place at once, while the latter, collecting the bedding, grass, and all combustible materials, piled them at the entrance of the ramada and threw on a burning ember. Soon a curtain of flame was defined against the dark background of the sky, and through the openings the plain appeared illumined by great moving reflections. Glenarvan could therefore judge of the great number of animals against which they had to defend themselves. Never had so many wolves been seen together before, nor so excited by rapacity. The fiery barrier that Thalcave had just opposed to them had redoubled their fury. Some, however, advanced to the very fire, crowded by the rear ranks, and burned their paws. From time to time a shot was necessary to check the howling horde, and at the end of an hour fifteen bodies lay on the prairie. The besieged were now in a situation relatively less dangerous. So long as their supplies lasted, so long as the barrier of fire stood at the entrance to the ramada, invasion was not to be feared. But what was to be done if all these methods of repelling the wolves should fail at the same time? Glenarvan gazed at Robert, and felt his heart beat quick with excitement. He forgot himself, and thought only of this poor child, who displayed a courage beyond his years. Robert was pale, but his hand did not leave his weapon, and he awaited with firm bearing the assault of the enraged wolves. Meantime, Glenarvan, after coolly considering the situation, resolved to do something decisive. "In one hour," said he, "we shall have no more powder, shot, or fire. We must not wait till then to make a sally." He turned towards Thalcave, and, recalling a few words of Spanish, began a conversation with the Indian, frequently interrupted by the cracks of the rifle. It was not without difficulty that these two men succeeded in understanding each other. Glenarvan, fortunately, knew the habits of the red wolf. Without this knowledge he could not have interpreted the words and gestures of the Patagonian. Nevertheless, a quarter of an hour passed before he could give to Robert the meaning of Thalcave's answer. He had questioned the Indian concerning their situation. "And what did he answer?" inquired Robert. "He said that, cost what it may, we must hold out till daybreak. The aguara goes out only at night, and when morning comes he returns to his lair. He is the wolf of darkness, a cowardly beast that fears the daylight." "Well, let us defend ourselves till day." "Yes, my boy, and with our knives if we can no longer use our guns." Already Thalcave had set the example, and when a wolf approached the fire, the long knife of the Patagonian was thrust through the flames and drawn back again red with blood. However, the means of defense were failing. About two o'clock in the morning, Thalcave threw into the fire the last armful of fuel, and the besieged had only five charges left. Glenarvan cast about him a sorrowful glance. He thought of the child who was there, of his companions, of all whom he loved. Robert said nothing; perhaps the danger did not appear imminent to his hopeful spirit. But Glenarvan pictured to himself that terrible event, now apparently inevitable, the being devoured alive! He was not master of his emotion; he drew the child to his breast, he clasped him to his heart, he pressed his lips to his forehead, while tears flowed from his eyes. Robert gazed at him with a smile. "I am not afraid," said he. "No, my boy, no," replied Glenarvan; "and you are right. In two hours, day will appear, and we shall be saved! Well done, Thalcave, my brave Patagonian!" cried he, as the Indian killed with the butt of his gun two enormous beasts that were attempting to cross the glowing barrier. [Sidenote: A DYING HOPE.] But at this moment the dying light of the fire showed him the aguaras advancing in a dense body to assail the ramada. The dénouement of the bloody drama was approaching. The fire gradually subsided, for want of fuel; the flames sank; the plain, before illumined, now relapsed into shadow, and in the shadow reappeared the terrible eyes of the red wolves. A few moments more, and the whole drove would rush into the inclosure. [Illustration] Thalcave discharged his carbine for the last time, stretched out one more of their enemies, and, as his ammunition was exhausted, folded his arms. His head sank upon his breast; he appeared to be questioning himself. Was he searching for some bold, novel, or rash scheme for repelling this furious herd? Glenarvan did not venture to ask him. At this moment a change took place in the action of the wolves. They seemed to be retreating, and their howls, so deafening before, suddenly ceased. An ominous silence reigned over the plain. "They are going," said Robert. "Perhaps," replied Glenarvan, who was listening with intentness. But Thalcave shook his head. He knew well that the animals would not abandon a certain prey until at daybreak they returned to their holes and dens. However, the tactics of their enemies had evidently changed, they no longer endeavored to force the entrance of the ramada; but their new manoeuvres were already causing a still more imminent danger. The wolves, abandoning their design of penetrating the inclosure by this entrance, which was defended by weapon and fire, went to the back of the ramada and sought to assail it in the rear. Their claws were soon heard rattling against the half-decayed wood. Already their powerful paws and bloody mouths had forced their way between the shattered stakes. The horses, bewildered and panic-stricken, broke their halters and dashed into the inclosure. Glenarvan seized Robert in his arms, to defend him to the last extremity; and he would have attempted a rash flight, and rushed out of the ramada, had not his eyes fallen upon the Indian. Thalcave, turning like a deer, had suddenly approached his horse, which was neighing with impatience, and was beginning to saddle him carefully, forgetting neither strap nor buckle. He seemed no longer to care for the howls, that were now redoubled. Glenarvan gazed at him with a dark foreboding. "He is leaving us!" cried he, seeing Thalcave gather up his reins as though he were about to mount. "He? never!" said Robert. In truth the Indian was about to make a venture, not to leave his friends, but to save them by sacrificing himself. Thaouka was ready. He champed his bit; he pranced; his eyes, full of a fiery spirit, shot forth lightning flashes; he understood his master. Just as the Indian was seizing the mane of his horse, Glenarvan caught him by the arm with a convulsive grasp. "You are going?" said he, pointing to the plain, which was now deserted. "Yes," replied the Indian, who comprehended the gesture of his companion; and, with vehement gesticulations which were however perfectly intelligible, he added a few words in Spanish, which signified: "Thaouka--good horse--swift--will draw the wolves after him." [Illustration: Frightful howls resounded. The wolves, starting on the track of the horse, fled into the darkness with a terrible speed.] "Ha! Thalcave!" cried Glenarvan. "Quick, quick!" continued the Indian; while Glenarvan said to Robert, in a voice broken by emotion,-- "Robert, my lad, you hear! He will sacrifice himself for us; he will rush out over the plain, and turn aside the fury of the wolves upon himself." "Friend Thalcave," replied Robert, looking imploringly at the Patagonian, "friend Thalcave, do not leave us!" "No," said Glenarvan, "he will not leave us." And, turning to the Indian, he added, pointing to the terrified horses crowding against the stakes,-- "Let us go together." "No," said the Indian, who was not mistaken as to the meaning of these words. "Bad beasts--frightened--Thaouka--good horse." "Very well," said Glenarvan. "Thalcave shall not leave, Robert. He shows me what I have to do. It is my duty to go, and his to remain with you." Then, seizing Thaouka's bridle, he added,-- "I will go." "No," replied the Patagonian, calmly. "I tell you," cried Glenarvan, taking the bridle from the hands of the Indian, "I will go. Save this boy! I trust him to you, Thalcave!" Glenarvan, in his excitement, mingled English and Spanish together. But what matters the language? In such a terrible situation, signs tell all, and men quickly understand each other. [Sidenote: SAFETY FOR TWO.] However, Thalcave resisted, and the discussion was prolonged. The danger was increasing every moment. Already the broken stakes were yielding to the teeth and claws of the wolves. But neither Glenarvan nor Thalcave appeared willing to yield. The Indian had drawn Glenarvan towards the entrance of the inclosure. He pointed to the plain, now free from wolves. In his animated language, he explained that not a moment was to be lost; that the danger, if this plan failed, would be greater for those who remained; in short, that he alone knew Thaouka well enough to employ his marvelous agility and speed for the common safety. Glenarvan blindly persisted in his resolve to sacrifice himself, when suddenly he was pushed violently back. Thaouka pranced, reared on his hind legs, and all at once, with a spring, cleared the barrier of fire and the rampart of bodies, while a boyish voice cried,-- "God save you, my lord!" Glenarvan and Thalcave had scarcely time to perceive Robert, who, clinging to the horse's mane, disappeared in the darkness. "Robert, unfortunate!" cried Glenarvan. But these words the Indian himself could not hear. Frightful howls resounded. The wolves, starting on the track of the horse, fled into the darkness with a terrible speed. Thalcave and Glenarvan rushed out of the ramada. Already the plain had resumed its tranquillity, and they could scarcely distinguish a moving line which undulated afar in the shadows of the night. Glenarvan sank upon the ground, overcome, in despair, clasping his hands. He gazed at Thalcave, who smiled with his accustomed calmness. "Thaouka--good horse--brave child--he will be saved!" he repeated, nodding his head. "But if he falls?" said Glenarvan. "He will not fall!" In spite of Thalcave's confidence, his companion passed the night in terrible anguish. He was no longer even mindful of the danger still to be feared from the wolves. He would have gone in search of Robert, but the Indian restrained him, and explained that their horses could not overtake the boy, that Thaouka must have distanced his enemies, and could not be found in the darkness. They must wait for day to start in search of Robert. At four o'clock in the morning day began to break. The mists of the horizon were soon tinged with pale rays. A sparkling dew covered the plain, and the tall grass began to wave under the first breezes of the dawn. The moment of departure had arrived. "Forward!" said the Indian. Glenarvan did not reply, but sprang upon Robert's horse, and the two were soon galloping towards the west in the direction from which their companions were to come. For an hour they traveled thus with great speed, gazing around for Robert, and dreading at each step to behold his mangled body. Glenarvan tortured the flanks of his horse with his spurs. Suddenly shots were heard, and reports at regular intervals, like signals for recognition. [Illustration] "It is they!" cried Glenarvan. Thalcave and he urged their horses to a more rapid pace, and a few moments afterwards they joined the party led by Paganel. [Sidenote: LIVELY GRATITUDE.] To Glenarvan's joy, Robert was there, alive, borne by the noble Thaouka, who neighed with pleasure at seeing his master. "Ah, my boy! my boy!" cried Glenarvan, with unspeakable tenderness; and Robert and he, dismounting, rushed into each other's arms. Then it was the Indian's turn to clasp to his breast the courageous son of Captain Grant. "He lives! he lives!" exclaimed Glenarvan. "Yes," replied Robert, "thanks to Thaouka." The Indian had not waited for these words of gratitude to embrace his horse, but at that very moment he spoke to him and embraced him, as if human blood flowed in the veins of the noble animal. Then, turning towards Paganel, he pointed to young Robert. "A brave boy!" said he. Glenarvan, however, asked, even while he admired the lad,-- "Why, my son, did you not let Thalcave or me try this last chance of saving you?" "My lord," replied he, in accents of the liveliest gratitude, "was it not my duty to sacrifice myself, when Thalcave has saved my life, and you are going to save my father?" CHAPTER XX. STRANGE SIGNS. After their first outbursts of joy at meeting were over, Paganel, Austin, Wilson, and Mulready--all who had remained behind, except the major--were conscious of one thing, namely, that they were suffering from thirst. Fortunately, the Guamini flowed at no great distance. They accordingly continued their journey, and at seven o'clock in the morning the little party arrived at the ramada. On seeing its entrance strewn with the bodies of the wolves, it was easy to understand the violence of the attack and the vigor of the defense. The travelers, after fully quenching their thirst, devoted their attention to breakfast in the inclosure. The ostrich-steaks were declared excellent, and the armadillo, roasted in its own covering, was a delicious dish. "To eat reasonably of this," said Paganel, "would be ingratitude towards Providence. We really must eat immoderately." And he did so accordingly,--but was not sick, thanks to the clear water of the Guamini, which appeared to possess superior digestive properties. [Sidenote: AEROSTATIC EXPERIMENTS.] At ten o'clock Glenarvan gave the signal for departure. The water-bottles were filled, and they set out. The horses, being greatly revived, evinced much spirit, and maintained an easy and almost continuous canter. The next morning they crossed the boundary which separates the Argentine Plains from the Pampas. Here Thalcave hoped to meet the chiefs in whose hands he doubted not that he should find Harry Grant and rescue him and his two companions from slavery. Since they had left the Guamini, the travelers noticed, with great satisfaction, a considerable change in the temperature, thanks to the cold winds of Patagonia, which cause continual currents of air. Neither man nor beast had any reason to complain, after suffering so much from dryness and heat. They therefore pushed on with courage and confidence. But, whatever might have been said, the country seemed to be entirely uninhabited, or, to use a more exact word, "disinhabited." Frequently they skirted the shores of fresh-water lagoons, on whose banks, in the shelter of the bushes, tiny wrens skipped and melodious larks warbled, in company with the brilliant-plumaged tanagers. These pretty birds gayly fluttered about, heedless of the haughty starlings that strutted on the banks like soldiers with their epaulettes and red breasts. In the thorny coppices the nests of the annubis swung like hammocks, and on the shores of the lagoons magnificent flamingoes, marching in regular file, spread their fiery-colored wings to the wind. Their nests were seen, by thousands together, like a small village, in the shape of truncated cones a foot high. The birds were not startled at the approach of the travelers, which was contrary to Paganel's calculations. "I have been curious for a long time," said he to the major, "to see a flamingo fly." "Well," said MacNabb. "Now, since I have an opportunity, I shall profit by it." "Do so, Paganel." "Come with me, major, and you too, Robert; I need witnesses." And Paganel, leaving his companions to go on, proceeded towards the flock of flamingoes, followed by Robert and the major. Arriving within range, Paganel fired a blank charge (for he would not needlessly destroy even a bird), and all the flamingoes flew away, while the geographer gazed at them attentively through his glasses. "Well," said he to the major, when the flock had disappeared, "did you see them fly?" "Certainly," replied MacNabb; "you could not do otherwise, unless you were blind. But let us hasten on, for we have fallen a mile behind." When he had joined his companions, Paganel found Glenarvan in excited conversation with the Indian, whom he did not appear to understand. Thalcave had frequently stopped to examine the horizon, and each time his countenance expressed a lively astonishment. Glenarvan, not seeing his ordinary interpreter present, had attempted, but in vain, to question the Patagonian. So, as soon as he perceived the geographer at a distance, he cried,-- "Come, friend Paganel, Thalcave and I can scarcely succeed in understanding each other." Paganel conversed a few moments with the Indian, and, turning to Glenarvan, said,-- "Thalcave is astonished at a circumstance that is really strange." "What?" "At meeting neither Indians, nor any traces of them, on these plains, which are usually furrowed with their trails, whether they are driving home the cattle stolen from the ranchos, or going to the Andes to sell their zorillo carpets and whips of braided leather." "And to what does Thalcave attribute this abandonment?" "He cannot tell; he is astonished. That is all." "But what Indians did he expect to find in this part of the Pampas?" "The very ones who have had foreign prisoners; those natives who are commanded by the caziques Calfoucoura, Catriel, and Yanchetruz." "Who are these caziques?" [Illustration: Arriving within range, Paganel fired a blank charge (for he would not needlessly destroy even a bird), and all the flamingoes flew away, while the geographer gazed at them attentively through his glasses.] "Chiefs of tribes that were very powerful thirty years ago, before they were driven beyond the sierras. Since that time they have been subdued as much as an Indian can be, and now scour the Pampas as well as the province of Buenos Ayres. I am therefore astonished, like Thalcave, at not encountering traces of them in a country where they generally pursue the calling of plunderers." "Well, then," inquired Glenarvan, "what course ought we to take?" "I will see," replied Paganel. After a few moments' conversation with Thalcave, he said,-- "This is his advice, which seems to me very wise. We must continue our journey to the east as far as Fort Independence; and there, if we have no news of Captain Grant, we shall at least know what has become of the Indians of the plain." "Is Fort Independence far?" "No; it is situated at Tandil, sixty miles distant." "And when shall we arrive there?" "On the evening of the day after to-morrow." Glenarvan was quite disconcerted at finding no Indians on the Pampas, a circumstance which was little expected. There are ordinarily too many of them. Some special cause must therefore have removed them. But a serious question was to be considered. If Captain Grant was a prisoner of one of these tribes, had he been carried to the north or to the south? This problem harassed Glenarvan. It was advisable at all hazards to keep track of the captain. In short, it was better to follow Thalcave's advice and reach the village of Tandil, where at least they could obtain information. About four o'clock in the afternoon they approached a hill that might have passed for a mountain in so level a country. It was Tapalquem Sierra, and at its foot the travelers encamped for the night. [Sidenote: GALLOPING GAUCHOS.] The passage of this mountain was accomplished the next day with the greatest ease. They followed the sandy undulations of a gradually sloping terrace, which certainly did not present difficulties to people who had scaled the Andes, and the horses scarcely relaxed their rapid pace. At noon they reached the abandoned Fort Tapalquem, the first of the chain of forts built on the southern frontier against the plundering natives. But not a shadow of an Indian did they encounter, to the increasing surprise of Thalcave; although, towards the middle of the day, three rovers of the plain, well armed and mounted, gazed for a moment at the little party, but prevented their approach, galloping away with incredible rapidity. Glenarvan was furious. "Gauchos," said the Patagonian. "Ah! Gauchos," replied MacNabb. "Well, Paganel, what do you think of these creatures?" "I think they look like famous bandits," answered Paganel. "And hence of course are, my dear geographer?" "Of course, my dear major." Paganel's avowal was followed by a general laugh, which did not disconcert him at all. According to Thalcave's orders, they advanced in close ranks, and at evening encamped in a spacious abandoned rancho, where the chief Catriel generally assembled his bands of natives. From an examination of the ground and the absence of fresh tracks, the Patagonian knew that it had not been occupied for a long time. The next morning Glenarvan and his companions found themselves again on the plain. The first estancias (vast establishments for raising cattle), which border upon the Tandil, were descried; but Thalcave resolved not to stop, but to keep straight on to Fort Independence, where he wished to obtain information, especially concerning the singular condition of this abandoned country. The trees, so rare since leaving the Andes, now reappeared. The greater part of these have been planted since the arrival of the Europeans on the American continent. They generally surround "corrals," vast cattle-inclosures protected with stakes. Here thousands of cattle, sheep, cows, and horses, branded with the mark of the owner, graze and fatten, while large numbers of huge dogs keep watch. The soil is admirably adapted to raising cattle, and yields an excellent fodder. The people lead the life of the shepherds of the Bible. Their flocks are perhaps even more numerous than those which fed on the plains of Mesopotamia; but the family element is wanting, and the owners of the great folds of the Pampas have little to recommend themselves or their manner of life. Paganel explained all these particulars to his companions, and even succeeded in interesting the major. Thalcave, meanwhile, hastened their progress, as he wished to arrive that evening at Fort Independence. The horses, urged on by their masters, and following the example of Thaouka, dashed through the tall grass. They passed several farms, fortified and defended by deep ditches. The principal house was provided with an elevated terrace, from which the inmates could fire upon the plunderers of the plain. Glenarvan might perhaps have obtained here the information that he sought; but it was wisest to go to the village of Tandil. They did not stop, therefore, and soon the feet of the horses struck the grassy sward of the first mountain slopes. An hour afterward the village appeared at the bottom of a narrow gorge crowned by the embattled walls of Fort Independence. [Illustration: In fact, they were a dozen young children and boys who were drilling very nicely. Their uniform consisted of a striped shirt confined at the waist by a leathern girdle.] CHAPTER XXI. A FALSE TRAIL. Paganel, after giving his companions a brief account of the village of Tandil, added that they could not fail to obtain information there; moreover, the fort was always garrisoned by a detachment of national troops. Glenarvan, accordingly, put the horses into the stable of a "fonda;" and Paganel, the major, Robert, and he, under the guidance of Thalcave, proceeded towards Fort Independence. After ascending the ridges of the mountains for a short time, they arrived at the postern, rather carelessly guarded by a native sentinel. They passed without difficulty, and inferred either great negligence or extreme security. A few soldiers were exercising on the parade-ground of the fort, the oldest of whom was not more than twenty and the youngest scarcely ten. In fact, they were a dozen young children and boys who were drilling very nicely. Their uniform consisted of a striped shirt confined at the waist by a leathern girdle. The mildness of the climate justified this light costume. Each of these young soldiers carried a gun and a sword, which were too long and heavy for the little fellows. All had a certain family resemblance, and the corporal who commanded resembled them too: they were twelve brothers, who were parading under the orders of the thirteenth. [Sidenote: AN ARGENTINE COMMANDANT.] Paganel was not astonished. He remembered his Argentine statistics, and knew that in this country the average number of children in a family exceeds nine. But what surprised him exceedingly was to see these little soldiers practicing the French tactics, and to hear the orders of the corporal given in his own native language. "This is singular," said he. But Glenarvan had not come to see boys drill, still less to occupy himself with their nationality or relationship. He did not, therefore, give Paganel time to express further astonishment, but besought him to ask for the commander of the fortress. Paganel did so, and one of the soldiers proceeded towards a small building which served as the barracks. A few moments after, the commander appeared in person. He was a man of fifty, robust, with a military air, thick whiskers, prominent cheek-bones, gray hair, and commanding look, so far as one could judge through the clouds of smoke that issued from his short pipe. Thalcave, addressing him, introduced Lord Glenarvan and his companions. While he spoke, the commander kept scrutinizing Paganel with quite embarrassing persistence. The geographer did not know what the trooper meant, and was about to ask him, when the latter unceremoniously seized his hand, and said, in a joyous tone, in his own language,-- "A Frenchman?" "Yes, a Frenchman," replied Paganel. "Ah, I am delighted! Welcome, welcome! I am almost a Frenchman," cried the commander, shaking the geographer's arm with rather painful violence. "One of your friends?" asked the major of Paganel. "Yes," replied he, with national pride; "we have friends in all parts of the world!" [Illustration: "Ah, I am delighted! Welcome, welcome! I am almost a Frenchman," cried the commander, shaking the geographer's arm with rather painful violence.] [Sidenote: RAISING A REGIMENT.] He then entered into conversation with the commander. Glenarvan would gladly have put in a word in regard to his affairs, but the soldier was telling his story, and was not in the mood to be interrupted. This honest man had left France a long time before; and the native language was no longer perfectly familiar to him: he had forgotten, if not words, at least the manner of combining them. As his visitors soon learned, he had been a sergeant in the French army. Since the foundation of the fort he had not left it, and commanded it by appointment from the Argentine government. He was by parentage a Basque, and his name was Manuel Ipharaguerre. A year after his arrival in the country, Sergeant Manuel was naturalized, joined the Argentine army, and married an honest Indian woman, who had twins,--boys, to be sure, for the sergeant's worthy consort would never present him with daughters. Manuel did not think of any other calling than that of the soldier, and hoped, in time, with the help of God, to offer to the republic a whole battalion of young soldiers. "You have seen them?" said he. "Charming fellows! Good soldiers! José! Juan! Miguel! Pepe! Pepe is only seven years old, and is already biting his cartridge!" Pepe, hearing himself complimented, joined his two little feet, and presented arms with perfect precision. "He will do!" added the sergeant. "He will be a major--or brigadier-general one day!" This story lasted a quarter of an hour, to Thalcave's great astonishment. The Indian could not understand how so many words could come from a single throat. No one interrupted the commander; and even a French sergeant had to conclude at last, though not without forcing his guests to accompany him to his dwelling. Here they were introduced to Madame Ipharaguerre, who appeared to be "a good-looking person," if this expression may be employed in regard to an Indian. When he had exhausted himself, the sergeant asked his guests to what he owed the honor of their visit. And now it was their turn to explain. Paganel, opening the conversation in French, told him of their journey across the Pampas, and ended by asking why the Indians had abandoned the country. "War!" replied the sergeant. "War?" "Yes, civil war." "Civil war?" rejoined Paganel. "Yes, war between Paraguay and Buenos Ayres," answered the sergeant. "Well?" "Why, all the Indians of the north are in the rear of General Flores, and those of the plains are plundering." "But the caziques?" "The caziques with them." This answer was reported to Thalcave, who shook his head. Indeed, he either did not know, or had forgotten, that a civil war, which was afterwards to involve Brazil, was decimating two-thirds of the republic. The Indians had everything to gain in these internal struggles, and could not neglect such fine opportunities for plunder. The sergeant, therefore, was not mistaken in attributing this desertion of the Pampas to the civil war that was being waged in the northern part of the Argentine Provinces. But this event disconcerted Glenarvan's hopes. If Captain Grant was a prisoner of the caziques, he must have been carried by them to the northern frontiers. Yet how and where to find him? Must they attempt a perilous and almost useless search to the northern limits of the Pampas? It was a serious matter, which was to be earnestly considered. However, one important question was still to be asked of the sergeant, and the major thought of this, while his companions were looking at each other in silence. "Have you heard of any Europeans being retained as prisoners by the caziques of the Pampas?" Manuel reflected for a few moments, like a man who recalls events to recollection. "Yes," said he, at length. "Ah!" cried Glenarvan, conceiving a new hope. [Sidenote: REVELATIONS.] Paganel, MacNabb, Robert, and he now surrounded the sergeant. "Speak, speak!" cried they, gazing at him with eagerness even in their looks. "Several years ago," replied Manuel, "yes,--that is it,--European prisoners--but have never seen them." "Several years ago?" said Glenarvan. "You are mistaken. The date of the shipwreck is definite. The Britannia was lost in June, 1862, less than two years ago." "Oh, more than that, my lord!" "Impossible!" cried Paganel. "Not at all. It was when Pepe was born. There were two men." "No, three!" said Glenarvan. "Two," replied the sergeant, in a positive tone. "Two?" exclaimed Glenarvan, very much chagrined. "Two Englishmen?" "No," continued the sergeant. "Who speaks of Englishmen? It was a Frenchman and an Italian." "An Italian who was massacred by the Indians?" cried Paganel. "Yes, and I learned afterwards--Frenchman saved." "Saved!" exclaimed Robert, whose very life seemed to hang on the sergeant's lips. "Yes, saved from the hands of the Indians," replied Manuel. Each looked to the geographer, who beat his brow in despair. "Ah! I understand," said he, at last. "All is clear, all is explained." "But what is to be done?" asked Glenarvan, with as much anxiety as impatience. "My friends," answered Paganel, taking Robert's hands, "we must submit to a severe misfortune. We have followed a false trail! The captive in question is not the captain, but one of my countrymen (whose companion, Marco Vazello, was actually assassinated by the Indians), a Frenchman who often accompanied these cruel savages to the banks of the Colorado, and who, after fortunately escaping from their hands, returned to France. While thinking that we were on the track of Captain Grant, we have fallen upon that of young Guinnard." A profound silence followed this declaration. The mistake was palpable. The sergeant's story, the nationality of the prisoner, the murder of his companion, and his escape from the hands of the Indians, all accorded with the evident facts. Glenarvan gazed at Thalcave with a bewildered air. The Indian then resumed the conversation. "Have you never heard of three English captives?" he asked the sergeant. "Never," replied Manuel. "It would have been known at Tandil. I should have heard of it. No, it cannot be." Glenarvan, after this formal response, had nothing more to do at Fort Independence. He and his friends, therefore, departed, not without thanking the sergeant and shaking hands with him. Glenarvan was in despair at this complete overthrow of his hopes. Robert walked beside him in silence, with tearful eyes, while his protector could not find a single word to console him. Paganel gesticulated and talked to himself. The major did not open his lips. As for Thalcave, his Indian pride seemed humbled at having gone astray on a false trail. No one, however, thought of reproaching him for so excusable an error. They returned to the encampment, saddened indeed. Still, not one of the courageous and devoted men regretted so many hardships uselessly endured, so many dangers vainly incurred. But each saw all hope of success annihilated in an instant. Could they find Captain Grant between Tandil and the sea? No. If any prisoner had fallen into the hands of the Indians on the Atlantic coast, Sergeant Manuel would certainly have been informed. An event of such a nature could not have escaped the natives who trade from Tandil to Carmen. Among the traders of the Argentine Plains everything is known and reported. There was therefore but one course now to take,--to join, without delay, the Duncan at Cape Medano, the appointed rendezvous. [Illustration: More than once during the journey, the attention and interest of all, but especially of Paganel, were arrested by the curious illusion of the mirage.] In the meantime, Paganel had asked Glenarvan for the document, by relying on which their search had resulted so unfortunately. He read it again with unconcealed vexation, seeking to discover a new interpretation. "This document is, at all events, clear," said Glenarvan. "It explains in the most definite manner the shipwreck of the captain and the place of his captivity." "No," replied the geographer, stamping with his foot, "a hundred times no! Since Captain Grant is not on the Pampas, he is not in America. This document ought to tell where he is; and it shall, my friends, or I am no longer Jacques Paganel." CHAPTER XXII. THE FLOOD. [Sidenote: OMENS AND MIRAGES.] Fort Independence is one hundred and fifty miles from the shores of the Atlantic. But for unforeseen and unexpected delays, Glenarvan could have rejoined the Duncan in four days. He could not, however, reconcile himself to the idea of returning on board without Captain Grant, and failing so completely in his search; and did not therefore, as usual, give the orders for departure. But the major assumed the task of saddling the horses, renewing the provisions, and making his arrangements for the journey. Thanks to his activity, the little party, at eight o'clock in the morning, was on its way down the grassy slopes of the Tandil Sierra. Glenarvan, with Robert at his side, galloped on in silence. His lordship's bold and resolute character did not permit him to accept this disappointment calmly. His heart beat violently, and his brain was on fire. Paganel, tormented by the mystery of the document, arranged the words in every way, as if to draw from them a new meaning. Thalcave silently resigned himself to Thaouka's sagacity. The major, always confident, performed his duties like a man upon whom discouragement can have no effect. Tom Austin and his two sailors shared their master's annoyance. Once, when a timid hare crossed the path in front of them, the superstitious Scotchmen gazed at one another. "A bad omen," said Wilson. "Yes, in the Highlands," replied Mulready. "What is bad in the Highlands is no better here," added Wilson, sententiously. About noon the travelers had descended the mountains and gained the undulating plains that extend to the sea; the boundless prairie spread its broad carpet of verdure before them. More than once during the journey the attention and interest of all, but especially of Paganel, were arrested by the curious illusion of the mirage, by which was presented in the sky, at the limits of the horizon, a semblance of the estancias, the poplars and willows near them, and other objects; the images being so much like the reality that it required a strong effort to realize their deceptive character. The weather hitherto had been fine, but now the sky assumed a less pleasing aspect. Masses of vapor, generated by the high temperature of the preceding days, condensed into thick clouds and threatened to dissolve in showers of rain. Moreover, the proximity of the Atlantic, and the west wind, which here reigns supreme, rendered the climate of this region peculiarly moist. However, for that day at least the heavy clouds did not break; and at evening the horses, after traveling forty miles, halted on the edge of a deep "cañada," an immense natural ditch filled with water. A shelter was wanting, but the ponchos served for tents as well as clothing, and peaceful slumbers enwrapped all. The next day, as they progressed farther, the presence of subterranean streams betrayed itself more noticeably, and moisture was seen in every depression of the ground. Soon they came to large ponds, some already deep and others just forming. So long as there were only lagoons, the horses could easily extricate themselves; but with these treacherous swamps it was more difficult. Tall grass obstructed them, and it was necessary to incur the danger before it could be understood. These quagmires had been already fatal to more than one human being. Robert, who had ridden half a mile in advance, returned at a gallop, crying,-- "Monsieur Paganel! Monsieur Paganel! A forest of horns!" "What!" replied the geographer, "have you found a forest of horns?" "Yes, yes; or at least a field." "A field! you are dreaming, my boy," said Paganel, shrugging his shoulders. "I am not dreaming," retorted Robert; "you shall see for yourself. This is a strange country! People sow horns, and they spring up like corn! I should like very well to have some of the seed." "But he speaks seriously," said the major. "Yes, major, you shall see." Robert was not mistaken, and soon they found themselves before a vast field of horns, regularly planted. "Well?" said Robert. "This is something singular," replied Paganel, turning towards the Indian with a questioning look. [Sidenote: AN ANXIOUS INDIAN.] "The horns come from the ground," explained Thalcave; "and the cattle are under it." "What!" cried Paganel, "is there a whole drove in this mire?" "Yes," answered the Patagonian. In fact, a vast herd had perished in this bog, which had given way beneath them. Hundreds of cattle had thus met their death, side by side, by suffocation in this vast quagmire. This circumstance, which sometimes takes place on the plains, could not be ignored by the Indian, and it was a warning which it was proper to heed. They passed around this immense hecatomb, which would have satisfied the most exacting gods of antiquity; and an hour after the field of horns was far behind. Thalcave now began to observe with an anxious air the state of things around him. He frequently stopped, and rose in his stirrups. His tall form enabled him to survey a wide range; but, perceiving nothing that could enlighten him, he resumed his undeviating course. A mile farther, he stopped again, and, turning from the beaten track, proceeded a short distance, first to the north, then to the south, and then resumed his place at the head of the party, without saying either what he hoped or what he feared. These manoeuvres, many times repeated, puzzled Paganel and annoyed Glenarvan. The geographer was accordingly requested to interrogate the Indian, which he did at once. Thalcave replied that he was astonished to see the plain so soaked with moisture. Never within his recollection, since he had performed the office of guide, had his feet trodden a soil so saturated. Even in the season of the great rains the Argentine plain was always easily passed. "But to what do you attribute this increasing moisture?" asked Paganel. "I know not," replied the Indian; "and what if I did?" "Do the mountain streams, when swollen with the rains, ever overflow their banks?" "Sometimes." "And now, perhaps?" "Perhaps," said Thalcave. Paganel was forced to be contented with this answer, and communicated to Glenarvan the result of the conversation. "And what does Thalcave advise?" inquired Glenarvan. "What is to be done?" asked Paganel of the Patagonian. "Advance quickly," replied the Indian. This advice was easier to give than to follow. The horses were quickly fatigued with treading a soil that sank beneath them deeper and deeper as they progressed, so that this part of the plain might have been compared to an immense basin in which the invading waters would rapidly accumulate. It was advisable, therefore, to cross without delay these sloping terraces that an inundation would have instantly transformed into a lake. They hastened their pace, though there was no great depth to the water which spread out in a sheet beneath the horses' feet. About two o'clock the flood-gates of the heavens opened, and tropical torrents of rain descended. Never was a finer opportunity presented for showing oneself a philosopher. There was no chance of escaping this deluge, and it was better for the travelers to receive it stoically. Their ponchos were soon dripping, and their hats wet them still more, like roofs whose gutters have overflowed. The fringes of the saddle-cloths seemed so many liquid streams; and the horsemen, bespattered by their animals, whose hoofs splashed in the water at every step, rode in a double shower, which came from the ground as well as the sky. [Sidenote: HYDROPATHIC TREATMENT.] It was in this wretchedly cold and exhausted state that they arrived, towards evening, at a very miserable rancho. Only people who were not fastidious could have given it the name of a shelter, only travelers in distress would consent to occupy it. But Glenarvan and his companions had no choice. They therefore cowered down in the abandoned hut which would not have satisfied even a poor Indian of the plains. A sorry fire of grass, which gave out more smoke than heat, was kindled with difficulty. The torrents of rain made havoc without, and large drops oozed through the mouldy thatch. The fire was extinguished twenty times, and twenty times did Wilson and Mulready struggle against the invading water. The supper was very meagre and comfortless, and every one's appetite failed. The major alone did justice to the water-soaked repast, and did not lose a mouthful: he was superior to misfortune. As for Paganel, like a Frenchman, he tried to joke; but now he failed. "My jokes are wet," said he: "they miss fire." However, as it was more agreeable--if possible, under the circumstances--to sleep, each one sought in slumber a temporary forgetfulness of his fatigues. The night was stormy. The sides of the rancho cracked as if they would break, while the frail structure bent beneath the gusts of wind and threatened to give way at every shock. The unfortunate horses neighed in terror without, exposed to the inclemency of the tempest; and their masters did not suffer less in their miserable shelter. However, sleep drowned all their troubles at last. Robert first closed his eyes, reclining his head on Lord Glenarvan's shoulder; and soon all the inmates of the rancho slept under the protection of God. They woke the next morning at the call of Thaouka, who, always ready, neighed without, and struck the wall of the hut vigorously with his hoof, as though to give the signal for departure. They owed him too much not to obey him, and they accordingly resumed their journey. The rain had ceased, but the hard earth held what had fallen. On the impenetrable clay, pools, marshes, and ponds overflowed and formed immense "bañados" of treacherous depth. Paganel, on consulting his map, judged rightly that the Grande and Nivarota Rivers, into which the waters of the plain usually flow, must have mingled together in one broad stream. An extremely rapid advance, therefore, became necessary. The common safety was at stake. If the inundation increased, where could they find a refuge? The vast circle of the horizon did not offer a single point, and on this level plain the progress of the water must be rapid. The horses were urged to their utmost speed. Thaouka took the lead, and might have borne the name of sea-horse, for he pranced as if he had been in his native element. Suddenly, about six o'clock in the evening, he manifested signs of extreme agitation. He turned frequently towards the vast expanse to the south; his neighs were prolonged, his nostrils keenly snuffed the air, and he reared violently. Thalcave, whom his antics could not unseat, managed his steed without difficulty. The froth from the horse's mouth was mingled with blood under the action of the firmly-closed bit, and yet the spirited animal could not be calm. If free, his master felt but too well that he would have fled away at full speed towards the north. "What is the matter with Thaouka?" asked Paganel. "Has he been bitten by those voracious blood-suckers of the Argentine waters?" "No," replied the Indian. "Is he terrified, then, at some danger?" "Yes, he has scented danger." "What?" "I do not know." Although the eye did not yet reveal the peril that Thaouka divined, the ear could already detect it. A low murmur, like the sound of a rising tide, was heard as from the limit of the horizon. The wind blew in damp gusts laden with spray; the birds, as if fleeing from some unknown phenomenon, shot swiftly through the air; and the horses, wading to their knees, felt the first impulse of the current. Soon a mingled roar, like bellowing, neighing, and bleating, resounded half a mile to the south, and immense herds appeared, tumbling, rising, and rushing, a confused mass of terrified beasts, and fled by with frightful rapidity. It was scarcely possible to distinguish them in the midst of the clouds of spray dashed up by their flight. [Illustration: "The flood! the flood!" replied Thalcave, spurring his horse towards the north.] "Quick! quick!" cried Thalcave, in a piercing voice. "What is it?" said Paganel. "The flood! the flood!" replied Thalcave, spurring his horse towards the north. "The inundation!" cried Paganel; and his companions, with him at their head, fled away in the track of Thaouka. It was time. Five miles to the south a high and broad wall of water was rushing over the plain, which was fast becoming an ocean. The tall grass disappeared as before the scythe, and the tufts of mimosas, torn up by the current, separated and formed floating islands. The mass of waters spread itself in broad waves of irresistible power. The dikes of the great rivers had evidently given way, and perhaps the waters of the Colorado and Rio Negro were now mingling in a common stream. The wall of water descried by Thalcave advanced with the speed of a race-horse. The travelers fled before it like a cloud driven by the storm. Their eyes sought in vain a place of refuge. Sky and water mingled together on the horizon. The horses, excited by the danger, dashed along in a mad gallop, so that their riders could scarcely keep their seats. Glenarvan frequently glanced behind him. "The water is overtaking us," he thought. "Quick! quick!" cried Thalcave. [Sidenote: THE ARK.] The unfortunate beasts were urged to a swifter pace. From their flanks, lacerated with the spur, flowed bright red streams, which marked their course on the water by long, crimson lines. They stumbled in the hollows of the ground; they were entangled in the hidden grass; they fell and rose again continually. The depth of the water sensibly increased. Long surges announced the on-rush of the mass of water that tossed its foaming crests less than two miles distant. For a quarter of an hour this final struggle against the most terrible of elements was prolonged. The fugitives could keep no account of the distance they had traversed; but, judging by the rapidity of their flight, it must have been considerable. Meantime the horses, immersed to their breasts, could no longer advance without extreme difficulty. Glenarvan, Paganel, Austin, all believed themselves lost, victims of the horrible death of unfortunates abandoned at sea. Their animals began to lose their footing; six feet of water was sufficient to drown them. We must forbear to picture the acute anguish of these eight men overtaken by a rising inundation. They felt their powerlessness to struggle against these convulsions of nature, superior to human strength. Their safety was no longer in their own hands. Five minutes after, the horses were swimming, while the current alone carried them along with irresistible force and furious swiftness. All safety seemed impossible, when the voice of the major was heard. "A tree!" said he. "A tree!" cried Glenarvan. "Yes, yonder!" replied Thalcave, and he pointed northward to a kind of gigantic walnut-tree, which rose solitary from the midst of the waters. His companions had no need to be urged. This tree that was opportunely presented to them they must reach at all hazards. The horses probably could not accomplish the distance; but the men, at least, could be saved,--the current would carry them. At that moment Tom Austin's horse gave a stifled neigh and disappeared. His rider, extricating himself from the stirrups, began to swim vigorously. "Cling to my saddle!" cried Glenarvan to him. "Thanks, my lord," replied he, "my arms are strong." "Your horse, Robert?" continued Glenarvan, turning towards the boy. "All right, my lord, all right! He swims like a fish." "Attention!" cried the major, in a loud voice. This word was scarcely pronounced, when the enormous wall of water reached them. A huge wave, forty feet high, overwhelmed the fugitives with a terrible roar. Men and beasts, everything, disappeared in a whirlpool of foam. A ponderous liquid mass engulfed them in its furious tide. When the deluge had passed, the men regained the surface, and rapidly counted their numbers; but the horses, except Thaouka, had disappeared forever. "Courage! courage!" cried Glenarvan, who supported Paganel with one arm and swam with the other. "All right! all right!" replied the worthy geographer; "indeed I am not sorry----" What was he not sorry for? No one ever knew; for the poor man was forced to swallow the end of his sentence in half a pint of muddy water. The major calmly advanced, taking a regular stroke of which the most skillful swimmer would not have been ashamed. The sailors worked their way along like porpoises in their native element. As for Robert, he clung to Thaouka's mane, and was thus drawn along. The horse proudly cut the waters, and kept himself instinctively on a line with the tree, towards which the current bore him, and which was now not far distant. In a few moments the entire party reached it. It was fortunate; for, if this refuge had failed, all chance of safety would have vanished, and they must have perished in the waves. The water was up to the top of the trunk where the main branches grew, so that it was easy to grasp them. Thalcave, leaving his horse, and lifting Robert, seized the first limb, and soon his powerful arms had lodged the exhausted swimmers in a place of safety. But Thaouka, carried away by the current, was rapidly disappearing. He turned his intelligent head towards his master, and, shaking his long mane, neighed for him beseechingly. [Illustration: A huge wave, forty feet high, overwhelmed the fugitives with a terrible roar. Men and beasts, everything, disappeared in a whirlpool of foam. A ponderous liquid mass engulfed them in its furious tide.] "Do you abandon him?" said Paganel. "I?" cried the Indian, and, plunging into the tempestuous waters, he reappeared some distance from the tree. A few moments after, his arm rested upon the neck of Thaouka, and horse and horseman swam away together towards the misty horizon of the north. CHAPTER XXIII. A SINGULAR ABODE. The tree upon which Glenarvan and his companions had just found refuge resembled a walnut-tree. It had the same shining foliage and rounded form. It was the "ombu," which is met with only on the Argentine Plains. It had an enormous, twisted trunk, and was confined to the earth not only by its great roots, but also by strong shoots which held it most tenaciously. It had thus resisted the force of the inundation. [Sidenote: AN ORNITHOLOGICAL OMNIUM-GATHERUM.] This ombu measured one hundred feet in height, and might have covered with its shade a circumference of three hundred and sixty feet. All the upper part rested on three great branches, which forked from the top of the trunk, that was six feet in diameter. Two of these branches were nearly perpendicular, and supported the immense canopy of foliage, whose crossed, twisted, and interlaced limbs, as if woven by the hand of a basket-maker, formed an impenetrable shelter. The third branch, on the contrary, extended almost horizontally over the roaring waters; its leaves were bathed in them, while it seemed a promontory to this island of verdure surrounded by an ocean. There was abundant space, also, in the interior of this gigantic tree. The foliage, which was not very dense at its outer circumference, left large openings like sky-lights, and made it well ventilated and cool. At sight of these branches rising in innumerable ramifications towards the clouds, while the parasitic convolvuli bound them to each other, and the rays of the sun shone through the interstices of the leaves, you would really have thought that the trunk of this ombu bore upon itself alone an entire forest. On the arrival of the fugitives, a feathered population flew away to the top branches, protesting by their cries against so flagrant a usurpation of their dwelling. These birds, that had themselves sought refuge upon this solitary ombu, were seen by hundreds,--blackbirds, starlings, and many other richly-feathered varieties; and when they flew away it seemed as if a gust of wind had stripped the tree of its leaves. Such was the asylum offered to Glenarvan's little party. Robert and the nimble Wilson were scarcely perched in the tree, before they hastened to climb to the topmost branches. Their heads protruded above the dome of verdure. From this lofty position the view embraced a wide range. The ocean created by the inundation surrounded them on all sides, and their eyes could discern no limit. No other tree emerged from the watery surface; the ombu, alone in the midst of the unconfined waters, groaned at every shock. At a distance, borne along by the impetuous current, floated uprooted trunks, twisted branches, thatch torn from some demolished rancho, beams swept by the waters from the roofs of cattle-folds, bodies of drowned animals, bloody skins, and, on a swaying tree, a whole family of growling jaguars that clung with their claws to this fragile raft. Still farther off, a black speck almost invisible attracted Wilson's attention. It was Thalcave and his faithful Thaouka, disappearing in the distance. [Illustration: He turned his intelligent head towards his master, and, shaking his long mane, neighed for him beseechingly.] [Sidenote: A COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY.] "Thalcave, friend Thalcave!" cried Robert, stretching out his hands towards the courageous Patagonian. "He will be saved, Mr. Robert," said Wilson; "but let us join Lord Glenarvan." A moment after, Robert and the sailor descended the three stories of branches and found themselves among their companions. Glenarvan, Paganel, the major, Austin, and Mulready were seated astraddle, or dangling in the branches, according to their own inclinations. Wilson gave an account of their visit to the top of the tree. All shared his opinion in regard to Thalcave. The only question was, whether Thalcave would save Thaouka, or Thaouka Thalcave. The present situation of these refugees was undeniably insecure. The tree would not probably give way to the force of the current, but the rising waters might reach the top branches, for the depression of the soil made this part of the plain a deep reservoir. Glenarvan's first care, therefore, was to establish, by means of notches, points of comparison which enabled him to note the different heights of the water. The flood was now stationary, and it appeared to have reached its greatest elevation. This was encouraging. "And now what shall we do?" asked Glenarvan. "Build our nest, of course," replied Paganel. "Build our nest!" cried Robert. "Certainly, my boy, and live the life of birds, since we cannot live the life of fishes." "Very well," said Glenarvan; "but who will give us our beakful?" "I," replied the major. All eyes were turned towards MacNabb, who was comfortably seated in a natural arm-chair formed of two pliant branches, and with one hand was holding out the wet though well-filled saddle-bags. "Ah, MacNabb," cried Glenarvan, "this is just like you! You think of everything, even under circumstances where it is allowable to forget." "As soon as it was decided not to be drowned, I concluded not to die of hunger." "I should not have thought of this," said Paganel, innocently; "but I am so absent-minded!" "And what do the saddle-bags contain?" inquired Tom Austin. "Provisions for seven men for two days," replied MacNabb. "Well," said Glenarvan, "I hope that the inundation will be considerably lower twenty-four hours hence." "Or that we shall find some means of gaining _terra firma_," added Paganel. "Our first business, then, is to breakfast," said Glenarvan. "After drying ourselves," observed the major. "And fire?" said Wilson. "Why, we must make one," replied Paganel. "Where?" "At the top of the trunk, of course." "With what?" "With dead wood that we shall cut in the tree." "But how kindle it?" said Glenarvan. "Our tinder is like a wet sponge." "We will manage that," answered Paganel; "a little dry moss, a ray of sunlight, the lens of my telescope, and you will see by what a fire I will dry myself. Who will go for wood in the forest?" "I!" cried Robert, and, followed by his friend Wilson, he disappeared like a cat in the depths of the foliage. [Sidenote: GOING BIRD'S-NESTING.] During their absence Paganel found dry moss in sufficient quantity; he availed himself of a ray of sunlight, which was easy, for the orb of day now shone with a vivid brightness, and then, with the aid of his lens, he kindled without difficulty the combustible materials which were laid on a bed of leaves in the fork of the branches. It was a natural fireplace, with no danger of conflagration. Wilson and Robert soon returned with an armful of dead wood, which was cast on the fire. Paganel, to cause a draught, placed himself above the fireplace, his long legs crossed in the Arab fashion; then, moving his body rapidly up and down, he produced, by means of his poncho, a strong current of air. The wood kindled, and a bright, roaring flame soon rose from this improvised oven. Each dried himself in his own way, while the ponchos, hung on the branches, swung to and fro in the breeze. They now breakfasted, sparingly however, for they had to allow for the following day. The immense basin might not perhaps be empty so soon as Glenarvan hoped, and, moreover, the provisions were limited. The tree bore no fruit; but fortunately it afforded a remarkable supply of fresh eggs, thanks to the numerous nests that loaded the branches, not to speak of their feathered occupants. These resources were by no means to be despised. The question now was, therefore, in case of a prolonged stay, how to secure comfortable quarters. "Since the kitchen and dining-room are on the ground floor," said Paganel, "we will sleep in the first story. The house is large, the rent reasonable, and we must take our ease. I perceive that above there are natural cradles, in which, when we have once laid ourselves, we shall sleep as well as in the best beds in the world. We have nothing to fear; moreover, we will keep watch, and there are enough of us to repulse all the wild animals." "Only we have no arms," said Tom Austin. "I have my revolvers," said Glenarvan. "And I mine," replied Robert. "What use," continued Tom Austin, "if Mr. Paganel does not find the means of manufacturing powder?" "It is not necessary," replied MacNabb, showing a full flask. "Where did you get that, major?" inquired Paganel. "Of Thalcave. He thought it might be useful to us, and gave it to me before going back to Thaouka." "Brave and generous Indian!" cried Glenarvan. "Yes," added Tom Austin, "if all the Patagonians are fashioned after this model, I pay my respects to Patagonia." "I desire that the horse be not forgotten," said Paganel. "He forms part of the Patagonian, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, we shall see them again." "How far are we from the Atlantic?" inquired the major. "Not more than forty miles," answered Paganel. "And now, my friends, since each is free to act, I ask permission to leave you. I am going to choose an observatory above, and, with the aid of my telescope, will keep you acquainted with what goes on here." The geographer was allowed to go. He very adroitly swung himself from branch to branch, and disappeared behind the thick curtain of foliage. His companions at once occupied themselves with making the sleeping-room and preparing their beds, which was neither a difficult nor a lengthy task. As there were no bedclothes to fix nor furniture to arrange, each soon resumed his place by the fire. They then conversed, but not about their present condition, which they must patiently endure. They returned to the inexhaustible subject of Captain Grant's recovery. If the waters subsided, in three days the travelers would be again on board the Duncan. But the captain and his two sailors, those unfortunate castaways, would not be with them; and it even seemed after this failure, after this vain search in South America, as if all hope of finding them were irrevocably lost. Whither direct a new search? What, too, would be the grief of Lady Helena and Mary Grant on learning that the future had no hope in store for them! "Poor sister!" exclaimed Robert; "all is over for us!" [Illustration: Glenarvan, Paganel, the major, Austin, and Mulready were seated astraddle, or dangling in the branches, according to their own inclinations.] Glenarvan, for the first time, had no consoling answer to make. What hope could he give the child? Had he not followed with rigorous exactitude the directions of the document? "At all events," said he, "this thirty-seventh degree of latitude is no vain indication. Have we not supposed, interpreted, and ascertained that it relates to the shipwreck or the captivity of Captain Grant? Have we not read it with our own eyes?" "All that is true, my lord," replied Tom Austin; "nevertheless our search has not succeeded." "It is discouraging as well as annoying," said Glenarvan. "Annoying if you will," replied MacNabb, in a calm tone, "but not discouraging. Precisely because we thus have a definite item, we must thoroughly exhaust all its instructions." "What do you mean?" inquired Glenarvan. "What do you think ought to be done?" "A very simple and reasonable thing, my dear Edward. Let us turn our faces towards the east, when we are on board the Duncan, and follow the thirty-seventh parallel even around to our starting-point, if necessary." "Do you think, my dear major, that I have not thought of this?" replied Glenarvan. "Indeed I have, a hundred times. But what chance have we of succeeding? Is not leaving the American continent departing from the place indicated by Captain Grant himself, from Patagonia, so clearly named in the document?" "Do you wish to begin your search in the Pampas again," replied the major, "when you are sure that the shipwreck of the Britannia did not take place on the Pacific or Atlantic coast?" Glenarvan did not answer. "And however feeble the chance of finding Captain Grant by following this latitude may be, still ought we not to attempt it?" "I do not deny it," replied Glenarvan. [Sidenote: APPLIED GEOGRAPHY.] "And you, my friends," added the major, addressing the sailors, "are you not of my opinion?" "Entirely," answered Tom Austin, while Wilson and Mulready nodded assent. "Listen to me, my friends," continued Glenarvan, after a few moments of reflection, "and you too, Robert, for this is a serious question. I shall do everything possible to find Captain Grant, as I have undertaken to do, and shall devote my entire life, if necessary, to this object. All Scotland would join me to save this noble man who sacrificed himself for her. I too think, however slight may be the chance, that we ought to make the tour of the world on the thirty-seventh parallel; and I shall do so. But this is not the point to be settled: there is a much more important one, and it is this: Ought we once and for all to abandon our search on the American continent?" This question, so directly asked, was unanswered. No one dared to declare his opinion. "Well?" resumed Glenarvan, addressing the major more especially. "My dear Edward," replied MacNabb, "it would involve too great a responsibility to answer you now. The case requires consideration. But first of all I desire to know what countries the thirty-seventh parallel crosses." "That is Paganel's business," replied Glenarvan. "Let us ask him, then," said the major. The geographer was no longer to be seen, as he was hidden by the thick foliage. It was necessary to call him. "Paganel! Paganel!" cried Glenarvan. "Present!" answered a voice which seemed to come to them from the sky. "Where are you?" "In my tower." "What are you doing?" "Surveying the wide horizon." "Can you come down a moment?" "Do you need me?" "Yes." "What for?" "To know what countries the thirty-seventh parallel crosses." "Nothing easier," replied Paganel; "I need not even disturb myself to tell you." "Very well, then." "Leaving America, the thirty-seventh parallel crosses the Atlantic." "Good." "It strikes Tristan d'Acunha Island." "Well?" "It passes two degrees to the south of the Cape of Good Hope." "And then?" "It runs across the Indian Ocean." "And then?" "It grazes St. Paul's Island of the Amsterdam group." "Go on." "It cuts Australia across the province of Victoria." "Proceed." "Leaving Australia----" This last sentence was not finished. Did the geographer hesitate? Did he know no more? No; but a startling cry was heard in the top of the tree. Glenarvan and his friends grew pale as they gazed at each other. Had a new calamity happened? Had the unfortunate Paganel fallen? Already Wilson and Mulready were hastening to his assistance, when a long body appeared. Paganel dangled from branch to branch. His hands could grasp nothing. Was he alive, or dead? They did not know; but he was about to fall into the roaring waters, when the major, with a strong hand, arrested his progress. "Very much obliged, MacNabb!" cried Paganel. "Why, what is the matter with you?" said the major. [Illustration: A long body appeared. Paganel dangled from branch to branch. His hands could grasp nothing. Was he alive, or dead?] "What has got into you? Is this another of your eternal distractions?" "Yes, yes," replied Paganel, in a voice choked with emotion (and leaves). "Yes, a distraction,--phenomenal this time." "What is it?" "We have been mistaken! We are still mistaken!" "Explain yourself." "Glenarvan, major, Robert, my friends," cried Paganel, "all you who hear me, we are seeking Captain Grant where he is not." "What do you say?" cried Glenarvan. "Not only where he is not," added Paganel, "but even where he has never been." CHAPTER XXIV. PAGANEL'S DISCLOSURE. A profound astonishment greeted these unexpected words. What did the geographer mean? Had he lost his senses? He spoke, however, with such conviction that all eyes were turned towards Glenarvan. This declaration of Paganel was a direct answer to the question the former had asked. But Glenarvan confined himself to a negative gesture, indicating disbelief in the geographer, who, as soon as he was master of his emotion, resumed. "Yes," said he, in a tone of conviction, "yes, we have gone astray in our search, and have read in the document what is not written there." "Explain yourself, Paganel," said the major; "and more calmly." [Sidenote: A NEW IDEA.] "That is very simple, major. Like you, I was in error; like you, I struck upon a false interpretation. When, but a moment ago, at the top of this tree, in answer to the question, at the word 'Australia' an idea flashed through my mind, and all was clear." "What!" cried Glenarvan, "do you pretend that Captain Grant----" "I pretend," replied Paganel, "that the word _Austral_ in the document is not complete, as we have hitherto supposed, but the root of the word _Australia_." "This is something singular," said the major. "Singular!" replied Glenarvan, shrugging his shoulders; "it is simply impossible!" "Impossible," continued Paganel, "is a word that we do not allow in France." "What!" added Glenarvan, in a tone of the greatest incredulity, "do you pretend, with that document in your possession, that the shipwreck of the Britannia took place on the shores of Australia?" "I am sure of it!" replied Paganel. "By my faith, Paganel," said Glenarvan, "this is a pretension that astonishes me greatly, coming from the secretary of a geographical society." "Why?" inquired Paganel, touched in his sensitive point. "Because, if you admit the word Australia, you admit at the same time that there are Indians in that country, a fact which has not yet been proved." Paganel was by no means surprised at this argument. He seemingly expected it, and began to smile. "My dear Glenarvan," said he, "do not be too hasty in your triumph. I am going to defeat you completely, as no Englishman has ever been defeated." "I ask nothing better. Defeat me, Paganel." "Listen, then. You say that the Indians mentioned in the document belong exclusively to Patagonia. The incomplete word _indi_ does not mean Indians, but natives (_indigènes_). Now do you admit that there are natives in Australia?" It must be confessed that Glenarvan now gazed fixedly at Paganel. "Bravo, Paganel!" said the major. "Do you admit my interpretation, my dear lord?" "Yes," replied Glenarvan, "if you can prove to me that the imperfect word _gonie_ does not relate to the country of the Patagonians." "No," cried Paganel, "it certainly does not mean Patagonia. Read anything you will but that." "But what?" "_Cosmogonie! théogonie! agonie!_" "_Agonie!_" cried the major. "That is indifferent to me," replied Paganel; "the word has no importance. I shall not even search for what it may signify. The principal point is that _Austral_ means Australia, and we must have been blindly following a false trail, not to have discovered before so evident a meaning. If I had found the document, if my judgment had not been set aside by your interpretation, I should never have understood it otherwise." This time cheers, congratulations, and compliments greeted Paganel's words. Austin, the sailors, the major, and Robert especially, were delighted to revive their hopes, and applauded the worthy geographer. Glenarvan, who had gradually been undeceived, was, as he said, almost ready to surrender. "One last remark, my dear Paganel, and I have only to bow before your sagacity." "Speak!" "How do you arrange these newly-interpreted words, and in what way do you read the document?" [Illustration: The hunt promised well, and gave hopes of culinary wonders.] "Nothing is easier. Here is the document," said Paganel, producing the precious paper that he had studied so conscientiously for several days. A profound silence ensued, while the geographer, collecting his thoughts, took his time to answer. His finger followed the incomplete lines on the document, while, in a confident tone, he expressed himself in the following terms: "'June 7th, 1862, the brig Britannia, of Glasgow, foundered after'--let us put, if you wish, 'two days, three days,' or, 'a long struggle,'--it matters little, it is quite unimportant,--'on the coast of Australia. Directing their course to shore, two sailors and Captain Grant endeavored to land,' or 'did land on the continent, where they will be,' or 'are prisoners of cruel natives. They cast this document,' and so forth. Is it clear?" "It is clear," replied Glenarvan, "if the word _continent_ can be applied to Australia, which is only an island." "Be assured, my dear Glenarvan, the best geographers are agreed in naming this island the Australian continent." "Then I have but one thing to say, my friends," cried Glenarvan. "To Australia, and may Heaven assist us!" "To Australia!" repeated his companions, with one accord. "Do you know, Paganel," added Glenarvan, "that your presence on board the Duncan is a providential circumstance?" "Well," replied Paganel, "let us suppose that I am an envoy of Providence, and say no more about it." [Sidenote: A FESTIVE BANQUET.] Thus ended this conversation, that in the future led to such great results. It completely changed the moral condition of the travelers. They had caught again the thread of the labyrinth in which they had thought themselves forever lost. A new hope arose on the ruins of their fallen projects. They could fearlessly leave behind them this American continent, and already all their thoughts flew away to the Australian land. On reaching the Duncan, they would not bring despair on board, and Lady Helena and Mary Grant would not have to lament the irrevocable loss of the captain. Thus they forgot the dangers of their situation in their new-found joy, and their only regret was that they could not start at once. It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and they resolved to take supper at six. Paganel wished to celebrate this joyful day by a splendid banquet. As the bill of fare was very limited, he proposed to Robert that they should go hunting "in the neighboring forest," at which idea the boy clapped his hands. They took Thalcave's powder-flask, cleaned the revolvers, loaded them with fine shot, and started. "Do not go far," said the major, gravely, to the two huntsmen. After their departure Glenarvan and MacNabb went to consult the notches on the tree, while Wilson and Mulready revived the smouldering embers. Arriving at the surface of this immense lake, they saw no sign of abatement. The waters seemed to have attained their highest elevation; but the violence with which they rolled from south to north proved that the equilibrium of the Argentine rivers was not yet established. Before the liquid mass could lower, it must first become calm, like the sea when flood-tide ends and ebb begins. They could not, therefore, expect a subsidence of the waters so long as they flowed towards the north with such swiftness. While Glenarvan and the major were making these observations, reports resounded in the tree, accompanied by cries of joy almost as noisy. The clear treble of Robert contrasted sharply with the deep bass of Paganel, and the strife was which should be the most boyish. The hunt promised well, and gave hopes of culinary wonders. When the major and Glenarvan returned to the fire, they had to congratulate Wilson upon an excellent idea. The honest sailor had devoted himself to fishing with wonderful success, with the aid of a pin and a piece of string. Several dozen of little fish, delicate as smelts, called "mojarras," wriggled in a fold of his poncho, and seemed likely to make an exquisite dish. At this moment the hunters descended from the top of the tree. Paganel carefully carried some black swallows' eggs and a string of sparrows, which he meant afterwards to serve up as larks. Robert had adroitly brought down several pairs of "hilgueros,"--little green-and-yellow birds, which are excellent eating, and very much in demand in the Montevideo market. The geographer, who knew many ways of preparing eggs, had to confine himself this time to cooking them in the hot ashes. However, the repast was as varied as it was delicate. The dried meat, the hard eggs, the broiled mojarras, and the roast sparrows and hilgueros, formed a repast which was long remembered. The conversation was very animated. Paganel was greatly complimented in his twofold capacity of hunter and cook, and accepted these encomiums with the modesty that belongs to true merit. Then he gave himself up to singular observations on the magnificent tree that sheltered them with its foliage, and whose extent, as he declared, was immense. "Robert and I," said he jokingly, "imagined ourselves in the open forest during the hunt. One moment I thought we should be lost. I could not find my way. The sun was declining towards the horizon. I sought in vain to retrace my steps. Hunger made itself felt acutely. Already the gloomy coppices were resounding with the growls of ferocious beasts,--but no, there are no ferocious beasts, and I am sorry." "What!" cried Glenarvan, "you are sorry there are no ferocious beasts?" "Certainly." "But, when you have everything to fear from their ferocity----" "Ferocity does not exist,--scientifically speaking," replied the geographer. [Illustration: However, the repast was as varied as it was delicate. The dried meat, the hard eggs, the broiled mojarras, and the roast sparrows and hilgueros, formed a repast which was long remembered.] "Ha! this time, Paganel," said the major, "you will not make me admit the utility of ferocious beasts. What are they good for?" "Major," cried Paganel, "they are good to form classifications, orders, families, genera, sub-genera, species----" "Very fine!" said MacNabb. "I should not have thought of that! If I had been one of Noah's companions at the time of the deluge, I should certainly have prevented that imprudent patriarch from putting into the ark pairs of tigers, lions, bears, panthers, and other animals as destructive as they were useless." "Should you have done so?" inquired Paganel. "I should." "Well, you would have been wrong in a zoological point of view." "But not in a human one." "This is shocking," continued Paganel; "for my part, I should have preserved all the animals before the deluge of which we are so unfortunately deprived." "I tell you," replied MacNabb, "that Noah was right in abandoning them to their fate, admitting that they lived in his time." "I tell you that Noah was wrong," retorted Paganel, "and deserves the malediction of scholars to the end of time." The listeners to this argument could not help laughing at seeing the two friends dispute about what Noah ought to have done or left undone. The major, who had never argued with any one in his life, contrary to all his principles, was every day at war with Paganel, who must have particularly excited him. Glenarvan, according to his custom, interrupted the debate, and said,-- [Sidenote: WANTED, A JAGUAR!] "However much it is to be regretted, in a scientific or human point of view, that we are deprived of ferocious animals, we must be resigned to-day to their absence. Paganel could not hope to encounter any in this aerial forest." "No," replied the geographer, "although we beat the bush. It is a pity, for it would have been a glorious hunt. A ferocious man-eater like the jaguar! With one blow of his paw he can twist the neck of a horse. When he has tasted human flesh, however, he returns to it ravenously. What he likes best is the Indian, then the negro, then the mulatto, and then the white man." "However that may be, my good Paganel," said Glenarvan, "so long as there are no Indians, mulattoes, or negroes among us, I rejoice in the absence of your dear jaguars. Our situation is not, of course, so agreeable----" "What!" cried Paganel, "you complain of your lot?" "Certainly," replied Glenarvan. "Are you at your ease in these uncomfortable and uncushioned branches?" "I have never been more so, even in my own study. We lead the life of birds; we sing and flutter about. I almost think that men were destined to live in the trees." "They only want wings," said the major. "They will make them some day." "In the meantime," replied Glenarvan, "permit me, my dear friend, to prefer the sand of a park, the floor of a house, or the deck of a vessel to this aerial abode." "Glenarvan," said Paganel, "we must take things as they come. If favorable, so much the better; if unfavorable, we must not mind it. I see you long for the comforts of Malcolm Castle." "No, but----" "I am certain that Robert is perfectly happy," interrupted Paganel, to secure one advocate, at least, of his theories. "Yes, Monsieur Paganel!" cried the boy, in a joyful tone. "It is natural at his age," replied Glenarvan. "And at mine," added the geographer. "The less ease we have, the fewer wants; the fewer wants, the happier we are." "Well," said the major, "here is Paganel going to make an attack upon riches and gilded splendor." "No, my dear major," continued Paganel; "but, if you wish, I will tell you, in this connection, a little Arab story that occurs to me." "Yes, yes, Monsieur Paganel," cried Robert. "And what will your story prove?" asked the major. "What all stories prove, my brave companion." "Not much, then," replied MacNabb. "But go on, Scheherezade, and tell one of those stories that you relate so well." "There was once upon a time," said Paganel, "a son of the great Haroun-al-Raschid who was not happy. He accordingly consulted an old dervish, who told him that happiness was a very difficult thing to find in this world. 'However,' added he, 'I know an infallible way to procure you happiness.' 'What is it?' inquired the young prince. 'It is,' replied the dervish, 'to put on the shirt of a happy man.' Thereupon the prince embraced the old man, and set out in search of his talisman. He visited all the capitals of the earth; he tried the shirts of kings, emperors, princes, and nobles; but it was a useless task, he was no happier. Then he put on the shirts of artists, warriors, and merchants, but with no more success. He had thus traveled far, without finding happiness. At last, desperate from having tried so many shirts, he was returning very sadly one beautiful day to the palace of his father, when he spied in the field an honest laborer, who was joyously singing as he ploughed. 'Here is, at all events, a man who possesses happiness,' said he to himself, 'or happiness does not exist on earth.' He approached him. 'Good man,' said he, 'are you happy?' 'Yes,' replied the other. 'You wish for nothing?' 'No.' 'You would not change your lot for that of a king?' 'Never!' 'Well, sell me your shirt!' 'My shirt! I have none!'" [Illustration: They were agreed on this point, that it was necessary to have courage for every fortune, and be contented with a tree when one has neither palace nor cottage.] CHAPTER XXV. BETWEEN FIRE AND WATER. Jacques Paganel's story had a very great success. He was greatly applauded, but each retained his own opinion, and the geographer obtained the result common to most discussions,--of convincing nobody. However, they were agreed on this point, that it was necessary to have courage for every fortune, and be contented with a tree when one has neither palace nor cottage. During the course of this confabulation evening had come on. Only a good sleep could thoroughly refresh, after this eventful day. The inmates of the tree felt themselves not only fatigued by the sudden changes of the inundation, but especially overcome by the heat, which had been excessive. Their feathered companions had already set the example; the hilgueros, those nightingales of the Pampas, had ceased their melodious warblings, and all the birds had disappeared in the recesses of the foliage. The best plan was to imitate them. But before "retiring to their nest," as Paganel said, Glenarvan, Robert, and he climbed to the observatory, to examine for the last time the watery expanse. It was about nine o'clock. The sun had just set in the sparkling mists of the horizon, and all the western part of the firmament was bathed in a warm vapor. The constellations, usually so dazzling, seemed veiled in a soft haze. Still they could be distinguished, and Paganel pointed out to Robert, for Glenarvan's benefit, that zone where the stars are most brilliant. [Sidenote: PHILOSOPHY AND PONCHOS.] While the geographer was discoursing thus, the whole eastern horizon assumed a stormy aspect. A dense and dark band, clearly defined, gradually rose, dimming the light of the stars. This cloud of threatening appearance soon invaded almost the entire vault of the sky. Its motive power must have been inherent in itself, for there was not a breath of wind. Not a leaf stirred on the tree, not a ripple curled the surface of the waters. Even the air seemed to fail, as if some huge pneumatic machine had rarefied it. A strong electric current was perceptible in the atmosphere, and every creature felt it course along the nerves. Glenarvan, Paganel, and Robert were sensibly affected by these electric currents. "We shall have a storm," said Paganel. "You are not afraid of thunder?" asked Glenarvan of the boy. "Oh, no, my lord," replied Robert. "Well, so much the better; for the storm is now not far distant." "And it will be violent," continued Paganel, "so far as I can judge from the state of the sky." "It is not the storm that troubles me," said Glenarvan, "but the torrents of rain with which it will be accompanied. We shall be drenched to the skin again. Whatever you may say, Paganel, a nest cannot suffice a man, as you will soon learn to your cost." "Oh, yes, it can, with philosophy," briskly replied the geographer. "Philosophy does not prevent you from getting wet." "No, but it warms you." "Well, then," said Glenarvan, "let us join our friends and persuade them to envelop us with their philosophy and their ponchos as closely as possible, and especially to lay in a stock of patience, for we shall need it." So saying, he gave another look at the threatening sky. The mass of clouds now covered it entirely. A faint line of light towards the horizon was scarcely discernible in the dimness. The sombre appearance of the water had increased, and between the dark mass below and the clouds above there was scarcely a separation. At the same time all perception seemed dulled; and a leaden torpor rested upon both eyes and ears, while the silence was profound. "Let us go down," said Glenarvan; "the lightning will soon be here." His two companions and himself slid down the smooth branches, and were somewhat surprised to find themselves in a remarkable kind of twilight, which was produced by myriads of luminous objects that crossed each other and buzzed on the surface of the water. "Phosphorescences?" said Glenarvan. "No," replied Paganel, "but phosphorescent insects, real glow-worms,--living diamonds, and not expensive, of which the ladies of Buenos Ayres make magnificent ornaments for themselves." "What!" cried Robert, "are these things, that fly like sparks, insects?" "Yes, my boy." Robert caught one of the brilliant creatures. Paganel was right. It was a kind of large beetle, an inch in length, to which the Indians give the name of "tuco-tuco." This curious insect threw out flashes at two points situated in front of its sheath, and its light would have enabled one to read in the darkness. Paganel, on bringing it close to his watch, saw that it was ten o'clock. Glenarvan now joined the major and the three sailors, and gave them instructions for the night. A terrible storm was to be expected. After the first rollings of the thunder, the wind would doubtless break forth and the tree be violently shaken. It was, therefore, advisable for every one to tie himself firmly to the bed of branches that had been appropriated to him. If they could not avoid the torrents of the sky, they must at least guard against those of the earth, and not fall into the rapid current that broke against the trunk of the tree. They wished each other good night without much hope of passing one, and then each, getting into his aerial resting-place, wrapped himself in his poncho and waited for sleep. [Illustration: The incessant flashes assumed various forms. Some, darting perpendicularly towards the earth, were repeated five or six times in the same place; others spread in zigzag lines, and produced on the dark vault of the heavens astonishing jets of arborescent flame.] But the approach of a mighty tempest brings to the hearts of most sentient beings a vague anxiety of which the bravest cannot divest themselves. The occupants of the tree, agitated and fearful, could not close their eyes, and the first thunder-clap found them all awake. It took place about eleven o'clock, resembling a distant rumbling. Glenarvan climbed to the end of the branch, and peered out from the foliage. The dark firmament was fitfully illumined by vivid and brilliant flashes, which the waters brightly reflected, and which disclosed great rifts in the clouds. Glenarvan, after surveying the zenith and the horizon, returned to his couch. "What do you think, Glenarvan?" asked Paganel. "I think that the storm is beginning, and, if it continues, it will be terrible." "So much the better," replied the enthusiastic Paganel. "I like a fine spectacle, especially when I cannot avoid it. Only one thing would make me anxious, if anxiety served to avert danger," added he, "and that is, that the culminating point of this plain is the ombu upon which we are perched. A lightning-conductor would be very useful here, for this very tree among all those of the Pampas is the one that particularly attracts the lightning. And then, as you are aware, my friends, meteorologists advise us not to take refuge under trees during a storm." "Well," said the major, "that is timely advice." "It must be confessed, Paganel," replied Glenarvan, "that you choose a good time to tell us these encouraging things!" "Bah!" replied Paganel; "all times are good to receive information. Ah, it is beginning!" [Sidenote: AN EXTRAORDINARY STORM.] Violent thunder-claps interrupted this conversation, and their intensity increased till they reached the most deafening peals. They soon became sonorous, and made the atmosphere vibrate in rapid oscillations. The firmament was on fire, and during this commotion it was impossible to distinguish from what electric spark emanated the indefinitely-prolonged rumblings that reverberated throughout the abysses of the sky. The incessant flashes assumed various forms. Some, darting perpendicularly towards the earth, were repeated five or six times in the same place; others, separating into a thousand different branches, spread in zigzag lines and produced on the dark vault of the heavens astonishing jets of arborescent flame. Soon the sky, from east to north, was crossed by a phosphorescent band of intense brilliancy. This illumination gradually overspread the entire horizon, lighting up the clouds like a bonfire, and was reflected in the mirror-like waters, forming what seemed to be an immense circle of fire, of which the tree occupied the centre. Glenarvan and his companions watched this terrific spectacle in silence. Sheets of dazzling light glided towards them, and blinding flashes followed in rapid succession, now showing the calm countenance of the major, then the speculative face of Paganel or the energetic features of Glenarvan, and again the frightened look of Robert or the unconcerned expression of the sailors. The rain, however, did not fall as yet, nor had the wind risen. But soon the flood-gates of the heavens opened, and the rain came down in torrents, the drops, as they struck the surface of the water, rebounding in thousands of sparks illuminated by the incessant lightning. Did this rain predict the end of the storm? Were Glenarvan and his companions to be released with a few thorough drenchings? At the height of this struggle of the elements, suddenly there appeared at the end of the branch which extended horizontally, a flaming globe, of the size of a fist, and surrounded by a black smoke. This ball, after revolving a few moments, burst like a bombshell, and with a noise that was distinguishable in the midst of the general tumult. A sulphurous vapor filled the atmosphere. There was a moment of silence, and then Tom Austin was heard crying,-- "The tree is on fire!" He was right. In a moment the flame, as if it had been communicated to an immense piece of fireworks, spread along the west side of the tree. The dead limbs, the nests of dry grass, and finally the live wood itself, furnished material for the devouring element. The wind now rose and fanned the flames into fury. Glenarvan and his friends, speechless with terror, and venturing upon limbs that bent beneath their weight, hastily took refuge in the other, the eastern part of the tree. Meantime the boughs shriveled, crackled, and twisted in the fire like burning serpents. The glowing fragments fell into the rushing waters and floated away in the current, sending forth flashes of ruddy light. The flames at one moment would rise to a fearful height, to be lost in the aerial conflagration, and the next, beaten back by the furious hurricane, would envelop the tree like a robe of molten gold. Glenarvan, Robert, the major, Paganel, and the sailors, were terrified. A thick smoke was stifling them; an intolerable heat was scorching them. The fire was extending to the lower part of the tree on their side; nothing could stop or extinguish it; and they felt themselves irrevocably doomed to the torture of those victims who are confined within the burning sides of a sacrificial fire-basket. At last their situation was no longer tenable, and of two deaths they were forced to choose the least cruel. "To the water!" cried Glenarvan. [Illustration: In a few moments the gigantic water-spout struck the ombu, and enveloped it in its watery folds.] Wilson, whom the flames had reached, had already plunged into the current, when they heard him cry, in tones of the greatest terror,-- "Help! help!" Austin rushed towards him and assisted him to regain the trunk. "What is the matter?" "Caymans! caymans!" replied Wilson. And, in truth, the foot of the tree was seen to be surrounded by the most formidable monsters. Their scales glittered in broad plates of light, sharply defined by the conflagration. Their flat tails, their pointed heads, their protruding eyes, their jaws, extending back of their ears, all these characteristic signs were unmistakable. Paganel recognized the voracious alligators peculiar to America, and called caymans in Spanish countries. There were a dozen of them, beating the water with their powerful tails, and attacking the tree with their terrible teeth. At this sight the unfortunate travelers felt themselves lost indeed. A horrible death was in store for them,--to perish either by the flames or by the teeth of the alligators. There are circumstances in which man is powerless to struggle, and where a raging element can only be repulsed by another equally strong. Glenarvan, with a wild look, gazed at the fire and water leagued against him, not knowing what aid to implore of Heaven. The storm had now begun to abate; but it had developed in the air a great quantity of vapor, which the electric phenomena were about to set in violent commotion. To the south an enormous water-spout was gradually forming,--an inverted cone of mist, uniting the raging waters below to the stormy clouds above. It advanced revolving with frightful rapidity, collected at its centre a liquid column, and by a powerful attraction, caused by its gyratory motion, drew towards it all the surrounding currents of air. [Sidenote: A STRANGE BARK.] In a few moments the gigantic water-spout struck the ombu and enveloped it in its watery folds. The tree was shaken to its very base, so that Glenarvan might have thought that the alligators had attacked it with their powerful jaws and were uprooting it from the ground. His companions and he, clinging to one another, felt the mighty tree give way and fall, and saw its flaming branches plunge into the tumultuous waters with a frightful hiss. It was the work of a second. The water-spout had passed, to exert elsewhere its destructive violence, and pumping the waters of the plain as if it would exhaust them. The tree now, loosened from its moorings, floated onward under the combined impulses of wind and current. The alligators had fled, except one which crawled along the upturned roots and advanced with open jaws; but Mulready, seizing a large brand, struck the creature so powerful a blow that he broke its back. The vanquished animal sank in the eddies of the torrent, still lashing his formidable tail with terrible violence. Glenarvan and his companions, delivered from these voracious creatures, took refuge on the branches to leeward of the fire, while the tree, wrapped by the blast of the hurricane in glowing sheets of flame, floated on like a burning ship in the darkness of the night. CHAPTER XXVI. THE RETURN ON BOARD. For two hours the tree floated on the immense lake without reaching _terra firma_. The flames had gradually died out, and thus the principal danger of this terrible voyage had vanished. The current, still keeping its original direction, flowed from southwest to northeast; the darkness, though illumined now and then by flashes, had become profound, and Paganel sought in vain for his bearings. But the storm was abating, the large drops of rain gave place to light spray that was scattered by the wind, while the huge distended clouds were crossed by light bands. The tree advanced rapidly on the impetuous torrent, gliding with surprising swiftness, as if some powerful propelling means were inclosed within its trunk. There was as yet no certainty that they would not float on thus for many days. About three o'clock in the morning, however, the major observed that the roots now and then struck the bottom. Tom Austin, by means of a long branch, carefully sounded, and declared that the water was growing shallow. Twenty minutes later, a shock was felt, and the progress of the tree was checked. "Land! land!" cried Paganel, in ringing tones. The ends of the charred branches had struck against a hillock on the ground, and never were navigators more delighted to land. Already Robert and Wilson, having reached a firm plateau, were uttering shouts of joy, when a well-known whistle was heard. The sound of a horse's hoofs was heard upon the plain, and the tall form of the Indian emerged from the darkness. [Illustration: The sound of a horse's hoofs was heard upon the plain, and the tall form of the Indian emerged from the darkness.] "Thalcave!" cried Robert. "Thalcave!" repeated his companions, as with one voice. "Friends!" said the Patagonian, who had waited for them there, knowing that the current would carry them as it had carried him. At the same moment he raised Robert in his arms and clasped him to his breast. Glenarvan, the major, and the sailors, delighted to see their faithful guide again, shook his hands with the most earnest cordiality. The Patagonian then conducted them to an abandoned estancia. Here a good fire was burning, which revived them, and on the coals were roasting succulent slices of venison, to which they did ample justice. And when their refreshed minds began to reflect, they could scarcely believe that they had escaped so many perils,--the fire, the water, and the formidable alligators. Thalcave, in a few words, told his story to Paganel, and ascribed to his intrepid horse all the honor of having saved him. Paganel then endeavored to explain to him the new interpretation of the document, and the hopes it led them to entertain. Did the Indian understand the geographer's ingenious suppositions? It was very doubtful; but he saw his friends happy and very confident, and he desired nothing more. It may be easily believed that these courageous travelers, after their day of rest on the tree, needed no urging to resume their journey. At eight o'clock in the morning they were ready to start. They were too far south to procure means of transport, and were therefore obliged to travel on foot. The distance, however, was only forty miles, and Thaouka would not refuse to carry from time to time a tired pedestrian. In thirty-six hours they would reach the shores of the Atlantic. [Sidenote: IN THE DARK.] As soon as refreshed the guide and his companions left behind them the immense basin, still covered with the waters, and proceeded across elevated plains, on which, here and there, were seen groves planted by Europeans, meadows, and occasionally native trees. Thus the day passed. The next morning, fifteen miles before reaching the ocean, its proximity was perceptible. They hastened on in order to reach Lake Salado, on the shores of the Atlantic, the same day. They were beginning to feel fatigued, when they perceived sand-hills that hid the foaming waves, and soon the prolonged murmur of the rising tide struck upon their ears. "The ocean!" cried Paganel. "Yes, the ocean!" replied Thalcave. And these wanderers, whose strength had seemed almost about to fail, climbed the mounds with wonderful agility. But the darkness was profound, and their eyes wandered in vain over the gloomy expanse. They looked for the Duncan, but could not discern her. "She is there, at all events," said Glenarvan, "waiting for us." "We shall see her to-morrow," replied MacNabb. Tom Austin shouted seaward, but received no answer. The wind was very strong, and the sea tempestuous. The clouds were driving from the west, and the foaming crests of the waves broke over the beach in masses of spray. If the Duncan was at the appointed rendezvous, the lookout man could neither hear nor be heard. The coast afforded no shelter. There was no bay, no harbor, no cove; not even a creek. The beach consisted of long sand-banks that were lost in the sea, and the vicinity of which is more dangerous than that of the rocks in the face of wind and tide. These banks, in fact, increase the waves; the sea is peculiarly boisterous around them, and ships are sure to be lost if they strike on these bars in heavy storms. It was therefore very natural that the Duncan, considering this coast dangerous, and knowing it to be without a port of shelter, kept at a distance. Captain Mangles must have kept to the windward as far as possible. This was Tom Austin's opinion, and he declared that the Duncan was not less than five miles at sea. The major, accordingly, persuaded his impatient relative to be resigned, as there was no way of dissipating the thick darkness. And why weary their eyes in scanning the gloomy horizon? He established a kind of encampment in the shelter of the sand-hills; the remains of the provisions furnished them a final repast; and then each, following the major's example, hollowed out a comfortable bed in the sand, and, covering himself up to his chin, was soon wrapped in profound repose. Glenarvan watched alone. The wind continued strong, and the ocean still showed the effects of the recent storm. The tumultuous waves broke at the foot of the sand-banks with the noise of thunder. Glenarvan could not convince himself that the Duncan was so near him; but as for supposing that she had not arrived at her appointed rendezvous, it was impossible, for such a ship there were no delays. The storm had certainly been violent and its fury terrible on the vast expanse of the ocean, but the yacht was a good vessel and her captain an able seaman; she must, therefore, be at her destination. These reflections, however, did not pacify Glenarvan. When heart and reason are at variance, the latter is the weaker power. The lord of Malcolm Castle seemed to see in the darkness all those whom he loved, his dear Helena, Mary Grant, and the crew of the Duncan. He wandered along the barren coast which the waves covered with phosphorescent bubbles. He looked, he listened, and even thought that he saw a fitful light on the sea. "I am not mistaken," he soliloquized; "I saw a ship's light, the Duncan's. Ah! why cannot my eyes pierce the darkness?" [Illustration: Glenarvan watched alone. He could not convince himself that the Duncan was so near him; but as for supposing that she had not arrived at her appointed rendezvous, it was impossible, for such a ship there were no delays.] Then an idea occurred to him. Paganel called himself a nyctalops; he could see in the night. The geographer was sleeping like a mole in his bed, when a strong hand dragged him from his sandy couch. "Who is that?" cried he. "I." "Who?" "Glenarvan. Come, I need your eyes." "My eyes?" replied Paganel, rubbing them vigorously. "Yes, your eyes, to distinguish the Duncan in this darkness. Come." "And why my eyes?" said Paganel to himself, delighted, nevertheless, to be of service to Glenarvan. He rose, shaking his torpid limbs in the manner of one awakened from sleep, and followed his friend along the shore. Glenarvan requested him to survey the dark horizon to seaward. For several moments Paganel conscientiously devoted himself to this task. "Well, do you perceive nothing?" asked Glenarvan. "Nothing. Not even a cat could see two paces before her." "Look for a red or a green light, on the starboard or the larboard side." "I see neither a red nor a green light. All is darkness," replied Paganel, whose eyes were thereupon involuntarily closed. For half an hour he mechanically followed his impatient friend in absolute silence, with his head bowed upon his breast, sometimes raising it suddenly. He tottered along with uncertain steps, like those of a drunken man. At last Glenarvan, seeing that the geographer was in a state of somnambulism, took him by the arm, and, without waking him, led him back to his sand-hole, and comfortably deposited him therein. At break of day they were all started to their feet by the cry,-- [Sidenote: IMPATIENCE.] "The Duncan! the Duncan!" "Hurrah! hurrah!" replied Glenarvan's companions, rushing to the shore. The Duncan was indeed in sight. Five miles distant, the yacht was sailing under low pressure, her main-sails carefully reefed, while her smoke mingled with the mists of the morning. The sea was high, and a vessel of her tonnage could not approach the shore without danger. Glenarvan, provided with Paganel's telescope, watched the movements of the Duncan. Captain Mangles could not have perceived them, for he did not approach, but continued to coast along with only a reefed top-sail. At this moment Thalcave, having loaded his carbine heavily, fired it in the direction of the yacht. They gazed and listened. Three times the Indian's gun resounded, waking the echoes of the shore. At last a white smoke issued from the side of the yacht. "They see us!" cried Glenarvan. "It is the Duncan's cannon." A few moments after, a heavy report rang out on the air, and the Duncan, shifting her sail and putting on steam, was seen to be approaching the shore. By the aid of the glass they saw a boat leave the ship's side. "Lady Helena cannot come," said Tom Austin: "the sea is too rough." "Nor Captain Mangles," replied MacNabb: "he cannot leave his vessel." "My sister! my sister!" cried Robert, stretching his arms towards the yacht, which rolled heavily. "I hope I shall soon get on board!" exclaimed Glenarvan. "Patience, Edward! You will be there in two hours," replied MacNabb. Glenarvan now joined Thalcave, who, standing with folded arms alongside of Thaouka, was calmly gazing at the waves. Glenarvan took his hand, and, pointing to the yacht, said,-- "Come!" The Indian shook his head. "Come, my friend!" continued Glenarvan. "No," replied Thalcave, gently. "Here is Thaouka, and there are the Pampas!" he added, indicating with a sweep of his hand the vast expanse of the plains. It was clear that the Indian would never leave the prairies, where the bones of his fathers whitened. Glenarvan knew the strong attachment of these children of the desert to their native country. He therefore shook Thalcave's hand, and did not insist; not even when the Indian, smiling in his peculiar way, refused the price of his services, saying,-- "It was done out of friendship." His lordship, however, desired to give the brave Indian something which might at least serve as a souvenir of his European friends. But what had he left? His arms, his horses, everything had been lost in the inundation. His friends were no richer than himself. For some moments he was at a loss how to repay the disinterested generosity of the brave guide; but at last a happy idea occurred to him. He drew from his pocket-book a costly medallion inclosing an admirable portrait, one of Lawrence's master-pieces, and presented it to Thalcave. "My wife," said Glenarvan. Thalcave gazed with wonder at the portrait, and pronounced these simple words,-- "Good and beautiful!" Then Robert, Paganel, the major, Tom Austin, and the two sailors bade an affectionate adieu to the noble Patagonian, who clasped each one in succession to his broad breast. All were sincerely sorry at parting with so courageous and devoted a friend. Paganel forced him to accept a map of South America and the two oceans, which the Indian had frequently examined with interest. It was the geographer's most precious possession. As for Robert, he had nothing to give but caresses, which he freely lavished upon his deliverer and upon Thaouka. [Illustration: They pushed off, and the boat was rapidly borne from the shore by the ebbing tide. For a long time the motionless outline of the Indian was seen through the foam of the waves.] At that instant the Duncan's boat approached, and, gliding into the narrow channel between the sand-banks, grounded on the beach. "My wife?" asked Glenarvan. "My sister?" cried Robert. "Lady Helena and Miss Grant await you on board," replied the cockswain. "But we have not a moment to lose, my lord, for the tide is beginning to ebb." The last acknowledgments were given, and Thalcave accompanied his friends to the boat. Just as Robert was about to embark, the Indian took him in his arms and gazed at him tenderly. "Now go," said he; "you are a man!" "Adieu, my friend, adieu!" cried Glenarvan. "Shall we ever see each other again?" asked Paganel. "Who knows?" replied Thalcave, raising his arms towards heaven. They pushed off, and the boat was rapidly borne from the shore by the ebbing tide. For a long time the motionless outline of the Indian was seen through the foam of the waves. Then his tall form grew indistinct, and soon became invisible. An hour afterwards they reached the Duncan. Robert was the first to spring upon the deck, where he threw himself upon his sister's neck, while the crew of the yacht filled the air with their joyous shouts. Thus had our travelers accomplished the journey across South America on a rigorously straight line. Neither mountains nor rivers had turned them aside from their course; and, although they were not forced to struggle against the evil designs of men, the relentless fury of the elements had often tested their generous intrepidity to its utmost powers of endurance. CHAPTER XXVII. A NEW DESTINATION. The first moments were consecrated to the happiness of meeting. Lord Glenarvan did not wish the joy in the hearts of his friends to be chilled by tidings of their want of success. His first words, therefore, were,-- "Courage, my friends, courage! Captain Grant is not with us, but we are sure to find him." It needed only such an assurance to restore hope to the passengers of the Duncan. Lady Helena and Mary Grant, while the boat was approaching the ship, had experienced all the anguish of suspense. From the deck they endeavored to count those who were returning. At one time the young girl would despair; at another she would think she saw her father. Her heart beat quickly; she could not speak; she could scarcely stand. Lady Helena supported her, while Captain Mangles stood beside her in silence. His keen eyes, accustomed to distinguish distant objects, could not discern the captain. "He is there! he is coming! my father!" murmured the young girl. But as the boat gradually drew near, the illusion vanished. Not only Lady Helena and the captain, but Mary Grant, had now lost all hope. It was, therefore, time for Glenarvan to utter his assuring words. [Sidenote: "BREAKFAST!"] After the first embraces, all were informed of the principal incidents of the journey; and, first of all, Glenarvan made known the new interpretation of the document, due to the sagacity of Jacques Paganel. He also praised Robert, of whom his sister had a right to be proud. His courage, his devotion, and the dangers that he had overcome, were conspicuously set forth by his noble friend, so that the boy would not have known where to hide himself, if his sister's arms had not afforded him a sure refuge. [Illustration: Lady Helena and Mary Grant, while the boat was approaching the ship, had experienced all the anguish of suspense. From the deck they endeavored to count those who were returning.] "You need not blush, Robert," said Captain Mangles; "you have behaved like the worthy son of Captain Grant." He stretched out his arms towards Mary's brother, and pressed his lips to the boy's cheeks, which were still wet with tears. They then spoke of the generous Thalcave. Lady Helena regretted that she could not have shaken hands with the brave Indian. MacNabb, after the first outbursts of enthusiasm, repaired to his cabin to shave himself. As for Paganel, he flitted hither and thither, like a bee, extracting the honey of compliments and smiles. He wished to embrace all on board the Duncan, and, beginning with Lady Helena and Mary Grant, ended with Mr. Olbinett, the steward, who could not better recognize such politeness than by announcing breakfast. "Breakfast!" cried Paganel. "Yes, Mr. Paganel," replied Olbinett. "A real breakfast, on a real table, with table-cloth and napkins?" "Certainly." "And shall we not eat hard eggs, or ostrich steaks?" "Oh, Mr. Paganel!" replied the worthy steward, greatly embarrassed. "I did not mean to offend you, my friend," said the geographer; "but for a month our food has been of that sort, and we have dined, not at a table, but stretched on the ground, except when we were astride of the trees. This breakfast that you have just announced seemed to me, therefore, like a dream, a fiction, a chimera." "Well, we will test its reality, Monsieur Paganel," replied Lady Helena, who could not help laughing. "Accept my arm," said the gallant geographer. "Has your lordship any orders to give?" inquired Captain Mangles. "After breakfast, my dear fellow," replied Glenarvan, "we will discuss in council the programme of the new expedition." The passengers and the young captain then descended to the cabin. Orders were given to the engineer to keep up steam, that they might start at the first signal. The major and the travelers, after a rapid toilette, seated themselves at the table. Ample justice was done to Mr. Olbinett's repast, which was declared excellent and even superior to the splendid banquets of the Pampas. Paganel called twice for every dish, "through absent-mindedness," as he said. This unfortunate word led Lady Helena to inquire if the amiable Frenchman had occasionally shown his habitual failing. The major and Lord Glenarvan looked at each other with a smile. As for Paganel, he laughed heartily, and promised "upon his honor" not to commit a single blunder during the entire voyage. He then in a very comical way told the story of his mistake in the study of Spanish. "After all," he added, in conclusion, "misfortunes are sometimes beneficial, and I do not regret my error." "And why, my worthy friend?" asked the major. "Because I not only know Spanish, but Portuguese also. I speak two languages instead of one." "By my faith, I should not have thought of that," replied MacNabb. "My compliments, Paganel, my sincere compliments!" [Sidenote: TABLE-TALK IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC.] Paganel was applauded, but did not lose a single mouthful. He did not, however, notice one peculiarity observed by Glenarvan, and that was the young captain's attentions to his neighbor, Mary Grant. A slight sign from Lady Helena to her husband told him how matters stood. He gazed at the two young people with affectionate sympathy, and finally addressed the captain, but upon a different subject. "How did you succeed with your voyage, captain?" he inquired. "Excellently," replied the captain; "only I must inform your lordship that we did not return by way of the Strait of Magellan." "What!" cried Paganel, "you doubled Cape Horn, and I was not there!" "Hang yourself!" said the major. "Selfish fellow! you give me this advice in order that you may share my rope!" retorted the geographer. "Well, my dear Paganel," added Glenarvan, "unless we are endowed with ubiquity, we cannot be everywhere. Since you crossed the Pampas, you could not at the same time double Cape Horn." "Nevertheless, I am sorry," replied the geographer. Captain Mangles now told the story of his voyage, and was congratulated by Glenarvan, who, addressing Mary Grant, said,-- "My dear young lady, I see that Captain John pays his homage to your noble qualities, and I am happy to find that you are not displeased with his ship." "Oh, how could I be?" replied Mary, gazing at Lady Helena, and perhaps also at the young captain. "My sister loves you, Mr. Captain," cried Robert, "and I do too." "And I return your love, my dear boy," replied Captain Mangles, a little confused by Robert's words, which also brought a slight blush to the face of the young girl. Then, changing the conversation to a less embarrassing subject, the captain added,-- "Since I have related the Duncan's voyage, will not your lordship give us a few particulars of your travels, and the exploits of our young hero?" No recital could have been more agreeable to Lady Helena and Miss Grant, and Glenarvan hastened to satisfy their curiosity. He told, word for word, all about their journey from ocean to ocean. The passage of the Andes, the earthquake, Robert's disappearance, his capture by the condor, Thalcave's fortunate shot, the adventure with the wolves, the boy's devotion, the meeting with Sergeant Manuel, the inundation, their refuge in the tree, the lightning, the fire, the alligators, the water-spout, the night on the shores of the Atlantic, all these incidents, cheerful or serious, excited alternately the joy and terror of his hearers. Many a circumstance was related that brought Robert the caresses of his sister and Lady Helena. Never was boy more highly praised, or by more enthusiastic friends. "Now, my friends," remarked Lord Glenarvan, when he had finished his recital, "let us think of the present. Let us return to the subject of Captain Grant." When breakfast was over, the party repaired to Lady Helena's state-room, and, taking seats around a table loaded with maps and charts, resumed the conversation. Glenarvan explained that the shipwreck had not taken place on the shores either of the Pacific or the Atlantic, and that, consequently, the document had been wrongly interpreted so far as Patagonia was concerned; that Paganel, by a sudden inspiration, had discovered the mistake and proved that they had been following a false trail. The geographer was accordingly asked to explain the French document, which he did to the satisfaction of every one. When he had finished his demonstration, Glenarvan announced that the Duncan would immediately set sail for Australia. The major, however, before the order was given, asked permission to make a single remark. "Speak, major," said Glenarvan. "My object," said MacNabb, "is not to invalidate the arguments of my friend Paganel, still less to refute them. I consider them rational, sagacious, and worthy of our whole attention. But I desire to submit them to a final examination, that their validity may be incontestable." [Illustration: "My object," said MacNabb, "is not to invalidate the arguments of my friend Paganel, still less to refute them."] No one knew what the prudent MacNabb meant, and his hearers listened with some anxiety. "Go on, major," said Paganel: "I am ready to answer all your questions." "Nothing can be simpler," said the major. "Five months ago, in the Frith of Clyde, when we studied the three documents, their interpretation seemed clear to us. No place but the western coast of Patagonia could, we thought, have been the scene of the shipwreck. We had not even the shadow of a doubt on the subject." "Very true," added Glenarvan. "Afterwards," resumed the major, "when Paganel, in a moment of providential absent-mindedness, embarked on board our vessel, the documents were submitted to him, and he unhesitatingly sanctioned our search upon the American coast." "You are right," observed the geographer. "And, nevertheless, we are mistaken," said the major. "Yes, we are mistaken," repeated Paganel; "but to be mistaken is only to be human, while it is the part of a madman to persist in his error." "Wait, Paganel," continued the major; "do not get excited. I do not mean that our search ought to be prolonged in America." "What do you ask, then?" inquired Glenarvan. "Simply the acknowledgment that Australia now seems to be the scene of the Britannia's shipwreck as much as South America did before." "Granted," replied Paganel. "Who knows, then," resumed the major, "whether, after Australia, another country may not offer us the same probabilities, and whether, when this new search proves vain, it may not seem evident that we ought to have searched elsewhere?" [Sidenote: FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.] Glenarvan and Paganel glanced at each other. The major's remarks were strictly correct. "I desire, therefore," added MacNabb, "that a final test be made before we start for Australia. Here are the documents and maps. Let us examine successively all points that the thirty-seventh parallel crosses, and see if there is not some other country to which the document has as precise a reference." "Nothing is easier," replied Paganel. The map was placed before Lady Helena, and all showed themselves ready to follow Paganel's demonstration. After carefully examining the documents, it was unanimously agreed that Paganel's interpretation was the correct one. "I leave you, therefore, my friends," said he, in conclusion, "to decide whether all the probabilities are not in favor of the Australian continent." "Evidently," replied the passengers and the captain with unanimity. "Captain," said Glenarvan, "have you sufficient provisions and coal?" "Yes, my lord, I procured ample supplies at Talcahuana, and, besides, we can lay in a fresh stock of fuel at Cape Town." "One more remark," said the major. "A thousand, if you please!" "Whatever may be the guarantees for success in Australia, will it not be well to call for a day or two, in passing, at the islets of Tristan d'Acunha and Amsterdam? They are situated so near our strict line of search, that it is worth our while to ascertain if there be on them any trace of the shipwreck of the Britannia." "The unbeliever!" said Paganel. "I do not want to have to return to them, monsieur, if Australia does not after all realize our newly-conceived expectations." "The precaution is not a bad one," said Glenarvan. [Illustration: At sunrise they saw the conical peak of Tristan, seemingly separated from all the rest of the rocky group.] [Illustration: A few hours of their united toil resulted in the death of a large number of seals who were "caught napping."] "And I do not wish to dissuade you; quite the contrary," replied the geographer. "Well, then, we will adopt it, and start forthwith," said Lord Glenarvan. "Immediately, my lord," replied the captain, as he went on deck, while Robert and Mary Grant uttered the liveliest expressions of gratitude; and the Duncan, leaving the American coast and heading to the east, was soon swiftly ploughing the waves of the Atlantic. CHAPTER XXVIII. TRISTAN D'ACUNHA AND THE ISLE OF AMSTERDAM. [Sidenote: LOOKING ALOFT.] The Duncan now had before her a broad stretch of ocean but little traversed by navigators. Between the shores of South America and the little speck in the ocean known by the name of Tristan d'Acunha, there was no probability of her meeting with any strange sail; and under some circumstances, or in some company, the days might have been monotonous and the hours might have hung wearily. But so ardent was the desire for success, and so accomplished, yet varied, were the characters of those who composed the little assembly, that the voyage on the South Atlantic, though devoid of striking incident, was by no means wanting in interest. Much of the time was spent on deck, where the ladies' cabins were now located, Mary Grant especially training her hand, head, and heart in feeling, thought, and action. The geographer set to work on a composition entitled "Travels of a Geographer on the Argentine Pampas;" but many a blank page did he leave. Tho Scottish peer (when tired of examining for the thousandth time all that belonged to his yacht) could look at the books and documents which he had brought with him, intending to peruse them carefully. And as to the major he was never in company and never out of company; his cigar insured, nothing else was wanted. Ever and anon many miles of the ocean would be covered by masses of sea-weed; these different species of algæ would afford subject for research; specimens must be preserved, authorities must be consulted, and as one result at least all would become wiser. Then a discussion would ensue on some geographical problem, and maps that were not attainable were of course appealed to by each disputant, though the subject in question was often of very trivial moment. It was in the midst of a debate of this kind, during the evening, that a sailor cried out,-- "Land ahead!" "In what direction?" asked Paganel. "To windward," replied the sailor. The landsmen's eyes were strained, but to no purpose. The geographer's telescope was brought into requisition, but with no avail. "I do not see the land," said its owner. "Look into the clouds," said the captain. "Ah!" replied Paganel, struck with the idea, and shortly with the reality also; for there was the barren mountain-top of Tristan d'Acunha. "Then," said he, "if I remember aright, we are eighty miles from it. Is not that the distance from which this mountain is visible?" "Exactly so," replied the captain. A few hours brought them much nearer to the group of high and steep rocks, and at sunrise they saw the conical peak of Tristan, seemingly separated from all the rest of the rocky group, and reflecting the glory of the blue heavens and of the rising orb on the placid sea at its base. There are three islets in this group,--Tristan d'Acunha, Inaccessible, and Rossignol; but it was only at the first [Illustration: Our friends found a few voluntary exiles on the former island, who, by means of seal-fishing, eke out a scanty existence in this out-of-the-way spot.] [Illustration: Inasmuch as this was sufficient to cook fish, Paganel decided that it was not necessary for him to bathe here "geographically."] of these that the Duncan called. Inquiry was made of the authorities (for these islets are governed by a British official from the Cape of Good Hope) if there were any tidings of the Britannia. But nothing was known of such a ship; they were told of the shipwrecks which had occurred, but there was nothing that afforded a clue to that which they sought. They spent some hours in examination of the fauna and flora, which were not very extensive. They saw and were seen by the sparse population that subsist here, and in the afternoon of the same day the yacht left the islands and islanders so rarely visited. Whilst the passengers had been thus engaged, Lord Glenarvan had allowed his crew to employ their time advantageously to themselves in capturing some of the seals which are so plentiful in these latitudes. A few hours of their united toil resulted in the death of a large number of seals who were "caught napping," and in the stowing away, for the profit of the crew when they should reach the Australian market, several barrels of the oil obtained from their carcases. Still onward on the same parallel lay the course of the Duncan, towards the Isles of Amsterdam and St. Paul; and the same subjects of conversation, study, and speculation engaged them all, until, one morning, they espied the first mentioned island, far ahead; and as they drew nearer, a peak rose clearly before their vision which strongly reminded them of the Peak of Teneriffe they had beheld a few months before. [Sidenote: WARM SPRINGS AND WARM TALK.] The Isle of Amsterdam or St. Peter, and the Isle of St. Paul, have been visited by very few, and but little is known of them. The latter is uninhabited; but our friends found a few voluntary exiles on the former island, who, by means of seal-fishing, eke out a scanty existence in this out-of-the-way spot. Here again inquiry was made, but in vain, for any information of the Britannia, her voyage, or her shipwreck. Neither on the Isle of Amsterdam nor on that of St. Paul, which the whalers and seal-fishers sometimes visit, had there been any trace of the catastrophe. Desolate as these lonely islands appeared to our travelers, they still were not devoid of objects of interest. They were meagre enough in vegetation and in animal life; but there were warm springs which well repaid a visit. Captain Mangles found the temperature of their waters to be 166° Fahrenheit; and, inasmuch as this was sufficient to cook fish, Paganel decided that it was not necessary for him to bathe here "geographically." When they resumed their course, though many miles were before them, there was a growing sense of anticipation; they were not to pause again until the "Australian continent" was reached; and more and more did the conversation and discussions tend towards this continent as their subject. On one occasion so certain was Paganel as to the ease with which they would be able to pursue their search, when they arrived, that he asserted that more than fifty geographers had already made the course clear for them. "What! fifty, do you say?" asked the major, with an air of doubt. "Yes, MacNabb, decidedly," said the geographer, piqued at the hesitancy to believe him. "Impossible!" replied the major. "Not at all; and if you doubt my veracity, I will cite their names." "Ah!" said the major, quietly, "you clever people stick at nothing." "Major," said Paganel, "will you wager your rifle against my telescope that I cannot name at least fifty Australian explorers?" "Of course, Paganel, if you like," replied MacNabb, seeing that he could not now recede from his position without incurring the ridicule of the company. [Illustration: "Major," said Paganel, "will you wager your rifle against my telescope that I cannot name at least fifty Australian explorers?"] [Illustration: "Master Robert shall count for us." And forthwith the learned geographer opened his budget, and poured forth the history of the discovery of Australia.] "Well, then," said Paganel to Lady Helena and Miss Grant, "come and be umpires, and Master Robert shall count for us." And forthwith the learned geographer opened his budget, and poured forth the history of the discovery of Australia, with the names of its discoverers and the dates of their explorations, as fluently as though his sole calling in life was to be professor of Australian history. Rapidly he mentioned the first twenty who found or traversed the Austral shores; as rapidly did the names of the second score flow from his lips; and after the prescribed fifty had been enumerated, he kept on as though his list were inexhaustible. "Enough, enough, Monsieur Paganel!" said Lady Helena. "You have shown that there is nothing, great or small, about Australia, of which you are ignorant." "Nay, madam," said the geographer, with a bow. Then, with a peculiar expression, he smiled as he said to the major, "We will talk about the rifle at another time." CHAPTER XXIX. THE STORM ON THE INDIAN OCEAN. Two days after this conversation, Captain Mangles took an observation, and the passengers saw, to their great satisfaction, upon consulting the map, that they were in the vicinity of Cape Bernouilli, which they might expect to reach in four days. The west wind had hitherto favored the progress of the yacht, but for several days it had shown a tendency to fail, and now there was a perfect calm. The sails flapped idly against the masts, and had it not been for her powerful screw, the Duncan would have been becalmed on the ocean. [Sidenote: FOREBODINGS OF DISASTER.] This state of things might be prolonged indefinitely. At evening Glenarvan consulted the captain on the subject. The latter, whose supply of coal was rapidly diminishing, appeared much disturbed at the subsidence of the wind. He had covered his ship with canvas, and set his studding- and main-sails, that he might take advantage of the least breeze; but, in nautical language, there was not enough wind "to fill a hat." "At all events," said Glenarvan, "we need not complain. It is better to be without wind than to have a contrary one." "Your lordship is right," replied Captain Mangles; "but I dread some sudden change in the weather. We are now in the neighborhood of the trade-winds, which, from October to April, blow from the northeast, and our progress will, therefore, be very much retarded." "But what can we do, captain? If this misfortune occurs, we must submit to it. It will only be a delay, after all." "Probably, if a storm does not come upon us too." "Do you fear bad weather?" asked Glenarvan, looking at the sky, which, however, was cloudless. "Yes," replied the captain. "I tell your lordship, but would conceal my apprehensions from Lady Helena and Miss Grant." "You act wisely. What do you apprehend?" "There are signs of a great storm. Do not trust the appearance of the sky, my lord; nothing is more deceptive. For two days the barometer has fallen to an alarming degree. This is a warning that I cannot disregard. I particularly fear the storms of the South Seas, for I have been already exposed to them." "John," replied Glenarvan, "the Duncan is a stout vessel, and her captain a skillful seaman. Let the storm come; we will take care of ourselves." Captain Mangles, while giving expression to his fears, was by no means forgetful of his duty as a sailor. The steady fall of the barometer caused him to take every measure of precaution. The sky, as yet, gave no indication of the approaching tempest; but the warnings of his infallible instrument were not to be disregarded. The young captain accordingly remained on deck all night. About eleven o'clock the sky grew threatening towards the south. All hands were immediately called on deck, to take in the sails. At midnight the wind freshened. The creaking of the masts, the rattling of the rigging, and the groaning of bulkheads informed the passengers of the state of affairs. Paganel, Glenarvan, the major, and Robert came on deck to render assistance if it should be needed. Over the sky, that they had left clear and studded with stars, now rolled thick clouds broken by light bands and spotted like the skin of a leopard. "Has the storm broken upon us?" asked Glenarvan. "Not yet, but it will presently," replied the captain. At that moment he gave the order to reef the top-sail. The sailors sprang into the windward rattlings, and with difficulty accomplished their task. Captain Mangles wished to keep on as much sail as possible, to support the yacht and moderate her rolling. After these precautions had been taken, he told the mate and the boatswain to prepare for the assault of the tempest, which could not be long in breaking forth. Still, like an officer at the storming of a breach, he did not leave the point of observation, but from the upper deck endeavored to draw from the stormy sky its secrets. [Sidenote: AN ADDED CALAMITY.] It was now one o'clock in the morning. Lady Helena and Miss Grant, aroused by the unusual bustle, ventured to come on deck. The wind was sharply whistling through the cordage, which, like the strings of a musical instrument, resounded as if some mighty bow had caused their rapid vibrations; the pulleys clashed against each other; the ropes creaked with a sharp sound in their rough sockets; the sails cracked like cannon, and vast waves rolled up to assail the yacht, as it lightly danced on their foaming crests. When the captain perceived the ladies, he approached and besought them to return to the cabin. Several waves had already been shipped, and the deck might be swept at any moment. The din of the elements was now so piercing that Lady Helena could scarcely hear the young captain. "Is there any danger?" she managed to ask him during a momentary lull in the storm. "No, madam," replied he; "but neither you nor Miss Mary can remain on deck." The ladies did not oppose an order that seemed more like an entreaty, and returned to the cabin just as a wave, rolling over the stern, shook the compass-lights in their sockets. The violence of the wind redoubled; the masts bent under the pressure of sail, and the yacht seemed to rise on the billows. "Brail up the main-sail!" cried the captain; "haul in the top-sails and jibs!" The sailors sprang to their places; the halyards were loosened, the brails drawn down, the jibs taken in with a noise that rose above the storm, and the Duncan, whose smoke-stack belched forth torrents of black smoke, rolled heavily in the sea. Glenarvan, the major, Paganel, and Robert gazed with admiration and terror at this struggle with the waves. They clung tightly to the rigging, unable to exchange a word, and watched the flocks of stormy petrels, those melancholy birds of the storm, as they sported in the raging winds. At that moment a piercing sound was heard above the roar of the hurricane. The steam was rapidly escaping, not through the escape-valve, but through the pipes of the boiler. The alarm-whistle sounded with unusual shrillness; the yacht gave a terrible lurch, and Wilson, who was at the helm, was overthrown by an unexpected blow of the wheel. The vessel was in the trough of the sea, and no longer manageable. "What is the matter?" cried Captain Mangles, rushing to the stern. "The ship is careening!" replied Austin. "Is the rudder unhinged?" "To the engine! to the engine!" cried the engineer. The captain rushed down the ladder. A cloud of steam filled the engine-room; the pistons were motionless in their cylinders, and the cranks gave no movement to the shaft. The engineer, seeing that all efforts were useless, and fearing for his boilers, had let out the steam through the escape-valve. "What has happened?" asked the captain. "The screw is either bent or entangled," replied the engineer; "it will not work." "Is it impossible to free it?" "Impossible, at present." To attempt to repair the accident at that moment was out of the question. The screw would not move, and the steam, being no longer effective, had escaped through the valves. The captain was, therefore, forced to rely on his sails, and seek the aid of the wind, which had been hitherto his most dangerous enemy. He came on deck, and, briefly informing Glenarvan of the situation, begged him to return to the cabin with the others; but the latter wished to remain. "No, my lord," replied Captain Mangles, in a firm tone: "I must be alone here with my crew. Go! The ship may be in danger, and the waves would drench you unmercifully." "But we may be of use----" "Go, go, my lord; you must! There are times when I am master on board. Retire, as I wish!" [Sidenote: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED.] For John Mangles to express himself so authoritatively, the situation must have been critical. Glenarvan understood that it was his duty to obey. He therefore left the deck, followed by his three companions, and joined the ladies in the cabin, who were anxiously awaiting the result of this struggle with the elements. "My brave John is an energetic man," remarked Glenarvan as he entered. Meantime Captain Mangles lost no time in extricating the ship from her perilous situation. He resolved to keep towards the Cape, that he might deviate as little as possible from his prescribed course. It was, therefore, necessary to brace the sails obliquely to the wind. The top-sail was reefed, a kind of fore-sail rigged on the main-stay, and the helm crowded hard aport. The yacht, which was a stanch and fleet vessel, started like a spirited horse that feels the spur, and proudly breasted the angry billows. The rest of the night was passed in this situation. They hoped that the tempest would abate by break of day. Vain hope! At eight o'clock in the morning it was still blowing hard, and the wind soon became a hurricane. The captain said nothing, but he trembled for his vessel and those whom she carried. The Duncan now and then gave a fearful lurch; her stanchions cracked, and sometimes the yards of the mainmast struck the crests of the waves. At one moment the crew thought the yacht would not rise again. Already the sailors, hatchet in hand, were rushing to cut away the fore-shrouds, when they were violently torn from their fastenings by the blast. The ship righted herself, but, without support on the waves, she was tossed about so terribly that the masts threatened to break at their very foundations. She could not long endure such rolling; she was growing weak, and soon her shattered sides and opening seams must give way for the water. [Illustration: Then, impelled by the hurricane, the billows outran her; they leaped over the taffrail, and the whole deck was swept with tremendous violence.] [Sidenote: NEARING THE END.] Captain Mangles had but one resource,--to rig a storm-jib. He succeeded after several hours' labor, but it was not until three o'clock in the afternoon that the jib was hauled to the main-stay and set to the wind. With this piece of canvas the Duncan flew before the wind with inconceivable rapidity. It was necessary to keep up the greatest possible speed, for upon this alone depended her safety. Sometimes, outstripping the waves, she cut them with her slender prow and plunged beneath them, like an enormous sea-monster, while the water swept her deck from stem to stern. At other times her swiftness barely equaled that of the surges, her rudder lost all power, and she gave terrific lurches that threatened to capsize her. Then, impelled by the hurricane, the billows outran her; they leaped over the taffrail, and the whole deck was swept with tremendous violence. The situation was indeed alarming. The captain would not leave his post for an instant. He was tortured by fears that his impassive face would not betray, and persistently sought to penetrate with his gaze the gathering gloom. And he had good cause for fear. The Duncan, driven out of her course, was running towards the Australian coast with a swiftness that nothing could arrest. He felt, too, as if by instinct, that a strong current was drawing him along. At every moment he feared the shock of a reef upon which the yacht would be dashed into a thousand pieces, and he calculated that the shore was not more than a dozen miles to leeward. Finally he went in search of Lord Glenarvan, consulted with him in private, explained their actual situation, viewed it with the coolness of a sailor who is ready for any emergency, and ended by saying that he should be obliged perhaps to run the Duncan ashore. "To save those she carries, if possible, my lord," he added. "Very well, captain," replied Glenarvan. "And Lady Helena and Miss Grant?" "I will inform them only at the last moment, when all hope is gone of keeping at sea. You will tell me." "I will, my lord." Glenarvan returned to the ladies, who, without knowing all the danger, felt it to be imminent. They displayed, however, a noble courage, equal at least to that of their companions. Paganel gave himself up to the most unreasonable theories concerning the direction of atmospheric currents, while the major awaited the end with the indifference of a Mussulman. About eleven o'clock the hurricane seemed to moderate a little, the heavy mists were gradually dissipated, and through the openings the captain could see a low land at least six miles to leeward. He steered directly for it. Huge waves rolled to a prodigious height, and he knew that they must have a firm point of support to reach such an elevation. "There are sand-bars here," said he to Tom Austin. "That is my opinion," replied the mate. "We are in the hands of God," continued the captain. "If He does not himself guide the Duncan over the bar, we are lost." "It is high tide now, captain; perhaps we may do it." "But see the fury of those waves! What ship could resist them? God help us, my friend!" Meantime the Duncan dashed towards the shore with terrible swiftness. Soon she was only two miles from the sand-bars. The mists still continued to conceal the land. Nevertheless Captain Mangles thought he perceived, beyond this foaming barrier, a tranquil haven, where the Duncan would be in comparative safety. But how to reach it? He called the passengers on deck, for he did not wish, when the hour of shipwreck had come, that they should be confined in the cabin. Glenarvan and his companions gazed at the awful sea. Mary Grant grew pale. "John," said Glenarvan in a low tone to the young captain, "I will try to save my wife, or will perish with her. Do you take charge of Miss Grant." [Sidenote: OILY INFLUENCES.] "Yes, your lordship," was the prompt reply. The Duncan was now only a few cable-lengths from the sand-bars. As it was high tide, there would doubtless have been sufficient water to enable the yacht to cross these dangerous shoals; but the enormous waves upon which she rose and fell would infallibly have wrecked her. Was there then any means of allaying these billows, of calming this tumultuous sea? A sudden idea occurred to the captain. "The oil!" cried he; "pour on oil, men, pour on oil!" These words were quickly understood by all the crew. They were about to employ a method that sometimes succeeds. The fury of the sea can often be appeased by covering it with a sheet of oil, which floats on the surface and destroys the shock of the waters. The effect is instantaneous, but transient. As soon as a ship has crossed this treacherous sea, it redoubles its fury; and woe to those who would venture to follow. The barrels containing the supply of seal-oil were hoisted into the forecastle by the crew, to whom the danger gave new strength. Here they were stove in with a blow of the hatchet, and suspended over the starboard rattlings. "Hold on!" cried the captain, waiting for the favorable moment. In a few seconds the yacht reached the entrance to the pass, which was barred by a terrible line of foam. "Let go!" cried the young captain. The barrels were inverted, and from their sides streamed floods of oil. Immediately the unctuous liquid leveled the foaming surface of the sea, and the Duncan sailed on calm waters, and was soon in a quiet harbor beyond the terrible sand-bars; and then the ocean, released from its fetters, bounded after its escaped prey with indescribable fury. [Illustration: "Let go!" cried the young captain. The barrels were inverted, and from their sides streamed floods of oil.] CHAPTER XXX. A HOSPITABLE COLONIST. The captain's first care was to secure anchorage. He moored the vessel in five fathoms of water. The bottom was good, a hard gravel, affording an excellent hold. There was no danger of drifting, or of stranding at low tide. The Duncan, after so many hours of peril, was now in a sort of creek sheltered by a high promontory from the fury of the wind. Lord Glenarvan shook the hand of the young captain, saying,-- "Thanks, John!" And Captain Mangles felt himself fully rewarded by these simple words. Glenarvan kept to himself the secret of his anguish, and neither Lady Helena, Mary Grant, nor Robert suspected the magnitude of the perils they had just escaped. One important point remained to be settled. On what part of the coast had the Duncan been cast by the storm? How could she regain her prescribed course? How far were they from Cape Bernouilli? Such were the first questions addressed to the captain, who at once took his bearings and noted his observations on the map. The Duncan had not deviated very far from her route. She was at Cape Catastrophe, on the southern coast of Australia, not three hundred miles from Cape Bernouilli. But could the Duncan's injuries be repaired? This was the question to decide. The captain wished to know the extent of the damage. It was discovered, by diving, that a flange of the screw was bent and came in contact with the stern-post. Hence it was impossible for the screw to rotate. This injury was considered serious enough to necessitate going into dry-dock, which of course could not be done in their present locality. Glenarvan and the captain, after mature reflection, resolved that the Duncan should follow the western shore, seeking traces of the Britannia, should stop at Cape Bernouilli, where further information could be obtained, and then continue southward to Melbourne, where her injuries could be repaired; and, as soon as this was done, that she should cruise along the eastern shores to finish the search. This arrangement was approved, and Captain Mangles resolved to take advantage of the first favorable wind. He did not have to wait long. Towards evening the hurricane had entirely subsided, and a moderate breeze was blowing from the southwest. Preparations were made for getting under way; new sails were set, and at four o'clock in the morning the sailors heaved at the capstan, the anchor was weighed, and the Duncan, with all sails set, cruised close to windward along the coast. They arrived at Cape Bernouilli without finding the least trace of the lost vessel. But this failure proved nothing. Indeed, during the two years since the shipwreck, the sea might have scattered or destroyed the fragments of the brig. Besides, the natives, who scent shipwrecks as a vulture does a corpse, might have carried away every vestige of it. Harry Grant and his two companions, therefore, without doubt, had been taken prisoners the moment the waves cast them ashore, and been carried into the interior of the country. [Sidenote: HOPING AGAINST HOPE.] But here one of Paganel's ingenious suppositions failed. So long as they were in the Argentine territory, the geographer could rightly maintain that the latitude of the document referred to the place of captivity,--not to the scene of the shipwreck. Indeed, the great rivers of the Pampas and their numerous affluents could easily bear the document to the sea. In this part of Australia, on the contrary, few streams cross the thirty-seventh parallel, and the principal Australian rivers--the Murray, the Yara, the Torrens, and the Darling--either flow into each other, or empty into the ocean by mouths where navigation is active. What probability was there, then, that a fragile bottle could have descended these continually navigated waters, and reached the Indian Ocean? This consideration could not escape such sagacious minds. Paganel's supposition, plausible in Patagonia, was illogical in Australia. The geographer perceived this in a discussion on the subject with the major. It was clear that the latitude applied only to the place of shipwreck, and that consequently the bottle had been cast into the sea where the Britannia was wrecked,--on the western coast of Australia. However, as Glenarvan justly observed, this interpretation did not preclude the possibility of Captain Grant's captivity, who, moreover, had intimated as much by the words "where they will be prisoners of the cruel Indians." But there was no more reason for seeking the prisoners on the thirty-seventh parallel than on any other. This conclusion, after much discussion, was finally accepted, and it was decided that, if no traces of the Britannia were found at Cape Bernouilli, Lord Glenarvan should return to Europe, relinquishing all hope of finding the object of their search. This resolution occasioned profound grief to the children of the lost captain. As the boats containing the whole of the party were rowed ashore, they felt that the fate of their father would soon be probably decided; irrevocably, we may say, for Paganel, in a former discussion, had clearly demonstrated that the shipwrecked seamen would have reached their country long ago, if their vessel had stranded on the other, the eastern coast. [Sidenote: A NEW PROSPECT.] "Hope! hope! never cease to hope!" said Lady Helena to the young girl seated beside her, as they approached the shore. "The hand of God will never fail us." [Illustration: As the boats containing the whole of the party were rowed ashore, they felt that the fate of their father would soon be probably decided.] "Yes, Miss Mary," said the captain; "when men have exhausted human resources, then Heaven interposes, and, by some unforeseen event, opens to them new ways." "God grant it, captain!" replied Mary. The shore was now only a cable's length distant. The cape terminated in gentle declivities extending far out into the sea. The boat entered a small creek, between banks of coral in process of formation, which in time would form a chain of reefs along the southern coast of the island. The passengers of the Duncan disembarked on a perfectly barren shore. Steep cliffs formed a lofty sea-wall, and it would have been difficult to scale this natural rampart without ladders or cramping-irons. Fortunately, the captain discovered a breach half a mile southward, caused by a partial crumbling of the cliffs. Probably the sea, during violent equinoctial storms, had beaten against this fragile barrier, and thus caused the fall of the upper portions of the mass. Glenarvan and his companions entered this opening, and reached the summit of the cliffs by a very steep ascent. Robert climbed an abrupt declivity with the agility of a cat, and arrived first at the top, to the great chagrin of Paganel, who was quite mortified at seeing himself outstripped by a mere lad of twelve. However, he distanced the peaceable major; but that worthy was utterly indifferent to his defeat. The little party surveyed the plain that stretched out beneath them. It was a vast, uncultivated tract, covered with bushes and brushwood, and was compared by Glenarvan to the glens of the Scottish lowlands, and by Paganel to the barren lands of Brittany. But though the country along the coast was evidently uninhabited, the presence of man, not the savage, but the civilized worker, was betokened by several substantial structures in the distance. "A mill!" cried Robert. True enough, at no great distance apparently, the sails of a mill were seen. "It is indeed a mill," replied Paganel. "Here is a beacon as modest as it is useful, the sight of which delights my eyes." "It is almost a belfry," said Lady Helena. "Yes, madam; and while one makes bread for the body, the other announces bread for the soul. In this respect they resemble each other." "Let us go to the mill," replied Glenarvan. They accordingly started. After half an hour's walk the soil assumed a new aspect. The transition from barren plains to cultivated fields was sudden. Instead of brushwood, quick-set hedges surrounded an inclosure freshly ploughed. Some cattle, and half a dozen horses, grazed in pastures encircled by acacias. Then fields of corn were reached, several acres of land bristling with the yellow ears, haycocks like great bee-hives, vineyards with blooming inclosures, a beautiful garden, where the useful and the ornamental mingled; in short, a fair and comfortable locality, which the merry mill crowned with its pointed gable and caressed with the moving shadow of its sails. At this moment a man of about fifty, of prepossessing countenance, issued from the principal house, at the barking of three great dogs that announced the coming of the strangers. Five stout and handsome boys, his sons, accompanied by their mother, a tall, robust woman, followed him. This man, surrounded by his healthful family, in the midst of these new erections, in this almost virgin country, presented the perfect type of the colonist, who, endeavoring to better his lot, seeks his fortune and happiness beyond the seas. Glenarvan and his friends had not yet introduced themselves, they had not had time to declare either their names or their rank, when these cordial words saluted them:-- [Sidenote: AN AUSTRALIAN HOME.] "Strangers, welcome to the house of Patrick O'Moore." "You are an Irishman?" said Glenarvan, taking the hand that the colonist offered him. "I was," replied Mr. O'Moore. "Now I am an Australian. But come in, whoever you are, gentlemen; this house is at your service." The invitation so hospitably given was accepted without ceremony. Lady Helena and Mary Grant, conducted by Mrs. O'Moore, entered the house, while the colonist's sons relieved the visitors of their fire-arms. A large, cool, airy room occupied the ground-floor of the house, which was built of stout beams arranged horizontally. Several wooden benches, built into the walls, and painted in gay colors, ten stools, two oaken trunks, in which white china and jugs of polished pewter were arranged, and a long table, at which twenty people could be comfortably seated, constituted the furniture, worthy of the house and its hardy inhabitants. Dinner was soon served. Dishes of soup smoked between roast beef and legs of mutton, flanked by large plates of olives, grapes, and oranges. The host and hostess had such an engaging air, and the fare was so tempting, so ample, and so abundantly furnished, that it would have been unbecoming not to accept this rural bounty. The domestics of the farm, the equals of their master, had already come to partake of the repast; and the host reserved the place of honor for the strangers. "I expected you," said he, quietly, to Lord Glenarvan. "You did?" replied the latter, very much surprised. "I always expect those who are coming," replied the Irishman. Then, in a grave voice, while his household stood respectfully, he invoked a Divine blessing. Lady Helena was much affected by his perfect simplicity of manner, and a look from her husband told her that he likewise was touched by it. [Illustration: A fair and comfortable locality, which the merry mill crowned with its pointed gable and caressed with the moving shadow of its sails.] [Sidenote: THE OLD QUESTION.] Ample justice was done to the repast. The conversation was general. The colonist told his story. It was like that of most deserving and voluntary emigrants. Many go far to seek their fortunes, and find only sorrow and disaster; they accuse fate, forgetting to blame their ignorance, laziness, and vices. The man who is sober and persevering, economical and honest, is almost sure to succeed. This had been the case with Mr. O'Moore. He had left Dundalk, where he was poor, and, emigrating with his family to Australia, had landed at Adelaide. At first he engaged in mining, but soon relinquished this for the less hazardous pursuits of the farmer, in which he had been successful beyond his highest anticipations. His agricultural knowledge was a great aid to him. He economized, and bought new lands with the profits of the first. His family flourished, as well as his farm. The Irish peasant had become a landed proprietor, and, although his establishment was only two years old, he owned at that moment five hundred acres of well-cultivated land and five hundred head of cattle, was his own master, and as independent as one can be even in the freest country in the world. His guests congratulated him sincerely when his story was finished. He doubtless expected a similar confidence, but did not urge it. Glenarvan had an immediate interest in speaking of the Duncan, of his own presence at Cape Bernouilli, and of the search that they had pursued so perseveringly. But, like a man who considers the main object in view, he first questioned his host concerning the shipwreck of the Britannia. The Irishman's answer was not cheering. He had never heard of the ship. No vessel had for some time been lost on the coast; and, as the shipwreck had occurred only two years before, he could affirm with absolute certainty that the sailors had not been cast on that part of the western shore. "And now, my lord," added he, "may I be allowed to ask why you have inquired of me concerning this shipwreck?" Glenarvan then told the story of the document, the voyage of the Duncan, and the attempts made to find Captain Grant. He confessed that his dearest hopes had been destroyed by Mr. O'Moore's discouraging information, and that he now despaired of ever finding the shipwrecked seamen of the Britannia. These words produced a gloomy impression upon his hearers. Robert and Mary listened to them with tearful eyes. Paganel could not find a word of consolation or hope. Captain Mangles suffered a grief that he could not subdue. Despair was seizing upon the souls of the noble people whom the Duncan had vainly brought to these distant shores, when all at once a voice was heard:-- "My lord, praise and thank God! If Captain Grant is living, he is in Australia." CHAPTER XXXI. THE QUARTERMASTER OF THE BRITANNIA. The astonishment that these words produced cannot be described. Glenarvan sprang to his feet, and, pushing back his chair, cried,-- "Who says that?" "I!" replied one of O'Moore's workmen, seated at the end of the table. "You, Ayrton?" said the colonist, no less astonished than Glenarvan. "I," repeated Ayrton, in an excited but firm tone; "I, a Scotchman like yourself, my lord, one of the shipwrecked sailors of the Britannia!" [Sidenote: A FRESH FACE.] Mary Grant, half fainting with emotion, and overcome with happiness, sank into the arms of Lady Helena; while Captain Mangles, Robert, and Paganel went towards the man whom their host had called Ayrton. He was a somewhat rough-looking, broad-shouldered man, of about forty-five, of more than medium height, and with piercing eyes sunk deeply beneath his projecting brows. His strength must have been unusual, even considering his stature, for he was all bone and sinew. His countenance, full of intelligence and energy, although the features were stern, prepossessed one in his favor. The sympathy that he elicited was still more increased by the traces of recent hardships imprinted upon his face. It was evident that he had suffered much, although he seemed a man able to brave, endure, and conquer suffering. The travelers felt all this at first sight. Ayrton's appearance had interested them; and Glenarvan, acting as spokesman for all, pressed him with inquiries. This strange meeting had evidently produced a bewildering effect, and the first questions were, to some extent, without order. "You are one of the sailors of the Britannia?" asked Glenarvan. "Yes, my lord; Captain Grant's quartermaster," replied Ayrton. "Saved with him from the shipwreck?" "No, my lord. At that terrible moment I was washed overboard and cast ashore." "You are not one of the sailors, then, of whom the document makes mention?" "No; I did not know of the existence of such a document. The captain must have thrown it overboard after I was gone." "But the captain, the captain?" "I suppose he was lost, drowned, with the rest of the crew. I thought I was the sole survivor." "But you said that Captain Grant was living!" [Illustration: He was a somewhat rough-looking, broad-shouldered man, of about forty-five.] [Illustration: "When I was washed from the forecastle, as I was hauling down the jib, the Britannia was driving towards the coast of Australia, which was not two cable-lengths distant."] "No. I said, 'if the captain is living'----" "'He is in Australia,' you added." "He can be nowhere else." "You do not know, then, where he is?" "No, my lord. I repeat that I thought he was buried in the waves or dashed upon the rocks. You say that perhaps he is still living." "What do you know, then?" asked Glenarvan. "Simply this, that if Captain Grant is living he is in Australia." "Where did the shipwreck take place?" inquired the major. This should have been the first question; but, in the excitement of the moment, Glenarvan, anxious to know where Captain Grant was, had not inquired where the Britannia was lost. From this point the conversation assumed a more definite form, and soon the details of the complicated story appeared clear and exact to the minds of Ayrton's hearers. To the major's question Ayrton replied,-- "When I was washed from the forecastle, as I was hauling down the jib, the Britannia was driving towards the coast of Australia, which was not two cable-lengths distant. The shipwreck, therefore, took place at that point." "In latitude thirty-seven?" asked Captain Mangles. "Thirty-seven," replied Ayrton. "On the west coast?" "No. On the east coast." "And when?" "On the night of June 27th, 1862." "The same! the very same!" cried Glenarvan. "You see, then, my lord," added Ayrton, "that I was right in saying that, if Captain Grant still lives, you must seek him in Australia." [Sidenote: OLD MEMORIES.] "And we will seek, find, and save him, my friend!" cried Paganel. "Ah, precious document!" added he, with perfect simplicity: "it must be confessed that you have fallen into the hands of very sagacious people." No one noticed these flattering words of Paganel. Glenarvan, Lady Helena, Mary, and Robert had crowded around Ayrton, and eagerly clasped his hands. It seemed as if the presence of this man was a guarantee of the safety of Harry Grant. Since the sailor had escaped the dangers of shipwreck, why should not the captain be safe and sound? Ayrton repeated his declaration that if Captain Grant were living he must be in Australia. He answered with remarkable intelligence and clearness the many questions that were propounded to him. Miss Mary, while he spoke, held one of his hands in her own. This sailor had been a companion of her father, one of the shipwrecked survivors of the Britannia. He had lived with Harry Grant, had sailed the seas with him, had braved the same dangers! She could not withdraw her eyes from that weather-beaten face, and she wept with happiness. Hitherto no one had thought of doubting the veracity of the quartermaster. Only the major, and perhaps Captain Mangles, questioned whether Ayrton's story merited _entire_ confidence. This unexpected meeting might be suspicious. To be sure, Ayrton had mentioned facts and dates that agreed, and striking particulars. But details, however exact they may be, do not constitute a certainty; and generally, as we know, falsehood endeavors to strengthen itself by its preciseness. MacNabb, therefore, reserved his opinion. [Illustration: When he came to himself, he was in the hands of the natives, who carried him into the interior of the country.] As for Captain Mangles, his doubts did not stand long before the assertions of the sailor, and he considered him a real companion of Captain Grant when he heard him speak to the young girl of her father. Ayrton knew Mary and Robert perfectly. He had seen them at Glasgow on the departure of the Britannia. He remembered that they had been present at the farewell dinner given on board to the friends of the captain. Sheriff MacIntyre was one of the guests. Robert--scarcely ten years old--had been confided to the care of Dick Turner, the boatswain, but had escaped from him and climbed to the top-sail yard-arm. [Illustration: At last, exhausted and almost dead, he reached the hospitable dwelling of Mr. O'Moore, where his labor insured him a comfortable livelihood.] "It is true! it is true!" cried Robert. The quartermaster remembered, too, a thousand little circumstances to which he did not seem to attach so much importance as did Captain Mangles. When he stopped, Mary said, in her sweet voice,-- "Mr. Ayrton, please tell us more about our father." Ayrton acceded to the young girl's request. Glenarvan was reluctant to interrupt him, and yet many more important questions thronged his mind. But Lady Helena, pointing out to him Mary's joyful excitement, checked his inquiries. [Sidenote: TWO YEARS OF SLAVERY.] The quartermaster now told the story of the Britannia and her voyage across the Pacific. During the period of a year Harry Grant landed at the principal ports of Oceanica, opposing unjustifiable captures, and often a victim to the hostility of unjust traders. He found, however, an important point on the western coast of Papua. Here the establishment of a Scottish colony appeared to him feasible, and its prosperity assured. After examining Papua, the Britannia sailed to Callao for provisions, and left that port on the 30th of May, 1862, to return to Europe by the way of the Indian Ocean and the Cape. Three weeks after her departure, a terrible tempest disabled her. It became necessary to cut away the masts. A leak was discovered in the hold, which they did not succeed in stopping. The crew were soon overtasked and exhausted. The pumps could not be worked. For eight days the vessel was at the mercy of the storm. There were six feet of water in her hold, and she gradually foundered. The boats had been washed overboard, and the crew had given themselves up for lost, when on the night of June 22nd, as Paganel had rightly interpreted, they descried the eastern coast of Australia. The vessel soon stranded. A violent shock was felt. At this moment Ayrton, borne by a wave, was cast into the midst of the breakers, and lost all consciousness. When he came to himself, he was in the hands of the natives, who carried him into the interior of the country. Since then he had heard nothing more of the Britannia, and naturally supposed that she had been wrecked, with all on board, on the dangerous reefs of Twofold Bay. This was Ayrton's story, which elicited more than once exclamations of sympathy. The major could not justly doubt its correctness; and after this recital the quartermaster's own experiences possessed a more real interest. Indeed, thanks to the document, they no longer doubted that Captain Grant had survived the shipwreck with two of his sailors. From the fate of the one they could fairly conjecture that of the other. Ayrton was invited to tell of his own adventures, which was soon and simply done. The shipwrecked sailor, prisoner of a native tribe, was carried into the interior regions watered by the Darling. Here he led a very wretched existence, because the tribe itself was miserable; but he was not maltreated. For two long years he endured a painful slavery. However, the hope of regaining his liberty sustained his courage. He watched for the least opportunity of escaping, although his flight would plunge him into the midst of innumerable perils. One night in October he eluded the vigilance of the natives, and took refuge in the depths of extensive forests. For a month, living on roots, edible ferns, and the gum of the mimosa, often overcome by despair, he wandered in those vast solitudes, with the sun as his guide by day and the stars by night. In this way he crossed marshes, rivers, mountains, in short, all that uninhabited portion of country that few travelers have explored. At last, exhausted and almost dead, he reached the hospitable dwelling of Mr. O'Moore, where his labor insured him a comfortable livelihood. "And if Ayrton is pleased with me," said the Irish colonist, when the story was finished, "I cannot but be pleased with him. He is an honest and intelligent man, a good worker, and, if he chooses, this house shall long be at his service." Ayrton thanked Mr. O'Moore, and waited for further questions. He probably thought, however, that the legitimate curiosity of his hearers ought to be satisfied. What could he say that had not been repeated a hundred times already? Glenarvan was, therefore, about to open the conversation on a new topic, to profit by the information received from Ayrton, when the major, addressing him, said: "You were quartermaster of the Britannia?" "Yes," replied Ayrton. But perceiving that a certain feeling of distrust, a doubt, however slight, had suggested this inquiry, he added,-- "I saved my contract from the wreck." He immediately left the room in search of this authoritative document. During his absence, which lasted but a few moments, Mr. O'Moore said: "My lord, I will answer for it that Ayrton is an honest man. During the two months that he has been in my employ, I have had no fault to find with him. I knew the story of his shipwreck and captivity. He is a true man, and worthy of your entire confidence." Glenarvan was about to answer that he had never doubted Ayrton's honesty, when the latter returned and presented his contract. It was a paper signed by the owners of the Britannia and Captain Grant, whose writing Mary recognized immediately. It stated that "Tom Ayrton, able seaman, was engaged as quartermaster on board the brig Britannia of Glasgow." There was, therefore, no possible doubt of Ayrton's identity, for it would have been difficult to suppose that this contract could be in his hands and not belong to him. [Sidenote: ENTANGLEMENTS.] "Now," said Glenarvan, "I appeal to you all for advice as to what is best to be done. Your advice, Ayrton, would be particularly valuable, and I should be much obliged if you would give it to us." The sailor reflected a few moments, and then replied: "I thank you, my lord, for the confidence you place in me, and hope to show myself worthy of it. I have some knowledge of the country, and of the customs of the natives; and, if I can be of use to you----" "Certainly," replied Glenarvan. "I think, like you," continued Ayrton, "that Captain Grant and his two sailors were saved from the shipwreck; but, since they have not reached the English possessions, since they have not reappeared, I doubt not that their fate was the same as my own, and that they are prisoners of the natives." "You repeat, Mr. Ayrton, the arguments that I have already substantiated," said Paganel. "The shipwrecked seamen are evidently prisoners of the natives, as they feared. But ought we to suppose that, like you, they have been carried to the north?" "It is quite likely, sir," replied Ayrton. "The hostile tribes would hardly remain in the neighborhood of the English provinces." "This fact will complicate our search," said Glenarvan, quite disconcerted. "How shall we find the traces of the prisoners in the interior of so vast a continent?" A prolonged silence followed this remark. Lady Helena frequently cast a questioning glance at her companions, but without eliciting a responsive sign. Paganel himself was silent, contrary to his custom. His usual ingenuity now failed him. Captain Mangles paced the room with long strides, as if he had been on the deck of his vessel, involved in some difficulty. "And you, Mr. Ayrton," said Lady Helena, at length, to the quartermaster, "what would you do?" "Madam," replied he, promptly, "I should re-embark on board the Duncan, and go straight to the place of the shipwreck. There I should act according to circumstances, or indications that chance might furnish." "Very good," said Glenarvan; "but we must wait till the Duncan is repaired." "Ah! you have suffered injuries?" inquired Ayrton. "Yes," replies the captain. "Serious?" "No; but they necessitate repairs which cannot be made on board. One of the flanges of the screw is bent, and this work can be done only at Melbourne." "Can you not sail?" asked the quartermaster. "Yes; but, if the wind is contrary, it would take considerable time to reach Twofold Bay, and at any rate we should have to return to Melbourne." "Well, let the yacht go to Melbourne," said Paganel, "and we will go without her to Twofold Bay." "But how?" "By crossing Australia, as we crossed South America." "But the Duncan?" added Ayrton, with singular persistency. "The Duncan will join us, or we will join her, according to circumstances. If Captain Grant is found during our journey, we will return together to Melbourne. If, on the contrary, we continue our search to the coast, the Duncan shall join us there. Who has any objections to make to this plan? Have you, major?" "No," replied MacNabb, "if it is practicable." "So practicable," said Paganel, "that I propose that Lady Helena and Miss Grant accompany us." "Do you speak seriously, Paganel?" asked Glenarvan. "Quite seriously, my lord. It is a journey of three hundred and fifty miles. At the rate of twelve miles a day it would last scarcely a month,--long enough to give time for repairing the Duncan." "But the ferocious animals?" said Glenarvan, wishing to state all possible objections. [Sidenote: OBSTACLES EXPLAINED AWAY.] "There are none in Australia." "But the savages?" "There are none in the course we shall take." "Well, then, the convicts?" "There are no convicts in the southern provinces of Australia, but only in the eastern colonies." "Mr. Paganel is perfectly right," said O'Moore; "they have all left the southern provinces. Since I have lived on this farm, I have not heard of one." "And, for my part, I never met one," added Ayrton. "You see, my friends," continued Paganel, "that there are few savages, no wild beasts, and no convicts. There are not many countries of Europe of which we could say as much. Well, is it agreed?" "What do you think, Helena?" asked Glenarvan. "What we all think," replied she, turning towards her companions. "Forward!" CHAPTER XXXII. PREPARATIONS FOR THE JOURNEY. It was not Glenarvan's habit to lose time in adopting and executing a plan. As soon as Paganel's proposal was accepted, he at once resolved that the preparations for the journey should be completed as soon as possible. And what was to be the result of this search? The existence of Harry Grant seemed to have become undeniable, which increased the probabilities of success. No one expected to find the captain exactly on the line of the thirty-seventh parallel; but perhaps they would come upon traces of him, and, at all events, their course would bring them straight to the scene of the shipwreck, which was the principal point. Moreover, if Ayrton would consent to join the travelers, to guide them through the forests, and to the eastern coast, there was another chance of success. Glenarvan felt the importance of this arrangement, and was therefore particularly desirous of obtaining the services of Captain Grant's companion. He inquired of his host whether he was willing for him to propose to Ayrton to accompany them. Mr. O'Moore consented, though not without regret at losing so good an assistant. "Well, Ayrton, will you aid us in our search for the sailors of the Britannia?" The quartermaster did not answer immediately; he seemed to hesitate for a few moments, but finally, after reflecting, said: "Yes, my lord, I will follow you; and, if I do not set you upon the track of Captain Grant, I will at least guide you to the place where his vessel was wrecked." "Thanks," replied Glenarvan. "One question, my lord." "Ask it." "Where will you join the Duncan?" "At Melbourne, if we do not cross Australia; on the eastern coast, if our search is continued so far." "But the captain of the Duncan?" "He will await my orders at Melbourne." "Very well, my lord," said Ayrton; "rely on me." "I will," replied Glenarvan. The quartermaster was heartily thanked by the travelers. Captain Grant's children lavished upon him their most grateful caresses. All were delighted at his decision, except the colonist, who would lose in him an intelligent and faithful assistant. But he understood the importance that Glenarvan attached to this new addition to his force, and was resigned. He had, moreover, engaged to furnish them with the means of conveyance for the journey, and, this business being settled, the party returned on board. [Illustration: This business being settled, the party returned on board.] Everything was now changed; all hesitation had vanished. These courageous searchers were no longer to wander on blindly. Harry Grant, they believed, had found a refuge on the continent, and each heart was full of the satisfaction that certainty brings when it takes the place of doubt. In two months, perhaps, the Duncan would land the lost captain on the shores of Scotland. When Captain Mangles seconded the proposal that they should attempt to cross Australia with the ladies, he supposed that this time he would accompany the expedition. He therefore consulted Glenarvan on the subject, and brought forward various arguments in his own favor, such as his desire to take part in the search for his countryman, and his usefulness in the undertaking. "One question, John," said Glenarvan. "You have absolute confidence in your mate?" "Absolute," replied he. "Tom Austin is a good sailor. He will take the Duncan to Melbourne, repair her thoroughly, and bring her back at the appointed time. He is a man devoted to duty and discipline, and will never take the responsibility of changing or delaying the execution of an order. You can rely upon him as fully as on myself." "Very well, captain," replied Glenarvan; "you shall accompany us; for," added he, smiling, "you certainly ought to be present when we find Mary Grant's father." "Ah, my lord!" murmured Captain Mangles, with something like a blush upon his swarthy cheeks. [Sidenote: A PALACE-CART.] The next day the captain, accompanied by the carpenter and by the sailors loaded with provisions, returned to the farm of Mr. O'Moore, who was to assist him in the preparations. All the family were waiting for him, ready to work under his orders. Ayrton was there, and freely gave them the benefit of his experience. He and his employer were agreed on this point, that the ladies ought to make the journey in an ox-cart, and the gentlemen on horseback. The colonist could procure them the animals and vehicle. The vehicle was a cart twenty feet long and covered with an awning, the whole resting upon four wheels, without spokes, felloes, or tires. The front wheels were a long way from the hind ones, and were joined together by a rude contrivance that made it impossible to turn short. To the body of the cart was attached a pole thirty-five feet long, to which three pairs of oxen were coupled. The animals, thus arranged, drew by means of a yoke across their necks, to which the bow was fastened with an iron pin. It required great skill to manage this long, narrow, tottering vehicle, and guide the oxen by means of the whip. But Ayrton had served his apprenticeship at O'Moore's farm, and his employer guaranteed his dexterity. Upon him, therefore, devolved the duty of driving. The cart, being without springs, was not very easy; but our travelers were obliged to conform to circumstances as much as they could. As no change was possible in its rude construction, Captain Mangles arranged the interior in the most comfortable manner. He divided it into two compartments by a wooden partition. The rear one was designed for the provisions, the baggage, and Mr. Olbinett's portable kitchen, while the forward one was reserved exclusively for the ladies. The carpenter converted it into a convenient chamber, covered it with a thick carpet, and furnished it with a dressing-table and two berths for Lady Helena and Mary Grant. Thick leathern curtains secured privacy, when necessary, and were a protection against the chilliness of the night. In rainy weather the men could find shelter under the awning; but a tent was to serve this purpose at the time of encampment. Captain Mangles succeeded in crowding into this narrow space all that two ladies could need, and Lady Helena and Mary Grant did not greatly miss the comfortable cabins of the Duncan. [Sidenote: A RETURN VISIT.] As for the men, seven strong horses were apportioned to Lord Glenarvan, Paganel, Robert Grant, Major MacNabb, Captain Mangles, and the two sailors, Wilson and Mulready, who accompanied this new expeditionary party. The horses and oxen grazed near at hand, and could be easily collected at the moment of departure. [Illustration: The vehicle was a cart twenty feet long and covered with an awning, the whole resting upon four wheels, without spokes, felloes, or tires.] Having made his arrangements, and given his orders to the carpenter, Captain Mangles returned on board with the colonist's family, who wished to pay Lord Glenarvan a visit. Ayrton thought proper to join them, and about four o'clock the captain crossed the gangway of the Duncan. Of course, Glenarvan invited his visitors to dinner, and they willingly accepted his return hospitality. Mr. O'Moore was amazed. The furniture of the cabins, the tapestry, the upholstery, and the fancy-work of maple and ebony excited his admiration. Ayrton, on the contrary, gave only a secondary attention to these costly luxuries. He first examined the yacht from a sailor's point of view. He explored the hold; he went down into the engine-room; he looked at the engine, inquired its effective power and consumption; he visited the coal-house, the pantry, and the powder-magazine, and took particular interest in the gun-room and the mounted cannon in the forecastle. Glenarvan now had to deal with a man who was a critical judge, as he could see by Ayrton's keen inquiries. At last the quartermaster finished his exploration by inspecting the masts and rigging; and, after a few moments of general review, said: "You have a fine vessel, my lord." "A good one, too," replied Glenarvan. "How many tons' burden is she?" "Two hundred and ten." "Shall I be greatly mistaken," added Ayrton, "if I say that the Duncan can easily make fifteen knots an hour at full speed?" "Say seventeen," interposed the captain, "and you will be nearer right." "Seventeen!" cried the quartermaster: "why, then, no man-of-war, not even the best, could overtake her." "Not one," said the captain. "The Duncan is a real racing yacht, and is not to be beaten in any way." "Not even in sailing?" asked Ayrton. "Not even in sailing." "Well, my lord, and you, captain, accept the compliments of a sailor who knows what a vessel is worth." "Thanks, Ayrton," replied Glenarvan; "and now remain on board, and it will be your own fault if the ship is not all you can desire." "I will think of it, my lord," said the quartermaster, modestly. Mr. Olbinett now approached, and informed Lord Glenarvan that dinner was ready; and they all adjourned to the saloon. "That Ayrton is an intelligent man," said Paganel to the major. "Too intelligent!" growled MacNabb, who, without any apparent reason, disliked the looks and manners of the quartermaster. During dinner, Ayrton gave some interesting information concerning Australia, with which he was perfectly familiar. He inquired the number of sailors that Glenarvan intended to take with him in his expedition. When he learned that only two, Wilson and Mulready, were to accompany them, he seemed astonished. He advised Glenarvan to form his party of the best seamen of the Duncan. He even insisted upon this point, which must have removed all suspicion from the mind of the major. "But," said Glenarvan, "is there any danger in our journey across Australia?" "None," replied Ayrton. [Sidenote: A CHANGE OF RESIDENCE.] "Well, then, let us leave on board as many as possible. There must be men to navigate the Duncan and take charge of her. It is especially important that she should arrive promptly at the place of meeting, which we will appoint hereafter. Let us not, therefore, lessen the crew." Ayrton seemed to appreciate this reason, and no longer insisted. At evening the party separated. Ayrton and O'Moore's family returned to their home. The horses and cart were to be ready the next day, and the travelers were to start at eight o'clock in the morning. Lady Helena and Mary Grant now made their last preparations, which were short and less minute than those of Jacques Paganel. The geographer passed half the night in unscrewing, cleaning, and screwing on again the lenses of his telescope. He was still asleep the next morning, when the major awoke him early with a loud summons. The baggage had already been conveyed to the farm through the care of Captain Mangles. A boat was waiting for the travelers, and they were not long in embarking. The young captain gave his last orders to Tom Austin, and instructed him above all to await the commands of Lord Glenarvan at Melbourne, and execute them scrupulously whatever they might be. The trusty sailor replied that they might rely on him. In the name of the crew he offered to his lordship their best wishes for the success of the expedition. The boat put off, and a thunder of applause rent the air. In a few moments the party reached the shore, and in no great length of time arrived at O'Moore's farm. Everything was ready. Lady Helena was delighted with her quarters. The immense cart, with its rude wheels and massive timbers, especially pleased her. The six oxen yoked in pairs seemed to indicate primeval simplicity, and were a novel sight. Ayrton, whip in hand, awaited the orders of his new chief. [Illustration: Ayrton and Olbinett took their places respectively in front and in the rear part of the cart, while Glenarvan, the major, Paganel, Robert, Captain Mangles, and the two sailors, mounted their horses.] "I declare!" said Paganel, "this is an admirable vehicle, worth all the mail-coaches in the world. I know of no better way of traversing the earth than in this style, like mountebanks. A house that moves when you please and stops wherever you please is all you can desire." [Illustration: The "Mosquito Plains," whose very name describes them, and serves to tell of the tortures that our friends had to encounter.] "Monsieur Paganel," replied Lady Helena, "I hope to have the pleasure of receiving you in my parlor." "Madam," replied the geographer, "you do me great honor! Have you chosen a day?" "I shall be at home every day for my friends," replied Lady Helena, smiling, "and you are----" "The most devoted of all," added Paganel, gallantly. This exchange of compliments was interrupted by the arrival of seven horses, all harnessed, driven by one of O'Moore's sons. Lord Glenarvan paid for these new acquisitions, and added many thanks, which the honest colonist seemed to value as highly as the gold and notes which he received. The signal for departure was now given. Lady Helena and Miss Grant seated themselves in their compartment, Ayrton and Olbinett took their places respectively in front and in the rear part of the cart, while Glenarvan, the major, Paganel, Robert, Captain Mangles, and the two sailors, all armed with carbines and revolvers, mounted their horses. A "God bless you" was Mr. O'Moore's parting salute, which was echoed in chorus by his family. Ayrton uttered a peculiar cry, and started his long team. The cart moved, the timbers cracked, the axles creaked, and the farm of the honest hospitable Irishman soon disappeared from view at the turn of the road. CHAPTER XXXIII. AN ACCIDENT. Our travelers made tolerably good progress by their new mode of conveyance. The heat was great, but endurable, and the road was quite easy for the horses. They were still in the province of South Australia, and in this part at least the scenery was not of the most interesting character. A succession of small hills, with very dusty tracks, small shrubs, and scant herbage, had to be traversed for several miles; and when these had been passed they reached the "Mosquito Plains," whose very name describes them, and serves to tell of the tortures that our friends had to encounter. Both the bipeds and the quadrupeds suffered terribly from the infliction of these flying pests, whom to avoid was impossible; but there was some consolation for the former in the spirits of hartshorn, carried in the medicine-chest, which alleviated the pain caused by the sting of those whom Paganel was continually consigning to a place and person whom they would not visit. But shortly a more pleasant neighborhood was reached. Hedges of acacias, then a newly cut and better made roadway, then European imported trees--oaks, olives, and lemons,--then a well-kept fence,--all these signs told of their approach to Red-gum Station, the home and settlement of an emigrant engaged in the cattle-breeding which is the source of so much Australian wealth. It was in itself an establishment of small importance; but to its owners it was a home, and to its visitors, on this occasion, it was a hotel, as the "station" generally is to the traveler. [Illustration: Red-gum Station, the home and settlement of an emigrant engaged in the cattle-breeding which is the source of so much Australian wealth.] [Illustration: The major was skillful enough to shoot a very rare bird,--a "jabiru," or giant crane. This creature was five feet high; and its broad, black, sharp conical beak measured eighteen inches in length.] Glenarvan's party invariably found beneath the roof of these solitary settlers a well-spread and hospitable table; and in the Australian farmer they always met an obliging host. After a night spent at this resting-place the party advanced through a grove, and at evening encamped on the shores of a brackish and muddy lake. Mr. Olbinett prepared supper with his usual promptness, and the travelers--some in the cart and others under the tent--were not long in falling asleep, in spite of the dismal howlings of the dingos,--the jackals of Australia. The next morning Glenarvan and his companions were greeted with a magnificent sight. As far as the eye could reach, the landscape seemed to be one flowery meadow in spring-like luxuriance. The delicate blue of the slender-leaved flax-plant mingled with the flaming scarlet of the acanthus, and the ground was clothed with a rich carpet of green and crimson. After a rapid journey of about ten miles, the cart wound through tall groups of acacias, mimosas, and white gum-trees. The vegetable kingdom on these plains did not show itself ungrateful towards the orb of day, and repaid in perfume and color what it received in sunshine. As for the animal kingdom, it was no less lavish of its products. Several cassowaries bounded over the plain with unapproachable swiftness. The major was skillful enough to shoot a very rare bird,--a "jabiru," or giant crane. This creature was five feet high; and its broad, black, sharp conical beak measured eighteen inches in length. The violet and purple colors of its head contrasted strongly with the lustrous green of its neck, the dazzling white of its breast, and the vivid red of its long legs. [Sidenote: A FOUR-FOOTED ARMY.] This bird was greatly admired, and the major would have won the honors of the day, if young Robert had not encountered a few miles farther on, and bravely vanquished, an unsightly beast, half hedgehog, half ant-eater, a chaotic-looking animal, like those of pre-historic periods. A long, glutinous, extensible tongue hung out of its mouth, and fished up the ants that constituted its principal food. Of course, Paganel wished to carry away the hideous creature, and proposed to put it in the baggage-room; but Mr. Olbinett opposed this with such indignation that the geographer gave up his idea of preserving this curious specimen. Hitherto few colonists or squatters had been seen. The country seemed deserted. There was not even the trace of a native; for the savage tribes wander farther to the north, over the immense wastes watered by the Darling and the Murray. But now a singular sight was presented to Glenarvan's party. They were fortunate enough to see one of those vast herds of cattle which bold speculators bring from the eastern mountains to the provinces of Victoria and South Australia. About four o'clock in the afternoon, Captain Mangles descried, three miles in advance, an enormous column of dust that spread along the horizon. What occasioned this? It would have been very difficult to say. Paganel was inclined to regard it as some phenomenon, for which his lively imagination already sought a natural cause. But Ayrton dissipated all his conjectures by declaring that this cloud of dust proceeded from a drove of cattle. The quartermaster was not mistaken. The thick cloud approached, from the midst of which issued a chorus of bleatings, neighings, and bellowings, while the human voice mingled in cries and whistles with this pastoral symphony. A man emerged from the noisy multitude; it was the commander-in-chief of this four-footed army. Glenarvan advanced to meet him, and friendly relations were established without ceremony. The leader, or, to give him his real title, the "stock-keeper," was proprietor of a part of the herd. His name was Sam Machell, and he was on his way from the eastern provinces to Portland Bay. His cattle comprised one thousand oxen, eleven thousand sheep, and seventy-five horses. All these animals, bought when lean on the plains of the Blue Mountains, were to be fattened in the healthy pastures of South Australia, where they would be sold for a large price. Sam Machell briefly told his story, while the drove continued its course through the clumps of mimosas. Lady Helena, Mary Grant, and the horsemen dismounted, and, seated in the shade of a huge gum-tree, listened to the stock-keeper's narrative. He had set out seven months before, and had made about ten miles a day, at which rate his journey would last three months longer. To aid him in this laborious task, he had with him twenty dogs and thirty men. Five of the men were blacks, who are very skillful in recovering stray animals. Six carts followed the drove; and the drivers, provided with stock-whips, the handles of which were eighteen inches and the lashes nine feet in length, moved among the ranks and maintained order, while the canine light dragoons hovered about on the wings. The travelers were amazed at the discipline of this novel army. The different classes advanced separately, for wild oxen and sheep do not associate well; the first will never graze where the second have passed. Hence it was necessary to place the oxen at the head; and these accordingly, divided into two battalions, took the lead. Five regiments of sheep, commanded by five drivers, followed, and the platoon of horses formed the rear-guard. The stock-keeper observed to his hearers that the leaders of the army were neither dogs nor men, but oxen, whose superiority was recognized by their mates. They advanced in the front rank with perfect gravity, choosing the best course by instinct, and thoroughly convinced of their right to be treated with consideration. [Sidenote: AN UNFORESEEN HINDRANCE.] Thus the discipline was maintained, for the drove obeyed them without resistance. If it pleased them to stop, the others were obliged to yield, and it was useless to attempt to resume the line of march if the leaders did not give the signal. Such was Sam Machell's account, during which a great part of the herd had advanced in good order. It was now time for him to join his army, and choose the best pastures. He therefore took leave of Lord Glenarvan, mounted a fine native horse that one of his men was holding for him, and a few moments after had disappeared in a cloud of dust, while the cart, resuming its interrupted journey, stopped at nightfall at the foot of Mount Talbot. The next day they reached the shores of the Wimerra, which is half a mile wide, and flows in a limpid stream between tall rows of gum-trees and acacias. Magnificent myrtles raised aloft their long, drooping branches, adorned with crimson flowers, while thousands of goldfinches, chaffinches, and golden-winged pigeons, not to speak of chattering parrots, fluttered about in the foliage. Below, on the surface of the stream, sported a pair of black swans, shy and unapproachable. Meantime the cart had stopped on a carpet of turf whose fringes hung over the swiftly flowing waters. There was neither raft nor bridge, but they must cross at all hazard. Ayrton busied himself in searching for a practicable ford. A quarter of a mile up-stream, the river seemed to him less deep, and from this point he resolved to reach the other bank. Various soundings gave a depth of only three feet. The cart could, therefore, pass over this shallow without running much risk. "Is there no other way of crossing the river?" asked Glenarvan of the quartermaster. "No, my lord," replied Ayrton; "but this passage does not seem to me dangerous. We can extricate ourselves from any difficulty." "Shall Lady Helena and Miss Grant leave the cart?" "Not at all. My oxen are sure-footed, and I will engage to keep them in the right track." "Well, Ayrton," said Glenarvan, "I trust to you." The horsemen surrounded the heavy vehicle, and the party boldly entered the river. Usually, when these fordings are attempted, the carts are encircled by a ring of empty barrels, which support them on the water. But here this buoyant girdle was wanting, and it was, therefore, necessary to confide to the sagacity of the oxen, guided by the cautious Ayrton. The major and the two sailors dashed through the rapid current some distance ahead, while Glenarvan and Captain Mangles, one on each side of the cart, stood ready to assist the ladies, and Paganel and Robert brought up the rear. Everything went well till they reached the middle of the river, but here the depth increased, and the water rose above the felloes. The oxen, if thrown out of their course, might lose their footing and overturn the unsteady vehicle. Ayrton exerted himself to the utmost. He leaped into the water, and, seizing the oxen by the horns, succeeded in keeping them in the right track. At this moment an accident, impossible to foresee, took place. A crack was heard; the cart inclined at an alarming angle; the water reached the feet of the ladies, and the whole vehicle threatened to give way. It was an anxious moment. Fortunately a vigorous blow upon the yoke brought the cart nearer the shore. The river grew shallower, and soon men and beasts were in safety on the opposite bank. Only the front wheels of the cart were damaged, and Glenarvan's horse had lost the shoes of his fore-feet. This mishap required immediate repair. The travelers gazed at each other in some degree of perplexity, when Ayrton proposed to go to Black Point Station, twenty miles to the north, and bring a farrier. [Sidenote: FOOD, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL.] "Very well, Ayrton," said Glenarvan. "How much time do you need to make the journey and return to the encampment?" "Fifteen hours," replied Ayrton. "Go, then; and, while waiting for your return, we will encamp on the banks of the Wimerra." A few moments after, the quartermaster, mounted on Wilson's horse, disappeared behind the thick curtain of mimosas. CHAPTER XXXIV. AUSTRALIAN EXPLORERS. After the departure of Ayrton, and during this compulsory halt, promenades and conversations became the order of the day. There was an abundance of agreeable surroundings to talk about, and nature seemed dressed in one of her most attractive garbs. Birds, novel and varied in their plumage, with flowers such as they had never before gazed on, were the constant theme of the travelers' remark; and when, in addition, they had in Mr. Olbinett one who knew how to spread before them and make the best of all the culinary novelties that were within reach, a very substantial foundation was possible for the "feast of reason and the flow of soul" which followed, and for which, as usual, they were to no small extent indebted to their learned historico-geographical professor, whose stock of information was as varied as it was pleasant. [Illustration: A crack was heard; the cart inclined at an alarming angle; the water reached the feet of the ladies, and the whole vehicle threatened to give way. It was an anxious moment.] After dinner the traveling party had, as if in anticipation, seated themselves at the foot of a magnificent banksia; the young moon was rising high into the heavens, lengthening the twilight, and prolonging it into the evening hour; whilst the smoke of the major's cigar was seen curling upwards, losing itself in the foliage of the tree. [Illustration: After dinner the traveling party had, as if in anticipation, seated themselves at the foot of a magnificent banksia; the young moon was rising high into the heavens, lengthening the twilight, and prolonging it into the evening hour.] "Monsieur Paganel," said Lady Helena, "you have never given us the history that you promised when you supplied us with that long list of names." The gentleman addressed did not require any lengthened entreaties on this subject, but, with an attentive auditory, and in the grandest of all lecture-rooms, he rehearsed to them the two great dramas of Australian travel, which have made the names of Burke and Stuart immortal in the history of that continent. He told them that it was on the 20th of August, 1860, that Robert O'Hara Burke set out, under the auspices of the Royal Society of Melbourne, to cross the continent from south to north, and so to reach the Indian Ocean. Eleven others--including a botanist, an astronomer, and an army officer--accompanied him, with horses and other beasts of burden. But the expedition did not long continue so numerous or so well provided; in consequence of misunderstandings, several returned, and Burke pressed on with but few followers and fewer aids. Again, on the 20th of November, he still further diminished his numbers by leaving behind at an encampment several of his companions, that he and three others might press on towards the north with as little incumbrance as possible. After a very painful journey across a stony desert, they arrived at the extreme point reached by Stuart in 1845; and from this point, after determining as accurately as possible their latitude and longitude, they again started northward and seaward. [Sidenote: LYING DOWN TO DIE.] By the 7th of January they had gone so far as to reach the southern limit of the tropical heat; and now under a scorching sun, deceived by the mirage, often without water, and then hailing a storm as a source of refreshment, now and then meeting with the aborigines, who could in no wise help them, they had indeed a hard road to travel, though having neither rivers, lakes, nor mountains to bar their path. At length, however, there were various signs that they were approaching the sea; by-and-by they reached the bank of a river which flows into the Gulf of Carpentaria; and finally Burke and Wills, after terrible hardships, arrived at the point where the sea-water flowed up to and inundated the marshes, though the sea-shore itself they did not reach. With naught but barrenness in sight on either hand, their great desire was to get back and rejoin their companions; but peril after peril awaited them, many of which their note-book has preserved an account of, but many more will be forever unrecorded. The three survivors (for one of the party had succumbed to the hardships) now strained every effort to reach the encampment, where they hoped to find their companions and a store of provisions. On the 21st of April they gained the goal, but the prize was missing; only seven hours before, after five months of waiting in vain, their companions had taken their departure. Of course nothing remained but to follow them with their feeble strength and scanty means of subsistence; but calamities still dogged their footsteps, and at last the leader, Burke, lay down exhausted, saying to his companion, King, "I have not many hours to live; here are my watch and my notes; when I am dead, place a pistol in my right hand, and leave me without burial." His forebodings were realized, and the next morning he died. King, in despair, went in search of some Australian tribe, for now Wills had begun to sink, and he shortly afterwards died also. At length the sole survivor was rescued by an expedition sent out in search of Burke; and thus the sad tale was told of this Australian tragedy. [Illustration: "When I am dead, place a pistol in my right hand, and leave me without burial." His forebodings were realized, and the next morning he died.] The narrative concerning Stuart was a less melancholy one, though the trials endured on his expedition were likewise great. Aided by the parliament of South Australia, he likewise proceeded northward, in the year 1862, about seven degrees to the west of the line taken by Burke. He found his route to be a more accessible and easy one than the other, and was rewarded for his toil when, on the 24th of July, he beheld the waters of the Indian Ocean, and proudly unfurled the Australian flag from the topmost branch of the highest tree he could find. His return to the inhabited regions was successfully accomplished, and his entry into Adelaide, on the 17th of December, was an ovation indeed. But his health was shattered, and, after receiving the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and returning to his native Scotland, he died on the 5th of June, 1866. [Illustration: He beheld the waters of the Indian Ocean, and proudly unfurled the Australian flag from the topmost branch of the highest tree he could find.] The histories of these Australian travels were lengthy, as told by Paganel. When he had finished, hope and despair seemed to fight for the mastery in the breasts of his listeners; but they did not fight long, for peaceful slumbers soon enwrapped the company, except those whose turn it was to watch over their fellow-travelers. CHAPTER XXXV. CRIME OR CALAMITY? [Sidenote: THE MISCHIEF REPAIRED.] It was not without a certain feeling of apprehension that the major had seen Ayrton leave the Wimerra to procure a farrier at Black Point Station. However, he did not breathe a word of his personal suspicions, but contented himself with exploring the surroundings of the river, whose tranquillity was undisturbed. As for Glenarvan, his only fear was to see Ayrton return alone. In the absence of skilled labor, the cart could not resume its journey, which would be interrupted for several days perhaps; and his longings for success and eagerness to attain his end admitted of no delay. Fortunately, Ayrton had lost neither his time nor his trouble. The next morning he reappeared at break of day. A man accompanied him, by profession a farrier. He was a tall, stout fellow, but of a low and brutish appearance, which did not prepossess one in his favor. However, this was of little importance, if he knew his business. At all events his breath was not wasted in idle words. "Is he an efficient workman?" inquired Captain Mangles of the quartermaster. "I know no more than you, captain," replied Ayrton. "We shall see." The farrier began his work. He was a man who understood his trade, as one could see by the way in which he repaired the wheels of the cart. He labored skillfully and with uncommon energy. During the operation, the major noticed that the farrier's wrists were considerably eroded, and that they were each encircled by a blackish ring of extravasated blood. These were the marks of recent wounds, which the sleeves of a miserable woolen shirt but partially concealed. MacNabb questioned the man about these erosions, which must have been very painful. He, however, made no reply, but stolidly kept on at his work. Two hours after, the injuries of the cart were repaired. As for Glenarvan's horse, he was quickly shod. The farrier had taken care to bring shoes all prepared. There was a peculiarity about them, however, which did not escape the major. It was a trefoil rudely carved on the outer rim. He pointed it out to Ayrton. "It is the Black Point mark," replied the quartermaster, "which enables them to follow the tracks of the horses that stray from the station, and not confound them with others." The farrier, having done all that was required of him, now claimed his wages, and departed without having spoken four words. Half an hour later, the travelers were on the move. Beyond the curtain of mimosas extended a broad, uncovered space, which justly deserved its name of "open plain." Fragments of quartz and ferruginous rocks lay among the bushes, tall grass, and hedgerows that protected numerous flocks. Several miles farther on, the wheels of the cart sank deeply in the marshy lowlands, through which ran winding creeks, half hidden beneath a canopy of gigantic rushes. The journey, notwithstanding, was neither difficult nor tedious. Lady Helena invited the horsemen to call upon her in turn, for her parlor was very small. Each was thus relieved from the fatigue of horseback riding, and enjoyed the society of this amiable lady, who, assisted by Miss Mary, performed with perfect grace the honors of her movable mansion. Captain Mangles was not forgotten in these invitations, and his rather sober conversation was not at all displeasing. At eleven o'clock they arrived at Carlsbrook, quite an important municipality. Ayrton thought it best to pass by the city without entering. Glenarvan was of the same opinion; but Paganel, always eager for something new, desired to visit the place. Accordingly, the geographer, taking Robert with him as usual, started on his explorations, while the cart slowly continued its journey. Their inspection of the town was very rapid, and shortly afterwards they had joined their companions. While they were passing through this region, the travelers requested Paganel to give them some account of its progress, and the geographer, in compliance with their wishes, had just begun a lecture upon the civilization of the country, when he was interrupted by a shrill whistle. The party were not a mile from the railroad. A locomotive, coming from the south, and going slowly, had stopped just where the road they were following crossed the iron track. At this point the railway passes over the Lutton on an iron bridge, and thither Ayrton directed his cart, preceded by the horsemen. The travelers were attracted, moreover, by a lively feeling of curiosity, for a considerable crowd was already rushing towards the bridge. The inhabitants of the neighboring stations, leaving their houses, and the shepherds their flocks, lined the sides of the track. Frequent cries were heard. Some serious event must have taken place to cause such excitement,--a great accident, perhaps. [Illustration: A terrible accident had occurred, not a collision, but a running off the track and a fall into the river, which was filled with the fragments of cars and locomotives.] Glenarvan, followed by his companions, urged on his horse, and in a few moments arrived at Camden Bridge. Here the cause of this agitation was at once manifest. A terrible accident had occurred, not a collision, but a running off the track and a fall into the river, which was filled with the fragments of cars and locomotives. Either the bridge had given way, or the engine had run off the track; for five coaches out of six had been precipitated into the bed of the Lutton. The last car, miraculously preserved by the breaking of its coupling, stood on the very verge of the abyss. Below was to be seen nothing but a terrible heap of blackened and bent axle-trees, broken cars, twisted rails, and charred timbers. The boiler, which had burst at the shock, had thrown its iron plates to an enormous distance. From this mass of unsightly objects issued flames and spiral wreaths of steam, mingled with black smoke. Large spots of blood, scattered limbs, and trunks of burnt bodies appeared here and there; and no one dared to estimate the number of victims buried beneath the ruins. Glenarvan, Paganel, the major, and Captain Mangles mingled with the crowd, and listened to the conjectures that passed from one to another. Each sought to explain the catastrophe, while laboring to save what was left. "The bridge has broken," said one. [Sidenote: CAUSES AND EFFECTS.] "Broken?" replied others. "That cannot be, for it is still uninjured. They forgot to close it for the passage of the train, that is all." It was a draw-bridge, which had been constructed for the convenience of the shipping. Had the man on guard, through unpardonable negligence, forgotten to close it, and thus precipitated the train, at full speed, into the bed of the Lutton? This supposition seemed plausible, for one half of the bridge lay beneath the fragments of the cars, while the other still hung intact in its chains. Doubt was no longer possible; surely carelessness must have caused the calamity. The accident had happened to the night express, which left Melbourne at forty-five minutes past eleven. It must have been a quarter-past three in the morning when the train reached Camden Bridge, where this terrible destruction of life and property took place. The travelers and employés of the last car at once busied themselves in seeking assistance; but the telegraph-wires, whose poles lay on the ground, were no longer available. It took the authorities of Castlemaine three hours to reach the scene of the disaster; and it was, therefore, six o'clock in the morning before a corps of workers was organized under the direction of the surveyor-general of the district, and a detachment of policemen, commanded by an officer. The squatters had come to their aid, and exerted themselves to extinguish the fire, which consumed the heap of ruins with unconquerable fierceness. Several unrecognizable bodies lay on the edge of the embankment, but it was impossible to rescue a living being from this furnace. The fire had rapidly accomplished the work of destruction. Of the travelers in the train, whose number was not known, only ten survived, those in the last car. The railroad company had just sent an extra locomotive to convey them to Castlemaine. Meantime, Lord Glenarvan, having made the acquaintance of the surveyor-general, was conversing with him and the police-officer. The latter was a tall, thin man, of imperturbable coolness, who, if he had any feeling, betrayed no sign of it on his impassible features. He was like a mathematician engaged upon a problem; he was seeking to elucidate the mystery of the disaster. To Glenarvan's first words, "This is a great calamity!" he replied, calmly, "It is more than that." "More than that!" cried Glenarvan; "and what can be more than that?" "It is a crime!" replied the officer, coolly. Glenarvan turned to Mr. Mitchell, the surveyor-general, with a questioning look. "That is correct," said the latter; "our examination has convinced us that the catastrophe is the result of a crime. The last baggage-wagon was robbed. The surviving travelers were attacked by a party of five or six malefactors. The bridge was opened intentionally; and, taking into account this fact with the disappearance of the guard, I cannot but come to the conclusion that the miserable man was the accomplice of the criminals." The police-officer, at these words, slowly shook his head. "You are not of my opinion?" inquired Mr. Mitchell. "Not as regards the complicity of the guard." "At any rate, this assumed complicity," continued the surveyor-general, "enables us to attribute the crime to the natives who wander about the country. Without the guard's assistance these natives could not have opened the draw-bridge, for they do not understand its working." "Exactly," replied the officer. "Now, it is known," added Mr. Mitchell, "from the testimony of a boatman, whose boat passed Camden Bridge at forty minutes past ten in the evening, that the bridge was closed according to regulation, after his passage." "Quite right." [Illustration: In the midst of the multitude two men were bearing a corpse. It was that of the guard, already cold. A poniard-thrust had pierced him to the heart.] "Therefore the complicity of the guard seems to me to be proved incontestably." The officer again made a gesture of dissent. "Then you do not attribute the crime to the natives?" inquired Glenarvan. "I do not." "To whom, then?" At this moment a loud uproar was heard half a mile up the river. A crowd had formed, which rapidly increased, and was now approaching the station. In the midst of the multitude two men were bearing a corpse. It was that of the guard, already cold. A poniard-thrust had pierced him to the heart. The assassins had dragged the body some distance from Camden Bridge, doubtless intending by this means to mislead the police in their first investigations. This discovery clearly justified the doubts of the officer. The natives had no hand in the crime. "Those who struck the blow," said he, "are persons already familiar with the use of these little instruments." As he spoke he displayed a pair of "darbies," a kind of manacles consisting of a double ring of iron, furnished with a padlock. "Before long," added he, "I shall have the pleasure of presenting them with these bracelets as a new year's gift." "Then you suspect----?" "People who have 'traveled free on Her Majesty's vessels.'" "What! convicts?" cried Paganel, who recognized the phrase employed in the Australian colonies. "I thought," observed Glenarvan, "that those who have been transported had no right to stay in the province of Victoria." "Ah, well," replied the officer, "if they have not the right, they take it! Sometimes they escape; and, if I am not greatly mistaken, these fellows have come direct from Perth. Well, they shall return again, you may be sure." [Sidenote: A RAILROAD SLEEPER.] Mr. Mitchell nodded approvingly at the words of the officer. At this moment the cart arrived at the railroad crossing. Glenarvan, wishing to spare the ladies the spectacle at Camden Bridge, took leave of the surveyor-general, and made a sign to his companions to follow him. "There is no occasion," said he, "for us to interrupt our journey." On reaching the cart, Glenarvan simply told Lady Helena that a railroad accident had taken place, without mentioning the part that the convicts had played in the catastrophe. He reserved this matter that he might question Ayrton in private. The little party then crossed the track, not far above the bridge, and resumed their route towards the east. CHAPTER XXXVI. FRESH FACES. They had not proceeded far before they reached a native cemetery, pleasantly situated and with abundance of shady trees. Here for a time they halted, and, whilst Robert and Paganel were exploring, Lord and Lady Glenarvan almost stumbled over a queer object. It was human, indigenous, and sleeping; but at first this was all that they could decide, until, as the eyes opened and the sleeper roused to active life, they saw before them a boy of eight years, with a notice pinned to the back of his jacket which read as follows: "TOLINÉ*, to be conducted to Echuca, care of Jeff Smith, Railway Porter. Prepaid." [Illustration: A boy of eight years, with a notice pinned to the back of his jacket which read as follows: "Toliné, to be conducted to Echuca, care of Jeff Smith, Railway Porter. Prepaid."] Here, it would seem, was another waif that Providence had cast in their path. They questioned him, and his answers were pertinent and clear. He had been educated in the Wesleyan Methodist day-school at Melbourne, and was now going for a time to visit his parents, who were living with the rest of their tribe in Lachlan. He had been in the train to which the accident had happened, and had, with childlike confidence, troubled less about his fate than did those of older years. Going to a little distance, and laying himself on the grass, he had soon fallen into the slumber from which our travelers had aroused him. [Illustration: Paganel and the others had now gathered round, and Toliné had to answer many a question. He came out of his examination very creditably.] Paganel and the others had now gathered round, and Toliné had to answer many a question. He came out of his examination very creditably; the reverence with which he spoke of the Creator and of the Bible produced a very favorable impression on the Scottish heads of the expedition, whilst the fact that he had taken "the first prize in geography" was sufficient introduction to Monsieur Paganel, who forthwith tested his knowledge, greatly to his own satisfaction, and considerably to the credit of his young pupil. The curiosity of his discoverers having been fully satisfied, Toliné was made welcome, and partook with the others of the general repast. Many were the plans and purposes concerning him, and much wonder was expressed as to how they could speed him on his way; but in the morning it was discovered that he had solved the problem for himself, and a bouquet of fresh leaves and flowers, laid by the side of Lady Helena's seat, was the only memento that Toliné had left. [Sidenote: A GOLDEN CITY.] The party were now approaching the district which, in the years 1851 and 1852, was so much talked of throughout the civilized world, and attracted from all parts so many reckless adventurers and fortune-hunters. The line of the thirty-seventh parallel, on which they were traveling, led them through the diggings and municipality of Mount Alexander, which was one of the most successful spots for the digger at the commencement of the gold fever, in consequence of the comparatively level nature of the ground and the general richness of the soil, so different from some other localities where only once in a while was some enormous nugget to be found. As they drew near to the streets of this hastily-built town, Ayrton and Mulready, who were in charge of the cart, were sent forward, whilst the others walked through the place to inspect what there might be of interest, as well as to ascertain what might be learned concerning the object of their expedition. Thus, in this strange gathering of all nationalities and creeds and professions, the regular inhabitants beheld a still more extraordinary sight than that every day afforded them: folks who to the refinement which education and civilization give added both the earnestness of the worker and the freshness and vigor of the pleasure-seeking tourist. In the streets, in connection with the strange sign-boards and announcements, the novel erections and purposes to which some of them were adapted, Paganel had a history and commentary for every one. Still more did he expatiate upon the thousand-and-one topics of interest when they visited the bank building, which here is the centre of more than one agency connected with this great gold-bearing district. Here was the mineralogical museum, in which might be seen specimens illustrative of all the various ways in which the gold has been found, whether in combination with clay or other minerals, or--as it is sometimes, to the great joy of the finder, discovered--_pur et simple_. Here also were models, diagrams, and even the tools themselves, to illustrate the different methods by which the object of search was dug out, or washed, or crushed, or tested. Here also was an almost unequaled collection of precious stones, gems of all sorts, making the gallery in which they were placed a real Golconda for its wealth and attractions. Besides all this, here was the centre of the varied agencies by which the reports were brought in from the companies established for mining purposes, and also from each isolated worker, of the space purchased, the number of feet or yards dug, the ore extracted, the comparative richness or poverty of the soil here, there, and elsewhere, which in their summarized and aggregate form have greatly helped to a correct knowledge of the comparative and absolute gold-bearing value of various spots. Then, in addition to the usual operations of a banking establishment, it was here that the ore was stored, from hence that it was sent, under government escort and with government guarantee, subject to a fixed, though moderate, charge, so that the transport to Melbourne, which at first was a dangerous and expensive "middle passage," was now as easily and inexpensively accomplished as is the transmission of freight from London to Paris. [Illustration: In the streets, in connection with the strange sign-boards and announcements, the novel erections and purposes to which some of them were adapted, Paganel had a history and commentary for every one.] Over the whole of this establishment they were conducted by the most courteous and obliging of officials, and the services thus rendered charmed the Frenchman, who was none the less loquacious, and was in truth able even to enlighten his guides. [Illustration: Here was the mineralogical museum, in which might be seen specimens illustrative of all the various ways in which the gold has been found.] [Sidenote: PLEASING PROGRESS.] But his joy culminated when, after some time spent in the hotel, the party left the town, and passed through the "diggings," properly so called. It was difficult to persuade Paganel and Robert--who kept together--to come on, in order that they might not leave Ayrton and Mulready too long in suspense. Now the Frenchman would see just the key that he needed to understand a point not before clear to him; anon you might see him as in the illustration, when he had picked up a pebble and was sure that it was in itself so interesting as a mineralogical specimen that he must treasure it up for the Bank of France, so that his own land might have at least one part of Australia. All this was done with such a mingling of childish good-nature and scientific and national pride that it was useless to do anything but laugh, and an irrepressible smile came over even the major's features. At length, however, by drawing him into a lecture, they succeeded in persuading him to follow them; and, as they left the diggings, he told them the history of the prophecies, the discovery, and the spread of knowledge as to the rich auriferous deposits of this part of Australia. He could give them facts and incidents and dates as to the ingress into Melbourne, and the exodus therefrom to the diggings, in the year 1852; he told them how the energy and the love of order which characterize the English-speaking peoples had reduced to system, method, subordination, the chaotic surgings and restlessness which marked the first weeks and months of this new era; and he detailed, as though he had studied the subject to the entire neglect of other matters, the working of the system,--how the land was registered, what was the sum paid in the aggregate, how the taxes were collected, wherein the system had been found faulty. All this occupied much time, and, before he had finished, the cart was in sight, in which Lady Helena and Miss Grant reseated themselves, and for the remainder of the day and the succeeding night their progress was in the accustomed order. CHAPTER XXXVII. A WARNING. At sunrise the travelers left the gold regions and crossed the frontiers of the county of Talbot. Their line of travel now struck the dusty roads of the county of Dalhousie. Half the journey was accomplished. In fifteen days more of travel equally rapid the little party would reach the shores of Twofold Bay. Moreover, every one was in good health. Paganel's assertions as to the salubrity of this climate were verified. There was little or no moisture, and the heat was quite endurable. Neither men nor animals complained. [Illustration: Anon you might see him as in the illustration, when he had picked up a pebble and was sure that it was in itself so interesting as a mineralogical specimen that he must treasure it up for the Bank of France.] [Sidenote: A PILLARED GROVE.] Only one change had been made in the line of march since leaving Camden Bridge. The criminal disaster on the railway, when made known to Ayrton, had induced him to take precautions hitherto needless. The horsemen were not to lose sight of the cart. During the hours of encampment one of them was always on guard. Morning and evening the priming of the fire-arms was renewed. It was certain that a band of malefactors were scouring the country; and, although nothing gave cause for immediate suspicion, still it was necessary to be ready for any emergency. In truth they had reason to act thus. An imprudence, or negligence even, might cost them dear. Glenarvan, moreover, was not alone in giving heed to this state of affairs. In the isolated towns and stations the inhabitants and squatters took precautions against any attack or surprise. The houses were closed at nightfall. The dogs were let loose within the palisades, and barked at the slightest alarm. There was not a shepherd, collecting his numerous flocks on horseback for the evening return, who did not carry a carbine suspended from the pommel of his saddle. The news of the crime committed at Camden Bridge was the reason for this excessive caution, and many a colonist who had formerly slept with open doors and windows now carefully locked his house at twilight. After awhile, the cart entered a grove of giant trees, the finest they had hitherto seen. There was a cry of admiration at sight of the eucalyptuses, two hundred feet high, whose spongy bark was five inches in thickness. The trunks measured twenty feet in circumference, and were furrowed by streams of odorous sap. Not a branch, not a twig, not a wanton shoot, not even a knot, disfigured their perfect symmetry. They could not have issued smoother from the hand of the turner. They were like so many columns exactly mated, and could be counted by hundreds, spreading at a vast height into capitals of finely-shaped branches adorned with vertical leaves, from which hung solitary flowers, whose calices were like inverted urns. Under this evergreen canopy the air circulated freely. A continual ventilation absorbed the moisture of the earth, and horses, herds of cattle, and carts could easily pass between these trees, which were widely separated and arranged in straight rows. It was neither a wood with thickets crowded and obstructed by brambles, nor a virgin forest barricaded with fallen trunks and entangled with inextricable parasites, where only axe and fire can clear a way for the pioneers. A carpet of herbage below, and a sheet of verdure above; long vistas of noble pillars; little shade or coolness; a peculiar light, like the rays that sift through a delicate tissue; shadows sharply defined upon the ground: all this constituted a strange sight. The forests of Oceanica are entirely different from those of the New World, and the eucalyptus--the "tara" of the aborigines--is the most perfect tree of the Australian flora. The shade is not dense, nor the darkness profound, beneath these domes of verdure, owing to a strange peculiarity in the arrangement of the leaves of the eucalyptus. Not one presents its face to the sun, but only its sharp edge. The eye sees nothing but profiles in this singular foliage. Thus the rays of the sun glide to the earth as if they had passed between the slats of a window-blind. Every one observed this and seemed surprised. Why this particular arrangement? This question was naturally addressed to Paganel, who replied like a man who is never at fault. "What astonishes me," said he, "is not the freak of nature, for she knows what she does; but botanists do not always know what they say. Nature was not mistaken in giving to these trees this singular foliage; but men are wrong in calling them eucalyptuses." "What does the word mean?" asked Mary Grant. "It comes from the Greek words [Greek: eu kalyptô], signifying _I cover well_. But you all see that the eucalyptus covers badly." [Sidenote: A SILENT MARCH.] "Just so, my dear Paganel," replied Glenarvan; "and now tell us why the leaves grow thus." "In this country, where the air is dry," said Paganel, "where rains are rare and the soil is parched, the trees need neither wind nor sun. Hence these narrow leaves seek to defend themselves against the elements and preserve themselves from too great an evaporation. They therefore present their edges, and not their faces, to the action of the solar rays. There is nothing more intelligent than a leaf." "Nor more selfish," remarked the major. "They thought only of themselves, and not at all of travelers." The entire party was inclined to be of MacNabb's opinion, except Paganel, who, as he wiped his face, congratulated himself upon traveling beneath these shadowless trees. However, this arrangement of foliage was to be regretted; for the journey through these forests is frequently very long and painful, since nothing protects the traveler from the heat of the sun. All day long our travelers pursued their way under these interminable arches. They met neither quadruped nor human being. A few cockatoos inhabited the tops of the trees; but at that height they could scarcely be distinguished, and their chattering was an almost inaudible murmur. Sometimes a flock of parrots would shoot across a distant vista, illumining it with a rapid flash of variegated light. But generally a deep silence reigned in this vast temple of verdure, and the measured tread of the horses, a few words exchanged now and then in desultory conversation, the creaking of the cart-wheels, and from time to time a cry from Ayrton as he urged on his sluggish team, were the only sounds that disturbed this vast solitude. [Illustration: They were like so many columns exactly mated, and could be counted by hundreds.] At evening they encamped at the foot of some trees that bore the marks of a recent fire. They formed tall chimneys, as it were, for the flames had hollowed them out internally throughout their entire length. Having only this shell of bark remaining, they no longer suffered severely from this treatment. However, this lamentable habit of the squatters and natives will finally destroy these magnificent trees, and they will disappear like the cedars of Lebanon, so many centuries old, consumed by the careless fires of wandering encampments. [Illustration: At evening they encamped at the foot of some trees that bore the marks of a recent fire. They formed tall chimneys, as it were, for the flames had hollowed them out internally throughout their entire length.] Olbinett, according to Paganel's advice, kindled a fire in one of these tubular trunks. He obtained a draught at once, and the smoke soon disappeared in the dark mass of foliage. The necessary precautions were taken for the night, and Ayrton, Mulready, Wilson, and Captain Mangles watched by turns till sunrise. During all the next day the interminable forest presented its long, monotonous avenues, till it seemed as if it would never end. Towards evening, however, the rows of trees became thinner; and a few miles farther on, upon a small plain, appeared a collection of regularly built houses. "Seymour!" cried Paganel. "This is the last place we shall meet with before leaving the province of Victoria." "Is it an important town?" inquired Lady Helena. "Madam," replied he, "it is a simple parish that would like to become a municipality." "Shall we find a comfortable hotel?" asked Glenarvan. "I hope so," answered the geographer. "Well, then, let us go into the town; for the ladies will not be sorry, I imagine, to rest here one night." "My dear Edward," replied Lady Helena, "Mary and I accept; but on the condition that it shall cause no trouble or delay." "None at all," said Lord Glenarvan. "Moreover, our oxen are fatigued. To-morrow we will start at break of day." [Sidenote: A TALK AFTER SUPPER.] It was now nine o'clock. The moon was approaching the horizon, and her rays were dimmed by the gathering mist. The darkness was increasing. The whole party, accordingly, entered the broad street of Seymour under the guidance of Paganel, who always seemed to be perfectly acquainted with what he had never seen. But his instinct directed him, and he went straight to Campbell's North British Hotel. Horses and oxen were taken to the stable, the cart was put under the shed, and the travelers were conducted to quite comfortable apartments. At ten o'clock the guests took their seats at a table, over which Olbinett had cast his experienced eye. Paganel had just explored the town, in company with Robert, and now related his nocturnal impressions in a very laconic style. He had seen absolutely nothing. However, a man less absent-minded would have observed a certain excitement in the streets of Seymour. Groups were formed here and there, which gradually increased. People talked at the doors of the houses, and questioned each other with an air of anxiety. Various daily papers were read aloud, commented upon, and discussed. These signs, one might suppose, could not have escaped the most careless observer; Paganel, however, had suspected nothing. The major, on the contrary, without even leaving the hotel, had ascertained the fears that were agitating the little community. Ten minutes' conversation with the loquacious landlord had informed him; but he did not utter a word. Not until supper was over, and Lady Helena, Mary, and Robert had retired to their chambers, did the major say to his companions: "They have traced the authors of the crime committed at Camden Bridge." "Have they been arrested?" asked Ayrton, quickly. "No," replied MacNabb, without seeming to notice the eagerness of the quartermaster. "So much the worse," added Ayrton. "Well," inquired Glenarvan, "to whom do they attribute the crime?" "Read," said the major, handing to Glenarvan a copy of the _Australian and New Zealand Gazette_, "and you will see that the police-officer was not mistaken." Glenarvan read aloud the following passage: "Sydney, Jan. 2, 1865.--It will be remembered that on the night of December 29 an accident took place at Camden Bridge, five miles from Castlemaine Station, on the Melbourne and Sandhurst Railway, by which the night express was precipitated at full speed into the Lutton River. Numerous thefts committed after the accident, and the corpse of the guard found half a mile above, prove that it was the result of a crime; and, in accordance with the verdict at the inquest, this crime is to be attributed to a band of convicts who escaped, six months ago, from the Perth penitentiary, in Western Australia, as they were about to be transferred to Norfolk Island. These convicts are twenty-nine in number, and are commanded by a certain Ben Joyce, a dangerous criminal, who arrived in Australia several months ago in some way, and upon whom justice has not yet succeeded in laying hands. The inhabitants of the cities, and the colonists and squatters of the stations, are warned to be on their guard, and requested to send to the undersigned any information which may assist his investigations. "J. P. MITCHELL, Surveyor-General." * * * * * When Glenarvan had finished reading this article, MacNabb turned to the geographer and said: "You see, Paganel, that there may yet be convicts in Australia." "Runaways there may be, of course," replied Paganel, "but not those who have been transported and regularly received. These people have no right to be here." "Well, at any rate they are here," continued Glenarvan; "but I do not suppose that their presence need cause us to change our plans or delay our journey. What do you think, captain?" [Sidenote: LOOKING AT BOTH SIDES.] Captain Mangles did not answer immediately. He hesitated between the grief that the abandonment of the search would cause the two children, and the fear of compromising the safety of the party. "If Lady Glenarvan and Miss Grant were not with us," said he, "I should care very little for this band of wretches." Glenarvan understood him, and added: "Of course it is not advisable to give up our undertaking; but perhaps it would be prudent for the sake of the ladies to join the Duncan at Melbourne, and continue our search for Captain Grant towards the east. What do you think, MacNabb?" "Before replying," said the major, "I should like to hear Ayrton's opinion." The quartermaster, thus addressed, looked at Glenarvan. "I think," said he, "that, as we are two hundred miles from Melbourne, the danger, if there is any, is as great on the southern as on the eastern road. Both are little frequented, and one is as good as the other. Moreover, I do not think that thirty malefactors can intimidate eight well-armed and resolute men. Therefore, in the absence of better advice, I should go on." "Well said," replied Paganel. "By continuing our course we shall cross Captain Grant's track, while by returning to the south we should go directly away from it. I agree with you, therefore, and shall give myself no uneasiness about the runaway convicts." Thus the determination to make no change in the programme was unanimously approved of. "One more remark, my lord," said Ayrton, as they were about to separate. "Speak." "Would it not be advisable to send an order to the Duncan to sail to the coast?" "Why?" asked Captain Mangles. "It will be time enough to send the order when we arrive at Twofold Bay. If any unforeseen event should compel us to return to Melbourne, we might be sorry not to find the Duncan there. Moreover, her injuries cannot yet have been repaired. I think, therefore, that it would be better to wait." "Well," replied Ayrton, without further remark. The next day the little party, armed and ready for any emergency, left Seymour, and half an hour after re-entered the forest of eucalyptuses, which appeared again towards the east. Glenarvan would have preferred to travel in the open country, for a plain is less favorable to sudden attacks and ambuscades than a thick wood. But they had no alternative; and the cart kept on all day between the tall, monotonous trees, and at evening encamped on the borders of the district of Murray. They were now setting foot on one of the least frequented portions of the Australian continent, a vast uninhabited region stretching away to the Australian Alps. At some future day its forests will be leveled, and the home of the colonist will stand where now all is desolation; but at present it is a desert. In this region is situated the so-styled "reserve for the blacks." On these remote plains various spots have been set apart, where the aboriginal race can enjoy to the full the privilege of gradually becoming extinct. Though the white man is at perfect liberty to invade this "reserved" territory, yet the black may call it his own. Paganel, who was in his element wherever statistics or history was concerned, went into full details respecting the native races. He gave a long account of the cruelties to which these unfortunate beings had been subjected at the hands of the early colonists, and showed how little had been done by the interference of the government. As a striking instance of the manner in which the aborigines melt away before the advance of civilization, he cited the case of Tasmania, which at the beginning of this century had five thousand native inhabitants, but in 1863 had only seven. [Sidenote: STUDIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY.] "Fifty years ago," said he, "we should have met in our course many a tribe of natives; whereas thus far we have not seen even one. A century hence, the black race will have utterly disappeared from this continent." At that moment Robert, halting in front of a group of eucalyptuses, cried out: "A monkey! there is a monkey!" The cart was instantly stopped, and, looking in the direction indicated by the boy, our travellers saw a huge black form moving with astonishing agility from branch to branch, until it was lost from view in the depths of the grove. "What sort of a monkey is that?" asked MacNabb. "That monkey," answered Paganel, "is a full-blooded Australian." Just then were heard sounds of voices at some little distance; the oxen were put in motion, and after proceeding a few hundred paces the party came suddenly upon an encampment of aborigines, consisting of some ten or twelve tents, made of strips of bark arranged in the manner of tiles, and giving shelter to their wretched inhabitants on only one side. Of these miserable beings there were about thirty, men, women, and children, dressed in ragged kangaroo-skins. Their first movement was one of flight; but a few words from Ayrton restored confidence, and they slowly approached the party of Europeans. The major jocularly insisted that Robert was correct in saying that he had seen a monkey; but Lady Helena declined to accept his views, and, getting out of the cart, made friendly advances to these degraded beings, who seemed to look upon her as a divinity. Reassured by her gentle manner, they surrounded the travelers, and began to cast wishful glances at the provisions which the cart contained. Glenarvan, at the request of his wife, distributed a quantity of food among the hungry group. [Illustration: Of these miserable beings there were about thirty, men, women, and children, dressed in ragged kangaroo-skins.] After this had been dispatched, our friends were favored by their new acquaintances with a sham fight, which lasted about ten minutes, the women urging on the combatants and pretending to mutilate those who fell in the fray. Suddenly the excited crowd dropped their arms, and a profound silence succeeded to the din of war. A flight of cockatoos had made its appearance in the neighboring trees; and the opportunity to display their proficiency in the use of the boomerang was at once improved by the Australians. The skill manifested in the construction and use of this instrument served Lady Helena as a strong argument against the monkey theory, though the major pretended that he was not yet convinced. [Illustration: A sham fight, which lasted about ten minutes, the women urging on the combatants and pretending to mutilate those who fell in the fray.] Lord Glenarvan was now about to give the order to advance, when a native came running up with the news that he had discovered half a dozen cassowaries. The chase that followed, with the ingenious disguise assumed by the hunter, and the marvelous fidelity with which he imitated the movements and cries of the bird, was witnessed with interest by the travelers. Lady Helena adduced the skill displayed as a still further argument against the major's theory; but the obstinate MacNabb declined to recede from his position, citing to his antagonist the statement of the negroes concerning the orang-outangs,--that they are negroes like themselves, only that they are too cunning to talk, for fear of being made to work. CHAPTER XXXVIII. WEALTH IN THE WILDERNESS. [Sidenote: A PIANO IN THE DESERT.] After a peaceful night, the travelers, at seven o'clock in the morning, resumed their journey eastward over the plains. Twice they crossed the tracks of squatters, leading towards the north; and then the different hoof-prints would have been confounded if Glenarvan's horse had not left upon the dust the Black Point mark, distinguishable by its three trefoils. Sometimes the plain was furrowed with winding creeks, bordered by box-wood, which took their source on the slopes of the Buffalo Range, a chain of mountains whose picturesque outlines stretched along the horizon, and which the party resolved to reach that evening. Ayrton urged on his oxen, and, after a journey of thirty-five miles, they reached the place. The tent was pitched beneath a great tree. Night had come, and supper was quickly dispatched; all thought more of sleeping than of eating, after the fatigues of the day. Paganel, to whom fell the first watch, did not lie down, but, rifle on shoulder, guarded the encampment, walking to and fro that he might the better resist sleep. In spite of the absence of the moon, the night was almost bright with the splendor of the southern constellations; and the geographer amused himself in reading the great book of the firmament, which is always open. The silence of sleeping nature was broken only by the sound of the horses' chains as they rattled against their feet. Paganel was becoming fully absorbed in his astronomical meditations, and occupying himself more with the things of heaven than those of earth, when a distant sound startled him from his reverie. He listened attentively, and, to his great astonishment, thought he distinguished the tones of a piano. A few boldly-struck chords wafted to his ears their harmonious vibrations. He could not be mistaken. "A piano in the desert!" said he to himself. "It cannot be!" It was indeed very surprising, and Paganel began to think that some strange Australian bird was imitating the sound of the instrument. [Sidenote: A TWOFOLD SURPRISE.] But at that moment a voice, harmoniously pitched, was heard. The pianist was accompanied by a vocalist. The geographer listened incredulously, but in a few moments was forced to recognize the sublime air that struck upon his ear. It was "_Il mio tesoro tanto_" from Don Juan. [Illustration: Paganel did not lie down, but, rifle on shoulder, guarded the encampment, walking to and fro that he might the better resist sleep.] "Parbleu!" thought the geographer, "however strange the Australian birds may be, or even though the parrots were the most musical in the world, they could not sing Mozart." He listened to the end of this grand inspiration of the master. The effect of this sweet melody, in the stillness of the starlit night, was indescribable. He remained a long time under the influences of its enchantment. At last the voice ceased, and all was silent. When Wilson came to relieve the geographer, he found him wrapt in a profound reverie. Paganel said nothing to the sailor, but, reserving his account of the incident for Glenarvan the next day, he crept into the tent. In the morning the whole party were awakened by unexpected bayings. Glenarvan at once arose. Two magnificent pointers were gamboling along the edge of a small wood; but at the approach of the travelers they disappeared among the trees, barking loudly. "There must be a station in this desert," said Glenarvan, "and hunters, since those are hunting-dogs." Paganel was just about to relate his experiences of the past night, when two men appeared, in hunting costume, mounted on fine horses. They naturally stopped at sight of the little party, encamped in gypsy-like fashion, and seemed to be wondering what the presence of armed men in this place meant, when they perceived the ladies, who were alighting from the cart. They immediately dismounted, and advanced towards them, hat in hand. Glenarvan went to meet them, and introduced himself and party, giving the name and rank of each member. The young men bowed, and one of them, the elder, said: "My lord, will your ladies, your companions, and yourself do us the honor to accompany us to our house?" "May I ask, gentlemen, whom I have the honor of addressing?" inquired Glenarvan. "Michael and Alexander Patterson, proprietors of Hottam Station. You are already on the grounds of the establishment, and have but a quarter of a mile to go." "Gentlemen," replied Glenarvan, "I should be unwilling to slight a hospitality so graciously offered----" "My lord," interrupted Michael Patterson, "by accepting you will confer a favor upon two poor colonists, who will be only too happy to extend to you the honors of the desert." Glenarvan bowed in token of assent. "Sir," said Paganel, addressing Michael Patterson, "should I be too inquisitive were I to ask if it was you who sang that divine air of Mozart last night?" "It was I, sir," replied the gentleman; "and my brother accompanied me." "Well, sir," continued Paganel, extending his hand, "accept the sincere compliments of a Frenchman, who is an ardent admirer of Mozart's music." The young man modestly returned the geographer's greeting, and then pointed towards the right to the road they were to take. The horses had been confided to the care of Ayrton and the sailors, and the travelers at once betook themselves on foot to Hottam Station, under the guidance of the two young men. It was a magnificent establishment, characterized by the perfect order of an English park. Immense meadows, inclosed by fences, extended as far as the eye could reach. Here grazed thousands of oxen and sheep. Numerous shepherds and still more numerous dogs tended this vast herd, while with the bellowing and bleating mingled the baying of mastiffs and the sharp crack of stock-whips. [Sidenote: ARTIFICIAL SELECTION.] To the east the prospect was broken by a border of gum-trees, beyond which rose the imposing peak of Mount Hottam, seven thousand five hundred feet high. Long avenues of tall trees stretched in all directions, while here and there stood dense clumps of grass-trees, shrubby plants about ten feet high, resembling the dwarf palm, with a thick foliage of long narrow leaves. The air was laden with the perfume of laurels, whose clusters of white flowers in full bloom exhaled the most delicate fragrance. With the charming groups of native trees were mingled those transplanted from European climes. The peach, the pear, the apple, the fig, the orange, and even the oak were hailed with delight by the travelers, who, if they were not astonished at walking in the shade of the trees of their country, wondered, at least, at the sight of the birds that fluttered among the branches, the satin-birds with their silky plumage, and the canaries, clad in golden and black velvet. Here, for the first time, they saw the menure, or lyre-bird, whose tail has the form of the graceful instrument of Orpheus. As the bird fled away among the arborescent ferns, its tail striking the branches, they almost expected to hear those harmonious chords that helped Amphion to rebuild the walls of Thebes. Lord Glenarvan was not satisfied with merely admiring the fairy wonders of this oasis of the Australian desert. He listened with profound interest to the young men's story. In England, in the heart of civilization, a new-comer would have first informed his host whence he came and whither he was going; but here, by a nice shade of distinction, Michael and Sandy Patterson thought they should make themselves known to the travelers to whom they offered their hospitalities, and briefly told their story. [Illustration: Here, for the first time, they saw the menure, or lyre-bird, whose tail has the form of the graceful instrument of Orpheus.] [Sidenote: NATURE AND ART.] It was like that of all intelligent and active young Englishmen, who do not believe that the possession of riches absolves from the responsibility to labor for the welfare of others. Michael and Alexander Patterson were the sons of a London banker. When they were twenty years old, their father had said: "Here is money, my sons. Go to some distant land, found there a useful establishment, and acquire in labor the knowledge of life. If you succeed, so much the better; if you fail, it matters little. We shall not regret the money that will have enabled you to become men." They obeyed; they chose the province of Victoria as the place to sow the paternal bank-notes, and had no reason to repent. At the end of three years their establishment had attained its present prosperity. They had just finished the brief account of their career, when the dwelling came in sight at the end of a fine avenue of trees. It was a charming house of wood and brick, surrounded by clusters of plants, and had the elegant form of a Swiss cottage, while a veranda, from which hung Chinese lanterns, encircled it like a Roman impluvium. The windows were shaded by brilliant-colored awnings, which at a distance looked almost like masses of flowers. Nothing could be prettier, cozier, or pleasanter to the sight. On the lawn and among the shrubbery round about stood bronze candelabra, supporting elegant lamps with glass globes, which at nightfall illumined the whole garden with a beauteous light. No farm-hands, stables, or outhouses were to be seen,--nothing that indicated scenes of toil. The dwellings of the workmen--a regular village, consisting of some twenty cottages--were a quarter of a mile distant, in the heart of a little valley. Telegraph-wires secured immediate communication between the village and the house of the proprietors, which, far from all tumult, was in truth "a thing of beauty." The avenue was soon passed. A little iron bridge, of great elegance, crossing a murmuring stream, gave access to the private grounds. A courteous attendant advanced to meet the travelers; the doors of the house were opened, and the guests of Hottam Station entered the sumptuous dwelling. All the luxuries of refined and civilized life seemed to be present. Into the vestibule, which was adorned with decorative subjects, illustrating the turf or the chase, opened a spacious parlor, lighted with five windows. A piano, covered with classic and modern music; easels, upon which were half-finished paintings; marble statues, mounted on tasteful pedestals; on the walls, a few pictures by Flemish masters; rich carpets, soft to the feet as grassy meadows; panels of tapestry, descriptive of pleasing mythological episodes; an antique chandelier, costly chinaware, delicate vases, and a great variety of articles of _virtù_, indicated a high appreciation of beauty and comfort. Everything that could please, everything that could relieve the tedium of a voluntary exile, everything that could remind one of a luxurious European home, was to be found in this fairy abode. It would have been easy to imagine oneself in some princely castle of England, France, or Germany. The five windows admitted, through delicate curtains, a light tempered and softened by the shadows of the veranda. Lady Helena looked out, and was astonished. The house, upon this side, commanded the view of a broad valley, which extended to the eastern mountains. The alternation of meadow and woodland, broken here and there by vast clearings, the graceful sweep of the hill-sides, and the outlines of the entire landscape, formed a picture beyond the power of description. This vast panorama, intersected by broad bands of light and shade, changed every hour with the progress of the sun. In the mean time, in accordance with the hosts' orders, breakfast had been prepared by the steward of the station, and in less than a quarter of an hour the travelers were seated at a bountiful table. The quality of the viands and the wines was unexceptionable; but what was especially gratifying, in the midst of these refinements of wealth, was the evident pleasure experienced by the young settlers in dispensing to strangers, beneath their own roof, this magnificent hospitality. [Sidenote: AUSTRALIANS, NATIVE AND IMPORTED.] The young gentlemen were soon made acquainted with the object of the expedition, and took a lively interest in Glenarvan's search, giving also great encouragement to the captain's children. "Harry Grant," said Michael, "has evidently fallen into the hands of the natives, since he has not appeared in the settlements on the coast. He knew his position exactly, as the document proves, and, as he has not reached any English colony, he must have been made prisoner by the natives as soon as he landed." "That is precisely what happened to his quartermaster, Ayrton," replied Captain Mangles. "But, gentlemen," inquired Lady Helena, "have you never heard of the shipwreck of the Britannia?" "Never, madam," said Michael. "And what treatment do you think Captain Grant would experience as a prisoner among the Australians?" "The Australians are not cruel, madam," replied the young settler: "Miss Grant may reassure herself on this point. There are many instances of their kindness; and some Europeans have lived a long time among them, without having any reason to complain of brutality." These words corroborated the information previously given by Paganel and Ayrton. When the ladies had left the table, the conversation turned upon convicts. The settlers had heard of the accident at Camden Bridge, but the band of runaways gave no uneasiness, they would not dare to attack a station that was guarded by more than a hundred men. They were confident, too, that they would not venture into the deserted regions of the Murray, nor into the colonies of New South Wales, where the roads are well protected. [Sidenote: A DAY'S SPORT.] Glenarvan could not decline the invitation of his amiable hosts to spend the entire day at Hottam Station. The delay thus occasioned could be turned to good account: the horses and oxen would be greatly benefited by their rest in the comfortable stables of the establishment. It was, therefore, decided to remain, and the two young men submitted to their guests a programme for the day's sports, which was adopted with alacrity. [Illustration: It was a charming house of wood and brick, surrounded by clusters of plants, and had the elegant form of a Swiss cottage.] At noon, seven fine hunters pawed the ground at the gate of the house. For the ladies was provided an elegant coach, and the long reins enabled their driver to show his skill in manoeuvring the "four-in-hand." The horsemen, accompanied by outriders, and well armed, galloped beside the carriage, while the pack of hounds bayed joyously in the coppices. For four hours the cavalcade traversed the paths and avenues of these spacious grounds. As for game, an army of bushmen could not have started up a greater number of animals. Young Robert, who kept close to the major's side, accomplished wonders. The intrepid boy, in spite of his sister's injunctions, was always ahead, and the first to fire. But Captain Mangles had promised to watch over him, a fact which tended not a little to allay Miss Grant's apprehension for her brother's safety. Of all the sports of the day the most interesting was unquestionably a kangaroo hunt. About four o'clock the dogs started a troop of these curious animals. The little ones took refuge in their mothers' pouches, and the whole drove rushed away in single file. Nothing can be more astonishing than the enormous bounds of the kangaroo, whose hind legs are twice as long as its fore ones, and bend like a spring. At the head of the drove was a male five feet high,--"an old man," in the language of the bushmen. For four or five miles the chase was briskly continued. The kangaroos did not slacken their pace; and the dogs, who feared, with good reason, the powerful blows of their formidable paws, did not venture to approach them. But at last the drove stopped in exhaustion, and "the old man" braced himself against the trunk of a tree, ready to fight for his life. One of the pointers, carried on by the impetus of his course, rolled within reach of him. A moment after, the unfortunate dog was tossed into the air, and fell back lifeless. The entire pack, deterred by the fate of their comrade, kept at a respectful distance. It became necessary to dispatch the kangaroo with the rifle, and nothing but bullets could bring down the gigantic quadruped. At this juncture Robert narrowly escaped being the victim of his rashness. In order to make sure of his aim, he approached so near the kangaroo that the animal made a spring at him. Robert fell. A cry of alarm resounded. Mary Grant, speechless with apprehension, stretched her hands towards her brother. No one dared to fire, for fear of hitting the boy. Suddenly Captain Mangles, with his hunting-knife open, rushed upon the kangaroo, at the risk of his life, and stabbed it to the heart. The beast fell dead, and Robert rose unharmed. An instant after, he was in the arms of his sister. "Thanks, Captain Mangles! thanks!" said Mary, extending her hand to the young captain. "I promised to take care of him," replied the captain, as he took the trembling hand of the young girl. This adventure ended the hunt. The troop of kangaroos had scattered after the death of their leader, whose carcass was brought to the house. It was now six o'clock, and dinner was in readiness for the hunters; comprising, among other dishes, a soup of kangaroo's tail, prepared in the native style. After a dessert of ices and sherbet, the party repaired to the parlor, where the evening was devoted to music. Lady Helena, who was a good pianiste, presided at the instrument, while Michael and Alexander Patterson sang with great taste selections from the latest compositions of the modern musical masters. [Sidenote: A FRESH DEPARTURE.] At eleven o'clock tea was served in true English style. Paganel having desired to taste the Australian tea, a liquid, black as ink, was brought to him. It consisted of a quart of water, in which half a pound of tea had been boiled four hours. Paganel, with a wry face, pronounced it excellent. At midnight the guests were conducted to cool and comfortable chambers, where they renewed in dreams the pleasures of the day. The next morning, at sunrise, they took leave of the two young settlers, with many thanks, and with warmly-expressed hopes to see them at Malcolm Castle at no very distant day. The cart then started, and in a few minutes, as the road wound around the foot of Mount Hottam, the hospitable habitation disappeared, like a passing vision, from the eyes of the travelers. For five miles farther they traversed the grounds of the station, and not till nine o'clock did the little party pass the last palisade and enter upon the almost unknown districts of the country before them. CHAPTER XXXIX. SUSPICIOUS OCCURRENCES. A mighty barrier crossed the road on the southeast. It was the chain of the Australian Alps, which extend in capricious windings fifteen hundred miles, and are capped with clouds four thousand feet aloft. [Sidenote: ASCENDING THE MOUNTAINS.] The sky was dull and lowering, and the rays of the sun struggled through dense masses of mist. The temperature was, therefore, endurable; but the journey was difficult on account of the irregularity of the surface. The unevenness of the plain constantly increased, and here and there rose mounds, covered with young green gum-trees. Farther on, these excrescences formed the first slopes of the great Alps. The ascent was very laborious, as was shown by the efforts of the oxen, whose yokes cracked under the tension of the heavy vehicle. The animals panted heavily, and the muscles of their hams were strained almost to breaking. The axles threatened to give way under the sudden jolts that Ayrton, with all his skill, could not prevent. The ladies, however, lost none of their accustomed cheerfulness. [Illustration: Of all the sports of the day the most interesting was unquestionably a kangaroo hunt.] Captain Mangles and the two sailors rode a few hundred paces in advance, to choose practicable passes. It was a difficult and often a perilous task. Several times Wilson was forced to make a way with his hatchet through the midst of dense thickets. Their course deviated in many windings, which impassable obstacles, lofty blocks of granite, deep ravines, and treacherous swamps compelled them to make. At evening they encamped at the foot of the Alps, on the banks of a small stream that flowed along the edge of a plain covered with tall shrubbery, whose bright-red foliage enlivened the banks. "We shall have difficulty in passing here," said Glenarvan, as he gazed at the chain of mountains, whose outlines were already growing dim in the twilight. "Alps! that is a name suggestive of arduous climbing." "You will change your opinion, my dear Glenarvan," replied Paganel. "You must not think you are in Switzerland." "Then these Australian Alps----?" asked Lady Helena. "Are miniature mountains," continued Paganel. "You will cross them without noticing it." The next day, in spite of the assurances of the confident geographer, the little party found great difficulty in crossing the mountains. They were forced to advance at a venture, and descend into deep and narrow gorges that, for aught they knew, might end in a wall of rock. Ayrton would doubtless have been eventually nonplused had they not, after an hour's climbing, caught sight of a tavern on one of the paths of the mountain. "Well!" said Paganel, as they reached the hostelry, "the proprietor of this inn cannot make a great fortune in such a place. Of what use can he be?" "To give us the information we need for our journey," replied Glenarvan. "Let us go in." Glenarvan, followed by Ayrton, entered the tavern. The landlord of "Bush Inn" was a coarse man, of forbidding appearance, who had to consider himself as the principal customer for the gin, brandy, and whisky of his tavern, and scarcely ever saw any one but squatters or herdsmen. He replied in an ill-humored way to the questions that were addressed him; but his answers sufficed to determine Ayrton upon his course. Glenarvan, however, remunerated the tavern-keeper for the little trouble they had given him, and was about to leave the inn, when a placard, affixed to the wall, attracted his attention. It was a notice of the colonial police, detailing the escape of the convicts from Perth, and setting a price upon the head of Ben Joyce--a hundred pounds sterling to any one who should deliver him up. "Indeed," said Glenarvan, "that is a rascal worth hanging." "And especially worth taking," replied Ayrton. "A hundred pounds! What a sum! He is not worth it." "As for the inn-keeper," added Glenarvan, as he left the room, "I scarcely put faith in him, despite his placard." "Nor I either," said Ayrton. Glenarvan and the quartermaster rejoined the party, and they all proceeded to where a narrow pass wound across the chain. Here they began the ascent. [Sidenote: ANOTHER DEATH.] But it was an arduous task. More than once the ladies and their companions had to dismount, and it was often necessary to push the wheels of the heavy vehicle at some steep ascent, or to hold it back along the edge of some dangerous precipice. The oxen, as they could not work to advantage at sudden turns, had frequently to be unyoked, and the cart blocked to prevent it from sliding back. Ayrton was repeatedly forced to bring the already exhausted horses to his assistance. Whether this exertion was too prolonged, or whether from some other cause, one of the horses gave out during the ascent. He fell suddenly, without an instant's warning. It was Mulready's horse; and when the sailor attempted to help him up, he found that he was dead. Ayrton examined the animal carefully, but did not seem to understand the cause of this sudden death. "The beast must have burst a blood-vessel," said Glenarvan. "Evidently," replied Ayrton. "Take my horse, Mulready," added Glenarvan; "I will join Lady Helena in the cart." Mulready obeyed, and the little party continued their fatiguing ascent, abandoning the body to the crows. The next day they began the descent, which was much more rapid. During its course a violent hail-storm burst on them, and they were forced to seek a shelter beneath the rocks. Not hailstones, but pieces of ice as large as one's hand, were precipitated from the angry clouds. A sling could not have hurled them with greater force, and several sharp blows warned Paganel and Robert to be on their guard. The cart was pierced through in many places: indeed, few roofs could have resisted the fall of these cutting missiles, some of which froze to the trunks of the trees. It was necessary to wait for the end of this avalanche, for fear of being stoned to death, and it was an hour before the party regained the steep path, still slippery with icy incrustations. At evening the cart, considerably shattered, but still firm on its wooden wheels, descended the last slopes of the Alps, between tall solitary pines, and reached the plains of Gippsland. [Illustration: Not hailstones, but pieces of ice as large as one's hand, were precipitated from the angry clouds.] [Sidenote: DIVIDED COUNSELS.] All were impatient to gain their destination, the Pacific Ocean, where the Britannia had been wrecked. There only could traces of the shipwrecked seamen be found, and not in these desert regions. Ayrton urged Lord Glenarvan to send an order to the Duncan to repair to the coast, that he might have at his disposal all the aid possible in his search. In his opinion they ought to take advantage of the Lucknow road, which would lead them to Melbourne. Afterwards this might be difficult, for highways leading directly to the capital would be absolutely wanting. This advice of the quartermaster seemed reasonable. Paganel seconded it. He thought, too, that the yacht would be very useful under the present circumstances, and added that they could no longer communicate with Melbourne after passing the Lucknow road. Glenarvan was undecided, and perhaps would have sent the order that Ayrton so particularly desired, if the major had not opposed this plan with great energy. He explained that Ayrton's presence was necessary to the expedition; that on approaching the coast the country would be unknown; that, if chance set them on the track of Captain Grant, the quartermaster would be more capable than any one else of following it; in short, that he alone could point out the place where the Britannia was lost. MacNabb, therefore, advocated their continuing on the journey without change. Captain Mangles was of the same opinion. The young captain observed that his lordship's orders could more easily reach the Duncan if sent from Twofold Bay, than by dispatching a messenger two hundred miles over a wild country. The major carried his point, and it was therefore decided that they should proceed to Twofold Bay. MacNabb noticed that Ayrton seemed quite disappointed, but he said nothing, and, according to his custom, kept his thoughts to himself. Early in the afternoon they passed through a curious forest of ferns. These arborescent plants, in full bloom, measured thirty feet in height. Horses and horsemen could easily pass beneath their drooping branches, and sometimes the rowel of a spur would ring, as it struck against their solid stalks. The coolness of the grove was very grateful to the wearied travelers. Paganel, always demonstrative, gave vent to exclamations of delight that startled flocks of parrots and cockatoos. All at once his companions saw the geographer reel in the saddle, and fall to the ground like a log. Was it giddiness, or sunstroke, caused by the heat? They hastened to him. "Paganel! Paganel! what is the matter?" cried Lord Glenarvan. "The matter is, my dear friend," replied Paganel, extricating himself from the stirrups, "that I no longer have a horse." "What! your horse----?" "Is dead, stricken like Mulready's." At once Glenarvan, Captain Mangles, and Wilson examined the animal. Paganel was right. His horse had been suddenly stricken dead. "This is singular," said the captain. "Very singular indeed," muttered the major. Glenarvan could not restrain a feeling of uneasiness at this strange occurrence. It was impossible for them to retrace their steps in this desert; while, if an epidemic were to seize all the horses, it would be very difficult to continue the journey. Before the end of the day his fears seemed to be justified. A third horse, Wilson's, fell dead, and, what was worse, one of the oxen was also stricken. Their means of conveyance now consisted of only three oxen and four horses. [Sidenote: A FINE FERNERY.] The situation had grown serious. The mounted horsemen could, of course, take turns in traveling on foot. But, if it should be necessary to leave the cart behind, what would become of the ladies? Could they accomplish the one hundred and twenty miles that still separated them from Twofold Bay? Captain Mangles and Glenarvan anxiously examined the remaining horses: perhaps preventives might be found against new calamities. No sign of disease, however, could be detected. The animals were in perfect health, and bravely endured the hardships of the journey. Glenarvan, therefore, was inclined to think that this mysterious epidemic would have no more victims. This was Ayrton's opinion too, who declared that he could not at all understand the cause of the frightful mortality. They started again, and the cart served to convey the pedestrians, who rode in it by turns. At evening, after a journey of only ten miles, the signal to halt was given, the encampment arranged, and the night was passed comfortably beneath a large group of arborescent ferns, among whose branches fluttered enormous bats. The next day they made an excellent beginning, and accomplished fifteen miles. Everything led them to hope that they would encamp that evening on the banks of the Snowy River. Evening came, and a fog, clearly defined against the horizon, marked the course of the long-looked-for stream. A forest of tall trees was seen at a bend in the road, behind a moderate elevation. Ayrton guided his oxen towards the tall trunks dimly discerned in the shadow, and was just passing the boundary of the wood, when the cart sank into the earth to the hubs. "What is the matter?" asked Glenarvan, when he perceived that the cart had come to a stop. "We are fast in the mud," replied Ayrton. He urged his oxen with voice and whip, but they were up to their knees in the mire, and could not stir. "Let us encamp here," said Captain Mangles. "That is the best plan," answered Ayrton. "To-morrow, at daybreak, we can see to extricate ourselves." [Illustration: Early in the afternoon they passed through a curious forest of ferns. These arborescent plants, in full bloom, measured thirty feet in height.] [Illustration: Flashes of lightning, the dazzling forerunners of a coming storm, every now and then illumined the horizon.] "Very well: be it so," replied Glenarvan. Night had set in rapidly, after a short twilight, but the heat had not departed with the sun. The air was heavy with stifling mists. Flashes of lightning, the dazzling forerunners of a coming storm, every now and then illumined the horizon. The beds were prepared, and the sunken cart was made as comfortable as possible. The sombre arch of the great trees sheltered the tent of the travelers. Provided no rain fell, they would have no reason to complain. Ayrton succeeded with difficulty in extricating his three oxen from the mud, in which they had by this time sunk to their flanks. The quartermaster picketed them with the four horses, and would allow no one to give them their fodder. This service he performed himself with great exactness, and that evening Glenarvan observed that his care was redoubled, for which he thanked him, as the preservation of the team was of paramount importance. Meantime, the travelers partook of a hasty supper. Fatigue and heat had driven away hunger, and they needed rest more than nourishment. Lady Helena and Miss Grant, wishing their companions good-night, retired to their accustomed bedroom. As for the men, some crawled under the tent, while others stretched themselves on the thick grass at the foot of the trees. Gradually each sank into a heavy sleep. The darkness increased beneath the curtain of dense clouds that covered the sky. Not a breath of air was felt. The silence of the night was only interrupted by the occasional howlings of wild animals. About eleven o'clock, after an uneasy slumber, the major awoke. His half-closed eyes were attracted by a dim light that flickered beneath the great trees. One would have thought it was a whitish sheet glittering like the surface of a lake. MacNabb imagined, at first, that the flames of a conflagration were spreading over the ground. [Sidenote: STRANGE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS.] He rose and walked towards the wood. His surprise was great when he found himself in the presence of a purely natural phenomenon. Before him extended an immense field of mushrooms, which emitted phosphorescent flashes. The major, who was not selfish, was about to waken Paganel, that the geographer might witness the spectacle with his own eyes, when an unexpected sight stopped him. The phosphorescent light illumined the wood for the space of half a mile, and MacNabb thought he saw shadows rapidly moving along the edge of the clearing. Did his eyes deceive him? Was he the sport of an illusion? He crouched down, and, after a long and attentive observation, distinctly perceived several men, who seemed by their movements to be searching the ground for something. What could these men want? He must know, and, without an instant's hesitation or awakening his companions, he crawled along on all-fours, carefully concealing himself in the tall grass. CHAPTER XL. A STARTLING DISCOVERY. [Sidenote: INCREASING PERPLEXITIES.] It was a terrible night. At two o'clock in the morning the rain began to fall in torrents, which continued to pour from the stormy clouds till daylight. The tent was an insufficient shelter. Glenarvan and his companions took refuge in the cart, where they passed the time in conversing upon various subjects. The major, however, whose short absence no one had noticed, contented himself with listening in silence. The fury of the tempest gave them considerable uneasiness, since it might cause an inundation, by which the cart, fast in the mire, would be overwhelmed. [Illustration: He crouched down, and, after a long and attentive observation, distinctly perceived several men.] More than once Mulready, Ayrton, and Captain Mangles went to ascertain the height of the rushing waters, and returned drenched from head to foot. At length day appeared. The rain ceased, but the rays of the sun failed to penetrate the thick veil of clouds. Large pools of muddy, yellowish water covered the ground. A warm vapor issued from the water-soaked earth and saturated the atmosphere with a sickly moisture. Glenarvan, first of all, turned his attention to the cart. In his eyes, this was their main support. It was imbedded fast in the midst of a deep hollow of sticky clay. The fore wheels were almost entirely out of sight, and the hind ones were buried up to the hubs. It would be a very difficult matter to pull out the heavy vehicle, and would undoubtedly require the united strength of men, oxen, and horses. "We must make haste," said Captain Mangles. "If this clay dries, the work will be more difficult." Glenarvan, the two sailors, the captain, and Ayrton then entered the wood, where the animals had passed the night. It was a tall forest of gloomy gum-trees. Nothing met the eye but dead trunks, widely separated, which had been destitute of their bark for centuries. Not a bird built its nest on these lofty skeletons; not a leaf trembled on the dry branches, that rattled together like a bundle of dry bones. Glenarvan, as he walked on, gazed at the leaden sky, against which the branches of the gum-trees were sharply defined. To Ayrton's great astonishment, there was no trace of the horses and oxen in the place where he had left them. The fettered animals, however, could not have gone far. They searched for them in the wood, but failed to find them. Ayrton then returned to the banks of the river, which was bordered by magnificent mimosas. He uttered a cry well known to his oxen, but there was no answer. The quartermaster seemed very anxious, and his companions glanced at each other in dismay. An hour passed in a vain search, and Glenarvan was returning to the cart, which was at least a mile off, when a neigh fell upon his ear, followed almost immediately by a bellow. "Here they are!" cried Captain Mangles, forcing his way between the tall tufts of the gastrolobium, which were high enough to conceal a whole herd. Glenarvan, Mulready, and Ayrton rushed after him, and soon shared his astonishment. Two oxen and three horses lay upon the ground, stricken like the others. Their bodies were already cold, and a flock of hungry crows, croaking in the mimosas, waited for their unexpected prey. Glenarvan and his friends gazed at each other, and Wilson did not suppress an oath that rose to his lips. "What is the matter, Wilson?" said Lord Glenarvan, scarcely able to control himself. "We can do nothing. Ayrton, bring the ox and horse that are left. They must extricate us from the difficulty." "If the cart were once out of the mud," replied Captain Mangles, "these two animals, by short journeys, could draw it to the coast. We must, therefore, at all events, release the clumsy vehicle." "We will try, John," said Glenarvan. "Let us return to camp, for there must be anxiety at our long absence." Ayrton took charge of the ox, and Mulready of the horse, and the party returned along the winding banks of the river. Half an hour after, Paganel, MacNabb, Lady Helena, and Miss Grant were told the state of affairs. "By my faith," the major could not help exclaiming, "it is a pity, Ayrton, that you did not shoe all our animals on crossing the Wimerra." "Why so, sir?" asked Ayrton. "Because of all our horses only the one you put into the hands of the farrier has escaped the common fate." "That is true," said Captain Mangles; "and it is a singular coincidence!" [Sidenote: MISTAKES AND MISAPPREHENSIONS.] "A coincidence, and nothing more," replied the quartermaster, gazing fixedly at the major. MacNabb compressed his lips, as if he would repress the words ready to burst from them. Glenarvan, the captain, and Lady Helena seemed to expect that he would finish his sentence; but he remained silent, and walked towards the cart, which Ayrton was now examining. "What did he mean?" inquired Glenarvan of Captain Mangles. "I do not know," replied the young captain. "However, the major is not the man to speak without cause." "No," said Lady Helena; "Major MacNabb must have suspicions of Ayrton." "What suspicions?" asked Glenarvan. "Does he suppose him capable of killing our horses and oxen? For what purpose, pray? Are not Ayrton's interests identical with ours?" "You are right, my dear Edward," said Lady Helena. "Besides, the quartermaster has given us, ever since the beginning of the journey, indubitable proofs of his devotion to our comfort." "True," replied Captain Mangles. "But, then, what does the major's remark mean? I must have an understanding." "Perhaps he thinks he is in league with these convicts?" remarked Paganel, imprudently. "What convicts?" inquired Miss Grant. "Monsieur Paganel is mistaken," said Captain Mangles quickly: "he knows that there are no convicts in the province of Victoria." "Yes, yes, that is so," eagerly replied Paganel, who would fain have retracted his words. "What could I have been thinking of? Convicts? Who ever heard of convicts in Australia? Moreover, as soon as they land, they make very honest people. The climate, you know, Miss Mary, the moral effect of the climate----" In his desire to correct his blunder, the poor geographer became hopelessly involved. Lady Helena looked at him, wondering what had deprived him of his usual coolness; but, not wishing to embarrass him further, she retired with Mary to the tent, where Mr. Olbinett was engaged in preparing breakfast. "I deserve to be transported myself," said Paganel piteously. "I think so," replied Glenarvan. Ayrton and the two sailors were still trying to extricate the cart. The ox and the horse, yoked side by side, were pulling with all their strength; the traces were stretched almost to breaking, and the bows threatened to give way to the strain. Wilson and Mulready pushed at the wheels, while the quartermaster, with voice and whip, urged on the ill-matched team. But the heavy vehicle did not stir. The clay, now dry, held it as if it had been cemented. Captain Mangles wetted the clay to make it yield, but to no purpose: the cart was immovable. Unless the vehicle was taken to pieces, they must give up the idea of getting it out of the quagmire. As tools were wanting, of course they could not undertake such a task. Ayrton, however, who seemed determined to overcome the difficulty at any cost, was about to renew his exertions, when Lord Glenarvan stopped him. "Enough, Ayrton! enough!" said he. "We must be careful of the ox and horse that remain. If we are to continue our journey on foot, one can carry the two ladies and the other the provisions. They may do us good service yet." "Very well, my lord," replied the quartermaster, unyoking his exhausted animals. "Now, my friends," added Glenarvan, "let us return to camp, deliberate, consider our situation, know what our chances are, and come to a resolution." [Illustration: But the heavy vehicle did not stir. The clay, now dry, held it as if it had been cemented.] A few minutes after, the travelers were indemnifying themselves for their sleeplessness the past night by a good breakfast, and the discussion of their affairs began. The first question was to determine the exact position of the encampment. Paganel was charged with this duty, and fulfilled it with his customary precision. "How far are we from Twofold Bay?" asked Glenarvan. "Seventy-five miles," replied Paganel. "And Melbourne is----?" "Two hundred miles distant, at least." "Very well. Our position being determined," continued Glenarvan, "what is it best to do?" The answer was unanimous,--make for the coast without delay. Lady Helena and Mary Grant engaged to travel fifteen miles a day. The courageous women did not shrink from traversing the entire distance on foot, if necessary. "But are we certain to find at the bay the resources that we need?" asked Glenarvan. "Without doubt," replied Paganel. "Eden is not a new municipality; and its harbor must have frequent communication with Melbourne. I even believe that thirty-five miles from here, at the parish of Delegete, we can obtain provisions and the means of conveyance." "And the Duncan?" asked Ayrton. "Do you not think it advisable to order her to the bay?" "What say you, captain?" said Glenarvan. "I do not think that there is any necessity for such a proceeding," replied the young captain, after reflection. "There will be plenty of time to send your orders to Tom Austin and summon him to the coast." "That is quite true," added Paganel. "Besides," continued Captain Mangles, "in four or five days we shall be at Eden." "Four or five days!" interposed Ayrton, shaking his head; "say fifteen or twenty, captain, if you do not wish to regret your error hereafter." [Sidenote: DIFFICULTIES FORESEEN.] "Fifteen or twenty days to make seventy-five miles!" exclaimed Glenarvan. "At least, my lord. You will have to cross the most difficult portion of Victoria,--plains covered with underbrush, without any cleared roads, where it has been impossible to establish stations. You will have to travel with the hatchet or the torch in your hand; and, believe me, you will not advance rapidly." Ayrton's tone was that of a man who is thoroughly acquainted with his subject. Paganel, towards whom questioning glances were turned, nodded approvingly at the words of the quartermaster. "I acknowledge the difficulties," said Captain Mangles, at length. "Well, in fifteen days, my lord, you can send your orders to the Duncan." "I may add," resumed Ayrton, "that the principal obstacles do not proceed from the roughness of the journey. We must cross the Snowy, and, very probably, have to wait for the subsidence of the waters." "Wait!" cried the captain. "Can we not find a ford?" "I think not," replied Ayrton. "This morning I searched in vain for a practicable one. It is unusual to find a river so much swollen at this season; it is a fatality against which I am powerless." "This Snowy River is broad, then?" remarked Lady Glenarvan. "Broad and deep, madam," answered Ayrton; "a mile in breadth, with a strong current. A good swimmer could not cross it without danger." "Well, then, let us build a boat!" cried Robert, who was never at fault for a plan. "We can cut down a tree, hollow it out, embark, and the thing is done." "Good for the son of Captain Grant!" replied Paganel. "The boy is right," continued Captain Mangles. "We shall be forced to this. I therefore think it useless to waste our time in further discussions." "What do you think, Ayrton?" asked Glenarvan. "I think, my lord, that if no assistance comes, in a month we shall still be detained on the banks of the Snowy." "But have you a better plan?" inquired Captain Mangles, somewhat impatiently. "Yes; let the Duncan leave Melbourne, and sail to the eastern coast." "How can her presence in the bay assist us to arrive there?" Ayrton meditated for a few moments, and then said, evasively: "I do not wish to obtrude my opinion. What I do is for the interest of all, and I am disposed to start as soon as your lordship gives the signal for departure." Then he folded his arms. "That is no answer, Ayrton," continued Glenarvan. "Tell us your plan, and we will discuss it. What do you propose?" In a calm and confident tone the quartermaster thereupon expressed himself as follows: "I propose that we do not venture beyond the Snowy in our present destitute condition. We must wait for assistance in this very place, and this assistance can come only from the Duncan. Let us encamp here where provisions are not wanting, while one of us carries to Tom Austin the order to repair to Twofold Bay." This unexpected proposal was received with a murmur of astonishment, and Captain Mangles took no pains to conceal his aversion. "In the mean time," continued Ayrton, "either the waters of the Snowy will have subsided, which will enable us to find a practicable ford, or we shall have to resort to a boat, and shall have time to construct it. This, my lord, is the plan which I submit to your approval." "Very well, Ayrton," replied Glenarvan; "your idea deserves to be seriously considered. Its greatest objection is the delay it will cause; but it spares us severe hardships, and perhaps real dangers. What do you think, friends?" [Illustration: "If it please your lordship, I will go."] "Let us hear your advice, major," said Lady Helena. "During the whole discussion you have contented yourself with listening simply." "Since you ask my opinion," answered the major, "I will give it to you very frankly. Ayrton seems to me to have spoken like a wise and prudent man, and I advocate his proposition." This answer was rather unexpected; for hitherto MacNabb had always opposed Ayrton's ideas on this subject. Ayrton, too, was surprised, and cast a quick glance at the major. Paganel, Lady Helena, and the sailors had been favorably disposed to the quartermaster's project, and no longer hesitated after MacNabb's declaration. Glenarvan, therefore, announced that Ayrton's plan was adopted. "And now, captain," added he, "do you not think that prudence dictates this course, and that we should encamp on the banks of the river while waiting for the means of conveyance?" "Yes," replied Captain Mangles, "if the messenger succeeds in crossing the Snowy, which we cannot cross ourselves." All looked at the quartermaster, who smiled with the air of a man who knows perfectly well what he is about to do. "The messenger will not cross the river," said he. "Ah!" cried Captain Mangles. "He will strike the Lucknow road, which will take him direct to Melbourne." "Two hundred miles on foot!" exclaimed the captain. "On horseback," continued Ayrton. "There is one good horse left. It will be a journey of but four days. Add two days for the Duncan to reach the bay, twenty-four hours for the return to the encampment, and in a week the messenger will be back again with the crew." [Sidenote: CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE.] The major again nodded approvingly at these words, to the great astonishment of Captain Mangles. But the quartermaster's proposition had gained all the votes, and the only question was how to execute this apparently well-conceived plan. "Now, my friends," said Glenarvan, "it remains only to choose our messenger. He will have a difficult and dangerous mission; that is certain. Who is willing to devote himself for his companions, and carry our instructions to Melbourne?" Wilson, Mulready, Captain Mangles, Paganel, and Robert offered themselves immediately. The captain particularly insisted that this mission should be confided to him; but Ayrton, who had not yet finished, resumed the conversation, and said: "If it please your lordship, I will go. I am acquainted with the country, and have often crossed more difficult regions. I can extricate myself where another would fail. I therefore claim, for the common welfare, the right to go to Melbourne. One word will place me on a good footing with your mate, and in six days I engage to bring the Duncan to Twofold Bay." "Well said!" replied Glenarvan. "You are a brave and intelligent man, Ayrton, and will succeed." The quartermaster was evidently more capable than any one else of fulfilling this difficult mission. Captain Mangles raised one final objection, that Ayrton's presence was necessary to enable them to find traces of the Brittania or Captain Grant; but the major observed that they should remain encamped on the banks of the Snowy till the messenger's return, that it was not proposed to resume the search without him, and that consequently his absence could be in no way prejudicial to their interests. "Well then, Ayrton, start," said Glenarvan. "Make haste, and return to the encampment by way of Eden." A gleam of satisfaction seemed to light up the eyes of the quartermaster. He turned his head to one side, though not so quickly but that Captain Mangles had intercepted his glance, and instinctively felt his suspicions increased. The quartermaster made his preparations for departure, aided by the two sailors, one of whom attended to his horse, and the other to his provisions. Meantime Glenarvan wrote the letter designed for Tom Austin. He ordered the mate of the Duncan to repair without delay to Twofold Bay, and recommended the quartermaster to him as a man in whom he could place entire confidence. As soon as he arrived at the bay, he was to send a detachment of sailors under the command of Ayrton. He had just reached this part of his letter, when the major, who had been looking over his shoulder, asked him, in a singular tone, how he wrote the word Ayrton. "As it is pronounced," replied Glenarvan. "That is a mistake," said the major coolly. "It is pronounced Ayrton, but it is written 'Ben Joyce'!" CHAPTER XLI. THE PLOT UNVEILED. The sound of the name of Ben Joyce fell upon the party like a thunderbolt. Ayrton suddenly sprang to his feet. In his hand was a revolver. A report was heard; and Glenarvan fell, struck by a bullet. Before Captain Mangles and the sailors recovered from the surprise into which this unexpected turn of affairs had thrown them, the audacious convict had escaped, and joined his band, scattered along the edge of the wood of gum-trees. [Illustration: A report was heard; and Glenarvan fell, struck by a bullet.] The tent did not offer a sufficient shelter against the bullets, and it was clearly necessary to beat a retreat. Glenarvan, who was but slightly injured, had risen. "To the cart! to the cart!" cried Captain Mangles, as he hurried on Lady Helena and Mary Grant, who were soon in safety behind its stout sides. The captain, the major, Paganel, and the sailors then seized their rifles, and stood ready to repel the convicts. Glenarvan and Robert had joined the ladies, while Olbinett hastened to the common defence. These events had transpired with the rapidity of lightning. Captain Mangles attentively watched the edge of the wood; but the reports suddenly ceased on the arrival of Ben Joyce, and a profound silence succeeded the noisy fusillade. A few wreaths of white smoke were still curling up between the branches of the gum-trees, but the tall tufts of gastrolobium were motionless and all signs of attack had disappeared. The major and Captain Mangles extended their examinations as far as the great trees. The place was abandoned. Numerous footprints were seen, and a few half-burnt cartridges smoked on the ground. The major, like a prudent man, extinguished them, for a spark was enough to kindle a formidable conflagration in this forest of dry trees. "The convicts have disappeared," said Captain Mangles. "Yes," replied the major; "and this disappearance alarms me. I should prefer to meet them face to face. It is better to encounter a tiger in the open plain than a serpent in the grass. Let us search these bushes around the cart." [Sidenote: UNRAVELINGS.] The major and captain scoured the surrounding country. But from the edge of the wood to the banks of the Snowy they did not meet with a single convict. Ben Joyce's band seemed to have flown away, like a flock of mischievous birds. This disappearance was too strange to inspire a perfect security. They therefore resolved to keep on the watch. The cart, which was a really immovable fortress, became the centre of the encampment, and two men kept guard, relieving each other every hour. Lady Helena and Mary Grant's first care had been to dress Glenarvan's wound. At the very moment that her husband fell, from Ben Joyce's bullet, in her terror she had rushed towards him. Then, controlling her emotion, this courageous woman had assisted Glenarvan to the cart. Here the shoulder of the wounded man was laid bare, and the major perceived that the ball had lacerated the flesh, causing no other injury. Neither bones nor large muscles seemed affected. The wound bled considerably, but Glenarvan, by moving the fingers of his hand and fore-arm, encouraged his friends to expect a favorable result. When his wound was dressed, he no longer desired any attention, and explanations followed. The travelers, except Wilson and Mulready, who were keeping guard outside, had taken seats as well as possible in the cart, and the major was requested to speak. Before beginning his story, he informed Lady Helena of the escape of a band of convicts from Perth, their appearance in the province of Victoria, and their complicity in the railway disaster. He gave her the number of the _Australian and New Zealand Gazette_ purchased at Seymour, and added that the police had set a price on the head of Ben Joyce, a formidable bandit, whom eighteen months of crime had given a wide-spread notoriety. But how had MacNabb recognized this Ben Joyce in the quartermaster Ayrton? Here was the mystery that all wished to solve; and the major explained. Since the day of his meeting with Ayrton he had suspected him. Two or three almost insignificant circumstances, a glance exchanged between the quartermaster and the farrier at Wimerra River, Ayrton's hesitation to pass through the towns and villages, his strong wish to order the Duncan to the coast, the strange death of the animals confided to his care, and, finally, a want of frankness in his actions,--all these facts, gradually noticed, had roused the major's suspicions. However, he could form no direct accusation until the events that had transpired the preceding night. Gliding between the tall clumps of shrubbery, as was related in the previous chapter, he approached near the suspicious shadows that had attracted his attention half a mile from the encampment. The phosphorescent plants cast their pale rays through the darkness. Three men were examining some tracks on the ground, and among them he recognized the farrier of Black Point Station. "Here they are," said one. "Yes," replied another, "here is the trefoil of the hoofs again." "It has been like this since leaving the Wimerra." "All the horses are dead." "The poison is not far away." "There is enough here to settle an entire troop of cavalry. This gastrolobium is a useful plant." "Then they were silent," added MacNabb, "and departed. I wanted to know more: I followed them. The conversation soon began again. 'A cunning man, this Ben Joyce,' said the farrier; 'a famous quartermaster, with his invented shipwreck. If his plan succeeds, it will be a stroke of fortune. Devilish Ayrton! Call him Ben Joyce, for he has well earned his name.' These rascals then left the wood of gum-trees. I knew what I wished, and returned to the encampment with the certainty that all the convicts in Australia are not reformed, in spite of Paganel's arguments." "Then," said Glenarvan, whose face was pale with anger, "Ayrton has brought us here to rob and assassinate us?" "Yes," replied the major. "And, since leaving the Wimerra, his band has followed and watched us, waiting for a favorable opportunity?" [Sidenote: FROM DEPTH TO DEPTH.] "Yes." "But this wretch is not, then, a sailor of the Britannia? He has stolen his name and contract?" All eyes were turned towards MacNabb, who must have considered this matter. "These," replied he, in his calm voice, "are the proofs that can be derived from this obscure state of affairs. In my opinion this man's real name is Ayrton. Ben Joyce is his fighting title. It is certain that he knows Harry Grant, and has been quartermaster on board the Britannia. These facts, proved already by the precise details given by Ayrton, are still further corroborated by the conversation of the convicts that I have related. Let us not, therefore, be led astray by vain conjectures, but only be certain that Ayrton is Ben Joyce, a sailor of the Britannia, now chief of a band of convicts." The major's explanation was accepted as conclusive. "Now," replied Glenarvan, "will you tell me how and why Harry Grant's quartermaster is in Australia?" "How, I do not know," said MacNabb; "and the police declare they know no more than I on the subject. Why, it is also impossible for me to say. Here is a mystery that the future will explain." "The police do not even know the identity of Ayrton and Ben Joyce," said Captain Mangles. "You are right, John," replied the major; "and such information would be likely to facilitate their search." "This unfortunate, then," remarked Lady Helena, "intruded into O'Moore's farm with a criminal intention?" "There is no doubt of it," continued MacNabb. "He was meditating some hostile attack upon the Irishman, when a better opportunity was offered. Chance threw us in his way. He heard Glenarvan's story of the shipwreck, and, like a bold man, he promptly decided to take part in the expedition. At the Wimerra he communicated with one of his friends, the farrier of Black Point, and thus left distinguishable traces of our course. His band followed us. A poisonous plant enabled him to gradually kill our oxen and horses. Then, at the proper moment, he entangled us in the marshes of the Snowy, and surrendered us to the convicts he commanded." Everything possible had been said concerning Ben Joyce. His past had just been reviewed by the major, and the wretch appeared as he was,--a bold and formidable criminal. His intentions had been clearly proved, and required, on the part of Glenarvan, extreme vigilance. Fortunately, there was less to fear from the detected bandit than the secret traitor. But one serious fact appeared from this explanation. No one had yet thought of it; only Mary Grant, disregarding the past, looked forward to the future. Captain Mangles first saw her pale and disconsolate. He understood what was passing in her mind. "Miss Mary!" cried he, "you are weeping!" "What is the matter, my child?" asked Lady Helena. "My father, madam, my father!" replied the young girl. She could not continue. But a sudden revelation dawned on the mind of each. They comprehended Mary's grief, why the tears flowed from her eyes, why the name of her father rose to her lips. The discovery of Ayrton's treachery destroyed all hope. The convict, to entice Glenarvan on, had invented a shipwreck. In their conversation, overheard by MacNabb, his accomplices had clearly confessed it. The Britannia had never been wrecked on the reefs of Twofold Bay! Harry Grant had never set foot on the Australian continent! For the second time an erroneous interpretation of the document had set the searchers of the Britannia on a false trail. All, in the face of this situation and the grief of the two children, preserved a mournful silence. Who then could have found words of hope? Robert wept in his sister's arms. Paganel murmured, in a voice of despair,-- [Sidenote: CALM AND CLOUDINESS.] "Ah, unlucky document! You can boast of having sorely puzzled the brains of a dozen brave people!" And the worthy geographer was fairly furious against himself, and frantically beat his forehead. In the mean time Glenarvan had joined Mulready and Wilson, who were on guard without. A deep silence reigned on the plain lying between the wood and the river. Heavy clouds covered the vault of the sky. In this deadened and torpid atmosphere the least sound would have been clearly transmitted; but nothing was heard. Ben Joyce and his band must have fled to a considerable distance; for flocks of birds that sported on the low branches of the trees, several kangaroos peacefully browsing on the young shoots, and a pair of cassowaries, whose unsuspecting heads were thrust between the tall bushes, proved that the presence of man did not disturb these peaceful solitudes. "You have not seen nor heard anything for an hour?" inquired Glenarvan of the two sailors. "Nothing, my lord," replied Wilson. "The convicts must be several miles away." "They cannot have been in sufficient force to attack us," added Mulready. "This Ben Joyce probably intended to recruit some bandits, like himself, among the bushrangers that wander at the foot of the Alps." "Very likely, Mulready," replied Glenarvan. "These rascals are cowards. They know we are well armed, and are perhaps waiting for darkness to commence their attack. We must redouble our vigilance at nightfall. If we could only leave this marshy plain and pursue our journey towards the coast! But the swollen waters of the river bar our progress. I would pay its weight in gold for a raft that would transport us to the other side!" "Why," said Wilson, "does not your lordship give us the order to construct this raft? There is plenty of wood." "No, Wilson," answered Glenarvan; "this Snowy is not a river, it is an impassable torrent." [Illustration: A pair of cassowaries proved that the presence of man did not disturb these peaceful solitudes.] [Sidenote: READINESS FOR SERVICE.] At this moment Captain Mangles, the major, and Paganel joined Glenarvan. They had been to examine the Snowy. The waters, swollen by the recent rains, had risen a foot above low-water mark, and formed an impetuous current. It was impossible to venture upon this roaring deluge, these rushing floods, broken into a thousand eddies by the depressions of the river-bed. Captain Mangles declared that the passage was impracticable. "But," added he, "we ought not to remain here without making any attempt. What we wished to do before Ayrton's treason is still more necessary now." "What do you say, captain?" asked Glenarvan. "I say that assistance is needed; and since we cannot go to Twofold Bay, we must go to Melbourne. One horse is left. Let your lordship give him to me, and I will go." "But it is a perilous venture, John," said Glenarvan. "Aside from the dangers of this journey of two hundred miles across an unknown country, all the roads may be guarded by Ben Joyce's accomplices." "I know it, my lord; but I know, too, that our situation cannot be prolonged. Ayrton only asked eight days' absence to bring back the crew of the Duncan. But I will return in six days to the banks of the Snowy. What are your lordship's orders?" "Before Glenarvan speaks," said Paganel, "I must make a remark. It is well that one of us should go to Melbourne, but not that these dangers should be incurred by Captain Mangles. He is the captain of the Duncan, and must not, therefore, expose himself. Allow me to go in his place." "Well said," replied the major; "but why should it be you, Paganel?" "Are we not here?" cried Wilson and Mulready. "And do you believe," continued MacNabb, "that I am afraid to make a journey of two hundred miles on horseback?" "My friends," said Glenarvan, "if one of us is to go to Melbourne, let fate decide. Paganel, write our names----" "Not yours at least, my lord," insisted Captain Mangles. "And why?" asked Glenarvan. "Separate you from Lady Helena, when your wound is not yet healed?" "Glenarvan," interposed Paganel, "you cannot leave the encampment." "No," resumed the major; "your place is here. Edward, you must not go." "There are dangers to incur," replied Glenarvan; "and I will not leave my part to others. Write, Paganel; let my name be mingled with those of my companions, and Heaven grant that it may be the first drawn." All yielded to this wish; and Glenarvan's name was added to the others. They then proceeded to draw, and the lot fell upon Mulready. The brave sailor uttered a cry of joy. "My lord, I am ready to go," said he. Glenarvan clasped his hand, and then turned towards the cart, leaving the major and Captain Mangles to guard the encampment. Lady Helena was at once informed of the decision taken to send a messenger to Melbourne, and of the result of the drawing by lot. She spoke words to Mulready that went to the heart of that noble sailor. They knew that he was brave, intelligent, hardy, and persevering. The lot could not have fallen better. It was decided that Mulready should depart at eight o'clock, after the short twilight. Wilson charged himself with getting the horse ready. He took the precaution to change the tell-tale shoe that he wore on his left foot, and to replace it by one belonging to the horses that had died in the night. The convicts could not now track Mulready, or follow him, unless mounted. [Sidenote: ANOTHER DISTRACTION.] While Wilson was occupied with these arrangements, Glenarvan was preparing the letter designed for Tom Austin; but his wounded arm disabled him, and he asked Paganel to write for him. The geographer, who seemed absorbed in one idea, was oblivious to what was passing around him. It must be confessed that Paganel, in all this succession of sad misfortunes, thought only of his false interpretation of the document. He turned the words about in every way to draw from them a new meaning, and remained wrapt in these meditations. Thus he did not hear Glenarvan's request, and the latter was forced to repeat it. "Very well," replied Paganel; "I am ready." So saying, he mechanically produced his note-book. He tore out a blank page, and then, with his pencil in his hand, made ready to write. Glenarvan began to dictate the following instructions: "Order for Tom Austin to put to sea, and bring the Duncan----" Paganel had just finished this last word when his eyes fell upon the number of the _Australian and New Zealand Gazette_ that lay upon the ground. The paper, being folded, only allowed him to see the two last syllables of its title. His pencil stopped, and he seemed to completely forget Glenarvan and his letter. "Well, Paganel?" said Glenarvan. "Ah!" continued the geographer, uttering a cry. "What is the matter?" asked the major. "Nothing! nothing!" replied Paganel. Then, in a lower tone, he repeated: "Aland! aland! aland!" He had risen; he had seized the paper. He shook it, seeking to repress words ready to escape his lips. Lady Helena, Mary, Robert, and Glenarvan gazed at him without understanding this inexplicable agitation. Paganel was like a man whom a sudden frenzy has seized. But this state of nervous excitation did not last. He gradually grew calm. The joy that gleamed in his eyes died away, and, resuming his place, he said, in a quiet tone: "When you wish, my lord, I am at your disposal." Glenarvan continued the dictation of his letter, which was distinctly worded as follows: "Order for Tom Austin to put to sea, and bring the Duncan to the eastern coast of Australia." "Australia?" cried Paganel. "Ah, yes, Australia!" The letter was now finished, and presented to Glenarvan for his signature, who, although affected by his recent wound, acquitted himself as well as possible of this formality. The note was then folded and sealed, while Paganel, with a hand that still trembled from excitement, wrote the following address: "Tom Austin, "Mate of the Yacht Duncan, "Melbourne." Thereupon he left the cart, gesticulating, and repeating these incomprehensible words: "Aland! aland! Zealand!" CHAPTER XLII. FOUR DAYS OF ANGUISH. The rest of the day passed without any other incident. Everything was ready for the departure of Mulready, who was happy to give his master this proof of his devotion. Paganel had regained his coolness and accustomed manners. His look still indicated an uneasy state of mind, but he appeared decided to keep his secret. He had doubtless strong reasons for acting thus, for the major overheard him repeating these words, like a man who is struggling with himself: "No, no! they would not believe me! And, besides what use is it? It is too late!" [Illustration: "Adieu, my lord," said he, in a calm voice, and soon disappeared by a path along the edge of the wood.] This resolution taken, he occupied himself with giving Mulready the necessary directions for reaching Melbourne, and, with the map before him, marked out his course. All the trails of the prairie converged towards the Lucknow road, which, after extending straight southward to the coast, suddenly turned in the direction towards Melbourne. It was simply necessary to follow this, and not attempt to cross the unknown country. Mulready could not, therefore, go astray. As for dangers, they lay only a few miles beyond the encampment, where Ben Joyce and his band were probably lying in wait. This point once passed, Mulready was sure he could easily distance the convicts and accomplish his important mission. At six o'clock supper was eaten in common. A heavy rain was falling. The tent no longer afforded sufficient shelter, and each had taken refuge in the cart, which was a safe retreat. The sticky clay held it in its place as firm as a fort on its foundations. The fire-arms consisted of seven rifles and seven revolvers, and thus enabled them to sustain a long siege, for neither ammunition nor provisions were wanting. In six days the Duncan would anchor in Twofold Bay. Twenty-four hours after, her crew would reach the opposite bank of the river; and, if the passage was not then practicable, at least the convicts would be compelled to retreat before superior forces. But, first of all, it was necessary that Mulready should succeed in his enterprise. At eight o'clock the darkness became intense. It was the time to start. The horse was brought out. His feet had been muffled; as an additional precaution, and made no sound. The animal seemed fatigued, but upon his surefootedness and endurance depended the safety of all. The major advised the sailor to spare his beast as soon as he was out of reach of the convicts. It was better to lose half a day and reach his destination safely. Captain Mangles gave him a revolver, which he had loaded with the greatest care. Mulready mounted. [Sidenote: A GLOOMY PROSPECT.] "Here is the letter which you are to take to Tom Austin," said Glenarvan. "Let him not lose an hour, but start for Twofold Bay; and, if he does not find us there, if we have not crossed the river, let him come to us without delay. Now go, my brave sailor, and may God guide you!" Glenarvan, Lady Helena, Mary Grant, all clasped Mulready's hand. This departure on a dark and stormy night, over a road beset with dangers, across the unknown stretches of a desert, would have appalled a heart less courageous than that of the sailor. "Adieu, my lord," said he, in a calm voice, and soon disappeared by a path along the edge of the wood. At that moment the tempest redoubled its violence. The lofty branches of the trees shook dismally in the darkness. You could hear the fall of the dry twigs on the drenched earth. More than one giant tree, whose sap was gone, but which had stood till then, fell during this terrible hurricane. The wind roared amid the cracking of the trees and mingled its mournful sounds with the rushing of the river. The heavy clouds that chased across the sky poured forth masses of mist, while a dismal darkness increased still more the horrors of the night. The travelers, after Mulready's departure, ensconced themselves in the cart. Lady Helena, Mary Grant, Glenarvan, and Paganel occupied the front compartment, which had been made water-tight. In the rear part Olbinett, Wilson, and Robert had found a sufficient shelter, while the major and Captain Mangles were on guard without. This precaution was necessary, for an attack by the convicts was easy and possible. These two faithful guardians, therefore, took turns and philosophically received the blasts that blew sharply in their faces. They strove to pierce with their eyes the shades so favorable for an ambuscade, for the ear could detect nothing amid the din of the storm, the roaring of the wind, the rattling of the branches, the fall of trees, and the rushing of the impetuous waters. In the mean time there were several lulls in the fury of the tempest, the wind ceasing as if to take breath. The river only moaned adown the motionless reeds and the black curtain of the gum-trees, and the silence seemed more profound during these momentary rests. The major and Captain Mangles now listened attentively. During one of these intervals a sharp whistle reached their ears. The captain hastened to the major. "Did you hear anything?" asked he. "Yes," replied MacNabb. "Was it a man or an animal?" "A man," said the captain. They both listened again. The mysterious whistle was suddenly repeated, and something like a report followed it, but almost inaudibly, for the storm just then broke forth with renewed violence. They could not hear themselves talk, and took their stations to leeward of the cart. At this moment the leathern curtains were raised, and Glenarvan joined his two companions. He likewise had heard the suspicious whistle, and the report. "From what direction?" he asked. "Yonder," said the captain, pointing to the dark line, towards which Mulready had gone. "How far?" "The wind carried it," was the reply. "It must be three miles distant at least." "Let us go!" said Glenarvan, throwing his rifle over his shoulder. "No," interposed the major; "it is a decoy to entice us away from the cart." "But if Mulready has fallen beneath the shots of these wretches!" continued Glenarvan, seizing MacNabb's hand. "We shall know to-morrow," replied the latter, firmly determined to prevent Glenarvan from committing a useless imprudence. [Sidenote: A CRY IN THE NIGHT.] "You cannot leave the encampment, my lord," said Captain Mangles; "I will go alone." "No!" cried MacNabb, with energy. "Will you have us, then, perish singly, diminish our numbers, and be left to the mercy of these criminals? If Mulready has been their victim, it is a calamity that we must not repeat a second time. He has gone according to lot. If the lot had chosen me, I should have gone like him, but should neither have asked nor expected any assistance." In restraining Glenarvan and Captain Mangles the major was right from every point of view. To attempt to reach the sailor, to go on such a dark night to meet the convicts, ambuscaded in some coppice, was useless madness. Glenarvan's little party did not number enough men to sacrifice any more. However, Glenarvan seemed unwilling to yield to these reasons. His hand played nervously with his rifle. He walked to and fro around the cart; he listened to the least sound; he strove to pierce the dismal obscurity. The thought that one of his friends was mortally wounded, helplessly abandoned, calling in vain upon those for whose sake he had sacrificed himself, tortured him. MacNabb feared that he should not succeed in restraining him, that Glenarvan, carried away by his feelings, would cast himself into the power of Ben Joyce. "Edward," said he, "be calm; listen to a friend; think of Lady Helena, Mary Grant, all who remain! Besides, where will you go? Where find Mulready? He was attacked two miles distant at least. On what road? What path take?" At this very moment, as if in answer to the major, a cry of distress was heard. "Listen!" said Glenarvan. The cry came from the very direction whence the report had sounded, but less than a quarter of a mile distant. Glenarvan, pushing back MacNabb, was advancing along the path, when, not far from the cart, these words were uttered: "Help! help!" It was a plaintive and despairing voice. Captain Mangles and the major rushed towards it. In a few moments they perceived, on the edge of the coppice, a human form that was dragging itself along and groaning piteously. It was Mulready, wounded and half dead. When his companions raised him, they felt their hands dabbling in blood. The rain now increased, and the wind howled through the branches of the dead trees. In the midst of these terrific gusts, Glenarvan, the major, and the captain bore the body of Mulready. On arriving at the cart, Paganel, Robert, Wilson, and Olbinett came out, and Lady Helena gave up her room to the poor sailor. The major took off Mulready's vest, wet with blood and rain. He discovered the wound. It was a poniard stab, which the unfortunate had received in his right side. MacNabb dressed it skillfully. Whether the weapon had reached the vital parts, he could not say. A stream of bright-red blood spurted forth, while the paleness and the swoon of the wounded man proved that he had been seriously injured. The major accordingly placed upon the opening of the wound, after first washing it with fresh water, a thick wad of tinder, and then a few layers of lint, confined by a bandage, and thus succeeded in stopping the hemorrhage. The patient was then laid on his side, his head and breast raised, and Lady Helena gave him a refreshing draught. At the end of a quarter of an hour, the wounded man, who had been motionless till then, made a movement. His eyes half opened, his lips murmured disconnected words, and the major, putting down his ear, heard him say: "My lord--the letter--Ben Joyce----" [Sidenote: A DAY OF DOUBT.] The major repeated these words, and glanced at his companions. What did Mulready mean? Ben Joyce had attacked the sailor, but why? Was it not simply for the purpose of preventing him from reaching the Duncan? This letter--Glenarvan examined the sailor's pockets. The letter addressed to Tom Austin was gone. The night passed in anxiety and anguish. They feared every moment that the wounded man would die. A burning fever consumed him. Lady Helena and Mary Grant, as though his sisters, did not leave him; never was patient better nursed, or by more tender hands. Day appeared. The rain had ceased. Heavy clouds still rolled along the vault of the sky, and the earth was strewn with the fragments of branches. The clay, soaked by floods of water, had yielded; and the sides of the cart became unsteady, but sank no deeper. Captain Mangles, Paganel, and Glenarvan took a tour of exploration around the camp. They traversed the path still marked with blood, but found no trace of Ben Joyce or his band. They went to the place where the attack had been made. Here two corpses lay on the ground, shot by Mulready. One was the farrier of Black Point. His face, which had mortified, was a horrible sight. Glenarvan did not pursue his investigations farther, prudence forbidding. He therefore returned to the cart, much alarmed by the seriousness of the situation. "We cannot think of sending another messenger to Melbourne," said he. "But we must," replied Captain Mangles; "and I will make the attempt, since my sailor has failed." "No, John. You have not even a horse to carry you these two hundred miles." Indeed, Mulready's horse, the only one that remained, had not reappeared. Had he fallen beneath the shots of the murderers? Was he running wild over the desert? Had the convicts captured him? [Illustration: In the midst of these terrific gusts, Glenarvan, the major, and the captain bore the body of Mulready.] [Sidenote: RESOLUTION, AND RECOVERY.] "Whatever happens," continued Glenarvan, "we will separate no more. Let us wait eight or fifteen days, till the waters of the river resume their natural level. We will then reach Twofold Bay by short journeys, and from there send to the Duncan by a surer way the order to sail for the coast." "This is the only feasible plan," replied Paganel. "Well, then, my friends," resumed Glenarvan, "no more separation! A man risks too much to venture alone across this desert, infested with bandits. And now may God save our poor sailor and protect ourselves!" Glenarvan was right in both resolves, first to forbid any single attempt to cross the plains, and next to wait patiently on the banks of the river for a practicable passage. Scarcely thirty-five miles separated them from Delegete, the first frontier town of New South Wales, where they would find means of reaching Twofold Bay. From this point he could telegraph his orders to the Duncan. These measures were wise, but they had been adopted rather tardily. If they had not sent Mulready with the letter, what misfortunes would have been avoided, not to speak of the attack upon the sailor! On arriving at the camp, Glenarvan found his companions less anxious; they seemed to have regained hope. "He is better!" cried Robert, running to meet him. "Mulready?" "Yes, Edward," replied Lady Helena. "A reaction has taken place. The major is more encouraged. Our sailor will live." "Where is MacNabb?" asked Glenarvan. "With him. Mulready wished to speak with him. We must not disturb them." Indeed, within an hour the wounded man had rallied from his swoon, and the fever had diminished. But the sailor's first care, on recovering memory and speech was to ask for Lord Glenarvan, or, in his absence, the major MacNabb, seeing him so feeble, would have forbidden all conversation; but Mulready insisted with such energy that he was forced to yield. The interview had already lasted some time, and they were only waiting for the major's report. Soon the curtains of the cart moved, and he appeared. He joined his friends at the foot of a gum-tree. His face, usually so calm, betokened a serious anxiety. When his eyes encountered Lady Helena and the young girl, they expressed a deep sadness. Glenarvan questioned him, and learned what the sailor had related. On leaving the encampment, Mulready had followed one of the paths indicated by Paganel. He hastened, as much at least as the darkness of the night permitted him. According to his estimate, he had traveled a distance of about two miles, when several men--five, he thought--sprang to his horse's head. The animal reared. Mulready seized his revolver and fired. He thought that two of his assailants fell. By the flash of the report, he recognized Ben Joyce, but that was all. He had not time to fully discharge his weapon. A violent blow was struck upon his right side, which brought him to the ground. However, he had not yet lost consciousness. The assassins believed him dead. He felt them search him. Then a conversation ensued. "I have the letter," said one of them. "Give it to me," replied Ben Joyce; "and now the Duncan is ours!" At this point in the story Glenarvan could not restrain a cry. MacNabb continued: [Sidenote: A HOPELESS CHANCE.] "'Now, you others,' said Ben Joyce, 'catch the horse. In two days I shall be on board the Duncan, and in six at Twofold Bay. There is the place of meeting. The lord's party will be still fast in the marshes of the Snowy. Cross the river at Kemple Pier bridge, go to the coast, and wait for me. I will find means to bring you on board. With the crew once at sea, and a vessel like the Duncan, we shall be masters of the Indian Ocean.' 'Hurrah for Ben Joyce!' cried the convicts. Mulready's horse was then led up, and Ben Joyce disappeared at a gallop on the Lucknow road, while the band proceeded southeastward to the Snowy River. Mulready, although severely wounded, had strength to drag himself within two hundred paces of the encampment, where we picked him up almost dead. This," added MacNabb, "is Mulready's sad story. You understand now why the courageous sailor wished so much to speak." This revelation terrified all. "Pirates! pirates!" cried Glenarvan. "My crew massacred, my Duncan in the hands of these bandits!" "Yes, for Ben Joyce will surprise the vessel," replied the major, "and then----" "Well, we must reach the coast before these wretches," said Paganel. "But how cross the Snowy?" asked Wilson. "Like them," answered Glenarvan. "They will cross Kemple Pier bridge, and we will do the same." "But what will become of Mulready?" inquired Lady Helena. "We will take turns in carrying him. Shall I give up my defenceless crew to Ben Joyce's band?" The plan of crossing Kemple Pier bridge was practicable, but perilous. The convicts might locate themselves at this point to defend it. It would be at least thirty against seven! But there are moments when we do not think of these things, when we must advance at all hazards. "My lord," said Captain Mangles, at length, "before risking our last chance, before venturing towards the bridge, it is prudent to reconnoitre it first. I will undertake this." "I will accompany you, captain," replied Paganel. [Sidenote: THE BURNED BRIDGE.] This proposal was accepted, and the captain and Paganel prepared to start immediately. They were to follow along the bank of the river till they came to the place indicated by Ben Joyce, and keep out of sight of the convicts, who were probably lying in wait. These two courageous men accordingly, well furnished with arms and provisions, set out, and soon disappeared among the tall rushes of the river. [Illustration: The animal reared. Mulready seized his revolver and fired.] All day the little party waited for them. At evening they had not yet returned, and great fears were entertained. At last, about eleven o'clock, Wilson announced their approach. They arrived, worn out with the fatigues of a six-mile journey. "The bridge? Is it there?" asked Glenarvan, rushing to meet them. "Yes, a bridge of rushes," said Captain Mangles. "The convicts passed, it is true, but----" "But what?" cried Glenarvan, who foresaw a new calamity. "They burned it after their passage," replied Paganel. CHAPTER XLIII. HELPLESS AND HOPELESS. It was not the time to despair, but to act. If Kemple Pier bridge was destroyed, they must cross the Snowy at all events, and reach Twofold Bay before Ben Joyce's band. They lost no time, therefore, in vain words; but the next day Captain Mangles and Glenarvan went to examine the river, preparatory to a passage. The tumultuous waters, swollen by the rains, had not subsided. They whirled along with indescribable fury. It was certain death to brave this torrent. Glenarvan, with folded arms and lowered head, stood motionless. "Do you wish me to try to swim to the opposite bank?" asked Captain Mangles. "No, John," replied Glenarvan, seizing the bold young man by the hand; "let us wait." They both returned to the encampment. The day was passed in the most lively anxiety. Ten times did Glenarvan return to the river. He sought to contrive some bold plan of crossing it, but in vain. It would not have been more impassable if a torrent of lava had flowed between its banks. During these long hours of delay, Lady Helena, with the major's assistance, bestowed upon Mulready the most skillful care. The sailor felt that he was returning to life. MacNabb ventured to affirm that no vital organ had been injured, the loss of blood sufficiently explained the patient's weakness. Thus, as soon as his wound was healed and the hemorrhage stopped, only time and rest were needed for his complete restoration. Lady Helena had insisted upon his occupying her end of the cart. Mulready felt greatly honored. His greatest anxiety was in the thought that his condition might delay Glenarvan, and he forced them to promise that they would leave him at the camp in charge of Wilson, as soon as the river became fordable. Unfortunately, this was not possible, either that day or the next. At seeing himself thus detained, Glenarvan despaired. Lady Helena and the major tried in vain to pacify and exhort him to patience. Patience! when, at that moment perhaps, Ben Joyce was going on board the yacht, when the Duncan was weighing anchor and steaming towards that fatal coast, to which every hour brought her nearer! [Sidenote: ALMOST DESPAIRING.] Captain Mangles felt at heart all Glenarvan's anguish, and, as he wished to overcome the difficulty at all hazards, he constructed a canoe in the Australian fashion, with large pieces of the bark of the gum-trees. These slabs, which were very light, were held together by wooden cross-bars, and formed a very frail craft. The captain and the sailor tried the canoe. All that skill, strength, or courage could do they did. But scarcely were they in the current, when they capsized and narrowly escaped with their lives. The boat was drawn into the eddies and disappeared. Captain Mangles and Wilson had not advanced ten yards into the river, which was swollen by the rains and melting snows till it was now a mile in breadth. Two days were wasted in this way. The major and Glenarvan went five miles up stream without finding a practicable ford. Everywhere was the same impetuosity, the same tumultuous rush of water; all the southern slopes of the mountains had poured their liquid torrents into this single stream. They were forced, therefore, to give up any hope of saving the Duncan. Five days had passed since Ben Joyce's departure, the yacht was probably that very moment at the coast, in the hands of the convicts. However, this state of things could not last long. Indeed, on the morning of the third day, Paganel perceived that the waters were beginning to subside. He reported to Glenarvan the result of his observations. "What does it matter now?" replied Glenarvan; "it is too late!" "That is no reason for prolonging our stay at the encampment," replied the major. "Certainly not," said Captain Mangles; "to-morrow, perhaps, it will be possible to cross." "But will that save my unfortunate crew?" cried Glenarvan. "Listen to me, my lord," continued Captain Mangles. "I know Tom Austin. He was to execute your orders, and start as soon as his departure was possible. Who knows whether the Duncan was ready, or her injuries repaired, on the arrival of Ben Joyce at Melbourne? Supposing the yacht could not put to sea, and suffered one or two days of delay?" "You are right, John," replied Glenarvan. "We must reach Twofold Bay. We are only thirty-five miles from Delegete." "Yes," said Paganel, "and in that town we shall find rapid means of conveyance. Who knows whether we shall not arrive in time to prevent this calamity?" "Let us start!" cried Glenarvan. Captain Mangles and Wilson at once occupied themselves in constructing a raft of large dimensions. Experience had proved that pieces of bark could not resist the violence of the torrent. The captain cut down several gum-trees, of which he made a rude but substantial raft. It was a tedious task, and that day ended before the work was completed; but the next day it was finished. The waters had now considerably subsided. The torrent had become a river again, with a rapid current. However, with proper management, the captain hoped to reach the opposite bank. At noon they put on board as much provisions as each could carry for two days' travel. The rest was abandoned with the cart and the tent. Mulready was well enough to be moved; he was recovering rapidly. Each took his place on the raft, which was moored to the bank. Captain Mangles had arranged on the starboard side, and confided to Wilson, a kind of oar to sustain the raft against the current, and prevent its drifting. As for himself, he stood at the stern, and steered by means of a clumsy rudder. Lady Helena and Mary Grant occupied the centre of the raft near Mulready. Glenarvan, the major, Paganel, and Robert surrounded them, ready to lend assistance. "Are we ready, Wilson?" asked Captain Mangles. "Yes, captain," replied the sailor, seizing his oar with a firm hand. [Illustration: However, the raft was entangled in the midst of the river, half a mile below where they started.] "Attention, and bear up against the current." Captain Mangles unmoored the raft, and with one push launched it into the current of the river. All went well for some time, and Wilson resisted the leeway. But soon the craft was drawn into the eddies, and turned round and round, so that neither oar nor rudder could keep it in a straight course. In spite of their efforts, they were soon placed in a position where it was impossible to use the oars. They were forced to be passive; there was no means of preventing this gyratory motion. They were whirled about with a giddy rapidity, and sent out of their course. The captain, with pale face and set teeth, stood and gazed at the eddying water. However, the raft was entangled in the midst of the river, half a mile below where they started. The current here was very strong, and, as it broke the eddies, it lessened the whirling motion. The captain and Wilson resumed their oars, and succeeded in propelling the craft in an oblique direction. In this way they approached nearer the left bank, and were only a few yards distant, when Wilson's oar broke. The raft, no longer sustained against the current, was carried down stream. The captain endeavored to prevent it, at the risk of breaking his rudder, and Wilson with bleeding hands assisted him. At last they succeeded, and the raft, after a voyage of more than half an hour, ran upon the steeply-sloping bank. The shock was violent; the timbers were thrown apart, the ropes broken, and the foaming water came through. The travelers had only time to cling to the bushes that hung over the stream. They extricated Mulready and the two ladies, who were half drenched. In short, everybody was saved; but the greater part of the provisions and arms, except the major's rifle, were swept away with the fragments of the raft. [Sidenote: A WEARY PILGRIMAGE.] The river was crossed, but the little party were without resources, thirty-five miles from Delegete, in the midst of these untrodden deserts. They resolved to start without delay. Mulready saw that he would cause trouble, and desired to remain behind, even alone, and wait for aid from Delegete. But Glenarvan refused. He could not reach the town before three days. If the Duncan had left Melbourne several days before, what mattered a delay of a few hours? "No, my friend," said he; "I will not abandon any one. We will make a litter, and take turns in carrying you." The litter was made of branches covered with leaves, and upon this Mulready was placed. Glenarvan wished to be the first to bear the sailor, and, seizing one end of the litter and Wilson the other, they started. What a sad sight! and how disastrously this journey, so well begun, had ended! They were no longer going in search of Captain Grant. This continent--where he was not, nor had ever been--threatened to be fatal to those who were seeking traces of him, and perhaps new discouragements still awaited them. The first day passed silently and painfully. Every ten minutes they took turns in carrying the litter. All the sailor's companions uncomplainingly imposed upon themselves this duty, which was made still more arduous by the great heat. At evening, after accomplishing only five miles, they encamped under a group of gum-trees. The rest of the provisions that had escaped the shipwreck furnished the evening meal. They must hereafter rely on the major's rifle; but he found no opportunity to fire a single shot. Fortunately, Robert found a nest of bustards, containing a dozen large eggs, which Olbinett cooked in the hot ashes. In addition to these embarrassments, their way became very difficult. The sandy plains were bristling with thorny plants that tore their garments and lacerated their limbs. The courageous ladies, however, did not complain, but valiantly advanced, setting the example, and encouraging each other by a word or a look. On the third day Mulready traveled part of the way on foot. His wound had entirely healed. The town of Delegete was only ten miles distant, and at evening they encamped on the very frontiers of New South Wales. A fine and penetrating rain had been falling for several hours, and all shelter would have failed, if Captain Mangles had not fortunately discovered a ruined and abandoned sawyer's hut. They were obliged to content themselves with this miserable hovel of branches and thatch. Wilson attempted to kindle a fire to prepare the food, and accordingly collected some dead wood that strewed the ground. But when he attempted to light the fuel he did not succeed; the great quantity of aluminous material that it contained prevented combustion. It was, therefore, necessary to dispense with fire and food, and sleep in wet garments, while the birds, hidden in the lofty branches, seemed to mock these unfortunate travelers. However, Glenarvan and his friends were approaching the end of their sufferings; and it was time. The two ladies exerted themselves heroically, but their strength was failing every hour. They dragged themselves along, they no longer walked. The next day they started at daybreak, and at eleven o'clock Delegete came in sight, fifty miles from Twofold Bay. Here means of conveyance were quickly obtained. Feeling himself so near the coast, hope returned to Glenarvan's heart; perhaps there had been some slight delay, and he would arrive before the Duncan! In twenty-four hours he would reach the bay! At noon, after a comforting repast, all the travelers took their seats in a mail-coach, and left Delegete at the full speed of five strong horses. The postilions, stimulated by the promise of a large reward, drove them along at a rapid rate, over a well-kept road. No time was lost in changing horses, and it seemed as if Glenarvan had inspired all with his own intense eagerness. [Illustration: The two ladies exerted themselves heroically, but their strength was failing every hour. They dragged themselves along, they no longer walked.] All day and all night they traveled with the same swiftness, and at sunrise the next morning a low murmur announced the proximity of the Indian Ocean. It was necessary, however, to pass around the bay to gain that part of the coast where Tom Austin was to meet the travelers. When the sea appeared, all eyes quickly surveyed the wide expanse. Was the Duncan there, by a miracle of Providence, as she had been discerned before by some of them on the Argentine coast? Nothing was seen; sky and water mingled in an unbroken horizon; not a sail brightened the vast extent of ocean. One hope still remained. Perhaps Tom Austin had thought it best to cast anchor in Twofold Bay, as the sea was rough and a vessel could not be moored in safety near such shores. "To Eden!" said Glenarvan. The mail-coach at once took the road to the right, which ran along the edge of the bay, and proceeded towards the little town of Eden, only five miles distant. The postilions stopped not far from the light that guarded the entrance to the harbor. Several ships were anchored in the roadstead, but none displayed the flag of Malcolm Castle. Glenarvan, Captain Mangles, and Paganel alighted immediately, and hastened to the custom-house. Here they questioned the employees, and consulted the latest arrivals. No vessel had entered the bay for a week. "She may not have started!" cried Glenarvan, who would not despair. "Perhaps we have arrived before her!" Captain Mangles shook his head. He knew Tom Austin; his mate would never have delayed so long to execute an order. "I will know what this means," said Glenarvan. "Certainty is better than doubt." [Sidenote: THE LAST HOPE.] Fifteen minutes later a telegram was sent to the ship-brokers of Melbourne, and the travelers repaired to the Victoria Hotel. Not long after an answer was delivered to Lord Glenarvan. It read as follows: "Lord Glenarvan, Eden, Twofold Bay. "Duncan started on the 18th instant for some unknown destination." The dispatch fell from Glenarvan's hands. There was no more doubt! The honest Scotch yacht, in Ben Joyce's hands, had become a pirate-vessel! Thus ended their search in Australia, begun under such favorable auspices. The traces of Captain Grant and his shipwrecked sailors seemed irrecoverably lost. This failure had cost the lives of an entire crew. Lord Glenarvan was crushed by the blow, and this courageous searcher, whom the leagued elements had failed to deter, was now baffled by the malice of men. CHAPTER XLIV. A ROUGH CAPTAIN. If ever the searchers for Captain Grant had reason to despair of seeing him again, was it not when every hope forsook them at once? To what part of the world should they venture a new expedition? how explore unknown countries? The Duncan was no longer in their possession, and they could not be immediately reconciled to their misfortune. The undertaking of these generous Scots had, therefore, failed. Failure! sad word, that finds no echo in a valiant soul; and yet, amid all the changes of destiny, Glenarvan was forced to acknowledge his powerlessness to pursue this work of mercy. Mary Grant, in this situation, no longer had the courage to utter the name of her father. She suppressed her own anguish by thinking of the unfortunate crew. Controlling herself in the presence of her friend, it was she who consoled Lady Helena, from whom she had received so many consolations. The young girl was the first to speak of their return to Scotland. At seeing her so courageous and resigned, Captain Mangles admired her, and would have spoken a final word in favor of Captain Grant, if Mary had not stopped him with a look and then said: "No, Mr. John; let us think of those who have sacrificed themselves. Lord Glenarvan must return to England." "You are right, Miss Mary," replied he; "he must. The English authorities must also be informed of the fate of the Duncan. But do not give up all hope. The search that we have begun I would continue alone, rather than abandon. I will find Captain Grant, or succumb to the task!" This was a solemn compact which John Mangles thus made. Mary accepted it, and gave her hand to the young captain, as if to ratify this treaty. On the part of the latter it was a devotion of his entire life; on the part of the former, an unchanging gratitude. The time of their departure was now definitely decided. They resolved to proceed to Melbourne without delay. The next day Captain Mangles went to inquire about vessels that were upon the point of sailing. He expected to find frequent communication between Eden and Melbourne, but he was disappointed. The vessels were few; two or three anchored in Twofold Bay composed the entire fleet of the place. There were none for Melbourne, Sydney, or Point-de-Galle. In this state of affairs, what was to be done? Wait for a ship? They might be delayed a long time, for Twofold Bay is little frequented. After some deliberation, Glenarvan was about to decide upon reaching Sydney by the coast, when Paganel made a proposal that was unexpected to every one. The geographer had just returned from Twofold Bay. He knew that there were no means of transportation to Sydney or Melbourne; but, of the three vessels anchored in the roadstead, one was preparing to start for Auckland, the capital of Ika-na-Maoui, the northern island of New Zealand. Thither Paganel proposed to go by the bark in question, and from Auckland it would be easy to return to England by the steamers of the English company. This proposition was taken into serious consideration, although Paganel did not enter into those extended arguments of which he was usually so lavish. He confined himself to stating the fact, and added that the voyage would not last more than five or six days. Captain Mangles advocated Paganel's plan. He thought it should be adopted, since they could not wait for the uncertain arrival of other vessels. But, before deciding, he judged it advisable to visit the ship in question. Accordingly, he, with Glenarvan, the major, Paganel, and Robert, took a boat, and pulled out to where it was anchored. It was a brig of two hundred and fifty tons, called the Macquarie, which traded between the different ports of Australia and New Zealand. The captain, or rather the "master," received his visitors very gruffly. They saw that they had to deal with an uneducated man, whose manners were not different from those of the five sailors of his crew. A coarse red face, big hands, a flat nose, a blinded eye, lips blackened by his pipe, and a specially brutish appearance, made Will Halley a very forbidding character. But they had no choice, and for a voyage of a few days there was no need to be very particular. "What do you want?" asked Will Halley, as the strangers reached the deck of his vessel. "The captain," replied Mangles. [Sidenote: A BUSINESS INTERVIEW.] "I am he," said Halley. "What then?" "The Macquarie is loading for Auckland?" "Yes. What of it?" "What does she carry?" "Anything that is bought or sold." "When does she sail?" "To-morrow, at the noon tide." "Would she take passengers?" "That depends upon the passengers, and whether they would be satisfied with the ship's mess." "They would take their own provisions." "Well, how many are there?" "Nine,--two of them ladies." "I have no cabins." "We will arrange a place for their exclusive use." "What then?" "Do you accept?" asked Captain Mangles, who was not embarrassed by this curtness. "I must see," replied the master of the Macquarie. He took a turn or two, striking the deck with his heavy, hobnailed boots; then, turning to Captain Mangles, said: "What do you pay?" "What do you ask?" was the reply. "Fifty pounds." Glenarvan nodded assent. "Very well! Fifty pounds." "But the passage in cash!" added Halley. "In cash." "Food separate?" "Separate." "Agreed. Well?" said Will Halley, holding out his hand. "What?" "The advance-money." "Here is half the fare,--twenty-five pounds," said Captain Mangles, counting out the sum, which the master pocketed without saying "thank you." "Be on board to-morrow," said he. "Whether you are here or not, I shall weigh anchor." "We will be here." Thereupon Glenarvan, the major, Robert, Paganel, and Captain Mangles left the vessel, without Will Halley's having so much as touched the brim of his hat. "What a stupid fellow!" was their first remark. "Well, I like him," replied Paganel. "He is a real sea-wolf." "A real bear!" remarked the major. "And I imagine," added Captain Mangles, "that this bear has at some time traded in human flesh." "What matter," replied Glenarvan, "so long as he commands the Macquarie, which goes to New Zealand? We shall see very little of him on the voyage." Lady Helena and Mary Grant were very much pleased to know that they were to start the next day. Glenarvan observed, however, that the Macquarie could not equal the Duncan for comfort; but, after so many hardships, they were not likely to be overcome by trifles. Mr. Olbinett was requested to take charge of the provisions. The poor man, since the loss of the Duncan, had often lamented the unhappy fate of his wife, who had remained on board, and would be, consequently, the victim of the convicts' brutality. However, he fulfilled his duties as steward with his accustomed zeal, and their food might yet consist of dishes that were never seen on the ship's table. In the mean time the major discounted at a money-changer's some drafts that Glenarvan had on the Union Bank of Melbourne. As for Paganel, he procured an excellent map of New Zealand. Mulready was now quite well. He scarcely felt his wound, which had so nearly proved fatal. A few hours at sea would complete his recovery. [Illustration: The landlord of Victoria Hotel furnished them with two horses, and they set out.] Wilson went on board first, charged with arranging the passengers' quarters. Under his vigorous use of the brush and broom the aspect of things was greatly changed. Will Halley shrugged his shoulders, but allowed the sailor to do as he pleased. As for Glenarvan and his friends, he scarcely noticed them; he did not even know their names, nor did he care to. This increase of cargo was worth fifty pounds to him, but he valued it less than the two hundred tons of tanned leather with which his hold was crowded,--the skins first, and the passengers next. He was a real trader; and by his nautical ability he passed for a good navigator of these seas, rendered so very dangerous by the coral reefs. During the afternoon, Glenarvan wished to visit once more the supposed place of the shipwreck. Ayrton had certainly been the quartermaster of the Britannia, and the vessel might really have been lost on that part of the coast. And there, at all events, the Duncan had fallen into the hands of the convicts. Had there been a fight? Perhaps they would find on the beach traces of a struggle. If the crew had perished in the waves, would not the bodies have been cast ashore? Glenarvan, accompanied by his faithful captain, undertook this examination. The landlord of Victoria Hotel furnished them with two horses, and they set out. But it was a sad journey. They rode in silence. The same thoughts, the same anxieties, tortured the mind of each. They gazed at the rocks worn by the sea. They had no need to question or answer; no sign of the Duncan could be found,--the whole coast was bare. Captain Mangles, however, found on the margin of the shore evident signs of an encampment, the remains of fires recently kindled beneath the few trees. Had a wandering tribe of natives passed there within a few days? No, for an object struck Glenarvan's eye, which proved incontestably that the convicts had visited that part of the coast. [Sidenote: THE LAST NIGHT IN AUSTRALIA.] It was a gray and yellow jacket, worn and patched, left at the foot of a tree. It bore a number and badge of the Perth penitentiary. The convict was no longer there, but his cast-off garment betrayed him. "You see, John," said Glenarvan, "the convicts have been here! And our poor comrades of the Duncan----" "Yes," replied the captain, in a low voice, "they have certainly been landed, and have perished!" "The wretches!" cried Glenarvan. "If they ever fall into my hands, I will avenge my crew!" Grief and exposure had hardened Glenarvan's features. For several moments he gazed at the vast expanse of water, seeking perhaps to discern some ship in the dim distance. Then his eyes relaxed their fierceness, he regained his composure, and, without adding a word or making a sign, took the road to Eden. Only one duty remained to be fulfilled,--to inform the constable of the events that had just transpired, which was done the same evening. The magistrate, Thomas Banks, could scarcely conceal his satisfaction at making out the official record. He was simply delighted at the departure of Ben Joyce and his band. The whole village shared his joy. The convicts had left Australia because of a new crime; but, at all events, they had gone. This important news was immediately telegraphed to the authorities of Melbourne and Sydney. Having accomplished his object, Glenarvan returned to the Victoria Hotel. The travelers passed this last evening in Australia in sadness. Their thoughts wandered over this country, so fertile in misfortunes. They recalled the hopes they had reasonably conceived at Cape Bernouilli, now so cruelly disappointed at Twofold Bay. Paganel was a prey to a feverish agitation. Captain Mangles, who had watched him since the incident at Snowy River, many times pressed him with questions which Paganel did not answer. But that evening, as he went with him to his chamber, the captain asked him why he was so nervous. "My friend," replied Paganel evasively, "I am no more nervous than usual." "Mr. Paganel, you have a secret that troubles you." "Well, as you will," cried the geographer; "it is stronger than I." "What is stronger than you?" "My joy on the one hand, and my despair on the other." "You are joyful and despairing at the same time?" "Yes; joyful and despairing at visiting New Zealand." "Have you any news?" asked Captain Mangles. "Have you discovered the lost trail?" "No, friend. _People never return from New Zealand!_ But yet--well, you know human nature. As long as we breathe we can hope; and my motto is '_dum spiro, spero_,' which is the best in the world." CHAPTER XLV. THE WRECK OF THE MACQUARIE. The next day the travelers were installed on board the Macquarie. Will Halley had not offered the ladies his cabin, which was not to be regretted, as the lair was only fit for the brute. At noon they made ready to take the flood-tide. The anchor was weighed. A moderate breeze blew from the southwest. The sails were gradually set, but the five men worked slowly. At last, incited by the oaths of the skipper, they accomplished their task. But in spite of her spread of canvas the brig scarcely advanced. Yet, however poorly she sailed, in five or six days they hoped to reach the harbor of Auckland. At seven o'clock in the evening they lost sight of the shores of Australia, and the lighthouse at Eden. The sea was rough, and the vessel labored heavily in the trough of the waves. The passengers found their situation very uncomfortable; but, as they could not remain on deck, they were forced to submit to confinement. [Illustration: But on the next day seven canoes of the islanders attacked it most violently and suddenly, causing it to capsize.] That evening conversation very naturally turned upon the land to which they were now sailing, its discovery and colonization; and just as naturally all turned to Paganel as to a bookcase, for some information thereon. It was very readily accessible, although evidently to the geographer's mind there was something of a painful character connected with the name, the impression, and the very thoughts of New Zealand and its Maori inhabitants. "Monsieur Paganel," said Lady Helena, "have your friends, the English, been the only ones to search out this island?" "By no means, madam," was the prompt reply. "On the contrary, they have come second, nay, third, in the race; only," and he looked half roguishly and half maliciously, "_they stayed when they came_." And then he told them of its first discovery by Abel Tasman, the Dutch navigator, in 1642; that, when first he landed, there seemed to be amicable feelings expressed by the islanders toward himself, a number of them coming back to his ship, and being apparently well pleased to cultivate intercourse. But on the next day, as he sent his boat to find good anchorage nearer to the shore, seven canoes of the islanders attacked it most violently and suddenly, causing it to capsize, and so vigorously assailing its occupants with their pikes that it was with difficulty any of them were able to swim back to their ship, leaving those of their companions who were not drowned to be butchered by the natives. [Sidenote: A SADDENING HISTORY.] Of course he did not forget to mention that a French navigator, Surville by name, was the next to visit the shores, and that his visit likewise was the cause of bloodshed and misery. But he gave them a more lengthy and extended narrative of Captain Cook's voyages, which were the most important in their results as well as the most interesting and tragic in many of their incidents. It was on the 6th of October, 1769, that this navigator first landed on the shores which he visited twice afterwards, and each time added greatly to the stock of previous knowledge concerning these islands, their productions, and their inhabitants. By him it was first ascertained that cannibalism was practiced by some, if not all, of the tribes at that time; and it was very evident, from the manner of Paganel's narration, that hereabout lay the extremely sensitive point of the worthy geographer's fears and forebodings. However, he was not deterred from rehearsing how one and another not merely visited, but began to settle, on the island, so that in the treaty of 1814 it was formally recognized as belonging to Great Britain, and twenty years after was important enough to have a separate official and governmental establishment. Paganel also told, at great length, the tales of many of the sad incidents which from time to time have marked even the commercial intercourse between the European and the Maori; as, for instance, the sad tale of conflict and bloodshed connected with the death of Captain Marion, a French navigator, in 1772. He had landed near the spot where Surville had ill-treated some of the natives and traitorously seized a son of the chief, Takouri, who yet appeared to welcome this next French visitant, though remembering none the less the terrible duty of vengeance which is felt by the Maori to be so binding. [Illustration: It was on the sixth of October, 1769, that this navigator (Captain Cook) first landed on the shores.] For a long time the cloak of friendship was worn by the natives, the more thoroughly to lull the suspicions of the whites, and to entice a larger number on shore; in which endeavor they succeeded only too well. The French ships being greatly out of repair, Marion was induced to fell timber at some distance in the interior, and to establish in this occupation a great number of his men, going frequently to them, and remaining with them and the apparently friendly chiefs. On one of these occasions the Maoris fulfilled their revengeful project with a terrible satisfaction to themselves. Only one man, of all those in the interior, managed to escape, the commander himself falling a prey to their vengeance. They then endeavored to kill the second in command, who, with several others, was nearer to the shore. These, of course, at once started for their boats; breathless, they reached them, hotly pursued to the water's edge by the insatiate savages. Then, safe themselves, the French marksmen picked off the chief, and the previous exultation of the aborigines was, even in the hour of their triumph, turned to lamentation, coupled with wonder at the terrible power of the white man's fire-barrel. [Illustration: Safe themselves, the French marksmen picked off the chief.] All this and much more did the geographer narrate; but it must be confessed that he neither spoke, nor did they listen, with the complacency evinced in his previous tales. Besides, their surroundings were at the time uncomfortable, and the first prognostications of a speedy passage were not likely to be verified. Unfortunately, this painful voyage was prolonged. Six days after her departure, the Macquarie had not descried the shores of Auckland. The wind was fair, however, and still blew from the southwest; but nevertheless the brig did not make much headway. The sea was rough, the rigging creaked, the ribs cracked, and the vessel rode the waves with difficulty. Fortunately, Will Halley, like a man who was in no hurry, did not crowd on sail, or his masts would inevitably have snapped. Captain Mangles hoped, therefore, that this clumsy craft would reach its destination in safety; still, he was pained to see his companions on board in such miserable quarters. [Sidenote: PERSISTENT GRIEF.] But neither Lady Helena nor Mary Grant complained, although the continual rain kept them confined, and the want of air and rolling of the ship seriously incommoded them. Their friends sought to divert them, and Paganel strove to while the time with his stories, but did not succeed so well as previously. Of all the passengers, the one most to be pitied was Lord Glenarvan. They rarely saw him below; he could not keep still. His nervous and excitable nature would not submit to an imprisonment between four wooden walls. Day and night, heedless of the torrents of rain and the dashing spray of the sea, he remained on deck, sometimes bending over the rail, sometimes pacing up and down with feverish agitation. His eyes gazed continually into space, and, during the brief lulls, his glass persistently surveyed the horizon. He seemed to question the mute waves; the mist that veiled the sky, the masses of vapor, he would have penetrated with a glance; he could not be resigned, and his countenance betokened an acute grief. The power and hopefulness of this man, hitherto so energetic and courageous, had suddenly failed. Captain Mangles seldom left him, but at his side endured the severity of the storm. That day, Glenarvan, wherever there was an opening in the mist, scanned the horizon with the utmost persistency. The young captain approached him. "Is your lordship looking for land?" he asked. Glenarvan shook his head. "It will yet be some time before we leave the brig. We ought to have sighted Auckland light thirty-six hours ago." Glenarvan did not answer. He still gazed, and for a moment his glass was pointed towards the horizon to windward of the vessel. "The land is not on that side," said Captain Mangles. "Your lordship should look towards the starboard." "Why, John?" replied Glenarvan. "It is not the land that I am seeking." "What is it, my lord?" [Sidenote: A COURAGEOUS CAPTAIN.] "My yacht, my Duncan! She must be here, in these regions, plowing these seas, in that dreadful employment of a pirate. She is here, I tell you, John, on this course between Australia and New Zealand! I have a presentiment that we shall meet her!" [Illustration: Day and night, heedless of the torrents of rain and the dashing spray of the sea, he remained on deck.] "God preserve us from such a meeting, my lord!" "Why, John?" "Your lordship forgets our situation. What could we do on this brig, if the Duncan should give us chase? We could not escape." "Escape, John?" "Yes, my lord. We should try in vain. We should be captured, at the mercy of the wretches. Ben Joyce has shown that he does not hesitate at a crime. I should sell my life dearly. We would defend ourselves to the last extremity. Well! But, then, think of Lady Helena and Mary Grant!" "Poor women!" murmured Glenarvan. "John, my heart is broken, and sometimes I feel as if despair had invaded it. It seems to me as if new calamities awaited us, as if Heaven had decreed against us! I am afraid!" "You, my lord?" "Not for myself, John, but for those whom I love, and whom you love also." "Take courage, my lord," replied the young captain. "We need no longer fear. The Macquarie is a poor sailer, but still she sails. Will Halley is a brutish creature; but I am here, and if the approach to the land seems to me dangerous I shall take the ship to sea again. Therefore from this quarter there is little or no danger. But as for meeting the Duncan, God preserve us, and enable us to escape!" Captain Mangles was right. To encounter the Duncan would be fatal to the Macquarie, and this misfortune was to be feared in these retired seas, where pirates could roam without danger. However, that day, at least, the Duncan did not appear, and the sixth night since their departure from Twofold Bay arrived without Captain Mangles's fears being realized. But that night was destined to be one of terror. Darkness set in almost instantaneously towards evening; the sky was very threatening. Even Will Halley, whose sense of danger was superior to the brutishness of intoxication, was startled by these warning signs. He left his cabin, rubbing his eyes and shaking his great red head. Then he drew a long breath, and examined the masts. The wind was fresh, and was blowing strong towards the New Zealand coast. Captain Halley summoned his men, with many oaths, and ordered them to reef the top-sails. Captain Mangles approved in silence. He had given up remonstrating with this coarse seaman; but neither he nor Glenarvan left the deck. Two hours passed. The sea grew more tempestuous, and the vessel received such severe shocks that it seemed as if her keel were grating on the sand. There was no unusual roughness, but yet this clumsy craft labored heavily, and the deck was deluged by the huge waves. The boat that hung in the larboard davits was swept overboard by a rising billow. Captain Mangles could not help being anxious. Any other vessel would have mocked these surges; but with this heavy hulk they might well fear foundering, for the deck was flooded with every plunge, and the masses of water, not finding sufficient outlet by the scuppers, might submerge the ship. It would have been wise, as a preparation for any emergency, to cut away the waistcloth to facilitate the egress of the water; but Will Halley refused to take this precaution. [Sidenote: A NAUTICAL COUP D'ETAT.] However, a greater danger threatened the Macquarie, and probably there was no longer time to prevent it. About half-past eleven Captain Mangles and Wilson, who were standing on the leeward side, were startled by an unusual sound. Their nautical instincts were roused, and the captain seized the sailor's hand. "The surf!" said he. "Yes," replied Wilson. "The sea is breaking on the reefs." "Not more than two cable-lengths distant." "Not more! The shore is here!" Captain Mangles leaned over the railing, gazed at the dark waves, and cried: "The sounding-lead, Wilson!" The skipper, who was in the forecastle, did not seem to suspect his situation. Wilson grasped the sounding-line, which lay coiled in its pail, and rushed into the port-shrouds. He cast the lead; the rope slipped between his fingers; at the third knot it stopped. "Three fathoms!" cried Wilson. "We are on the breakers!" shouted the sober captain to the stupefied one. Whether the former saw Halley shrug his shoulders or not is of little consequence. At all events, he rushed towards the wheel and crowded the helm hard alee, while Wilson, letting go the line, hauled upon the top-sail yard-arms to luff the ship. The sailor who was steering, and had been forcibly pushed aside, did not at all understand this sudden attack. "To the port-yards! let loose the sails!" cried the young captain, managing so as to escape the reefs. For half a minute, the starboard side of the brig grazed the rocks, and, in spite of the darkness, John perceived a roaring line of breakers that foamed a few yards from the ship. [Sidenote: VERY CRITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES.] At this moment Will Halley, becoming conscious of the imminent danger, lost his presence of mind. His sailors, who were scarcely sober, could not comprehend his orders. Moreover, his incoherent words and contradictory commands showed that this stupid drunkard's coolness had failed. He was surprised by the nearness of the land, which was only eight miles off, when he thought it thirty or forty. The currents had taken him unawares, and thrown him out of his ordinary course. [Illustration: The sailor who was steering, and had been forcibly pushed aside, did not at all understand this sudden attack.] However, Captain Mangles's prompt management had rescued the brig from her peril; but he did not know his position. Perhaps he was inclosed by a chain of reefs. The wind blew fresh from the east, and at every pitch they might strike bottom. The roar of the surf was soon redoubled, and it was necessary to luff still more. John crowded the helm down and braced farther to leeward. The breakers multiplied beneath the prow of the ship, and they were obliged to tack so as to put to sea. Would this manoeuvre succeed with such an unsteady vessel, and under such reduced sail? It was uncertain, but as their only chance they must venture it. "Hard alee!" cried Captain Mangles to Wilson. The Macquarie began to approach the new line of reefs. Soon the water foamed above the submerged rocks. It was a moment of torturing suspense. The spray glittered on the crests of the waves. You would have thought a phosphorescent glow had suddenly illumined the water. Wilson and Mulready forced down the wheel with their whole weight. Suddenly a shock was felt. The vessel had struck upon a rock. The bob-stays broke, and nearly overthrew the mainmast. Could they come about without any other injury? No; for all at once there was a calm, and the ship veered to windward again, and her movements suddenly ceased. A lofty wave seized and bore her forward towards the reefs, while she rolled heavily. The mainmast went by the board with all its rigging, the brig heaved twice and was motionless, leaning over to starboard. The pump-lights were shattered in pieces, and the passengers rushed to the deck; but the waves were sweeping it from one end to the other, and they could not remain without danger. Captain Mangles, knowing that the ship was firmly imbedded in the sand, besought them for their own sakes to go below again. "The truth, John?" asked Glenarvan, faintly. "The truth, my lord, is that we shall not founder. As for being destroyed by the sea, that is another question; but we have time to take counsel." "Is it midnight?" "Yes, my lord, and we must wait for daylight." "Can we not put to sea in the boat?" "In this storm and darkness it is impossible. And, moreover, where should we strike land?" "Well, John, let us remain here till morning." Meantime Will Halley was running about the deck like a madman. His sailors, who had recovered from their stupor, stove in a brandy-barrel and began to drink. Mangles foresaw that their drunkenness would lead to terrible scenes. The captain could not be relied upon to restrain them; the miserable man tore his hair and wrung his hands; he thought only of his cargo, which was not insured. "I am ruined! I am lost!" cried he, running to and fro. Captain Mangles scarcely thought of consoling him. He armed his companions, and all stood ready to repel the sailors, who were filling themselves with brandy, and cursing frightfully. "The first of these wretches who approaches," said the major calmly, "I will shoot like a dog." The sailors doubtless saw that the passengers were determined to keep them at bay, for, after a few attempts at plunder, they disappeared. Captain Mangles paid no more attention to these drunken men, but waited impatiently for day. [Sidenote: SLEEPING IN A SAND-CRADLE.] The ship was now absolutely immovable. The sea grew gradually calm, and the wind subsided. The hull could, therefore, hold out a few hours longer. At sunrise they would examine the shore. If it seemed easy to land, the yawl, now the only boat on board, would serve to transport the crew and passengers. It would require three trips, at least, to accomplish this, for there was room for only four persons. As for the gig, it had been swept overboard, during the storm, as before mentioned. While reflecting on the dangers of his situation, the young captain, leaning against the binnacle, listened to the roar of the surf. He strove to pierce the dense darkness, and estimate how far he was from that desired yet dreaded coast. Breakers are frequently heard several leagues at sea. Could the frail cutter weather so long a voyage in her present shattered state? While he was thinking thus, and longing for a little light in the gloomy sky, the ladies, relying upon his words, were reposing in their berths. The steadiness of the brig secured them several hours of rest. Glenarvan and the others, no longer hearing the cries of the drunken crew, refreshed themselves also by a hasty sleep, and, early in the morning, deep silence reigned on board this vessel, which had sunk to rest, as it were, upon her bed of sand. About four o'clock the first light appeared in the east. The clouds were delicately tinged by the pale rays of the dawn. Captain Mangles came on deck. Along the horizon extended a curtain of mist. A few vague outlines floated in the vapors of the morning. A gentle swell still agitated the sea, and the outer waves were lost in the dense, motionless fog. He waited. The light gradually brightened, and the horizon glowed with crimson hues. The misty curtain gradually enveloped the vast vault of the firmament. Black rocks emerged from the water. Then, a line was defined along a border of foam, and a luminous point kindled like a lighthouse at the summit of a peak against the still invisible disk of the rising sun. "Land!" cried Captain Mangles. [Illustration: The mainmast went by the board with all its rigging, the brig heaved twice and was motionless, leaning over to starboard.] [Illustration: As the Macquarie lay over on her starboard beams, her opposite side was raised, and the defective seams were out of water.] His companions, awakened by his voice, rushed on deck, and gazed in silence at the coast that was seen on the horizon. Whether hospitable or fatal, it was to be their place of refuge. "Where is that Halley?" asked Glenarvan. "I do not know, my lord," replied Captain Mangles. "And his sailors?" "Disappeared, like himself." "And like himself, doubtless, drunk," added MacNabb. "Let us search for them," said Glenarvan; "we cannot abandon them on this vessel." Mulready and Wilson went down to the bunks in the forecastle. The place was empty. They then visited between-decks, and the hold, but found neither Halley nor his sailors. "What! nobody?" said Glenarvan. "Have they fallen into the sea?" asked Paganel. "Anything is possible," replied Captain Mangles, who cared little for their disappearance. Then, turning towards the stern, he said,-- "To the boat!" Wilson and Mulready followed, to assist in lowering it. The yawl was gone! CHAPTER XLVI. VAIN EFFORTS. Will Halley and his crew, taking advantage of the night and the passengers' sleep, had fled with the only boat left. They could not doubt it. This captain, who was in duty bound to be the last on board, had been the first to leave. [Sidenote: AN ADVANTAGEOUS LOSS.] "The rascals have fled," said Captain Mangles. "Well, so much the better, my lord. We are spared so many disagreeable scenes." "I agree with you," replied Glenarvan. "Besides, there is a better captain on board, yourself, and courageous seamen, your companions. Command us; we are ready to obey you." All endorsed Glenarvan's words, and, ranged along the deck, they stood ready for the young captain's orders. "What is to be done?" asked Glenarvan. John cast a glance over the ocean, looked at the shattered masts of the brig, and, after a few moments' reflection, said: "We have two ways, my lord, of extricating ourselves from this situation: either to raise the vessel and put her to sea, or reach the coast on a raft, which can be easily constructed." "If the vessel can be raised, let us raise it," replied Glenarvan. "That is the best plan, is it not?" "Yes, my lord; for, once ashore, what would become of us without means of transport?" "Let us avoid the coast," added Paganel. "We must beware of New Zealand." "All the more so, as we have gone considerably astray," continued Captain Mangles. "Halley's carelessness has carried us to the south, that is evident. At noon I will take an observation; and if, as I presume, we are below Auckland, I will try to sail the Macquarie up along the coast." "But the injuries of the brig?" inquired Lady Helena. "I do not think they are serious, madam," replied Captain Mangles. "I shall rig a jury-mast at the bows; and we shall sail slowly, it is true, but still we shall go where we wish. If, unfortunately, the hull is stove in, or if the ship cannot be extricated, we must gain the coast, and travel by land to Auckland." "Let us examine the state of the vessel, then," said the major. "This is of the first importance." Glenarvan, the captain, and Mulready opened the main scuttle, and went down into the hold. About two hundred tons of tanned hides were there, very badly stowed away; but they could draw them aside without much difficulty, by means of the main-stay tackling, and they at once threw overboard part of this ballast so as to lighten the ship. After three hours of hard labor, they could see the bottom timbers. Two seams in the larboard planking had sprung open as far up as the channel wales. As the Macquarie lay over on her starboard beams, her opposite side was raised, and the defective seams were out of water. Wilson hastened, therefore, to tighten the joints with oakum, over which he carefully nailed a copper plate. On sounding they found less than two feet of water in the hold, which the pumps could easily exhaust, and thus relieve the ship. After his examination of the hull, the captain perceived that it had been little injured in stranding. It was probable that a part of the false keel would remain in the sand, but they could pass over it. Wilson, after inspecting the interior of the brig, dived, in order to determine her position on the reef. The Macquarie was turned towards the northwest, and lay on a very shelving, slimy sand-bar. The lower end of her prow and two-thirds of her keel were deeply imbedded in the sand. The rest, as far as the stern, floated where the water was five fathoms deep. The rudder was not, therefore, confined, but worked freely. The captain considered it useless to lighten her, as he hoped they would be ready to make use of her at the earliest opportunity. The tides of the Pacific are not very strong, but he relied upon their influence to float the brig, which had stranded an hour before high water. The only point was to extricate her, which would be a long and painful task. [Sidenote: LABOR FOR THE COMMON WEAL.] "To work!" cried the captain. His improvised sailors were ready. He ordered them to reef the sails. The major, Robert, and Paganel, under Wilson's direction, climbed the maintop. The top-sail, swelled by the wind, would have prevented the extrication of the ship, and it was necessary to reef it, which was done as well as possible. At last, after much labor, severe to unaccustomed hands, the maintop-gallant was taken down. Young Robert, nimble as a cat, and bold as a cabin-boy, had rendered important services in this difficult operation. It was now advisable to cast one anchor, perhaps two, at the stern of the vessel in the line of the keel. The effect of this would be to haul the Macquarie around into deep water. There is no difficulty in doing this when you have a boat, but here all the boats were gone, and something else must be supplied. Glenarvan was familiar enough with the sea to understand the necessity of these arrangements. One anchor was to be cast to prevent the ship from stranding at low water. "But what shall we do without a boat?" asked he of the captain. "We will use the remains of the mizen-mast and the empty casks," was the reply. "It will be a difficult, but not impossible task, for the Macquarie's anchors are small. Once cast however, if they do not drag, I shall be encouraged." "Very well, let us lose no time." To accomplish their object, all were summoned on deck; each took part in the work. The rigging that still confined the mizen-mast was cut away, so that the maintop could be easily withdrawn. Out of this platform Captain Mangles designed to make a raft. He supported it by means of empty casks, and rendered it capable of carrying the anchors. A rudder was fastened to it, which enabled them to steer the concern. This labor was half accomplished when the sun neared the meridian. The captain left Glenarvan to follow out his instructions, and turned his attention to determining his position, which was very important. Fortunately, he had found in Will Halley's cabin a Nautical Almanac and a sextant, with which he was able to take an observation. By consulting the map Paganel had bought at Eden, he saw that they had been wrecked at the mouth of Aotea Bay, above Cahua Point, on the shores of the province of Auckland. As the city was on the thirty-seventh parallel, the Macquarie had been carried a considerable distance out of her course. It was, therefore, necessary to sail northward to reach the capital of New Zealand. "A journey of not more than twenty-five miles," said Glenarvan. "It is nothing." "What is nothing at sea will be long and difficult on land," replied Paganel. "Well, then," said Captain Mangles, "let us do all in our power to float the Macquarie." This question being settled, their labors were resumed. It was high water, but they could not take advantage of it, since the anchors were not yet moored. Yet the captain watched the ship with some anxiety. Would she float with the tide? This point would soon be decided. They waited. Several cracks were heard, caused either by a rising or starting of the keel. Great reliance had been placed upon the tide, but the brig did not stir. The work was continued, and the raft was soon ready. The small anchor was put on board, and the captain and Wilson embarked, after mooring a small cable at the stern. The ebb-tide made them drift, and they therefore anchored, half a cable's length distant, in ten fathoms of water. The bottom afforded a firm hold. [Sidenote: A MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE.] The great anchor now remained. They lowered it with difficulty, transported it on the raft, and soon it was moored behind the other; the captain and his men returning to the vessel, and waiting for high water, which would be early in the morning. It was now six o'clock in the evening. The young captain complimented his sailors, and told Paganel that, with the aid of courage and good discipline, he might one day become quartermaster. Meantime, Mr. Olbinett, after assisting in different operations, had returned to the kitchen, and prepared a very comforting and seasonable repast. The crew were tempted by a keen appetite, which was abundantly satisfied, and each felt himself invigorated for fresh exertions. After dinner, Captain Mangles took a final precaution to insure the success of his experiment. He threw overboard a great part of the merchandise to lighten the brig; but the remainder of the ballast, the heavy spars, the spare yards, and a few tons of pig-iron, were carried to the stern, to aid by their weight in liberating the keel. Wilson and Mulready likewise rolled to the same place a number of casks filled with water. Midnight arrived before these labors were completed. But at this hour the breeze subsided, and only a few capricious ripples stirred the surface of the water. Looking towards the horizon, the captain observed that the wind was changing from southwest to northwest. A sailor could not be mistaken in the peculiar arrangement and color of the clouds. He accordingly informed Glenarvan of these indications, and proposed to defer their work till the next day. [Sidenote: "A TIDE IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN."] "And these are my reasons," said he. "First, we are very much fatigued, and all our strength is necessary to free the vessel. Then, when this is accomplished, how can we sail among the dangerous breakers, and in such profound darkness? Moreover, another reason induces me to wait. The wind promises to aid us, and I desire to profit by it, and am in hopes that it will drift the old hull out when the tide raises her. To-morrow, if I am not mistaken, the breeze will blow from the northwest. We will set the main-sails, and they will help to raise the brig." [Illustration: They therefore anchored, half a cable's length distant, in ten fathoms of water.] These reasons were decisive. Glenarvan and Paganel, the most impatient on board, yielded, and the work was suspended. The night passed favorably, and day appeared. Their captain's predictions were realized. The wind blew from the northwest, and continued to freshen. The crew were summoned. It was nine o'clock. Four hours were still to elapse before it would be high water, and that time was not lost. The laborers renewed their efforts with very good success. Meantime the tide rose. The surface of the sea was agitated into ripples, and the points of the rocks gradually disappeared, like marine animals returning to their native element. The time for the final attempt approached. A feverish impatience thrilled all minds. No one spoke. Each gazed at the captain, and awaited his orders. He was leaning over the stern-railing, watching the water, and casting an uneasy glance towards the cables. At last the tide reached its height. The experiment must now be made without delay. The main-sails were set, and the mast was bent with the force of the wind. "To the windlass!" cried the captain. Glenarvan, Mulready, and Robert on one side, and Paganel, the major, and Olbinett on the other, bore down upon the handles that moved the machine. At the same time the captain and Wilson added their efforts to those of their companions. "Down! down!" cried the young captain; "all together!" The cables were stretched taut under the powerful action of the windlass. The anchors held fast, and did not drag. But they must be quick, for high tide lasts only a few moments, and the water would not be long in lowering. They redoubled their efforts. The wind blew violently, and forced the sails against the mast. A few tremors were felt in the hull, and the brig seemed on the point of rising. Perhaps a little more power would suffice to draw her from the sand. "Helena! Mary!" cried Glenarvan. The two ladies came and joined their efforts to those of their companions. A final crack was heard, but that was all! The experiment had failed. The tide was already beginning to ebb, and it was evident that, even with the aid of wind and tide, this insufficient crew could not float their ship. As their first plan had failed, it was necessary to have recourse to the second without delay. It was plain that they could not raise the Macquarie, and that the only way was to abandon her. To wait on board for the uncertain arrival of assistance would have been folly and madness. The captain therefore proposed to construct a raft strong enough to convey the passengers and a sufficient quantity of provisions to the New Zealand coast. It was not a time for discussion, but for action. The work was accordingly begun, and considerably advanced when night interrupted them. In the evening, after supper, while Lady Helena and Mary Grant were reposing in their berths, Paganel and his friends conversed seriously as they paced the deck. The geographer had asked Captain Mangles whether the raft could not follow the coast as far as Auckland, instead of landing the passengers at once. The captain replied that it would be impossible with such a rude craft. "And could we have done with the boat what we cannot do with the raft?" "Yes, candidly speaking, we could," was the reply; "but with the necessity of sailing by day and anchoring by night." [Sidenote: A FRENCHMAN'S FOIBLE.] "Then these wretches, who have abandoned us----" "Oh," said Captain Mangles, "they were drunk, and in the profound darkness I fear they have paid for their cowardly desertion with their lives." "So much the worse for them," continued Paganel; "and for us, too, as this boat would have been useful." "What do you mean, Paganel?" said Glenarvan. "The raft will take us ashore." "That is precisely what I would avoid," replied the geographer. "What! can a journey of not more than twenty miles terrify us, after what has been done on the Pampas and in Australia?" "My friends," resumed Paganel, "I do not doubt your courage, nor that of our fair companions. Twenty miles is nothing in any other country except New Zealand. Here, however, anything is better than venturing upon these treacherous shores." "Anything is better than exposing yourself to certain death on a wrecked vessel," returned Captain Mangles. "What have we to fear in New Zealand?" asked Glenarvan. "The savages!" replied Paganel. "The savages?" said Glenarvan. "Can we not avoid them by following the coast? Besides, an attack from a few wretches cannot intimidate ten well-armed and determined Europeans." "It is not a question of wretches," rejoined Paganel. "The New Zealanders form terrible tribes that struggle against the English government, fight with invaders, frequently conquer them, and always eat them." "Cannibals! cannibals!" cried Robert; and then he murmured, as though afraid to give full utterance to the words, "My sister! Lady Helena!" "Never fear, my boy!" said Glenarvan; "our friend Paganel exaggerates." [Illustration: The work was accordingly begun, and considerably advanced when night interrupted them.] [Illustration: Not long since, in the year 1864, one of these clergymen was seized by the chiefs and hung from the tree.] "I do not exaggerate," replied Paganel. "With these New Zealanders war is what the sports of the chase are to civilized nations; and the game they hunt for they feast upon." "Paganel," said the major, "this may be all very true, but have you forgotten the introduction of Christianity? has it not destroyed these anthropophagous habits?" "No, it has not," was the prompt reply. "The records are yet fresh of ministers who have gone out to proclaim Christianity and have fallen victims to the murderous and cannibal instincts of those to whom they preached. Not long since, in the year 1864, one of these clergymen was seized by the chiefs, was hung to the tree, was tantalized and tortured to his last moments; and then, whilst some tore his body to pieces, others devoured the various members. No, the Maoris are still cannibals, and will remain so for some time to come." But Paganel was on this point a pessimist, contrary to his usual characteristic. CHAPTER XLVII. A DREADED COUNTRY. What Paganel had stated was indisputable. The cruelty of the New Zealanders could not be doubted. There was, therefore, danger in landing. But if the danger had been a hundred times greater, it must have been faced. Captain Mangles felt the necessity of leaving this vessel, which would soon break up. Between two perils, one certain, the other only probable, there was no possible hesitation. [Sidenote: ANOTHER CHANGE OF RESIDENCE.] As for the chance of being picked up by some passing ship, they could not reasonably rely upon it, for the Macquarie was out of the course usually taken in going to New Zealand. The shipwreck had happened on the desert shores of Ika-Na-Maoui. "When shall we start?" asked Glenarvan. "To-morrow morning at ten o'clock," replied Captain Mangles. "The tide will begin to rise then, and will carry us ashore." Early the next day the raft was finished. The captain had given his entire attention to its construction. They needed a steady and manageable craft, and one capable of resisting the waves for a voyage of nine miles. The masts of the brig could alone furnish the necessary materials. The raft was at length completed. It could doubtless sustain the shock of the surges; but could it be steered, and the coast be reached, if the wind should veer? This was a question only to be decided by trial. At nine o'clock the loading began. The provisions were first put on board in sufficient quantities to last until the arrival at Auckland, for there could be no reliance upon the products of this dreaded country. Olbinett furnished some preserved meats, the remains of the Macquarie's supplies. There was very little, however; and they were forced to depend upon the coarse fare of the mess, which consisted of very inferior ship-biscuits and two barrels of salt fish, greatly to the steward's regret. These stores were inclosed in sealed cans and then secured to the foot of the mast. The arms and ammunition were put in a safe and dry place. Fortunately, the travelers were well supplied with rifles and revolvers. A small anchor was taken on board, in case they should reach the shore at low tide and be forced to anchor in the offing. Flood-tide soon began, the breeze blew gently from the northwest, and a slight swell agitated the surface of the sea. "Are we ready?" asked Captain Mangles. "All is ready, captain," replied Wilson. "Aboard, then!" Lady Helena and Mary Grant descended the ship's side by a clumsy rope-ladder, and took their seats at the foot of the mast near the cases of provisions, their companions around them. Wilson took the helm, the captain stationed himself at the sail-tackling, and Mulready cut the cable that confined the raft to the brig. The sail was spread, and they began to move towards the shore under the combined influence of wind and tide. The coast was only nine miles distant,--not a difficult voyage for a well-manned boat; but with the raft it was necessary to advance slowly. If the wind held out, they might perhaps reach land with this tide; but if there should be a calm, the ebb would carry them back, or they would be compelled to anchor and wait for the next tide. However, Captain Mangles hoped to succeed. The wind freshened. As it had been flood now for some hours, they must either reach land soon, or anchor. Fortune favored them. Gradually the black points of the rocks and the yellow sand of the bars disappeared beneath the waves; but great attention and extreme skill became necessary, in this dangerous neighborhood, to guide their unwieldy craft. They were still five miles from shore. A clear sky enabled them to distinguish the principal features of the country. To the northeast rose a lofty mountain, whose outline was defined against the horizon in a very singular resemblance to the grinning profile of a monkey. Paganel soon observed that all the sand-bars had disappeared. "Except one," replied Lady Helena. "Where?" asked Paganel. "There," said Lady Helena, pointing to a black speck a mile ahead. "That is true," answered Paganel. "Let us try to determine its position, that we may not run upon it when the tide covers it." [Illustration: The yawl was drawn alongside.] "It is exactly at the northern projection of the mountain," said Captain Mangles. "Wilson, bear away towards the offing." "Yes, captain," replied the sailor, bearing with all his weight upon the steering oar. They approached nearer; but, strange to say, the black point still rose above the water. The captain gazed at it attentively, and, to see better, employed Paganel's telescope. "It is not a rock," said he, after a moment's examination; "it is a floating object, that rises and falls with the swell." "Is it not a piece of the Macquarie's mast?" asked Lady Helena. "No," replied Glenarvan; "no fragment could have drifted so far from the ship." "Wait!" cried Captain Mangles. "I recognize it. It is the boat." "The brig's boat?" said Glenarvan. "Yes, my lord, the brig's boat, bottom upwards." "The unfortunate sailors!" exclaimed Lady Helena, "they have perished!" "Yes, madam," continued the captain; "and they might have foreseen it; for in the midst of these breakers, on a stormy sea, and in such profound darkness, they fled to certain death." "May Heaven have pity on them!" murmured Mary Grant. For a few moments the passengers were silent. They gazed at this frail bark towards which they drew nearer and nearer. It had evidently capsized a considerable distance from land, and of those who embarked in it probably not one had survived. "But this boat may be useful," said Glenarvan. "Certainly," replied Captain Mangles. "Come about, Wilson." [Sidenote: REALITIES AND FANCIES.] The direction of the raft was changed, but the wind subsided gradually, and it cost them much time to reach the boat. Mulready, standing at the bow, warded off the shock, and the yawl was drawn alongside. "Empty?" asked Captain Mangles. "Yes, captain," replied the sailor, "the boat is empty, and her seams have started open. She is of no use to us." "Can we not save any part?" asked MacNabb. "No," answered the captain. "She is only fit to burn." "I am sorry," said Paganel, "for the yawl might have taken us to Auckland." "We must be resigned, Mr. Paganel," rejoined the captain. "Moreover, on such a rough sea, I prefer our raft to that frail conveyance. A slight shock would dash it in pieces! Therefore, my lord, we have nothing more to stay here for." "As you wish, John," said Glenarvan. "Forward, Wilson," continued the young captain, "straight for the coast!" The tide would yet flow for about an hour, and in this time they could accomplish a considerable distance. But soon the breeze subsided almost entirely, and the raft was motionless. Soon it even began to drift towards the open sea under the influence of the ebb. The captain did not hesitate a moment. "Anchor!" cried he. Mulready, who was in an instant ready to execute this order, let fall the anchor, and the raft drifted till the cable was taut. The sail was reefed, and arrangements were made for a long detention. Indeed, the tide would not turn till late in the evening; and, as they did not care to sail in the dark, they anchored for the night in sight of land. Quite a heavy swell agitated the surface of the water, and seemed to set steadily towards the shore. Glenarvan, therefore, when he learned that the whole night would be passed on board, asked why they did not take advantage of this current to approach the coast. [Illustration: Night approached. Already the sun's disk was disappearing beneath the horizon.] [Illustration: The ladies were carried in their companions' arms, and reached the shore without wetting a single fold of their garments.] "My lord," replied the young captain, "is deceived by an optical illusion. The apparent onward movement is only an oscillation of the water, nothing more. Throw a piece of wood into the water, and you will see that it will remain stationary, so long as the ebb is not felt. We must therefore have patience." "And dinner," added the major. Olbinett took out of a case of provisions some pieces of dried meat and a dozen biscuits, though reluctant to offer such meagre fare. It was accepted, however, with good grace, even by the ladies, whose appetites the fresh sea air greatly improved. Night approached. Already the sun's disk, glowing with crimson, was disappearing beneath the horizon; and the waters glistened and sparkled like sheets of liquid silver under his last rays. Nothing could be seen but sky and water, except one sharply-defined object, the hull of the Macquarie, motionless on the reefs. The short twilight was rapidly followed by the darkness, and soon the land that bounded the horizon some miles away was lost in the gloom. In this perplexing situation these shipwrecked people lapsed into an uneasy and distressing drowsiness, and as the result at daybreak all were more exhausted than refreshed. With the turn of the tide the wind rose. It was six o'clock in the morning, and time was precious. Preparations were made for getting under way, and the order was given to weigh anchor; but the flukes, by the strain of the cable, were so deeply imbedded in the sand that without the windlass even the tackling that Wilson arranged could not draw them out. [Sidenote: TERRA-FIRMA ONCE MORE.] Half an hour passed in useless efforts. The captain, impatient to set sail, cut the cable, and thus took away all possibility of anchoring, in case the tide should not enable them to reach the shore. The sail was unfurled, and they drifted slowly towards the land that rose in grayish masses against the background of the sky, illumined by the rising sun. The reefs were skillfully avoided, but, with the unsteady breeze, they did not seem to draw nearer the shore. At last, however, land was less than a mile distant, craggy with rocks and very precipitous. It was necessary to find a practicable landing. The wind now moderated and soon subsided entirely, the sail flapping idly against the mast. The tide alone moved the raft; but they had to give up steering, and masses of sea-weed retarded their progress. After awhile they gradually became stationary three cable-lengths from shore. But they had no anchor, and would they not be carried out to sea again by the ebb? With eager glance and anxious heart the captain looked towards the inaccessible shore. Just at this moment a shock was felt. The raft stopped. They had stranded on a sand-bar, not far from the coast. Glenarvan, Robert, Wilson, and Mulready leaped into the water, and moored their bark firmly with cables on the adjoining reefs. The ladies were carried in their companions' arms, and reached the shore without wetting a single fold of their garments; and soon all, with arms and provisions, had set foot on the inhospitable shores of New Zealand. Glenarvan, without losing an hour, would have followed the coast to Auckland; but since early morning the sky had been heavy with clouds, which, towards noon, descended in torrents of rain. Hence it was impossible to start on their journey, and advisable to seek a shelter. [Illustration: While the fire served to dry their garments conversation beguiled the hours, as they lay or stood at ease.] Wilson discovered, fortunately, a cavern, hollowed out by the sea in the basaltic rocks of the shore, and here the travelers took refuge with their arms and provisions. There was an abundance of dry sea-weed, lately cast up by the waves. This formed a soft couch, of which they availed themselves. Several pieces of wood were piled up at the entrance and then kindled; and while the fire served to dry their garments conversation beguiled the hours, as they lay or stood at ease. [Illustration: Louper, with difficulty, managed to support himself on one of them.] [Sidenote: SEALS AND SIRENS.] Paganel, as usual, upon being appealed to, could tell them of the rise, extension, and consolidation of the British power upon the island; he informed them of the beginnings--and, to his belief, of the causes--of the strife which for years decimated the aborigines, and was very injurious to the colonists who had emigrated; then, in reply to Robert's questions, he went on to speak of those who on a narrower theatre had emulated by their heroism and patience the deeds of the world's great travelers and scientific explorers. He told them of Witcombe and Charlton Howitt, men known in their own circles and in connection with their own branch of the New Zealand government. At still greater length he detailed the adventures of Jacob Louper, who was the companion of Witcombe, and had gone as his assistant to discover a practicable route over the mountains in the north of the province of Canterbury. In those mountain wilds, which even the islanders rarely traverse, these two Europeans suffered greatly, but still worse was their fate when they descended to the water-level and essayed to cross the Taramakau near its mouth. Jacob Louper at length found two old and almost useless canoes, and by attaching the one to the other they hoped to accomplish the passage safely. Before they had reached the middle of the rapid current, however, both the tubs capsized. Louper, with difficulty, managed to support himself on one of them, and by clinging to it was at length carried to the river's bank, which his companion also reached; but when after a period of insensibility Louper returned to consciousness and found the body of Witcombe, it was lifeless. Though terribly bruised and still bleeding from his wounds, Louper hollowed a grave for the remains, and then, after many more days of privation and danger, came to the huts of some of the Maoris, by whose assistance he at length reached the settled parts of the colony. These facts and reminiscences, it must be confessed, were not of the most inspiriting character; but they were in the same key as most of Paganel's disquisitions and information concerning these islands, and they were before a late hour exchanged for peaceful though probably dreamy slumbers, by his hearers. Early the next morning the signal for departure was given. The rain had ceased during the night, and the sky was covered with grayish clouds, which intercepted the rays of the sun, so that the temperature thus moderated enabled them to endure the fatigues of the journey. By consulting the map, Paganel had calculated that they would have to travel eight days. But, instead of following the windings of the coast, he considered it best to proceed to the village of Ngarnavahia, at the junction of the Waikato and Waipa rivers. Here the overland mail-road passed, and it would thence be easy to reach Drury, and rest, after their hardships, in a comfortable hotel. But before they left the shore their attention was drawn to the large number of seals, of a peculiar appearance and genus, which lay on the broad sands daily washed by the tidal water. These seals, with their rounded heads, their upturned look, their expressive eyes, presented an appearance, almost a physiognomy, that was mild and wellnigh tender, and served to recall to the traveler's memory the tales about the sirens of the olden and modern times, who served as the enchantresses to just such inhospitable shores as that seemed on which they had themselves been cast. These animals, which are very numerous on the coast of New Zealand, are hunted and killed for the sake of their oil and their skins, and Paganel was of course able to tell how much within the last few years they had been searched for by the traders and navigators on these seas. [Illustration: These seals, with rounded heads, upturned look, expressive eyes, presented an appearance, almost a physiognomy, that was mild and wellnigh tender.] [Illustration: The New Zealand "kiwi," known to naturalists as the apteryx.] Whilst speaking of these matters, Robert drew Paganel's attention to some curious amphibious creatures, resembling the seals, but larger, which were devouring with rapidity the large stones lying on the shore. "Look," said he, "here are seals which feed on pebbles." Paganel assured them that these sea-elephants were only weighting themselves preparatory to their descent into the water, and protested that if they would but wait for a time they might see them descend and subsequently return when they had unloaded themselves. The first part of this programme they saw accomplished; but, greatly to Paganel's grief, Glenarvan would not longer delay the party, and they soon began to see inland beauties and curiosities of another sort. The district through which they had to walk this day and the next was one very thick with brush and under-wood, and there was no possibility of horse or vehicle passing or meeting them. They now regretted the absence of their Australian cart, for the height and frequency of the large ferns in the neighborhood prevented their making any rapid progress on foot. [Sidenote: THE LAST STAGE OF PERIPATETICS.] Here and there, however, Robert and Paganel would rejoice together over some choice bush or bird that they had met with. Notable among the latter was the New Zealand "kiwi," known to naturalists as the apteryx, and which is becoming very scarce, from the pursuit of its many enemies. Robert discovered in a nest on the ground a couple of these birds without tails or wings, but with four toes on the foot, and a long beak or bill like that of a woodcock, and small white feathers all over its body. Of this bird there was then an entire absence in the zoological collections of Europe, and Paganel indulged the hope that he might be able to be the proud contributor of such a valuable specimen to the "Jardin" of his own city. For the present, at least, the realization of his hopes had to be deferred; and at length, after some days of weariness and continued travel, the party reached the banks of the Waipa. The country was deserted. There was no sign of natives, no path that would indicate the presence of man in these regions. The waters of the river flowed between tall bushes, or glided over sandy shallows, while the range of vision extended to the hills that inclosed the valley on the east. At four o'clock in the afternoon nine miles had been valiantly accomplished. According to the map, which Paganel continually consulted, the junction of the Waikato and Waipa could not be more than five miles distant. The road to Auckland passed this point, and there they would encamp for the night. As for the fifty miles that would still separate them from the capital, two or three days would be sufficient for this, and even eight hours, if they should meet the mail-coach. "Then," said Glenarvan, "we shall be compelled to encamp again to-night." "Yes," replied Paganel; "but, as I hope, for the last time." "So much the better; for these are severe hardships for Lady Helena and Mary Grant." "And they endure them heroically," added Captain Mangles. "But, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Paganel, you have spoken of a village situated at the junction of the two rivers." "Yes," answered the geographer; "here it is on the map. It is Ngarnavahia, about two miles below the junction." "Well, could we not lodge there for the night? Lady Helena and Miss Grant would not hesitate to go two miles farther, if they could find a tolerable hotel." "A hotel!" cried Paganel. "A hotel in a Maori village! There is not even a tavern. This village is only a collection of native huts; and, far from seeking shelter there, my advice is to avoid it most carefully." "Always your fears, Paganel!" said Glenarvan. "My dear lord, distrust is better than confidence among the Maoris. I do not know upon what terms they are with the English. Now, timidity aside, such as ourselves would be fine prizes, and I dislike to try New Zealand hospitality. I therefore think it wise to avoid this village, and likewise any meeting with the natives. Once at Drury, it will be different, and there our courageous ladies can refresh themselves at their ease for the fatigues of their journey." The geographer's opinion prevailed. Lady Helena preferred to pass the last night in the open air rather than to expose her companions. Neither she nor Mary Grant required a halt, and they therefore continued to follow the banks of the river. Two hours after, the first shadows of evening began to descend the mountains. The sun before disappearing below the western horizon had glinted a few rays through a rift in the clouds. The eastern peaks were crimsoned with the last beams of day. Glenarvan and his friends hastened their pace. They knew the shortness of the twilight in this latitude, and how quickly night sets in. It was important to reach the junction of the two rivers before it became dark. But a dense fog rose from the earth, and made it very difficult to distinguish the way. Fortunately, hearing availed in place of sight. Soon a distinct murmur of the waters indicated the union of the two streams in a common bed, and not long after the little party arrived at the point where the Waipa mingles with the Waikato in resounding cascades. "Here is the Waikato," cried Paganel, "and the road to Auckland runs along its right bank." "We shall see to-morrow," replied the major. "Let us encamp here. It seems to me as if those deeper shadows yonder proceeded from a little thicket of trees that has grown here expressly to shelter us. Let us eat and sleep." [Sidenote: A TRANSFORMATION SCENE.] "Eat," said Paganel, "but of biscuits and dried meat, without kindling a fire. We have arrived here unseen; let us try to go away in the same manner. Fortunately, this fog will render us invisible." The group of trees was reached, and each conformed to the geographer's rigorous regulations. The cold supper was noiselessly eaten, and soon a profound sleep overcame the weary travelers. CHAPTER XLVIII. INTRODUCTION TO THE CANNIBALS. The next morning at break of day a dense fog was spreading heavily over the river, but the rays of the sun were not long in piercing the mist, which rapidly disappeared under the influence of the radiant orb. The banks of the stream were released from their shroud, and the course of the Waikato appeared in all its morning beauty. A narrow tongue of land bristling with shrubbery ran out to a point at the junction of the two rivers. The waters of the Waipa, which flowed more swiftly, drove back those of the Waikato for a quarter of a mile before they mingled; but the calm power of the one soon overcame the boisterous impetuosity of the other, and both glided peacefully together to the broad bosom of the Pacific. As the mist rose, a boat might have been seen ascending the Waikato. It was a canoe seventy feet long and five broad. The lofty prow resembled that of a Venetian gondola, and the whole had been fashioned out of the trunk of a pine. A bed of dry fern covered the bottom. Eight oars at the bow propelled it up the river, while a man at the stern guided it by means of a movable paddle. This man was a native, of tall form, about forty-five years old, with broad breast and powerful limbs. His protruding and deeply furrowed brow, his fierce look and his sinister countenance, showed him to be a formidable individual. He was a Maori chief of high rank, as could be seen by the delicate and compact tattooing that striped his face and body. Two black spirals, starting from the nostrils of his aquiline nose, circled his tawny eyes, met on his forehead, and were lost in his abundant hair. His mouth, with its shining teeth, and his chin, were hidden beneath a net-work of varied colors, while graceful lines wound down to his sinewy breast. There was no doubt as to his rank. The sharp albatross bone, used by Maori tattooers, had furrowed his face five times, in close and deep lines. That he had reached his fifth promotion was evident from his haughty bearing. A large flaxen mat, ornamented with dog-skins, enveloped his person; while a girdle, bloody with his recent conflicts, encircled his waist. From his ears dangled ear-rings of green jade, and around his neck hung necklaces of "pounamous," sacred stones to which the New Zealanders attribute miraculous properties. At his side lay a gun of English manufacture, and a "patou-patou," a kind of double-edged hatchet. Near him nine warriors, of lower rank, armed and of ferocious aspect, some still suffering from recent wounds, stood in perfect immobility, enveloped in their flaxen mantles. Three dogs of wild appearance were stretched at their feet. The eight rowers seemed to be servants or slaves of the chief. They worked vigorously, and the boat ascended the current of the Waikato with remarkable swiftness. In the centre of this long canoe, with feet tied, but hands free, were ten European prisoners clinging closely to each other. They were Lord Glenarvan and his companions. [Sidenote: A TESTING TIME.] The evening before, the little party, led astray by the dense fog, had encamped in the midst of a numerous tribe of natives. About midnight, the travelers, surprised in their sleep, were made prisoners and carried on board the canoe. They had not yet been maltreated, but had tried in vain to resist. Their arms and ammunition were in the hands of the savages, and their own bullets would have quickly stretched them on the earth had they attempted to escape. They were not long in learning, by the aid of a few English words which the natives used, that, being driven back by the British troops, they were returning, vanquished and weakened, to the regions of the upper Waikato. Their chief, after an obstinate resistance, in which he lost his principal warriors, was now on his way to rouse again the river tribes. He was called Kai-Koumou, a terrible name, which signified in the native language "he who eats the limbs of his enemy." He was brave and bold, but his cruelty equaled his bravery. No pity could be expected from him. His name was well known to the English soldiers, and a price had been set upon his head by the governor of New Zealand. This terrible catastrophe had come upon Glenarvan just as he was about reaching the long-desired harbor of Auckland, whence he would have returned to his native country. Yet, looking at his calm and passionless countenance, you could not have divined the depth of his anguish, for in his present critical situation he did not betray the extent of his misfortunes. He felt that he ought to set an example of fortitude to his wife and his companions, as being the husband and chief. Moreover, he was ready to die first for the common safety, if circumstances should require it. [Sidenote: CHIEFS, CIVILIZED AND UNCIVILIZED.] His companions were worthy of him; they shared his noble thoughts, and their calm and haughty appearance would scarcely have intimated that they were being carried away to captivity and suffering. By common consent, at Glenarvan's suggestion, they had resolved to feign a proud indifference in the presence of the savages. It was the only way of influencing those fierce natures. [Illustration: A boat might have been seen ascending the Waikato. It was a canoe seventy feet long and five broad.] Since leaving the encampment, the natives, taciturn like all savages, had scarcely spoken to each other. However, from a few words exchanged, Glenarvan perceived that they were acquainted with the English language. He therefore resolved to question the chief in regard to the fate that was in store for them. Addressing Kai-Koumou, he said, in a fearless tone: "Where are you taking us, chief?" Kai-Koumou gazed at him coldly without answering. "Say, what do you expect to do with us?" continued Glenarvan. The chief's eyes blazed with a sudden light, and in a stern voice he replied: "To exchange you, if your friends will ransom you; to kill you, if they refuse." Glenarvan asked no more, but hope returned to his heart. Doubtless, some chiefs of the Maori tribe had fallen into the hands of the English, and the natives would attempt to recover them by way of exchange; their situation, therefore, was not one for despair. Meantime the canoe rapidly ascended the river. Paganel, whose changeable disposition carried him from one extreme to another, had regained his hopefulness. He believed that the Maoris were sparing them the fatigue of their journey to the English settlements, and that they were certain to arrive at their destination. He was, therefore, quite resigned to his lot, and traced on his map the course of the Waikato across the plains and valleys of the province. Lady Helena and Mary Grant, suppressing their terror, conversed in low tones with Glenarvan, and the most skillful physiognomist could not have detected on their faces the anxiety of their hearts. The Waikato River is worshiped by the natives, as Paganel knew, and English and German naturalists have never ascended beyond its junction with the Waipa. Whither did Kai-Koumou intend to take his captives? The geographer could not have guessed if the word "Taupo," frequently repeated, had not attracted his attention. By consulting his map, he saw that this name was applied to a celebrated lake in the most mountainous part of the island, and that from it the Waikato flows. Paganel, addressing Captain Mangles in French, so as not to be understood by the savages, asked him how fast the canoe was going. The captain thought about three miles an hour. "Then," replied the geographer, "if we do not travel during the night, our voyage to the lake will last about four days." "But whereabouts are the English garrisons?" asked Glenarvan. "It is difficult to say," replied Paganel. "At all events, the war must have reached the province of Taranaki, and probably the troops are collected beyond the mountains, on the side of the lake where the habitations of the savages are concentrated." "God grant it!" said Lady Helena. Glenarvan cast a sorrowful glance at his young wife and Mary Grant, exposed to the mercy of these fierce natives, and captives in a wild country, far from all human assistance. But he saw that he was watched by Kai-Koumou, and, not wishing to show that one of the captives was his wife, he prudently kept his thoughts to himself, and gazed at the banks of the river with apparent indifference. [Sidenote: ACCESSIONS, AND PROGRESS.] The sun was just sinking below the horizon as the canoe ran upon a bank of pumice-stones, which the Waikato carries with it from its source in the volcanic mountains. Several trees grew here, as if designed to shelter an encampment. Kai-Koumou landed his prisoners. The men had their hands tied, the ladies were free. All were placed in the centre of the encampment, around which large fires formed an impassable barrier. Before Kai-Koumou had informed his captives of his intention to exchange them, Glenarvan and Captain Mangles had discussed various methods of recovering their liberty. What they could not venture in the boat they hoped to attempt on land, at the hour for encamping, under cover of the night. But since Glenarvan's conversation with the chief, it seemed wise to abandon this design. They must be patient. It was the most prudent plan. The exchange offered chances that neither an open attack nor a flight across these unknown regions could afford. Many circumstances might indeed arise that would delay, and even prevent, such a transaction; but still it was better to await the result. What, moreover, could ten defenceless men do against thirty well-armed savages? Besides, Glenarvan thought it likely that Kai-Koumou's tribe had lost some chief of high rank whom they were particularly anxious to recover; and he was not mistaken. The next day the canoe ascended the river with increased swiftness. It stopped for a moment at the junction of a small river which wound across the plains on the right bank. Here another canoe, with ten natives on board, joined Kai-Koumou. The warriors merely exchanged salutations, and then continued their course. The new-comers had recently fought against the English troops, as could be seen by their tattered garments, their gory weapons, and the wounds that still bled beneath their rags. They were gloomy and taciturn, and, with the indifference common to all savage races, paid no attention to the captives. Towards evening Kai-Koumou landed at the foot of the mountains, whose nearer ridges reached precipitously to the river-bank. Here twenty natives, who had disembarked from their canoes, were making preparations for the night. Fires blazed beneath the trees. A chief, equal in rank to Kai-Koumou, advanced with measured pace, and, rubbing his nose against that of the latter, saluted him cordially. The prisoners were stationed in the centre of the encampment, and guarded with extreme vigilance. The next morning the ascent of the Waikato was resumed. Other boats came from various affluents of the river. Sixty warriors, evidently fugitives from the last insurrection, had now assembled, and were returning, more or less wounded in the fray, to the mountain districts. Sometimes a song arose from the canoes, as they advanced in single file. One native struck up the patriotic ode of the mysterious "Pihé," the national hymn that calls the Maoris to battle. The full and sonorous voice of the singer waked the echoes of the mountains; and after each stanza his comrades struck their breasts, and sang the warlike verses in chorus. Then they seized their oars again, and the canoes were headed up stream. During the day a singular sight enlivened the voyage. About four o'clock the canoe, without lessening its speed, guided by the steady hand of the chief, dashed through a narrow gorge. Eddies broke violently against numerous small islands, which rendered navigation exceeding dangerous. Never could it be more hazardous to capsize, for the banks afforded no refuge, and whoever had set foot on the porous crust of the shore would probably have perished. At this point the river flowed between warm springs, oxide of iron colored the muddy ground a brilliant red, and not a yard of firm earth could be seen. The air was heavy with a penetrating sulphureous odor. The natives did not regard it, but the captives were seriously annoyed by the noxious vapors exhaled from the fissures of the soil and the bubbles that burst and discharged their gaseous contents. Yet, however disagreeable these emanations were, the eye could not but admire this magnificent spectacle. [Illustration: At this point the river flowed between warm springs, and not a yard of firm earth could be seen.] The canoes soon after entered a dense cloud of white smoke, whose wreaths rose in gradually decreasing circles above the river. On the shores a hundred geysers, some shooting forth masses of vapor, and others overflowing in liquid columns, varied their effects, like the jets and cascades of a fountain. It seemed as though some engineer was directing at his pleasure the outflowings of these springs, as the waters and vapor, mingling in the air, formed rainbows in the sunbeams. For two miles the canoes glided within this vapory atmosphere, enveloped in its warm waves that rolled along the surface of the water. Then the sulphureous smoke disappeared, and a pure swift current of fresh air refreshed the panting voyagers. The region of the springs was passed. Before the close of the day two more rapids were ascended, and at evening Kai-Koumou encamped a hundred miles above the junction of the two streams. The river now turned towards the east, and then again flowed southward into Lake Taupo. The next morning Jacques Paganel consulted his map and discovered on the right bank Mount Taubara, which rises to the height of three thousand feet. At noon the whole fleet of boats entered Lake Taupo, and the natives hailed with frantic gestures a shred of cloth that waved in the wind from the roof of a hut. It was the national flag. CHAPTER XLIX. A MOMENTOUS INTERVIEW. [Sidenote: NEW ZEALAND TOPOGRAPHY.] Long before historic times, an abyss, twenty-five miles long and twenty wide, must at some period have been formed by a subsidence of subterranean caverns in the volcanic district forming the centre of the island. The waters of the surrounding country have rushed down and filled this enormous cavity, and the abyss has become a lake, whose depth no one has yet been able to measure. Such is this strange Lake Taupo, elevated eleven hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, and surrounded by lofty mountains. On the west of the prisoners towered precipitous rocks of imposing form; on the north rose several distant ridges, crowned with small forests; on the east spread a broad plain furrowed by a trail and covered with pumice-stones that glittered beneath a net-work of bushes; and on the north, behind a stretch of woodland, volcanic peaks majestically encircled this vast extent of water, the fury of whose tempests equaled that of the ocean cyclones. But Paganel was scarcely disposed to enlarge his account of these wonders, nor were his friends in a mood to listen. They gazed in silence towards the northeast shore of the lake, whither the canoe was bringing them. The mission established at Pukawa, on the western shores, no longer existed. The missionary had been driven by the war far from the principal dwellings of the insurrectionists. The prisoners were helpless, abandoned to the mercy of the vengeful Maoris, and in that wild part of the island to which Christianity has never penetrated. Kai-Koumou, leaving the waters of the Waikato, passed through the little creek which served as an outlet to the river, doubled a sharp promontory, and landed on the eastern border of the lake, at the base of the first slopes of Mount Manga. A quarter of a mile distant, on a buttress of the mountain, appeared a "pah," a Maori fortification, situated in an impregnable position. The prisoners were taken ashore, with their hands and feet free, and conducted thither by the warriors. After quite a long détour, Glenarvan and his companions reached the pah. [Illustration: At noon the whole fleet of boats entered Lake Taupo.] [Illustration: On their arrival, the captives were terribly impressed at sight of the heads that ornamented the stakes of the second inclosure.] This fortress was defended by an outer rampart of strong palisades, fifteen feet high. A second line of stakes, and then a fence of osiers, pierced with loop-holes, inclosed the inner space, the court-yard of the pah, in which stood several Maori tents, and forty huts which were symmetrically arranged. On their arrival, the captives were terribly impressed at sight of the heads that ornamented the stakes of the second inclosure. Lady Helena and Mary Grant turned away their eyes with more of disgust than terror. These heads had most of them belonged to hostile chiefs, fallen in battle, whose bodies had served as food for the conquerors. The geographer knew them to be such by their hollow and eyeless sockets! In Kai-Koumou's pah only the heads of his enemies formed this frightful museum; and here, doubtless, more than one English skull had served to increase the size of the chief's collection. His hut, among those belonging to warriors of lower rank, stood at the rear of the pah, in front of a large open terrace. This structure was built of stakes, interlaced with branches, and lined inside with flax matting. Only one opening gave access to the dwelling. A thick curtain, made of a vegetable tissue, served as a door. The roof projected so as to form a water-shed. Several faces, carved at the ends of the rafters, adorned the hut, and the curtain was covered with various imitations of foliage, symbolical figures, monsters, and graceful sculpturing, a curious piece of work, fashioned by the scissors of the native decorators. [Sidenote: FEMININE ORATORY.] Inside of the habitation the floor was made of hard-trodden earth, and raised six inches above the ground. Several rush screens and some mattresses, covered with woven matting of long leaves and twigs, served as beds. In the middle of the room a hole in a stone formed the fireplace, and another in the roof answered for a chimney. The smoke, when it became sufficiently thick, perforce escaped at this outlet, but it of course blackened the walls of the house. On one side of the hut were storehouses, containing the chief's provisions, his harvest of flax, potatoes, and edible ferns, and the ovens where the various articles of food were cooked by contact with heated stones. Farther off, in small pens, pigs and goats were confined, and dogs ran about seeking their scanty sustenance. They were rather poorly kept, for animals that formed the Maori daily food. Glenarvan and his companions had taken in the whole at a glance. They awaited beside an empty hut the good pleasure of the chief, exposed to the insults of a crowd of old women, who surrounded them like harpies, and threatened them with their fists, crying and howling. Several English words that passed their lips clearly indicated that they were demanding immediate vengeance. In the midst of these cries and threats, Lady Helena affected a calmness that she could not feel in her heart. This courageous woman, in order that her husband's coolness might not forsake him, heroically controlled her emotions. Poor Mary Grant felt herself growing weak, and Captain Mangles supported her, ready to die in her defence. The others endured this torrent of invectives in various ways, either indifferent like the major, or increasingly annoyed like Paganel. Glenarvan, wishing to relieve Lady Helena from the assaults of these shrews, boldly approached Kai-Koumou, and, pointing to the hideous throng, said: "Drive them away!" The Maori chief gazed steadily at his prisoner without replying. Then with a gesture he silenced the noisy horde. Glenarvan bowed in token of thanks, and slowly resumed his place among his friends. Kai-Koumou, fearing an insurrection of the fanatics of his tribe, now led his captives to a sacred place, situated at the other end of the pah, on the edge of a precipice. This hut rested against a rock that rose a hundred feet above it and was a steep boundary to this side of the fortification. In this consecrated temple the priests, or "arikis," instruct the New Zealanders. The building was spacious and tightly closed, and contained the holy and chosen food of the god. Here the prisoners, temporarily sheltered from the fury of the natives, stretched themselves on the flax mats. Lady Helena, her strength exhausted and her energy overcome, sank into her husband's arms. Glenarvan pressed her to his breast, and said: "Courage, my dear Helena; Heaven will not forsake us!" Robert was scarcely within the hut before he climbed on Wilson's shoulders, and succeeded in thrusting his head through an opening between the roof and the wall, where strings of pipes were hanging. From this point his view commanded the whole extent of the pah, as far as Kai-Koumou's hut. "They have gathered around the chief," said he, in a low voice. "They are waving their arms, and howling. Kai-Koumou is going to speak." The boy was silent for a few moments, then continued: "Kai-Koumou is speaking. The savages grow calm; they listen." "This chief," said the major, "has evidently a personal interest in protecting us. He wishes to exchange his prisoners for some chiefs of his tribe. But will his warriors consent?" "Yes, they are listening to him," continued Robert. "They are dispersing; some return to their huts,--others leave the fortification." "Is it really so?" cried the major. "Yes, Mr. MacNabb," replied Robert. "Kai-Koumou remains alone with the warriors that were in the canoe. Ha! one of them is coming towards us!" [Illustration: Robert was scarcely within the hut before he climbed on Wilson's shoulders, and succeeded in thrusting his head through an opening.] "Get down, Robert," said Glenarvan. At this moment Lady Helena, who had risen, seized her husband's arm. "Edward," said she, in a firm voice, "neither Mary Grant nor I shall fall alive into the hands of those savages!" And, so saying, she presented to her husband a loaded revolver. "A weapon!" exclaimed Glenarvan, whose eyes suddenly brightened. "Yes. The Maoris do not search their female prisoners; but this weapon is for us, Edward, not for them." "Glenarvan," said MacNabb quickly, "hide the revolver. It is not time yet." The weapon was immediately concealed in his clothes. The mat that closed the entrance of the hut was raised. A native appeared. He made a sign to the captives to follow him. Glenarvan and his companions passed through the pah, and stopped before Kai-Koumou. Around him were assembled the principal warriors of his tribe, among whom was seen the chief whose canoe had first joined Kai-Koumou on the river. He was a man of about forty, robust, and of fierce and cruel aspect. His name was Kara-Tété, which means in the native language "The Irascible." Kai-Koumou treated him with some respect, and from the delicacy of his tattooing it was evident that he occupied a high rank in his tribe. An observer, however, would have detected a rivalry between the two chiefs. The major, indeed, perceived that Kara-Tété's influence surpassed that of Kai-Koumou. They both ruled the powerful tribes of the Waikato with equal rank; and, during this interview, although Kai-Koumou smiled, his eyes betrayed a deep hostility. He now questioned Glenarvan. "You are English?" said he. "Yes," replied Glenarvan, without hesitation, for this nationality would probably facilitate an exchange. [Sidenote: THE RATE OF BARTER.] "And your companions?" asked Kai-Koumou. "My companions are also English. We are shipwrecked travelers, and, if you care to know, we have taken no part in the war." "No matter," replied Kara-Tété, brutally. "Every Englishman is our enemy. Your people have invaded our island. They have stolen away our fields; they have burned our villages." "They have done wrong," said Glenarvan, in a grave tone. "I say so because I think so, and not because I am in your power." "Listen," continued Kai-Koumou. "Tohonga, the high-priest of Nouï-Atoua, has fallen into the hands of your brothers. He is prisoner of the Pakekas (Europeans). Our god commands us to ransom his life. I would have torn out your heart, I would have hung your companions' heads and yours forever to the stakes of this palisade. But Nouï-Atoua has spoken." So saying, Kai-Koumou, who had hitherto controlled himself, trembled with rage, and his countenance was flushed with a fierce exultation. Then, after a few moments, he resumed, more coolly: "Do you think the English will give us our Tohonga in exchange for you?" Glenarvan hesitated, and watched the Maori chief very attentively. "I do not know," said he, after a moment's silence. "Speak," continued Kai-Koumou. "Is your life worth that of our Tohonga?" "No," answered Glenarvan. "I am neither a chief nor a priest among my people." Paganel was astounded at this reply, and gazed at Glenarvan in profound wonder. Kai-Koumou seemed equally surprised. "Then you doubt it?" said he. "I do not know," repeated Glenarvan. "Will not your people accept you in exchange for our Tohonga?" "Not me alone," replied Glenarvan; "but perhaps all of us." "Among the Maoris," said Kai-Koumou, "it is one for one." "Offer these ladies first in exchange for your priest," answered Glenarvan, pointing to Lady Helena and Mary Grant. Lady Helena would have rushed towards her husband, but the major restrained her. "These two ladies," continued Glenarvan, turning respectfully towards them, "hold a high rank in their country." The warrior glanced coldly at his prisoner. A malicious smile passed over his face; but he almost instantly repressed it, and replied, in a voice which he could scarcely control: "Do you hope, then, to deceive Kai-Koumou by false words, cursed European? Do you think that Kai-Koumou's eyes cannot read your heart?" Then, pointing to Lady Helena, he said: "That is your wife!" "No, mine!" cried Kara-Tété. Then, pushing back the prisoners, the chief laid his hand on Lady Helena's shoulder, who grew pale at the touch. "Edward!" cried the unfortunate woman, in terror. Glenarvan, without uttering a word, raised his arm. A report resounded. Kara-Tété fell dead. At this sound a crowd of natives issued from the huts. The pah was filled in an instant. A hundred arms were raised against the captives. Glenarvan's revolver was snatched from his hand. Kai-Koumou cast a strange look at Glenarvan, and then, guarding with one hand the person of him who had fired, he controlled with the other the throng that was rushing upon the Europeans. [Illustration: At last his voice rose above the tumult. "Taboo! taboo!" cried he.] At last his voice rose above the tumult. "Taboo! taboo!" cried he. At this word the crowd fell back before Glenarvan and his companions, thus temporarily preserved by a supernatural power. A few moments after they were led back to the temple that served as their prison; but Robert Grant and Paganel were no longer with them. CHAPTER L. THE CHIEF'S FUNERAL. Kai-Koumou, according to a custom quite ordinary in New Zealand, joined the rank of priest to that of chief, and could, therefore, extend to persons or objects the superstitious protection of the taboo. The taboo, which is common to the tribes of Polynesia, has the power to prohibit at once all connection with the object or person tabooed. According to the Maori religion, whoever should lay his sacrilegious hand on what is declared taboo would be punished with death by the offended god; and in case the divinity should delay to avenge his own insult, the priests would not fail to excite his anger. As for the prisoners confined in the temple, the taboo had rescued them from the fury of the tribe. Some of the natives, the friends and partisans of Kai-Koumou, had stopped suddenly at the command of their chief, and had protected the captives. [Sidenote: THE TORTURES OF SUSPENSE.] Glenarvan, however, was not blind to the fate that was reserved for him. Only his death could atone for the murder of a chief. Among savage races death is always preceded by a protracted torture. He therefore expected to cruelly expiate the righteous indignation that had nerved his arm, but hoped that Kai-Koumou's rage would fall only on himself. What a night he and his companions passed! Who could depict their anguish, or measure their sufferings? Neither poor Robert nor brave Paganel had reappeared. But how could they doubt their fate? Were they not the first victims of the natives' vengeance? All hope had vanished even from the heart of the major, who did not easily despair. John Mangles felt himself growing mad at sight of the sad dejection of Mary Grant, thus separated from her brother. Glenarvan thought of that terrible request of Lady Helena, who, rather than yield to torture or slavery, preferred to die by his hand. Could he summon this fearful courage? As for an escape, that was plainly impossible. Ten warriors, armed to the teeth, guarded the entrance of the temple. Morning came at last. There had been no communication between the natives and the prisoners. The hut contained a considerable quantity of food, which the unfortunates scarcely touched. Hunger gave place to grief. The day passed without bringing a change or a hope. Doubtless the hour for the dead chief's funeral and their torture would be the same. However, although Glenarvan concluded that Kai-Koumou must have abandoned all idea of exchange, the major on this point retained a gleam of hope. "Who knows," said he, reminding Glenarvan of the effect produced upon the chief by the death of Kara-Tété,--"who knows but that Kai-Koumou in reality feels obliged to you?" But, in spite of these observations, Glenarvan would no longer hope. The next day also passed away without the preparations for torture being made. The reason of the delay was this. The Maoris believe that the soul, for three days after death, inhabits the body of the deceased, and therefore during this time the corpse remains unburied. This custom was rigorously observed, and for two days the pah was deserted. Captain Mangles frequently stood on Wilson's shoulders and surveyed the fortification. No native was seen; only the sentinels guarded in turn at the door of their prison. But on the third day the huts were opened. The savages, men, women, and children, to the number of several hundreds, assembled in the pah, silent and calm. Kai-Koumou came out of his house, and, surrounded by the principal warriors of his tribe, took his place on a mound several feet high in the centre of the fortification. The crowd of natives formed a semicircle around him, and the whole assembly preserved absolute silence. At a sign from the chief, a warrior advanced towards the temple. "Remember!" said Lady Helena to her husband. Glenarvan clasped his wife to his heart. At this moment Mary Grant approached John Mangles. "Lord and Lady Glenarvan," said she, "I think that, if a wife can die by the hand of her husband to escape a degrading existence, a maiden can likewise die by the hand of her lover. John (for I may tell you at this critical moment), have I not long been your betrothed in the depths of your heart? May I rely upon you, dear John, as Lady Helena does upon Lord Glenarvan?" "Mary!" cried the young captain, in terror. "Ah! dear Mary----" He could not finish: the mat was raised, and the captives were dragged towards Kai-Koumou. The two women were resigned to their fate, while the men concealed their anguish beneath a calmness that showed superhuman self-control. They came before the chief, who did not delay sentence. "You killed Kara-Tété!" said he to Glenarvan. "I did." [Sidenote: THE BEGINNING OF THE END.] "You shall die to-morrow at sunrise." "Alone?" inquired Glenarvan, whose heart beat quickly. "What! as if our Tohonga's life were not more precious than yours!" cried Kai-Koumou, whose eyes expressed a fierce regret. At this moment a commotion took place among the natives. Glenarvan cast a rapid glance around him. The crowd opened, and a warrior, dripping with sweat and overcome with fatigue, appeared. As soon as Kai-Koumou perceived him, he said in English, evidently that he might be understood by the captives: "You come from the camp of the pale-faces?" "Yes," replied the Maori. "You saw the prisoner, our Tohonga?" "I did." "Is he living?" "He is dead! The English have shot him." The fate of Glenarvan and his companions was settled. "You shall all die to-morrow at daybreak!" cried Kai-Koumou. The unfortunates were therefore to suffer a common death. Lady Helena and Mary Grant raised towards heaven a look of thankfulness. The captives were not taken back to the temple. They were to attend that day the funeral of the dead chief, and the bloody ceremonies connected therewith. A party of natives conducted them to the foot of an enormous koudi, where these guardians remained without losing sight of their prisoners. The rest of the tribe, absorbed in their official mourning, seemed to have forgotten them. The customary three days had elapsed since the death of Kara-Tété. The soul of the deceased had therefore forever abandoned its mortal abode. The sacred rites began. The body was carried to a small mound in the centre of the fortification, clothed in splendid costume, and enveloped in a magnificent flaxen mat. The head was adorned with plumes, and wore a crown of green leaves. The face, arms, and breast had been rubbed with oil, and therefore showed no mortification. The parents and friends of the deceased came to the foot of the mound, and all at once, as if some director were beating time to a funeral dirge, a great concert of cries, groans, and sobs arose on the air. They mourned the dead in plaintive and modulated cadences. His relations struck their heads together; his kinswomen lacerated their faces with their nails, and showed themselves more lavish of blood than of tears. These unfortunate females conscientiously fulfilled their barbarous duty. But these demonstrations were not enough to appease the soul of the deceased, whose wrath would doubtless have smitten the survivors of his tribe; and his warriors, as they could not recall him to life, wished that he should have no cause to regret in the other world the happiness of this. Kara-Tété's wife was not to forsake her husband in the tomb. Moreover, the unfortunate woman would not have been allowed to survive him; it was the custom, in accordance with duty, and examples of such sacrifices are not wanting in New Zealand history. The woman appeared. She was still young. Her hair floated in disorder over her shoulders. Vague words, lamentations, and broken phrases, in which she celebrated the virtues of the dead, interrupted her groans; and, in a final paroxysm of grief, she stretched herself at the foot of the mound, beating the ground with her head. At this moment Kai-Koumou approached her. Suddenly the unfortunate victim rose; but a violent blow with the "méré," a formidable club, wielded by the hand of the chief, struck her lifeless to the earth. [Sidenote: POOR HUMANITY!] Frightful cries at once broke forth. A hundred arms threatened the captives, who trembled at the horrible sight. But no one stirred, for the funeral ceremonies were not ended. Kara-Tété's wife had joined her husband in the other world. Both bodies lay side by side. But for the eternal life his faithful spouse could not alone suffice the deceased. Who would serve them in presence of Nouï-Atoua, if their slaves did not follow them? Six unfortunates were brought before the corpse of their master and mistress. They were servants, whom the pitiless laws of war had reduced to slavery. During the life of the chief they had undergone the severest privations, suffered a thousand abuses, had been scantily fed, and compelled constantly to labor like beasts; and now, according to the Maori belief, they were to continue their existence of servitude for eternity. They appeared to be resigned to their fate, and were not astonished at a sacrifice they had long anticipated. Their freedom from all bonds showed that they would meet death unresistingly. Moreover, this death was rapid, protracted sufferings were spared them. These were reserved for the captives who stood trembling not twenty paces distant. Six blows of the méré, given by six stalwart warriors, stretched the victims on the ground in a pool of blood. It was the signal for a terrible scene of cannibalism, which followed in all its horrible details. Glenarvan and his companions, breathless with fright, strove to hide this awful scene from the eyes of the two unhappy ladies. They now understood what awaited them at sunrise the next day, and what cruel tortures would doubtless precede such a death. They were dumb with horror. The funeral dance now began. Strong spirits, extracted from an indigenous plant, maddened the savages till they seemed no longer human. Would they not forget the taboo of the chief, and throw themselves in their final outbreaks upon the prisoners who trembled at their frenzy? [Illustration: A terrible scene of cannibalism, which followed in all its horrible details.] [Illustration: The corpses, folded together, in a sitting posture, and tied in their clothes by a girdle of withes, were placed on this primitive bier.] But Kai-Koumou had preserved his reason in the midst of the general intoxication. He allowed this bloody orgy an hour to reach its utmost intensity. The last act of the funeral was played with the usual rites. The bodies of Kara-Tété and his wife were taken up, and their limbs bent and gathered against the stomach, according to the New Zealand custom. The place for the tomb had been chosen outside of the fortification, about two miles distant, on the summit of a small mountain, called Maunganamu, situated on the right shore of the lake. Thither the bodies were to be carried. Two very rude palanquins, or rather litters, were brought to the foot of the mound. The corpses, folded together, in a sitting posture, and tied in their clothes by a girdle of withes, were placed on this primitive bier. Four warriors bore it between them, and the entire tribe, chanting the funeral hymn, followed them in procession to the place of burial. The captives, who were always watched, saw them leave the inner inclosure of the pah, and then the songs and cries gradually died away. For about half an hour this funeral escort continued in sight, in the depths of the valley. Finally they perceived it again winding along the mountain paths. The distance gave a fantastic appearance to the undulating movements of the long, sinuous column. The tribe stopped at the summit of the mountain, which was eight hundred feet high, at the place prepared for Kara-Tété's interment. A common Maori would have had only a hole and a heap of stones for a grave; but for a powerful and dreaded chief, destined doubtless for a speedy deification, a tomb worthy of his exploits was reserved. [Sidenote: THE LAST NIGHT.] The sepulchre had been surrounded by palisades, while stakes, ornamented with faces reddened with ochre, stood beside the grave where the bodies were to lie. The relatives had not forgotten that the "waidoua" (the spirit of the dead) feeds on substantial nourishment like the body during this perishable life. Food had therefore been deposited in the inclosure, together with the weapons and clothes of the deceased. Nothing was wanting for the comfort of the tomb. Husband and wife were laid side by side, and then covered with earth and grass after a series of renewed lamentations. Then the procession silently descended the mountain, and now no one could ascend it under penalty of death, for it was tabooed. CHAPTER LI. STRANGELY LIBERATED. Just as the sun was disappearing behind Lake Taupo, the captives were led back to their prison. They were not to leave it again until the summit of the Wahiti mountains should kindle with the first beams of the day. One night remained to prepare for death. In spite of the faintness, in spite of the horror with which they were seized, they shared their repast in common. "We shall need all the strength possible to face death," said Glenarvan. "We must show these barbarians how Europeans and Christians can die." The meal being finished, Lady Helena repeated the evening prayer aloud, while all her companions, with uncovered heads, joined her. Having fulfilled this duty, and enjoyed this privilege, the prisoners embraced each other. Lady Helena and Mary Grant then retired to one corner of the hut, and stretched themselves upon a mat. Sleep, which soothes all woes, soon closed their eyes, and they slumbered in each other's arms, overcome by fatigue and long wakefulness. Glenarvan, taking his friends aside, said: "My dear companions, our lives and those of these poor ladies are in God's hands. If Heaven has decreed that we shall die to-morrow, we can, I am sure, die like brave people, like Christians, ready to appear fearlessly before the final Judge. God, who does read the secrets of the soul, knows that we are fulfilling a noble mission. If death awaits us instead of success, it is his will. However severe his decree may be, I shall not murmur against it. But this is not death alone; it is torture, disgrace; and here are two women----" Glenarvan's voice, hitherto firm, now faltered. He paused to control his emotion. After a moment's silence, he said to the young captain: "John, you have promised Mary Grant what I have promised Lady Helena. What have you resolved?" "This promise," replied John Mangles, "I believe I have the right in the sight of God to fulfill." "Yes, John; but we have no weapons." "Here is one," answered John, displaying a poniard. "I snatched it from Kara-Tété's hands when he fell at your feet. My lord, he of us who survives the other shall fulfill this vow." At these words a profound silence reigned in the hut. At last the major interrupted it by saying: "My friends, reserve this extreme measure till the last moment. I am no advocate of what is irremediable." "I do not speak for ourselves," replied Glenarvan. "We can brave death, whatever it may be. Ah, if we were alone! Twenty times already would I have urged you to make a sally and attack those wretches. But _they_----" [Sidenote: THE APPROACH OF DAY.] At this moment Captain Mangles raised the mat and counted twenty-five natives, who were watching at the door of their prison. A great fire had been kindled, which cast a dismal light over the irregular outlines of the pah. Some of these savages were stretched around the fire; and others, standing and motionless, were darkly defined against the bright curtain of flame. It is said that, between the jailer who watches and the prisoner who wishes to escape, the chances are on the side of the latter. Indeed, the design of one is stronger than that of the other, for the first may forget that he is guarding, but the second cannot forget that he is guarded; the captive thinks oftener of escaping than his guardian thinks of preventing his escape. But here it was hate and vengeance that watched the prisoners, and not an indifferent jailer. They had not been bound, for bonds were useless where twenty-five men guarded the only outlet of the prison. This hut was built against the rock that terminated the fortification, and was only accessible by a narrow passage that connected it with the front of the pah. The other two sides of the building were flanked by towering precipices, and stood on the verge of an abyss a hundred feet deep. A descent this way was therefore impossible. There was no chance of escaping in the rear, which was guarded by the enormous rock. The only exit was the door of the temple, and the Maoris defended the narrow passage that connected it with the pah. All escape was therefore out of the question; and Glenarvan, after examining the walls of his prison, was forced to acknowledge this disheartening fact. Meantime, the hours of this night of anguish were passing away. Dense darkness had covered the mountain. Neither moon nor stars illumined the deep shades. A few gusts of wind swept along the side of the pah. The stakes of the hut groaned, the fire of the natives suddenly revived at this passing draught, and the flames cast rapid flashes into the temple, illumining for a moment the group of prisoners. These poor people were absorbed with their last thoughts; a deathly silence reigned in the hut. It must have been about four o'clock in the morning, when the major's attention was attracted by a slight sound that seemed to come from behind the rear stakes, in the back wall that lay towards the rock. At first he was indifferent to the noise, but finding that it continued, he listened. At last, puzzled by its persistence, he put his ear close to the ground to hear better. It seemed as if some one was scraping and digging outside. When he was certain of this fact, he passed quietly towards Glenarvan and the captain, and led them to the rear of the hut. "Listen," said he, in a low voice, motioning to them to bend down. The scrapings became more and more audible. They could hear the little stones grate under the pressure of a sharp instrument and fall down outside. "Some creature in its burrow," said Captain Mangles. Glenarvan, with bewildered gaze, stood astonished. "Who knows," said he, "but that it is a man?" "Man or animal," replied the major, "I will know what is going on." Wilson and Olbinett joined their companions, and all began to dig in the wall, the captain with his poniard, the others with stones pulled out of the ground, or with their nails, while Mulready, stretched on the earth, watched the group of natives through the loop-hole of the mat. But they were motionless around the fire, and did not suspect what was transpiring twenty paces from them. The soil was loose and crumbling, and lay upon a bed of clay, so that, in spite of the want of tools, the hole rapidly enlarged. It was soon evident that somebody, clinging to the sides of the pah, was making a passage in its outer wall. What could be the object? Did he know of the existence of the prisoners, or could a mere chance attempt at escape explain the work that seemed nearly completed? [Sidenote: HEAVENLY HELP FROM AN EARTHLY HAND.] The captives redoubled their efforts. Their lacerated fingers bled, but still they dug on. After half an hour's labor, the hole they were drilling had reached a depth of three feet. They could perceive by the sounds, which were now more distinct, that only a thin layer of earth prevented immediate communication. A few moments more elapsed, when suddenly the major drew back his hand, which was cut by a sharp blade. He suppressed a cry that was about to escape him. Captain Mangles, holding out his poniard, avoided the knife that was moving out of the ground, but seized the hand that held it. It was the hand of a woman or a youth, a European hand. Not a word had been uttered on either side. There was plainly an object in keeping silent. "Is it Robert?" murmured Glenarvan. But, though only whispering this name, Mary Grant, awakened by the movement that was taking place in the hut, glided towards Glenarvan, and, seizing this hand all soiled with mud, covered it with kisses. "It is you! it is you!" cried the young girl, who could not be mistaken, "you, my Robert!" "Yes, little sister," replied Robert, "I am here to save you all! But silence!" "Brave lad!" repeated Glenarvan. "Keep watch of the savages outside," continued Robert. Mulready, whose attention had been diverted for a moment by the appearance of the hand, resumed his post of observation. "All is well," said he. "Only four warriors are watching now. The others have fallen asleep." "Courage!" replied Wilson. In an instant the hole was widened, and Robert passed from the arms of his sister into those of Lady Helena. Around his body was wound a rope of flax. "My boy! my boy!" murmured Lady Helena; "these savages did not kill you?" "No, madam," replied Robert. "Somehow, during the uproar, I succeeded in escaping their vigilance. I crossed the yard. For two days I kept hidden behind the bushes. At night I wandered about, longing to see you again. While the tribe were occupied with the funeral of the chief, I came and examined this side of the fortification, where the prison stands, and saw that I could reach you. I stole this knife and rope in a deserted hut. The tufts of grass and the bushes helped me to climb. By chance I found a kind of grotto hollowed out in the very rock against which this hut rests. I had only a few feet to dig in the soft earth, and here I am." Twenty silent kisses were his only answer. "Let us start," said he, in a decided tone. "Is Paganel below?" inquired Glenarvan. "Mr. Paganel?" repeated the boy, surprised apparently at the question. "Yes; is he waiting for us?" "No, my lord. What! is he not here?" "He is not, Robert," replied Mary Grant. "What! have you not seen him?" exclaimed Glenarvan. "Did you not meet each other in the confusion? Did you not escape together?" "No, my lord," answered Robert, at a loss to understand the disappearance of his friend Paganel. "Let us start," said the major; "there is not a moment to lose. Wherever Paganel may be, his situation cannot be worse than ours here. Let us go." Indeed, the moments were precious. It was high time to start. The escape presented no great difficulties, but for the almost perpendicular wall of rock outside of the grotto, twenty feet high. The declivity then sloped quite gently to the base of the mountain, from which point the captives could quickly gain the lower valleys, while the Maoris, if they chanced to discover their flight, would be forced to make a very long détour, since they were not aware of the passage that had been dug in the mountain. [Illustration: First her husband, and then she, slid down the rope to the point where the perpendicular wall met the summit of the slope.] They now prepared to escape, and every precaution was taken to insure their success. The captives crawled one by one through the narrow passage, and found themselves in the grotto. Captain Mangles, before leaving the hut, concealed all traces of their work, and glided in his turn through the opening, which he closed with the mats. Their outlet was therefore entirely hidden. The object now was to descend the perpendicular wall of rock, which would have been impossible if Robert had not brought the flax rope. It was unwound, fastened to a point of rock, and thrown over the declivity. Before allowing his friends to trust their weight to these flaxen fibres, Captain Mangles tested them. They seemed to be quite strong, but it would not answer to venture rashly, for a fall might be fatal. "This rope," said he, "can only bear the weight of two bodies, and we must therefore act accordingly. Let Lord and Lady Glenarvan slide down first. When they have reached the bottom, three shakes at the rope will be the signal to follow them." "I will go first," replied Robert. "I have discovered at the base of the slope a sort of deep excavation, where those who descend first can wait for the others in safety." "Go then, my boy," said Glenarvan, clasping the boy's hand. Robert disappeared through the opening of the grotto. A moment after, three shakes of the rope informed them that he had accomplished his descent successfully. Glenarvan and Lady Helena now ventured out of the grotto. The darkness below was still profound, but the gray light of dawn was already tinging the top of the mountain. The keen cold of the morning reanimated the young wife; she felt stronger, and commenced her perilous escape. [Sidenote: A PRECIPITATE DESCENT.] First her husband, and then she, slid down the rope to the point where the perpendicular wall met the summit of the slope. Then Glenarvan, going before his wife and assisting her, began to descend the declivity of the mountain backwards. He sought for tufts of grass and bushes that offered a point of support, and tried them before placing Lady Helena's feet upon them. Several birds, suddenly awakened, flew away with shrill cries, and the fugitives shuddered when a large stone rolled noisily to the base of the mountain. They had accomplished half the distance when a voice was heard at the opening of the grotto. "Stop!" whispered Captain Mangles. Glenarvan, clinging with one hand to a tuft of grass and holding his wife with the other, waited, scarcely breathing. Wilson had taken alarm. Hearing some noise outside, he had returned to the hut, and, raising the mat, watched the Maoris. At a sign from him the captain had stopped Glenarvan. In truth, one of the warriors, startled by some unaccustomed sound, had risen and approached the prison. Standing two paces from the hut, he listened with lowered head. He remained in this attitude for a moment, that seemed an hour, with ear intent and eye on the alert. Then, shaking his head as a man who is mistaken, he returned to his companions, took an armful of dead wood and threw it on the half-extinct fire, whose flames revived. His face, brightly illumined by the blaze, betrayed no more anxiety, and, after gazing at the first glimmers of dawn that tinged the horizon, he stretched himself beside the fire to warm his cold limbs. "All right!" said Wilson. The captain made a sign to Glenarvan to continue his descent. The latter, accordingly, slid gently down the slope, and soon Lady Helena and he stood on the narrow path where Robert was waiting for them. The rope was shaken three times, and next Captain Mangles, followed by Mary Grant, took the same perilous course. They were successful, and joined Lord and Lady Glenarvan. Five minutes later all the fugitives, after their fortunate escape from the hut, left this temporary retreat, and, avoiding the inhabited shores of the lake, made their way by narrow paths farther down the mountain. They advanced rapidly, seeking to avoid all points where they might be seen. They did not speak, but glided like shadows through the bushes. Where were they going? At random, it is true, but they were free. About five o'clock day began to break. Purple tints colored the lofty banks of clouds. The mountain peaks emerged from the mists of the morning. The orb of day would not be long in appearing, and instead of being the signal for torture, was to betray the flight of the condemned. Before this dreaded moment arrived it was important that the fugitives should be beyond the reach of the savages. But they could not advance quickly, for the paths were steep. Lady Helena scaled the declivities, supported and even carried by Glenarvan, while Mary Grant leaned upon the arm of her betrothed. Robert, happy and triumphant, whose heart was full of joy at his success, took the lead, followed by the two sailors. For half an hour the fugitives wandered at a venture. Paganel was not there to guide them,--Paganel, the object of their fears, whose absence cast a dark shadow over their happiness. However, they proceeded towards the east as well as possible, in the face of a magnificent dawn. They had soon reached an elevation of five hundred feet above Lake Taupo, and the morning air at this altitude was keen and cold. Hills and mountains rose one above another in indistinct outlines; but Glenarvan only wished to conceal himself and his companions. Afterwards they would see about issuing from this winding labyrinth. [Illustration: They saw, but were also seen.] At last the sun appeared and flashed his first rays into the faces of the fugitives. Suddenly a terrible yelling, the concentrated union of a hundred voices, broke forth upon the air. It rose from the pah, whose exact position Glenarvan did not now know. Moreover, a thick curtain of mist stretched at their feet, and prevented them from distinguishing the valleys below. But the fugitives could not doubt that their escape had been discovered. Could they elude the pursuit of the natives? Had they been perceived? Would their tracks betray them? At this moment the lower strata of vapor rose, enveloping them for an instant in a moist cloud, and they discerned, three hundred feet below them, the frantic crowd of savages. They saw, but were also seen. Renewed yells resounded, mingled with barks; and the whole tribe, after vainly endeavoring to climb the rock, rushed out of the inclosure and hastened by the shortest paths in pursuit of the prisoners, who fled in terror from their vengeance. CHAPTER LII. THE SACRED MOUNTAIN. The summit of the mountain was a hundred feet higher. It was important for the fugitives to reach it, that they might conceal themselves from the sight of the Maoris, on the opposite slope. They hoped that some practicable ridge would then enable them to gain the neighboring peaks. The ascent was, therefore, hastened, as the threatening cries came nearer and nearer. The pursuers had reached the foot of the mountain. "Courage, courage, my friends!" cried Glenarvan, urging his companions with word and gesture. [Sidenote: A SCENE OF ENCHANTMENT.] In less than five minutes they reached the top of the mountain. Here they turned around to consider their situation, and take some route by which they might evade the Maoris. From this height the prospect commanded Lake Taupo, which extended towards the west in its picturesque frame of hills. To the north rose the peaks of Pirongia; to the south the flaming crater of Tongariro. But towards the east the view was limited by a barrier of peaks and ridges. Glenarvan cast an anxious glance around him. The mist had dissolved under the rays of the sun, and his eye could clearly distinguish the least depressions of the earth. No movement of the Maoris could escape his sight. The natives were not five hundred feet distant, when they reached the plateau upon which the solitary peak rested. Glenarvan could not, for ever so short a time, delay longer. At all hazards they must fly, at the risk of being hemmed in on all sides. "Let us go down," cried he, "before our only way of escape is blocked up." But just as the ladies rose by a final effort, MacNabb stopped them, and said: "It is useless, Glenarvan. Look!" And all saw, indeed, that an inexplicable change had taken place in the movements of the Maoris. Their pursuit had been suddenly interrupted. Their ascent of the mountain had ceased, as if by an imperious interdict. The crowd of natives had checked their swiftness, and halted, like the waves of the sea before an impassable rock. All the savages, thirsting for blood, were now ranged along the foot of the mountain, yelling, gesticulating, and brandishing guns and hatchets; but they did not advance a single foot. Their dogs, like themselves, as though chained to earth, howled with rage. What was the difficulty? What invisible power restrained the natives? The fugitives gazed without comprehending, fearing that the charm that enchained Kai-Koumou's tribe would dissolve. Suddenly Captain Mangles uttered a cry that caused his companions to turn. He pointed to a little fortress at the summit of the peak. "The tomb of the chief Kara-Tété!" cried Robert. "Are you in earnest?" asked Glenarvan. "Yes, my lord, it is the tomb; I recognize it." Robert was right. Fifty feet above, at the extreme point of the mountain, stood a small palisaded inclosure of freshly-painted stakes. Glenarvan, likewise, recognized the sepulchre of the Maori chief. In their wanderings they had come to the top of the Maunganamu, where Kara-Tété had been buried. Followed by his companions, he climbed the sides of the peak, to the very foot of the tomb. A large opening, covered with mats, formed the entrance. Glenarvan was about to enter, when, all at once, he started back suddenly. "A savage!" said he. "A savage in this tomb?" inquired the major. "Yes, MacNabb." "What matter? Let us enter." Glenarvan, the major, Robert, and Captain Mangles passed into the inclosure. A Maori was there, clad in a great flax mantle. The darkness of the sepulchre did not permit them to distinguish his features. He appeared very calm, and was eating his breakfast with the most perfect indifference. Glenarvan was about to address him, when the native, anticipating him, said, in an amiable tone, and in excellent English: "Be seated, my dear lord; breakfast is awaiting you." It was Paganel. At his voice all rushed into the tomb, and gazed with wonder at the worthy geographer. Paganel was found! The common safety was represented in him. They were going to question him: they wished to know how and why he was on the top of the mountain; but Glenarvan checked this unseasonable curiosity. [Illustration: "Be seated, my dear lord; breakfast is awaiting you."] "The savages!" said he. "The savages," replied Paganel, shrugging his shoulders, "are individuals whom I supremely despise." "But can they not----?" "They! the imbeciles! Come and see them." Each followed Paganel, who issued from the tomb. The Maoris were in the same place, surrounding the foot of the peak, and uttering terrible cries. "Cry and howl till you are tired, miserable creatures!" said Paganel. "I defy you to climb this mountain!" "And why?" asked Glenarvan. "Because the chief is buried here; this tomb protects us, and the mountain is tabooed." "Tabooed?" "Yes, my friends; and that is why I took refuge here, as in one of those asylums of the Middle Ages, open to unfortunates." Indeed, the mountain was tabooed, and by this consecration had become inaccessible by the superstitious savages. The safety of the fugitives was not yet certain, but there was a salutary respite, of which they strove to take advantage. Glenarvan, a prey to unspeakable emotion, did not venture a word; while the major nodded his head with an air of genuine satisfaction. "And now, my friends," said Paganel, "if these brutes expect us to test their patience they are mistaken. In two days we shall be beyond the reach of these rascals." "We will escape!" said Glenarvan; "but how?" "I do not know," replied Paganel, "but we will do so all the same." All now wished to hear the geographer's adventures. Strangely enough, in the case of a man loquacious usually, it was necessary to draw, as it were, the words from his mouth. He, who was so fond of telling stories, replied only in an evasive way to the questions of his friends. "Paganel has changed," thought MacNabb. [Sidenote: THE WORTH OF SPECTACLES.] Indeed, the countenance of the geographer was no longer the same. He wrapped himself gloomily in his great flaxen mantle, and seemed to shun too inquisitive looks. However, when they were all seated around him at the foot of the tomb, he related his experiences. After the death of Kara-Tété, Paganel had taken advantage, like Robert, of the confusion of the natives, and escaped from the pah. But less fortunate than young Grant, he had fallen upon an encampment of Maoris, who were commanded by a chief of fine form and intelligent appearance, who was evidently superior to all the warriors of his tribe. This chief spoke English accurately, and bade him welcome by rubbing his nose against that of the geographer. Paganel wondered whether he should consider himself a prisoner; but seeing that he could not take a step without being graciously accompanied by the chief, he soon knew how matters stood on this point. The chief, whose name was "Hihy" (sunbeam), was not a bad man. The spectacles and telescope gave him a high opinion of Paganel, whom he attached carefully to his person, not only by his benefits, but by strong flaxen ropes, especially at night. This novel situation lasted three long days. Was he well or badly treated? Both, as he stated without further explanation. In short, he was a prisoner, and, except for the prospect of immediate torture, his condition did not seem more enviable than that of his unfortunate friends. Fortunately, last night he succeeded in biting asunder his ropes and escaping. He had witnessed at a distance the burial of the chief, knew that he had been interred on the summit of Maunganamu mountain, and that it was tabooed in consequence. He therefore resolved to take refuge there, not wishing to leave the place where his companions were held captives. He succeeded in his undertaking, arrived at Kara-Tété's tomb, and waited in hope that Providence would in some way deliver his friends. Such was Paganel's story. Did he omit designedly any circumstance of his stay among the natives? More than once his embarrassment led them to suspect so. However that might be, he received unanimous congratulations; and as the past was now known, they returned to the present. Their situation was still exceedingly critical. The natives, if they did not venture to climb the mountain, expected that hunger and thirst would force their prisoners to surrender. It was only a matter of time, and the savages had great patience. Glenarvan did not disregard the difficulties of his position, but waited for the favorable issue which Providence seemed to promise. And first he wished to examine this improvised fortress; not to defend it, for an attack was not to be feared, but that he might find a way of escaping. The major and the captain, Robert, Paganel, and himself, took the exact bearings of the mountain. They observed the direction of the paths, their branches and declivities. A ridge a mile in length united the Maunganamu to the Wahiti range, and then declined to the plain. Its narrow and winding summit presented the only practicable route, in case escape should become possible. If the fugitives could pass this point unperceived, under cover of the night, perhaps they might succeed in reaching the deep valleys and outwitting the Maoris. But this course offered more than one danger, as they would have to pass below within gun-shot. The bullets of the natives on the lower ramparts of the pah might intercept them, and form a barrier that no one could safely cross. Glenarvan and his friends, as soon as they ventured on the dangerous part of the ridge, were saluted with a volley of shots; but only a few wads, borne by the wind, reached them. They were made of printed paper. Paganel picked them up out of curiosity, but it was difficult to decipher them. [Sidenote: A STRANGE COLPORTEUR.] "Why!" said he, "do you know, my friends, what these creatures use for wads in their guns?" "No," replied Glenarvan. "Leaves of the Bible! If this is the use they make of the sacred writings, I pity the missionaries. They will have difficulty in founding Maori libraries." "And what passage of the Scriptures have these natives fired at us?" asked Glenarvan. "A mighty promise of God," replied Captain Mangles, who had also read the paper. "It bids us hope in Him," added the young captain, with the unshaken conviction of his Scottish faith. "Read, John," said Glenarvan. He read this line, which had so strangely reached them: "Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him:" Psalm xci. I. "My friends," said Glenarvan, "we must make known the words of hope to our brave and dear ladies. Here is something to reanimate their hearts." Glenarvan and his companions ascended the steep paths of the peak, and proceeded towards the tomb, which they wished to examine. On the way they were astonished to feel, at short intervals, a certain trembling of the ground. It was not an irregular agitation, but that continued vibration which the sides of a boiler undergo when it is fully charged. Steam, in large quantities, generated by the action of subterranean fires, seemed to be working beneath the crust of the mountain. This peculiarity could not astonish people who had passed between the warm springs of the Waikato. They knew that this region of Ika-Na-Maoui is volcanic. It is like a sieve, from the holes of which ever issue the vapors of subterranean laboratories. Paganel, who had already observed this, called the attention of his friends to the circumstance. The Maunganamu is only one of those numerous cones that cover the central portion of the island. The least mechanical action could provoke the formation of a crater in the clayey soil. "And yet," said Glenarvan, "we seem to be in no more danger here than beside the boiler of the Duncan. This crust is firm." "Certainly," replied the major; "but a boiler, however strong it may be, will always burst at last after too long use." "MacNabb," said Paganel, "I do not desire to remain on this peak. Let Heaven show me a way of escape, and I will leave it instantly." Lady Helena, who perceived Lord Glenarvan, now approached. "My dear Edward," said she, "you have considered our position! Are we to hope or fear?" "Hope, my dear Helena," replied Glenarvan. "The natives will never come to the top of the mountain, and we shall have abundant time to form a plan of escape." "Moreover, madam," said Captain Mangles, "God himself encourages us to hope." So saying, he gave her the text of the Bible which had been sent to them. She and Mary Grant, whose confiding soul was always open to the ministrations of Heaven, saw, in the words of the Holy Book, an infallible pledge of safety. "Now to the tomb!" cried Paganel, gayly. "This is our fortress, our castle, our dining-room, and our workshop. No one is to disarrange it. Ladies, permit me to do the honors of this charming dwelling." All followed the good-natured Paganel. When the savages saw the fugitives desecrate anew this tabooed sepulchre, they fired numerous volleys, and uttered yells no less terrible. But fortunately their bullets could not reach as far as their cries, for they only came half-way, while their vociferations were lost in empty air. [Sidenote: BOARD AND LODGING.] Lady Helena, Mary Grant, and their companions, quite reassured at seeing that the superstition of the Maoris was still stronger than their rage, entered the tomb. It was a palisade of red painted stakes. Symbolical faces, a real tattooing on wood, described the nobleness and exploits of the deceased. Strings of pipes, shells, and carved stones extended from one stake to another. Inside, the earth was hidden beneath a carpet of green leaves. In the centre a slight protuberance marked the freshly-made grave. Here reposed the weapons of the chief, his guns loaded and primed, his lance, his splendid hatchet of green jade, with a supply of powder and balls sufficient for the hunts of the other world. "Here is a whole arsenal," said Paganel, "of which we will make a better use than the deceased. It is a good idea of these savages to carry their weapons to heaven with them." "But these are English guns!" said the major. "Doubtless," replied Glenarvan; "it is a very foolish custom to make presents of fire-arms to the savages, who then use them against the invaders, and with reason. At all events, these guns will be useful to us." "But still more useful," said Paganel, "will be the provisions and water intended for Kara-Tété." The parents and friends of the dead had, indeed, faithfully fulfilled their duties. The amount of food testified their esteem for the virtues of the chief. There were provisions enough to last ten persons fifteen days, or rather the deceased for eternity. They consisted of ferns, sweet yams, and potatoes, which were introduced some time before by the Europeans. Tall vases of fresh water stood near, and a dozen baskets, artistically woven, contained numerous tablets of green gum. The fugitives were, therefore, fortified for several days against hunger and thirst, and they needed no urging to take their first meal at the chief's expense. Glenarvan directed Mr. Olbinett's attention to the food necessary for his companions; but he, with his usual exactness, even in critical situations, thought the bill of fare rather scanty. Moreover, he did not know how to prepare the roots, and there was no fire. But Paganel solved the difficulty, and advised him to simply bury his ferns and potatoes in the ground itself, for the heat of the upper strata was very great. Olbinett, however, narrowly escaped a serious scalding, for, just as he had dug a hole to put his roots in, a stream of watery vapor burst forth, and rose to the height of several feet. The steward started back in terror. "Close the hole!" cried the major, who, with the aid of the two sailors, covered the orifice with fragments of pumice-stone, while Paganel murmured these words: "Well! well! ha! ha! very natural!" "You are not scalded?" inquired MacNabb of Olbinett. "No, Mr. MacNabb," replied the steward; "but I scarcely expected----" "So many blessings," added Paganel, in a mirthful tone. "Consider Kara-Tété's water and provisions, and the fire of the earth! This mountain is a paradise! I propose that we found a colony here, cultivate the soil, and settle for the rest of our days. We will be Robinson Crusoes of Maunganamu. Indeed, I look in vain for any deficiency on this comfortable peak." "Nothing is wanting if the earth is firm," replied Captain Mangles. "Well, it was not created yesterday," said Paganel. "It has long resisted the action of internal fires, and will easily hold out till our departure." "Breakfast is ready," announced Mr. Olbinett, as gravely as if he had been performing his duties at Malcolm Castle. The fugitives at once sat down near the palisade, and enjoyed the repast that Providence had so opportunely furnished to them in this critical situation. No one appeared particular about the choice of food, but there was a diversity of opinion concerning the edible ferns. Some found them sweet and pleasant, and others mucilaginous, insipid, and acrid. The sweet potatoes, cooked in the hot earth, were excellent. [Illustration: The steward started back in terror.] Their hunger being satiated, Glenarvan proposed that they should, without delay, arrange a plan of escape. "So soon!" said Paganel, in a truly piteous tone. "What! are you thinking already of leaving this delightful place?" "I think, first of all," replied Glenarvan, "that we ought to attempt an escape before we are forced to it by hunger. We have strength enough yet, and must take advantage of it. To-night let us try to gain the eastern valleys, and cross the circle of natives under cover of the darkness." "Exactly," answered Paganel; "if the Maoris will let us pass." "And if they prevent us?" asked Captain Mangles. "Then we will employ the great expedients," said Paganel. "You have great expedients, then?" inquired the major. "More than I know what to do with," rejoined Paganel, without further explanation. They could now do nothing but wait for night to attempt crossing the line of savages, who had not left their position. Their ranks even seemed increased by stragglers from the tribe. Here and there freshly-kindled fires formed a flaming girdle around the base of the peak. When darkness had invaded the surrounding valleys, the Maunganamu seemed to rise from a vast conflagration, while its summit was lost in a dense shade. Six hundred feet below were heard the tumult and cries of the enemy's camp. At nine o'clock it was very dark, and Glenarvan and Captain Mangles resolved to make an exploration before taking their companions on this perilous journey. They noiselessly descended the declivity some distance, and reached the narrow ridge that crossed the line of natives fifty feet above the encampment. [Sidenote: ANOTHER SUNRISE.] All went well so far. The Maoris, stretched beside their fires, did not seem to perceive the two fugitives, who advanced a few paces farther. But suddenly, to the left and right of the ridge, a double volley resounded. "Back!" cried Glenarvan; "these bandits have eyes like a cat, and the guns of riflemen!" Captain Mangles and he reascended at once the precipitous slopes of the mountain, and speedily assured their terrified friends of their safety. Glenarvan's hat had been pierced by two bullets. It was, therefore, dangerous to venture on the ridge between these two lines of marksmen. "Wait till to-morrow," said Paganel; "and since we cannot deceive the vigilance of these natives, permit me to give them a dose in my own way." The temperature was quite cold. Fortunately, Kara-Tété wore in the tomb his best night-robes, warm, flaxen coverings, in which each one wrapped himself without hesitation; and soon the fugitives, protected by the native superstition, slept peacefully in the shelter of the palisades, on the earth that seemed to quake with the internal commotion. CHAPTER LIII. A BOLD STRATAGEM. The rising sun awakened with his first rays the sleepers on the Maunganamu. The Maoris for some time had been moving to and fro at the foot of the peak without wandering from their post of observation. Furious cries saluted the appearance of the Europeans as they issued from the desecrated tomb. Each cast a longing glance towards the surrounding mountains, the deep valleys, still veiled in mist, and the surface of Lake Taupo, gently rippling beneath the morning wind. Then all, eager to know Paganel's new project, gathered around him with questioning looks; while the geographer at once satisfied the restless curiosity of his companions. "My friends," said he, "my project has this advantage, that if it does not produce the result that I expect, or even fails, our situation will not be impaired. But it ought to and will succeed." "And this project?" asked the major. "This is it," replied Paganel. "The superstition of the natives has made this mountain a place of refuge, and this superstition must help us to escape. If I succeed in convincing Kai-Koumou that we have become the victims of our sacrilege, that the wrath of Heaven has fallen upon us, in short, that we have met a terrible death, do you think that he will abandon the mountain and return to his village?" "Probably," said Glenarvan. "And with what horrible death do you threaten us?" inquired Lady Helena. "The death of the sacrilegious, my friends," continued Paganel. "The avenging flames are under our feet. Let us open a way for them." "What! you would make a volcano?" cried Captain Mangles. "Yes, a factitious, an improvised one, whose fury we will control. There is quite a supply of vapors and subterranean fires that only ask for an outlet. Let us arrange an artificial eruption for our own advantage." "The idea is good," said the major, "and well conceived, Paganel." "You understand," resumed the geographer, "that we are to feign being consumed by the flames of Pluto, and shall disappear spiritually in the tomb of Kara-Tété." [Sidenote: A VOLCANO IN MINIATURE.] "Where we shall remain three, four, or five days, if necessary, till the savages are convinced of our death, and abandon the siege." "But if they think of making sure of our destruction," said Miss Grant, "and climb the mountain?" "No, my dear Mary," replied Paganel, "they will not do that. The mountain is tabooed, and if it shall itself devour its profaners the taboo will be still more rigorous." "This plan is really well conceived," remarked Glenarvan. "There is only one chance against it, and that is, that the savages may persist in remaining at the foot of the mountain till the provisions fail us. But this is scarcely probable, especially if we play our part skillfully." "And when shall we make this last venture?" asked Lady Helena. "This very evening," answered Paganel, "at the hour of the greatest darkness." "Agreed," said MacNabb. "Paganel, you are a man of genius; and although from habit I am scarcely ever enthusiastic, I will answer for your success. Ha! these rascals! we shall perform a little miracle for them that will delay their conversion a good century. May the missionaries pardon us!" Paganel's plan was therefore adopted, and really, with the superstitious notions of the Maoris, it might and ought to succeed. It only remained to execute it. The idea was good, but in practice difficult. Might not this volcano consume the audacious ones who should dig the crater? Could they control and direct this eruption when the vapors, flames, and lava should be let loose? Would it not engulf the entire peak in a flood of fire? They were tampering with those phenomena whose absolute control is reserved for forces higher than theirs. Paganel had foreseen these difficulties, but he expected to act prudently, and not to venture to extremes. An illusion was enough to deceive the Maoris, without the awful reality of a large eruption. How long that day seemed! Each one counted the interminable hours. Everything was prepared for flight. The provisions of the tomb had been divided, and made into convenient bundles. Several mats, and the fire-arms, which had been found in the tomb of the chief, formed light baggage. Of course these preparations were made within the palisaded inclosure and unknown to the savages. At six o'clock the steward served a farewell feast. Where and when they should eat in the valleys no one could foretell. Twilight came on. The sun disappeared behind a bank of dense clouds of threatening aspect. A few flashes illumined the horizon, and a distant peal of thunder rumbled along the vault of the sky. Paganel welcomed the storm that came to the aid of his design. At eight o'clock the summit of the mountain was hidden by a foreboding darkness, while the sky looked terribly black, as if for a background to the flaming outbreak that Paganel was about to inaugurate. The Maoris could no longer see their prisoners. The time for action had come. Rapidity was necessary, and Glenarvan, Paganel, MacNabb, Robert, the steward, and the two sailors at once set to work vigorously. The place for the crater was chosen thirty paces from Kara-Tété's tomb. It was important that this structure should be spared by the eruption, for otherwise the taboo would become ineffective. Paganel had observed an enormous block of stone, around which the vapors seemed to pour forth with considerable force. This rocky mass covered a small natural crater in the peak, and only by its weight prevented the escape of the subterranean flames. If they could succeed in overturning it, the smoke and lava would immediately issue through the unobstructed opening. [Sidenote: VULCANS AT WORK.] The fugitives made themselves levers out of the stakes of the tomb, and with these they vigorously attacked the ponderous mass. Under their united efforts the rock was not long in moving. They dug a sort of groove for it down the side of the mountain, that it might slide on an inclined plane. As their action increased, the trembling of the earth became more violent. Hollow rumblings and hissings sounded under the thin crust. But the bold experimenters, like real Vulcans, governing the underground fires, worked on in silence. Several cracks and a few gusts of hot smoke warned them that their position was becoming dangerous. But a final effort detached the block, which glided down the slope of the mountain and disappeared. The thin covering at once yielded. An incandescent column poured forth towards the sky with loud explosions, while streams of boiling water and lava rolled towards the encampment of the natives and the valleys below. The whole peak trembled, and you might almost have thought that it was disappearing in a general conflagration. Glenarvan and his companions had scarcely time to escape the shock of the eruption. They fled to the inclosure of the tomb, but not without receiving a few scalding drops of the water, which bubbled and exhaled a strong sulphureous odor. Then mud, lava, and volcanic fragments mingled in the scene of devastation. Torrents of flame furrowed the sides of the Maunganamu. The adjoining mountains glowed in the light of the eruption, and the deep valleys were illumined with a vivid brightness. The savages were soon aroused, both by the noise and the heat of the lava that flowed in a scalding tide through the midst of their encampment. Those whom the fiery flood had not reached fled, and ascended the surrounding hills, turning and gazing back at this terrific phenomenon, with which their god, in his wrath, had overwhelmed the desecrators of the sacred mountain; while at certain moments they were heard howling their consecratory cry: "Taboo! taboo! taboo!" [Illustration: The fugitives made themselves levers out of the stakes of the tomb.] [Illustration: An incandescent column poured forth towards the sky with loud explosions, while streams of boiling water and lava rolled towards the encampment of the natives.] Meantime an enormous quantity of vapor, melted stones, and lava had escaped from the crater. It was no longer a simple geyser. All this volcanic effervescence had hitherto been confined beneath the crust of the peak, since the outlets of Tangariro sufficed for its expansion; but as a new opening had been made, it had rushed forth with extreme violence. All night long, during the storm that raged above and below, the peak was shaken with a commotion that could not but alarm Glenarvan. The prisoners, concealed behind the palisade of the tomb, watched the fearful progress of the outbreak. Morning came. The fury of the volcano had not moderated. Thick, yellowish vapors mingled with the flames, and torrents of lava poured in every direction. Glenarvan, with eye alert and beating heart, glanced between the interstices of the inclosure, and surveyed the camp of the Maoris. The natives had fled to the neighboring plateaus, beyond the reach of the volcano. Several corpses, lying at the foot of the peak, had been charred by the fire. Farther on, towards the pah, the lava had consumed a number of huts, that were still smoking. The savages, in scattered groups, were gazing at the vapory summit of Maunganamu with religious awe. Kai-Koumou came into the midst of his warriors, and Glenarvan recognized him. The chief advanced to the base of the peak, on the side spared by the eruption, but did not cross the first slopes. Here, with outstretched arms, like a sorcerer exorcising, he made a few grimaces, the meaning of which did not escape the prisoners. As Paganel had foreseen, Kai-Koumou was invoking upon the mountain a more rigorous taboo. Soon after, the natives descended, in single file, the winding paths that led towards the pah. [Sidenote: A WEARY WAITING.] "They are going!" cried Glenarvan. "They are abandoning their post! God be thanked! Our scheme has succeeded! My dear Helena, my brave companions, we are now dead and buried; but this evening we will revive, we will leave our tomb, and flee from these barbarous tribes!" It would be difficult to describe the joy that reigned within the palisade. Hope had reanimated all hearts. These courageous travelers forgot their past trials, dreaded not the future, and only rejoiced in their present deliverance; although very little reflection would show how difficult was the task of reaching an European settlement from their present position. But if Kai-Koumou was outwitted, they believed themselves safe from all the savages of New Zealand. A whole day must pass before the decisive attempt could be made, and they employed their time in arranging a plan of escape. Paganel had preserved his map of New Zealand, and could therefore search out the safest routes. After some discussion, the fugitives resolved to proceed eastward towards the Bay of Plenty. This course would lead them through districts that were very rarely visited. The travelers, who were already accustomed to overcoming natural difficulties, only feared meeting the Maoris. They therefore determined to avoid them at all hazards, and gain the eastern coast, where the missionaries have founded several establishments. Moreover, this portion of the island had hitherto escaped the ravages of the war and the depredations of the natives. As for the distance that separated Lake Taupo from the Bay of Plenty, it could not be more than one hundred miles. Ten days would suffice for the journey. The missions once reached, they could rest there, and wait for some favorable opportunity of gaining Auckland, their destination. These points being settled, they continued to watch the savages till evening. Not one of them remained at the foot of the mountain, and when darkness invaded the valleys of the lake, no fire betokened the presence of the Maoris at the base of the peak. The coast was clear. At nine o'clock it was dark night, and Glenarvan gave the signal for departure. His companions and he, armed and equipped at Kara-Tété's expense, began to cautiously descend the slopes of the Maunganamu. Captain Mangles and Wilson led the way, with eyes and ears on the alert. They stopped at the least sound,--they examined the faintest light; each slid down the declivity, the better to elude detection. Two hundred feet below the summit, Captain Mangles and his sailor reached the dangerous ridge that had been so obstinately guarded by the natives. If, unfortunately, the Maoris, more crafty than the fugitives, had feigned a retreat to entice them within reach, if they had not been deceived by the eruption, their presence would be discovered at this point. Glenarvan, in spite of his confidence and Paganel's pleasantries, could not help trembling. The safety of his friends was at stake during the few moments necessary to cross the ridge. He felt Lady Helena's heart beat as she clung to his arm. But neither he nor Captain Mangles thought of retreating. The young captain, followed by the others, and favored by the dense obscurity, crawled along the narrow path, only stopping when some detached stone rolled to the base of the mountain. If the savages were still in ambush, these unusual sounds would provoke from each side a formidable volley. However, in gliding like serpents along this inclined crest, the fugitives could not advance rapidly. When Captain Mangles had gained the lowest part, scarcely twenty-five feet separated him from the plain where the natives had encamped the night before. Here the ridge ascended quite steeply towards a coppice about a quarter of a mile distant. [Sidenote: TABOOED NO LONGER.] The travelers crossed this place without accident, and began the ascent in silence. The thicket was invisible, but they knew where it was, and, provided no ambuscade was laid there, Glenarvan hoped to find a secure refuge. However, he remembered that they were now no longer protected by the taboo. The ascending ridge did not belong to the sacred mountain, but to a chain that ran along the eastern shores of Lake Taupo. Therefore not only the shots of the savages, but also a hand-to-hand conflict, were to be feared. For a short time the little party slowly mounted towards the upper elevations. The captain could not yet discern the dark coppice, but it could not be more than two hundred feet distant. Suddenly he stopped, and almost recoiled. He thought he heard some sound in the darkness. His hesitation arrested the advance of his companions. He stood motionless long enough to alarm those who followed him. With what agonizing suspense they waited could not be described. Would they be forced to return to the summit of the mountain? But, finding that the noise was not repeated, their leader continued his ascent along the narrow path. The coppice was soon dimly defined in the gloom. In a few moments it was reached, and the fugitives were crouching beneath the thick foliage of the trees. CHAPTER LIV. FROM PERIL TO SAFETY. Darkness favored the escape; and making the greatest possible progress, they left the fatal regions of Lake Taupo. Paganel assumed the guidance of the little party, and his marvelous instinct as a traveler was displayed anew during this perilous journey. He managed with surprising dexterity in the thick gloom, chose unhesitatingly the almost invisible paths, and kept constantly an undeviating course. At nine o'clock in the morning they had accomplished a considerable distance, and could not reasonably require more of the courageous ladies. Besides, the place seemed suitable for an encampment. The fugitives had reached the ravine that separates the Kaimanawa and Wahiti ranges. The road on the right ran southward to Oberland. Paganel, with his map in his hand, made a turn to the northeast, and at ten o'clock the little party had reached a sort of steep buttress, formed by a spur of the mountain. The provisions were taken from the sacks, and all did ample justice to them. Mary Grant and the major, who had not hitherto been very well satisfied with the edible ferns, made this time a hearty meal of them. They rested here till two o'clock in the afternoon, then the journey towards the east was resumed, and at evening the travelers encamped eight miles from the mountains. They needed no urging to sleep in the open air. The next day very serious difficulties were encountered. They were forced to pass through a curious region of volcanic lakes and geysers that extends eastward from the Wahiti ranges. It was pleasing to the eye, but fatiguing to the limbs. Every quarter of a mile there were obstacles, turns, and windings, far too many for rapid progress; but what strange appearances and what infinite variety does nature give to her grand scenes! [Sidenote: ALMOST TIRED OUT!] Over this expanse of twenty square miles the overflow of subterranean forces was displayed in every form. Salt springs, of a singular transparency, teeming with myriads of insects, issued from the porous ground. They exhaled a penetrating odor, and deposited on the earth a white coating like dazzling snow. Their waters, though clear, were at the boiling-point, while other neighboring springs poured forth ice-cold streams. On every side water-spouts, with spiral rings of vapor, spirted from the ground like the jets of a fountain, some continuous, others intermittent, as if controlled by some capricious sprite. They rose like an amphitheatre, in natural terraces one above another, their vapors gradually mingling in wreaths of white smoke; and flowing down the semi-transparent steps of these gigantic staircases, they fed the lakes with their boiling cascades. It will be needless to dilate upon the incidents of the journey, which were neither numerous nor important. Their way led through forests and over plains. The captain took his bearings by the sun and stars. The sky, which was quite clear, was sparing of heat and rain. Still, an increasing weariness delayed the travelers, already so cruelly tried, and they had to make great efforts to reach their destination. However, they still conversed together, but no longer in common. The little party was divided into groups, not by any narrow prejudice or ill feeling, but to some extent from sadness. Often Glenarvan was alone, thinking, as he approached the coast, of the Duncan and her crew. He forgot the dangers that still threatened him, in his grief for his lost sailors and the terrible visions that continually haunted his mind. They no longer spoke of Harry Grant. And why should they, since they could do nothing for him? If the captain's name was ever pronounced, it was in the conversations of his daughter and her betrothed. The young captain had not reminded her of what she had said to him on the last night of their captivity on the mountain. His magnanimity would not take advantage of words uttered in a moment of supreme despair. [Sidenote: ACCOMPLISHING THE LAST STAGE.] When he did speak of Captain Grant, he began to lay plans for a further search. He declared to Mary that Lord Glenarvan would resume this undertaking, hitherto so unsuccessful. [Illustration: On every side water-spouts, with spiral rings of vapor, spirted from the ground like the jets of a fountain.] He maintained that the authenticity of the document could not be doubted. Her father must, therefore, be somewhere; and though it were necessary to search the whole world, they were sure to find him. The young girl was cheered by these words; and both, bound by the same thoughts, now sympathized in the same hope. Lady Helena often took part in the conversation, and was very careful not to discourage the young people with any sad forebodings. Glenarvan and his companions, after many vicissitudes, reached the foot of Mount Ikirangi, whose peak towered five thousand feet aloft. They had now traveled almost one hundred miles since leaving the Maunganamu, and the coast was still thirty miles distant. Captain Mangles had hoped to make the journey in ten days, but he was ignorant then of the difficulties of the way. There were still two good days of travel before they could gain the ocean, and renewed activity and extreme vigilance became necessary, for they were entering a region frequented by the natives. However, each conquered the fatigue, and the little party continued their course. Between Mount Ikirangi, some distance on their right, and Mount Hardy, whose summit rose to the left, was a large plain, thickly overspread with twining plants and underbrush. Progress here was tedious and difficult in the extreme; for the pliant tendrils wound a score of folds about their bodies like serpents. Hunting was impossible; the provisions were nearly exhausted, and could not be renewed, and water failed, so that they could not allay their thirst, rendered doubly acute by their fatigue. The sufferings of Glenarvan and his friends were terrible, and for the first time their moral energy now almost forsook them. At last, dragging themselves along, wearied to the utmost degree in body, almost despairing in mind, they reached Lottin Point, on the shores of the Pacific. At this place several deserted huts were seen, the ruins of a village recently devastated by the war; around them were abandoned fields, and everywhere the traces of plunder and conflagration. But here fate had reserved a new and fearful test for the unfortunate travelers. They were walking along the coast, when, at no great distance, a number of natives appeared, who rushed towards the little party, brandishing their weapons. Glenarvan, shut in by the sea, saw that escape was impossible, and, summoning all his strength, was about to make preparations for battle, when Captain Mangles cried: "A canoe! a canoe!" And truly, twenty paces distant, a canoe, with six oars, was lying on the beach. To rush to it, set it afloat, and fly from this dangerous place was the work of an instant; the whole party seemed to receive at once a fresh accession of bodily strength and mental vigor. In ten minutes the boat was at a considerable distance. The sea was calm. The captain, however, not wishing to wander too far from the coast, was about to give the order to cruise along the shore, when he suddenly ceased rowing. He had observed three canoes starting from Lottin Point, with the evident intention of overtaking and capturing the unfortunate fugitives. "To sea! to sea!" cried he; "better perish in the waves than be captured!" The canoe, under the strokes of its four oarsmen, at once put to sea, and for some time kept its distance. But the strength of the weakened fugitives soon grew less, and their pursuers gradually gained upon them. The boats were now scarcely a mile apart. There was therefore no possibility of avoiding the attack of the natives, who, armed with their long guns, were already preparing to fire. [Sidenote: DEATH ON EVERY HAND.] What was Glenarvan doing? Standing at the stern of the canoe, he looked around as if for some expected aid. What did he expect? What did he wish? Had he a presentiment? All at once his face brightened, his hand was stretched towards an indistinct object. "A ship!" cried he; "my friends, a ship! Row, row!" Not one of the four oarsmen turned to see this unexpected vessel, for they must not lose a stroke. Only Paganel, rising, directed his telescope towards the place indicated. "Yes," said he, "a ship, a steamer, under full headway, coming towards us! Courage, captain!" The fugitives displayed new energy, and for several moments longer they kept their distance. The steamer grew more and more distinct. They could clearly discern her masts, and the thick clouds of black smoke that issued from her smoke-stack. Glenarvan, giving the helm to Robert, had seized the geographer's glass, and did not lose a single movement of the vessel. But what were Captain Mangles and his companions to think when they saw the expression of his features change, his face grow pale, and the instrument fall from his hands. A single word explained this sudden emotion. "The Duncan!" cried Glenarvan,--"the Duncan and the convicts!" "The Duncan?" repeated the captain, dropping his oar and rising. "Yes, death on all sides!" moaned Glenarvan, overcome by so many calamities. It was indeed the yacht--without a doubt,--the yacht, with her crew of bandits! The major could not repress a malediction. This was too much. Meantime the canoe was floating at random. Whither should they guide it, whither flee? Was it possible to choose between the savages and the convicts? [Illustration: A second ball whistled over their heads, and demolished the nearest of the three canoes.] [Sidenote: A MYSTERIOUS PRESERVATION.] Just then a shot came from the native boat, that had approached nearer. The bullet struck Wilson's oar; but his companions still propelled the canoe towards the Duncan. The yacht was advancing at full speed, and was only half a mile distant. Captain Mangles, beset on all sides, no longer knew how to act, or in what direction to escape. The two poor ladies were on their knees, praying in their despair. The savages were now firing a continued volley, and the bullets rained around the canoe. Just then a sharp report sounded, and a ball from the yacht's cannon passed over the heads of the fugitives, who remained motionless between the fire of the Duncan and the natives. Captain Mangles, frantic with despair, seized his hatchet. He was on the point of sinking their own canoe, with his unfortunate companions, when a cry from Robert stopped him. "Tom Austin! Tom Austin!" said the child. "He is on board! I see him! He has recognized us! He is waving his hat!" The hatchet was suspended in mid-air. A second ball whistled over their heads, and demolished the nearest of the three canoes, while a loud hurrah was heard on board the Duncan. The savages fled in terror towards the coast. "Help, help, Tom!" cried Captain Mangles, in a piercing voice. And a few moments afterwards the ten fugitives, without knowing how, or scarcely comprehending this unexpected good fortune, were all in safety on board the Duncan. CHAPTER LV. WHY THE DUNCAN WENT TO NEW ZEALAND. The feelings of Glenarvan and his friends, when the songs of old Scotland resounded in their ears, it is impossible to describe. As soon as they set foot on deck the bagpiper struck up a well remembered air, while hearty hurrahs welcomed the owner's return on board. Glenarvan, John Mangles, Paganel, Robert, and even the major, wept and embraced each other. Their emotions rose from joy to ecstasy. The geographer was fairly wild, skipping about and watching with his inseparable telescope the canoes returning to shore. But at sight of Glenarvan and his companions, with tattered garments, emaciated features, and the traces of extreme suffering, the crew ceased their lively demonstrations. These were spectres, not the bold and dashing travelers whom, three months before, hope had stimulated to a search for the shipwrecked captain. Chance alone had led them back to this vessel that they had ceased to regard as theirs, and in what a sad state of exhaustion and feebleness! However, before thinking of fatigue, or the imperative calls of hunger and thirst, Glenarvan questioned Tom Austin concerning his presence in these waters. Why was the Duncan on the eastern coast of New Zealand? Why was she not in the hands of Ben Joyce? By what providential working had God restored her to the fugitives? These were the questions that were hurriedly addressed to Tom Austin. The old sailor did not know which to answer first. He therefore concluded to listen only to Lord Glenarvan, and reply to him. "But the convicts?" inquired Glenarvan. "What have you done with the convicts?" "The convicts!" replied Tom Austin, like a man who is at a loss to understand a question. "Yes; the wretches who attacked the yacht." "What yacht, my lord? The Duncan?" "Of course. Did not Ben Joyce come on board?" "I do not know Ben Joyce; I have never seen him." "Never?" cried Glenarvan, amazed at the answers of the old sailor. "Then will you tell me why the Duncan is now on the shores of New Zealand?" [Sidenote: MYSTERY MORE MYSTERIOUS!] Although Glenarvan and his friends did not at all understand Austin's astonishment, what was their surprise when he replied, in a calm voice: "The Duncan is here by your lordship's orders." "By my orders?" cried Glenarvan. "Yes, my lord. I only conformed to the instructions contained in your letter." "My letter?" exclaimed Glenarvan. The ten travelers at once surrounded Tom Austin, and gazed at him in eager curiosity. The letter written at the Snowy River had reached the Duncan. "Well," continued Glenarvan, "let us have an explanation; for I almost think I am dreaming. You received a letter, Tom?" "Yes; a letter from your lordship." "At Melbourne?" "At Melbourne; just as I had finished the repair of the ship." "And this letter?" "It was not written by you; but it was signed by you, my lord." "Exactly; it was sent by a convict, Ben Joyce." "No; by the sailor called Ayrton, quartermaster of the Britannia." "Yes, Ayrton or Ben Joyce; it is the same person. Well, what did the letter say?" "It ordered me to leave Melbourne without delay, and come to the eastern shores of----" "Australia!" cried Glenarvan, with an impetuosity that disconcerted the old sailor. "Australia?" repeated Tom, opening his eyes. "No, indeed; New Zealand!" "Australia, Tom! Australia!" replied Glenarvan's companions, with one voice. [Illustration: As soon as they set foot on deck the bagpiper struck up a well remembered air, while hearty hurrahs welcomed the owner's return on board.] Austin was now bewildered. Glenarvan spoke with such assurance, that he feared he had made a mistake in reading the letter. Could he, faithful and accurate sailor that he was, have committed such a blunder? He began to feel troubled. [Illustration: This sally finished the poor geographer.] "Be easy, Tom," said Lady Helena. "Providence has decreed----" "No, madam, pardon me," returned the sailor; "no, it is not possible! I am not mistaken. Ayrton also read the letter, and he, on the contrary, wished to go to Australia." "Ayrton?" cried Glenarvan. "The very one. He maintained that it was a mistake, and that you had appointed Twofold Bay as the place of meeting." "Have you the letter, Tom?" asked the major, greatly puzzled. "Yes, Mr. MacNabb," replied Austin. "I will soon bring it." He accordingly repaired to his own cabin. While he was gone, they gazed at each other in silence, except the major, who, with his eye fixed upon Paganel, said, as he folded his arms: "Indeed, I must confess, Paganel, that this is a little too much." At this moment Austin returned. He held in his hand the letter written by Paganel, and signed by Glenarvan. "Read it, my lord," said the old sailor. Glenarvan took the letter, and read: "Order for Tom Austin to put to sea, and bring the Duncan to the eastern coast of New Zealand." "New Zealand?" cried Paganel, starting. He snatched the letter from Glenarvan's hands, rubbed his eyes, adjusted his spectacles to his nose, and read in his turn. "New Zealand!" repeated he, in an indescribable tone, while the letter slipped from his fingers. Just then he felt a hand fall upon his shoulder. He turned, and found himself face to face with the major. [Sidenote: PAGANEL IN THE WITNESS-BOX.] "Well, my good Paganel," said MacNabb, in a grave tone, "it is fortunate that you did not send the Duncan to Cochin-China." This sally finished the poor geographer. A fit of laughter seized the whole crew. Paganel, as if mad, ran to and fro, holding his head in his hands, and tearing his hair. However, when he had recovered from his frenzy, there was still another unavoidable question to answer. "Now, Paganel," said Glenarvan, "be candid. I acknowledge that your absent-mindedness has been providential. To be sure, without you the Duncan would have fallen into the hands of the convicts; without you we should have been recaptured by the Maoris. But do tell me, what strange association of ideas, what unnatural aberration, induced you to write New Zealand instead of Australia?" "Very well," said Paganel. "It was----" But at that moment his eyes fell upon Robert and Mary Grant, and he stopped short, finally replying: "Never mind, my dear Glenarvan. I am a madman, a fool, an incorrigible being, and shall die a most famous blunderer!" The affair was no longer discussed. The mystery of the Duncan's presence there was solved; and the travelers, so miraculously saved, thought only of revisiting their comfortable cabins and partaking of a good breakfast. However, leaving Lady Helena, Mary Grant, the major, Paganel, and Robert to enter the saloon, Glenarvan and Captain Mangles retained Tom Austin with them. They wished to question him further. "Now, Tom," said Glenarvan, "let me know: did not this order to sail for the coast of New Zealand seem strange to you?" "Yes, my lord," replied Austin. "I was very much surprised; but, as I am not in the habit of discussing the orders I receive, I obeyed. Could I act otherwise? If any accident had happened from not following your instructions, should I not have been to blame? Would you have done differently, captain?" "No, Tom," answered Captain Mangles. "But what did you think?" asked Glenarvan. "I thought, my lord, that, in the cause of Captain Grant, it was necessary to go wherever you directed me; that by some combination of circumstances another vessel would take you to New Zealand, and that I was to wait for you on the eastern coast of the island. Moreover, on leaving Melbourne, I kept my destination secret, and the crew did not know it till we were out at sea and the shores of Australia had disappeared from sight. But then an incident occurred that perplexed me very much." "What do you mean, Tom?" inquired Glenarvan. "I mean," he replied, "that when the quartermaster, Ayrton, learned, the day after our departure, the Duncan's destination----" "Ayrton!" cried Glenarvan. "Is he on board?" "Yes, my lord." "Ayrton here!" repeated Glenarvan, glancing at Captain Mangles. "Wonderful indeed!" said the young captain. In an instant, with the swiftness of lightning, Ayrton's conduct, his long-contrived treachery, Glenarvan's wound, the attack upon Mulready, their sufferings in the marshes of the Snowy, all the wretch's deeds, flashed upon the minds of the two men. And now, by a strange fatality, the convict was in their power. "Where is he?" asked Glenarvan quickly. "In a cabin in the forecastle," replied Tom Austin, "closely guarded." "Why this confinement?" [Sidenote: AN UNOFFICIAL TRIBUNAL.] "Because, when Ayrton saw that the yacht was sailing for New Zealand, he flew into a passion; because he attempted to force me to change the ship's course; because he threatened me; and, finally, because he urged my men to a mutiny. I saw that he was a dangerous person, and was compelled, therefore, to take precautions against him." "And since that time?" "Since that time he has been in his cabin, without offering to come out." "Good!" At this moment Glenarvan and Captain Mangles were summoned to the saloon. Breakfast, which they so much needed, was ready. They took seats at the table, but did not speak of Ayrton. However, when the meal was ended, and the passengers had assembled on deck, Glenarvan informed them of the quartermaster's presence on board. At the same time he declared his intention of sending for him. "Can I be released from attending this tribunal?" asked Lady Helena. "I confess to you, my dear Edward, that the sight of this unfortunate would be very painful to me." "It is only to confront him, Helena," replied Glenarvan. "Remain, if you can. Ben Joyce should see himself face to face with all his intended victims." Lady Helena yielded to this request, and Mary Grant and she took their places beside him, while around them stood the major, Paganel, Captain Mangles, Robert, Wilson, Mulready, and Olbinett, all who had suffered so severely by the convict's treason. The crew of the yacht, who did not yet understand the seriousness of these proceedings, maintained a profound silence. "Call Ayrton!" said Glenarvan. CHAPTER LVI. AYRTON'S OBSTINACY. Ayrton soon made his appearance. He crossed the deck with a confident step, and ascended the poop-stairs. His eyes had a sullen look, his teeth were set, and his fists clinched convulsively. His bearing displayed neither exultation nor humility. As soon as he was in Lord Glenarvan's presence, he folded his arms, and calmly and silently waited to be questioned: "Ayrton," said Glenarvan, "here we all are, as you see, on board the Duncan, that you would have surrendered to Ben Joyce's accomplices." At these words the lips of the quartermaster slightly trembled. A quick blush colored his hard features,--not the sign of remorse, but the shame of defeat. He was prisoner on this yacht that he had meant to command as master, and his fate was soon to be decided. However, he made no reply. Glenarvan waited patiently, but Ayrton still persisted in maintaining an obstinate silence. "Speak, Ayrton; what have you to say?" continued Glenarvan. The convict hesitated, and the lines of his forehead were strongly contracted. At last he said, in a calm voice: "I have nothing to say, my lord. I was foolish enough to let myself be taken. Do what you please." [Sidenote: A DUMB PRISONER.] Having given his answer, the quartermaster turned his eyes toward the coast that extended along the west, and affected a profound indifference for all that was passing around him. You would have thought, to look at him, that he was a stranger to this serious affair. But Glenarvan had resolved to be patient. A powerful motive urged him to ascertain certain circumstances of Ayrton's mysterious life, especially as regarded Harry Grant and the Britannia. He therefore resumed his inquiries, speaking with extreme mildness, and imposing the most perfect calmness upon the violent agitation of his heart. "I hope, Ayrton," continued he, "that you will not refuse to answer certain questions that I desire to ask you. And, first, am I to call you Ayrton or Ben Joyce? Are you the quartermaster of the Britannia?" Ayrton remained unmoved, watching the coast, deaf to every question. Glenarvan, whose eye flashed with some inward emotion, continued to question him. "Will you tell me how you left the Britannia, and why you were in Australia?" There was the same silence, the same obstinacy. "Listen to me, Ayrton," resumed Glenarvan. "It is for your interest to speak. We may reward a frank confession, which is your only resort. For the last time, will you answer my questions?" Ayrton turned his head towards Glenarvan, and looked him full in the face. "My lord," said he, "I have nothing to answer. It is for justice to prove against me." "The proofs will be easy," replied Glenarvan. [Sidenote: USELESS APPEALS.] "Easy, my lord?" continued the quartermaster, in a sneering tone. "Your lordship seems to me very hasty. I declare that the best judge in Westminster Hall would be puzzled to establish my identity. Who can say why I came to Australia, since Captain Grant is no longer here to inform you? Who can prove that I am that Ben Joyce described by the police, since they have never laid hands upon me, and my companions are at liberty? Who, except you, can charge me, not to say with a crime, but even with a culpable action?" [Illustration: Ayrton soon made his appearance. He crossed the deck with a confident step, and ascended the poop-stairs.] Ayrton had grown animated while speaking, but soon relapsed into his former indifference. He doubtless imagined that this declaration would end the examination: but Glenarvan resumed, and said: "Ayrton, I am not a judge charged with trying you. This is not my business. It is important that our respective positions should be clearly defined. I ask nothing that can implicate you, for that is the part of justice. But you know what search I am pursuing, and, with a word, you can put me on the track I have lost. Will you speak?" Ayrton shook his head, like a man determined to keep silent. "Will you tell me where Captain Grant is?" asked Glenarvan. "No, my lord." "Will you point out where the Britannia was wrecked?" "Certainly not." "Ayrton," said Glenarvan, in almost a suppliant tone, "will you, at least, if you know where Captain Grant is, tell his poor children, who are only waiting for a word from your lips?" The quartermaster hesitated; his features quivered; but, in a low voice, he muttered: "I cannot, my lord." Then, as if he reproached himself for a moment's weakness, he added, angrily: "No, I will not speak! Hang me if you will!" "Hang, then!" cried Glenarvan, overcome by a sudden feeling of indignation. But finally controlling himself, he said, in a grave voice: "There are neither judges nor hangmen here. At the first landing-place you shall be put into the hands of the English authorities." "Just what I desire," replied the quartermaster. Thereupon he was taken back to the cabin that served as his prison, and two sailors were stationed at the door, with orders to watch all his movements. The witnesses of this scene retired indignant and in despair. Since Glenarvan had failed to overcome Ayrton's obstinacy, what was to be done? Evidently to follow the plan formed at Eden, of returning to England, and resuming hereafter this unsuccessful enterprise, for all traces of the Britannia now seemed irrevocably lost. The document admitted of no new interpretation. There was no other country on the line of the thirty-seventh parallel, and the only way was to sail for home. He consulted his friends, and more especially Captain Mangles, on the subject of return. The captain examined his store-rooms. The supply of coal would not last more than fifteen days. It was, therefore, necessary to replenish the fuel at the first port. He accordingly proposed to Glenarvan to sail for Talcahuana Bay, where the Duncan had already procured supplies before undertaking her voyage. This was a direct passage. Then the yacht, with ample provisions, could double Cape Horn, and reach Scotland by way of the Atlantic. This plan being adopted, the engineer was ordered to force on steam. Half an hour afterwards the yacht was headed towards Talcahuana, and at six o'clock in the evening the mountains of New Zealand had disappeared beneath the mists of the horizon. [Sidenote: WOMANLY INFLUENCE.] It was a sad return for these brave searchers, who had left the shores of Scotland with such hope and confidence. To the joyous cries that had saluted Glenarvan on his return succeeded profound dejection. Each confined himself to the solitude of his cabin, and rarely appeared on deck. All, even the loquacious Paganel, were mournful and silent. If Glenarvan spoke of beginning his search again, the geographer shook his head like a man who has no more hope, for he seemed convinced as to the fate of the shipwrecked sailors. Yet there was one man on board who could have informed them about this catastrophe, but whose silence was still prolonged. There was no doubt that the rascally Ayrton knew, if not the actual situation of the captain, at least the place of the shipwreck. Probably Harry Grant, if found, would be a witness against him; hence he persisted in his silence, and was greatly enraged, especially towards the sailors who would accuse him of an evil design. Several times Glenarvan renewed his attempts with the quartermaster. Promises and threats were useless. Ayrton's obstinacy was carried so far, and was so inexplicable, that the major came to the belief that he knew nothing; which opinion was shared by the geographer and corroborated his own ideas in regard to Captain Grant. But if Ayrton knew nothing, why did he not plead his ignorance? It could not turn against him, while his silence increased the difficulty of forming a new plan. Ought they to infer the presence of Harry Grant in Australia from meeting the quartermaster on that continent? At all events, they must induce Ayrton to explain on this subject. Lady Helena, seeing her husband's failures, now suggested an attempt, in her turn, to persuade the quartermaster. Where a man had failed, perhaps a woman could succeed by her gentle entreaty. Glenarvan, knowing the tact of his young wife, gave his hearty approval. Ayrton was, accordingly, brought to Lady Helena's boudoir. Mary Grant was to be present at the interview, for the young girl's influence might also be great, and Lady Helena would not neglect any chance of success. [Illustration: For an hour the two ladies were closeted with the quartermaster, but nothing resulted from this conference.] For an hour the two ladies were closeted with the quartermaster, but nothing resulted from this conference. What they said, the arguments they used to draw out the convict's secret, all the details of this examination, remained unknown. Moreover, when Ayrton left them they did not appear to have succeeded, and their faces betokened real despair. [Illustration: He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders, which so increased the rage of the crew, that nothing less than the intervention of the captain and his lordship could restrain them.] When the quartermaster was taken back to his cabin, therefore, the sailors saluted his appearance with violent threats. But he contented himself with shrugging his shoulders, which so increased the rage of the crew, that nothing less than the intervention of the captain and his lordship could restrain them. But Lady Helena did not consider herself defeated. She wished to struggle to the last with this heartless man, and the next day she went herself to Ayrton's cabin, to avoid the scene that his appearance on deck occasioned. For two long hours this kind and gentle Scotch lady remained alone face to face with the chief of the convicts. Glenarvan, a prey to nervous agitation, lingered near the cabin, now determined to thoroughly exhaust the chances of success, and now upon the point of drawing his wife away from this painful and prolonged interview. But this time, when Lady Helena reappeared, her features inspired confidence. Had she, then, brought this secret to light, and stirred the dormant feeling of pity in the heart of this poor creature? MacNabb, who saw her first, could not repress a very natural feeling of incredulity. However, the rumor soon spread among the crew that the quartermaster had at length yielded to Lady Helena's entreaties. All the sailors assembled on deck more quickly than if Tom Austin's whistle had summoned them. "Has he spoken?" asked Lord Glenarvan of his wife. "No," replied Lady Helena; "but in compliance with my entreaties he desires to see you." "Ah, dear Helena, you have succeeded!" "I hope so, Edward." "Have you made any promise that I am to sanction?" "Only one: that you will use all your influence to moderate the fate in store for him." [Sidenote: VERY BUSINESS-LIKE.] "Certainly, my dear Helena. Let him come to me immediately." Lady Helena retired to her cabin, accompanied by Mary Grant, and the quartermaster was taken to the saloon where Glenarvan awaited him. CHAPTER LVII. A DISCOURAGING CONFESSION. As soon as the quartermaster was in Lord Glenarvan's presence his custodians retired. "You desired to speak to me, Ayrton?" said Glenarvan. "Yes, my lord," replied he. "To me alone?" "Yes; but I think that if Major MacNabb and Mr. Paganel were present at the interview it would be better." "For whom?" "For me." Ayrton spoke calmly. Glenarvan gazed at him steadily, and then sent word to MacNabb and Paganel, who at once obeyed his summons. "We are ready for you," said Glenarvan, as soon as his two friends were seated at the cabin-table. Ayrton reflected for a few moments, and then said: "My lord, it is customary for witnesses to be present at every contract or negotiation between two parties. That is why I requested the presence of Mr. Paganel and Major MacNabb; for, properly speaking, this is a matter of business that I am going to propose to you." Glenarvan, who was accustomed to Ayrton's manners, betrayed no surprise, although a matter of business between this man and himself seemed strange. [Illustration: "Do you agree or not?"] [Sidenote: BARGAINING FOR TERMS.] "What is this business?" said he. "This is it," replied Ayrton. "You desire to know from me certain circumstances which may be useful to you. I desire to obtain from you certain advantages which will be valuable to me. Now, I will make an exchange, my lord. Do you agree or not?" "What are these circumstances?" asked Paganel, quickly. "No," corrected Glenarvan: "what are these advantages?" Ayrton bowed, showing that he understood the distinction. "These," said he, "are the advantages for which I petition. You still intend, my lord, to deliver me into the hands of the English authorities?" "Yes, Ayrton; it is only justice." "I do not deny it," replied the quartermaster. "You would not consent, then, to set me at liberty?" Glenarvan hesitated before answering a question so plainly asked. Perhaps the fate of Harry Grant depended upon what he was about to say. However, the feeling of duty towards humanity prevailed, and he said: "No, Ayrton, I cannot set you at liberty." "I do not ask it," replied the quartermaster, proudly. "What do you wish, then?" "An intermediate fate, my lord, between that which you think awaits me and the liberty that you cannot grant me." "And that is----?" "To abandon me on one of the desert islands of the Pacific, with the principal necessaries of life. I will manage as I can, and repent, if I have time." Glenarvan, who was little prepared for this proposal, glanced at his two friends, who remained silent. After a few moments of reflection, he replied: "Ayrton, if I grant your request, will you tell me all that it is for my interest to know?" "Yes, my lord; that is to say, all that I know concerning Captain Grant and the Britannia." "The whole truth?" "The whole." "But who will warrant----?" "Oh, I see what troubles you, my lord. You do not like to trust to me,--to the word of a malefactor! That is right. But what can you do? The situation is thus. You have only to accept or refuse." "I will trust you, Ayrton," said Glenarvan, simply. "And you will be right, my lord. Moreover, if I deceive you, you will always have the power to revenge yourself." "How?" "By recapturing me on this island, from which I shall not be able to escape." Ayrton had a reply for everything. He met all difficulties, and produced unanswerable arguments against himself. As was seen, he strove to treat in his business with good faith. It was impossible for a person to surrender with more perfect confidence, and yet he found means to advance still further in this disinterested course. "My lord and gentlemen," added he, "I desire that you should be convinced that I am honorable. I do not seek to deceive you, but am going to give you a new proof of my sincerity in this affair. I act frankly, because I rely upon your loyalty." "Go on, Ayrton," replied Glenarvan. "My lord, I have not yet your promise to agree to my proposition, and still I do not hesitate to tell you that I know little concerning Harry Grant." "Little!" cried Glenarvan. "Yes, my lord; the circumstances that I am able to communicate to you are relative to myself. They are personal experiences, and will scarcely tend to put you on the track you have lost." [Sidenote: REVELATIONS AND DISCLOSURES.] A keen disappointment was manifest on the features of Glenarvan and the major. They had believed the quartermaster to possess an important secret, and yet he now confessed that his disclosures would be almost useless. However that may be, this avowal of Ayrton, who surrendered himself without security, singularly affected his hearers, especially when he added, in conclusion: "Thus you are forewarned, my lord, that the business will be less advantageous for you than for me." "No matter," replied Glenarvan; "I accept your proposal, Ayrton. You have my word that you shall be landed at one of the islands of the Pacific." "Very well, my lord," said he. Was this strange man pleased with this decision? You might have doubted it, for his impassive countenance betrayed no emotion. He seemed as if acting for another more than for himself. "I am ready to answer," continued he. "We have no questions to ask you," rejoined Glenarvan. "Tell us what you know, Ayrton, and, in the first place, who you are." "Gentlemen," replied he, "I am really Tom Ayrton, quartermaster of the Britannia. I left Glasgow in Captain Grant's ship on the 12th of March, 1861. For fourteen months we traversed together the Pacific, seeking some favorable place to found a Scottish colony. Harry Grant was a man capable of performing great deeds, but frequently serious disputes arose between us. His character did not harmonize with mine. I could not yield; but with Harry Grant, when his resolution is taken, all resistance is impossible. He is like iron towards himself and others. However, I dared to mutiny, and attempted to involve the crew and gain possession of the vessel. Whether I did right or wrong is of little importance. However it may be, Captain Grant did not hesitate to land me, April 8, 1862, on the west coast of Australia." "Australia!" exclaimed the major, interrupting Ayrton's story. "Then you left the Britannia before her arrival at Callao, where the last news of her was dated?" "Yes," replied the quartermaster; "for the Britannia never stopped at Callao while I was on board. If I spoke of Callao at O'Moore's farm, it was your story that gave me this information." "Go on, Ayrton," said Glenarvan. [Sidenote: MORE BLANKS THAN PRIZES.] "I found myself, therefore, abandoned on an almost desert coast, but only twenty miles from the penitentiary of Perth, the capital of Western Australia. Wandering along the shore, I met a band of convicts who had just escaped. I joined them. You will spare me, my lord, the account of my life for two years and a half. It is enough to know that I became chief of the runaways, under the name of Ben Joyce. In the month of September, 1864, I made my appearance at the Irishman's farm, and was received as a servant under my true name of Ayrton. Here I waited till an opportunity should be offered to gain possession of a vessel. This was my great object. Two months later the Duncan arrived. During your visit at the farm you related, my lord, the whole story of Captain Grant. I then learned what I had not known, the Britannia's stoppage at Callao, the last news of her, dated June, 1862, two months after my abandonment, the finding of the document, the shipwreck of the vessel, and finally the important reasons you had for seeking Captain Grant in Australia. I did not hesitate, but resolved to appropriate the Duncan,--a marvelous ship, that would have distanced the best of the British navy. However, there were serious injuries to be repaired. I therefore let her start for Melbourne, and offered myself to you in my real character of quartermaster, volunteering to guide you to the scene of the shipwreck, which I falsely located on the eastern coast of Australia. Thus followed at a distance and sometimes preceded by my band of convicts, I conducted your party across the province of Victoria. My companions committed a useless crime at Camden Bridge, since the Duncan, once at Twofold Bay, could not have escaped me, and with it I should have been master of the ocean. I brought you thus unsuspectingly as far as the Snowy River. The horses and oxen fell dead one by one, poisoned by the gastrolobium. I entangled the cart in the marshes. At my suggestion----but you know the rest, my lord, and can be certain that, except for Mr. Paganel's absent-mindedness, I should now be commander on board the Duncan. Such is my story, gentlemen. My disclosures, unfortunately, cannot set you on the track of Captain Grant, and you see that in dealing with me you have made a bad bargain." The quartermaster ceased, crossed his arms, according to his custom, and waited. Glenarvan and his friends were silent. They felt that this strange criminal had told the entire truth. The capture of the Duncan had only failed through a cause altogether beyond his control. His accomplices had reached Twofold Bay, as the convict's blouse, found by Glenarvan, proved. There, faithful to the orders of their chief, they had lain in wait for the yacht, and at last, tired of watching, they had doubtless resumed their occupation of plunder and burning in the fields of New South Wales. The major was the first to resume the examination, in order to determine the dates relative to the Britannia. "It was the 8th of April, 1862, then, that you were landed on the west coast of Australia?" he asked of the quartermaster. "Exactly," replied Ayrton. "And do you know what Captain Grant's plans were then?" "Vaguely." "Continue, Ayrton," said Glenarvan. "The least sign may set us on the track." "What I can say is this, my lord. Captain Grant intended to visit New Zealand. But this part of his programme was not carried out while I was on board. The Britannia might, therefore, after leaving Callao, have gained the shores of New Zealand. This would agree with the date, June 27, 1862, given in the document as the time of the shipwreck." "Evidently," remarked Paganel. "But," added Glenarvan, "there is nothing in these half-obliterated portions of the document which can apply to New Zealand." "That I cannot answer," said the quartermaster. "Well, Ayrton," continued Glenarvan, "you have kept your word, and I will keep mine. We will decide on what island of the Pacific you shall be abandoned." "Oh, it matters little to me," answered Ayrton. "Return to your cabin now, and await our decision." The quartermaster retired, under guard of the two sailors. "This villain might have been a great man," observed the major. "Yes," replied Glenarvan. "He has a strong and self-reliant character. Why must his abilities be devoted to crime?" "But Harry Grant?" "I fear that he is forever lost! Poor children! who could tell them where their father is?" "I!" cried Paganel. As we have remarked, the geographer, although so loquacious and excitable usually, had scarcely spoken during Ayrton's examination. He had listened in total silence. But this last word that he had uttered was worth more than all the others, and startled Glenarvan at once. "You, Paganel!" he exclaimed; "do you know where Captain Grant is?" "As well as can be known," answered the geographer. "And how do you know?" "By that everlasting document." [Sidenote: A GEOGRAPHER'S REMINISCENCES.] "Ah!" said the major, in a tone of the most thorough incredulity. "Listen first, MacNabb, and shrug your shoulders afterwards. I did not speak before, because you would not have believed me. Besides, it was useless. But if I speak to-day, it is because Ayrton's opinion corroborates mine." "Then New Zealand----?" asked Glenarvan. "Hear and judge," replied Paganel. "I did not commit the blunder that saved us, without reason. Just as I was writing that letter at Glenarvan's dictation, the word Zealand was troubling my brain. You remember that we were in the cart. MacNabb had just told Lady Helena the story of the convicts, and had handed her the copy of the _Australian and New Zealand Gazette_ that gave an account of the accident at Camden Bridge. As I was writing, the paper lay on the ground, folded so that only two syllables of its title could be seen, and these were _aland_. What a light broke in upon my mind! 'Aland' was one of the very words in the English document,--a word that we had hitherto translated _ashore_, but which was the termination of the proper name Zealand." "Ha!" cried Glenarvan. "Yes," continued Paganel, with profound conviction, "this interpretation had escaped me, and do you know why? Because my examinations were naturally confined more particularly to the French document, where this important word was wanting." "Ho! ho!" laughed the major, "that is too much imagination, Paganel. You forget your previous conclusions rather easily." "Well, major, I am ready to answer you." "Then what becomes of your word _austral_?" "It is what it was at first. It simply means the southern (_australes_) countries." "Very well. But that word _indi_, that was first the root of Indians (_indiens_), and then of natives (_indigènes_)?" "The third and last time, it shall be the first two syllables of the word _indigence_ (destitution)." "And _contin_!" cried MacNabb; "does it still signify _continent_?" "No, since New Zealand is only an island." "Then?" inquired Glenarvan. "My dear lord," replied Paganel, "I will translate the document for you, according to my third interpretation, and you shall judge. I only make two suggestions. First, forget as far as possible the previous interpretations; and next, although certain passages will seem to you forced, and I may translate them wrongly, still, remember that they have no special importance. Moreover, the French document serves as the basis of my interpretation, and you must consider that it was written by an Englishman who could not have been perfectly familiar with the idioms of our language." So saying, Paganel, slowly pronouncing each syllable, read the following: "On the 27th of June, 1862, the brig Britannia, of Glasgow, foundered, after a long struggle (_agonie_), in the South (_australes_) Seas, on the coasts of New Ze_aland_. Two sailors and Captain Grant succeeded in landing (_abor_der). Here, continually (_contin_uellement) a prey (_pr_oie) to a cruel (_cruel_le) destitution (_indi_gence), they cast this document into the sea, at longitude ---- and latitude 37° 11'. Come to their assistance, or they are lost." Paganel stopped. His interpretation was admissible. But, although it appeared as probable as the other, still it might be as false. Glenarvan and the major therefore no longer attempted to dispute it. However, since the traces of the Britannia had not been encountered on the coasts of Patagonia or Australia, the chances were in favor of New Zealand. "Now, Paganel," said Glenarvan, "will you tell me why, for about two months, you kept this interpretation secret?" [Sidenote: UNANIMITY IN DESPAIR.] "Because I did not wish to give you vain hopes. Besides, we were going to Auckland, which is on the very latitude of the document." "But afterwards, when we were taken out of our course, why did you not speak?" "Because, however just this interpretation may be, it cannot contribute to the captain's rescue." "Why, Paganel?" "Because, admitting that Captain Grant was wrecked on the coast of New Zealand, as long as he has not made his appearance for two years since the disaster, he must have fallen a victim to the sea or the savages." "Then your opinion is----?" asked Glenarvan. "That we might perhaps find some traces of the shipwreck, but that the seamen of the Britannia have perished." "Keep all this silent, my friends," replied Glenarvan, "and leave me to choose the time for telling this sad news to the children of Captain Grant." CHAPTER LVIII. A CRY IN THE NIGHT. The crew soon learned that Ayrton's disclosures had not thrown light upon the situation of Captain Grant. The despair on board was profound, for they had relied on the quartermaster, who, however, knew nothing that could put the Duncan on the track of the Britannia. The yacht therefore continued on the same course, and the only question now was to choose the island on which to leave Ayrton. Paganel and Captain Mangles consulted the maps on board. Exactly on the thirty-seventh parallel was an island, generally known by the name of Maria Theresa, a lone rock in the midst of the Pacific, three thousand five hundred miles from the American coast, and one thousand five hundred miles from New Zealand. No ship ever came within hail of this solitary isle; no tidings from the world ever reached it. Only the storm-birds rested here during their long flights, and many maps do not even indicate its position. If anywhere absolute isolation was to be found on earth, it was here, afar from the ocean's traveled highways. Its situation was made known to Ayrton, who consented to live there; and the vessel was accordingly headed towards the island. Two days later the lookout hailed land on the horizon. It was Maria Theresa, low, long, and scarcely emerging from the waves, appearing like some enormous sea-monster. Thirty miles still lay between it and the yacht, whose prow cut the waves with such speed that soon the island grew distinct. The sun, now sinking towards the west, defined its outlines in glowing light. Several slight elevations were tinged with the last rays of the day. At five o'clock Captain Mangles thought he distinguished a faint smoke rising towards the sky. "Is that a volcano?" he inquired of Paganel, who, with his telescope, was examining the land. "I do not know what to think," replied the geographer. "Maria Theresa is a point little known. However, I should not be surprised if its origin was due to some volcanic upheaval." "But then," said Glenarvan, "if an eruption created it, may we not fear that the same agency will destroy it?" "That is scarcely probable," answered Paganel. "Its existence has been known for several centuries; and this seems a guarantee for its continuance." "Well," continued Glenarvan, "do you think, captain, that we can land before night?" [Sidenote: ANOTHER ARTIFICIAL VOLCANO.] "No, certainly not. I ought not to endanger the Duncan in the darkness, on a coast that is not familiar to me. I will keep a short distance from land, and to-morrow at daybreak we will send a boat ashore." At eight o'clock Maria Theresa, although only five miles to windward, appeared like a lengthened shadow, scarcely visible. An hour later, quite a bright light, like a fire, blazed in the darkness. It was motionless and stationary. "That would seem to indicate a volcano," said Paganel, watching it attentively. "However," replied Captain Mangles, "at this distance we ought to hear the commotion that always accompanies an eruption, and yet the wind brings no sound to our ears." "Indeed," observed Paganel, "this volcano glows, but does not speak. You might say that it throws out intermittent flashes like a lighthouse." "You are right," continued Captain Mangles; "and yet we are not on the illuminated side. Ha!" cried he, "another fire! On the shore this time! See! it moves, it changes its place!" He was not mistaken. A new light had appeared, that sometimes seemed to go out, and then all at once flash forth again. "Is the island inhabited?" asked Glenarvan. "Evidently, by savages," replied Paganel. "Then we cannot abandon the quartermaster here." "No," said the major; "that would be giving even savages too dangerous a present." "We will seek some other deserted island," resumed Glenarvan, who could not help smiling at MacNabb's delicacy. "I promised Ayrton his life, and I will keep my promise." "At all events, let us beware," added Paganel. "The New Zealanders have the barbarous custom of misleading ships by moving fires. The natives of Maria Theresa may understand this deception." "Bear away a point," cried the captain to the sailor at the helm. "To-morrow, at sunrise, we shall know what is to be done." At eleven o'clock the passengers and the captain retired to their cabins. At the bow the first watch was pacing the deck, while at the stern the helmsman was alone at his post. In the stillness Mary and Robert Grant came on deck. The two children, leaning upon the railing, gazed sadly at the phosphorescent sea and the luminous wake of the yacht. Mary thought of Robert's future; Robert thought of his sister's; both thought of their father. Was that beloved parent still living? Yet must they give him up? But no, what would life be without him? What would become of them without his protection? What would have become of them already, except for the magnanimity of Lord and Lady Glenarvan? The boy, taught by misfortune, divined the thoughts that were agitating his sister. He took her hand in his. "Mary," said he, "we must never despair. Remember the lessons our father taught us. 'Courage compensates for everything in this world,' he said. Let us have that indomitable courage that overcomes all obstacles. Hitherto you have labored for me, my sister, but now I shall labor for you." "Dear Robert!" replied the young girl. "I must tell you one thing," continued he. "You will not be sorry, Mary?" "Why should I be sorry, my child?" "And you will let me do as I wish?" "What do you mean?" asked she, anxiously. "My sister, I shall be a sailor----!" "And leave me?" cried the young girl, clasping her brother's hand. [Sidenote: EULOGY AND THRENODY.] "Yes, sister, I shall be a sailor, like my father, and like Captain John. Mary, my dear Mary, he has not lost all hope! You will have, like me, confidence in his devotion. He has promised that he will make me a thorough and efficient sailor, and we shall seek our father together. Say that you are willing, sister. What our father would have done for us it is our duty, or mine at least, to do for him. My life has but one object, to which it is wholly devoted,--to search always for him who would never have abandoned either of us. Dear Mary, how good our father was!" "And so noble, so generous!" added Mary. "Do you know, Robert, that he was already one of the glories of our country, and would have ranked among its great men if fate had not arrested his course?" "How well I know it!" answered Robert. Mary pressed her brother to her heart, and the child felt tears dropping upon his forehead. "Mary! Mary!" cried he, "it is in vain for them to speak, or to keep silent. I hope still, and shall always do so. A man like our father does not die till he has accomplished his purpose!" Mary Grant could not reply; sobs choked her utterance. A thousand emotions agitated her soul at the thought that new attempts would be made to find her father, and that the young captain's devotion was boundless. "Does Mr. John still hope?" asked she. "Yes," replied Robert. "He is a brother who will never forsake us. I shall be a sailor, shall I not, sister,--a sailor to seek my father with him? Are you willing?" "Yes," said Mary. "But must we be separated?" "You will not be alone, Mary, I know. John has told me so. Lady Helena will not permit you to leave her. You are a woman, and can and ought to accept her benefits. To refuse them would be ungrateful. But a man, as my father has told me a hundred times, ought to make his own fortune." "But what will become of our house at Dundee, so full of associations?" "We will keep it, my sister. All that has been well arranged by our friend John and Lord Glenarvan, who will keep you at Malcolm Castle like a daughter. He said so to John, who told me. You will be at home there, and wait till John and I bring back our father. Ah, what a joyful day that will be!" cried Robert, whose face was radiant with enthusiasm. "My brother, my child!" exclaimed Mary, "how happy our father would be if he could hear you! How much you resemble him, dear Robert! When you are a man you will be quite like him!" "God grant it, Mary!" said Robert, glowing with holy and filial pride. "But how shall we pay our debt to Lord and Lady Glenarvan?" continued Mary. "Oh, that will not be difficult," answered Robert, with his boyish impulsiveness. "We will tell them how much we love and respect them, and we will show it to them by our actions." "That is all we can do!" added the young girl, covering her brother's face with kisses; "and all that they will like, too!" Then, relapsing into reveries, the two children of the captain gazed silently into the shadowy obscurity of the night. However, in fancy they still conversed, questioned, and answered each other. The sea rocked the ship in silence, and the phosphorescent waters glistened in the darkness. But now a strange, a seemingly supernatural event took place. The brother and sister, by one of those magnetic attractions that mysteriously draw the souls of friends together, experienced at the same instant the same curious hallucination. [Sidenote: "METHOUGHT, THE BILLOWS SPOKE!"] From the midst of these alternately brightening and darkening waves, they thought they heard a voice issue, whose depth of sadness stirred every fibre of their hearts. "Help! help!" cried the voice. "Mary," said Robert, "did you hear?" And, raising their heads above the bulwarks, they both gazed searchingly into the misty shadows of the night. Yet there was nothing but the darkness stretching blankly before them. "Robert," said Mary, pale with emotion, "I thought--yes, I thought like you." At this moment another cry reached them, and this time the illusion was such that these words broke simultaneously from both their hearts: "My father! my father!" This was too much for Mary Grant. Overcome by emotion, she sank senseless into her brother's arms. "Help!" cried Robert. "My sister! my father! help!" The man at the helm hastened to Miss Grant's assistance, and after him the sailors of the watch, Captain Mangles, Lady Helena, and Lord Glenarvan, who had been suddenly awakened. "My sister is dying, and my father is yonder!" exclaimed Robert, pointing to the waves. No one understood his words. "Yes," repeated he, "my father is yonder! I heard his voice, and Mary did too!" Just then Mary Grant recovered consciousness, and, looking wildly around, cried: "My father, my father is yonder!" The unfortunate girl arose, and, leaning over the bulwark, would have thrown herself into the sea. "My lord! Madam!" repeated she, clasping her hands, "I tell you my father is there! I declare to you that I heard his voice issue from the waves like a despairing wail, like a last adieu!" [Sidenote: THE POSITIVENESS OF DISBELIEF.] Then her feelings overcame the poor girl, and she became insensible. They carried her to her cabin, and Lady Helena followed, to minister to her wants, while Robert kept repeating: [Illustration: The unfortunate girl arose, and, leaning over the bulwark, would have thrown herself into the sea.] "My father! my father is there! I am sure of it, my lord!" The witnesses of this sorrowful scene perceived at last that the two children had been the sport of an hallucination. But how undeceive their senses, which had been so strongly impressed? Glenarvan, however, attempted it, and taking Robert by the hand, said: "You heard your father's voice, my dear boy?" "Yes, my lord. Yonder, in the midst of the waves, he cried, 'Help! help!'" "And you recognized the voice?" "Did I recognize it? Oh, yes, I assure you! My sister heard and recognized it, too. How could both of us be deceived? My lord, let us go to his rescue. A boat! a boat!" Glenarvan saw plainly that he could not undeceive the poor child. Still, he made a last attempt, and called the helmsman. "Hawkins," asked he, "you were at the wheel when Miss Grant was so singularly affected?" "Yes, my lord," replied Hawkins. "And you did not see or hear anything?" "Nothing." "You see how it is, Robert." "If it had been _his_ father," answered the lad, with irrepressible energy, "he would not say so. It was _my_ father, my lord! my father, my father----!" Robert's voice was choked by a sob. Pale and speechless, he, too, like his sister, lost consciousness. Glenarvan had him carried to his bed, and the child, overcome by emotion, sank into a profound slumber. "Poor orphans!" said Captain Mangles; "God tries them in a terrible way!" "Yes," replied Glenarvan, "excessive grief has produced upon both at the same moment a similar effect." "Upon both!" murmured Paganel. "That is strange!" Then, leaning forward, after making a sign to keep still, he listened attentively. The silence was profound everywhere. Paganel called in a loud voice, but there was no answer. "It is strange!" repeated the geographer, returning to his cabin; "an intimate sympathy of thought and grief does not suffice to explain this mystery." Early the next morning the passengers (and among them were Robert and Mary, for it was impossible to restrain them) were assembled on deck. All wished to examine this land, which had been scarcely distinguishable the night before. The principal points of the island were eagerly scanned. The yacht coasted along about a mile from the shore, and the unassisted eye could easily discern the larger objects. Suddenly Robert uttered a cry. He maintained that he saw two men running and gesticulating, while a third was waving a flag. "Yes: the flag of England!" cried Captain Mangles, when he had used his glass. "It is true!" said Paganel, turning quickly towards Robert. "My lord!" exclaimed the boy, trembling with excitement,--"my lord, if you do not wish me to swim to the island, you will lower a boat! Ah, my lord, if you please, I do wish to be the first to land!" [Sidenote: A COMPENSATION FOR ALL.] No one knew what to say. Were there three men, shipwrecked sailors, Englishmen, on that island? All recalled the events of the night before, and thought of the voice heard by Robert and Mary. Perhaps, after all, they were not mistaken. A voice might have reached them. But could this voice be that of their father? No, alas, no! And each, thinking of the terrible disappointment that was probably in store, trembled lest this new trial would exceed their strength. But how restrain them? Lord Glenarvan had not the courage. "Lower the boat!" cried he. In a moment this was done; the two children, Glenarvan, Captain Mangles, and Paganel stepped into it, and six earnest and skilled oarsmen sped away towards the shore. At ten yards therefrom, Mary uttered again the heart-rending cry: "My father!" A man was standing on the beach between two others. His form was tall and stout, while his weather-beaten yet pleasant countenance betrayed a strong resemblance to the features of Mary and Robert Grant. It was, indeed, the man whom the children had so often described. Their hearts had not deceived them. It was their father, it was Captain Grant! He heard his daughter's cry, he opened his arms, and supported her fainting form. CHAPTER LIX. CAPTAIN GRANT'S STORY. Joy does not kill, for the long lost father and his recovered children were soon rejoicing together and preparing to return to the yacht. But how can we depict that scene, so little looked for by any? Words are powerless. [Sidenote: THE JOYS OF REUNION.] As soon as he gained the deck, Harry Grant sank upon his knees. The pious Scotchman, on touching what was to him the soil of his country, wished, first of all, to thank God for his deliverance. Then, turning towards Lady Helena; Lord Glenarvan, and their companions, he thanked them in a voice broken by emotion. While on their way to the yacht, his children had briefly told him the story of the Duncan. [Illustration: A man was standing on the beach between two others. His form was tall and stout.] How great a debt of gratitude did he feel that he owed this noble woman and her companions! From Lord Glenarvan down to the lowest sailor, had not all struggled and suffered for him? Harry Grant expressed the feelings of thankfulness that overflowed his heart with so much simplicity and nobleness, and his manly countenance was illumined by so pure and sincere a sentiment, that all felt themselves repaid for the trials they had undergone. Even the imperturbable major's eye was wet with a tear that he could not repress. As for Paganel, he wept like a child who does not think of hiding his emotion. Captain Grant could not cease gazing at his daughter. He found her beautiful and charming, and told her so again and again, appealing to Lady Helena as if to be assured that his fatherly love was not mistaken. Then, turning to his son, he cried rapturously: "How he has grown! He is a man!" He lavished upon these two beings, so dearly loved, the thousand expressions of love that had been unuttered during long years of absence. Robert introduced him successively to all his friends. All had alike proved their kindness and good wishes towards the two orphans. When Captain Mangles came to be introduced, he blushed like a young girl, and his voice trembled as he saluted Mary's father. Lady Helena then told the story of the voyage, and made the captain proud of his son and daughter. He learned the exploits of the young hero, and how the boy had already repaid part of his obligation to Lord Glenarvan at the peril of his life. Captain Mangles' language to Mary and concerning her was so truly loving, that Harry Grant, who had been already informed on this point by Lady Helena, placed the hand of his daughter in that of the noble young captain, and, turning towards Lord and Lady Glenarvan, said: "My lord and lady, join with me to bless our children!" It was not long before Glenarvan related Ayrton's story to the captain, who confirmed the quartermaster's declaration in regard to his having been abandoned on the Australian coast. "He is a shrewd and courageous man," added he; "but his passions have ruined him. May meditation and repentance lead him to better feelings!" But before Ayrton was transferred to Tabor Island, Harry Grant wished to show his new friends the bounds of his habitation. He invited them to visit his house, and sit for once at his table. Glenarvan and his companions cordially accepted the invitation, and Robert and Mary were not a little desirous to see those haunts where their father had doubtless at times bewailed his fate. A boat was manned, and the whole party soon disembarked on the shores of the island. A few hours sufficed to traverse Captain Grant's domain. It was in reality the summit of a submarine mountain, covered with basaltic rocks and volcanic fragments. When the shipwrecked seamen of the Britannia took refuge here, the hand of man began to control the development of nature's resources, and in two years and a half the captain and his companions had completely metamorphosed their island home. The visitors at last reached the house, shaded by verdant gum-trees, while before its windows stretched the glorious sea, glittering in the rays of the sun. Harry Grant set his table in the shade, and all took seats around it. Some cold roast meat, some of the produce of the breadfruit-tree, several bowls of milk, two or three bunches of wild chicory, and pure, fresh water, formed the elements of the simple but healthful repast. Paganel was in ecstasies. It recalled his old idea of Robinson Crusoe. [Sidenote: THE RULING PASSION STILL STRONG.] "That rascal Ayrton will have no cause to complain," cried he in his enthusiasm. "The island is a paradise!" "Yes," replied Harry Grant, "a paradise for three poor sailors whom Heaven sheltered here. But I regret that Maria Theresa is not a large and fertile island, with a river instead of a rivulet, and a harbor instead of a coast so exposed to the force of the waves." "And why, captain?" asked Glenarvan. "Because I would have laid here the foundation of that colony that I wish to present to Scotland." "Ah!" said Glenarvan. "Then you have not abandoned the idea that has made you so popular in your native land?" "No, my lord; and God has saved me, through your instrumentality, only to permit me to accomplish it. Our poor brothers of old Caledonia shall yet have another Scotland in the New World. Our dear country must possess in these seas a colony of her own, where she can find that independence and prosperity that are wanting in many European empires." "That is well said, captain," replied Lady Helena. "It is a noble project, and worthy of a great heart. But this island----?" "No, madam, it is a rock, only large enough to support a few colonists; while we need a vast territory, rich in all primitive treasures." "Well, captain," cried Glenarvan, "the future is before us! Let us seek this land together!" The hands of both men met in a warm clasp, as if to ratify this promise. All now wished to hear the story of the shipwrecked sailors of the Britannia during those two long years of solitude. Harry Grant accordingly hastened to satisfy the desires of his new friends, and began as follows: [Illustration: Harry Grant set his table in the shade, and all took seats around it.] [Sidenote: A TALE OF INDUSTRY.] "It was on the night of the 26th of June, 1862, that the Britannia, disabled by a six days' tempest, was wrecked on the rock of Maria Theresa. The sea was so high that to save anything was impossible, and all the crew perished except my two sailors, Bob Learce and Joe Bell, and myself; and we succeeded in reaching the coast after many struggles. The land that we thus reached was only a desert island, two miles wide and five long, with a few trees in the interior, some meadow land, and a spring of fresh water that, fortunately, has never ceased to flow. Alone with my two sailors, in this quarter of the globe, I did not despair, but, placing my confidence in God, engaged in a resolute struggle. Bob and Joe, my companions and friends in misfortune, energetically aided my efforts. We began, like Robinson Crusoe, by collecting the fragments of the vessel, some tools, a little powder, several weapons, and a bag of precious seeds. The first weeks were very toilsome, but soon hunting and fishing furnished us subsistence, for wild goats swarmed in the interior of the island, and marine animals abounded on its coast. Gradually our daily routine was regularly organized. I determined our exact situation by my instruments, which I had saved from the shipwreck. We were out of the regular course of ships, and could not be rescued except by a providential interposition. Although thinking of those who were dear to me, and whom I never expected to see again, still I accepted this trial with fortitude, and my most earnest prayers were for my two children. Meantime we labored resolutely. Much of the land was sown with the seeds taken from the Britannia; and potatoes, chicory, sorrel, and other vegetables improved and varied our daily food. We caught several goats, which were easily kept, and had milk and butter. The breadfruit-tree, which grew in the dry creeks, furnished us with a sort of nourishing bread, and the wants of life no longer gave us any alarm. We built a house out of the fragments of the Britannia, covered it with sails, carefully tarred, and under this shelter the rainy season was comfortably passed. Here many plans were discussed, and many dreams enjoyed, the best of which has just been realized! At first I thought of braving the sea in a boat made of the wreck of the vessel; but a vast distance separated us from the nearest land. No boat could have endured so long a voyage. I therefore abandoned my design, and no longer expected deliverance, except through a Divine interposition. Ah, my poor children, how many times, on the rocks of the coast, have we waited for ships at sea! During the entire period of our exile only two or three sails appeared on the horizon, and these soon to disappear again. Two years and a half passed thus. We no longer hoped, but still did not wholly despair. At last, yesterday afternoon, I had mounted the highest summit of the island, when I perceived a faint smoke in the west, which grew clearer, and I soon distinctly discerned a vessel that seemed to be coming towards us. But would she not avoid this island, which offered no landing-place? Ah, what a day of anguish, and how my heart throbbed! My companions kindled a fire on one of the peaks. Night came, but the ship gave no signal for approach. Deliverance was there, and should we see it vanish? I hesitated no longer. The darkness increased. The vessel might double the island during the night. I threw myself into the sea, to swim to her. Hope increased my strength. I beat the waves with almost superhuman energy, and approached the yacht. Scarcely thirty yards separated me, when she tacked. Then I uttered those despairing cries which my two children alone heard, for they were no illusion. I returned to the shore, exhausted and overcome by fatigue and emotion. It was a terrible night, this last one on the island. We believed ourselves forever abandoned, when, at daybreak, I perceived the yacht slowly coasting along the shores. Your boat was then lowered,--we were saved, and, thanks to the Divine goodness of Heaven, my dear children were there to stretch out their arms to me!" [Sidenote: THE DOCUMENT ONCE MORE!] Harry Grant's story was finished amid a fresh shower of kisses and caresses from Robert and Mary. The captain learned now, for the first time, that he owed his deliverance to that hieroglyphic document that, eight days after his shipwreck, he had inclosed in a bottle and confided to the mercy of the waves. But what did Jacques Paganel think during this recital? The worthy geographer revolved the words of the document a thousand ways in his brain. He reviewed his three interpretations, which were all false. How had this island been indicated in these damaged papers? He could no longer restrain himself, but, seizing Harry Grant's hand, cried: "Captain, will you tell me what your undecipherable document contained?" At this request curiosity was general, for the long-sought clew to the mystery would now be given. "Well, captain," said Paganel, "do you remember the exact words of the document?" "Perfectly," replied Harry Grant; "and scarcely a day has passed but memory has recalled those words upon which our only hope hung." "And what are they, captain?" inquired Glenarvan. "Tell us, for our curiosity is great." "I am ready to satisfy you," continued Harry Grant; "but you know that, to increase the chances of success, I inclosed in the bottle three documents, written in three languages. Which one do you wish to hear?" "They are not identical, then?" cried Paganel. "Yes, almost to a word." "Well, give us the French document," said Glenarvan. "This one was spared the most by the waves, and has served as the principal basis for our search." "This is it, my lord, word for word," answered Harry Grant. "'On the 27th June, 1862, the brig Britannia, of Glasgow, was lost 1500 leagues from Patagonia, in the southern hemisphere. Carried by the waves, two sailors and Captain Grant reached Tabor Island----'" "Ha!" interrupted Paganel. "'Here,'" resumed Harry Grant, "'continually a prey to a cruel destitution, they cast this document into the sea at longitude 153° and latitude 37° 11'. Come to their aid, or they are lost.'" At the word "Tabor," Paganel had suddenly risen, and then, controlling himself no longer, he cried: "How Tabor Island? It is Maria Theresa." "Certainly, Mr. Paganel," replied Harry Grant; "Maria Theresa on the English and German, but Tabor on the French maps." At this moment a vigorous blow descended upon Paganel's shoulder. Truth compels us to say that it was from the major, who now failed in his strict habits of propriety. "A fine geographer you are!" said MacNabb, in a tone of badinage. "But no matter, since we have succeeded." "No matter?" cried Paganel; "I ought never to have forgotten that twofold appellation! It is an unpardonable mistake, unworthy of the secretary of a Geographical Society. I am disgraced!" When the meal was finished, Harry Grant put everything in order in his house. He took nothing away, for he was willing that the guilty convict should inherit his possessions. They returned to the vessel; and, as he expected to sail the same day, Glenarvan gave orders for the quartermaster's landing. Ayrton was brought on deck, and found himself in the presence of Harry Grant. "It is I, Ayrton," said he. "Yes, captain," replied Ayrton, without betraying any astonishment at Harry Grant's appearance. "Well, I am not sorry to see you again in good health." [Illustration: The passengers could see the quartermaster, with folded arms, standing motionless as a statue, on a rock, and gazing at the vessel.] "It seems, Ayrton, that I made a mistake in landing you on an inhabited coast." "It seems so, captain." "You will take my place on this desert island. May Heaven lead you to repentance!" "May it be so," rejoined Ayrton, in a calm tone. Then Glenarvan, addressing the quartermaster, said: "Do you still adhere, Ayrton, to this determination to be abandoned?" "Yes, my lord." "Does Tabor Island suit you?" "Perfectly." "Now listen to my last words. You will be far removed from every land, and deprived of all communication with your fellow-men. Miracles are rare, and you will not probably remove from this island, where we leave you. You will be alone, under the eye of God, who reads the uttermost depths of all hearts; but you will not be lost, as was Captain Grant. However unworthy you may be of the remembrance of men, still they will remember you. I know where you are, and will never forget you." "Thank you, my lord!" replied Ayrton, simply. Such were the last words exchanged between Glenarvan and the quartermaster. The boat was ready, and Ayrton embarked. Captain Mangles had previously sent to the island several cases of preserved food, some clothes, tools, weapons, and a supply of powder and shot. The abandoned man could therefore employ his time to advantage. Nothing was wanting, not even books, foremost among which was a Bible. The hour for separation had come. The crew and passengers stood on deck. More than one felt the heart strangely moved. Lady Helena and Mary Grant could not repress their emotion. "Must it then be so?" inquired the young wife of her husband. "Must this unfortunate be abandoned?" [Sidenote: "FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL!"] "He must, Helena," answered Glenarvan. "It is his punishment." At this moment the boat, commanded by Captain Mangles, started. Ayrton raised his hat and gave a grave salute. Glenarvan and the crew returned this last farewell, as if to a man about to die, as he departed, in a profound silence. On reaching the shore, Ayrton leaped upon the sand, and the boat returned. It was then four o'clock in the afternoon, and from the upper deck the passengers could see the quartermaster, with folded arms, standing motionless as a statue, on a rock, and gazing at the vessel. "Shall we start, my lord?" asked Captain Mangles. "Yes, John," replied Glenarvan, quickly, with more emotion than he wished to manifest. "All right!" cried the captain to the engineer. The steam hissed, the screw beat the waves, and at eight o'clock the last summits of Tabor Island disappeared in the shadows of the night. CHAPTER LX. PAGANEL'S LAST ENTANGLEMENT. Eleven days after leaving Tabor Island the Duncan came in sight of the Australian coast, and anchored in Talcahuana Bay. Five months had elapsed since her departure from this port, during which time the travelers had made the circuit of the world on this thirty-seventh parallel. Their efforts had not been in vain, for they had found the shipwrecked survivors of the Britannia. The Duncan, having taken in her necessary stores, skirted the coasts of Patagonia, doubled Cape Horn, and steamed across the Atlantic. The voyage was very uneventful. The yacht carried a full complement of happy people; there seemed to be no secrets on board. A mystery, however, still perplexed MacNabb. Why did Paganel always keep hermetically incased in his clothes, and wear a comforter over his ears? The major longed to know the motive for this singular fancy. But in spite of his questions, hints, and suspicions, Paganel did not unbutton his coat. At last, fifty-three days after leaving Talcahuana, Captain Mangles descried the lighthouse of Cape Clear. The vessel entered St. George's Channel, crossed the Irish Sea, and passed into the Frith of Clyde. At eleven o'clock they anchored at Dumbarton, and early in the afternoon the travelers reached Malcolm Castle, amidst the hurrahs of their tenantry and friends. Thus it was that Harry Grant and his two companions were rescued, and that John Mangles married Mary Grant in the old cathedral of St. Mungo, where the Rev. Mr. Morton, who nine months before had prayed for the rescue of the father, now blessed the union of the daughter with one of his deliverers. It was arranged that Robert should be a sailor, like his father and brother-in-law, and that he should continue the contemplated project of the former, under the munificent patronage of Lord Glenarvan. But was Jacques Paganel to die a bachelor? Certainly not; for, after his heroic exploits, the worthy geographer could not escape celebrity. His eccentricities (and his abilities) made him much talked of in Scotland. People seemed as though they could not show him enough attention. Just at this time an amiable lady of thirty, none other than the major's cousin, a little eccentric herself, but still agreeable and charming, fell in love with the geographer's peculiarities. Paganel was far from being insensible to Miss Arabella's attractions, yet did not dare to declare his sentiments. The major accordingly undertook the part of Cupid's messenger between these two congenial hearts, and even told Paganel that marriage was "the last blunder" that he could commit. But the geographer was very much embarrassed, and, strangely enough, could not summon courage to speak for himself. [Illustration: Early in the afternoon the travelers reached Malcolm Castle, amidst the hurrahs of their tenantry and friends.] "Does not Miss Arabella please you?" MacNabb would say to him. "Oh, major, she is charming!" cried Paganel,--"a thousand times too charming for me; and, if I must tell you, would please me better if she were less so. I should like to find a defect." "Be easy," answered the major; "she has more than one. The most perfect woman always has her share. Well, then, Paganel, are you decided?" "I do not dare." "But, my learned friend, why do you hesitate?" "I am unworthy of her!" was the geographer's invariable reply. At last, one day, driven desperate by the irrepressible major, Paganel confessed to him, under the pledge of secrecy, a peculiarity that would facilitate his identification, if the police should ever be on his track! "Bah!" exclaimed the major. "It is as I tell you," persisted Paganel. "What matter, my worthy friend?" "Is that your opinion?" "On the contrary, you are only more remarkable. This adds to your personal advantages. It makes you the inimitable individual of whom Arabella has dreamed." And the major, preserving an imperturbable gravity, left Paganel a prey to the most acute anxiety. A short interview took place between MacNabb and the lady, and fifteen weeks after a marriage was celebrated with great pomp in the chapel of Malcolm Castle. [Illustration: Fifteen weeks after a marriage was celebrated with great pomp in the chapel of Malcolm Castle.] The geographer's secret would doubtless have remained forever buried in the abysses of the unknown if the major had not told it to Glenarvan, who did not conceal it from Lady Helena, who communicated it to Mrs. Mangles. In short, it reached the ear of Mrs. Olbinett, and spread. Jacques Paganel, during his three days' captivity among the Maoris, had been tattooed from head to foot, and bore on his breast the picture of an heraldic kiwi with outstretched wings, in the act of biting at his heart. This was the only adventure of his great voyage for which Paganel could never be consoled or pardon the New Zealanders. In spite of the representations of his friends, he dared not go back to France, for fear of exposing the whole Geographical Society in his person to the jests and railleries of the caricaturists. The return of Captain Grant to Scotland was welcomed as a cause for national rejoicing, and he became the popular man of old Caledonia. His son Robert has become a sailor like himself, and, under the patronage of Lord Glenarvan, has undertaken the plan of founding a Scottish colony on the shores washed by the Pacific Ocean. 9826 ---- Homeward Bound; or, The Chase. A Tale of the Sea. By J. Fenimore Cooper. "Is 't not strange, Canidius. That from Tarentum and Brundusium He could so quickly cut the Ionian Sea, and take in Toryne."--SHAKSPEARE. Complete in One Volume. New Edition. NEW YORK: Published by Hurd and Houghton, Cambridge: Riverside Press. 1871 Homeward Bound. Preface. In one respect, this book is a parallel to Franklin's well-known apologue of the hatter and his sign. It was commenced with a sole view to exhibit the present state of society in the United States, through the agency, in part, of a set of characters with different peculiarities, who had freshly arrived from Europe, and to whom the distinctive features of the country would be apt to present themselves with greater force, than to those who had never lived beyond the influence of the things portrayed. By the original plan, the work was to open at the threshold of the country, or with the arrival of the travellers at Sandy Hook, from which point the tale was to have been carried regularly forward to its conclusion. But a consultation with others has left little more of this plan than the hatter's friends left of his sign. As a vessel was introduced in the first chapter, the cry was for "more ship," until the work has become "all ship;" it actually closing at, or near, the spot where it was originally intended it should commence. Owing to this diversion from the author's design--a design that lay at the bottom of all his projects--a necessity has been created of running the tale through two separate works, or of making a hurried and insufficient conclusion. The former scheme has, consequently, been adopted. It is hoped that the interest of the narrative will not be essentially diminished by this arrangement. There will be, very likely, certain imaginative persons, who will feel disposed to deny that every minute event mentioned in these volumes ever befell one and the same ship, though ready enough to admit that they may very well have occurred to several different ships: a mode of commenting that is much in favour with your small critic. To this objection, we shall make but a single answer. The caviller, if any there should prove to be, is challenged to produce the log-book of the Montauk, London packet, and if it should be found to contain a single sentence to controvert any one of our statements or facts, a frank recantation shall be made. Captain Truck is quite as well known in New York as in London or Portsmouth, and to him also we refer with confidence, for a confirmation of all we have said, with the exception, perhaps, of the little occasional touches of character that may allude directly to himself. In relation to the latter, Mr. Leach, and particularly Mr. Saunders, are both invoked as unimpeachable witnesses. Most of our readers will probably know that all which appears in a New York journal is not necessarily as true as the Gospel. As some slight deviations from the facts accidentally occur, though doubtless at very long intervals, it should not be surprising that they sometimes omit circumstances that are quite as veracious as anything they do actually utter to the world. No argument, therefore, can justly be urged against the incidents of this story, on account of the circumstance of their not being embodied in the regular marine news of the day. Another serious objection on the part of the American reader to this work is foreseen. The author has endeavoured to interest his readers in occurrences of a date as antiquated as two years can make them, when he is quite aware, that, in order to keep pace with a state of society in which there was no yesterday, it would have been much safer to anticipate things, by laying his scene two years in advance. It is hoped, however, that the public sentiment will not be outraged by this glimpse at antiquity, and this the more so, as the sequel of the tale will bring down events within a year of the present moment. Previously to the appearance of that sequel, however, it may be well to say a few words concerning the fortunes of some of our _characters_, as it might be _en attendant_. To commence with the most important: the Montauk herself, once deemed so "splendid" and convenient, is already supplanted in the public favour by a new ship; the reign of a popular packet, a popular preacher, or a popular anything-else, in America, being limited by a national _esprit de corps_, to a time materially shorter than that of a lustre. This, however, is no more than just; rotation in favour being as evidently a matter of constitutional necessity, as rotation in office. Captain Truck, for a novelty, continues popular, a circumstance that he himself ascribes to the fact of his being still a bachelor. Toast is promoted, figuring at the head of a pantry quite equal to that of his great master, who regards his improvement with some such eyes as Charles the Twelfth of Sweden regarded that of his great rival Peter, after the affair of Pultowa. Mr. Leach now smokes his own cigar, and issues his own orders from a monkey rail, his place in the line being supplied by his former "Dickey." He already speaks of his great model, as of one a little antiquated it is true, but as a man who had merit in his time, though it was not the particular merit that is in fashion to-day. Notwithstanding these little changes, which are perhaps inseparable from the events of a period so long as two years in a country as energetic as America, and in which nothing seems to be stationary but the ages of Tontine nominees and three-life leases, a cordial esteem was created among the principal actors in the events of this book, which is likely to outlast the passage, and which will not fail to bring most of them together again in the sequel. _April_ 1838. Chapter I. An inner room I have, Where thou shalt rest and some refreshment take, And then we will more fully talk of this ORRA. The coast of England, though infinitely finer than our own, is more remarkable for its verdure, and for a general appearance of civilisation, than for its natural beauties. The chalky cliffs may seem bold and noble to the American, though compared to the granite piles that buttress the Mediterranean they are but mole-hills; and the travelled eye seeks beauties instead, in the retiring vales, the leafy hedges, and the clustering towns that dot the teeming island. Neither is Portsmouth a very favourable specimen of a British port, considered solely in reference to the picturesque. A town situated on a humble point, and fortified after the manner of the Low Countries, with an excellent haven, suggests more images of the useful than of the pleasing; while a background of modest receding hills offers little beyond the verdant swales of the country. In this respect England itself has the fresh beauty of youth, rather than the mellowed hues of a more advanced period of life; or it might be better to say, it has the young freshness and retiring sweetness that distinguish her females, as compared with the warmer tints of Spain and Italy, and which, women and landscape alike, need the near view to be appreciated. Some such thoughts as these passed through the mind of the traveller who stood on the deck of the packet Montauk, resting an elbow on the quarter-deck rail, as he contemplated the view of the coast that stretched before him east and west for leagues. The manner in which this gentleman, whose temples were sprinkled with grey hairs, regarded the scene, denoted more of the thoughtfulness of experience, and of tastes improved by observation, than it is usual to meet amid the bustling and common-place characters that compose the majority in almost every situation of life. The calmness of his exterior, an air removed equally from the admiration of the novice and the superciliousness of the tyro, had, indeed, so strongly distinguished him from the moment he embarked in London to that in which he was now seen in the position mentioned, that several of the seamen swore he was a man-of-war's-man in disguise. The fair-haired, lovely, blue-eyed girl at his side, too seemed a softened reflection of all his sentiment, intelligence, knowledge, tastes, and cultivation, united to the artlessness and simplicity that became her sex and years. "We have seen nobler coasts, Eve," said the gentleman, pressing the arm that leaned on his own; "but, after all England will always be fair to American eyes." "More particularly so if those eyes first opened to the light in the eighteenth century, father." "You, at least, my child, have been educated beyond the reach of national foibles, whatever may have been my own evil fortune; and still, I think even you have seen a great deal to admire in this country, as well as in this coast." Eve Effingham glanced a moment towards the eye of her father, and perceiving that he spoke in playfulness, without suffering a cloud to shadow a countenance that usually varied with her emotions, she continued the discourse, which had, in fact, only been resumed by the remark first mentioned. "I have been educated, as it is termed, in so many different places and countries," returned Eve, smiling, "that I sometimes fancy I was born a woman, like my great predecessor and namesake, the mother of Abel. If a congress of nations, in the way of masters, can make one independent of prejudice, I may claim to possess the advantage. My greatest fear is, that in acquiring liberality, I have acquired nothing else." Mr. Effingham turned a look of parental fondness, in which parental pride was clearly mingled, on the face of his daughter, and said with his eyes, though his tongue did not second the expression, "This is a fear, sweet one, that none besides thyself would feel." "A congress of nations, truly!" muttered another male voice near the father and daughter. "You have been taught music in general, by seven masters of as many different states, besides the touch of the guitar by a Spaniard; Greek by a German; the living tongues by the European powers, and philosophy by seeing the world; and now with a brain full of learning, fingers full of touches, eyes full of tints, and a person full of grace, your father is taking you back to America, to 'waste your sweetness on the desert air.'" "Poetically expressed, if not justly imagined, cousin Jack," returned the laughing Eve; "but you have forgot to add, and a heart full of feeling for the land of my birth." "We shall see, in the end." "In the end, as in the beginning, now and for evermore." "All love is eternal in the commencement." "Do you make no allowance for the constancy of woman? Think you that a girl of twenty can forget the country of her birth, the land of her forefathers--or, as you call it yourself when in a good humour, the land of liberty?" "A pretty specimen _you_ will have of its liberty!" returned the cousin sarcastically. "After having passed a girlhood of wholesome restraint in the rational society of Europe, you are about to return home to the slavery of American female life, just as you are about to be married!" "Married! Mr. Effingham?" "I suppose the catastrophe will arrive, sooner or later, and it is more likely to occur to a girl of twenty than to a girl of ten." "Mr. John Effingham never lost an argument for the want of a convenient fact, my love," the father observed by way of bringing the brief discussion to a close. "But here are the boats approaching; let us withdraw a little, and examine the chance medley of faces with which we are to become familiar by the intercourse of a month." "You will be much more likely to agree on a verdict of murder," muttered the kinsman. Mr. Effingham led his daughter into the hurricane-house--or, as the packet-men quaintly term it, the _coach_-house, where they stood watching the movements on the quarter-deck for the next half-hour; an interval of which we shall take advantage to touch in a few of the stronger lights of our picture, leaving the softer tints and the shadows to be discovered by the manner in which the artist "tells the story." Edward and John Effingham were brothers' children; were born on the same day; had passionately loved the same woman, who had preferred the first-named, and died soon after Eve was born; had, notwithstanding this collision in feeling, remained sincere friends, and this the more so, probably, from a mutual and natural sympathy in their common loss; had lived much together at home, and travelled much together abroad, and were now about to return in company to the land of their birth, after what might be termed an absence of twelve years; though both had visited America for short periods in the intervals,--John not less than five times. There was a strong family likeness between the cousins, their persons and even features being almost identical; though it was scarcely possible for two human beings to leave more opposite impressions on mere casual spectators when seen separately. Both were tall, of commanding presence, and handsome; while one was winning in appearance, and the other, if not positively forbidding, at least distant and repulsive. The noble outline of face in Edward Effingham had got to be cold severity in that of John; the aquiline nose of the latter, seeming to possess an eagle-like and hostile curvature,--his compressed lip, sarcastic and cold expression, and the fine classical chin, a feature in which so many of the Saxon race fail, a haughty scorn that caused strangers usually to avoid him. Eve drew with great facility and truth, and she had an eye, as her cousin had rightly said, "full of tints." Often and often had she sketched both of these loved faces, and never without wondering wherein that strong difference existed in nature which she had never been able to impart to her drawings. The truth is, that the subtle character of John Effingham's face would have puzzled the skill of one who had made the art his study for a life, and it utterly set the graceful but scarcely profound knowledge of the beautiful young painter at defiance. All the points of character that rendered her father so amiable and so winning, and which were rather felt than perceived, in his cousin were salient and bold, and if it may be thus expressed, had become indurated by mental suffering and disappointment. The cousins were both rich, though in ways as opposite as their dispositions and habits of thought. Edward Effingham possessed a large hereditary property, that brought a good income, and which attached him to this world of ours by kindly feelings towards its land and water; while John, much the wealthier of the two, having inherited a large commercial fortune, did not own ground enough to bury him. As he sometimes deridingly said, he "kept his gold in corporations, that were as soulless as himself." Still, John Effingham was a man of cultivated mind, of extensive intercourse with the world, and of manners that varied with the occasion; or perhaps it were better to say, with his humours. In all these particulars but the latter the cousins were alike; Edward Effingham's deportment being as equal as his temper, though also distinguished for a knowledge of society. These gentlemen had embarked at London, on their fiftieth birthday, in the packet of the 1st of October, bound to New York; the lands and family residence of the proprietor lying in the state of that name, of which all of the parties were natives. It is not usual for the cabin passengers of the London packets to embark in the docks; but Mr. Effingham,--as we shall call the father in general, to distinguish him from the bachelor, John,--as an old and experienced traveller, had determined to make his daughter familiar with the peculiar odours of the vessel in smooth water, as a protection against sea-sickness; a malady, however, from which she proved to be singularly exempt in the end. They had, accordingly, been on board three days, when the ship came to an anchor off Portsmouth, the point where the remainder of the passengers were to join her on that particular day when the scene of this tale commences. At this precise moment, then, the Montauk was lying at a single anchor, not less than a league from the land, in a flat calm, with her three topsails loose, the courses in the brails, and with all those signs of preparation about her that are so bewildering to landsmen, but which seamen comprehend as clearly as words. The captain had no other business there than to take on board the wayfarers, and to renew his supply of fresh meat and vegetables; things of so familiar import on shore as to be seldom thought of until missed, but which swell into importance during a passage of a month's duration. Eve had employed her three days of probation quite usefully, having, with the exception of the two gentlemen, the officers of the vessel, and one other person, been in quiet possession of all the ample, not to say luxurious cabins. It is true, she had a female attendant; but to her she had been accustomed from childhood, and Nanny Sidley, as her quondam nurse and actual lady's-maid was termed, appeared so much a part of herself, that, while her absence would be missed almost as greatly as that of a limb, her presence was as much a matter of course as a hand or foot. Nor will a passing word concerning this excellent and faithful domestic be thrown away, in the brief preliminary explanations we are making. Ann Sidley was one of those excellent creatures who, it is the custom with the European travellers to say, do not exist at all in America, and who, while they are certainly less numerous than could be wished, have no superiors in the world, in their way. She had been born a servant, lived a servant, and was quite content to die a servant,--and this, too, in one and the same family. We shall not enter into a philosophical examination of the reasons that had induced old Ann to feel certain she was in the precise situation to render her more happy than any other that to her was attainable; but feel it she did, as John Effingham used to express it, "from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot." She had passed through infancy, childhood, girlhood, up to womanhood, _pari passu_, with the mother of Eve, having been the daughter of a gardener, who died in the service of the family, and had heart enough to feel that the mixed relations of civilised society, when properly understood and appreciated, are more pregnant of happiness than the vulgar scramble and heart-burnings, that, in the _mêlée_ of a migrating and unsettled population, are so injurious to the grace and principles of American life. At the death of Eve's mother, she had transferred her affections to the child; and twenty years of assiduity and care had brought her to feel as much tenderness for her lovely young charge as if she had been her natural parent. But Nanny Sidley was better fitted to care for the body than the mind of Eve; and when, at the age of ten, the latter was placed under the control of an accomplished governess, the good woman had meekly and quietly sunk the duties of the nurse in those of the maid. One of the severest trials--or "crosses," as she herself termed it--that poor Nanny had ever experienced, was endured when Eve began to speak in a language she could not herself comprehend; for, in despite of the best intentions in the world, and twelve years of use, the good woman could never make anything of the foreign tongues her young charge was so rapidly acquiring. One day, when Eve had been maintaining an animated and laughing discourse in Italian with her instructress, Nanny, unable to command herself, had actually caught the child to her bosom, and, bursting into tears, implored her not to estrange herself entirely from her poor old nurse. The caresses and solicitations of Eve soon brought the good woman to a sense of her weakness; but the natural feeling was so strong, that it required years of close observation to reconcile her to the thousand excellent qualities of Mademoiselle Viefville, the lady to whose superintendence the education of Miss Effingham had been finally confided. This Mademoiselle Viefville was also among the passengers, and was the one other person who now occupied the cabins in common with Eve and her friends. She was the daughter of a French officer who had fallen in Napoleon's campaigns, had been educated at one of those admirable establishments which form points of relief in the ruthless history of the conqueror, and had now lived long enough to have educated two young persons, the last of whom was Eve Effingham. Twelve years of close communion with her _élève_ had created sufficient attachment to cause her to yield to the solicitations of the father to accompany his daughter to America, and to continue with her during the first year of her probation, in a state of society that the latter felt must be altogether novel to a young woman educated as his own child had been. So much has been written and said of French governesses, that we shall not anticipate the subject, but leave this lady to speak and act for herself in the course of the narrative. Neither is it our intention to be very minute in these introductory remarks concerning any of our characters; but having thus traced their outlines, we shall return again to the incidents as they occurred, trusting to make the reader better acquainted with all the parties as we proceed. Chapter II. Lord Cram and Lord Vultur. Sir Brandish O'Cultur, With Marshal Carouzer, And old Lady Mouser. BATH GUIDE. The assembling of the passengers of a packet-ship is at all times a matter of interest to the parties concerned. During the western passage in particular, which can never safely be set down at less than a month, there is the prospect of being shut up for the whole of that period, within the narrow compass of a ship, with those whom chance has brought together, influenced by all the accidents and caprices of personal character, and a difference of nations, conditions in life, and education. The quarter-deck, it is true, forms a sort of local distinction, and the poor creatures in the steerage seem the rejected of Providence for the time being; but all who know life will readily comprehend that the _pêle-mêle_ of the cabins can seldom offer anything very enticing to people of refinement and taste. Against this evil, however, there is one particular source of relief; most persons feeling a disposition to yield to the circumstances in which they are placed, with the laudable and convenient desire to render others comfortable, in order that they may be made comfortable themselves. A man of the world and a gentleman, Mr. Effingham had looked forward to this passage with a good deal of concern, on account of his daughter, while he shrank with the sensitiveness of his habits from the necessity of exposing one of her delicacy and plastic simplicity to the intercourse of a ship. Accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville, watched over by Nanny, and guarded by himself and his kinsman, he had lost some of his apprehensions on the subject during the three probationary days, and now took his stand in the centre of his own party to observe the new arrivals, with something of the security of a man who is entrenched in his own door-way. The place they occupied, at a window of the hurricane-house, did not admit of a view of the water; but it was sufficiently evident from the preparations in the gangway next the land, that boats were so near as to render that unnecessary. "_Genus_ cockney; _species_, bagman," muttered John Effingham, as the first arrival touched the deck. "That worthy has merely exchanged the basket of a coach for the deck of a packet; we may now learn the price of buttons." It did not require a naturalist to detect the species of the stranger, in truth; though John Effingham had been a little more minute in his description than was warranted by the fact. The person in question was one of those mercantile agents that England scatters so profusely over the world, some of whom have all the most sterling qualities of their nation, though a majority, perhaps, are a little disposed to mistake the value of other people as well as their own. This was the _genus_, as John Effingham had expressed it; but the _species_ will best appear on dissection. The master of the ship saluted this person cordially, and as an old acquaintance, by the name of Monday. "A _mousquetaire_ resuscitated," said Mademoiselle Viefville, in her broken English, as one who had come in the same boat as the first-named, thrust his whiskered and mustachoed visage above the rail of the gangway. "More probably a barber, who has converted his own head into a wig-block," growled John Effingham. "It cannot, surely, be Wellington in disguise!" added Mr. Effingham, with a sarcasm of manner that was quite unusual for him. "Or a peer of the realm in his robes!" whispered Eve, who was much amused with the elaborate toilet of the subject of their remarks, who descended the ladder supported by a sailor, and, after speaking to the master, was formally presented to his late boat-companion, as Sir George Templemore. The two bustled together about the quarter-deck for a few minutes, using eye-glasses, which led them into several scrapes, by causing them to hit their legs against sundry objects they might otherwise have avoided, though both were much too high-bred to betray feelings--or fancied they were, which answered the same purpose. After these flourishes, the new comers descended to the cabin in company, not without pausing to survey the party in the hurricane-house, more especially Eve, who, to old Ann's great scandal, was the subject of their manifest and almost avowed admiration and observation. "One is rather glad to have such a relief against the tediousness of a sea-passage," said Sir George as they went down the ladder. "No doubt you are used to this sort of thing, Mr. Monday; but with me, it is voyage the first,--that is, if I except the Channel and the seas one encounters in making the usual run on the Continent." "Oh, dear me! I go and come as regularly as the equinoxes, Sir George, which you know is quite, in rule, once a year. I call my passages the equinoxes, too, for I religiously make it a practice to pass just twelve hours out of the twenty-four in my berth." This was the last the party on deck heard of the opinions of the two worthies, for the time being; nor would they have been favoured with all this, had not Mr. Monday what he thought a rattling way with him, which caused him usually to speak in an octave above every one else. Although their voices were nearly mute, or rather lost to those above, they were heard knocking about in their state-rooms; and Sir George, in particular, as frequently called out for the steward, by the name of "Saunders," as Mr. Monday made similar appeals to the steward's assistant for succour, by the appropriate appellation of "Toast." "I think we may safely claim this person, at least, for a countryman," said John Effingham: "he is what I have heard termed an American in a European mask." "The character is more ambitiously conceived than skilfully maintained," replied Eve, who had need of all her _retenue_ of manner to abstain from laughing outright. "Were I to hazard a conjecture, it would be to describe the gentleman as a collector of costumes, who had taken a fancy to exhibit an assortment of his riches on his own person. Mademoiselle Viefville, you, who so well understand costumes, may tell us from what countries the separate parts of that attire have been collected?" "I can answer for the shop in Berlin where the travelling cap was purchased," returned the amused governess; "in no other part of the world can a parallel be found." "I should think, ma'am," put in Nanny, with the quiet simplicity of her nature as well as of her habits, "that the gentleman must have bought his boots in Paris, for they seem to pinch his feet, and all the Paris boots and shoes pinch one's feet,--at least, all mine did." "The watch-guard is stamped 'Geneva,'" continued Eve. "The coat comes from Frankfort: _c'est une équivoque_." "And the pipe from Dresden, Mademoiselle Viefville." "The _conchiglia_ savours of Rome, and the little chain annexed bespeaks the Rialto; while the _moustaches_ are anything but _indigènes_, and the _tout ensemble_ the world: the man is travelled, at least." Eve's eyes sparkled with humour as she said this: while the new passenger, who had been addressed as Mr. Dodge, and as an old acquaintance also, by the captain, came so near them as to admit of no further comments. A short conversation between the two soon let the listeners into the secret that the traveller had come from America in the spring, whither, after having made the tour of Europe, he was about to return in the autumn. "Seen enough, ha!" added the captain, with a friendly nod of the head, when the other had finished a brief summary of his proceedings in the eastern hemisphere. "All eyes, and no leisure or inclination for more?" "I've seen as much as I _warnt_ to see," returned the traveller, with an emphasis _on_, and a pronunciation _of_, the word we have italicised, that cannot be committed to paper, but which were eloquence itself on the subject of self-satisfaction and self-knowledge. "Well, that is the main point. When a man has got all he wants of a thing, any addition is like over-ballast. Whenever I can get fifteen knots out of the ship, I make it a point to be satisfied, especially under close-reefed topsails and on a taut bowline." The traveller and the master nodded their heads at each other, like men who understood more than they expressed; when the former, after inquiring with marked interest if his room-mate, Sir George Templemore, had arrived, went below. An intercourse of three days had established something like an acquaintance between the latter and the passengers she had brought from the River, and turning his red quizzical face towards the ladies, he observed with inimitable gravity, "There is nothing like understanding when one has enough, even if it be of knowledge. I never yet met with the navigator who found two 'noons' in the same day, that he was not in danger of shipwreck. Now I dare say, Mr. Dodge there, who has just gone below, has, as he says, seen all he _warnts_ to see, and it is quite likely he knows more already than he can cleverly get along with.--Let the people be getting the booms on the yards, Mr. Leach; we shall be _warnting_ to spread our wings before the end of the passage." As Captain Truck, though he often swore, seldom laughed, his mate gave the necessary order with a gravity equal to that with which it had been delivered to him; and even the sailors went aloft to execute it with greater alacrity for an indulgence of humour that was peculiar to their trade, and which, as few understood it so well, none enjoyed so much as themselves. As the homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the Dresden pipe, the Venetian chain, and the Roman _conchiglia_ in his state-room, and in "instituting an acquaintance," as he expressed it, with his room-mate, Sir George Templemore. "We must surely have something better than this," observed Mr. Effingham, "for I observed that two of the state-rooms in the main cabin are taken singly." In order that the general reader may understand this, it may be well to explain that the packet-ships have usually two berths in each state-room, but they who can afford to pay an extra charge are permitted to occupy the little apartment singly. It is scarcely necessary to add, that persons of gentlemanly feeling, when circumstances will at all permit, prefer economising in other things in order to live by themselves for the month usually consumed in the passage, since in nothing is refinement more plainly exhibited than in the reserve of personal habits. "There is no lack of vulgar fools stirring with full pockets," rejoined John Effingham; "the two rooms you mention may have been taken by some 'yearling' travellers, who are little better than the semi-annual _savant_ who has just passed us." "It is at least _something_, cousin Jack, to have the wishes of a gentleman." "It _is something_, Eve, though it end in wishes, or even in caricature." "What are the names?" pleasantly asked Mademoiselle Viefville; "the _names_ may be a clue to the characters." "The papers pinned to the bed-curtains bear the antithetical titles of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt; though it is quite probable the first is wanting of a letter or two by accident, and the last is merely a synonyme of the old _nom de guerre_ 'Cash.'" "Do persons, then, actually travel with borrowed names, in our days?" asked Eve, with a little of the curiosity of the common mother whose name she bore. "That do they, and with borrowed money too, as well as in other days. I dare say, however, these two co-voyagers of ours will come just as they are, in truth, Sharp enough, and Blunt enough." "Are they Americans, think you?" "They ought to be; both the qualities being thoroughly _indigènes_, as Mademoiselle Viefville would say." "Nay, cousin John, I will bandy words with you no longer; for the last twelve months you have done little else than try to lessen the joyful anticipations with which I return to the home of my childhood." "Sweet one, I would not willingly lessen one of thy young and generous pleasures by any of the alloy of my own bitterness; but what wilt thou? A little preparation for that which is as certain to follow as that the sun succeeds the dawn, will rather soften the disappointment thou art doomed to feel." Eve had only time to cast a look of affectionate gratitude towards him,--for whilst he spoke tauntingly, he spoke with a feeling that her experience from childhood had taught her to appreciate,--ere the arrival of another boat drew the common attention to the gangway. A call from the officer in attendance had brought the captain to the rail; and his order "to pass in the luggage of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt," was heard by all near. "Now for _les indigènes_," whispered Mademoiselle Viefville, with the nervous excitement that is a little apt to betray a lively expectation in the gentler sex. Eve smiled, for there are situations in which trifles help to awaken interest, and the little that had just passed served to excite curiosity in the whole party. Mr. Effingham thought it a favourable symptom that the master, who had had interviews with all his passengers in London, walked to the gangway to receive the new-comers; for a boat-load of the quarter-deck _oi polloi_ had come on board a moment before without any other notice on his part than a general bow, with the usual order to receive their effects. "The delay denotes Englishmen," the caustic John had time to throw in, before the silent arrangement at the gangway was interrupted by the appearance of the passengers. The quiet smile of Mademoiselle Viefville, as the two travellers appeared on deck, denoted approbation, for her practised eye detected at a glance, that both were certainly gentlemen. Women are more purely creatures of convention in their way than men, their education inculcating nicer distinctions and discriminations than that of the other sex; and Eve, who would have studied Sir George Templemore and Mr. Dodge as she would have studied the animals of a caravan, or as creatures with whom she had no affinities, after casting a sly look of curiosity at the two who now appeared on deck, unconsciously averted her eyes like a well-bred young person in a drawing-room. "They are indeed English," quietly remarked Mr. Effingham; "but, out of question English gentlemen." "The one nearest appears to me to be Continental," answered Mademoiselle Viefville who had not felt the same impulse to avert her look as Eve; "he is _jamais Anglais_!" Eve stole a glance in spite of herself, and, with the intuitive penetration of a woman, intimated that she had come to the same conclusion. The two strangers were both tall, and decidedly gentleman-like young men, whose personal appearance would cause either to be remarked. The one whom the captain addressed as Mr. Sharp had the most youthful look, his complexion being florid, and his hair light; though the other was altogether superior in outline of features as well as in expression; indeed, Mademoiselle Viefville fancied she never saw a sweeter smile than that he gave on returning the salute of the deck; there was more than the common expression of suavity and of the usual play of features in it, for it struck her as being thoughtful and as almost melancholy. His companion was gracious in his manner, and perfectly well toned; but his demeanour had less of the soul of the man about it, partaking more of the training of the social caste to which it belonged. These may seem to be nice distinctions for the circumstances; but Mademoiselle Viefville had passed her life in good company, and under responsibilities that had rendered observation and judgment highly necessary, and particularly observations of the other sex. Each of the strangers had a servant; and while their luggage was passed up from the boat, they walked aft nearer to the hurricane-house, accompanied by the captain. Every American, who is not very familiar with the world appears to possess the mania of introducing. Captain Truck was no exception to the rule; for, while he was perfectly acquainted with a ship, and knew the etiquette of the quarter-deck to a hair, he got into blue water the moment he approached the finesse of deportment. He was exactly of that school of _élégants_ who fancy drinking a glass of wine with another, and introducing, are touches of breeding; it being altogether beyond his comprehension that both have especial uses, and are only to be resorted to on especial occasions. Still, the worthy master, who had begun life on the forecastle, without any previous knowledge of usages, and who had imbibed the notion that "manners make the man," taken in the narrow sense of the axiom, was a devotee of what he fancied to be good breeding, and one of his especial duties, as he imagined, in order to put his passengers at their ease, was to introduce them to each other; a proceeding which, it is hardly necessary to say, had just a contrary effect with the better class of them. "You are acquainted, gentlemen?" he said, as the three approached the party in the hurricane-house. The two travellers endeavoured to look interested, while Mr. Sharp carelessly observed that they had met for the first time in the boat. This was delightful intelligence to Captain Truck, who did not lose a moment in turning it to account. Stopping short, he faced his companions, and, with a solemn wave of the hand, he went through the ceremonial in which he most delighted, and in which he piqued himself at being an adept. "Mr. Sharp, permit me to introduce you to Mr. Blunt--Mr. Blunt, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Sharp." The gentlemen, though taken a little by surprise at the dignity and formality of the captain, touched their hands civilly to each other, and smiled. Eve, not a little amused at the scene, watched the whole procedure; and then she too detected the sweet melancholy of the one expression and the marble-like irony of the other. It may have been this that caused her to start, though almost imperceptibly, and to colour. "Our turn will come next," muttered John Effingham: "get the grimaces ready." His conjecture was right; for, hearing his voice without understanding the words, the captain followed up his advantage to his own infinite gratification. "Gentlemen,--Mr. Effingham, Mr. John Effingham"--(every one soon came to make this distinction in addressing the cousins)--"Miss Effingham, Mademoiselle Viefville:--Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt,--ladies;--gentlemen, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Sharp." The dignified bow of Mr. Effingham, as well as the faint and distant smile of Eve, would have repelled any undue familiarity in men of less tone than either of the strangers, both of whom received the unexpected honour like those who felt themselves to be intruders. As Mr. Sharp raised his hat to Eve, however, he held it suspended a moment above his head, and then dropping his arm to its full length, he bowed with profound respect, though distantly. Mr. Blunt was less elaborate in his salute, but as pointed as the circumstances at all required. Both gentlemen were a little struck with the distant hauteur of John Effingham, whose bow, while it fulfilled all the outward forms, was what Eve used laughingly to term "imperial." The bustle of preparation, and the certainty that there would be no want of opportunities to renew the intercourse, prevented more than the general salutations, and the new-comers descended to their state-rooms. "Did you remark the manner in which those people took my introduction?" asked Captain Truck of his chief mate, whom he was training up in the ways of packet-politeness, as one in the road of preferment. "Now, to my notion, they might have shook hands at least. That's what I call _Vattel_." "One sometimes falls in with what are _rum_ chaps," returned the other, who, from following the London trade, had caught a few cockneyisms. "If a man chooses to keep his hands in the beckets, why let him, say I; but I take it as a slight to the company to sheer out of the usual track in such matters." "I was thinking as much myself; but after all, what can packet-masters do in such a case? We can set luncheon and dinner before the passengers, but we can't make them eat. Now, my rule is, when a gentleman introduces me, to do the thing handsomely, and to return shake for shake, if it is three times three; but as for a touch of the beaver, it is like setting a top-gallant sail in passing a ship at sea, and means just nothing at all. Who would know a vessel because he has let run his halyards and swayed the yard up again? One would do as much to a Turk for manners' sake. No, no! there is something in this, and, d--- me, just to make sure of it, the first good opportunity that offers, I'll--ay, I'll just introduce them all over again!--Let the people ship their hand-spikes, Mr. Leach, and heave in the slack of the chain.--Ay, ay! I'll take an opportunity when all hands are on deck, and introduce them, ship-shape, one by one, as your greenhorns go through a lubber's-hole, or we shall have no friendship during the passage." The mate nodded approbation, as if the other had hit upon the right expedient, and then he proceeded to obey the orders, while the cares of his vessel soon drove the subject temporarily from the mind of his commander. Chapter III. By all description, this should be the place. Who's here?--Speak, ho!--No answer!--What is this? TIMON OF ATHENS A ship with her sails loosened and her ensign abroad is always a beautiful object; and the Montauk, a noble New-York-built vessel of seven hundred tons burthen, was a first-class specimen of the "kettle-bottom" school of naval architecture, wanting in nothing that the taste and experience of the day can supply. The scene that was now acting before their eyes therefore soon diverted the thoughts of Mademoiselle Viefville and Eve from the introductions of the captain, both watching with intense interest the various movements of the crew and passengers as they passed in review. A crowd of well-dressed, but of an evidently humbler class of persons than those farther aft, were thronging the gangways, little dreaming of the physical suffering they were to endure before they reached the land of promise,--that distant America, towards which the poor and oppressed of nearly all nations turn longing eyes in quest of a shelter. Eve saw with wonder aged men and women among them; beings who were about to sever most of the ties of the world in order to obtain relief from the physical pains and privations that had borne hard on them for more than threescore years. A few had made sacrifices of themselves in obedience to that mysterious instinct which man feels in his offspring; while others, again, went rejoicing, flushed with the hope of their vigour and youth. Some, the victims of their vices, had embarked in the idle expectation that a change of scene, with increased means of indulgence, could produce a healthful change of character. All had views that the truth would have dimmed, and, perhaps, no single adventurer among the emigrants collected in that ship entertained either sound or reasonable notions of the mode in which his step was to be rewarded, though many may meet with a success that will surpass their brightest picture of the future. More, no doubt, were to be disappointed. Reflections something like these passed through the mind of Eve Effingham, as she examined the mixed crowd, in which some were busy in receiving stores from boats; others in holding party conferences with friends, in which a few were weeping; here and there a group was drowning reflection in the parting cup; while wondering children looked up with anxiety into the well-known faces, as if fearful they might lose the countenances they loved, and the charities on which they habitually relied, in such a _mêlée._ Although the stern discipline which separates the cabin and steerage passengers into castes as distinct as those of the Hindoos had not yet been established, Captain Truck had too profound a sense of his duty to permit the quarterdeck to be unceremoniously invaded. This part of the ship, then, had partially escaped the confusion of the moment; though trunks, boxes, hampers, and other similar appliances of travelling, were scattered about in tolerable affluence. Profiting by the space, of which there was still sufficient for the purpose, most of the party left the hurricane-house to enjoy the short walk that a ship affords. At that instant, another boat from the land reached the vessel's side, and a grave-looking personage, who was not disposed to lessen his dignity by levity or an omission of forms, appeared on deck, where he demanded to be shown the master. An introduction was unnecessary in this instance; for Captain Truck no sooner saw his visitor than he recognized the well-known features and solemn pomposity of a civil officer of Portsmouth, who was often employed to search the American packets, in pursuit of delinquents of all degrees of crime and folly. "I had just come to the opinion I was not to have the pleasure of seeing you this passage, Mr. Grab," said the captain, shaking hands familiarly with the myrmidon of the law; "but the turn of the tide is not more regular than you gentlemen who come in the name of the king.--Mr. Grab, Mr. Dodge; Mr. Dodge, Mr. Grab. And now, to what forgery, or bigamy, or elopement, or _scandalum magnatum,_ do I owe the honor of your company this time?--Sir George Templemore, Mr. Grab; Mr. Grab, Sir George Templemore." Sir George bowed with the dignified aversion an honest man might be supposed to feel for one of the other's employment; while Mr. Grab looked gravely and with a counter dignity at Sir George. The business of the officer, however, was with none in the cabin; but he had come in quest of a young woman who had married a suitor rejected by her uncle,--an arrangement that was likely to subject the latter to a settlement of accounts which he found inconvenient, and which he had thought it prudent to anticipate by bringing an action of debt against the bridegroom for advances, real or pretended, made to the wife during her nonage. A dozen eager ears caught an outline of this tale as it was communicated to the captain, and in an incredibly short space of time it was known throughout the ship, with not a few embellishments. "I do not know the person of the husband," continued the officer, "nor indeed does the attorney who is with me in the boat; but his name is Robert Davis, and you can have no difficulty in pointing him out. We know him to be in the ship." "I never introduce any steerage passengers, my dear sir; and there is no such person in the cabin, I give you my honour,--and that is a pledge that must pass between gentlemen like us. You are welcome to search, but the duty of the vessel must go on. Take your man--but do not detain the ship.--Mr. Sharp, Mr. Grab; Mr. Grab, Mr. Sharp.--Bear a hand there, Mr. Leach, and let us have the slack of the chain as soon as possible." There appeared to be what the philosophers call the attraction of repulsion between the parties last introduced, for the tall gentlemanly-looking Mr. Sharp eyed the officer with a supercilious coldness, neither party deeming much ceremony on the occasion necessary. Mr. Grab now summoned his assistant, the attorney, from the boat, and there was a consultation between them as to their further proceedings. Fifty heads were grouped around them, and curious eyes watched their smallest movements, one of the crowd occasionally disappearing to report proceedings. Man is certainly a clannish animal; for without knowing any thing of the merits of the case, without pausing to inquire into the right or the wrong of the matter, in the pure spirit of partisanship, every man, woman, and child of the steerage, which contained fully a hundred souls, took sides against the law, and enlisted in the cause of the defendant. All this was done quietly, however, for no one menaced or dreamed of violence, crew and passengers usually taking their cues from the officers of the vessel on such occasions, and those of the Montauk understood too well the rights of the public agents to commit themselves in the matter. "Call Robert Davis," said the officer, resorting to a _ruse_, by affecting an authority he had no right to assume. "Robert Davis!" echoed twenty voices, among which was that of the bridegroom himself, who was nigh to discover his secret by an excess of zeal. It was easy to call, but no one answered. "Can you tell me which is Robert Davis, my little fellow?" the officer asked coaxingly, of a fine flaxen-headed boy, whose age did not exceed ten, and who was a curious spectator of what passed. "Tell me which is Robert Davis, and I will give you a sixpence." The child knew, but professed ignorance. "_C'est un esprit de corps admirable_!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville; for the interest of the scene had brought nearly all on board, with the exception of those employed in the duty of the vessel, near the gangway. "_Ceci est délicieux,_ and I could devour that boy--!" What rendered this more, odd, or indeed absolutely ludicrous, was the circumstance that, by a species of legerdemain, a whisper had passed among the spectators so stealthily, and yet so soon, that the attorney and his companion were the only two on deck who remained ignorant of the person of the man they sought. Even the children caught the clue, though they had the art to indulge their natural curiosity by glances so sly as to escape detection. Unfortunately, the attorney had sufficient knowledge of the family of the bride to recognize her by a general resemblance, rendered conspicuous as it was by a pallid face and an almost ungovernable nervous excitement. He pointed her out to the officer, who ordered her to approach him,--a command that caused her to burst into tears. The agitation and distress of his wife were near proving too much for the prudence of the young husband, who was making an impetuous movement towards her, when the strong grasp of a fellow-passenger checked him in time to prevent discovery. It is singular how much is understood by trifles when the mind has a clue to the subject, and how often signs, that are palpable as day, are overlooked when suspicion is not awakened, or when the thoughts have obtained a false direction. The attorney and the officer were the only two present who had not seen the indiscretion of the young man, and who did not believe him betrayed. His wife trembled to a degree that almost destroyed the ability to stand; but, casting an imploring look for self-command on her indiscreet partner, she controlled her own distress, and advanced towards the officer, in obedience to his order, with a power of endurance that the strong affections of a woman could alone enable her to assume. "If the husband will not deliver himself up, I shall be compelled to order the wife to be carried ashore in his stead!" the attorney coldly remarked, while he applied a pinch of snuff to a nose that was already saffron-coloured from the constant use of the weed. A pause succeeded this ominous declaration, and the crowd of passengers betrayed dismay, for all believed there was now no hope for the pursued. The wife bowed her head to her knees, for she had sunk on a box as if to hide the sight of her husband's arrest. At this moment a voice spoke from among the group on the quarter-deck. "Is this an arrest for crime, or a demand for debt?" asked the young man who has been announced as Mr. Blunt. There was a quiet authority in the speaker's manner that reassured the failing hopes of the passengers, while it caused the attorney and his companion to look round in surprise, and perhaps a little in resentment. A dozen eager voices assured "the gentleman" there was no crime in the matter at all--there was even no just debt, but it was a villanous scheme to compel a wronged ward to release a fraudulent guardian from his liabilities. Though all this was not very clearly explained, it was affirmed with so much zeal and energy as to awaken suspicion, and to increase the interest of the more intelligent portion of the spectators. The attorney surveyed the travelling dress, the appearance of fashion, and the youth of his interrogator, whose years could not exceed five-and-twenty, and his answer was given with an air of superiority. "Debt or crime, it can matter nothing in the eye of the law." "It matters much in the view of an honest man," returned the youth with spirit. "One might hesitate about interfering in behalf of a rogue, however ready to exert himself in favour of one who is innocent, perhaps, of every thing but misfortune." "This looks a little like an attempt at a rescue! I hope we are still in England, and under the protection of English laws?" "No doubt at all of that, Mr. Seal," put in the captain, who having kept an eye on the officer from a distance, now thought it time to interfere, in order to protect the interests of his owners. "Yonder is England, and that is the Isle of Wight, and the Montauk has hold of an English bottom, and good anchorage it is; no one means to dispute your authority, Mr. Attorney, nor to call in question that of the king. Mr. Blunt merely throws out a suggestion, sir; or rather, a distinction between rogues and honest men; nothing more, depend on it, sir.--Mr. Seal, Mr. Blunt; Mr. Blunt, Mr. Seal. And a thousand pities it is, that a distinction is not more commonly made." The young man bowed slightly, and with a face flushed, partly with feeling, and partly at finding himself unexpectedly conspicuous among so many strangers, he advanced a little from the quarter-deck group, like one who feels he is required to maintain the ground he has assumed. "No one can be disposed to question the supremacy of the English laws in this roadstead," he said, "and least of all myself; but you will permit me to doubt the legality of arresting, or in any manner detaining, a wife in virtue of a process issued against the husband." "A briefless barrister!" muttered Seal to Grab. "I dare say a timely guinea would have silenced the fellow. What is now to be done?" "The lady must go ashore, and all these matters can be arranged before a magistrate." "Ay, ay! let her sue out a _habeas corpus_ if she please," added the ready attorney, whom a second survey caused to distrust his first inference. "Justice is blind in England as well as in other countries, and is liable to mistakes; but still she is just. If she does mistake sometimes, she is always ready to repair the wrong." "Cannot _you_ do something here?" Eve involuntarily half-whispered to Mr. Sharp, who stood at her elbow. This person started on hearing her voice making this sudden appeal, and glancing a look of intelligence at her, he smiled and moved nearer to the principal parties. "Really, Mr. Attorney," he commenced, "this appears to be rather irregular, I must confess,--quite out of the ordinary way, and it may lead to unpleasant consequences." "In what manner, sir?" interrupted Seal, measuring the other's ignorance at a glance. "Why, irregular in form, if not in principle. I am aware that the _habeas corpus_ is all-essential, and that the law must have its way; but really this does seem a little irregular, not to describe it by any harsher term." Mr. Seal treated this new appeal respectfully, in appearance at least, for he saw it was made by one greatly his superior, while he felt an utter contempt for it in essentials, as he perceived intuitively that this new intercession was made in a profound ignorance of the subject. As respects Mr. Blunt, however, he had an unpleasant distrust of the result, the quiet manner of that gentleman denoting more confidence in himself, and a greater practical knowledge of the laws. Still, to try the extent of the other's information, and the strength of his nerves, he rejoined in a magisterial and menacing tone-- "Yes, let the lady sue out a writ of _habeas corpus_ if wrongfully arrested; and I should be glad to discover the foreigner who will dare to attempt a rescue in old England, and in defiance of English laws." It is probable Paul Blunt would have relinquished his interference, from an apprehension that he might be ignorantly aiding the evil-doer, but for this threat; and even the threat might not have overcome his prudence, had not he caught the imploring look of the fine blue eyes of Eve. "All are not necessarily foreigners who embark on board an American ship at an English port," he said steadily, "nor is justice denied those that are. The _habeas corpus_ is as well understood in other countries as in this, for happily we live in an age when neither liberty nor knowledge is exclusive. If an attorney, you must know yourself that you cannot legally arrest a wife for a husband, and that what you say of the _habeas corpus_ is little worthy of attention." "We arrest, and whoever interferes with an officer in charge of a prisoner is guilty of a rescue. Mistakes must be rectified by the magistrates." "True, provided the officer has warranty for what he does." "Writs and warrants may contain errors, but an arrest is an arrest," growled Grab. "Not the arrest of a woman for a man. In such a case there is design, and not a mistake. If this frightened wife will take counsel from me, she will refuse to accompany you." "At her peril, let her dare do so!" "At _your_ peril do you dare to attempt forcing her from the ship!" "Gentlemen, gentlemen!--let there be no misunderstanding, I pray you," interposed the captain. "Mr. Blunt, Mr. Grab; Mr. Grab, Mr. Blunt. No warm words, gentlemen, I beg of you. But the tide is beginning to serve, Mr. Attorney, and 'time and tide,' you know--If we stay here much longer, the Montauk may be forced to sail on the 2d, instead of the 1st, as has been advertised in both hemispheres. I should be sorry to carry you to sea, gentlemen, without your small stores; and as for the cabin, it is as full as a lawyer's conscience. No remedy but the steerage in such a case.--Lay forward, men, and heave away. Some of you, man the fore-top-sail halyards.--We are as regular as our chronometers; the 1st, 10th, and 20th, without fail." There was some truth, blended with a little poetry, in Captain Truck's account of the matter. The tide had indeed made in his favour, but the little wind there was blew directly into the roadstead, and had not his feelings become warmed by the distress of a pretty and interesting young woman, it is more than probable the line would have incurred the disgrace of having a ship sail on a later day than had been advertised. As it was, however, he had the matter up in earnest, and he privately assured Sir George and Mr. Dodge, if the affair were not immediately disposed of, he should carry both the attorney and officer to sea with him, and that he did not feel himself bound to furnish either with water. "They may catch a little rain, by wringing their jackets," he added, with a wink; "though October is a dryish month in the American seas." The decision of Paul Blunt would have induced the attorney and his companion to relinquish their pursuit but for two circumstances. They had both undertaken the job as a speculation, or on the principle of "no play, no pay," and all their trouble would be lost without success. Then the very difficulty that occurred had been foreseen, and while the officer proceeded to the ship, the uncle had been busily searching for a son on shore, to send off to identify the husband,--a step that would have been earlier resorted to could the young man have been found. This son was a rejected suitor, and he was now seen, by the aid of a glass that Mr. Grab always carried, pulling towards the Montauk, in a two-oared boat, with as much zeal as malignancy and disappointment could impart. His distance from the ship was still considerable; but a peculiar hat, with the aid of the glass, left no doubt of his identity. The attorney pointed out the boat to the officer, and the latter, after a look through the glass, gave a nod of approbation. Exultation overcame the usual wariness of the attorney, for his pride, too, had got to be enlisted in the success of his speculation,--men being so strangely constituted as often to feel as much joy in the accomplishment of schemes that are unjustifiable, as in the accomplishment of those of which they may have reason to be proud. On the other hand, the passengers and people of the packet seized something near the truth, with that sort of instinctive readiness which seems to characterize bodies of men in moments of excitement. That the solitary boat which was pulling towards them in the dusk of the evening contained some one who might aid the attorney and his myrmidon, all believed, though in what manner none could tell. Between all seamen and the ministers of the law there is a long-standing antipathy, for the visits of the latter are usually so timed as to leave nothing between the alternatives of paying or of losing a voyage. It was soon apparent, then, that Mr. Seal had little to expect from the apathy of the crew, for never did men work with better will to get a ship loosened from the bottom. All this feeling manifested itself in a silent and intelligent activity rather than in noise or bustle, for every man on board exercised his best faculties, as well as his best good will and strength; the clock-work ticks of the palls of the windlass resembling those of a watch that had got the start of time, while the chain came in with surges of half a fathom at each heave. "Lay hold of this rope, men," cried Mr. Leach, placing the end of the main-topsail halyards in the hands of half-a-dozen athletic steerage passengers, who had all the inclination in the world to be doing, though uncertain where to lay their hands; "lay hold, and run away with it." The second mate performed the same feat forward, and as the sheets had never been started, the broad folds of the Montauk's canvas began to open, even while the men were heaving at the anchor. These exertions quickened the blood in the veins of those who were not employed, until even the quarter-deck passengers began to experience the excitement of a chase, in addition to the feelings of compassion. Captain Truck, was silent, but very active in preparations. Springing to the wheel, he made its spokes fly until he had forced the helm hard up, when he unceremoniously gave it to John Effingham to keep there. His next leap was to the foot of the mizen-mast, where, after a few energetic efforts alone, he looked over his shoulder and beckoned for aid. "Sir George Templemore, mizen-topsail-halyards; mizen-topsail-halyards, Sir George Templemore," muttered the eager master, scarce knowing what he said. "Mr. Dodge, now is the time to show that your name and nature are not identical." In short, nearly all on board were busy, and, thanks to the hearty good will of the officers, stewards, cooks, and a few of the hands that could be spared from the windlass, busy in a way to spread sail after sail with a rapidity little short of that seen on board of a vessel of war. The rattling of the clew-garnet blocks, as twenty lusty fellows ran forward with the tack of the mainsail, and the hauling forward of braces, was the signal that the ship was clear of ground, and coming under command. A cross current had superseded the necessity of casting the vessel, but her sails took the light air nearly abeam; the captain understanding that motion was of much more importance just then than direction. No sooner did he perceive by the bubbles that floated past, or rather appeared to float past, that his ship was dividing the water forward, than he called a trusty man to the wheel, relieving John Effingham from his watch. The next instant, Mr. Leach reported the anchor catted and fished. "Pilot, you will be responsible for this if my prisoners escape," said Mr. Grab menacingly. "You know my errand, and it is your duty to aid the ministers of the law." "Harkee, Mr. Grab," put in the master, who had warmed himself with the exercise; "we all know, and we all do our duties, on board the Montauk. It is your duty to take Robert Davis on shore if you can find him; and it is my duty to take the Montauk to America: now, if you will receive counsel from a well-wisher, I would advise you to see that you do not go in her. No one offers any impediment to your performing your office, and I'll thank you to offer me none in performing mine.--Brace the yards further forward, boys, and let the ship come up to the wind." As there were logic, useful information, law, and seamanship united in this reply, the attorney began to betray uneasiness; for by this time the ship had gathered so much way as to render it exceedingly doubtful whether a two-oared boat would be able to come up with her, without the consent of those on board. It is probable, as evening had already closed, and the rays of the moon were beginning to quiver on the ripple of the water, that he would have abandoned his object, though with infinite reluctance, had not Sir George Templemore pointed out to the captain a six-oared boat, that was pulling towards them from a quarter that permitted it to be seen in the moonlight. "That appears to be a man-of-war's cutter," observed the baronet uneasily, for by this time all on board felt a sort of personal interest in their escape. "It does indeed, Captain Truck," added the pilot; "and if _she_ make a signal, it will become my duty to heave-to the Montauk." "Then bundle out of her, my fine fellow, as fast as you can for not a brace or a bowline shall be touched here, with my consent, for any such purpose. The ship is cleared--my hour is come--my passengers are on board--and America is my haven.--Let them that want me, catch me. That is what I call _Vattel_." The pilot and the master of the Montauk were excellent friends, and understood each other perfectly, even while the former was making the most serious professions of duty. The beat was hauled up, and, first whispering a few cautions about the shoals and the currents, the worthy marine guide leaped into it, and was soon seen floating astern--a cheering proof that the ship had got fairly in motion. As he fell out of hearing in the wake of the vessel, the honest fellow kept calling out "to tack in season." "If you wish to try the speed of your boat against that of the pilot, Mr. Grab," called out the captain, "you will never have a better opportunity. It is a fine night for a regatta, and I will stand you a pound on Mr. Handlead's heels. For that matter, I would as soon trust his head, or his hands, in the bargain." The officer continued obstinately on board, for he saw that the six-oared boat was coming up with the ship, and, as he well knew the importance to his client of compelling a settlement of the accounts, he fancied some succour might be expected in that quarter. In the mean time, this new movement on the part of their pursuers attracted general attention, and, as might be expected, the interest of this little incident increased the excitement that usually accompanies a departure for a long sea-voyage, fourfold. Men and women forgot their griefs and leave-takings in anxiety, and in that pleasure which usually attends agitation of the mind that does not proceed from actual misery of our own. Chapter IV. Whither away so fast? O God save you! Even to the hall to hear what shall become Of the great Duke of Buckingham. HENRY VIII. The assembling of the passengers of the large packet-ship is necessarily an affair of coldness and distrust, especially with those who know the world, and more particularly still when the passage is from Europe to America. The greater sophistication of the old than of the new hemisphere, with its consequent shifts and vices, the knowledge that the tide of emigration sets westward, and that few abandon the home of their youth unless impelled by misfortune at least, with other obvious causes, unite to produce this distinction. Then come the fastidiousness of habits, the sentiments of social castes, the refinements of breeding, and the reserves of dignity of character, to be put in close collision with bustling egotism, ignorance of usages, an absence of training, and downright vulgarity of thought and practices. Although necessity soon brings these chaotic elements into something like order, the first week commonly passes in reconnoitring, cool civilities, and cautious concessions, to yield at length to the never-dying charities; unless, indeed, the latter may happen to be kept in abeyance by a downright quarrel, about midnight carousals, a squeaking fiddle, or some incorrigible snorer. Happily, the party collected in the Montauk had the good fortune to abridge the usual probation in courtesies, by the stirring events of the night on which they sailed. Two hours had scarcely elapsed since the last passenger crossed the gangway, and yet the respective circles of the quarter-deck and steerage felt more sympathy with each other than the boasted human charities ordinarily quicken in days of common-place intercourse. They had already found out each other's names, thanks to the assiduity of Captain Truck, who had stolen time, in the midst of all his activity, to make half-a-dozen more introductions, and the Americans of the less trained class were already using them as freely as if they were old acquaintances. We say Americans, for the cabins of these ships usually contain a congress of nations, though the people of England, and of her ci-devant colonies, of course predominate in those of the London lines. On the present occasion, the last two were nearly balanced in numbers, so far as national character could be made out; opinion (which, as might be expected, had been busy the while,) being suspended in reference to Mr. Blunt, and one or two others whom the captain called "foreigners," to distinguish them from the Anglo-Saxon stock. This equal distribution of forces might, under other circumstances, have led to a division in feeling; for the conflicts between American and British opinions, coupled with a difference in habits, are a prolific source of discontent in the cabins of packets. The American is apt to fancy himself at home, under the flag of his country; while his Transatlantic kinsman is strongly addicted to fancying that when he has fairly paid his money, he has a right to embark all his prejudices with his other luggage. The affair of the attorney and the newly-married couple, however, was kept quite distinct from all feelings of nationality; the English apparently entertaining quite as lively a wish that the latter might escape from the fangs of the law, as any other portion of the passengers. The parties themselves were British, and although the authority evaded was of the same origin, right or wrong, all on board had taken up the impression that it was improperly exercised. Sir George Templemore, the Englishman of highest rank, was decidedly of this way of thinking,--an opinion he was rather warm in expressing,--and the example of a baronet had its weight, not only with most of his own countrymen, but with not a few of the Americans also. The Effingham party, together with Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt, were, indeed, all who seemed to be entirely indifferent to Sir George's sentiments; and, as men are intuitively quick in discovering who do and who do not defer to their suggestions, their accidental independence might have been favoured by this fact, for the discourse of this gentleman was addressed in the main to those who lent the most willing ears. Mr. Dodge, in particular, was his constant and respectful listener, and profound admirer:--But then he was his room-mate, and a democrat of a water so pure, that he was disposed to maintain no man had a right to any one of his senses, unless by popular sufferance. In the mean while, the night advanced, and the soft light of the moon was playing on the waters, adding a semi-mysterious obscurity to the excitement of the scene. The two-oared boat had evidently been overtaken by that carrying six oars, and, after a short conference, the first had returned reluctantly towards the land, while the latter profiting by its position, had set two lug-sails, and was standing out into the offing, on a course that would compel the Montauk to come under its lee, when the shoals, as would soon be the case, should force the ship to tack. "England is most inconveniently placed," Captain Truck dryly remarked as he witnessed this manoeuvre. "Were this island only out of the way, now, we might stand on as we head, and leave those man-of-war's men to amuse themselves all night with backing and filling in the roads of Portsmouth." "I hope there is no danger of that little boat's overtaking this large ship!" exclaimed Sir George, with a vivacity that did great credit to his philanthropy, according to the opinion of Mr. Dodge at least; the latter having imbibed a singular bias in favour of persons of condition, from having travelled in an _eilwagen_ with a German baron, from whom he had taken a model of the pipe he carried but never smoked, and from having been thrown for two days and nights into the society of a "Polish countess," as he uniformly termed her, in the _gondole_ of a _diligence_, between Lyons and Marseilles. In addition, Mr. Dodge, as has just been hinted, was an ultra-freeman at home--a circumstance that seems always to react, when the subject of the feeling gets into foreign countries. "A feather running before a lady's sigh would outsail either of us in this air, which breathes on us in some such fashion as a whale snores, Sir George, by sudden puffs. I would give the price of a steerage passage, if Great Britain lay off the Cape of Good Hope for a week or ten days." "Or Cape Hatteras!" rejoined the mate. "Not I; I wish the old island no harm, nor a worse climate than it has got already; though it lies as much in our way just at this moment, as the moon in an eclipse of the sun. I bear the old creature a great-grandson's love--or a step or two farther off, if you will,--and come and go too often to forget the relationship. But, much as I love her, the affection is not strong enough to go ashore on her shoals, and so we will go about, Mr. Leach; at the same time, I wish from my heart that two-lugged rascal would go about his business." The ship tacked slowly but gracefully, for she was in what her master termed "racing trim;" and as her bows fell off to the eastward, it became pretty evident to all who understood the subject, that the two little lug-sails that were "eating into the wind," as the sailors express it, would weather upon her track ere she could stretch over to the other shoal. Even the landsmen had some feverish suspicions of the truth, and the steerage passengers were already holding a secret conference on the possibility of hiding the pursued in some of the recesses of the ship. "Such things were often done," one whispered to another, "and it was as easy to perform it now as at any other time." But Captain Truck viewed the matter differently: his vocation called him three times a year into the roads at Portsmouth, and he felt little disposition to embarrass his future intercourse with the place by setting its authorities at a too open defiance. He deliberated a good deal on the propriety of throwing his ship up into the wind, as she slowly advanced towards the boat, and of inviting those in the latter to board him. Opposed to this was the pride of profession, and Jack Truck was not a man to overlook or to forget the "yarns" that were spun among his fellows at the New England Coffee-house, or among those farming hamlets on the banks of the Connecticut, whence all the packet-men are derived, and whither they repair for a shelter when their careers are run, as regularly as the fruit decays where it falleth, or the grass that has not been harvested or cropped withers on its native stalk. "There is no question, Sir George, that this fellow is a man-of-war's man," said the master to the baronet, who stuck close to his side. "Take a peep at the creeping rogue through this night-glass, and you will see his crew seated at their thwarts with their arms folded, like men who eat the king's beef. None but your regular public servant ever gets that impudent air of idleness about him, either in England or America. In this respect, human nature is the same in both hemispheres, a man never falling in with luck, but he fancies it is no more than his deserts." "There seems to be a great many of them! Can it be their intention to carry the vessel by boarding?" "If it is, they must take the will for the deed," returned Mr. Truck a little coldly. "I very much question if the Montauk, with three cabin officers, as many stewards, two cooks, and eighteen foremast-men, would exactly like the notion of being 'carried,' as you style it, Sir, George, by a six-oared cutter's crew. We are not as heavy as the planet Jupiter, but have somewhat too much gravity to be 'carried' as lightly as all that, too." "You intend, then, to resist?" asked Sir George, whose generous zeal in behalf of the pursued apparently led him to take a stronger interest in their escape than any other person on board. Captain Truck, who had never an objection to sport, pondered with himself a little, smiled, and then loudly expressed a wish that he had a member of congress or a member of parliament on board. "Your desire is a little extraordinary for the circumstances," observed Mr. Sharp; will you have the goodness to explain why?" "This matter touches on international law, gentlemen." continued the master, rubbing his hands; for, in addition to having caught the art of introduction, the honest mariner had taken it into his head he had become an adept in the principles of Vattel, of whom he possessed a well-thumbed copy, and for whose dogmas he entertained the deference that they who begin to learn late usually feel for the particular master into whose hands they have accidentally fallen. "Under what circumstances, or in what category, can a public armed ship compel a neutral to submit to being boarded--not 'carried,' Sir George, you will please to remark; for d---- me, if any man 'carries' the Montauk that is not strong enough to 'carry' her crew and cargo along with her!--but in what category, now, is a packet like this I have the honour to command obliged, in comity, to heave-to and to submit to an examination at all? The ship is a-weigh, and has handsomely tacked under her canvas; and, gentlemen, I should be pleased to have your sentiments on the occasion. Just have the condescension to point out the category." Mr. Dodge came from a part of the country in which men were accustomed to think, act, almost to eat and drink and sleep, in common; or, in other words, from one of those regions in America, in which there was so much community, that few had the moral courage, even when they possessed the knowledge, and all the other necessary means, to cause their individuality to be respected. When the usual process of conventions, sub-conventions, caucusses, and public meetings did not supply the means of a "concentrated action," he and his neighbours had long been in the habit of having recourse to societies, by way of obtaining "energetic means," as it was termed; and from his tenth year up to his twenty-fifth, this gentleman had been either a president, vice-president, manager, or committee-man, of some philosophical, political, or religious expedient to fortify human wisdom, make men better, and resist error and despotism. His experience had rendered him expert in what may well enough be termed the language of association. No man of his years, in the twenty-six states, could more readily apply the terms of "taking up"--"excitement"--"unqualified hostility"--"public opinion"--"spreading before the public," or any other of those generic phrases that imply the privileges of all, and the rights of none. Unfortunately, the pronunciation of this person was not as pure as his motives, and he misunderstood the captain when he spoke of comity, as meaning a "committee;" and although it was not quite obvious what the worthy mariner could intend by "obliged in committee (comity) to heave-to," yet, as he had known these bodies to do so many "energetic things," he did not see why they might not perform this evolution as well as another. "It really does appear, Captain Truck," he remarked accordingly, "that our situation approaches a crisis, and the suggestion of a comity (committee) strikes me as being peculiarly proper and suitable to the circumstances, and in strict conformity with republican usages. In order to save time, and that the gentlemen who shall be appointed to serve may have opportunity to report, therefore, I will at once nominate Sir George Templemore as chairman, leaving it for any other gentleman present to suggest the name of any candidate he may deem proper. I will only add, that in my poor judgment this comity (committee) ought to consist of at least three and that it have power to send for persons and papers." "I would propose five, Captain Truck, by way of amendment," added another passenger of the same kidney as the last speaker, gentlemen of their school making it a point to differ a little from every proposition by way of showing their independence. It was fortunate for both the mover of the original motion, and for the proposer of the amendment, that the master was acquainted with the character of Mr. Dodge, or a proposition that his ship was to be worked by a committee, (or indeed by comity,) would have been very likely to meet with but an indifferent reception; but, catching a glimpse of the laughing eyes of Eve, as well as of the amused faces of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt, by the light of the moon, he very gravely signified his entire approbation of the chairman named, and his perfect readiness to listen to the report of the aforesaid committee as soon as it might be prepared to make it. "And if your committee, or comity, gentlemen," he added, "can tell me what Vattel would say about the obligation to heave-to in a time of profound peace, and when the ship, or boat, in chase, can have no belligerent rights, I shall be grateful to my dying day; for I have looked him through as closely as old women usually examine almanacks to tell which way the wind is about to blow, and I fear he has overlooked the subject altogether." Mr. Dodge, and three or four more of the same community-propensity as himself, soon settled the names of the rest of the committee, when the nominees retired to another part of the deck to consult together; Sir George Templemore, to the surprise of all the Effingham party, consenting to serve with a willingness that rather disregarded forms. "It might be convenient to refer other matters to this committee, captain," said Mr. Sharp, who had tact enough to see that nothing but her habitual _retenue_ of deportment kept Eve, whose bright eyes were dancing with humour from downright laughter: "these are the important points of reefing and furling, the courses to be steered, the sail to be carried, the times and seasons of calling all hands together, with sundry other customary duties, that no doubt would be well treated on in this forthcoming report." "No doubt, sir; I perceive you have been at sea before, and I am sorry you were overlooked in naming the members of the comity: take my word for it, all that you have mentioned can be done on board the Montauk by a comity, as well as settling the question of heaving-to, or not, for yonder boat.--By the way, Mr. Leach, the fellows have tacked, and are standing in this direction, thinking to cross our bows and speak us.--Mr. Attorney, the tide is setting us off the land, and you may make it morning before you get into your nests, if you hold on much longer. I fear Mrs. Seal and Mrs. Grab will be unhappy women." The bloodhounds of the law heard this warning with indifference, for they expected succour of some sort, though they hardly knew of what sort, from the man-of-war's boat which, it was now plain enough, must weather on the ship. After putting their heads together, Mr. Seal offered his companion a pinch of snuff, helping himself afterwards, like a man indifferent to the result, and one patient in time of duty. The sun-burnt face of the captain, whose standing colour was that which cooks get when the fire burns the brightest, but whose hues no fire or cold ever varied, was turned fully on the two, and it is probable they would have received some decided manifestation of his will, had not Sir George Templemore, with the four other committee-men, approached to give in the result of their conference. "We are of opinion, Captain Truck," said the baronet, "that as the ship is under way, and your voyage may be fairly said to have commenced, it is quite inexpedient and altogether unnecessary for you to anchor again; but that it is your duty----" "I have no occasion for advice as to my duty, gentlemen. If you can let me know what Vattel says, or ought to have said, on the subject, or touching the category of the right of search, except as a belligerent right, I will thank you; if not, we must e'en guess at it. I have not sailed a ship in. this trade these ten years to need any jogging of the memory about port-jurisdiction either, for these are matters in which one gets to be expert by dint of use, as my old master used to say when he called us from table with half a dinner. Now, there was the case of the blacks in Charleston, in which our government showed clearly it had not studied Vattel, or it never would have given the answer it did. Perhaps you never heard that case, Sir George, and as it touches a delicate principle, I will just run over the category lightly; for it has its points, as well as a coast." "Does not this matter press,--may not the boat--" "The boat will do nothing, gentlemen, without the permission of Jack Truck. You must know, the Carolinians have a law that all niggers brought into their state by ships, must be caged until the vessel sails again. This is to prevent emancipation, as they call it, or abolition, I know not which. An Englishman comes in from the islands with a crew of blacks, and, according to law, the authorities of Charleston house them all before night. John Bull complains to his minister, and his minister sends a note to our secretary, and our secretary writes to the Governor of Carolina, calling on him to respect the treaty, and so on. Gentlemen, I need not tell you what a treaty is--it is a thing in itself to be obeyed; but it is all important to know what it commands. Well, what was this said treaty? That John should come in and out of the ports, on the footing of the most favoured nation; on the _statu quo ante bellum_ principle, as Vattel has it. Now, the Carolinians treated John just as they treated Jonathan, and there was no more to be said. All parties were bound to enter the port, subject to the municipals, as is set forth in Vattel. That was a case soon settled, you perceive, though depending on a nicety." Sir George had listened with extreme impatience, but, fearful of offending, he listened to the end; then, seizing the first pause in the captain's discourse, he resumed his remonstrances with an interest that did infinite credit to his humanity, at the same time that he overlooked none of the obligations of politeness. "An exceedingly clear case, I protest," he answered, "and capitally put--I question if Lord Stowell could do it better--and exceedingly apt, that about the _ante bellum_; but I confess my feelings have not been so much roused for a long time as they have been on account of these poor people. There is something inexpressibly painful in being disappointed as one is setting out in the morning of life, as it were, in this cruel manner; and rather than see this state of things protracted, I would prefer paying a trifle out of my own pocket. If this wretched attorney will consent, now to take a hundred pounds and quit us, and carry back with him that annoying cutter with the lug-sails, I will give him the money most cheerfully,--most cheerfully, I protest." There is something so essentially respectable in practical generosity, that, though Eve and all the curious auditors of what was massing; felt an inclination to laugh at the whole procedure up to this declaration, eye met eye in commendation of the liberality of the baronet. He had shown he had a heart, in the opinion of most of those who heard him though his previous conversation had led several of the observers to distrust his having the usual quantum of head. "Give yourself no trouble about the attorney, Sir George," returned the captain, shaking the other cordially by the hand: "he shall not touch a pound of your money, nor do I think he is likely to touch Robert Davis. We have caught the tide on our lee bow, and the current is wheeling us up to windward, like an opposition coach flying over Blackheath. In a few minutes we shall be in blue water; and then I'll give the rascal a touch of Vattel that will throw him all aback, if it don't throw him overboard." "But the cutter?" "Why, if we drive the attorney and Grab out of the ship, there will be no process in the hands of the others, by which they can carry off the man, even admitting the jurisdiction. I know the scoundrels, and not a shilling shall either of the knaves take from this vessel with my consent Harkee, Sir George, a word in your ear: two of as d----d cockroaches as ever rummaged a ship's bread-room; I'll see that they soon heave about, or I'll heave them both into their boat, with my own fair hands." The captain was about to turn away to examine the position of the cutter, when Mr. Dodge asked permission to make a short report in behalf of the minority of the comity (committee), the amount of which was, that they agreed in all things with the majority, except on the point that, as it might become expedient for the ship to anchor again in some of the ports lower down the Channel, it would be wise to keep that material circumstance in view, in making up a final decision in the affair. This report, on the part of the minority, which, Mr. Dodge explained to the baronet, partook rather of the character of a caution than of a protest, had quite as little influence on Captain Truck as the opinion of the majority, for he was just one of those persons who seldom took advice that did not conform with his own previous decision; but he coolly continued to examine the cutter, which by this time was standing on the same course as the ship, a short distance to windward of her, and edging a little off the wind, so as to bring the two nearer to each other, every yard they advanced. The wind had freshened to a little breeze, and the captain nodded his head with satisfaction when he heard even where he stood on the quarter-deck, the slapping of the sluggish swell, as the huge bows of the ship parted the water. At this moment those in the cutter saw the bubbles glide swiftly past them, while to those in the Montauk the motion was still slow and heavy; and yet, of the two, the actual velocity was rather in favour of the latter, both having about what is technically termed "four-knot way" on them. The officer of the boat was quick to detect the change that was acting against him, and by easing the sheets of his lug-sails, and keeping the cutter as much off the wind as he could, he was soon within a hundred feet of the ship, running along on her weather-beam. The bright soft moonlight permitted the face of a young man in a man-of-war cap, who wore the undress uniform of a sea lieutenant, to be distinctly seen, as he rose in the stern-sheets, which contained also two other persons. "I will thank you to heave-to the Montauk," said the lieutenant civilly, while he raised his cap, apparently in compliment to the passengers who crowded the rail to see and hear what passed. "I am sent on the duty of the king, sir." "I know your errand, sir," returned Captain Truck, whose resolution to refuse to comply was a good deal shaken by the gentleman-like manner in which the request was made; "and I wish you to bear witness, that if I do consent to your request, it is voluntarily; for, on the principles laid down by Vattel and the other writers on international law, the right of search is a belligerent right, and England being at peace, no ship belonging to one nation can have a right to stop a vessel belonging to another." "I cannot enter into these niceties, sir," returned the lieutenant, sharply: "I have my orders, and you will excuse me if I say, I intend to execute them." "Execute them, with all my heart, sir: if you are ordered to heave-to my ship, all you have to do is to get on board if you can, and let us see the style in which you handle yards. As to the people now stationed at the braces, the trumpet that will make them stir is not to be spoken through at the Admiralty. The fellow has spirit in him, and I like his principles as an officer, but I cannot admit his conclusions as a jurist. If he flatters himself with being able to frighten us into a new category, now, that is likely to impair national rights, the lad has just got himself into a problem that will need all his logic, and a good deal of his spirit, to get out of again." "You will scarcely think of resisting a king's officer in British waters!" said the young man with that haughtiness that the meekest tempers soon learn to acquire under a pennant. "Resisting, my dear sir! I resist nothing. The misconception is in supposing that you sail this ship instead of John Truck. That is my name, sir; John Truck. Do your errand in welcome, but do not ask me to help you. Come aboard, with all my heart; nothing would give me more pleasure than to take wine with you; but I see no necessity of stopping a packet, that is busy on a long road, without an object, as we say on the other side of the big waters." There was a pause, and then the lieutenant, with the sort of hesitation that a gentleman is apt to feel when he makes a proposal that he knows ought not to be accepted, called out that those in the boat with him would pay for the detention of the ship. A more unfortunate proposition could not be made to Captain Truck, who would have hove-to his ship in a moment had the lieutenant proposed to discuss Vattel with him on the quarter-deck, and who was only holding out as a sort of salve to his rights, with that disposition to resist aggression that the experience of the last forty years has so deeply implanted in the bosom of every American sailor, in cases connected with English naval officers, and who had just made up his mind to let Robert Davis take his chance, and to crack a bottle with the handsome young man who was still standing up in the boat. But Mr. Truck had been too often to London not to understand exactly the manner in which Englishmen appreciate American character; and, among other things, he knew it was the general opinion in the island that money could do any thing with Jonathan; or, as Christophe is said once to have sententiously expressed the same sentiment, "if there were a bag of coffee in h---, a Yankee could be found to go and bring it out." The master of the Montauk had a proper relish for his lawful gains as well as another, but he was vain-glorious on the subject of his countrymen, principally because he found that the packets outsailed all other merchant-ships, and fiercely proud of any quality that others were disposed to deny them. At hearing this proposal, or intimation, therefore, instead of accepting it, Captain Truck raised his hat with formal civility, and coolly wished the other "good night." This was bringing the affair to a crisis at once; for the helm of the cutter was borne up, and an attempt was made to run the boat alongside of the ship. But the breeze had been steadily increasing, the air had grown heavier as the night advanced, and the dampness of evening was thickening the canvas of the coarser sails in a way sensibly to increase the speed of the ship. When the conversation commenced, the boat was abreast of the fore-rigging; and by the time it ended, it was barely up with the mizzen. The lieutenant was quick to see the disadvantage he laboured under, and he called out "Heave!" as he found the cutter was falling close under the counter of the ship, and would be in her wake in another minute. The bowman of the boat cast a light grapnel with so much precision that it hooked in the mizzen rigging, and the line instantly tightened so as to tow the cutter. A seaman was passing along the outer edge of the hurricane-house at the moment, coming from the wheel, and with the decision of an old salt, he quietly passed his knife across the stretched cordage, and it snapped like pack-thread. The grapnel fell into the sea, and the boat was lossing in the wake of the ship, all as it might be while one could draw a breath. To furl the sails and ship the oars consumed but an instant, and then the cutter was ploughing the water under the vigorous strokes of her crew. "Spirited! spirited and nimble!" observed Captain Truck, who stood coolly leaning against a shroud, in a position where he could command a view of all that was passing, improving the opportunity to shake the ashes from his cigar while he spoke; "a fine young fellow, and one who will make an admiral, or something better, I dare say, if he live;--perhaps a cherub, in time. Now, if he pull much longer in the back-water of our wake, I shall have to give him up, Leach, as a little marin-_ish:_ ah! there he sheers out of it, like a sensible youth as he is! Well, there is something pleasant in the conceit of a six-oared boat's carrying a London liner by boarding, even admitting the lad could have got alongside." So, it would seem, thought Mr. Leach and the crew of the Montauk; for they were clearing the decks with as much philosophy as men ever discover when employed in an unthankful office. This _sang-froid_ of seamen is always matter of surprise to landsmen; but adventurers who have been rocked in the tempest for years, whose utmost security is a great hazard, and whose safety constantly depends on the command of the faculties, come in time to experience an apathy on the subject of all the minor terrors and excitements of life, that none can acquire unless by habit and similar risks. There was a low laugh among the people, and now and then a curious glance of the eye over the quarter to ascertain the position of the struggling boat; but there the effect of the little incident ceased, so far as the seamen were concerned. Not so with the passengers. The Americans exulted at the failure of the man-of-war's man, and the English doubted. To them, deference to the crown was habitual, and they were displeased at seeing a stranger play a king's boat such a trick, in what they justly enough thought to be British waters. Although the law may not give a man any more right than another to the road before his own door, he comes in time to fancy it, in a certain degree, his particular road. Strictly speaking, the Montauk was perhaps still under the dominion of the English laws, though she had been a league from the land when laying at her anchor, and by this time the tide and her own velocity had swept her broad off into the offing quite as far again; indeed she had now got to such a distance from the land, that Captain Truck thought it his "duty" to bring matters to a conclusion with the attorney. "Well, Mr. Seal," he said, "I am grateful for the pleasure of your company thus far; but you will excuse me if I decline taking you and Mr. Grab quite to America. Half an hour hence you will hardly be able to find the island; for as soon as we have got to a proper distance from the cutter, I shall tack to the south-west, and you ought, moreover, to remember the anxiety of the ladies at home." "This may turn out a serious matter, Captain Truck, on your return passage! The laws of England are not to be trifled with. Will you oblige me by ordering the steward to hand me a glass of water? Waiting for justice is dry duty, I find." "Extremely sorry I cannot comply, gentlemen. Vattel has nothing on the subject of watering belligerents, or neutrals, and the laws of Congress compel me to carry so many gallons to the man. If you will take it in the way of a nightcap, however, and drink success to our run to America, and your own to the shore, it shall be in champagne, if you happen to like that agreeable fluid." The attorney was about to express his readiness to compromise on these terms, when a glass of the beverage for which he had first asked was put into his hand by the wife of Robert Davis. He took the water, drank it, and turned from the woman with the obduracy of one who never suffered feeling to divert him from the pursuit of gain. The wine was brought, and the captain filled the glasses with a seaman's heartiness. "I drink to your safe return to Mrs. Seal, and the little gods and goddesses of justice,--Pan or Mercury, which is it? And as for you, Grab, look out for sharks as you pull in. If they hear of your being afloat, the souls of persecuted sailors will set them on you, as the devil chases male coquettes. Well, gentlemen, you are balked this time; but what matters it? It is but another man got safe out of a country that has too many in it; and I trust we shall meet good friends again this day four months. Even man and wife must part, when the hour arrives." "That will depend on how my client views your conduct on this occasion, Captain Truck; for he is not a man that it is always safe to thwart." "That for your client, Mr. Seal!" returned the captain, snapping his fingers. "I am not to be frightened with an attorney's growl, or a bailiff's nod. You come off with a writ or a warrant, I care not which; I offer no resistance; you hunt for your man, like a terrier looking for a rat, and can't find him; I see the fine fellow, at this moment, on deck,--but I feel no obligation to tell you who or where he is; my ship is cleared and I sail, and you have no power to stop me; we are outside of all the head-lands, good two leagues and a half off, and some writers say that a gun-shot is the extent of your jurisdiction, once out of which, your authority is not worth half as much as that of my chief cook, who has power to make his mate clean the coppers. Well, sir, you stay here ten minutes longer and we shall be fully three leagues from your nearest land, and then you are in America, according to law, and a quick passage you will have made of it. Now, that is what I call a category." As the captain made this last remark, his quick eye saw that the wind had hauled so far round to the westward, as to supersede the necessity of tacking, and that they were actually going eight knots in a direct line from Portsmouth. Casting an eye behind him, he perceived that the cutter had given up the chase, and was returning towards the distant roads. Under circumstances so discouraging, the attorney, who began to be alarmed for his boat, which was flying along on the water, towed by the ship, prepared to take his leave; for he was fully aware that he had no power to compel the other to heave-to his ship, to enable him to get out of her. Luckily the water was still tolerably smooth, and with fear and trembling, Mr. Seal succeeded in blundering into the boat; not, however, until the watermen had warned him of their intention to hold on no longer. Mr. Grab followed, with a good deal of difficulty, and just as a hand was about to let go the painter, the captain appeared at the gangway with the man they were in quest of, and said in his most winning manner-- "Mr. Grab, Mr. Davis; Mr. Davis, Mr Grab; I seldom introduce steerage passengers, but to oblige two old friends I break the rule. That's what I call a category. My compliments to Mrs. Grab. Let go the painter" The words were no sooner uttered than the boat was tossing and whirling in the caldron left by the passing ship. Chapter V. What country, Mends, is this? Illyria, lady. TWELFTH NIGHT. Captain Truck cast an eye aloft to see if everything drew, as coolly as if nothing out of the usual course had happened; he and his crew having, seemingly, regarded the attempt to board them as men regard the natural phenomena of the planets, or in other words, as if the ship, of which they were merely parts, had escaped by her own instinct or volition. This habit of considering the machine as the governing principle is rather general among seamen, who, while they ease a brace, or drag a bowline, as the coachman checks a rein, appear to think it is only permitting the creature to work her own will a little more freely. It is true all _know_ better, but none talk, or indeed would seem to _feel_, as if they thought otherwise. "Did you observe how the old barky jumped out of the way of those rovers in the cutter?" said the captain complacently to the quarter-deck group, when his survey aloft had taken sufficient heed that his own nautical skill should correct the instinct of the ship. "A skittish horse, or a whale with the irons in him, or, for that matter, one of the funniest of your theatricals, would not have given a prettier aside than this poor old hulk, which is certainly just the clumsiest craft that sails the ocean. I wish King William would take it into his royal head, now, to send one of his light-heeled cruisers out to prove it, by way of resenting the cantaverous trick the Montauk played his boat!" The dull report of a gun, as the sound came short and deadened up against the breeze, checked the raillery of Mr. Truck. On looking to leeward, there was sufficient light to see the symmetrical sails of the corvette they had left at anchor, trimmed close by the wind, and the vessel itself standing out under a press of canvas, apparently in chase. The gun had evidently been fired as a signal of recall to the cutter, blue lights being burnt on board of both the ship and its boat, in proof that they were communicating. The passengers now looked gravely at each other, for the matter, in their eyes, began to be serious. Some suggested the possibility that the offence of Davis might be other than debt, but this was disproved by the process and the account of the bailiff himself; while most concluded that a determination to resent the slight done the authorities had caused the cruiser to follow them out, with the intention of carrying them back again. The English passengers in particular began now to reason in favour of the authority of the crown, while those who were known to be Americans grew warm in maintaining the rights of their flag. Both the Effinghams, however, were moderate in the expression of their opinions; for education, years, and experience, had taught them to discriminate justly. "As respects the course of Captain Truck, in refusing to permit the cutter to board him, he is probably a better judge than any of us," Mr. Effingham observed with gentlemanly reserve--"for he must better understand the precise position of his ship at the time; but concerning the want of right in a foreign vessel of war to carry this ship into port in a time of profound peace, when sailing on the high seas, as will soon be the case with the Montauk,--admitting that she is not there at present,--I should think there can be no reasonable doubt. The dispute, if there is to be any, has now to become matter of negotiation; or redress must be sought through the general agents of the two nations, and not taken by the inferior officers of either party. The instant Montauk reaches the public highway of nations, she is, within the exclusive jurisdiction of the country under whose flag she legally sails." "Vattel, to the back-bone!" said the captain, giving a nod of approbation, again clearing the end of his cigar. Now, John Effingham was a man of strong feelings, which is often but another word for a man of strong prejudices; and he had been educated between thirty or forty years before, which is saying virtually, that he was educated under the influence of the British opinions, that then weighed (and many of which still weigh) like an incubus on the national interests of America. It is true, Mr. Effingham was in all senses the contemporary, as he had been the school-fellow, of his cousin; that they loved each other as brothers, had the utmost reliance on each other's principles in the main, thought alike in a thousand things, and yet, in the particular of English domination, it was scarcely possible for one man to resemble another less than the widowed kinsman resembled the bachelor. Edward Effingham was a singularly just-minded man, and having succeeded at an early age to his estate, he had lived many years in that intellectual retirement which, by withdrawing him from the strifes of the world, had left a cultivated sagacity to act freely on a natural disposition. At the period when the entire republic was, in substance, exhibiting the disgraceful picture of a nation torn by adverse factions, that had their origin in interests alien to its own; when most were either Englishmen or Frenchmen, he had remained what nature, the laws and reason intended him to be, an American. Enjoying the _otium cum dignitate_ on his hereditary estate, and in his hereditary abode, Edward Effingham, with little pretensions to greatness, and with many claims to goodness, had hit the line of truth which so many of the "god-likes" of the republic, under the influence of their passions, and stimulated by the transient and fluctuating interests of the day, entirely overlooked, or which, if seeing, they recklessly disregarded. A less impracticable subject for excitement,--the _primum mobile_ of all American patriotism and activity, if we are to believe the theories of the times,--could not be found, than this gentleman. Independence of situation had induced independence of thought; study and investigation rendered him original and just, by simply exempting him from the influence of the passions; and while hundreds were keener, abler in the exposition of subtleties, or more imposing with the mass, few were as often right, and none of less selfishness, than this simple-minded and upright gentleman. He loved his native land, while he saw and regretted its weaknesses; was its firm and consistent advocate abroad, without becoming its interested or mawkish flatterer at home, and at all times, and in all situations, manifested that his heart was where it ought to be. In many essentials, John Effingham was the converse of all this. Of an intellect much more acute and vigorous than that of his cousin, he also possessed passions less under control, a will more stubborn, and prejudices that often neutralized his reason. His father had inherited most of the personal property of the family, and with this he had plunged into the vortex of monied speculation that succeeded the adoption of the new constitution, and verifying the truth of the sacred saying, that "where treasure is, there will the heart be also," he had entered warmly and blindly into all the factious and irreconcilable principles of party, if such a word can properly be applied to rules of conduct that Bary with the interests of the day, and had adopted the current errors with which faction unavoidably poisons the mind. America was then much too young in her independence, and too insignificant in all eyes but her own, to reason and act for herself, except on points that pressed too obviously on her immediate concerns to be overlooked; but the great social principles,--or it might be better to say, the great social interests,--that then distracted Europe, produced quite as much sensation in that distant country, as at all comported with a state of things that had so little practical connexion with the result, The Effingham family had started Federalists, in the true meaning of the term; for their education, native sense and principles, had a leaning to order, good government, and the dignity of the country; but as factions became fiercer, and names got to be confounded and contradictory, the landed branch settled down into what they thought were American, and the commercial branch into what might properly be termed English Federalists. We do not mean that the father of John intended to be untrue to his native land; but by following up the dogmas of party he had reasoned himself into a set of maxims which, if they meant anything, meant everything but that which had been solemnly adopted as the governing principles of his own country, and many of which were diametrically opposed to both its interests and its honour. John Effingham had insensibly imbibed the sentiments of his particular sect, though the large fortune inherited from his father had left him too independent to pursue the sinuous policy of trade. He had permitted temperament to act on prejudice to such an extent that he vindicated the right of England to force men from under the American flag, a doctrine that his cousin was too simple-minded and clear-headed ever to entertain for an instant: and he was singularly ingenious in discovering blunders in all the acts of the republic, when they conflicted with the policy of Great Britain. In short, his talents were necessary, perhaps, to reconcile so much sophistry, or to render that reasonably plausible that was so fundamentally false. After the peace of 1815, John Effingham went abroad for the second time, and he hurried through England with the eagerness of strong affection; an affection that owed its existence even more to opposition than to settled notions of truth, or to natural ties. The result was disappointment, as happens nineteen times in twenty, and this solely because, in the zeal of a partisan he had fancied theories, and imagined results. Like the English radical, who rushes into America with a mind unsettled by impracticable dogmas, he experienced a reaction, and this chiefly because he found that men were not superior to nature, and discovered so late in the day, what he might have known at starting, that particular causes must produce particular effects. From this time, John Effingham became a wiser and a more moderate man; though, as the shock had not been sufficiently violent to throw him backward on truth, or rather upon the opposing prejudices of another sect, the remains of the old notions were still to be discovered lingering in his opinions, and throwing a species of twilight shading over his mind; as, in nature, the hues of evening and the shadows of the morning follow, or precede, the light of the sun. Under the influence of these latent prejudices, then, John Effingham replied to the remarks of his cousin, and the discourse soon partook of the discursive character of all arguments, in which the parties are not singularly clear-headed, and free from any other bias than that of truth, Nearly all joined in it, and half an hour was soon passed in settling the law of nations, and the particular merits or demerits of the instance before them. It was a lovely night, and Mademoiselle Viefville and Eve walked the deck for exercise, the smoothness of the water rendering the moment every way favourable. As has been already said, the common feeling in the escape of the new-married couple had broken the ice, and less restraint existed between the passengers, at the moment when Mr. Grab left the ship, than would have been the case at the end of a week, under ordinary circumstances. Eve Effingham had passed her time since her eleventh year principally on the continent of Europe, and in the mixed intercourse that is common to strangers in that part of the world; or, in other words, equally without the severe restraint that is usually imposed there on the young of her own sex, or without the extreme license that is granted to them at home. She came of a family too well toned to run into the extravagant freedoms that sometimes pass for easy manners in America, had she never quitted her father's house even: but her associations abroad had unavoidably imparted greater reserve to her ordinary deportment than the simplicity of cis-Atlantic usages would have rendered indispensable in the most, fastidious circles. With the usual womanly reserves, she was natural and unembarrassed in her intercourse with the world, and she had been allowed to see so many different nations, that she had obtained a self-confidence that did her no injury, under the influence of an exemplary education, and great natural dignity of mind. Still, Mademoiselle Viefville, notwithstanding she had lost some of her own peculiar notions on the subject, by having passed so many years in an American family, was a little surprised at observing that Eve received the respectful advances of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt with less reserve than it was usual to her to manifest to entire strangers. Instead of remaining a mere listener, she answered several remarks of the first, and once or twice she even laughed with him openly at some absurdity of the committee of five. The cautious governess wondered, but half disposed to fancy that there was no more than the necessary freedom of a ship in it all,--for, like a true Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Viefville had very vague notions of the secrets of the mighty deep--she permitted it to pass, confiding in the long-tried taste and discretion of her charge. While Mr. Sharp discoursed with Eve, who held her arm the while, she herself had fallen into an animated conversation with Mr. Blunt, who walked at her side, and who spoke her own language so well, that she at first set him down as a countryman, travelling under an English appellation, as _a nom de guerre_. While this dialogue was at its height of interest--for Paul Blunt discoursed with his companion of Paris and its excellencies with a skill that soon absorbed all her attention, "_Paris, ce magnifique Paris,_" having almost as much influence on the happiness of the governess, as it was said to have had on that of Madame de Stael, Eve's companion dropped his voice to a tone that was rather confidential for a stranger, although it was perfectly respectful, and said,-- "I have flattered myself, perhaps through the influence of self-love alone, that Miss Effingham has not so far forgotten all whom she has met in her travels, as to think me an utter stranger." "Certainly not," returned Eve, with perfect simplicity and composure; "else would one of my faculties, that of memory, be perfectly useless. I knew you at a glance, and consider the worthy captain's introduction as so much finesse of breeding utterly thrown away." "I am equally gratified and vexed at all this; gratified and infinitely flattered to find that I have not passed before your eyes like the common herd, who leave no traces of even their features behind them; and vexed at finding myself in a situation that, I fear, you fancy excessively ridiculous?" "Oh, one hardly dare to attach such consequences to acts of young men, or young women either, in an age as original as our own. I saw nothing particularly absurd but the introduction;--and so many absurder have since passed, that this is almost forgotten." "And the name--?" "--Is certainly a keen one. If I am not mistaken, when we were in Italy you were content to let your servant bear it; but, venturing among a people so noted for sagacity as the Yankees, I suppose you have fancied it was necessary to go armed _cap-á-pié_." Both laughed lightly, as if they equally enjoyed the pleasantry, and then he resumed: "But I sincerely hope you do not impute improper motives to the incognito?" "I impute it to that which makes many young men run from Rome to Vienna, or from Vienna to Paris; which causes you to sell the _vis-a-vis_ to buy a _dormeuse_; to know your friends to-day, and to forget them to-morrow; or, in short, to do a hundred other things that can be accounted for on no other motive." "And this motive--?" "--Is simply caprice." "I wish I could persuade you to ascribe some better reason to all my conduct. Can you think of nothing, in the present instance, less discreditable?" "Perhaps I can," Eve answered, after a moment of thought; then laughing lightly again, she added, quickly; "But I fear, in exonerating you from the charge of unmitigated caprice, I shall ascribe a reason that does little less credit to your knowledge." "This will appear in the end. Does Mademoiselle Viefville remember me, do you fancy?" "It is impossible; she was ill, you will remember, the three months we saw so much of you." "And your father, Miss Effingham;--am I really forgotten by him?" "I am quite certain you are not. He never forgets a face, whatever in this instance may have befallen the name." "He received me so coldly, and so much like a total stranger!" "He is too well-bred to recognise a man who wishes to be unknown, or to indulge in exclamations of surprise, or in dramatic starts. He is more stable than a girl, moreover, and may feel less indulgence to caprice." "I feel obliged to his reserve; for exposure would be ridiculous, and so long as you and he alone know me, I shall feel less awkward in the ship. I am certain neither will betray me." "Betray!" "Betray, discover, annihilate me if you will. Anything is preferable to ridicule." "This touches a little on the caprice; but you flatter yourself with too much security; you are known to one more besides my father, myself, and the honest man whom you have robbed of all his astuteness, which I believe was in his name." "For pity's sake, who can it be?" "The worthy Nanny Sidley, my whilom nurse, and actual _femme de chambre_. No ogre was ever more vigilant on his ward than the faithful Nanny, and it is vain to suppose she does not recall your features." "But ogres sometimes sleep; recollect how many have been overcome in that situation." Eve smiled, but shook her head. She was about to assure Mr. Sharp of the vanity of his belief, when an exclamation from her governess diverted the attention of both, and before either had time to speak again, Mademoiselle turned to them, and said rapidly in French-- "I assure you, _ma chère_, I should have mistaken monsieur for a _compatriote_ by his language, were it not for a single heinous fault that he has just committed." "Which fault you will suffer me to inquire into, that I may hasten to correct it?" asked Mr. Blunt. "Mais, monsieur, you speak _too_ perfectly, too grammatically, for a native. You do not take the liberties with the language that one who feels he owns it thinks he has a right to do. It is the fault of too much correctness." "And a fault it easily becomes. I thank you for the hint, mademoiselle; but as I am now going where little French will be heard, it is probable it will soon be lost in greater mistakes." The two then turned away again, and continued the dialogue that had been interrupted by this trifling. "There may also be one more to whom you are known," continued Eve, as soon as the vivacity of the discourse of the others satisfied her the remark would not he heard. "Surely, you cannot mean _him_?" "Surely, I do mean _him_. Are you quite certain that 'Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt; Mr. Blunt, Mr. Sharp,' never saw each other before?" "I think not until the moment we entered the boat in company. He is a gentlemanly young man; he seems even to be more, and one would not be apt to forget him. He is altogether superior to the rest of the set: do you not agree with me?" Eve made no answer, probably because she thought her companion was not sufficiently intimate to interrogate her on the subject of her opinions of others. Mr. Sharp had too much knowledge of the world not to perceive the little mistake he had made, and after begging the young lady, with a ludicrous deprecation of her mercy, not to betray him, he changed the conversation with the tact of a man who saw that the discourse could not be continued without assuming a confidential character that Eve was indisposed to permit. Luckily, a pause in the discourse between the governess and her colloquist permitted a happy turn to the conversation. "I believe you are an American, Mr. Blunt," he remarked; "and as I am an Englishman, we may be fairly pitted against each other on this important question of international law, and about which I hear our worthy captain flourishing extracts from Vattel as familiarly as household terms. I hope, at least, you agree with me in thinking that when the sloop-of-war comes up with us, it will be very silly on our part to make any objections to being boarded by her?" "I do not know that it is at all necessary I should be an American to give an opinion on such a point," returned the young man he addressed, courteously, though he smiled to himself as he answered--"For what is right, is right, quite independent of nationality. It really does appear to me that a public-armed vessel ought, in war or peace, to have a right to ascertain the character of all merchant-ships, at least on the coast of the country to which the cruisers belong. Without this power, it is not easy to see in what manner they can seize smugglers, capture pirates, or other wise enforce the objects for which such vessels are usually sent to sea, in the absence of positive hostilities." "I am happy to find you agreeing with me, then, in the legality of the doctrine of the right of search." Paul Blunt again smiled, and Eve, as she caught a glimpse of his fine countenance in turning in their short walk, fancied there was a concealed pride of reason in the expression. Still he answered as mildly and quietly as before. "The right of search, certainly, to attain these ends, but to attain no more. If nations denounce piracy, for instance, and employ especial agents to detect and overcome the free-booters, there is reason in according to these agents all the rights that are requisite to the discharge of the duties: but, in conceding this much, I do not see that any authority is acquired beyond that which immediately belongs to the particular service to be performed. If we give a man permission to enter our house to look for thieves, it does not follow that, because so admitted, he has a right to exercise any other function. I do believe that the ship in chase of us, as a public cruiser, ought to be allowed to board this vessel; but finding nothing contrary to the laws of nations about her, that she will have no power to detain or otherwise molest her. Even the right I concede ought to be exercised in good faith, and without vexatious abuses." "But, surely, you must think that in carrying off a refugee from justice we have placed ourselves in the wrong, and cannot object, as a principle, to the poor man's being taken back again into the country from which he has escaped, however much we may pity the hardships of the particular case?" "I much question if Captain Truck will be disposed to reason so vaguely. In the first place, he will be apt to say that his ship was regularly cleared, and that he had authority to sail; that in permitting the officer to search his vessel, while in British waters, he did all that could be required of him, the law not compelling him to be either a bailiff or an informer; that the process issued was to take Davis, and not to detain the Montauk; that, once out of British waters, American law governs, and the English functionary became an intruder of whom he had every right to rid himself, and that the process by which he got his power to act at all became impotent the instant it was without the jurisdiction under which it was granted." "I think you will find the captain of yonder cruiser indisposed to admit this doctrine." "That is not impossible; men often preferring abuses to being thwarted in their wishes. But the captain of yonder cruiser might as well go on board a foreign vessel of war, and pretend to a right to command her, in virtue of the commission by which he commands his own ship, as to pretend to find reason or law in doing what you seem to predict." "I rejoice to hear that the poor man cannot now be torn from his wife!" exclaimed Eve. "You then incline to the doctrine of Mr. Blunt, Miss Effingham?" observed the other controversialist a little reproachfully. "I fear you make it a national question." "Perhaps I have done what all seem to have done, permitted sympathy to get the better of reason. And yet it would require strong proof to persuade me that villanous-looking attorney was engaged in a good cause, and that meek and warm-hearted wife in a bad one!" Both the gentlemen smiled, and both turned to the fair speaker, as if inviting her to proceed. But Eve checked herself, having already said more than became her, in her own opinion. "I had hoped to find an ally in you, Mr. Blunt, to sustain the claim of England to seize her own seamen when found on board of vessels of another nation," resumed Mr. Sharp, when a respectful pause had shown both the young men that they need expect nothing more 'from their fair companion; "but I fear I must set you down as belonging to those who wish to see the power of England reduced, _coúte qui coúte_." This was received as it was meant, or as a real opinion veiled under pleasantry. "I certainly do not wish to see her power maintained, _coúte qui coúte_" returned the other, laughing; "and in this opinion, I believe, I may claim both these ladies as allies." "_Certainement!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, who was a living proof that the feelings created by centuries of animosity are not to be subdued by a few flourishes of the pen. "As for me, Mr. Sharp," added Eve, "you may suppose, being an American girl, I cannot subscribe to the right of any country to do us injustice; but I beg you will not include me among those who wish to see the land of my ancestors wronged, in aught that she may rightfully claim as her due." "This is powerful support, and I shall rally to the rescue. Seriously, then, will you allow me to inquire, sir, if you think the right of England to the services of her seamen can be denied?" "Seriously, then, Mr. Sharp, you must permit me to ask if you mean by force, or by reason?" "By the latter, certainly." "I think you have taken the weak side of the English argument; the nature of the service that the subject, or the citizen, as it is now the fashion to say at Paris, mademoiselle--" "--_Tant pis_," muttered the governess. "--Owes his government," continued the young man slightly glancing at Eve, at the interruption, "is purely a point of internal regulation. In England there is compulsory service for seamen without restriction, or what is much the same, without an equal protection; in France, it is compulsory service on a general plan; in America, as respects seamen, the service is still voluntary." "Your pardon;--will the institutions of America permit impressment at all?" "I should think, not indiscriminate impressment; though I do not see why laws might not be enacted to compel drafts for the ships of war, as well as for the army: but this is a point that some of the professional gentlemen on board, if there be any such, might better answer than myself." "The skill with which you have touched on these subjects to-night, had made me hope to have found such a one in you; for to a traveller, it is always desirable to enter a country with a little preparation, and a ship might offer as much temptation to teach as to learn." "If you suppose me an _American lawyer_, you give me credit for more than I can lay claim to." As he hesitated, Eve wondered whether the slight emphasis he had laid on the two words we have italicised, was heaviest on that which denoted the country, or on that which denoted the profession. "I have been much in America, and have paid a little attention to the institutions, but should be sorry to mislead you into the belief that I am at all infallible on such points," Mr. Blunt continued. "You were about to touch on impressment." "Simply to say that it is a municipal national power, one in no degree dependent on general principles, and that it can properly be exercised in no situation in which the exercise of municipal or national powers is forbidden. I can believe that this power may be exercised on board American ships in British waters--or at least, that it is a more plausible right in such situations; but I cannot think it can be rightfully exercised anywhere else. I do not think England would submit to such a practice an hour, reversing the case, and admitting her present strength: and an appeal of this sort is a pretty good test of a principle." "Ay, ay, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as Vattel says," interrupted Captain Truck, who had overheard the last speech or two: "not that he says this in so many words, but then, he has the sentiment at large scattered throughout his writings. For that matter, there is little that can be said on a subject that he does not put before his readers, as plainly as Beachy Head lies before the navigator of the British Channel. With Bowditch and Vattel, a man might sail round the globe, and little fear of a bad landfall, or a mistake in principles. My present object is to tell you, ladies, that the steward has reported the supper in waiting for the honour of your presence." Before quitting the deck, the party inquired into the state of the chase, and the probable intentions of the sloop-of-war. "We are now on the great highway of nations," returned Mr. Truck, "and it is my intention to travel it without jostling, or being jostled. As for the sloop, she is standing out under a press of canvas, and we are standing from her, in nearly a straight line, in like circumstances. She is some eight or ten miles astern of us, and there is an old saying among seamen that 'a stern chase is a long chase.' I do not think our case is about to make an exception to the rule. I shall not pretend to say what will be the upshot of the matter; but there is not the ship in the British navy that can gain ten miles on the Montauk, in her present trim, and with this breeze, in as many hours; so we are quit of her for the present." The last words were uttered just as Eve put her foot on the step to descend into the cabin. Chapter VI. _Trin._ Stephano,-- _Steph._ Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy! Mercy! TEMPEST. The life of a packet steward is one of incessant mixing and washing, of interrogations and compoundings, all in a space of about twelve feet square. These functionaries, usually clever mulattoes who have caught the civilisation of the kitchen, are busy from morning till night in their cabins, preparing dishes, issuing orders, regulating courses, starting corks, and answering questions. Apathy is the great requisite for the station; for wo betide the wretch who fancies any modicum of zeal, or good nature, can alone fit him for the occupation. From the moment the ship sails until that in which a range of the cable is overhauled, or the chain is rowsed up in readiness to anchor, no smile illumines his face, no tone issues from his voice while on duty, but that of dogged routine--of submission to those above, or of snarling authority to those beneath him. As the hour for the "drink gelt," or "buona mana," approaches, however, he becomes gracious and smiling. On his first appearance in the pantry of a morning, he has a regular series of questions to answer, and for which, like the dutiful Zeluco, who wrote all his letters to his mother on the same day, varying the dates to suit the progress of time, he not unfrequently has a regular set of answers out and dried, in his gastronomical mind. "How's the wind?" "How's the weather?" "How's her head?" all addressed to this standing almanack, are mere matters of course, for which he is quite prepared, though it is by no means unusual to hear him ordering a subordinate to go on deck, after the answer is given, with a view to ascertain the facts. It is only when the voice of the captain is heared from his state-room, that he conceives himself bound to be very particular, though such is the tact of all connected with ships, that they instinctively detect the "know nothings," who are uniformly treated with an indifference suited to their culpable ignorance. Even the "old salt" on the forecastle has an instinct for a brother tar, though a passenger, and a due respect is paid to Neptune in answering his inquiries, while half the time the maiden traveller meets with a grave equivoque, a marvel, or a downright mystification. On the first morning out, the steward of the Montauk commenced the dispensation of his news; for no sooner was he heard rattling the glasses, and shuffling plates in the pantry, than the attack was begun by Mr. Dodge, in whom "a laudable thirst after knowledge," as exemplified in putting questions, was rather a besetting principle. This gentleman had come out in the ship, as has been mentioned, and unfortunately for the interest of his propensity, not only the steward, but all on board, had, as it is expressed in slang language, early taken the measure of his foot. The result of his present application was the following brief dialogue. "Steward," called out Mr. Dodge, through the blinds of his state-room; "whereabouts are we?" "In the British Channel, sir." "I might have guessed that, myself." "So I s'pose, sir; nobody is better at guessing and divining than Mr. Dodge." "But in what part of the Channel are we, Saunders?" "About the middle, sir." "How far have we come to night?" "From Portsmouth Roads to this place, sir." Mr. Dodge was satisfied, and the steward, who would not have dared to be so explicit with any other cabin-passenger, continued coolly to mix an omelette. The next attack was made from the same room, by Sir George Templemore. "Steward, my good fellow, do you happen to know whereabouts we are?" "Certainly, sir; the land is still werry obwious." "Are we getting on cleverly?" "_Nicely_, sir;" with a mincing emphasis on the first word, that betrayed there was a little waggery about the grave-looking mulatto. "And the sloop-of-war, steward?" "Nicely too, sir." There was a shuffling in the state-room, followed by a silence. The door of Mr. Sharp's room was now opened an inch or two, and the following questions issued through the crevice: "Is the wind favourable, steward?" "Just her character, sir." "Do you mean that the wind is favourable?" "For the Montauk, sir; she's a persuader in this breeze." "But is she going in the direction we wish?" "If the gentleman wishes to perambulate America, it is probable he will get there with a little patience." Mr. Sharp pulled-to his door, and ten minutes passed without further questions; the steward beginning to hope the morning catechism was over, though he grumbled a wish that gentlemen would "turn out" and take a look for themselves. Now, up to this moment, Saunders knew no more, than those who had just been questioning him of the particular situation of the ship, in which he floated as indifferent to the whereabouts and the winds, as men sail in the earth along its orbit, without bethinking them of parallaxes, nodes, ecliptics, and solstices. Aware that it was about time for the captain to be heard, he sent a subordinate on deck, with a view to be ready to meet the usual questions from his commander. A couple of minutes were sufficient to put him _au courant_ of the real state of things. The next door that opened was that of Paul Blunt, however, who thrust his head into the cabin, with all his dark curls in the confusion of a night scene. "Steward!" "Sir. "How's the wind?" "Quite exhilarating, sir." "From what quarter?" "About south, sir" "Is there much of it?" "A prewailing breeze, sir." "And the sloop?" "She's to leeward, sir, operating along as fast as she can." "Steward!" "Sir," stepping hurriedly out of his pantry, in order to hear more distinctly. "Under what sail are we?" "Topgallant sails, sir." "How's her head?" "West-south-west, sir." "Delicious! Any news of the rover?" "Hull down to leeward, sir, and on our quarter. "Staggering along, eh?" "Quite like a disguised person, sir." "Better still. Hurry along that breakfast of yours, sir; I am as hungry as a Troglodyte." The honest captain had caught this word from a recent treatise against agrarianism, and having an acquired taste for orders in one sense, at least, he flattered himself with being what is called a Conservative, in other words, he had a strong relish for that maxim of the Scotch freebooter, which is rendered into English by the comely aphorism of "keep what you've got, and get what you can." A cessation of the interrogatories took place, and soon after the passengers began to appear in the cabin, one by one. As the first step is almost invariably to go on deck, especially in good weather, in a few minutes nearly all of the last night's party were again assembled in the open air, a balm that none can appreciate but those who have experienced the pent atmosphere of a crowded vessel. The steward had rendered a faithful account of the state of the weather to the captain, who was now seen standing in the main-rigging, looking at the clouds to windward, and at the sloop-of-war to leeward, in the knowing manner of one who was making comparisons materially to the disadvantage of the latter. The day was fine, and the Montauk, bearing her canvas nobly, was, to use the steward's language, also staggering along, under everything that would draw, from her topgallant-sails down, with the wind near two points forward of the beam, or on an easy bowline. As there was but little sea, her rate was quite nine knots, though varying with the force of the wind. The cruiser had certainly followed them thus far, though doubts began to be entertained whether she was in chase, or merely bound like themselves to the westward; a course common to all vessels that wish to clear the Channel, even when it is intended to go south, as the rocks and tides of the French coast are inconvenient neighbours in long nights. "Who knows, after all, that the cutter which tried to board us," asked the captain aloud, "belongs to the ship to leeward?" "I know the boat, sir," answered the second mate; "and the ship is the Foam." "Let her foam away, then, if she wishes to speak us. Has any one tried her bearings since daylight?" "We set her by the compass at six o'clock, sir, and she has not varied her bearing, as far as from one belaying pin to another, in three hours; but her hull rises fast: you can now make out her ports, and at daylight the bottom of her courses dipped." "Ay, ay, she is a light-going Foam, then! If that is the case, she will be alongside of us by night." "In which event, captain, you will be obliged to give him a broadside of Vattel," threw in John Effingham, in his cool manner. "If that will answer his errand, he is welcome to as much as he can carry. I begin to doubt, gentlemen, whether this fellow be not in earnest: in which case you may nave an opportunity of witnessing how ships are handled, when seamen have their management. I have no objection, to setting the experience of a poor come-and-go sort of a fellow, like myself, in opposition to the geometry and Hamilton Moore of a young man-of-war's-man. I dare say, now, yonder chap is a lord, or a lord's progeny, while poor Jack Truck is just as you see him." "Do you not think half-an-hour of compliance on our part might bring the matter to an amicable conclusion a once?" said Paul Blunt. "Were we to run down to him, the object of his pursuit could be determined in a few minutes." "What! and abandon poor Davis to the rapacity of that rascally attorney?" generously exclaimed Sir George Templemore. "I would prefer paying the port-charges myself, run into the handiest French port, and let the honest fellow escape!" "There is no probability that a cruiser would attempt to take a mere debtor from a foreign vessel on the open sea." "If there were no tobacco in the world, Mr. Blunt, I might feel disposed to waive the categories, and show the gentleman that courtesy," returned the captain, who was preparing another cigar. "But while the cruiser might not feel authorised to take an absconding debtor from this vessel, he might feel otherwise on the subject of tobacco, provided there has been an information for smuggling." Captain Truck then explained, that the subordinates of the packets frequently got their ships into trouble, by taking adventures of the forbidden weed clandestinely into European ports, and that his ship, in such circumstances, would lose her place in the line, and derange all the plans of the company to which she belonged. He did the English government the justice to say, that it had always manifested a liberal disposition not to punish the innocent for the guilty; but were any such complaints actually in the wind, he thought he could settle it with much less loss to himself on his return, than on the day of sailing. While this explanation was delivered, a group had clustered round the speaker, leaving Eve and her party on the opposite side of the deck. "This last speech of Mr. Blunt's quite unsettles my opinion of his national character, as Vattel and our worthy captain would say," remarked Mr. Sharp. "Last night, I set him down as a right loyal American; but I think it would not be natural for a thorough-going countryman of yours, Miss Effingham, to propose this act of courtesy to a cruiser of King William." "How far any countrymen of mine, thorough-going or not, have reason to manifest extreme courtesy to any of your cruisers," Eve laughingly replied, "I shall leave Captain Truck to say. But, with you, I have long been at a loss to determine whether Mr. Blunt is an Englishman or an American, or indeed, whether he be either." "Long, Miss Effingham! He then has the honour of being well known to you?" Eye answered steadily, though the colour mounted to her brow; but whether from the impetuous exclamation of her companion, or from any feeling connected with the subject of their conversation, the young man was at a loss to discover. "Long, as girls of twenty count time--some four or five years; but you may judge how well, when I tell you I am ignorant of his country even." "And may I venture to ask which do you, yourself, give him credit for being, an American or an Englishman?" Eve's bright eyes laughed, as she answered, "You have put the question with so much finesse, and with a politeness so well managed, that I should indeed be churlish to refuse an answer:--Nay, do not interrupt me, and spoil all the good you have done by unnecessary protestations of sincerity." "All I wish to say is, to ask an explanation of a finesse, of which I am quite as innocent as of any wish to draw down upon myself the visitations of your displeasure." "Do you, then, really conceive it a _credit_ to be an American?" "Nobody of less modesty than yourself, Miss Effingham, under all the circumstances, would dream of asking the question." "I thank you for the civility, which must be taken as it is offered, I presume, quite as a thing _en règle_; but to leave our fine opinions of each other, as well as our prejudices, out of the question--" "You will excuse me if I object to this, for I feel nay good sense implicated. _You_ can hardly attribute to me opinions so utterly unreasonable, so unworthy of a gentleman--so unfounded, in short! Am I not incurring all the risks and hardships of a long sea-voyage, expressly to visit your great country, and, I trust, to improve by its example and society?" "Since you appear to wish it, Mr. Sharp--" Eve glanced her playful eye up at him as she pronounced the name--"I will be as credulous as a believer in animal magnetism: and that, I fancy, is pushing credulity to the verge of reason. It is now settled between us, that you do conceive it an honour to be an American, born, educated, and by extraction." "All of which being the case with Miss Effingham." "All but the second; indeed, they write me fearful things concerning this European education of mine; some even go so far as to assure me I shall be quite unfitted to live in the society to which I properly belong!" "Europe will be rejoiced to receive you back again, in that case; and no European more so than myself." The beautiful colour deepened a little on the cheek of Eve, but she made no immediate reply. "To return to our subject," she at length said; "Were I required to say, I should not be able to decide on the country of Mr. Blunt; nor have I ever met with any one who appeared to know. I saw him first in Germany, where he circulated in the best company; though no one seemed acquainted with his history, even there. He made a good figure; was quite at his ease; speaks several languages almost as well as the natives of the different countries themselves; and, altogether, was a subject of curiosity with those who had leisure to think of any thing but their own dissipation and folly." Mr. Sharp listened with obvious gravity to the fair speaker, and had not her own eyes been fastened on the deck, she might have detected the lively interest betrayed in his. Perhaps the feeling which was at the bottom of all this, to a slight degree, influenced his answer. "Quite an Admirable Crichton!" "I do not say that, though certainly expert in tongues. My own rambling life has made me acquainted with a few languages, and I do assure you, this gentleman speaks three or four with almost equal readiness, and with no perceptible accent. I remember, at Vienna, many even believed him to be a German." "What! with the name of Blunt?" Eve smiled, and her companion, who silently watched every expression of her varying countenance, as if to read her thoughts, noted it. "Names signify little in these migratory times," returned the young lady. "You have but to imagine a _von_ before it, and it would pass at Dresden, or at Berlin. Von Blunt, _der Edelgeborne Graf Von Blunt, Hofrath_--or if you like it better, _Geheimer Rath mit Excellenz und eure Gnaden_" "Or, _Baw-Berg-Veg-Inspector-Substitut!_" added Mr. Sharp, laughing. "No, no! this will hardly pass. Blunt is a good old English name; but it has not finesse enough for Italian, German, Spanish, or anything else but John Bull and his family." "I see no necessity, for my part, for all this Bluntishness; the gentleman may think frankness a good travelling quality." "Surely, he has not concealed his real name!" "Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt; Mr. Blunt, Mr. Sharp;" rejoined Eve, laughing until her bright eyes danced with pleasure. "There would be something ridiculous, indeed, in seeing so much of the finesse of a master of ceremonies subjected to so profound a mystification! I have been told that passing introductions amount to little among you men, and this would be a case in point." "I would I dared ask if it be really so." "Were I to be guilty of indiscretion in another's case, you would not fail to distrust me in your own. I am, moreover, a protestant, and abjure auricular confessions." "You will not frown if I inquire whether the rest of your party remember him?" "My father, Mademoiselle Viefville, and the excellent Nanny Sidley, again; but, I think, none other of the servants, as he never visited us. Mr. John Effingham was travelling in Egypt at the time, and did not see him at all, and we only met in general society; Nanny's acquaintance merely that of seeing him check his horse in the Prater, to speak to us of a morning." "Poor fellow, I pity him; he has, at least, never had the happiness of strolling on the shores of Como and the islands of Laggo Maggiore in your company, or of studying the wonders of the Pitti and the Vatican." "If I must confess all, he journeyed with us on foot and in boats an entire month, among the wonders of the Oberland, and across the Wallenstadt. This was at a time when we had no one with us but the regular guides and the German courier, who was discharged in London." "Were it not for the impropriety of tampering with a servant, I would cross the deck and question your good Nanny, this moment!" said Mr. Sharp with playful menace. "Of all torture, that of suspense is the hardest to be borne." "I grant you full permission, and acquit you of all sins, whether of disrespect, meanness, impertinence, ungentle-manlike practices, or any other vice that may be thought to attend and characterize the act." "This formidable array of qualities would check the curiosity of a village gossip!" "It has an effect I did not intend, then; I wish you to put your threat in execution." "Not seriously, surely?" "Never more so. Take a favourable moment to speak to the good soul, as an old acquaintance; she remembers you well, and by a little of that interrogating management you possess, a favourable opportunity may occur to bring in the other subject. In the mean time, I will glance over the pages of this book." As Eve began to read, Mr. Sharp perceived she was in earnest, and hesitating a moment, in doubt of the propriety of the act, he yielded to her expressed desire, and strolled carelessly towards the faithful old domestic. He addressed her indifferently at first, until believing he might go further, he smilingly observed that he believed he had seen her in Italy. To this Nanny quietly assented, and when he indirectly added that it was under another name, she smiled, but merely intimated her consciousness of the fact, by a quick glance of the eye. "You know that travellers assume names for the sake of avoiding curiosity," he added, "and I hope you will not betray me." "You need not fear me, sir; I meddle with little besides my own duty, and so long as Miss Eve appears to think there is no harm in it, I will venture to say it is no more than a gentleman's caprice." "Why, that is the very word she applied to it herself! You have caught the term from Miss Effingham." "Well, sir, and if I have, it is caught from one who deals little harm to any." "I believe I am not the only one on board who travels under a false name, if the truth were known?" Nanny looked first at the deck, then at her interrogator's face, next towards Mr. Blunt, withdrawing her eye again, as if guilty of an indiscretion, and finally at the sails. Perceiving her embarrassment, respecting her discretion, and ashamed of the task he had undertaken, Mr. Sharp said a few civil things suited to the condition of the woman, and sauntering about the deck for a short time, to avoid suspicion, soon found himself once more alongside of Eve. The latter inquired with her eyes, a little exultingly perhaps, concerning his success. "I have failed," he said; "but something must be ascribed to my own awkward diffidence; for there is so much meanness in tampering with a servant, that I had not the heart to push my questions, even while I am devoured by curiosity." "Your fastidiousness is not a disease with which all on board are afflicted, for there is at least one grand inquisitor among us, by what I can learn; so take heed to your sins, and above all, be very guarded of old letters, marks, and other tell-tales, that usually expose impostors." "To all that, I believe, sufficient care has already been had, by that other Dromio, my own man." "And in what way do you share the name between you? Is it Dromio of Syracuse, and Dromio of Ephesus? or does John call himself Fitz-Edward, or Mortimer, or De Courcy?" "He has complaisance enough to make the passage with nothing but a Christian name, I believe. In truth, it was by a mere accident that I turned usurper in this way. He took the state-room for me, and being required to give a name, he gave his own, as usual. When I went to the docks to look at the ship, I was saluted as Mr. Sharp, and then the conceit took me of trying how it would wear for a month or six weeks. I would give the world to know if the _Geheimer Rath_ got his cognomen in the same honest manner." "I think not, as his man goes by the pungent title of Pepper. Unless poor John should have occasion for two names during the passage, you are reasonably safe. And still, I think," continued Eve, biting her lips, like one who deliberated, "if it were any longer polite to bet, Mr. John Effingham would hazard all the French gloves in his trunks, against all the English finery in yours, that the inquisitor just hinted at gets at your secret before we arrive. Perhaps I ought rather to say, ascertains that you are not Mr. Sharp, and that Mr. Blunt is." Her companion entreated her to point out the person to whom she had given the _sobriquet_ she mentioned. "Accuse me of giving nicknames to no one. The man has this title from Mademoiselle Viefville, and his own great deeds. It is a certain Mr. Steadfast Dodge, who, it seems, knows something of us, from the circumstance of living in the same county, and who, from knowing a little in this comprehensive manner, is desirous of knowing a great deal more." "The natural result of all useful knowledge." "Mr. John Effingham, who is apt to fling sarcasms at all lands, his native country included, affirms that this gentleman is but a fair specimen of many more it will be our fortune to meet in America. If so, we shall not long be strangers; for according to Mademoiselle Viefville and my good Nanny, he has already communicated to them a thousand interesting particulars of himself, in exchange for which he asks no more than the reasonable compensation of having all his questions concerning us truly answered." "This is certainly alarming intelligence, and I shall take heed accordingly." "If he discover that John is without a surname, I am far from certain he will not prepare to have him arraigned for some high crime or misdemeanour; for Mr John Effingham maintains that the besetting propensity of all this class is to divine the worst the moment their imaginations cease to be fed with fact. All is false with them, and it is flattery or accusation." The approach of Mr. Blunt caused a cessation of the discourse, Eve betraying a slight degree of sensitiveness about admitting him to share in these little asides, a circumstance that her companion observed, not without satisfaction. The discourse now became general, the person who joined them amusing the others with an account of several proposals already made by Mr. Dodge, which, as he expressed it, in making the relation, manifested the strong community-characteristics of an American. The first proposition was to take a vote to ascertain whether Mr. Van Buren or Mr. Harrison was the greatest favourite of the passengers; and, on this being defeated, owing to the total ignorance of so many on board of both the parties he had named, he had suggested the expediency of establishing a society to ascertain daily the precise position of the ship. Captain Truck had thrown cold water on the last proposal, however, by adding to it what, among legislators, is called a "rider;" he having drily suggested that one of the duties of the said society should be to ascertain also the practicability of wading across the Atlantic. Chapter VII. When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks, When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand; When the sun sets, who doth not look for night? Untimely storms make men expect a dearth: All may be well; but if God sort it so, 'Tis more than we deserve, or I expect. RICHARD III. These conversations, however, were mere episodes of the great business of the passage. Throughout the morning, the master was busy in rating his mates, giving sharp reprimands to the stewards and cooks, overhauling the log line, introducing the passengers, seeing to the stowage of the anchors, in getting down the signal-pole, throwing in touches of Vattel, and otherwise superintending duty, and dispensing opinions. All this time, the cat in the grass does not watch the bird that hops along the ground with keener vigilance than he kept his eye on the Foam. To an ordinary observer, the two ships presented the familiar spectacle of vessels sailing in the same direction, with a very equal rate of speed; and as the course was that necessary to clear the Channel, most of the passengers, and, indeed, the greater part of the crew, began to think the cruiser, like themselves, was merely bound to the westward. Mr. Truck, on the contrary, judging by signs and movements that more naturally suggested themselves to one accustomed to direct the evolutions of a ship, and to reason on their objects, than to the mere subjects of his will, thought differently. To him, the motive of the smallest change on board the sloop-of-war was as intelligible as if it had been explained in words, and he even foresaw many that were about to take place. Before noon, the Foam had got fairly abeam, and Mr. Leach, pointing out the circumstance, observed, that if her wish was to overhaul them, she ought then to tack; it being a rule among seamen, that the pursuing vessel should turn to windward as often as she found herself nearest to her chase. But the experience of Captain Truck taught him better; the tide was setting into the Channel on the flood, and the wind enabled both ships to fake the current on their lee-bows, a power that forced them up to windward; whereas, by tacking, the Foam would receive the force of the stream on her weather broadside, or so nearly so, as to sweep her farther astern than her difference in speed could easily repair. "She has the heels of us, and she weathers on us, as it, is," grumbled the master; "and that might satisfy a man less modest. I have led the gentleman such a tramp already that he will be in none of the best humours when he comes alongside, and we may make up our minds on seeing Portsmouth again before we see New-York, unless a slant of wind, or the night, serve us a good turn. I trust, Leach, you have not been destroying your prospects in life by looking too wistfully at a tobacco-field?" "Not I, sir; and if you will give me leave to say it, Captain Truck, I do not think a plug has been landed from the ship, which did not go ashore in a _bona-fide_ tobacco-box, that might appear in any court in England. The people will swear, to a man, that this is true." "Ay, ay! and the Barons of the Exchequer would be the greatest fools in England not to believe them. If there has been no defrauding the revenue, why does a cruiser follow this ship, a regular packet, to sea?" "This affair of the steerage passenger, Davis, sir, is probably the cause. The man may be heavily in debt, or possibly a defaulter; for these rogues, when they break down, often fall lower than the 'twixt decks of a ship like this." "This will do to put the quarter-deck and cabin in good humour at sailing, and give them something to open an acquaintance with; but it is sawdust to none but your new beginners. I have known that Seal this many a year, and the rogue never yet had a case that touched the quarter-deck. It is as the man and his wife say, and I'll not give them up, out here in blue water, for as much foam as lies on Jersey beach after an easterly blow. It will not be any of the family of Davis that will satisfy yonder wind-eater; but he will lay his hand on the whole family of the Montauk, leaving them the agreeable alternative of going back to Portsmouth in his pleasant society, or getting out here in mid-channel, and wading ashore as best they can. D--- me! If I believe, Leach, that Vattel will bear the fellow out in it, even if there has been a whole hogshead of the leaves trundled into his island without a permit!" To this Mr. Leach had no encouraging answer to make, for, like most of his class, he held practical force in much greater respect than the abstractions of books. He deemed it prudent, therefore, to be silent, though greatly doubting the efficacy of a quotation from any authority on board, when fairly put in opposition to a written order from the admiral at Portsmouth, or even to a signal sent down from Admiralty at London. The day wore away, making a gradual change in the relative positions of the two ships, though so slowly, as to give Captain Truck strong hopes of being able to dodge his pursuer in the coming night, which promised to be dark and squally. To return to Portsmouth was his full intention, but not until he had first delivered his freight and passengers in New-York; for, like all men bound up body and soul in the performance of an especial duty, he looked on a frustration of his immediate object as a much greater calamity than even a double amount of more remote evil. Besides, he felt a strong reliance on the liberality of the English authorities in the end, and had little doubt of being able to extricate himself and his ship from any penalties to which the indiscretion or cupidity of his subordinates might have rendered him liable. Just as the sun dipped into the watery track of the Montauk, most of the cabin passengers again appeared on deck, to take a look at the situation of the two vessels, and to form their own conjectures as to the probable result of the adventure. By this time the Foam had tacked twice, once to weather upon the wake of her chase, and again to resume her line of pursuit. The packet was too good a ship to be easily overtaken, and the cruiser was now nearly hull-down astern, but evidently coming up at a rate that would bring her alongside before morning. The wind blew in squalls, a circumstance that always aids a vessel of war, as the greater number of her hands enables them to make and shorten sail with ease and rapidity. "This unsettled weather is as much as a mile an hour against us," observed Captain Truck, who was far from pleased at the fact of his being outsailed by anything that floated; "and, if truth must be said, I think that fellow has somewhere about half a knot the best of it, in the way of foot, on a bowline and with this breeze. But he has no cargo in, and they trim their boats like steel-yards. Give us more wind, or a freer, and I would leave him to digest his orders, as a shark digests a marling-spike, or a ring-bolt, notwithstanding all his advantages; for little good would it then do him to be trying to run into the wind's eye, like a steam-tug. As it is, we must submit. We are certainly in a category, and be d---d to it!" It was one of those wild-looking sunsets that are so frequent in the autumn, in which appearances are worse, perhaps, than the reality. The ships were now so near the Chops of the Channel that no land was visible, and the entire horizon presented that chill and wintry aspect that belongs to gloomy and driving clouds, to which streaks of dull light serve more to give an appearance of infinite space than any of the relief of brightness. It was a dreary night-fall to a landsman's eye; though they who better understood the signs of the heavens, as they are exhibited on the ocean, saw little more than the promise of obscurity, and the usual hazards of darkness in a much-frequented sea, "This will be a dirty night," observed John Effingham, "and we may have occasion to bring in some of the flaunting vanity of the ship, ere another morning returns." "The vessel appears to be in good hands," returned Mr. Effingham: "I have watched them narrowly; for, I know not why, I have felt more anxiety on the occasion of this passage than on any of the nine I have already made." As he spoke, the tender father unconsciously bent his eyes on Eve, who leaned affectionately on his arm, steadying her light form against the pitching of the vessel. She understood his feelings better than he did himself, possibly, since, accustomed to his fondest care from childhood, she well knew that he seldom thought of others, or even of himself, while her own wants or safety appealed to his unwearying love. "Father," she said, smiling in his wistful face, "we have seen more troubled waters than these, far, and in a much frailer vessel. Do you not remember the Wallenstadt and its miserable skiff? where I have heard you say there was really danger, though we escaped from it all with a little fright." "Perfectly well do I recollect it, love, nor have I forgotten our brave companion, and his good service, at that critical moment. But for his stout arm and timely succour we might not, as you say, have been quit for the fright." Although Mr. Effingham looked only at his daughter, while speaking, Mr. Sharp, who listened with interest, saw the quick, retreating, glance of Eve at Paul Blunt, and felt something like a chill in his blood as he perceived that her own cheeks seemed to reflect the glow which appeared on that of the young man. He alone observed this secret evidence of common interest in some event in which both had evidently been actors, those around them being too much occupied in the arrangements of the ship, and too little suspicious, to heed the trifling circumstance. Captain Truck had ordered all hands called, to make sail, to the surprise of even the crew. The vessel, at the moment, was staggering along under as much canvas as she could apparently bear, and the mates looked aloft with inquiring eyes as if to ask what more could be done. The master soon removed all doubts. With a rapidity that is not common in merchant ships, but which is usual enough in the packets, the lower studding-sails, and two topmast-studding-sails were prepared, and made ready for hoisting. As soon as the words "all ready" were uttered, the helm was put up, the sails were set, and the Montauk was running with a free wind towards the narrow passage between the Scilly Islands and the Land's End. Captain Truck was an expert channel pilot, from long practice, and keeping the run of the tides in his head, he had loosely calculated that his vessel had so much offing as, with a free wind, and the great progress she had made in the last twenty-four hours, would enable him to lay through the pass. "'Tis a ticklish hole to run into in a dirty night, with a staggering breeze," he said, rubbing his hands as if the hazard increased his satisfaction, "and we will now see if this Foam has mettle enough to follow." "The chap has a quick eye and good glasses, even though he should want nerve for the Scilly rocks," cried the mate, who was looking out from the mizzen rigging. "There go his stun'-sails already, and a plenty of them!" Sure enough the cruiser threw out her studding-sails, had them full and drawing in five minutes, and altered her course so as to follow the Montauk. There was now no longer any doubt concerning her object; for it was hardly possible two vessels should adopt so bold a step as this, just at dark, and on such a night, unless the movements of one were regulated by the movements of the other. In the mean time, anxious faces began to appear on the quarter-deck, and Mr. Dodge was soon seen moving stealthily about among the passengers, whispering here, cornering there, and seemingly much occupied in canvassing opinions on the subject of the propriety of the step that the master had just taken; though, if the truth must be told, he rather stimulated opposition than found others prepared to meet his wishes. When he thought, however, he had collected a sufficient number of suffrages to venture on an experiment, that nothing but an inherent aversion to shipwreck and a watery grave could embolden him to make, he politely invited the captain to a private conference in the state-room occupied by himself and Sir George Templemore. Changing the _venue_, as the lawyers term it, to his own little apartment,--no master of a packet willingly consenting to transact business in any other place--Captain Truck, who was out of cigars at the moment, very willingly assented. When the two were seated, and the door of the room was closed, Mr. Dodge carefully snuffed the candle, looked about him to make sure there was no eave's-dropper in a room eight feet by seven, and then commenced his subject, with what he conceived to be a commendable delicacy and discretion. "Captain Truck," he said, in the sort of low confidential tone that denotes equally concern and mystery, "I think by this time you must have set me down as one of your warm and true friends and supporters. I came out in your ship, and, please God we escape the perils of the sea, it is my hope and intention to return home in her." "If not, friend Dodge," returned the master, observing that the other paused to note the effect of his peroration, and using a familiarity in his address that the acquaintance of the former passage had taught him was not misapplied; "if not, friend Dodge, you have made a capital mistake in getting on board of her, as it is by no means probable an occasion will offer to get out of her, until we fall in with a news-boat, or a pilot-boat, at least somewhere in the latitude and longitude of Sandy Hook. You smoke, I believe sir?" "I ask no better," returned Steadfast, declining the offer; "I have told every one on the Continent,"--Mr. Dodge had been to Paris, Geneva, along the Rhine, and through Belgium and Holland, and in his eyes, this was the Continent,--"that no better ship or captain sails the ocean; and you know captain, I have a way with me, when I please, that causes what I say to be remembered. Why, my dear sir, I had an article extolling the whole line in the most appropriate terms, and this ship in particular, put into the journal at Rotterdam. It was so well done, that not a soul suspected it came from a personal friend of yours." The captain was rolling the small end of a cigar in his mouth to prepare it for smoking, the regulations of the ship forbidding any further indulgence below; but when he received this assurance, he withdrew the tobacco with the sort of mystifying simplicity that gets to be a second nature with a regular votary of Neptune, and answered with a coolness of manner that was in ridiculous contrast to the affected astonishment of the words:-- "The devil you did!--Was it in good Dutch?" "I do not understand much of the language," said Mr. Dodge, hesitatingly; for all he knew, in truth, was _yaw_ and _nein_, and neither of these particularly well;--"but it looked to be uncommonly well expressed. I could do no more than pay a man to translate it. But to return to this affair of running in among the Scilly Islands such a night as this." "Return, my good fellow! this is the first syllable you have said about the matter!" "Concern on your account has caused me to forget myself. To be frank with you, Captain Truck, and if I wer'n't your very best friend I should be silent, there is considerable excitement getting up about this matter." "Excitement! what is that like?--a sort of moral head-sea, do you mean?" "Precisely: and I must tell you the truth, though I had rather a thousand times not; but this change in the ship's course is monstrous unpopular!" "That is bad news, with a vengeance, Mr. Dodge; I shall rely on you, as an old friend, to get up an opposition." "My dear captain, I have done all I could in that way already; but I never met with people so bent on a thing as most of the passengers. The Effinghams are very decided, though so purse-proud and grand; Sir George Templemore declares it is quite extraordinary, and even the French lady is furious. To be as sincere as the crisis demands, public opinion is setting so strong against you, that I expect an explosion." "Well, so long as the tide sets in my favour, I must endeavour to bear it. Stemming a current, in or out of water, is up-hill work; but with a good bottom, clean copper, and plenty of wind, it may be done." "It would not surprise me were the gentlemen to appeal to the general sentiment against you when we arrive, and make a handle of it against your line!" "It may be so indeed; but what can be done? If we return, the Englishman will certainly catch us, and, in that case, my own opinion would be dead against me!" "Well, well, captain; I thought as a friend I would speak my mind. If this thing should really get into the papers in America, it would spread like fire in the prairies. You know what the papers are, I trust, Captain Truck?" "I rather think I do, Mr. Dodge, with many thanks for your hints, and I believe I know what the Scilly Islands are, too. The elections will be nearly or quite over by the time we get in, and, thank God, they'll not be apt to make a party question of it, this fall at least. In the mean time rely on my keeping a good look-out for the shoals of popularity, and the quicksands of excitement. You smoke sometimes, I know, and I can recommend this cigar as fit to regale the nose of that chap of Strasbourg----you read your Bible, I know, Mr. Dodge, and need not be told whom I mean. The steward will be happy to give you a light on deck, sir." In this manner, Captain Truck, with the _sang froid_ of an old tar, and the tact of a packet-master, got rid of his troublesome visiter, who departed, half suspecting that he had been quizzed, but still ruminating on the expediency of getting up a committee, or at least a public meeting in the cabin, to follow up the blow. By the aid of the latter, could he but persuade Mr. Effingham to take the chair, and Sir George Templemore to act as secretary, he thought he might escape a sleepless night, and, what was of quite as much importance, make a figure in a paragraph on reaching home. Mr. Dodge, whose Christian name, thanks to a pious ancestry, was Steadfast, partook of the qualities that his two appellations not inaptly expressed. There was a singular profession of steadiness of purpose, and of high principle about him, all of which vanished in Dodge at the close. A great stickler for the rights of the people, he never considered that this people was composed of many integral parts, but he viewed all things as gravitating towards the great aggregation. Majorities were his hobbies, and though singularly timid as an individual, or when in the minority, put him on the strongest side and he was ready to face the devil. In short, Mr. Dodge was a people's man, because his strongest desire, his "ambition and his pride," as he often expressed it, was to be a man of the people. In his particular neighbourhood, at home, sentiment ran in veins, like gold in the mines, or in streaks of public opinion; and though there might be three or four of these public sentiments, so long as each had its party, no one was afraid to avow it; but as for maintaining a notion that was not thus upheld, there was a savour of aristocracy about it that would damn even a mathematical proposition, though regularly solved and proved. So much and so long had Mr. Dodge respired a moral atmosphere of this community-character, and gregarious propensity, that he had, in many things, lost all sense of his individuality; as much so, in fact, as if he breathed with a pair of county lungs, ate with a common mouth, drank from the town-pump, and slept in the open air. Such a man was not very likely to make an impression on Captain Truck, one accustomed to rely on himself alone, in the face of warring elements, and who knew that a ship could not safely have more than a single will, and that the will of her master. The accidents of life could scarcely form extremes of character more remote than that of Steadfast Dodge and that of John Truck. The first never did anything beyond acts of the most ordinary kind, without first weighing its probable effect in the neighbourhood; its popularity or unpopularity; how it might tally with the different public opinions that were whiffling through the county; in what manner it would influence the next election, and whether it would be likely to elevate him or depress him in the public mind. No Asiatic slave stood more in terror of a vindictive master than Mr. Dodge stood in fear and trembling before the reproofs, comments, censures, frowns, cavillings and remarks of every man in his county, who happened to be long to the political party that just at that moment was in power. As to the minority, he was as brave as a lion, could snap his fingers at them, and was foremost in deriding and scoffing at all they said and did. This, however, was in connexion with politics only; for, the instant party-drill ceased to be of value, Steadfast's valour oozed out of his composition, and in all other things he dutifully consulted every public opinion of the neighbourhood. This estimable man had his weak points as well as another, and what is more, he was quite sensible of them, as was proved by a most jealous watchfulness of his besetting sins, in the way of exposure if not of indulgence. In a word, Steadfast Dodge was a man that wished to meddle with and control all things, without possessing precisely the spirit that was necessary to leave him master of himself; he had a rabid desire for the good opinion of every thing human, without always taking the means necessary to preserve his own; was a stout declaimer for the rights of the community, while forgetting that the community itself is but a means set up for the accomplishment, of a given end; and felt an inward and profound respect for everything that was beyond his reach, which manifested itself, not in manly efforts to attain the forbidden fruit, but rather in a spirit of opposition and detraction, that only betrayed, through its jealousy, the existence of the feeling, which jealousy, however, he affected to conceal under an intense regard for popular rights, since he was apt to aver it was quite intolerable that any man should possess anything, even to qualities, in which his neighbours might not properly participate. All these, moreover, and many similar traits, Mr. Dodge encouraged in the spirit of liberty! On the other hand, John Truck sailed his own ship; was civil to his passengers from habit as well as policy; knew that every vessel must have a captain; believed mankind to be little better than asses; took his own observations, and cared not a straw for those of his mates; was never more bent on following his own views than when all hands grumbled and opposed him; was daring by nature, decided from use and long self-reliance, and was every way a man fitted to steer his bark through the trackless ways of life, as well as those of the ocean. It was fortunate for one in his particular position, that nature had made the possessor of so much self-will and temporary authority, cool and sarcastic rather than hot-headed and violent; and for this circumstance Mr. Dodge in particular had frequent occasions for felicitation. Chapter VIII. But then we are in order, when we are Most out of order. JACK CADE. Disappointed in his private appeal to the captain's dread of popular disapprobation, Mr. Dodge returned to his secret work on deck: for like a true freeman of the exclusive school, this person never presumed to work openly, unless sustained by a clear majority; canvassing all around him, and striving hard to create a public opinion, as he termed it, on his side of the question, by persuading his hearers that every one was of his particular way of thinking already; a method of exciting a feeling much practised by partisans of his school. In the interval, Captain Truck was working up his day's reckoning by himself, in his own state-room, thinking little, and caring less, about any thing but the results of his figures, which soon convinced him, that by standing a few hours longer on his present course, he should "plump his ship ashore" somewhere between Falmouth and the Lizard. This, discovery annoyed the worthy master so much the more, on account of the suggestions of his late visiter; for nothing could be less to his taste than to have the appearance of altering his determination under a menace. Still something must be done before midnight, for he plainly perceived that thirty or forty miles, at the farthest, would fetch up the Montauk on her present course. The passengers had left the deck to escape the night air, and he heard the Effinghams inviting Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt into the ladies' cabin, which had been taken expressly for their party, while the others were calling upon the stewards for the usual allowance of hot drinks, at the dining-table without. The talking and noise disturbed him; his own state-room became too confined, and he went on deck to come to his decision, in view of the angry-looking skies and the watery waste, over which he was called to prevail. Here we shall leave him, pacing the quarter-deck, in moody silence alone, too much disturbed to smoke even, while the mate of the watch sat in the mizzen-rigging, like a monkey, keeping a look-out to windward and ahead. In the mean time, we will return to the cabin of the Effinghams. The Montauk was one of the noblest of those surpassingly beautiful and yacht-like ships that now ply between the two hemispheres in such numbers, and which in luxury and the fitting conveniences seem to vie with each other for the mastery. The cabins were lined with satin-wood and bird's-eye maple; small marble columns separated the glittering panels of polished wood, and rich carpets covered the floors. The main cabin had the great table, as a fixture, in the centre, but that of Eve, somewhat shorter, but of equal width, was free from all encumbrance of the sort. It had its sofas, cushions, mirrors, stools, tables, and an upright piano. The doors of the state-rooms, and other conveniences, opened on its sides and ends. In short, it presented, at that hour, the resemblance of a tasteful boudoir, rather than that of an apartment in a cramped and vulgar ship. Here, then, all who properly belonged to the place were assembled, with Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt as guests, when a tap at the door announced another visiter. It was Mr. Dodge, begging to be admitted on a matter of business. Eve smiled, as she bowed assent to old Nanny, who acted as her groom of the chambers, and hastily expressed a belief that her guest must have come with a proposal to form a Dorcas society. Although Mr. Dodge was as bold as Caesar in expressing his contempt of anything but popular sway, he never came into the presence of the quiet and well-bred without a feeling of distrust and uneasiness, that had its rise in the simple circumstance of his not being used to their company. Indeed, there is nothing more appalling, in general, to the vulgar and pretending, than the simplicity and natural ease of the refined. Their own notions of elegance lie so much on the surface, that they seem at first to suspect an ambush, and it is probable that, finding so much repose where, agreeably to their preconceived opinions, all ought to be fuss and pretension, they imagine themselves to be regarded as intruders. Mr. Effingham gave their visitor a polite reception, and one that was marked with a little more than the usual formality, by way of letting it be understood that the apartment was private; a precaution that he knew was very necessary in associating with tempers like those of Steadfast. All this was thrown away on Mr. Dodge, notwithstanding every other person present admired the tact with which the host kept his guest at a distance, by extreme attention, for the latter fancied so much ceremony was but a homage to his claims. It had the effect to put him on his own good behaviour, however, and of suspending the brusque manner in which he had intended to broach his subject. As every body waited in calm silence, as if expecting an explanation of the cause of his visit, Mr. Dodge soon felt himself constrained to say something, though it might not be quite as clearly as he could wish. "We have had a considerable pleasant time, Miss Effingham, since we sailed from Portsmouth," he observed familiarly. Eve bowed her assent, determined not to take to herself a visit that did violence to all her habits and notions of propriety. But Mr. Dodge was too obtuse to feel the hint conveyed in mere reserve of manner. "It would have been more agreeable, I allow, had not this man-of-war taken it into her head to follow us in this unprecedented manner." Mr. Dodge was as fond of his dictionary as the steward, though he belonged to the political, while Saunders merely adorned the polite school of talkers. "Sir George calls it a most 'uncomfortable pro endure.' You know Sir George Templemore, without doubt, Miss Effingham?" "I am aware there is a person of that name on board, sir," returned Eve, who recoiled from this familiarity with the sensitiveness with which a well-educated female distinguishes between one who appreciates her character and one who does not; "but have never had the honour of his acquaintance." Mr. Dodge thought all this extraordinary, for he had witnessed Captain Truck's introduction, and did not understand how people who had sailed twenty-four hours in the same ship, and had been fairly introduced, should not be intimate. As for himself, he fancied he was, what he termed, "well acquainted" with the Effinghams, from having talked of them a great deal ignorantly, and not a little maliciously; a liberty he felt himself fully entitled to take from the circumstance of residing in the same county, although he had never spoken to one of the family, until accident placed him in their company on board the same vessel. "Sir George is a gentleman of great accomplishments, Miss Effingham, I assure you; a man of unqualified merit. We have the same state-room, for I like company, and prefer chatting a little in my berth to being always asleep. He is a baronet, I suppose you know,--not that I care anything for titles, all men being equal in truth, though--though----" "--Unequal in reality, sir, you probably meant to add," observed John Effingham, who was lolling on Eve's work-stand, his eagle-shaped face fairly curling with the contempt he felt, and which he hardly cared to conceal. "Surely not, sir!" exclaimed the terrified Steadfast, looking furtively about, lest some active enemy might be at hand to quote this unhappy remark to his prejudice. "Surely not! men are every way equal, and no one can pretend to be better than another. No, no,--it is nothing to me that Sir George is a baronet; though one would prefer having a gentleman in the same state-room to having a coarse fellow. Sir George thinks, sir, that the ship is running into great danger by steering for the land in so dark a night, and in such _dirty_ weather. He _has_ many out-of-the-way expressions, Sir George, I must admit, for one of his rank; he calls the weather _dirty_, and the proceedings _uncomfortable_; modes of expression, gentlemen, to which I give an unqualified disapprobation." "Probably Sir George would attach more importance to a _qualified_ disapprobation," retorted John Effingham. "Quite likely," returned Mr. Dodge innocently, though the two other visiters, Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville, permitted slight muscular movements about the lips to be seen: "Sir George is quite an original in his way. We have few originals in our part of the country, you know, Mr. John Effingham; for to say the truth, it is rather unpopular to differ from the neighbourhood, in this or any other respect. Yes, sir, the people will rule, and ought to rule. Still, I think Sir George may get along well enough as a stranger, for it is not quite as unpopular in a stranger to be original, as in a native. I think you will agree with me, sir, in believing it excessively presuming in an American to pretend to be different from his fellow-citizens." "No one, sir, could entertain such presumption, I am persuaded, in your case." "No, sir, I do not speak from personal motives; but of the great general principles, that are to be maintained for the good of mankind. I do not know that any man has a right to be peculiar in a free country. It is aristocratic and has an air of thinking one man is better than another. I am sure Mr. Effingham cannot approve of it?" "Perhaps not. Freedom has many arbitrary laws that it will not do to violate." "Certainly, sir, or where would be its supremacy? If the people cannot control and look down peculiarity, or anything they dislike, one might as well live in despotism at once." "As I have resided much abroad, of late years, Mr. Dodge," inquired Eve, who was fearful her kinsman would give some cut that would prove to be past bearing, as she saw his eye was menacing, and who felt a disposition to be amused at the other's philosophy, that overcame the attraction of repulsion she had at first experienced towards him--"will you favour me with some of those great principles of liberty of which I hear so much, but which, I fear, have been overlooked by my European instructors?" Mademoiselle Viefville looked grave; Messrs. Sharp and Blunt delighted; Mr. Dodge, himself, mystified. "I should feel myself little able to instruct Miss Effingham on such a subject," the latter modestly replied, "as no doubt she has seen too much misery in the nations she has visited, not to appreciate justly all the advantages of that happy country which has the honour of claiming her for one of its fair daughters." Eve was terrified at her own temerity, for she was far from anticipating so high a flight of eloquence in return for her own simple request, but it was too late to retreat. "None of the many illustrious and god-like men that our own beloved land has produced can pretend to more zeal in its behalf than myself, but I fear my abilities to do it justice will fall far short of the subject," he continued. "Liberty, as you know, Miss Effingham, as you well know, gentlemen, is a boon that merits our unqualified gratitude, and which calls for our daily and hourly thanks to the gallant spirits who, in the days that tried men's souls, were foremost in the tented field, and in the councils of the nation." John Effingham turned a glance at Eve, that seemed to tell her how unequal she was to the task she had undertaken, and which promised a rescue, with her consent; a condition that the young lady most gladly complied with in the same silent but expressive manner. "Of all this my young kinswoman is properly sensible, Mr. Dodge," he said by way of diversion; "but she, and I confess myself, have some little perplexity on the subject of what this liberty is, about which so much has been said and written in our time. Permit me to inquire, if you understand by it a perfect independence of thought, action, and rights?" "Equal laws, equal rights, equality in all respects, and pure, abstract, unqualified liberty, beyond all question, sir." "What, a power in the strong man to beat the little man, and to take away his dinner?" "By no means, sir; Heaven forbid that I should maintain any such doctrine! It means entire liberty: no kings, no aristocrats, no exclusive privileges; but one man as good as another!" "Do you understand, then, that one man is as good as another, under our system, Mr. Dodge?" "Unqualifiedly so, sir; I am amazed that such a question should be put by a gentleman of your information, in an age like this!" "If one man is as good as another," said Mr. Blunt, who perceived that John Effingham was biting his lips, a sign that something more biting would follow,--"will you do me the favour to inform me, why the country puts itself to the trouble and expense of the annual elections?" "Elections, sir! In what manner could free institutions flourish or be maintained, without constantly appealing to the people, the only true sources of power?" "To this I make no objections, Mr. Dodge," returned the young man, smiling; "but why an election; if one man is as good as another, a lottery would be cheaper, easier, and sooner settled. Why an election, or even a lottery at all? why not choose the President as the Persians chose their king, by the neighing of a horse? "This would be indeed an extraordinary mode of proceeding for an intelligent and virtuous people, Mr. Blunt; and I must take the liberty of saying that I suspect you of pleasantry. If you wish an answer, I will say, at once by such a process we might get a knave, or a fool, or a traitor." "How, Mr. Dodge! I did not expect this character of the country from you! Are the Americans, then, all fools, or knaves, or traitors?" "If you intend to travel much in our country, sir, I would advise great caution in throwing out such an insinuation, for it would be apt to meet with a very general and unqualified disapprobation. Americans are enlightened and free, and as far from deserving these epithets as any people on earth." "And yet the fact follows from your own theory. If one man is as good as another, and any one of them is a fool, or a knave, or a traitor,--all are knaves, or fools, or traitors! The insinuation is not mine, but it follows, I think, inevitably, as a consequence of your own proposition." In the pause that succeeded, Mr. Sharp said in a low voice to Eve, "He is an Englishman, after all!" "Mr. Dodge does not mean that one man is as good as another in that particular sense," Mr. Effingham kindly interposed, in his quality of host; "his views are less general, I fancy, than his words would give us, at first, reason to suppose." "Very true, Mr. Effingham, very true, sir; one man is not as good as another in that particular sense, or in the sense of elections, but in all other senses. Yes, sir," turning towards Mr. Blunt again, as one reviews the attack on an antagonist, who has given a fall, after taking breath; "in all other senses, one man is unqualifiedly as good as another. One man has the same rights as another." "The slave as the freeman?" "The slaves are exceptions, sir. But in the free states except in the case of elections, one man is as good as another in all things. That is our meaning, and any other principle would be unqualifiedly unpopular." "Can one man make a shoe as well as another?" "Of rights, sir,--I stick to the rights, you will remember," "Has the minor the same rights as the man of full age; the apprentice as the master; the vagabond as the resident; the man who cannot pay as the man who can?" "No, sir, not in that sense either. You do not understand me, sir, I fear. All that I mean is, that in particular things, one man is as good as another in America. This is American doctrine, though it may not happen to be English, and I flatter myself it will stand the test of the strictest investigation." "And you will allow me to inquire where this is not the case, in particular things. If you mean to say that there are fewer privileges accorded to the accidents of birth, or to fortune and station in America, than is usual in other countries, we shall agree; but I think it will hardly do to say there are none!" "Privileges accorded to birth in America, sir! The idea would be odious to her people!" "Does not the child inherit the property of the father?" "Most assuredly; but this can hardly be termed a privilege. "That may depend a good deal on taste. I should account it a greater privilege than to inherit a title without the fortune." "I perceive, gentlemen, that we do not perfectly understand each other, and I must postpone the discussion to a more favourable opportunity; for I confess great uneasiness at this decision of the captain's, about steering in among the rocks of Sylla." (Mr. Dodge was not as clear-headed as common, in consequence of the controversy that had just occurred.) "I challenge you to renew the subject another time, gentlemen. I only happened in" (another peculiarity of diction in this gentleman) "to make a first call, for I suppose there is no exclusion in an American ship?" "None whatever, sir," Mr. John Effingham coldly answered. "All the state-rooms are in common, and I propose to seize an early occasion to return this compliment, by making myself at home in the apartment which has the honour to lodge Mr. Dodge and Sir George Templemore." Here Mr. Dodge beat a retreat, without touching at all on his real errand. Instead of even following up the matter with the other passengers, he got into a corner, with one or two congenial spirits, who had taken great offence that the Effinghams should presume to retire into their cabin, and particularly that they should have the extreme aristocratical audacity to shut the door, where he continued pouring into the greedy ears of his companions his own history of the recent dialogue, in which, according to his own account of the matter, he had completely gotten the better of that "young upstart, Blunt," a man of whom he knew positively nothing, divers anecdotes of the Effingham family, that came of the lowest and most idle gossip of rustic malignancy, and his own vague and confused notions of the rights of persons and of things. Very different was the conversation that ensued in the ladies' cabin, after the welcome disappearance of the uninvited guest. Not a remark of any sort was made on his intrusion, or on his folly; even John Effingham, little addicted in common to forbearance, being too proud to waste his breath on so low game, and too well taught to open upon a man the moment his back was turned. But the subject was continued, and in a manner better suited to the education, intelligence, and views of the several speakers. Eve said but little, though she ventured to ask a question now and then; Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt being the principal supporters of the discourse, with an occasional quiet discreet remark from the young lady's father, and a sarcasm, now and then, from John Effingham. Mr. Blunt, though advancing his opinions with diffidence, and with a proper deference for the greater experience of the two elder gentlemen, soon made his superiority apparent, the subject proving to be one on which he had evidently thought a great deal, and that too with a discrimination and originality that are far from common. He pointed out the errors that are usually made on the subject of the institutions of the American Union, by confounding the effects of the general government with those of the separate states; and he clearly demonstrated that the Confederation itself had, in reality, no distinctive character of its own, even for or against liberty. It was a confederation, and got its character from the characters of its several parts, which of themselves were independent in all things, on the important point of distinctive principles, with the exception of the vague general provision that they must be republics; a prevision that meant anything, or nothing, so far as true liberty was concerned, as each state might decide for itself. "The character of the American government is to be sought in the characters of the state governments," he concluded, "which vary with their respective policies. It is in this way that communities that hold one half of their numbers in domestic bondage are found tied up in the same political _fasces_ with other communities of the most democratic institutions. The general government assures neither liberty of speech, liberty of conscience, action, nor of anything else, except as against itself; a provision that is quite unnecessary, as it is purely a government of delegated powers, and has no authority to act at all on those particular interests." "This is very different from the general impression in Europe," observed Mr. Sharp; "and as I perceive I have the good fortune to be thrown into the society of an American, if not an _American lawyer_, able to enlighten my ignorance on these interesting topics, I hope to be permitted, during some of the idle moments, of which we are likely to have many, to profit by it." The other coloured, bowed to the compliment, but appeared to hesitate before he answered. "'Tis not absolutely necessary to be an American by birth," he said, "as I have already had occasion to observe, in order to understand the institutions of the country, and I might possibly mislead you were you to fancy that a native was your instructer. I have often been in the country, however, if not born in it, and few young men, on this side of the Atlantic, have had their attention pointed, with so much earnestness, to all that affects it as myself." "I was in hopes we had the honour of including you among our countrymen," observed John Effingham, with evident disappointment. "So many young men come abroad disposed to quarrel with foreign excellences, of which they know nothing, or to concede so many of our own, in the true spirit of serviles, that I was flattering myself I had at last found an exception." Eve also felt regret, though she hardly avowed to herself the reason. "He is then, an Englishman, after all!" said Mr. Sharp, in another aside. "Why not a German--or a Swiss--or even a Russian?" "His English is perfect; no continental could speak so fluently, with such a choice of words, so totally without an accent, without an effort. As Mademoiselle Viefville says, he does not speak well enough for a foreigner." Eve was silent, for she was thinking of the singular manner in which a conversation so oddly commenced, had brought about an explanation on a point that had often given her many doubts. Twenty times had she decided in her own mind that this young man, whom she could properly call neither stranger nor acquaintance, was a countryman, and as often had she been led to change her opinion. He had now been explicit, she thought, and she felt compelled to set him down as a European, though not disposed, still, to believe he was an Englishman. For this latter notion she had reasons it might not have done to give to a native of the island they had just left, as she knew to be the fact with Mr. Sharp. Music succeeded this conversation, Eve having taken the precaution to have the piano tuned before quitting port, an expedient we would recommend to all who have a regard for the instrument that extends beyond its outside, or even for their own ears. John Effingham executed brilliantly on the violin; and, as it appeared on inquiry, the two younger gentlemen performed respectably on the flute, flageolet, and one or two other wind instruments. We shall leave them doing great justice to Beethoven, Rossini, and Mayerbeer, whose compositions Mr. Dodge did not fail to sneer at in the outer cabin, as affected and altogether unworthy of attention, and return on deck to the company of the anxious master. Captain Truck had continued to pace the deck moodily and alone, during the whole evening, and he only seemed to come to a recollection of himself when the relief passed him on his way to the wheel, at eight bells. Inquiring the hour, he got into the mizzen rigging, with a night-glass, and swept the horizon in search of the Foam. Nothing could be made out, the darkness having settled upon the water in a way to circumscribe the visible horizon to very narrow limits. "This may do," he muttered to himself, as he swung off by a rope, and alighted again on the planks of the deck. Mr. Leach was summoned, and an order was passed for the relieved watch to remain on deck for duty. When all was ready, the first mate went through the ship, seeing that all the candles were extinguished, or that the hoods were drawn over the sky-lights, in such a way as to conceal any rays that might gleam upwards from the cabin. At the same time attention was paid to the binnacle lamp. This precaution observed, the people went to work to reduce the sail, and in the course of twenty minutes they had got in the studding-sails, and all the standing canvas to the topsails, the fore-course, and a forward stay-sail. The three topsails were then reefed, with sundry urgent commands to the crew to be active, for, "The Englishman was coming up like a horse, all this time, no doubt." This much effected, the hands returned on deck, as much amazed at the several arrangements as if the order had been to cut away the masts. "If we had a few guns, and were a little stronger-handed," growled an old salt to the second-mate, as he hitched up his trousers and rolled over his quid, "I should think the hard one, aft, had been stripping for a fight; but as it is we have nothing to carry on the war with, unless we throw sea-biscuits into the enemy'!" "Stand by to _veer_!" called out the captain from the quarter-deck; or, as he pronounced it, "_ware_." The men sprang to the braces, and the bows of the ship fell off gradually, as the yards yielded slowly to the drag. In a minute the Montauk was rolling dead before it, and her broadside came sweeping up to the wind with the ship's head to the eastward. This new direction in the course had the double effect of hauling off the land, and of diverging at more than right angles from the line of sailing of the Foam, if that ship still continued in pursuit. The seamen nodded their heads at each other in approbation, for all now as well understood the meaning of the change as if it had been explained to them verbally. The revolution on deck produced as sudden a revolution below. The ship was no longer running easily on an even keel, but was pitching violently into a head-beating sea, and the wind, which a few minutes before, was scarcely felt to blow, was now whistling its hundred strains among the cordage. Some sought their berths, among whom were Mr. Sharp and Mr. Dodge; some hurried up the stairs to learn the reason, and all broke up their avocations for the night. Captain Truck had the usual number of questions to answer, which he did in the following succinct and graphic manner, a reply that we hope will prove as satisfactory to the reader, as it was made to be, perforce, satisfactory to the curious on board. "Had we stood on an hour longer, gentlemen, we should have been lost on the coast of Cornwall!" he said, pithily: "had we stopped where we were, the sloop-of-war would nave been down upon us in twenty minutes: by changing the course, in the way you have seen, he may get to leeward ward of us; if he find it out, he may change his own course, in the dark, being as likely to go wrong as to go right; or he may stand in, and set up the ribs of his majesty's ship Foam to dry among the rocks of the Lizard, where I hope all her people will get safely ashore, dry shod." After waiting the result anxiously for an hour, the passengers retired to their rooms one by one; but Captain Truck did not quit the deck until the middle watch was set. Paul Blunt heard him enter his state-room, which was next to his own, and putting out his head, he inquired the news above. The worthy master had discovered something about this young man which created a respect for his nautical information, for he never misapplied a term, and he invariably answered all his questions promptly, and with respect. "Dirtier, and dirtier," he said, in defiance of Mr. Dodge's opinion of the phrase, pulling off his pee-jacket, and laying aside his sow-wester; "a cap-full of wind, with just enough drizzle to take the comfort out of a man, and lacker him down like a boot." "The ship has gone about?" "Like a dancing-master with two toes. We have got her head to the southward and westward again; another reef in the topsails," (which word Mr. Truck pronounced _tawsails_, with great unction,) "England well under our lee, and the Atlantic ocean right before us. Six hours on this course, and we make a fair wind of it." "And the sloop?" Chapter IX. The moon was now Rising full orbed, but broken by a cloud. The wind was hushed, and the sea mirror-like ITALY. Most of the passengers appeared on deck soon after Saunders was again heard rattling among his glasses. The day was sufficiently advanced to allow a distinct view of all that was passing, and the wind had shifted. The change had not occurred more than ten minutes, and as most of the inmates of the cabin poured up the cabin-stairs nearly in a body, Mr. Leach had just got through with the necessary operation of bracing the yards about, for the breeze, which was coming stiff, now blew from the north-east. No land was visible, and the mate was just giving his opinion that they were up with Scilly, as Captain Truck appeared in the group. One glance aloft, and another at the heavens, sufficed to let the experienced master into all the secrets of his present situation. His next step was to jump into the rigging, and to take a look at the sea, in the direction of the Lizard. There, to his extreme disappointment, appeared a ship with everything set that would draw, and with a studding-sail flapping, before it could be drawn down, which he knew in an instant to be the Foam. At this spectacle Mr. Truck compressed his lips, and made an inward imprecation, that it would ill comport with our notions of propriety to repeat. "Turn the hands up and shake out the reefs, sir," he said coolly to his mate, for it was a standing rule of the captain's to seem calmest when he was in the greatest rage. "Turn them up, sir, and show every rag that will draw, from the truck to the lower studding-sail boom, and be d----d to them!" On this hint Mr. Leach bestirred himself, and the men were quickly on the yards, casting loose gaskets and reef-points. Sail opened after sail, and as the steerage passengers, who could show a force of thirty or forty men, aided with their strength, the Montauk was soon running dead before the wind, under every thing that would draw, and with studding-sails on both sides. The mates looked surprised, the seamen cast inquiring glances aft, but Mr. Truck lighted a cigar. "Gentlemen," said the captain, after a few philosophical whiffs, "to go to America with yonder fellow on my weather beam is quite out of the question: he would be up with me, and in possession, before ten o'clock, and my only play is to bring the wind right over the taffrail, where, luckily, we have got it. I think we can bother him at this sport, for your sharp bottoms are not as good as your kettle-bottoms in ploughing a full furrow. As for bearing her canvas, the Montauk will stand it as long as any ship in King William's navy, before the gale. And on one thing you may rely; I'll carry you all into Lisbon, before that tobacco-hating rover shall carry you back to Portsmouth. This is a category to which I will stick." This characteristic explanation served to let the passengers understand the real state of the case. No one remonstrated, for all preferred a race to being taken; and even the Englishmen on board began again to take sides with the vessel they were in, and this the more readily, as Captain Truck freely admitted that their cruiser was too much for him on every tack but the one he was about to try. Mr. Sharp hoped that they might now escape, and as for Sir George Templemore, he generously repeated his offer to pay, out of his own pocket, all the port-charges in any French, Spanish, or Portuguese harbour, the master would enter, rather than see such an outrage done a foreign vessel in a time of profound peace. The expedient of Captain Truck proved his judgment, and his knowledge of his profession. Within an hour it was apparent that, if there was any essential difference in the sailing of the two ships under the present circumstances, it was slightly in favour of the Montauk. The Foam now set her ensign for the first time, a signal that she wished to speak the ship in sight. At this Captain Truck chuckled, for he pronounced it a sign that she was conscious she could not get them within range of her guns. "Show him the gridiron," cried the captain, briskly; "it will not do to be beaten in civility by a man who has beaten us already on so many other tacks; but keep all fast as a church-door on a week-day." This latter comparison was probably owing to the circumstance of the master's having come from a part of the country where all the religion is compressed into the twenty-four hours that commence on a Saturday-night at sunset, and end at sunset the next day: at least, this was his own explanation of the matter. The effect of success was always to make Mr. Truck loquacious, and he now began to tell many excellent anecdotes, of which he had stores, all of events that had happened to him in person, or of which he had been an eye-witness; and on which his hearers, as Sancho said, might so certainly depend as true, that, if they chose, they might safely swear they had seen them themselves. "Speaking of churches and doors, Sir George," he said, between the puffs of the cigar, "were you ever in Rhode Island?" "Never, as this is my first visit to America, captain." "True; well, you will be likely to go there, if you go to Boston, as it is the best way; unless you would prefer to run over Nantucket shoals, and a hundred miles of ditto as Mr. Dodge calls it." "_Ditter_, captain, if you please--_ditter_: it is the continental word for round-about." "The d---l it is! it is worth knowing, however. And what may be the French for pee-jacket?" "You mistake me, sir,--_ditter_, a circuit, or the longer way." "That is the road we are now travelling, by George!--I say, Leach, do you happen to know that we are making a ditter to America?" "You were speaking of a church, Captain Truck," politely interposed Sir George, who had become rather intimate with his fellow-occupant of the state-room. "I was travelling through that state, a few years since, on my way from Providence to New London, at a time when a new road had just been opened. It was on a Sunday, and the stage--a four-horse power, you must know--had never yet run through on the Lord's-day. Well, we might be, as it were, off here at right angles to our course, and there was a short turn in the road, as one would say, out yonder. As we hove in sight of the turn, I saw a chap at the mast-head of a tree; down he slid, and away he went right before it, towards a meeting-house two or three cables length down the road. We followed at a smart jog, and just before we got the church abeam, out poured the whole congregation, horse and foot, parson and idlers, sinners and hypocrites, to see the four-horse power go past. Now this is what I call keeping the church-door open on a Sunday." We might have hesitated about recording this anecdote of the captain's, had we not received an account of the same occurrence from a quarter that left no doubt that his version of the affair was substantially correct. This and a few similar adventures, some of which he invented, and all of which he swore were literal, enabled the worthy master to keep the quarter-deck in good humour, while the ship was running at the rate of ten knots the hour in a line so far diverging from her true course. But the relief to landsmen is so great, in general, in meeting with a fair wind at sea, that few are disposed to quarrel with its consequences. A bright day, a steady ship, the pleasure of motion as they raced with the combing seas, and the interest of the chase, set every one at ease; and even Steadfast Dodge was less devoured with envy, a jealousy of his own deservings, and the desire of management, than usual. Not an introduction occurred, and yet the little world of the ship got to be better acquainted with each other in the course of that day, than would have happened in months of the usual collision on land. The Montauk continued to gain on her pursuer until the sun set, when Captain Truck began once more to cast about him for the chances of the night. He knew that the ship was running into the mouth of the Bay of Biscay, or at least was fast approaching it, and he bethought him of the means of getting to the westward. The night promised to be anything but dark, for though a good many wild-looking clouds were by this time scudding athwart the heavens, the moon diffused a sort of twilight gleam in the air. Waiting patiently, however, until the middle-watch was again called, he reduced, sail, and hauled the ship off to a south-west course, hoping by this slight change insensibly to gain an offing before the Foam was aware of it; a scheme that he thought more likely to be successful, as by dint of sheer driving throughout the day, he had actually caused the courses of that vessel to dip before the night shut in. Even the most vigilant become weary of watching, and Captain Truck was unpleasantly disturbed next morning by an alarm that the Foam was just out of gun-shot, coming up with them fast. On gaining the deck, he found the fact indisputable. Favoured by the change in the course, the cruiser had been gradually gaining on the Montauk ever since the first watch was relieved, and had indeed lessened the distance between the respective ships by two-thirds. No remedy remained but to try the old expedient of getting the wind over the taffrail once more, and of showing all the canvas that could be spread. As like causes are known to produce like effects, the expedient brought about the old results. The packet had the best of it, and the sloop-of-war slowly fell astern. Mr. Truck now declared he would make a "regular business of it," and accordingly he drove his ship in that direction throughout the day, the following night, and until near noon of the day which succeeded, varying his course slightly to suit the wind, which he studiously kept so near aft as to allow the studding-sails to draw on both sides. At meridian, on the fourth day out, the captain got a good observation, and ascertained that the ship was in the latitude of Oporto, with an offing of less than a degree. At this time the top-gallant sails of the Foam might be discovered from the deck, resembling a boat clinging to the watery horizon. As he had fully made up his mind to run into port in preference to being overhauled, the master had kept so near the land, with an intention of profiting by his position, in the event of any change favouring his pursuers; but he now believed that at sunset he should be safe in finally shaping his course for America. "There must be double-fortified eyes aboard that fellow to see what we are about at this distance, when the night is once shut in," he said to Mr. Leach, who seconded all his orders with obedient zeal, "and we will watch our moment to slip out fairly into the great prairie, and then we shall discover who best knows the trail! You'll be for trotting off to the prairies, Sir George, as soon as we get in, and for trying your hand at the buffaloes, like all the rest of them. Ten years since, if an Englishman came to look at us, he was afraid of being scalped in Broadway and now he is never satisfied unless he is astraddle of the Rocky Mountains in the first fortnight. I take over lots of cockney-hunters every summer, who just get a shot at a grizzly bear or two, or at an antelope, and come back in time for the opening of Drury Lane." "Should we not be more certain of accomplishing your plans, by seeking refuge in Lisbon for a day or two? I confess now I should like to see Lisbon, and as for the port-charges, I would rather pay them twice, than that this poor man should be torn from his wife. On this point I hope, Captain Truck, I have made myself sufficiently explicit." Captain Truck shook the baronet heartily by the hand, as he always did when this offer was renewed, declaring that his feelings did him honour. "Never fear for Davis," he said. "Old Grab shall not have him this tack, nor the Foam neither. I'll throw him overboard before such a disgrace befall us or him. Well, this leech has driven us from the old road, and nothing now remains but to make the southern passage, unless the wind prevail at south." The Montauk, in truth, had not much varied from a course that was once greatly in favour with the London ships, Lisbon and New York being nearly in the same parallel of latitude, and the currents, if properly improved, often favouring the run. It is true, the Montauk had kept closer in with the continent by a long distance than was usual, even for the passage he had named; but the peculiar circumstances of the chase had left no alternative, as the master explained to his listeners. "It was a coasting voyage, or a tow back to Portsmouth, Sir George," he said, "and of the two, I know you like the Montauk too well to wish to be quit of her so soon." To this the baronet gave a willing assent, protesting that his feelings had got so much enlisted on the side of the vessel he was in, that he would cheerfully forfeit a thousand pounds rather than be overtaken. The master assured him that was just what he liked, and swore that he was the sort of passenger he most delighted in. "When a man puts his foot on the deck of a ship, Sir George, he should look upon her as his home, his church, his wife and children, his uncles and aunts, and all the other lumber ashore. This is the sentiment to make seamen. Now, I entertain a greater regard for the shortest ropeyarn aboard this ship, than for the topsail-sheets or best bower of any other vessel. It is like a man's loving his own finger, or toe, before another person's. I have heard it said that one should love his neighbour as well as himself; but for my part I love my ship better than my neighbour's, or my neighbour himself; and I fancy, if the truth were known, my neighbour pays me back in the same coin! For my part, I like a thing because it is mine." A little before dark the head of the Montauk was inclined towards Lisbon, as if her intention was to run in, but the moment the dark spot that pointed out the position of the Foam was lost in the haze of the horizon, Captain Truck gave the order to "_ware_" and sail was made to the west-south-west. Most of the passengers felt an intense curiosity to know the state of things on the following morning, and all the men among them were dressed and on deck just as the day began to break. The wind had been fresh and steady all night, and as the ship had been kept with, her yards a little checked, and topmast studding-sails set, the officers reported her to be at least a hundred miles to the westward of the spot where she veered. The reader will imagine the disappointment the latter experienced, then, when they beheld the Foam a little on their weather-quarter, edging away for them as assiduously as she had been hauling up for them, the night they sailed from Portsmouth, distant little more than a league! "This is indeed extraordinary perseverance," said Paul Blunt to Eve, at whose side he was standing at the moment the fact was ascertained, "and I think our captain might do well to heave-to and ascertain its cause." "I hope not," cried his companion with vivacity. I confess to an _esprit de corps_, and a gallant determination to 'see it out,' as Mr. Leach styles his own resolution. One does not like to be followed about the ocean in this manner, unless it be for the interest it gives the voyage. After all, how much better is this than dull solitude, and what a zest it gives to the monotony of the ocean!" "Do you then find the ocean a scene of monotony?" "Such it has oftener appeared to me than anything else, and I give it a fair trial, having never _le mal de mer_. But I acquit it of this sin now; for the interest of a chase, in reasonably good weather, is quite equal to that of a horse-race, which is a thing I delight in. Even Mr. John Effingham can look radiant under its excitement." "And when this is the case, he is singularly handsome; a nobler outline of face is seldom seen than that of Mr. John Effingham." "He has a noble outline of soul, if he did but know it himself," returned Eve, warmly: "I love no one as much as he, with the exception of my father, and as Mademoiselle Viefville would say, _pour cause_." The young man could have listened all day, but Eve smiled, bowed graciously, though with a glistening eye, and hastily left the deck, conscious of having betrayed some of her most cherished feelings to one who had no claim to share them. Captain Truck, while vexed to his heart's core, or, as he expressed it himself, "struck aback, like an old lady shot off a hand-sled in sliding down hill," was prompt in applying the old remedy to the evil. The Montauk was again put before the wind, sail was made, and the fortunes of the chase were once more cast on the "play of the ship." The commander of the Foam certainly deprecated this change, for it was hardly made before he set his ensign, and fired a gun. But of these signals no other notice was taken than to show a flag in return, when the captain and his mates proceeded to get the bearings of the sloop-of-war. Ten minutes showed they were gaining; twenty did better and in an hour she was well on the quarter. Another day of strife succeeded, or rather of pure sailing, for not a rope was started on board the Montauk, the wind still standing fresh and steady. The sloop made many signals, all indicating a desire to speak the Montauk, but Captain Truck declared himself too experienced a navigator to be caught by bunting, and in too great a hurry to stop and chat by the way. "Vattel had laid down no law for such a piece of complaisance, in a time of profound peace. I am not to be caught by that category." The result may be anticipated from what has been already related. The two ships kept before the wind until the Foam was again far astern, and the observations of Captain Truck told him, he was as far south as the Azores. In one of these islands he was determined to take refuge, provided he was not favoured by accident, for going farther south was out of the question, unless absolutely driven to it. Calculating his distance, on the evening of the sixth day out, he found that he might reach an anchorage at Pico, before the sloop-of-war could close with him, even allowing the necessity of hauling up again by the wind. But Providence had ordered differently. Towards midnight, the breeze almost failed and became baffling, and when the day dawned the officer of the watch reported that it was ahead. The pursuing ship, though still in sight, was luckily so far astern and to leeward as to prevent any danger from a visit by boats, and there was leisure to make the preparations that might become necessary on the springing up of a new breeze. Of the speedy occurrence of such a change there was now every symptom, the heavens lighting up at the north-west, a quarter from which the genius of the storms mostly delights in making a display of his power. Chapter X I come with mightier things; Who calls mo silent? I have many tones-- The dark sky thrills with low mysterious moans, Borne on my sweeping winds. MRS. HEMANS. The awaking of the winds on the ocean is frequently attended with signs and portents as sublime as any the fancy can conceive. On the present occasion, the breeze that had prevailed so steadily for a week was succeeded by light baffling puffs, as if, conscious of the mighty powers of the air that were assembling in their strength, these inferior blasts were hurrying to and fro for a refuge. The clouds, too, were whirling about in uncertain eddies, many of the heaviest and darkest descending so low along the horizon, that they had an appearance of settling on the waters in quest of repose. But the waters themselves were unnaturally agitated. The billows, no longer following each other in long regular waves, were careering upwards, like fiery coursers suddenly checked in their mad career. The usual order of the eternally unquiet ocean was lost in a species of chaotic tossings of the element, the seas heaving themselves upward, without order, and frequently without visible cause. This was the reaction of the currents, and of the influence of breezes still older than the last. Not the least fearful symptom of the hour was the terrific calmness of the air amid such a scene of menacing wildness. Even the ship came into the picture to aid the impression of intense expectation; for with her canvas reduced, she, too, seemed to have lost that instinct which had so lately guided her along the trackless waste, and was "wallowing," nearly helpless, among the confused waters. Still she was a beautiful and a grand object, perhaps more so at that moment than at any other; for her vast and naked spars, her well-supported masts, and all the ingenious and complicated hamper of the machine, gave her a resemblance to some sinewy and gigantic gladiator, pacing the arena, in waiting for the conflict that was at hand. "This is an extraordinary scene," said Eve, who clung to her father's arm, as she gazed around her equally in admiration and in awe; "a dreadful exhibition of the sublimity of nature!" "Although accustomed to the sea," returned Mr. Blunt, "I have witnessed these ominous changes but twice before, and I think this the grandest of them all." "Were the others followed by tempests?" inquired the anxious parent. "One brought a tremendous gale, while the other passed away like a misfortune of which we get a near view, but are permitted to escape the effects." "I do not know that I wish such to be entirely our present fortune," rejoined Eve, "for there is so much sublimity in this view of the ocean unaroused, that I feel desirous of seeing it when aroused." "We are not in the hurricane latitudes, or hurricane months," resumed the young man, "and it is not probable that there is anything more in reserve for us than a hearty gale of wind, which may, at least, help us to get rid of yonder troublesome follower." "Even that I do not wish, provided he will let us continue the race on our proper route. A chase across the Atlantic would be something to enjoy at the moment, gentlemen, and something to talk of in after life." "I wonder if such a thing be possible!" exclaimed Mr. Sharp; "it would indeed be an incident to recount to another generation!" "There is little probability of our witnessing such an exploit," Mr. Blunt remarked, "for gales of wind on the ocean have the same separating influence on consorts of the sea, that domestic gales have on consorts of the land. Nothing is more difficult than to keep ships and fleets in sight of each other in very heavy weather, unless, indeed, those of the best qualities are disposed to humour those of the worst." "I know not which may be called the best, or which the worst, in this instance, for our tormentor appears to be as much better than ourselves in some particulars, as we are better than he in others. If the humouring is to come from our honest captain, it will be some such humouring as the spoiled child gets from a capricious parent in moments o anger." Mr. Truck passed the group at that instant, and heard his name coupled with the word honest, in the mouth of Eve, though he lost the rest of the sentence. "Thank you for the compliment, my dear young lady," he said; "and I wish I could persuade Captain Somebody, of his Britannic Majesty's ship Foam, to be of the same way of thinking. It is all because he will not fancy me honest in the article of tobacco, that he has got the Montauk down here, on the Spanish coast, where the man who built her would not know her; so unnatural and unseemly is it to catch a London liner so far out of her track. I shall have to use double care to get the good craft home again." "And why this particular difficulty, captain?" Eve, who was amused with Mr. Truck's modes of speech, pleasantly inquired. "Is it not equally easy to go from one part of the ocean, as from another?" "Equally easy! Bless you, my dear young lady, you never made a more capital mistake in your life. Do you imagine it is as easy to go from London to New York, now, as to go from New York to London?" "I am so ignorant as to have made this ridiculous mistake, if mistake it be; nor do I now see why it should be otherwise." "Simply because it is up-hill, ma'am. As for our position here to the eastward of the Azores; the difficulty is soon explained. By dint of coaxing I had got the good old ship so as to know every inch of the road on the northern passage, and now I shall be obliged to wheedle her along on a new route, like a shy horse getting through a new stable-door. One might as well think of driving a pig from his sty, as to get a ship out of her track." "We trust to you to do all this and much more at need. But to what will these grand omens lead? Shall we have a gale, or is so much magnificent menacing to be taken as an empty threat of Nature's?" "That we shall know in the coarse of the day, Miss Effingham, though Nature is no bully, and seldom threatens in vain. There is nothing more curious to study, or which needs a nicer eye to detect, than your winds." "Of the latter I am fully persuaded, captain, for they are called the 'viewless winds,' you will remember, and the greatest authority we possess, speaks of them as being quite beyond the knowledge of man: 'That we may hear the sound of the wind, but cannot tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.'" "I do not remember the writer you mean, my dear young lady," returned Mr. Truck, quite innocently; "but he was a sensible fellow, for I believe Vattel has never yet dared to grapple with the winds. There are people who fancy the weather is foretold in the almanack; but, according to my opinion, it is safer to trust a rheumatis' of two or three years' standing. A good, well-established, old-fashioned rheumatis'--I say nothing of your new-fangled diseases, like the cholera, and varioloid, and animal magnitudes--but a good old-fashioned rheumatis', such as people used to have when I was a boy, is as certain a barometer as that which is at this moment hanging up in the coach-house here, within two fathoms of the very spot where we are standing. I once had a rheumatis' that I set much store by, for it would let me know when to look out for easterly weather, quite as infallibly as any instrument I ever sailed with. I never told you the story of the old Connecticut horse-jockey, and the typhoon, I believe; and as we are doing nothing but waiting for the weather to make up its mind--" "The weather to make up its mind!" exclaimed Eve, looking around her in awe at the sublime and terrific grandeur of the ocean, of the heavens, and of the pent and moody air; "is there an uncertainty in this?" "Lord bless you! my dear young lady, the weather is often as uncertain, and as undecided, and as hard to please, too, as an old girl who gets sudden offers on the same day from a widower with ten children, an attorney with one leg, and the parson of the parish. Uncertain, indeed! Why I have known the weather in this grandiloquent condition for a whole day. Mr. Dodge, there, will tell you it is making up its mind which way it ought to blow, to be popular; so, as we have nothing better to do, Mr. Effingham, I will tell you the story about my neighbour, the horse-jockey. Hauling yards when there is no wind, is like playing on a Jew's-Harp, at a concert of trombones." Mr. Effingham made a complaisant sign of assent, and pressed the arm of the excited Eve for patience. "You must know, gentlemen," the captain commenced, looking round to collect as many listeners as possible,--for he excessively disliked lecturing to small audiences, when he had anything to say that he thought particularly clever,--"you must know that we had formerly many craft that went between the river and the islands--" --"The river?" interrupted the amused Mr. Sharp. "Certain; the Connecticut, I mean; we all call it the river down our way--between the river and the West Indies, with horses, cattle, and other knick-knacks of that description. Among others was old Joe Bunk, who had followed the trade in a high-decked brig for some twenty-three years, he and the brig having grown old in company, like man and wife. About forty years since, our river ladies began to be tired of their bohea, and as there was a good deal said in favour of souchong in those days, an excitement was got up on the subject, as Mr. Dodge calls it, and it was determined to make an experiment in the new quality, before they dipped fairly into the trade. Well, what do you suppose was done in the premises, as Vattel says, my dear young lady?" Eve's eyes were still on the grand and portentous aspect of the heavens, but she civilly answered, "No doubt they sent to a shop and purchased a sample." "Not they; they knew too much for that, since any rogue of a grocer might cheat them. When the excitement had got a little headway on it, they formed a tea society, with the parson's wife for presidentess, and her oldest daughter for secretary. In this way they went to work, until the men got into the fever too, and a project was set a-foot to send a craft to China for a sample of what they wanted." "China!" exclaimed Eve, this time looking the captain fairly in the face. "China, certain; it lies off hereaway, you know, round on the other side of the earth. Well, whom should they choose to go on the errand but old Joe Bunk. The old man had been so often to the islands and back, without knowing anything of navigation, they thought he was just their man, as there was no such thing as losing him." "One would think he was the very man to get lost," observed Mr. Effingham, while the captain fitted a fresh cigar; for smoke he would, and did, in any company, that was out of the cabin, although he always professed a readiness to cease, if any person disliked the fragrance of tobacco. "Not he, sir; he was just as well off in the Indian Ocean as he would be here, for he knew nothing about, either. Well, Joe fitted up the brig; the Seven Dollies was her name; for you must, know we had seven ladies in the town, who were cally Dolly, and they each of them used to send a colt, or a steer, or some other delicate article to the islands by Joe, whenever he went; so he fitted up the Seven Dollies, hoisted in his dollars, and made sail. The last that was seen or heard of the old man for eight months, was off Montauk, where he was fallen in with, two days out, steering south-easterly, by compass." "I should think," observed John Effingham, who began to arouse himself as the story proceeded, "that Mrs. Bunk must have been very uneasy all this time?" "Not she; she stuck to the bohea in hopes the souchong would arrive before the restoration of the Jews. Arrive it did, sure enough, at the end of eight months, and a capital adventure it proved for all concerned. Old Joe got a great name in the river for the exploit, though how he got to China no one could say, or how he got back again; or, for a long time, how he got the huge heavy silver tea-pot, he brought home with him." "A silver tea-pot?" "Exactly that article. At last the truth came to be known; for it is not an easy matter to hide anything of that nature down our way; it is aristocratic, as Mr. Dodge says, to keep a secret. At first they tried Joe with all sorts of questions, but he gave them 'guess' for 'guess.' Then people began to talk, and finally it was fairly whispered that the old man had stolen the tea-pot. This brought him before the meeting.--Law was out of the question, you will understand, as there was no evidence; but the meeting don't stick much at particulars, provided people talk a good deal." "And the result?" asked John Effingham, "I suppose the parish took the tea-pot and left Joe the grounds." "You are as far out of the way as we are here, down on the coast of Spain! The truth is just this. The Seven Dollies was lying among the rest of them, at anchor, below Canton, with the weather as fine as young girls love to see it in May, when Joe began to get down his yards, to house his masts, and to send out all his spare anchors. He even went so far as to get two hawsers fastened to a junk that had grounded a little ahead of him. This made a talk among the captains of the vessels, and some came on board to ask the reason. Joe told them he was getting ready for the typhoon; but when they inquired his reasons for believing there was to be a typhoon at all, Joe looked solemn, shook his head, and said he had reasons enough, but they were his own. Had he been explicit, he would have been laughed at, but the sight of an old grey-headed man, who had been at sea forty years, getting ready in this serious manner, set the others at work too; for ships follow each other's movements, like sheep running through a breach in the fence. Well, that night the typhoon came in earnest, and it blew so hard, that Joe Bunk said he could see the houses in the moon, all the air having blown out of the atmosphere." "But what has this to do with the tea-pot, Captain Truck?" "It is the life and soul of it. The captains in port were so delighted with Joe's foreknowledge, that they clubbed, and presented him this pot as a testimony of their gratitude and esteem. He'd got to be popular among them, Mr. Dodge, and that was the way they proved it." "But, pray, how did he know the storm was approaching?" asked Eve, whose curiosity had been awakened in spite of herself. "It could not have been that his 'foreknowledge' was supernatural." "That no one can say, for Joe was presbyterian-built, as we say, kettle-bottomed, and stowed well. The truth was not discovered until ten years afterwards, when the old fellow got to be a regular cripple, what between rheumatis', old age, and steaming. One day he had an attack of the first complaint, and in one of its most severe paroxysms, when nature is apt to wince, he roared three times, 'a typhoon! a typhoon! a typhoon!' and the murder was out. Sure enough, the next day we had a regular north-easter; but old Joe got no sign of popularity that time. And now, when you get to America, gentlemen and ladies, you will be able to say you have heard the story of Joe Bunk and his tea-pot." Thereupon Captain Truck took two or three hearty whiffs of the cigar, turned his face upwards, and permitted the smoke to issue forth in a continued stream until it was exhausted, but still keeping his head raised in the inconvenient position it had taken. The eye of the master, fastened in this manner on something aloft, was certain to draw other eyes in the same direction, and in a few seconds all around him were gazing in the same way, though none but himself could tell why. "Turn up the watch below, Mr. Leach," Captain Truck at length called out, and Eve observed that he threw away the cigar, although a fresh one; a proof, as she fancied, that he was preparing for duty. The people were soon at their places, and an effort was made to get the ship's head round to the southward. Although the frightful stillness of the atmosphere rendered the manoeuvre difficult, it succeeded in the end, by profiting by the passing and fitful currents, that resembled so many sighings of the air. The men were then sent on the yards, to furl all the canvas, with the exception of the three topsails and the fore-course, most of it having been merely hauled up to await the result. All those who had ever been at sea before, saw in these preparations proof that Captain Truck expected the change would be sudden and severe: still, as he betrayed no uneasiness, they hoped his measures were merely those of prudence. Mr. Effingham could not refrain from inquiring, however, if there existed any immediate motives for the preparations that were so actively, though not hurriedly, making. "This is no affair for the rheumatis'," returned the facetious master, "for, look you here, my worthy sir, and you, my dear young lady,"--this was a sort of parental familiarity the honest Jack fancied he had a right to take with all his unmarried female passengers, in virtue of his office, and of his being a bachelor drawing hard upon sixty;--"look you here, my dear young lady, and you, too, ma'amselle, for you can understand the clouds, I take it, if they are not French clouds; do you not see the manner in which those black-looking rascals are putting their heads together? They are plotting something quite in their own way, I'll warrant you." "The clouds are huddling, and rolling over each other, certainly," returned Eve, who had been struck with the wild beauty of their evolutions, "and a noble, though fearful picture they present; but I do not understand the particular meaning of it, if there be any hidden omen in their airy flights." "No rheumatis' about you, young lady," said the captain, jocularly; "too young, and handsome, and too modern, too, I dare say, for that old-fashioned complaint. But on one category you may rely, and that is, that nothing in nature conspires without an object." "But I do not think vapour whirling in a current of air is a conspiracy," answered Eve, laughing, "though it may be a category." "Perhaps not,--who knows, however; for it is as easy to suppose that objects understand each other, as that horses and dogs understand each other. We know nothing about it, and, therefore, it behooves us to say nothing. If mankind conversed only of the things they understood, half the words might be struck out of the dictionaries. But, as I was remarking, those clouds, you can see, are getting together, and are making ready for a start, since here they will not be able to stay much longer." "And what will compel them to disappear?" "Do me the favour to turn your eyes here, to the nor'-west You see an opening there that looks like a crouching lion; is it not so?" "There is certainly a bright clear streak of sky along the margin of the ocean, that has quite lately made its appearance; does it prove that the wind will blow from that quarter?" "Quite as much, my dear young lady, as when you open your window it proves that you mean to put your head out of it." "An act a well-bred young woman very seldom performs," observed Mademoiselle Viefville; "and never in a town." "No? Well, in our town on the river, the women's heads are half the time out of the windows. But I do not pretend, ma'amselle, to be expert in proprieties of this sort, though I can venture to say that I am somewhat of a judge of what the winds would be about when they open _their_ shutters. This opening to the nor'-west, then, is a sure sign of something coming out of the window, well-bred or not." "But," added Eve, "the clouds above us, and those farther south, appear to be hurrying towards your bright opening, captain, instead of from it." "Quite in nature, gentlemen; quite in nature, ladies. When a man has fully made up his mind to retreat, he blusters the most; and one step forward often promises two backward. You often see the stormy petterel sailing at a ship as if he meant to come aboard, but he takes good care to put his helm down before he is fairly in the rigging. So it is with clouds, and all other things in nature. Vattel says you may make a show of fight when your necessities require it, but that a neutral cannot fire a gun, unless against pirates. Now, these clouds are putting the best face on the matter, but in a few minutes you will see them wheeling as St. Paul did before them." "St. Paul, Captain Truck!" "Yes, my dear young lady; to the right about." Eve frowned, for she disliked some of these nautical images, though it was impossible not to smile in secret at the queer associations that so often led the well-meaning master's discursive discourse. His mind was a strange jumble of an early religious education,--religious as to externals and professions, at least,--with subsequent loose observation and much worldly experience, and he drew on his stock of information, according to his own account of the matter, "as Saunders, the steward, cut the butter from the firkins, or as it came first." His prediction concerning the clouds proved to be true, for half an hour did not pass before they were seen "scampering out of the way of the nor'-wester," to use the captain's figure, "like sheep giving play to the dogs." The horizon brightened with a rapidity almost supernatural, and, in a surprisingly short space of time, the whole of that frowning vault that had been shadowed by murky and menacing vapour, sporting its gambols in ominous wildness, was cleared of everything like a cloud, with the exception of a few white, rich, fleecy piles, that were grouped in the north, like a battery discharging its artillery on some devoted field. The ship betrayed the arrival of the wind by a cracking of the spars, as they settled into their places, and then the huge hull began to push aside the waters, and to come under control. The first shock was far from severe, though, as the captain determined to bring his vessel up as near his course as the direction of the breeze would permit, he soon found he had as much canvas spread as she could bear. Twenty minutes brought him to a single reef, and half an hour to a second. By this time attention was drawn to the Foam. The old superiority of that cruiser was now apparent again, and calculations were made concerning the possibility of avoiding her, if they continued to stand on much longer on the present course. The captain had hoped the Montauk would have the advantage from her greater bulk, when the two vessels should be brought down to close-reefed topsails, as he foresaw would be the case; but he was soon compelled to abandon even that hope. Further to the southward he was resolved he would not go, as it would be leading him too far astray, and, at last, he came to the determination to stand towards the islands, which were as near as might be in his track, and to anchor in a neutral roadstead, if too hard pressed. "He cannot get up with us before midnight. Leach," he concluded the conference held with the mate by saying; "and by that time the gale will be at its height, if we are to have a gale, and then the gentleman will not be desirous of lowering his boats. In the mean time, we shall be driving in towards the Azores, and it will be nothing out of the course of nature, should I find an occasion to play him a trick. As for offering up the Montauk a sacrifice on the altar of tobacco, as old Deacon Hourglass used to say in his prayers, it is a category to be averted by any catastrophe short of condemnation." Chapter XI. I, that shower dewy light Through slumbering leaves, bring storms!--the tempest birth Of memory, thought, remorse.--Be holy, Earth! I am the solemn Night! MRS. HEMANS. In this instance, it is not our task to record any of the phenomena of the ocean, but a regular, though fierce gale of wind. One of the first signs of its severity was the disappearance of the passengers from the deck, one shutting himself in his room after another, until none remained visible but John Effingham and Paul Blunt. Both these gentlemen, as it appeared, had made so many passages, and had got to be so familiar with ships, that sea-sickness and alarms were equally impotent as respects their constitutions and temperaments. The poor steerage-passengers were no exception, but they stole for refuge into their dens, heartily repentant, for the time being, at having braved the dangers and discomforts of the sea. The gentle wife of Davis would now willingly have returned to meet the resentment of her uncle; and as for the bridegroom himself, as Mr. Leach, who passed through this scene of abominations to see that all was right, described him,--"Mr. Grab would not wring him for a dish-cloth, if he could see him in his present pickle." Captain Truck chuckled a good deal at this account, for he had much the same sympathy for ordinary cases of sea-sickness, as a kitten feels in the agony of the first mouse it has caught, and which it is its sovereign pleasure to play with, instead of eating. "It serves him right, Mr. Leach, for getting married; and mind you don't fall into the same abuse of your opportunities," he said, with an air of self-satisfaction, while comparing three or four cigars in the palm of his hand doubtful which of the fragrant plump rolls to put into his mouth. "Getting married, Mr. Blunt, commonly makes a man a fit subject for nausea, and nothing is easier than to set the stomach-pump in motion in one of your bridegrooms; is not this true as the gospel, Mr. John Effingham?" Mr. John Effingham made no reply,--but the young man who at the moment was admiring his fine form, and the noble outline of his features, was singularly struck with the bitterness, not to say anguish, of the smile with which he bowed a cold assent. All this was lost on Captain Truck who proceeded _con amore._ "One of the first things that I ask concerning my passengers is, is he married? when the answer is 'no,' I set him down as a good companion in a gale like this, or as one who can smoke, or crack a joke when a topsail is flying out of a bolt-rope,--a companion for a category. Now, if either of you gentlemen had a wife, she would have you under hatches to-day, lest you should slip through a scupperhole,--or be washed overboard with the spray,--or have your eye-brows blown away in such a gale, and then I should lose the honour of your company. Comfort is too precious to be thrown away in matrimony. A man may gain foreknowledge by a wife, but he loses free agency. As for you, Mr. John Effingham, you must have coiled away about half a century of life, and there is not much to fear on your account; but Mr. Blunt is still young enough to be in danger of a mishap. I wish Neptune would come aboard of us, hereaway, and swear you to be true and constant to yourself, young gentleman." Paul laughed, coloured slightly, and then rallying, he replied in the same voice, "At the risk of losing your good opinion, captain, and even in the face of this gale, I shall avow myself an advocate of matrimony," "If you will answer me one question, my dear sir, I will tell you whether the case is or is not hopeless." "In order to assent to this, you will of course see the necessity of letting me know what the question is." "Have you made up your mind who the young woman shall be? If that point is settled, I can only recommend to you some of Joe Bunk's souchong, and advise you to submit, for there is no resisting one's fate. The reason your Turks yield so easily to predestination and fate, is the number of their wives. Many a book is written to show the cause of their submitting their necks so easily to the sword and the bow-string. I've been in Turkey, gentlemen, and know something of their ways. The reason of their submitting so quietly to be beheaded is, that they are always ready to hang themselves. How is the fact, sir? Have you settled upon the young lady in your own mind or not?" Although there was nothing in all this but the permitted trifling of boon companions on ship-board, Paul Blunt received it with an awkwardness one would hardly have expected in a young man of his knowledge of the world. He reddened, laughed, made an effort to throw the captain to a greater distance by reserve, and in the end fairly gave up the matter by walking to another part of the deck. Luckily, the attention of the honest master was drawn to the ship, at that instant, and Paul flattered himself he was unperceived; but the shadow of a figure at his elbow startled him, and turning quickly, he found Mr. John Effingham at his side. "Her mother was an angel," said the latter huskily. "I too love her; but it is as a father." "Sir!--Mr. Effingham!--These are sudden and unexpected remarks, and such as I am not prepared for." "Do you think one as jealous of that fair creature as I, could have overlooked your passion?--She is loved by _both_ of you, and she merits the warmest affection of a thousand. Persevere, for while I have no voice, and, I fear, little influence on her decision, some strange sympathy causes me to wish you success. My own man told me that you have met before, and with her father's knowledge, and this is all I ask, for my kinsman is discreet. He probably knows you, though I do not." The face of Paul glowed like fire, and he almost gasped for breath. Pitying his distress, Effingham smiled kindly, and was about to quit him, when he felt his hand convulsively grasped by those of the young man. "Do not quit me, Mr. Effingham, I entreat you," he said rapidly; "it is so unusual for me to hear words of confidence, or even of kindness, that they are most precious to me! I have permitted myself to be disturbed by the random remarks of that well-meaning, but unreflecting man; but in a moment I shall be more composed--more manly--less unworthy of your attention and pity." "Pity is a word I should never have thought of applying to the person, character, attainments, or, as I hoped, fortunes of Mr. Blunt; and I sincerely trust that you will acquit me of impertinence. I have felt an interest in you, young man, that I have long ceased to feel in most of my species, and I trust this will be some apology for the liberty I have taken. Perhaps the suspicion that you were anxious to stand well in the good opinion of my little cousin was at the bottom of it all." "Indeed you have not misconceived my anxiety, sir; for who is there that could be indifferent to the good opinion of one so simple and yet so cultivated; with a mind in which nature and knowledge seem to struggle for the possession. One, Mr. Effingham, so little like the cold sophistication and heartlessness of Europe on the one hand, and the unformed girlishness of America, on the other; one, in short, so every way what the fondest father or the most sensitive brother could wish." John Effingham smiled, for to smile at any weakness was with him a habit; but his eye glistened. After a moment of doubt, he turned to his young companion, and with a delicacy of expression and a dignity of manner that none could excel him in, when he chose, he put a question that for several days had been uppermost in his thoughts, though no fitting occasion had ever before offered, on which he thought he might venture. "This frank confidence emboldens me--one who ought to be ashamed to boast of his greater experience, when every day shows him to how little profit it has been turned, to presume to render our acquaintance less formal by alluding to interests more personal than strangers have a right to touch on. You speak of the two parts of the world just mentioned, in a way to show me you are equally acquainted with both." "I have often crossed the ocean, and, for so young a man, have seen a full share of their societies. Perhaps it increases my interest in your lovely kinswoman, that, like myself, she properly belongs to neither." "Be cautious how you whisper that in her ear, my youthful friend; for Eve Effingham fancies herself as much American in character as in birth. Single-minded and totally without management,--devoted to her duties,--- religious without cant,--a warm friend of liberal institutions, without the slightest approach to the impracticable, in heart and soul a woman, you will find it hard to persuade her, that with all her practice in the world, and all her extensive attainments, she is more than a humble copy of heir own great _beau idéal_." Paul smiled, and his eyes met those of John Effingham--the expression of both satisfied the parties that they thought alike in more things than in their common admiration of the subject of their discourse. "I feel I have not been as explicit as I ought to be with you, Mr. Effingham," the young, man resumed, after a pause; "but on a more fitting occasion, I shall presume on your kindness to be less reserved. My lot has thrown me on the world, almost without friends, quite without relatives, so far as intercourse with them is concerned; and I have known little of the language or the acts of the affections." John Effingham pressed his hand, and from that time he cautiously abstained from any allusion to his personal concerns; for a suspicion crossed his mind that the subject was painful to the young man. He knew that thousands of well-educated and frequently of affluent people, of both sexes, were to be found in Europe, to whom, from the circumstance of having been born out of wedlock, through divorces, or other family misfortunes, their private histories were painful, and he at once inferred that some such event, quite probably the first, lay at the bottom of Paul Blunt's peculiar situation. Notwithstanding his warm attachment to Eve, he had too much confidence in her own as well as in her father's judgment, to suppose an acquaintance of any intimacy would be lightly permitted; and as to the mere prejudices connected with such subjects, he was quite free from them. Perhaps his masculine independence of character caused him, on all such points, to lean to the side of the _ultra_ in liberality. In this short dialogue, with the exception of the slight though unequivocal allusion of John Effingham, both bad avoided any farther allusions to Mr. Sharp, or to his supposed attachment to Eve. Both were confident of its existence, and this perhaps was one reason why neither felt any necessity to advert to it: for it was a delicate subject, and one, under the circumstances, that they would mutually wish to forget in their cooler moments. The conversation then took a more general character, and for several hours that day, while the rest of the passengers were kept below by the state of the weather, these two were together, laying, what perhaps it was now too late to term, the foundation of a generous and sincere friendship. Hitherto Paul had regarded John Effingham with distrust and awe, but he found him a man so different from what report and his own fancy had pictured, that the reaction in his feelings served to heighten them, and to aid in increasing his respect. On the other hand, the young man exhibited so much modest good sense, a fund of information so much beyond his years, such integrity and justice of sentiment, that when they separated for the night, the old bachelor was full of regret that nature had not made him the parent of such a son. All this time the business of the ship had gone on. The wind increased steadily, until, as the sun went down, Captain Truck announced it, in the cabin, to be a "regular-built gale of wind." Sail after sail had been reduced or furled until the Montauk was lying-to under her foresail, a close-reefed main-top-sail, a fore-top-mast stay-sail, and a mizzen stay-sail. Doubts were even entertained whether the second of these sails would not have to be handed soon, and the foresail itself reefed. The ship's head was to the south-south-west, her drift considerable, and her way of course barely sufficient to cause her to feel her helm. The Foam had gained on her several miles during the time sail could be carried; but she, also, had been obliged to heave-to, at the same increase of the sea and wind as that which had forced Mr. Truck to lash his wheel down. This state of things made a considerable change in the relative positions of the two vessels again; the next morning showing the sloop-of-war hull down, and well on the weather-beam of the packet. Her sharper mould and more weatherly qualities had done her this service, as became a ship intended for war and the chase. At all this, however, Captain Truck laughed. He could not be boarded in such weather, and it was matter of indifference where his pursuer might be, so long as he had time to escape, when the gale ceased. On the whole, he was rather glad than otherwise of the present state of things, for it offered a chance to slip away to leeward as soon as the weather would permit, if, indeed, his tormentor did not altogether disappear in the northern board, or to windward. The hopes and fears of the worthy master, however, were poured principally into the ears of his two mates; for few of the passengers were visible until the afternoon of the second day of the gale; then, indeed, a general relief to their physical suffering occurred, though it was accompanied by apprehensions that scarcely permitted the change to be enjoyed. About noon, on that day, the wind came with such power, and the seas poured down against the bows of the ship with a violence so tremendous, that it got to be questionable whether she could any longer remain with safety in her present condition. Several times in the course of the morning, the waves had forced her bows off, and before the ship could recover her position, the succeeding billow would break against her broadside, and throw a flood of water on her decks. This is a danger peculiar to lying-to in a gale; for if the vessel get into the trough of the sea, and is met in that situation by a wave of unusual magnitude, she runs the double risk of being thrown on her beam-ends, and of having her decks cleared of everything, by the cataract of water that washes athwart them. Landsmen entertain little notion of the power of the waters, when driven before a tempest, and are often surprised, in reading of naval catastrophes, at the description of the injuries done. But experience shows that boats, hurricane-houses, guns, anchors of enormous weight, bulwarks and planks, are even swept off into the ocean, in this manner, or are ripped up from their fastenings. The process of lying-to has a double advantage, so long as it can be maintained, since it offers the strongest portion of the vessel to the shock of the seas, and has the merit of keeping her as near as possible to the desired direction. But it is a middle course, being often adopted as an expedient of safety when a ship cannot scud; and then, again, it is abandoned for scudding when the gale is so intensely severe that it becomes in itself dangerous. In nothing are the high qualities of ships so thoroughly tried as in their manner of behaving, as it is termed, in these moments of difficulty; nor is the seamanship of the accomplished officer so triumphantly established in any other part of his professional knowledge, as when he has had an opportunity of showing that he knows how to dispose of the vast weight his vessel is to carry, so as to enable her mould to exhibit its perfection, and on occasion to turn both to the best account. Nothing will seem easier to a landsman than for a vessel to run before the wind, let the force of the gale be what it may. But his ignorance overlooks most of the difficulties, nor shall we anticipate their dangers, but let them take their places in the regular thread of the narrative. Long before noon, or the hour mentioned, Captain Truck foresaw that, in consequence of the seas that were constantly coming on board of her, he should be compelled to put his ship before the wind. He delayed the manoeuvre to the last moment, however, for what he deemed to be sufficient reasons. The longer he kept the ship lying-to, the less he deviated from his proper course to New York, and the greater was the probability of his escaping, stealthily and without observation from the Foam, since the latter, by maintaining her position better, allowed the Montauk to drift gradually to leeward, and, of course, to a greater distance. But the crisis would no longer admit of delay. All hands were called; the maintop-sail was hauled up, not without much difficulty, and then Captain Truck reluctantly gave the order to haul down the mizzen-stay-sail, to put the helm hard up, and to help the ship round with the yards. This is at all times a critical change, as has just been mentioned for the vessel is exposed to the ravages of any sea, larger than common, that may happen to strike her as she lies nearly motionless, with her broadside exposed to its force. To accomplish it, therefore, Captain Truck went up a few ratlines in the fore-rigging, (he was too nice a calculator to offer even a surface as small as his own body to the wind, in the after shrouds,) whence he looked out to windward for a lull, and a moment when the ocean had fewer billows than common of the larger and more dangerous kind. At the desired instant he signed with his hand, and the wheel was shifted from hard-down to hard-up. This is always a breathless moment in a ship, for as none can foresee the result, it resembles the entrance of a hostile battery. A dozen men may be swept away in an instant, or the ship herself hove over on her side. John Effingham and Paul, who of all the passengers were alone on deck, understood the hazards, and they watched the slightest change with the interest of men who had so much at stake. At first the movement of the ship was sluggish, and such as ill-suited the eagerness of the crew. Then her pitching ceased, and she settled into the enormous trough bodily, or the whole fabric sunk, as it were, never to rise again. So low did she fall, that the foresail gave a tremendous flap; one that shook the hull and spars from stem to stern. As she rose on the next surge, happily its foaming crest slid beneath her, and the tall masts rolled heavily to windward. Recovering her equilibrium, the ship started through the brine, and as the succeeding roller came on, she was urging ahead fast. Still, the sea struck her abeam, forcing her bodily to leeward, and heaving the lower yardarms into the ocean. Tons of water fell on her decks, with the dull sound of the clod on the coffin. At this grand moment, old Jack Truck, who was standing in the rigging, dripping with he spray, that had washed over him, with a naked head, and his grey hair glistening, shouted like a Stentor, "Haul in your fore-braces, boys! away with the yard, like a fiddlestick!" Every nerve was strained; the unwilling yards, pressed upon by an almost irresistible column of air, yielded slowly, and as the sail met the gale more perpendicularly, or at right angles to its surface, it dragged the vast hull through the sea with a power equal to that of a steam-engine. Ere another sea could follow, the Montauk was glancing through the ocean at a furious rate, and though offering her quarter to the billows, their force was now so much diminished by her own velocity, as to deprive them of their principal danger. The motion of the ship immediately became easy, though her situation was still far from being without risk. No longer compelled to buffet the waves, but sliding along in their company, the motion ceased to disturb the systems of the passengers, and ten minutes had not elapsed before most of them were again on deck, seeking the relief of the open air. Among the others was Eve, leaning on the arm of her father. It was a terrific scene, though one might now contemplate it without personal inconvenience. The gentlemen gathered around the beautiful and appalled spectatress of this grand sight, anxious to know the effect it might produce on one of her delicate frame and habits. She expressed herself as awed, but not alarmed; for the habits of dependence usually leave females less affected by fear, in such cases, than those who, by their sex, are supposed to be responsible. "Mademoiselle Viefville has promised to follow me," she said, "and as I have a national claim to be a sailor, you are not to expect hysterics or even ecstasies from me; but reserve yourselves, gentlemen, for the _Parisienne_." The _Parisienne_, sure enough, soon came out of the hurricane-house, with elevated hands, and eyes eloquent of admiration, wonder and fear. Her first exclamations were those of terror, and then turning a wistful look on Eve, she burst into tears. "_Ah, ceci est décisif!_" she exclaimed. "When we part, we shall be separated for life." "Then we will not part at all, my dear mademoiselle; you have only to remain in America, to escape all future inconveniences of the ocean. But forget the danger, and admire the sublimity of this terrific panorama." Well might Eve thus term the scene. The hazards now to be avoided were those of the ship's broaching-to, and of being pooped. Nothing may seem easier, as has been said, than to "sail before the wind," the words having passed into a proverb; but there are times when even a favouring gale becomes prolific of dangers, that we shall now briefly explain. The velocity of the water, urged as it is before a tempest, is often as great as that of the ship, and at such moments the rudder is useless, its whole power being derived from its action as a moving body against the element in comparative repose. When ship and water move together, at an equal rate, in the same direction, of course this power of the helm is neutralized, and then the hull is driven much at the mercy of the winds and waves. Nor is this all; the rapidity of the billows often exceeds that of a ship, and then the action of the rudder becomes momentarily reversed, producing an effect exactly opposite to that which is desired. It is true, this last difficulty is never of more than a few moments' continuance, else indeed would the condition of the mariner be hopeless; but it is of constant occurrence, and so irregular as to defy calculations and defeat caution. In the present instance, the Montauk would seem to fly through the water, so swift was her progress; and then, as a furious surge overtook her in the chase, she settled heavily into the element, like a wounded animal, that, despairing of escape, sinks helplessly in the grass, resigned to fate. At such times the crests of the waves swept past her, like vapour in the atmosphere, and one unpractised would be apt to think the ship stationary, though in truth whirling along in company with a frightful momentum. It is scarcely necessary to say, that the process of scudding requires the nicest attention to the helm, in order that the hull may be brought speedily back to the right direction, when thrown aside by the power of the billows; for, besides losing her way in the caldron of water--an imminent danger of itself--if left exposed to the attack of the succeeding wave, her decks, at least, would be swept, even should she escape a still more serious calamity. Pooping is a hazard of another nature, and is also peculiar to the process of scudding. It merely means the ship's being overtaken by the waters while running from them, when the crest of a sea, broken by the resistance, is thrown in-board, over the taffrail or quarter. The term is derived from the name of that particular portion of the ship. In order to avoid this risk, sail is carried on the vessel as long as possible, it being deemed one of the greatest securities of scudding, to force the hull through the water at the greatest attainable rate. In consequence of these complicated risks, ships that sail the fastest and steer the easiest, scud the best. There is, however, a species of velocity that becomes of itself a source of new danger; thus, exceedingly sharp vessels have been known to force themselves so far into the watery mounds in their front, and to receive so much of the element on decks, as never to rise again. This is a fate to which those who attempt to sail the American clipper, without understanding its properties, are peculiarly liable. On account of this risk, however, there was now no cause of apprehension, the full-bowed, kettle-bottomed Montauk being exempt from the danger; though Captain Truck intimated his doubts whether the corvette would like to brave the course he had himself adopted. In this opinion, the fact would seem to sustain the master of the packet; for when the night shut in, the spars of the Foam were faintly discernible, drawn like spiders' webs on the bright streak of the evening sky. In a few more minutes, even this tracery, which resembled that of a magic-lantern, vanished from the eyes of those aloft; for it had not been seen by any on deck for more than an hour. The magnificent horrors of the scene increased with the darkness. Eve and her companions stood supported by the hurricane-house, watching it for hours, the supernatural-looking light, emitted by the foaming sea, rendering the spectacle one of attractive terror. Even the consciousness of the hazards heightened the pleasure; for there was a solemn and grand enjoyment mingled with it all, and the first watch had been set an hour, before the party had resolution enough to tear themselves from the sublime sight of a raging sea. Chapter XII. _Touch._ Wast ever in court, shepherd? _Cor._ No, truly. _Touch._ Then thou art damn'd. _Cor._ Nay, I hope---- _Touch._ Truly, thou art damn'd, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. AS YOU LIKE IT. No one thought of seeking his berth when all the passengers were below. Some conversed in broken, half intelligible dialogues, a few tried unavailingly to read, and more sat looking at each other in silent misgivings, as the gale howled through the cordage and spars, or among the angles and bulwarks of the ship. Eve was seated on a sofa in her own apartment, leaning on the breast of her father, gazing silently through the open doors into the forward cabin; for all idea of retiring within oneself, unless it might be to secret prayer, was banished from the mind. Even Mr. Dodge had forgotten the gnawings of envy, his philanthropical and exclusive democracy, and, what was perhaps more convincing still of his passing views of this sublunary world, his profound deference for rank, as betrayed in his strong desire to cultivate an intimacy with Sir George Templemore. As for the baronet himself, he sat by the cabin-table with his face buried in his hands, and once he had been heard to express a regret that he had ever embarked. Saunders broke the moody stillness of this characteristic party, with preparations for a supper. He took but one end of the table for his cloth, and a single cover showed that Captain Truck was about to dine, a thing he had not yet done that day. The attentive steward had an eye to his commander's tastes; for it is not often one sees a better garnished board than was spread on this occasion, so far at least as quantity was concerned. Besides the usual solids of ham, corned-beef, and roasted shoat, there were carcasses of ducks, pickled oysters--a delicacy almost peculiar to America--and all the minor condiments of olives, anchovies, dates, figs, almonds, raisins, cold potatoes, and puddings, displayed in a single course, and arranged on the table solely with regard to the reach of Captain Truck's arm. Although Saunders was not quite without taste, he too well knew the propensities of his superior to neglect any of these important essentials, and great care was had, in particular, so to dispose of everything as to render the whole so many radii diverging from a common centre, which centre was the stationary arm-chair that the master of the packet loved to fill in his hours of ease. "You will make many voyages, Mr. Toast,"--the steward affectedly gave his subordinate, or as he was sometimes facetiously called, the steward's mate, reason to understand, when they had retired to the pantry to await the captain's appearance--"before you accumulate all the niceties of a gentleman's dinner. Every _plat_," (Saunders had been in the Havre line, where he had caught a few words of this nature,) "every _plat_ should be within reach of the _convive's_ arm, and particularly if it happen to be Captain Truck, who has a great awersion to delays at his diet. As for the _entremets_, they may be scattered miscellaneously with the salt and the mustard, so that they can come with facility in their proper places." "I don't know what an _entremet_ is," returned the subordinate, "and I exceedingly desire, sir, to receive my orders in such English as a gentleman can diwine." "An _entremet_, Mr. Toast, is a mouthful thrown in promiscuously between the reliefs of the solids. Now, suppose a gentleman begins on pig; when he has eaten enough of this, he likes a little brandy and water, or a glass of porter, before he cuts into the beef; and while I'm mixing the first, or starting the cork, he refreshes himself with an _entremet_, such as a wing of a duck, or perhaps a plate of pickled oysters. You must know that there is great odds in passengers; one set eating and jollifying, from the hour we sail till the hour we get in, while another takes the ocean as it might be sentimentally." "Sentimentally, sir! I s'pose those be they as uses the basins uncommon?" "That depends on the weather. I've known a party not eat as much as would set one handsome table in a week, and then, when they conwalesced, it was intimidating how they dewoured. It makes a great difference, too, whether the passengers acquiesce well together or not, for agreeable feelings give a fine appetite. Lovers make cheap passengers always." "That is extr'or'nary, for I thought such as they was always hard to please, with every thing but one another." "You never were more mistaken. I've seen a lover who couldn't tell a sweet potato from an onion, or a canvas-back from an old wife. But of all mortals in the way of passengers, the bagman or go-between is my greatest animosity. These fellows will sit up all night, if the captain consents, and lie abed next day, and do nothing but drink in their berths. Now, this time we have a compliable set, and on the whole, it is quite a condescension and pleasure to wait on them." "Well, I think, Mr. Saunders, they isn't alike as much as they might be 'nother." "Not more so than wenison and pig. Perfectly correct, sir; for this cabin is a lobskous as regards deportment and character. I set all the Effinghams down as tip-tops, or, A No. 1, as Mr. Leach calls the ship; and then Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt are quite the gentlemen. Nothing is easier, Mr. Toast, than to tell a gentleman; and as you have set up a new profession,--in which I hope, for the credit of the colour, you will be prosperous,--it is well worth your while to know how this is done, especially as you need never expect much from a passenger, that is not a true gentleman, but trouble. There is Mr. John Effingham, in particular; his man says he never anticipates change, and if a coat confines his arm, he repudiates it on the spot." "Well, it must be a satisfaction to serve such a companion, I think Mr. Dodge, sir, quite a feller." "Your taste, Toast, is getting to be observable, and by cultivating it, you will soon be remarkable for a knowledge of mankind. Mr. Dodge, as you werry justly insinuate, is not werry refined, or particularly well suited to figure in genteel society." "And yet he seems attached to it Mr. Saunders, for he has purposed to establish five or six societies since we sailed." "Werry true, sir; but then every society is not genteel. When we get back to New York, Toast, I must see and get you into a better set than the one you occupied when we sailed. You will not do yet for our circle, which is altogether conclusive; but you might be elevated. Mr. Dodge has been electioneering with me, to see if we cannot inwent a society among the steerage-passengers for the abstinence of liquors, and another for the perpetration of the morals and religious principles of our forefathers. As for the first, Toast, I told him it was sufficiently indurable to be confined in a hole like the steerage, without being percluded from the consolation of a little drink; and as for the last, it appeared to me that such a preposition inwolwed an attack on liberty of conscience." "There you give'd him, sir, quite as good as he sent," returned the steward's mate, chuckling, or perhaps sniggering would be a word better suited to his habits of cachinnation, "and I should have been glad to witness his confusion. It seems to me, Mr. Saunders, that Mr. Dodge loves to get up his societies in support of liberty and religion, that he may predominate over both by his own inwentions." Saunders laid his long yellow finger on the broad flat nose of his mate, with an air of approbation, as he replied, "Toast, you have hit his character as pat as I touch your Roman. He is a man fit to make proselytes among the wulgar and Irish,"--the Hibernian peasant and the American negro are sworn enemies--"but quite unfit for anything respectable or decent. Were it not for Sir George, I would scarcely descend to clean his state-room." "What is your sentiments, Mr. Saunders, respecting Sir George?" "Why, Sir George is a titled gentleman, and of course is not to be strictured too freely. He has complimented me already with a sovereign, and apprised me of his intention to be more particular when we get in." "I feel astonished such a gentleman should neglect to insure a state-room to his own convenience." "Sir George has elucidated all that in a conversation we had in his room, soon after our acquaintance commenced. He is going to Canada on public business, and sailed at an hour's interval. He was too late for a single room, and his own man is to follow with most of his effects by the next ship. Oh! Sir George may be safely put down as respectable and liberalized, though thrown into disparagement perhaps by forty circumstances." Mr. Saunders, who had run his vocabulary hard in this conversation, meant to say "fortuitous;" and Toast thought that so many circumstances might well reduce a better man to a dilemma. After a moment of thought, or what in his orbicular shining features he fancied passed for thought, he said,-- "I seem to diwine, Mr. Saunders, that the Effinghams do not much intimate Sir George." Saunders looked out of the pantry-door to reconnoitre, and finding the sober quiet already described reigning, he opened a drawer, and drew forth a London newspaper. "To treat you with the confidence of a gentleman in a situation as respectable and responsible as the one you occupy, Mr. Toast," he said, "a little ewent has transpired in my presence yesterday, that I thought sufficiently particular to be designated by retaining this paper. Mr. Sharp and Sir George happened to be in the cabin together, alone, and the last, as it suggested to me, Toast, was desirous of removing some of the haughter of the first, for you may have observed that there has been no conversation between any of the Effinghams, or Mr. Blunt, or Mr. Sharp, and the baronet; and so to break the ice of his haughter, as it might be, Sir George says, 'Really, Mr. Sharp, the papers have got to be so personally particular, that one cannot run into the country for a mouthful of fresh air that they don't record it. Now, I thought not a soul knew of my departure for America, and yet here you see they have mentioned it, with more particulars than are agreeable.' On concluding, Sir George gave Mr. Sharp this paper, and indicated this here paragraph. Mr. Sharp perused it, laid down the paper, and retorted coldly, 'It is indeed quite surprising, sir; but impudence is a general fault of the age.' And then he left the cabin solus. Sir George was so wexed, he went into his state-room and forgot the paper, which fell to the steward, you know, on a principle laid down in Wattel, Toast" Here the two worthies indulged in a smothered merriment of their own at the expense of their commander; for though a dignified man in general, Mr. Saunders could laugh on occasion, and according to his own opinion of himself he danced particularly well. "Would you like to read the paragraph, Mr. Toast?" "Quite unnecessary, sir; your account will be perfectly legible and satisfactory." By this touch of politeness, Mr. Toast, who knew as much of the art of reading as a monkey commonly knows of mathematics, got rid of the awkwardness of acknowledging the careless manner in which he had trifled with his early opportunities. Luckily, Mr. Saunders, who had been educated as a servant in a gentleman's family, was better off, and as he was vain of all his advantages, he was particularly pleased to have an opportunity of exhibiting them. Turning to the paragraph he read the following lines, in that sort of didactic tone and elaborate style with which gentlemen who commence the graces after thirty are a little apt to make bows: "We understand Sir George Templemore, Bart., the member for Boodleigh, is about to visit our American colonies, with a view to make himself intimately acquainted with the merits of the unpleasant questions by which they are just now agitated, and with the intention of entering into the debates in the house on that interesting subject on his return. We believe that Sir George will sail in the packet of the first from Liverpool, and will return in time to be in his seat after the Easter holidays. His people and effects left town yesterday by the Liverpool coach. During the baronet's absence, his country will be hunted by Sir Gervaise de Brush, though the establishment at Templemore Hall will be kept up." "How came Sir George here, then?" Mr. Toast very naturally inquired. "Having been kept too late in London, he was obliged to come this way or to be left. It is sometimes as close work to get the passengers on board, Mr. Toast, as to get the people. I have often admired how gentlemen and ladies love procrastinating, when dishes that ought to be taken hot, are getting to be quite insipid and uneatable." "Saunders!" cried the hearty voice of Captain Truck, who had taken possession of what he called his throne in the cabin. All the steward's elegant diction and finish of demeanour vanished at the well-known sound, and thrusting his head out of the pantry-door, he gave the prompt ship-answer to a call, "Ay, ay, sir!" "Come, none of your dictionary in the pantry there, but show your physiognomy in my presence. What the devil do you think Vattel would say to such a supper as this?" "I think, sir, he would call it a werry good supper, for a ship in a hard gale of wind. That's my honest opinion, Captain Truck, and I never deceive any gentleman in a matter of food. I think, Mr. Wattel would approve of that there supper, sir." "Perhaps he might, for he has made blunders as well as another man. Go, mix me a glass of just what I love when I've not had a drop all day. Gentlemen, will any of you honour me, by sharing in a cut? This beef is not indigestible, and here is a real Marylander, in the way of a ham. No want of oakum to fill up the chinks with, either." Most of the gentlemen were too full of the gale to wish to eat; besides they had not fasted like Captain Truck since morning. But Mr. Monday, the bagman, as John Effingham had termed him, and who had been often enough at sea to know something of its varieties, consented to take a glass of brandy and water, as a corrective of the Madeira he had been swallowing. The appetite of Captain Truck was little affected by the state of the weather, however; for though too attentive to his duties to quit the deck until he had ascertained how matters were going on, now that he had fairly made up his mind to eat, he set about it with a heartiness and simplicity that proved his total disregard of appearances when his hunger was sharp. For some time he was too much occupied to talk, making regular attacks upon the different _plats_, as Mr. Saunders called them, without much regard to the cookery or the material. The only pauses were to drink, and this was always done with a steadiness that never left a drop in the glass. Still Mr. Truck was a temperate man; for he never consumed more than his physical wants appeared to require, or his physical energies knew how to dispose of. At length, however, he came to the steward's _entremets_, or he began to stuff what he, himself, had called "oakum," into the chinks of his dinner. Mr. Sharp had watched the whole process from the ladies' cabin, as indeed had Eve, and thinking this a favourable occasion to ascertain the state of things on deck, the former came into the main-cabin, commissioned by the latter, to make the inquiry. "The ladies are desirous of knowing where we are, and what is the state of the gale, Captain Truck," said the gentleman, when he had seated himself near the throne. "My dear young lady," called out the captain, by way of cutting short the diplomacy of employing ambassadors between them, "I wish in my heart I could persuade you and Mademoiselle V.A.V., (for so he called the governess, in imitation of Eve's pronunciation of her name,) to try a few of these pickled oysters; they are as delicate as yourselves, and worthy to be set before a mermaid, if there were any such thing." "I thank you for the compliment, Captain Truck, and while I ask leave to decline it, I beg leave to refer you to the plenipotentiary Mademoiselle Viefville" (Eve would not say herself) "has intrusted with her wishes." "Thus you perceive, sir," interposed Mr. Sharp again, "you will have to treat with me, by all the principles laid down by Vattel." "And treat you, too, my good sir. Let me persuade you to try a slice of this anti-abolitionist," laying his knife on the ham, which he still continued to regard himself with a sort of melancholy interest. "No? well, I hold over-persuasion as the next thing to neglect. I am satisfied, sir, after all, as Saunders says, that Vattel himself, unless more unreasonable at his grub than in matters of state, would be a happier man after he had been at his table twenty minutes, than before he sat down." Mr. Sharp perceiving that it was idle to pursue his inquiry while the other was in one of his discursive humours, determined to let things take their course, and fell into the captain's own vein. "If Vattel would approve of the repast, few men ought to repine at their fortune in being so well provided." "I flatter myself, sir, that I understand a supper, especially in a gale of wind, as well as Mr. Vattel, or any other man could do." "And yet Vattel was one of the most celebrated cooks of his day." Captain Truck stared, looked his grave companion steadily in the eye, for he was too much addicted to mystifying, not to distrust others, and picked his teeth with redoubled vigilance. "Vattel a cook! This is the first I ever heard of it." "There was a Vattel, in a former age, who stood at the head of his art as a cook; this I can assure you, on my honour: he may not have been your Vattel, however." "Sir, there never were two Vattels. This is extraordinary news to me, and I scarcely know how to receive it." "If you doubt my information, you may ask any of the other passengers. Either of the Mr. Effinghams, or Mr. Blunt, or Miss Effingham, or Mademoiselle Viefville will confirm what I tell you, I think; especially the latter, for he was her countryman." Hereupon Captain Truck began to stuff in the oakum again, for the calm countenance of Mr. Sharp produced an effect; and as he was pondering on the consequences of his oracle's turning out to be a cook, he thought it not amiss to be eating, as it were, incidentally. After swallowing a dozen olives, six or eight anchovies, as many pickled oysters, and raisins and almonds, as the advertisements say _à volonté_, he suddenly struck his fist on the table, and announced his intention of putting the question to both the ladies. "My dear young lady," he called out, "will you do me the honour to say whether you ever heard of a cook of the name of Vattel?" Eve laughed, and her sweet tones were infectious amid the dull howling of the gale, which was constantly heard in the cabins, like a bass accompaniment, or the distant roar of a cataract among the singing of birds. "Certainly, captain," she answered; "Mr. Vattel was not only a cook, but perhaps the most celebrated on record, for sentiment at least, if not for skill." "I make no doubt the man did his work well, let him be set about what he might; and, mademoiselle, he was a countryman of yours, they tell me?" "_Assurement_, Monsieur Vattel has left more distinguished _souvenirs_ than any other cook in France." Captain Truck turned quickly to the elated and admiring Saunders, who felt his own glory enhanced by this important discovery, and said in that short-hand way he had of expressing himself to the chief of the pantry, "Do you hear that, sir; see and find out what they are, and dress me a dish of these _souvenirs_ as soon as we get in. I dare say they are to be had at the Fulton market, and mind while there to look out for some tongues and sounds. I've not made half a supper to-night, for the want of them. I dare say these _souvenirs_ are capital eating, if Monsieur Vattel thought so highly of them. Pray, mademoiselle, is the gentleman dead?" "Hélas, oui! How could he live with a sword run through his body?" "Ha! killed in a duel, I declare; died fighting for his principles, if the truth were known! I shall have a double respect for his opinion, for this is the touchstone of a man's honesty. Mr. Sharp, let us take a glass of Geissenheimer to his memory; we might honour a less worthy man." As the captain poured out the liquor, a fall of several tons of water on the deck shook the entire ship, and one of the passengers in the hurricane-house, opening a door to ascertain the cause, the sound of the hissing waters and of the roaring winds came fresher and more distinct into the cabin. Mr. Truck cast an eye at the tell-tale over his head to ascertain the course of the ship, and paused just an instant, and then tossed off his wine. "This hint reminds me of my mission," Mr. Sharp re joined. "The ladies desire to know your opinion of the state of the weather?" "I owe them an answer, if it were only in gratitude for the hint about Vattel. Who the devil would have supposed the man ever was a cook! But these Frenchmen are not like the rest of mankind, and half the nation are cooks, or live by food, in some way or other." "And very good cooks, too, Monsieur le Capitaine," said Mademoiselle Viefville. "Monsieur Vattel did die for the honour of his art. He fell on his own sword, because the fish did not arrive in season for the dinner of the king." Captain Truck looked more astonished than ever. Then turning short round to the steward, he shook his head and exclaimed, "Do you hear that, sir? How often would you have died, if a sword had been run through you every time the fish was forgotten, or was too late'? Once, to a dead certainty, about these very tongues and sounds." "But the weather?" interrupted Mr. Sharp. "The weather, my dear sir; the weather, my dear ladies, is very good weather, with the exception of winds and waves, of which unfortunately there are, just now, more of both than we want. The ship must scud, and as we go like a race-horse, without stopping to take breath, we may see the Canary Islands before the voyage is over. Of danger there is none in this ship, as long as we can keep clear of the land, and in order that this may be done, I will just step into my state-room, and find out exactly where we are." On receiving this information, the passengers retired for the night, Captain Truck setting about his task in good earnest. The result of his calculations showed that they would run westward of Madeira, which was all he cared about immediately, intending always to haul up to his course on the first good occasion. Chapter XIII. There are yet two things in my destiny-- world to roam o'er, and a home with thee. BYRON. Eve Effingham slept little: although the motion of the ship had been much more severe and uncomfortable while contending with head-winds, on no other occasion were there so many signs of a fierce contention, of the elements as in this gale. As she lay in her berth, her ear was within a foot of the roaring waters without, and her frame trembled as she heard them gurgling so distinctly, that it seemed as if they had already forced their way through the seams of the planks, and were filling the ship. Sleep she could not, for a long time, therefore, and during two hours she remained with closed eyes an entranced and yet startled listener of the fearful strife that was raging over the ocean. Night had no stillness, for the roar of the winds and waters was incessant, though deadened by the intervening decks and sides; but now and then an open door admitted, as it might be, the whole scene into the cabins. At such moments every sound was fresh, and frightfully grand,--even the shout of the officer coming to the ear like a warning cry from the deep. At length Eve, wearied by her apprehensions even, fell into a troubled sleep, in which her frightened faculties, however, kept so much on the alert, that at no time was the roar of the tempest entirely lost to her sense of hearing. About midnight the glare of a candle crossed her eyes, and she was broad awake in an instant. On rising in her berth she found Nanny Sidley, who had so often and so long watched over her infant and childish slumbers, standing at her side, and gazing wistfully in her face. "'Tis a dread night, Miss Eve," half whispered the appalled domestic. "I have not been able to sleep for thinking of you, and of what might happen on these wide waters!" "And why of me particularly, my good Nanny?" returned Eve, smiling in the face of her old nurse as sweetly as the infant smiles in its moments of tenderness and recollection. "Why so much of me, my excellent Ann?--are there not others too, worthy of your care? my beloved father--your own good self--Mademoiselle Viefville--cousin Jack--and--" the warm colour deepened on the cheek of the beautiful girl, she scarcely knew why herself--"and many others in the vessel, that one, kind as you, might think of, I should hope, when your thoughts become apprehensions, and your wishes prayers." "There are many precious souls in the ship, ma'am, out of all question; and I'm sure no one wishes them all safe on land again more than myself; but it seems to me, no one among them all is so much loved as you." Eve leaned forward playfully, and drawing her old nurse towards her, kissed her cheek, while her own eyes glistened, and then she laid her flushed cheek on that bosom which had so frequently been its pillow before. After remaining a minute in this affectionate attitude, she rose and inquired if her nurse had been on deck. "I go every half-hour, Miss Eve; for I feel it as much my duty to watch over you here, as when I had you all to myself in the cradle. I do not think your father sleeps a great deal to-night, and several of the gentlemen in the other cabins remain dressed; they ask me how you spend the time in this tempest, whenever I pass their state-room doors." Eve's colour deepened, and Ann Sidley thought she had never seen her child more beautiful, as the bright luxuriant golden hair, which had strayed from the confinement of the cap, fell on the warm cheek, and rendered eyes that were always full of feeling, softer and more brilliant even than common. "They conceal their uneasiness for themselves under an affected concern for me, my good Nanny," she said hurriedly; "and your own affection makes you an easy dupe to the artifice." "It may be so, ma'am, for I know but little of the ways of the world. It is fearful, is it not, Miss Eve, to think that we are in a ship, so far from any land, whirling along over the bottom as fast as a horse could plunge?" "The danger is not exactly of that nature, perhaps, Nanny." "There is a bottom to the ocean, is there not? I have heard some maintain there is no bottom to the sea--and that would make the danger so much greater. I think, if I felt certain that the bottom was not very deep, and there was only a rock to be seen now and then, I should not find it so very dreadful." Eve laughed like a child, and the contrast between the sweet simplicity of her looks, her manners, and her more cultivated intellect, and the matronly appearance of the less instructed Ann, made one of those pictures in which the superiority of mind over all other things becomes most apparent. "Your notions of safety, my dear Nanny," she said, "are not precisely those of a seaman; for I believe there is nothing of which they stand more in dread than of rocks and the bottom." "I fear I'm but a poor sailor, ma'am, for in my judgment we could have no greater consolation in such a tempest than to see them all around us. Do you think, Miss Eve, that the bottom of the ocean, if there is truly a bottom, is whitened with the bones of shipwrecked mariners, as people say?" "I doubt not, my excellent Nanny, that the great deep might give up many awful secrets; but you ought to think less of these things, and more of that merciful Providence which has protected us through so many dangers since we have been wanderers. You are in much less danger now than I have known you to be, and escape unharmed." "I, Miss Eve!--Do you suppose that I fear for myself? What matters it if a poor old woman like me die a few years sooner or later or where her frail old body is laid? I have never been of so much account when living as to make it of consequence where the little which will remain to decay when dead moulders into dust. Do not, I implore you, Miss Effingham, suppose me so selfish as to feel any uneasiness to-night on my own account." "Is it then, as usual, all for me, my dear, my worthy old nurse, that you feel this anxiety? Put your heart at ease, for they who know best betray no alarm; and you may observe that the captain sleeps as tranquilly this night as on any other." "But he is a rude man, and accustomed to danger. He has neither wife nor children, and I'll engage has never given a thought to the horrors of having a form precious as this floating in the caverns of the ocean, amidst ravenous fish and sea-monsters." Here her imagination overcame poor Nanny Sidley, and she folded her arms about the beautiful person of Eve, and sobbed violently. Her young mistress, accustomed to similar exhibitions of affection, soothed her with blandishments and assurances that soon restored her self-command, when the dialogue was resumed with a greater appearance of tranquillity on the part of the nurse. They conversed a few minutes on the subject of their reliance on God, Eve returning fourfold, or with the advantages of a cultivated intellect, many of those simple lessons of faith and humility that she had received from her companion when a child; the latter listening, as she always did, to these exhortations, which sounded in her ears, like the echoes of all her own better thoughts, with a love and reverence no other could awaken. Eve passed her small white hand over the wrinkled cheek of Nanny in kind fondling, as it had been passed a thousand times when a child, an act she well knew her nurse delighted in, and continued,-- "And now, my good old Nanny, you will set your heart at ease, I know; for though a little too apt to trouble yourself about one who does not deserve half your care, you are much too sensible and too humble to feel distrust out of reason. We will talk of something else a few minutes, and then you will lie down and rest your weary body." "Weary! I should never feel weary in watching, when I thought there was a cause for it." Although Nanny made no allusion to herself, Eve understood in whose behalf this watchfulness was meant. She drew the face of the old woman towards her, and left a kiss on each cheek ere she continued:-- "These ships have other things to talk about, besides their dangers," she said. "Do you not find it odd, at least, that a vessel of war should be sent to follow us about the ocean in this extraordinary way?" "Quite so, ma'am, and I did intend to speak to you about it, some time when I saw you had nothing better to think of. At first I fancied, but I believe it was a silly thought, that some of the great English lords and admirals that used to be so much about us at Paris, and Rome, and Vienna, had sent this ship to see you safe to America, Miss Eve; for I never supposed they would make so much fuss concerning a poor runaway couple, like these steerage-passengers." Eve did not refrain from laughing again, at this conceit of Nanny's, for her temperament was gay as childhood, though well restrained by cultivation and manner, and once more she patted the cheek of her nurse kindly. "Those great lords and admirals are not great enough for that, dear Nanny, even had they the inclination to do so silly a thing. But has no other reason suggested itself to you, among the many curious circumstances you may have had occasion to observe in the ship?" Nanny looked at Eve, and turned her eyes aside, glanced furtively at the young lady again, and at last felt compelled to answer. "I endeavour, ma'am, to think well of everybody, though strange thoughts will sometimes arise without our wishing it. I suppose I know to what you allude; but I don't feel quite certain it becomes me to speak." "With me at least, Nanny, you need have no reserves, and I confess a desire to learn if we have thought alike about some of our fellow-passengers. Speak freely, then; for you can have no more apprehension in communicating all your thoughts to me, than in communicating them to your own child." "Not as much, ma'am, not half as much; for you are both child and mistress to me, and I look quite as much to receiving advice as to giving it. It is odd, Miss Eve, that gentlemen should not pass under their proper names, and I have had unpleasant feelings about it, though I did not think it became me to be the first to speak, while your father was with you, and mamerzelle," for so Nanny always styled the governess, "and Mr. John, all of whom love you almost as much as I do, and all of whom are so much better judges of what is right. But now you encourage me to speak my mind, Miss Eve, I will say I should like that no one came near you who does not carry his heart in his open hand, that the youngest child might know his character and understand his motives." Eve smiled as her nurse grew warm, but she blushed in spite of an effort to seem indifferent. "This would be truly a vain wish, dear Nanny, in the mixed company of a ship," she said. "It is too much to expect that strangers will throw aside all their reserves, on first finding themselves in close communion. The well-bred and prudent will only stand more on their guard under such circumstances." "Strangers, ma'am!" "I perceive that you recollect the face of one of our shipmates. Why do you shake your head?" The tell-tale blood of Eve again mantled over her lovely countenance. "I suppose I ought to have said _two_ of our shipmates, though I had doubted whether you retained any recollection of one of them." "No gentleman ever speaks to you twice, Miss Eve, that I do not remember him." "Thank you, dearest Nanny, for this and a thousand other proofs of your never-ceasing interest in my welfare; but I had not believed you so vigilant as to take heed of every face that happens to approach me." "Ah, Miss Eve! neither of these gentlemen would like to be mentioned by you in this careless manner, I'm sure. They both did a great deal more than 'happen to approach you;' for as to--" "Hist! dear Nanny; we are in a crowded place, and you may be overheard. You will use no names, therefore, as I believe we understand each other without going into all these particulars. Now, my dear nurse, would I give something to know which of these young men has made the most favourable impression on your upright and conscientious mind I?" "Nay, Miss Eve, what is my judgment in comparison with your own, and that of Mr. John Effingham, and--" "--My cousin Jack! In the name of wonder, Nanny, what has he to do with the matter?" "Nothing, ma'am; only I can see he has his favourites as well as another, and I'll venture to say Mr. Dodge is not the greatest he has in this ship." "I think you might add Sir George Templemore; too," returned Eve, laughing. Ann Sidley looked hard at her young mistress, and smiled before she answered; and then she continued the discourse naturally, as if there had been no interruption. "Quite likely, ma'am; and Mr. Monday, and all the rest of that set. But you see how soon he discovers a real gentleman; for he is quite easy and friendly with Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt, particularly the last." Eve was silent, for she did not like the open introduction of these names, though she scarce knew why herself. "My cousin is a man of the world," she resumed, on perceiving that Nanny watched her countenance with solicitude, as if fearful of having gone too far; "and there is nothing surprising in his discovering men of his own class. We know both these persons to be not exactly what they seem, though I think we know no harm of either, unless it be the silly change of names. It would have been better had they come on board, bearing their proper appellations; to us, at least, it would have been more respectful, though both affirm they were ignorant that my father had taken passage in the Montauk,--a circumstance that may very well be true, as you know we got the cabin that was first engaged by another party." "I should be sorry, ma'am, if either failed in respect." "It is not quite adulatory to make a young woman the involuntary keeper of the secrets of two unreflecting young men; that is all, my good Nanny. We cannot well betray them, and we are consequently their confidants _par force_. The most amusing part of the thing is, that they are masters of each other's secrets, in part at least, and feel a delightful awkwardness in a hundred instances. For my own part I pity neither, but think each is fairly enough punished. They will be fortunate if their servants do not betray them before we reach New York." "No fear of that, ma'am, for they are discreet, cautious men, and if disposed to blab, Mr. Dodge has given both good opportunities already, as I believe he has put to them as many questions as there are speeches in the catechism." "Mr. Dodge is a vulgar man." "So we all say, ma'am, in the servants' cabin, and everybody is so set against him there, that there is little chance of his learning much. I hope, Miss Eve, mamerzelle does not distrust either of the gentlemen?" "Surely you cannot suspect Mademoiselle Viefville of indiscretion, Nanny; a better spirit, or a better tone than hers, does not exist." "No, ma'am, 'tis not that: but I should like to have one more secret with you, all to myself. I honour and respect mamerzelle, who has done a thousand times more for you than a poor ignorant woman like me could have done, with all my zeal; but I do believe, Miss Eve, I love your shoe tie better than she loves your pure and beautiful spirit." "Mademoiselle Viefville is an excellent woman, and I believe is sincerely attached to me." "She would be a wretch else. I do not deny her attachment, but I only say it is nothing, it ought to be nothing, it can be nothing, it shall be nothing, compared to that of the one who first held you in her arms, and who has always held you in her heart. Mamerzelle can sleep such a night as this, which I'm sure she could not do were she as much concerned for you as I am." Eve knew that jealousy of Mademoiselle Viefville was Nanny's greatest weakness, and drawing the old woman to her, she entwined her arms around her neck and complained of drowsiness. Accustomed to watching, and really unable to sleep, the nurse now passed a perfectly happy hour in holding her child, who literally dropped asleep on her bosom; after which Nanny slid into the berth beneath, in her clothes, and finally lost the sense of her apprehensions in perturbed slumbers. A cry on dock awoke all in the cabins early on the succeeding morning. It was scarcely light, but a common excitement seized every passenger, and ten minutes had not elapsed when Eve and her governess appeared in the hurricane-house, the last of those who came from below. Few questions had been asked, but all hurried on deck with their apprehensions awakened by the gale, increased to the sense of some positive and impending danger. Nothing, however, was immediately apparent to justify all this sudden clamour. The gale continued, if anything with increased power; the ocean was rolling over its cataracts of combing seas, with which the ship was still racing, driven under the strain of a reefed fore-course, the only canvas that was set. Even with this little sail the hull was glancing through the raging seas, or rather in their company, at a rate a little short of ten miles in the hour. Captain Truck was in the mizzen-rigging, bare-headed, every lock of hair he had blowing out like a pennant. Occasionally he signed to the man at the wheel which way to put the helm; for instead of sleeping, as many had supposed, he had been conning the ship for hours in the same situation, As Eve appeared, he was directing the attention of several of the gentlemen to some object astern, but a very few moments put all on deck in possession of the facts. About a cable's length, on one of the quarters of the Montauk, was a ship careering before the gale like themselves, though carrying more canvas, and consequently driving faster through the water. The sudden appearance of this vessel in the sombre light of the morning, when objects were seen distinctly but without the glare of day; the dark hull, relieved by a single narrow line of white paint, dotted with ports; the glossy hammock-cloths, and all those other coverings of dark glistening canvas which give to a cruiser an air of finish and comfort, like that of a travelling carriage; the symmetry of the spars, and the gracefulness of all the lines, whether of the hull or hamper, told all who knew anything of such subjects, that the stranger was a vessel of war. To this information Captain Truck added that it was their old pursuer the Foam. "She is corvette-built," said the master of the Montauk, "and is obliged to carry more canvas than we, in order to keep out of the way of the seas; for, if one of these big fellows should overtake her, and throw its crest into her waist, she would become like a man who has taken too much Saturday-night, and with whom a second dose might settle the purser's books forever." Such in fact was the history of the sudden appearance of this ship. She had lain-to as long as possible, and on being driven to scud, carried a close-reefed maintop-sail, a show of canvas that urged her through the water about two knots to the hour faster than the rate of the-packet. Necessarily following the same coarse, she overtook the latter just as the day began to dawn. The cry had arisen on her sudden discovery, and the moment had now arrived when she was about to come up, quite abreast of her late chase. The passage of the Foam, under such circumstances, was a grand but thrilling thing. Her captain, too, was seen in the mizzen-rigging of his ship, rocked by the gigantic billows over which the fabric was careering. He held a speaking-trumpet in his hand, as if still bent on his duty, in the midst of that awful warring of the elements. Captain Truck called for a trumpet in his turn, and fearful of consequences he waved it to the other to keep more aloof, The injunction was either misunderstood, the man-of-war's man was too much bent on his object, or the ocean was too uncontrollable for such a purpose, the corvette driving up on a sea quite abeam of the packet, and in fearful proximity. The Englishman applied the trumpet, and words were heard amid the roaring of the winds. At that time the white field of old Albion, with the St. George's cross, rose over the bulwarks, and by the time it had reached the gaff-end, the bunting was whipping in ribbons. "Show 'em the gridiron!" growled Captain Truck through his trumpet, with its mouth turned in board. As everything was ready this order was instantly obeyed, and the stripes of America were soon seen fluttering nearly in separate pieces. The two ships now ran a short distance in parallel lines, rolling from each other so heavily that the bright copper of the corvette was seen nearly to her keel. The Englishman, who seemed a portion of his ship, again tried his trumpet; the detached words of "lie-by,"--"orders,"--"communicate," were caught by one or two, but the howling of the gale rendered all connexion in the meaning impossible. The Englishman ceased his efforts to make himself heard, for the two ships were now rolling-to, and it appeared as if their spars would interlock. There was an instant when Mr. Leach had his hand on the main-brace to let it go; but the Foam started away on a sea, like a horse that feels the spur, and disobeying her helm, shot forward, as if about to cross the Montauk's forefoot. A breathless instant followed, for all on board the two ships thought they must now inevitably come foul of each other, and this the more so, because the Montauk took the impulse of the sea just as it was lost to the Foam, and seemed on the point of plunging directly into the stern of the latter. Even the seamen clenched the ropes around them convulsively, and the boldest held their breaths for a time. The "p-o-r-t, hard a port, and be d---d to you!" of Captain Truck; and the "S-t-a-r-b-o-a-r-d, starboard hard!" of the Englishman, were both distinctly audible to all in the two ships; for this was a moment in which seamen can speak louder than the tempest. The affrighted vessels seemed to recede together, and they shot asunder in diverging lines, the Foam leading. All further attempts at a communication were instantly useless; the corvette being half a mile ahead in a quarter of an hour, rolling her yardarms nearly to the water. Captain Truck said little to his passengers concerning this adventure; but when he had lighted a cigar, and was discussing the matter with his chief-mate, he told the latter there was "just one minute when he would not have given a ship's biscuit for both vessels, nor much more for their cargoes. A man must have a small regard for human souls, when he puts them, and their bodies too, in so much jeopardy for a little tobacco." Throughout the day it blew furiously, for the ship was running into the gale, a phenomenon that we shall explain, as most of our readers may not comprehend it. All gates of wind commence to leeward; or, in other words, the wind is first felt at some particular point, and later, as we recede from that point, proceeding in the direction from which the wind blows. It is always severest near the point where it commences, appearing to diminish in violence as it recedes. This, therefore, is an additional motive for mariners to lie-to, instead of scudding, since the latter not only carries them far from their true coarse, but it carries them also nearer to the scene of the greatest fury of the elements. Chapter XIV. Good boatswain, have care. TEMPEST. At sunset, the speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of the tempest; but it was impossible to haul up for any one among them. The most that could be done was to keep the ship dead before it, to prevent her broaching-to, and to have a care that she kept clear of those rocks and of that bottom, for which Nanny Sidley had so much pined. Familiarity with the scene began to lessen the apprehensions of the passengers, and as scudding is an easy process for those who are liable to sea-sickness, ere another night shut in, the principal concern was connected with the course the ship was compelled to steer. The wind had so far hauled to the westward as to render it certain that the coast of Africa would lie in their way, if obliged to scud many hours longer; for Captain Truck's observations actually placed him to the southward and eastward of the Canary Islands. This was a long distance out of his course, but the rate of sailing rendered the fact sufficiently clear. This, too was the precise time when the Montauk felt the weight of the tempest, or rather, when she experienced the heaviest portion of that which it was her fate to feel. Lucky was it for the good ship that she had not been in this latitude a few hours earlier, when it had blown something very like a hurricane. The responsibility and danger of his situation now began seriously to disturb Captain Truck, although he kept his apprehensions to himself, like a prudent officer. All his calculations were gone over again with the utmost care, the rate of sailing was cautiously estimated, and the result showed, that ten or fifteen hours more would inevitably produce shipwreck of another sort, unless the wind moderated. Fortunately, the gale began to break about midnight. The wind still blew tremendously, but it was less steadily, and there were intervals of half-an-hour at a time when the ship might have carried much more canvas, even on a bowline: of course her speed abated in proportion, and, after the day had dawned, a long and anxious survey from aloft showed no land to the eastward. When perfectly assured of this important fact, Captain Truck rubbed his hands with delight, ordered a coal for his cigar, and began to abuse Saunders about the quality of the coffee during the blow. "Let there be something creditable, this morning, sir," added the captain, after a sharp rebuke; "and remember we are down here in the neighbourhood of the country of your forefathers, where a man ought, in reason, to be on his good behaviour. If I hear any more of your washy compounds, I'll put you ashore, and let you run naked a summer or two with the monkeys and ouran-outangs." "I endeavour, on all proper occasions, to render myself agreeable to you, Captain Truck, and to all those with whom I have the happiness to sail," returned the steward; "but the coffee, sir, cannot be very good, sir, in such weater, sir. I do diwine that the wind must blow away its flavour, for I am ready to confess it has not been as odorous as it usually is, when I have had the honour to prepare it. As for Africa, sir, I flatter myself, Captain Truck, that you esteem me too highly to believe I am suited to consort or besort with the ill-formed and inedicated men who inhabit that wild country. I misremember whether my ancestors came from this part of the world or not; but if they did, sir, my habits and profession entirely unqualify me for their company, I hope. I know I am only a poor steward, sir, but you'll please to recollect that your great Mr. Vattel was nothing but a cook." "D--n the fellow, Leach; I believe it is this conceit that has spoiled the coffee the last day or two! Do you suppose it can be true that a great writer like this man could really be no better than a cook, or was that Englishman roasting me, by way of showing how cooking is done ashore? If it were not for the testimony of the ladies, I might believe it; but they would not share in such an indecent trick. What are you lying-by for, sir? go to your pantry and remember that the gale is broken, and we shall all sit down to table this morning, as keen-set as a party of your brethren ashore here, who had a broiled baby for breakfast." Saunders, who _ex-officio_ might be said to be trained in similar lectures, went pouting to his work, taking care to expend a proper part of his spleen on Mr. Toast, who, quite as a matter of course, suffered in proportion as his superior was made to feel, in his own person, the weight of Captain Truck's authority. It is perhaps fortunate that nature points out this easy and self-evident mode of relief, else would the rude habits of a ship sometimes render the relations between him who orders and him whose duty it is to obey, too nearly approaching to the intolerable. The captain's squalls, however, were of short duration and on the present occasion he was soon in even a better humour than common, as every minute gave the cheering assurance, that the tempest was fast drawing to a close. He had finished his third cigar, and was actually issuing his orders to turn the reef out of the foresail, and to set the main-top-sail close-reefed, when most of the passengers appeared on deck, for the first time that morning. "Here we are, gentlemen!" cried Captain Truck, in the way of salutation, "nearer to Guinea than I could wish, with every prospect, now, of soon working our way across the Atlantic, and possibly of making a thirty or thirty-five days' passage of it yet. We have this sea to quiet; and then I hope to show you what the Montauk has in her, besides her passengers and cargo. I think we have now got rid of the Foam, as well as of the gale. I did believe, at one time, her people might be walking and wading on the coast of Cornwall; but I now believe they are more likely to try the sands of the great Desert of Sahara." "It is to be hoped they have escaped the latter calamity, as fortunately as they escaped the first!" observed Mr. Effingham. "It may be so; but the wind has got round to nor-west, and has not been sighing these last twelve hours. Cape Bianco is not a hundred leagues from us, and, at the rate he was travelling, that gentleman with the speaking-trumpet may now be philosophizing over the fragments of his ship, unless he had the good sense to haul off more to the westward than he was steering when last seen. His ship should have been christened the 'Scud,' instead of the 'Foam.'" Every one expressed the hope that the ship, to which their own situation was fairly enough to be ascribed, might escape this calamity; and all faces regained their cheerfulness as they saw the canvas fall, in sign that their own danger was past. So rapidly, indeed, did the gale now abate, that the topsails were hardly hoisted before the order was given to shake out another reef, and within an hour all the heavier canvas that was proper to carry before the wind was set, solely with a view to keep the ship steady. The sea was still fearful, and Captain Truck found himself obliged to keep off from his course, in order to avoid the danger of having his decks swept. The racing with the crest of the waves, however, was quite done, for the seas soon cease to comb and break, after the force of the wind is expended. At no time is the motion of the vessel more unpleasant, or, indeed, more dangerous, than in the interval that occurs between the ceasing of a violent gale, and the springing up of a new wind. The ship is unmanageable, and falling into the troughs of the sea, the waves break in upon her decks, often doing serious injury, while the spars and rigging are put to the severest trial by the sudden and violent surges which they have to withstand. Of all this Captain Truck was fully aware, and when he was summoned to breakfast he gave many cautions to Mr. Leach before quitting the deck. "I do not like the new shrouds we got up in London," he said, "for the rope has stretched in this gale in a way to throw too much strain on the old rigging; so see all ready for taking a fresh drag on them, as soon as the people have breakfasted. Mind and keep her out of the trough, sir, and watch every roller that you find comes tumbling upon us." After repeating these injunctions in different ways, looking to windward some time, and aloft five or six minutes, Captain Truck finally went below, to pass judgment on Mr. Saunders' coffee. Once in his throne, at the head of the long table, the worthy master, after a proper attention to his passengers, set about the duty of restoration, as the steward affectedly called eating, with a zeal that never failed him on such occasions. He had just swallowed a cup of the coffee, about which he had lectured Saunders, when a heavy flap of the sails announced the sudden failure of the wind. "That is bad news," said Captain Truck, listening to the fluttering blows of the canvas against the masts. "I never like to hear a ship shaking its wings while there is a heavy sea on; but this is better than the Desert of Sahara, and so, my dear young lady, let me recommend to you a cup of this coffee, which is flavoured this morning by a dread of ouran-outangs, as Mr. Saunders will have the honour to inform you--" A jerk of the whole ship was followed by a report like that made by a musket. Captain Truck rose, and stood leaning on one hand in a bent attitude, expectation and distrust intensely portrayed in every feature. Another helpless roil of the ship succeeded, and three or four similar reports were immediately heard, as if large ropes had parted in quick succession. A rending of wood followed, and then came a chaotic crash, in which the impending heavens seemed to fall on the devoted ship. Most of the passengers shut their eyes, and when they were opened again, or a moment afterwards, Mr. Truck had vanished It is scarcely necessary to describe the confusion that followed. Eve was frightened, but she behaved well, though Mademoiselle Viefville trembled so much as to require the assistance of Mr. Effingham. "We have lost our masts," John Effingham coolly remarked; "an accident that will not be likely to be very dangerous, though by prolonging the passage a month or two, it may have the merit of making this good company more intimately acquainted with each other, a pleasure for which we cannot express too much gratitude." Eve implored his forbearance by a glance, for she saw his eye was unconsciously directed towards Mr. Monday and Mr. Dodge, for both of whom she knew her kinsman entertained an incurable dislike. His words, however, explained the catastrophe, and most of the men hastened on deck to assure themselves of the fact. John Effingham was right. The new rigging which had stretched so much during the gale, had permitted too much of the strain, in the tremendous rolls of the ship, to fall upon the other ropes. The shroud most exposed had parted first; three or four more followed in succession, and before there was time to secure anything, the remainder had gone together, and the mainmast had broken at a place where a defect was now seen in its heart. Falling over the side, the latter had brought down with it the mizzen-mast and all its hamper, and as much of the fore-mast as stood above the top. In short, of all the complicated tracery of ropes, the proud display of spars, and the broad folds of canvas that had so lately overshadowed the deck of the Montauk, the mutilated fore-mast, the fore-yard and sail, and the fallen head-gear alone remained. All the rest either cumbered the deck, or was beating against the side of the ship, in the water. The hard, red, weather-beaten face of Captain Truck was expressive of mortification and concern, for a single instant, when his eye glanced over the ruin we have just described. His mind then seemed made up to the calamity, and he ordered Toast to bring him a coal of fire, with which he quietly lighted a cigar. "Here is a category, and be d---d to it, Mr. Leach," he said, after taking a single whiff. "You are doing quite right, sir; cut away the wreck and force the ship free of it, or we shall have some of those sticks poking themselves through the planks. I always thought the chandler in London, into whose hands the agent has fallen, was a--rogue, and now I know it well enough to swear to it. Cut away, carpenter, and get us rid of all this thumping as soon as possible. A very capital vessel, Mr. Monday, or she would have rolled the pumps out of her, and capsized the galley." No attempt being made to save anything, the wreck was floating astern in five minutes, and the ship was fortunately extricated from this new hazard. Mr. Truck, in spite of his acquired coolness, looked piteously at all that gallant hamper, in which he had so lately rejoiced, as yard-arm, cross-trees, tressel-trees, and tops rose on the summits of swells or settled in the troughs, like whales playing their gambols. But habit is a seaman's philosophy, and in no one feature is his character more respectable than in that manliness which disinclines him to mourn over a misfortune that is inevitable. The Montauk now resembled a tree stripped of its branches, or a courser crippled in his sinews; her glory had, in a great degree, departed. The foremast alone remained, and of this even the head was gone, a circumstance of which Captain Truck complained more than of any other, as, to use his own expressions, "it destroyed the symmetry of the spar, which had proved itself to be a good stick." What, however, was of more real importance, it rendered it difficult, if not impossible, to get up a spare topmast forward. As both the main and mizzen-mast had gone quite near the deck, this was almost the only tolerably easy expedient that remained; and, within an hour of the accident, Mr. Truck announced his intentions to stand as far south as he could to strike the trades, and then to make a fair wind of it across the Atlantic, unless, indeed, he might be able to fetch into the Cape de Verde Islands, where it would be possible, perhaps, to get something like a now outfit. "All I now ask, my dear young lady," he said to Eve, who ventured on deck to look at the desolation, as soon the wreck was cut adrift, "all I now ask, my dear young lady, is an end to westerly winds for two or three weeks, and I will promise to place you all in America yet, in time to eat your Christmas dinner. I do not think Sir George will shoot many white bears among the Rocky Mountains this year, but then there will be so many more left for another season. The ship is in a category, and he will be an impudent scoundrel who denies it; but worse categories than this have been reasoned out of countenance. All head-sail is not a convenient show of cloth to claw off a lee-shore with; but I still hope to escape the misfortune of laying eyes on the coast of Africa." "Are we far from it?" asked Eve, who sufficiently understood the danger of being on an uninhabitable shore in their present situation; one in which it was vain to seek for a port. "I would rather be in the neighbourhood of any other land, I think, than that of Africa." "Especially Africa between the Canaries and Cape Blanco," returned Captain Truck, with an expressive shrug. "More hospitable regions exist, certainly; for, if accounts are to be credited, the honest people along-shore never get a Christian that they do not mount him on a camel, and trot him through the sands a thousand miles or so, under a hot sun, with a sort of haggis for food, that would go nigh to take away even a Scotchman's appetite." "And you do not tell us how far we are from this frightful land, Mons. le Capitaine?" inquired Mademoiselle Viefville. "In ten minutes you shall know, ladies, for I am about to observe for the longitude. It is a little late, but it may yet be done." "And we may rely on the fidelity of your information?" "On the honour of a sailor and a man." The ladies were silent, while Mr. Truck proceeded to get the sun and the time. As soon as he had run through his calculations, he came to them with a face in which the eye was roving, though it was still good-humoured and smiling. "And the result?" said Eve. "Is not quite as flattering as I could wish. We are materially within a degree of the coast; but, as the wind is gone, or nearly so, we may hope to find a shift that will shove us farther from the land. And now I have dealt frankly with you, let me beg you will keep the secret, for my people will be dreaming of Turks, instead of working, if they knew the fact." It required no great observation to discover that Captain Truck was far from satisfied with the position of his ship. Without any after-sail, and almost without the means of making any, it was idle to think of hauling off from the land, more especially against the heavy sea that was still rolling in from the north-west; and his present object was to make the Cape de Verdes, before reaching which he would be certain to meet the trades, and where, of course, there would be some chance of repairing damages. His apprehensions would have been much less were the ship a degree further west, as the prevailing winds in this part of the ocean are from the northward and eastward; but it was no easy matter to force a ship that distance under a foresail, the only regular sail that now remained in its place. It is true, he had some of the usual expedients of seamen at his command, and the people were immediately set about them; but, in consequence of the principal spars having gone so near the decks, it became exceedingly difficult to rig jury-masts. Something must be attempted, however, and the spare spars were got out, and all the necessary preparations were commenced, in order that they might be put into their places and rigged, as well as circumstances would allow. As soon as the sea went down, and the steadiness of the ship would permit, Mr. Leach succeeded in getting up an awkward lower studding-sail, and a sort of a stay-sail forward, and with these additions to their canvas, the ship was brought to head south, with the wind light at the westward. The sea was greatly diminished about noon; but a mile an hour, for those who had so long a road before them, and who were so near a coast that was known to be fearfully inhospitable, was a cheerless progress, and the cry of "sail, ho!" early in the afternoon, diffused a general joy in the Montauk. The stranger was made to the southward and eastward, and was standing on a course that must bring her quite near to their own track, as the Montauk then headed. The wind was so light, however, that Captain Truck gave it as his opinion they could not speak until night had set in. "Unless the coast has brought him up, yonder flaunting gentleman, who seems to have had better luck with his light canvas than ourselves, must be the Foam," he said. "Tobacco, or no tobacco, bride or bridegroom, the fellow has us at last, and all the consolation that is left is, that we shall be much obliged to him, now, if he will carry us to Portsmouth, or into any other Christian haven. We have shown him what a kettle-bottom can do before the wind, and now let him give us a tow to windward like a generous antagonist. That is what I call Vattel, my dear young lady." "If he do this, he will indeed prove himself a generous adversary," said Eve, "and we shall be certain to speak well of his humanity, whatever we may think of his obstinacy." "Are you quite sure the ship in sight is the corvette?" asked Paul Blunt. "Who else can it be?--Two vessels are quite sufficient to be jammed down here on the coast of Africa, and we know that the Englishman must be somewhere to leeward of us; though, I will confess, I had believed him much farther, if not plump up among the Mohammedans, beginning to reduce to a feather-weight, like Captain Riley, who came out with just his skin and bones, after a journey across the desert." "I do not think those top-gallant-sails have the symmetry of the canvas of a ship-of-war." Captain Truck looked steadily at the young man an instant, as one regards a sound criticism, and then he turned his eye towards the object of which they were speaking. "You are right, sir," he rejoined, after a moment of examination; "and I have had a lesson in my own trade from one young enough to be my son. The stranger is clearly no cruiser, and as there is no port in-shore of us anywhere near this latitude, he is probably some trader who has been driven down here, like ourselves." "And I'm very sure, captain," put in Sir George Templemore, "we ought to rejoice sincerely that, like ourselves he has escaped shipwreck. For my part, I pity the poor wretches on board the Foam most sincerely, and could almost wish myself a Catholic, that one might yet offer up sacrifices in their behalf." "You have shown yourself a Christian throughout all that affair, Sir George, and I shall not forget your hand some offers to befriend the ship, rather than let us fall into the jaws of the Philistines. We were in a category more than once, with that nimble-footed racer in our wake, and you were the man, Sir George, who manifested the most hearty desire to get us out." "I ever feel an interest in the ship in which I embark," returned the gratified baronet, who was not displeased at hearing his liberality so openly commended; "and I would cheerfully have given a thousand pounds in preference to being taken. I rather think, now, that is the true spirit for a sportsman!" "Or for an admiral, my good sir. To be frank with you, Sir George, when I first had the honour of your acquaintance, I did not think you had so much in you. There was a sort of English attention to small wares, a species of knee-buckleism about your _debutt_, as Mr. Dodge calls it, that made me distrust your being the whole-souled and one-idea'd man I find you really are." "Oh! I _do_ like my comforts," said Sir George, laughing. "That you do, and I am only surprised you don't smoke. Now, Mr. Dodge, your room-mate, there, tells me you have six-and-thirty pair of breeches!" "I have--yes, indeed, I have. One would wish to go abroad decently clad." "Well! if it should be our luck to travel in the deserts, your wardrobe would rig out a whole harem." "I wish, captain, you would do me the favour to step into our state-room, some morning; I have many curious things I should like to show you. A set of razors, in particular,--and a dressing-case--and a pair of patent pistols--and that life-preserver that you admire so much, Mr. Dodge. Mr. Dodge has seen most of my curiosities, I believe, and will tell you some of them are really worth a moment's examination." "Yes, captain, I must say," observed Mr. Dodge,--for this conversation was held apart between the three, the mate keeping an eye the while on the duty of the ship, for habit had given Mr. Truck the faculty of driving his people while he entertained his passengers--"Yes, captain, I must say I have met no gentleman who is better supplied with necessaries, than _my_ friend, Sir George. But English gentlemen are curious in such things, and I admit that I admire their ingenuity." "Particularly in breeches, Mr. Dodge. Have you coats to match, Sir George?" "Certainly, sir. One would be a little absurd in his shirt sleeves. I wish, captain, we could make Mr. Dodge a little less of a republican. I find him a most agreeable room-mate, but rather annoying on the subject of kings and princes." "You stick up for the people, Mr. Dodge, or to the old category?" "On that subject, Sir George and I shall never agree, for he is obstinately monarchial; but I tell him we shall treat him none the worse for that, when he gets among us. He has promised me a visit in our part of the country, and I have pledged myself to his being unqualifiedly well received; and I think I know the whole meaning of a pledge." "I understand Mr. Dodge," pursued the baronet, "that he is the editor of a public journal, in which he entertains his readers with an account of his adventures and observations during his travels, 'The Active Inquirer,' is it not, Mr. Dodge?" "That is the name, Sir George. 'The Active Inquirer' is the present name, though when we supported Mr. Adams it was called 'The Active Enquirer,' with an E." "A distinction without a difference; I like that," interrupted Captain Truck. "This is the second time I have had the honour to sail with Mr. Dodge, and a more active inquirer never put foot in a ship, though I did not know the use he put his information to before. It is all in the way of trade, I find." "Mr. Dodge claims to belong to a profession, captain, and is quite above trade. He tells me many things have occurred on board this ship, since we sailed, that will make very eligible paragraphs." "The d---- he does!--I should like particularly well, Mr. Dodge, to know what you will find to say concerning this category in which the Montauk is placed." "Oh! captain, no fear of me, when you are concerned. You know I am a friend, and you have no cause to apprehend any thing; though I'll not answer for everybody else on board; for there are passengers in this ship to whom I have decided antipathies, and whose deportment meets with my unqualified disapprobation." "And you intend to paragraph them?" Mr. Dodge was now swelling with the conceit of a vulgar and inflated man, who not only fancies himself in possession of a power that others dread, but who was so far blinded to his own qualities as to think his opinion of importance to those whom he felt, in the minutest fibre of his envious and malignant system, to be in every essential his superiors. He did not dare express all his rancour, while he was unequal to suppressing it entirely. "These Effinghams, and this Mr. Sharp, and that Mr. Blunt," he muttered, "think themselves everybody's betters; but we shall see! America is not a country in which people can shut themselves up in rooms, and fancy they are lords and ladies." "Bless my soul!" said Captain Truck, with his affected simplicity of manner; "how did you find this out, Mr. Dodge? What a thing it is, Sir George, to be an active inquirer!" "Oh! I know when a man is blown up with notions of his own importance. As for Mr. John Effingham, he has been so long abroad that he has forgotten that he is a going home to a country of equal rights!" "Very true, Mr. Dodge; a country in which a man cannot shut himself, up in his room, whenever the notion seizes him. This is the spirit, Sir George, to make a great nation, and you see that the daughter is likely to prove worthy of the old lady! But, my dear sir, are you quite sure that Mr. John Effingham has absolutely so high a sentiment in his own favour. It would be awkward business to make a blunder in such a serious matter, and murder a paragraph for nothing. You should remember the mistake of the Irishman!" "What was that?" asked the baronet, who was completely mystified by the indomitable gravity of Captain Truck, whose character might be said to be actually formed by the long habit of treating the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures with cool contempt. "We hear many good things at our club; but I do not remember the mistake of the Irishman?" "He merely mistook the drumming in his own ear, for some unaccountable noise that disturbed his companions." Mr. Dodge felt uncomfortable; but there is no one in whom a vulgar-minded man stands so much in awe as an immovable quiz, who has no scruple in using his power. He shook his head, therefore, in a menacing manner, and affecting to have something to do he went below, leaving the baronet and captain by themselves. "Mr. Dodge is a stubborn friend of liberty," said the former, when his room-mate was out of hearing. "That is he, and you have his own word for it. He has no notion of letting a man do as he has a mind to! We are full of such active inquirers in America, and I don't care how many you shoot before you begin upon the white bears, Sir George." "But it would be more gracious in the Effinghams, you must allow, captain, if they shut themselves up in their cabin less, and admitted us to their society a little oftener. I am quite of Mr. Dodge's way of thinking, that exclusion is excessively odious." "There is a poor fellow in the steerage, Sir George, to whom I have given a piece of canvas to repair a damage to his mainsail, who would say the same thing, did he know of your six-and-thirtys. Take a cigar, my dear sir, and smoke away sorrow." "Thankee, captain: I never smoke. We never smoke at our club, though some of us go, at times, to the divan to try a chibouk." "We can't all have cabins to ourselves, or no one would live forward. If the Effinghams like their own apartment, I do honestly believe it is for a reason as simple as that it is the best in the ship. I'll warrant you, if there were a better, that they would be ready enough to change. I suppose when we get in, Mr. Dodge will honour you with an article in 'The Active Inquirer?'" "To own the truth, he has intimated some such thing." "And why not? A very instructive paragraph might be made about the six-and-thirty pair of breeches, and the patent razors, and the dressing-case, to say nothing of the Rocky Mountains, and the white bears." Sir George now began to feel uncomfortable, and making a few unmeaning remarks about the late accident, he disappeared. Captain Truck, who never smiled except at the corner of his left eye, turned away, and began rattling off his people, and throwing in a hint or two to Saunders, with as much indifference as if he were a firm believer in the unfailing orthodoxy of a newspaper, and entertained a profound respect for the editor of the 'Active Inquirer,' in particular. The prognostic of the master concerning the strange ship proved true, for about nine at night she came within hail, and backed her maintop-sail. This vessel proved to be an American in ballast, bound from Gibraltar to New York; a return store-ship from the squadron kept in the Mediterranean. She had met the gale to the westward of Madeira, and after holding on as long as possible, had also been compelled to scud. According to the report of her officers, the Foam had run in much closer to the coast than herself, and it was their opinion she was lost. Their own escape was owing entirely to the wind's abating, for they had actually been within sight of the land, though having received no injury, they had been able to haul off in season. Luckily, this ship was ballasted with fresh water, and Captain Truck passed the night in negotiating a transfer of his steerage passengers, under an apprehension that, in the crippled state of his own vessel, his supplies might be exhausted before he could reach America. In the morning, the offer of being put on board the store-ship was made to those who chose to accept it, and all in the steerage, with most from the cabin, profited by the occasion to exchange a dismasted vessel for one that was, at least, full rigged. Provisions were transferred accordingly, and by noon next day the stranger made sail on a wind, the sea being tolerably smooth, and the breeze still ahead. In three hours she was out of sight to the northward and westward, the Montauk holding her own dull course to the southward, with the double view of striking the trades, or of reaching one of the Cape de Verdes. Chapter XV. _Steph_.--His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches, and to detract. TEMPEST The situation of the Montauk appeared more desolate than ever, after the departure of so many of her passengers. So long as her decks were thronged there was an air of life about her, that served to lessen disquietude, but now that she was left by all in the steerage, and by so many in the cabins, those who remained began to entertain livelier apprehensions of the future. When the upper sails of the store-ship sunk as a speck in the ocean, Mr. Effingham regretted that he, too, had not overcome his reluctance to a crowded and inconvenient cabin, and gone on board her, with his own party. Thirty years before he would have thought himself fortunate in finding so good a ship, and accommodations so comfortable; but habit and indulgence change all our opinions, and he had now thought it next to impossible to place Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville in a situation that was so common to those who travelled by sea at the commencement of the century. Most of the cabin passengers, as has just been stated, decided differently, none remaining but the Effinghams and their party, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt, Sir George Templemore, Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Monday. Mr. Effingham had been influenced by the superior comforts of the packet, and his hopes that a speedy arrival at the islands would enable the ship to refit, in time to reach America almost as soon as the dull-sailing vessel which had just left them. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt had both expressed a determination to share his fortunes, which was indirectly saying that they would share the fortunes of his daughter. John Effingham remained, as a matter of course, though he had made a proposition to the stranger to tow them into port, an arrangement that failed in consequence of the two captains disagreeing as to the course proper to be steered, as well as to a more serious obstacle in the way of compensation, the stranger throwing out some pretty plain hints about salvage; and Mr. Monday staying from an inveterate attachment to the steward's stores, more of which, he rightly judged, would now fall to his share than formerly. Sir George Templemore had gone on board the store-ship, and had given some very clear demonstrations of an intention to transfer himself and the thirty-six pair of breeches to that vessel; but on examining her comforts, and particularly the confined place in which he should be compelled to stow himself and his numerous curiosities, he was unequal to the sacrifice. On the other hand, he knew an entire state-room would now fall to his share, and this self-indulged and feeble-minded young man preferred his immediate comfort, and the gratification of his besetting weakness, to his safety. As for Mr. Dodge, he had the American mania of hurry, and was one of the first to propose a general swarming, as soon as it was known the stranger could receive them. During the night, he had been actively employed in fomenting a party to "resolve" that prudence required the Montauk should be altogether abandoned, and even after this scheme failed, he had dwelt eloquently in corners (Mr. Dodge was too meek, and too purely democratic, ever to speak aloud, unless under the shadow of public opinion,) on the propriety of Captain Truck's yielding his own judgment to that of the majority. He might as well have scolded against the late gale, in the expectation of out-railing the tempest, as to make such an attempt on the firm-set notions of the old seaman concerning his duty; for no sooner was the thing intimated to him than he growled a denial in a tone that he was little accustomed to use to his passengers, and one that effectually silenced remonstrance. When these two plans had failed, Mr. Dodge endeavoured strenuously to show Sir George that his interests and safety were on the side of a removal; but with all his eloquence, and with the hold that incessant adulation had actually given him on the mind of the other, he was unable to overcome his love of ease, and chiefly the passion for the enjoyment of the hundred articles of comfort and curiosity in which the baronet so much delighted. The breeches might have been packed in a trunk, it is true, and so might the razors, and the dressing-case, and the pistols, and most of the other things; but Sir George loved to look at them daily, and as many as possible were constantly paraded before his eyes. To the surprise of every one, Mr. Dodge, on finding it impossible to prevail on Sir George Templemore to leave the packet, suddenly announced his own intention to remain also. Few stopped to inquire into his motives in the hurry of such a moment. To his room-mate he affirmed that the strong friendship he had formed for him, could alone induce him to relinquish the hope of reaching home previously to the autumn elections. Nor did Mr. Dodge greatly colour the truth in making this statement. He was an American demagogue precisely in obedience to those feelings and inclinations which would have made him a courtier any where else. It is true, he had travelled, or thought he had travelled, in a _diligence_ with a countess or two, but from these he had been obliged to separate early on account of the force of things; while here he had got a _bonâ-fide_ English baronet all to himself, in a confined state-room, and his imagination revelled in the glory and gratification of such an acquaintance. What were the proud and distant Effinghams to Sir George Templemore! He even ascribed their reserve with the baronet to envy, a passion of whose existence he had very lively perceptions, and he found a secret charm in being shut up in so small an apartment with a man who could excite envy in an Effingham. Rather than abandon his aristocratical prize, therefore, whom he intended to exhibit to all his democratic friends in his own neighbourhood, Mr. Dodge determined to abandon his beloved hurry, looking for his reward in the future pleasure of talking of Sir George Templemore and his curiosities, and of his sayings and his jokes, in the circle at home. Odd, moreover, as it may seem, Mr. Dodge had an itching desire to remain with the Effinghams; for while he was permitting jealousy and a consciousness of inferiority to beget hatred, he was willing at any moment to make peace, provided it could be done by a frank admission into their intimacy. As to the innocent family that was rendered of so much account to the happiness of Mr. Dodge, it seldom thought of that individual at all, little dreaming of its own importance in his estimation, and merely acted in obedience to its own cultivated tastes and high principles in disliking his company. It fancied itself, in this particular, the master of its own acts, and this so much the more, that with the reserve of good-breeding its members seldom indulged in censorious personal remarks, and never in gossip. As a consequence of these contradictory feelings of Mr. Dodge, and of the fastidiousness of Sir George Templemore, the interest her two admirers took in Eve, the devotion of Mr. Monday to sherry and champaigne, and the decision of Mr. Effingham, these persons therefore remained the sole occupants of the cabins of the Montauk. Of the _oi polloi_ who had left them, we have hitherto said nothing, because this separation was to remove them entirely from the interest of our incidents. If we were to say that Captain Truck did not feel melancholy as the store-ship sunk beneath the horizon, we should represent that stout-hearted mariner as more stoical than he actually was. In the course of a long and adventurous professional life, he had encountered calamities before, but he had never before been compelled to call in assistance to deliver his passengers at the stipulated port, since he had commanded a packet. He felt the necessity, in the present instance, as a sort of stain upon his character as a seaman, though in fact the accident which had occurred was chiefly to be attributed to a concealed defect in the mainmast. The honest master sighed often, smoked nearly double the usual number of cigars in the course of the afternoon, and when the sun went down gloriously in the distant west, he stood gazing at the sky in melancholy silence, as long as any of the magnificent glory that accompanies the decline of day lingered among the vapours of the horizon. He then summoned Saunders to the quarter-deck, where the following dialogue took place between them: "This is a devil of a category to be in, Master Steward!" "Well, he might be better, sir. I only wish the good butter may endure until we get in." "If it fail, I shall go nigh to see you clapt into the State's prison, or at least into that Gothic cottage on Blackwell's Island." "There is an end to all things, Captain Truck, if you please, sir, even to butter. I presume, sir, Mr. Vattel, if he know anything of cookery, will admit that." "Harkee, Saunders, if you ever insinuate again that Vattel belonged to the coppers, in my presence, I'll take the liberty to land you on the coast here, where you may amuse yourself in stewing young monkeys for your own dinner. I saw you aboard the other ship, sir, overhauling her arrangements; what sort of a time will the gentlemen be likely to have in her?" "Atrocious, sir! I give you my honour, as a real gentleman, sir. Why, would you believe it, Captain Truck, the steward is a downright nigger, and he wears ear-rings, and a red flannel shirt, without the least edication. As for the cook, sir, he wouldn't pass an examination for Jemmy Ducks aboard here, and there is but one camboose, and one set of coppers." "Well, the steerage-passengers, in that case, will fare as well as the cabin." "Yes, sir, and the cabin as bad as the steerage; and for my part, I abomernate liberty and equality." "You should converse with Mr. Dodge on that subject, Master Saunders, and let the hardest fend off in the argument. May I inquire, sir, if you happen to remember the day of the week?" "Beyond controversy, sir; to-morrow will be Sunday, Captain Truck, and I think it a thousand pities we have not an opportunity to solicit the prayers and praises of the church, sir, in our behalf, sir." "If to-morrow will be Sunday, to-day must be Saturday, Mr. Saunders, unless this last gale has deranged the calendar." "Quite naturally, sir, and werry justly remarked. Every body admits there is no better navigator than Captain Truck, sir." "This may be true, my honest fellow," returned the captain moodily, after making three or four heavy puffs on the cigar; "but I am sadly out of my road down here in the country of your amiable family, just now. If this be Saturday, there will be a Saturday night before long, and look to it, that we have our 'sweethearts and wives.' Though I have neither myself, I feel the necessity of something cheerful, to raise my thoughts to the future." "Depend on my discretion, sir, and I rejoice to hear you say it; for I think, sir, a ship is never so respectable and genteel as when she celebrates all the anniwersaries. You will be quite a select and agreeable party to-night, sir." With this remark Mr. Saunders withdrew, to confer with Toast on the subject, and Captain Truck proceeded to give his orders for the night to Mr. Leach. The proud ship did indeed present a sight to make a seaman melancholy; for to the only regular sail that stood, the foresail, by this time was added a lower studding-sail, imperfectly rigged, and which would not resist a fresh puff, while a very inartificial jury-topmast supported a topgallant-sail, that could only be carried in a free wind. Aft, preparations were making of a more permanent nature, it is true. The upper part of the mainmast had been cut away, as low as the steerage-deck where an arrangement had been made to step a spare topmast. The spar itself was lying on the deck rigged, and a pair of sheers were in readiness to be hoisted, in order to sway it up; but night approaching, the men had been broken off, to rig the yards, bend the sails, and to fit the other spars it was intended to use, postponing the last act, that of sending all up, until morning. "We are likely to have a quiet night of it," said the captain, glancing his eyes round at the heavens; "and at eight o'clock to-morrow let all hands be called, when we will turn-to with a will, and make a brig of the old hussey. This topmast will do to bear the strain of the spare main-yard, unless there come another gale, and by reefing the new mainsail we shall be able to make something out of it. The topgallant-mast will fit of course above, and we may make out, by keeping a little free, to carry the sail: at need, we may possibly coax the contrivance into carrying a studding-sail also. We have sticks for no more, though we'll endeavour to get up something aft, out of the spare spars obtained from the store-ship. You may knock off at four bells, Mr. Leach, and let the poor fellows have their Saturday's night in peace. It is a misfortune enough to be dismasted, without having one's grog stopped." The mate of course obeyed, and the evening shut in beautifully and placid, with all the glory of a mild night, in a latitude as low as that they were in. They who have never seen the ocean under such circumstances, know little of its charms in its moments of rest. The term of sleeping is well applied to its impressive stillness, for the long sluggish swells on which the ship rose and fell, hardly disturbed its surface. The moon did not rise until midnight, and Eve, accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville and most of her male companions, walked the deck by the bright starlight, until fatigued with pacing their narrow bounds. The song and the laugh rose frequently from the forecastle, where the crew were occupied with their Saturday night; and occasionally a rude sentiment in the way of a toast was heard. But weariness soon got the better of merriment forward, and the hard-worked mariners, who had the watch below, soon went down to their berths, leaving those whose duty it was to remain to doze away the long hours in such places as they could find on deck. "A white squall," said Captain Truck, looking up at the uncouth sails that hardly impelled the vessel a mile in the hour through the water, "would soon furl all our canvas for us, and we are in the very place for such an interlude." "And what would then become of us?" asked Mademoiselle Viefville quickly. "You had better ask what would become of that apology for a topsail, mam'selle, and yonder stun'sail, which looks like an American in London without straps to his pantaloons. The canvas would play kite, and we should be left to renew our inventions. A ship could scarcely be in better plight than we are at this moment, to meet with one of these African flurries." "In which case, captain," observed Mr. Monday, who stood by the skylight watching the preparations below, "we can go to our Saturday-night without fear; for I see the steward has everything ready, and the punch looks very inviting, to say nothing of the champaigne." "Gentlemen, we will not forget our duty," returned the captain; "we are but a small family, and so much the greater need that we should prove a jolly one. Mr. Effingham, I hope we are to have the honour of your company at 'sweethearts and wives.'" Mr. Effingham had no wife, and the invitation coming under such peculiar circumstances, produced a pang that Eve, who felt his arm tremble, well understood. She mildly intimated her intention to go below however; the whole party followed, and lucky it was for the captain's entertainment that she quitted the deck, as few would otherwise have been present at it. By pressing the passengers to favour him with their company, he succeeded in the course of a few minutes in getting all the gentlemen seated at the cabin-table, with a glass of delicious punch before each man. "Mr. Saunders may not be a conjuror or a mathematician, gentlemen," cried Captain Truck, as he ladled out the beverage; "but he understands the philosophy of sweet and sour, strong and weak; and I will venture to praise his liquor without tasting it. Well, gentlemen, there are better-rigged ships on the ocean than this of ours; but there are few with more comfortable cabins, or stouter hulls, or better company. Please God we can get a few sticks aloft again, now that we are quit of our troublesome shadow, I think I may flatter myself with a reasonable hope of landing you, that do me the honour to stand by me, in New York, in less time than a common drogger would make the passage, with his legs and arms. Let our first toast be, if you please: A happy end to that which has had a disastrous beginning.'" Captain Truck's hard face twitched a little while he was making this address, and as he swallowed the punch, his eyes glistened in spite of himself. Mr. Dodge, Sir George, and Mr. Monday repeated the sentiment sonorously, word for word, while the other gentlemen bowed, and drank it in silence. The commencement of a regular scene of merriment is usually dull and formal, and it was some time before Captain Truck could bring any of his companions up to the point where he wished to see them; for though a perfectly sober man, he loved a social glass, and particularly at those times and seasons which conformed to the practice of his calling. Although Eve and her governess had declined taking their seats at the table, they consented to place themselves where they might be seen, and where they might share occasionally in the conversation. "Here have I been drinking sweethearts and wives of a Saturday-night, my dear young lady, these forty years and more," said Captain Truck, after the party had sipped their liquor for a minute or two, "without ever falling into luck's latitude, or furnishing myself with either; but, though so negligent of my own interests and happiness, I make it an invariable rule to advise all my young friends to get spliced before they are thirty. Many is the man who has come aboard my ship a determined bachelor in his notions, who has left it at the end of the passage ready to marry the first pretty young woman he fell in with." As Eve had too much of the self-respect of a lady, and of the true dignity of her sex, to permit jokes concerning matrimony, or a treatise on love, to make a part of her conversation, and all the gentlemen of her party understood her character too well, to say nothing of their own habits, to second this attempt of the captain's, after a vapid remark or two from the others, this rally of the honest mariner produced no _suites_. "Are we not unusually low, Captain Truck," inquired Paul Blunt, with a view to change the discourse, "not to have fallen in with the trades? I have commonly met with those winds on this coast as high as twenty-six or twenty seven, and I believe you observed to-day, in twenty-four." Captain Truck looked hard at the speaker, and when he had done, he nodded his head in approbation. "You have travelled this road before, Mr. Blunt, I perceive. I have suspected you of being a brother chip, from the moment I saw you first put your foot on the side-cleets in getting out of the boat. You did not come aboard parrot-toed, like a country-girl waltzing; but set the ball of the foot firmly on the wood, and swung off the length of your arms, like a man who knows how to humour the muscles. Your present remark, too, shows you understand where a ship ought to be, in order to be in her right place. As for the trades, they are a little uncertain, like a lady's mind when she has more than one good offer; for I've known them to blow as high as thirty, and then again, to fail a vessel as low as twenty-three, or even lower. It is my private opinion, gentlemen, and I gladly take this opportunity to make it public, that we are on the edge of the trades, or in those light baffling winds which prevail along their margin, as eddies play near the track of strong steady currents in the ocean. If we can force the ship fairly out of this trimming region--that is the word, I believe, Mr. Dodge--we shall do well enough; for a north-east, or an east wind, would soon send us up with the islands, even under the rags we carry. We are very near the coast, certainly--much nearer than I could wish; but when we do get the good breeze, it will be all the better for us, as it will find us well to windward." "But these trades, Captain Truck?" asked Eve: "if they always blow in the same direction, how is it possible that the late gale should drive a ship into the quarter of the ocean where they prevail?" "Always, means sometimes, my dear young lady. Although light winds prevail near the edge of the trades, gales and tremendous fellows too, sometimes blow there also, as we have just seen. I think we shall now have settled weather, and that our chance of a safe arrival, more particularly in some southern American port, is almost certain, though our chance for a speedy arrival be not quite as good I hope before twenty-four hours are passed, to see our decks white with sand. "Is that a phenomenon seen here?" asked the father. "Often, Mr. Effingham, when ships are close in with Africa, and are fairly in the steady winds. To say the truth, the country abreast of us, some twenty or thirty miles distant, is not the most inviting; and though it may not be easy to say where the garden of Eden is, it is no hazardous to say it is not there." "If we are so very near the coast, why do we not see it?" "Perhaps we might from aloft, if we had any aloft just now. We are to the southward of the mountains, however, and off a part of the country where the Great Desert makes from the coast. And now, gentlemen, I perceive Mr. Monday finds all this sand arid, and I ask permission to give you, one and all, 'Sweethearts and wives.'" Most of the company drank the usual toast with spirit, though both the Effinghams scarce wetted their lips. Eve stole a timid glance at her father, and her own eyes were filled with tears as she withdrew them; for she knew that every allusion of this nature revived in him mournful recollections. As for her cousin Jack, he was so confirmed a bachelor that she thought nothing of his want of sympathy with such a sentiment. "You must have a care for your heart, in America, Sir George Templemore," cried Mr. Dodge, whose tongue loosened with the liquor he drank. "Our ladies are celebrated for their beauty, and are immensely popular, I can assure you." Sir George looked pleased, and it is quite probable his thoughts ran on the one particular vestment of the six-and-thirty, in which he ought to make his first appearance in such a society. "I allow the American ladies to be handsome," said Mr. Monday; "but I think no Englishman need be in any particular danger of his heart from such a cause, after having been accustomed to the beauty of his own island. Captain Truck, I have the honour to drink your health." "Fairly said," cried the captain, bowing to the compliment; "and I ascribe my own hard fortune to the fact that I have been kept sailing between two countries so much favoured in this particular, that I have never been able to make up my mind which to prefer. I have wished a thousand times there was but one handsome woman in the world, when a man would have nothing to do but fall in love with her; and make up his mind to get married at once, or to hang himself." "That is a cruel wish to us men," returned Sir George, "as we should be certain to quarrel for the beauty." "In such a case," resumed Mr. Monday, "we common men would have to give way to the claims of the nobility and gentry, and satisfy ourselves with plainer companions; though an Englishman loves his independence, and might rebel. I have the honour to drink your health and happiness, Sir George." "I protest against your principle, Mr. Monday," said Mr. Dodge, "which is an invasion on human rights. Perfect freedom of action is to be maintained in this matter as in all others. I acknowledge that the English ladies are extremely beautiful, but I shall always maintain the supremacy of the American fair." "We will drink their healths, sir. I am far from denying their beauty, Mr. Dodge, but I think you must admit that they fade earlier than our British ladies. God bless them both, however, and I empty this glass to the two entire nations, with all my heart and soul." "Perfectly polite, Mr. Monday; but as to the fading of the ladies, I am not certain that I can yield an unqualified approbation to your sentiment." "Nay, sir, your climate, you will allow, is none of the best, and it wears out constitutions almost as fast as your states make them." "I hope there is no real danger to be apprehended from the climate," said Sir George: "I particularly detest bad climates; and for that reason have always made it a rule never to go into Lincolnshire." "In that case, Sir George, you had better have stayed at home. In the way of climate, a man seldom betters himself by leaving old England. Now this is the tenth time I've been in America, allowing that I ever reach there, and although I entertain a profound respect for the country, I find myself growing older every time I quit it. Mr. Effingham, I do myself the favour to drink to your health and happiness." "You live too well when amongst us, Mr. Monday," said the captain; "there are too many soft crabs, hard clams, and canvas-backs; too much old Madeira, and generous Sherry, for a man of your well-known taste to resist them. Sit less time at table, and go oftener to church this trip, and let us hear your report of the consequences a twelve-month hence." "You quite mistake my habits, Captain Truck, I give you my honour. Although a judicious eater, I seldom take anything that is compounded, being a plain roast and boiled man; a true old-fashioned Englishman in this respect, satisfying my appetite with solid beef and mutton, and turkey, and pork, and puddings and potatoes, and turnips and carrots, and similar simple food; and then I _never_ drink.--Ladies, I ask the honour to be permitted to wish you a happy return to your native countries.--I ascribe all the difficulty, sir, to the climate, which will not permit a man to digest properly." "Well, Mr. Monday, I subscribe to most of your opinions, and I believe few men cross the ocean together that are more harmonious in sentiment, in general, than has proved to be the case between you and Sir George, and myself," observed Mr. Dodge, glancing obliquely and pointedly at the rest of the party, as if he thought they were in a decided minority; "but in this instance, I feel constrained to record my vote in the negative. I believe America has as good a climate, and as good general digestion as commonly falls to the lot of mortals: more than this I do not claim for the country, and less than this I should be reluctant to maintain. I have travelled a little, gentlemen, not as much, perhaps, as the Messrs. Effinghams; but then a man can see no more than is to be seen, and I do affirm, Captain Truck, that in my poor judgment, which I know is good for nothing--" "Why do you use it, then?" abruptly asked the straight-forward captain; "why not rely on a better?" "We must use such as we have, or go without, sir; and I suspect, in my very poor judgment, which is probably poorer than that of most others on board, that America is a very good sort of a country. At all events, after having seen something of other countries, and governments, and people, I am of opinion that America, as a country, is quite good enough for me." "You never said truer words, Mr. Dodge, and I beg you will join Mr. Monday and myself in a fresh glass of punch, just to help on the digestion. You have seen more of human nature than your modesty allows you to proclaim, and I dare say this company would be gratified if you would overcome all scruples, and let us know your private opinions of the different people you have visited. Tell us something of that _dittur_ you made on the Rhine." "Mr. Dodge intends to publish, it is to be hoped!" observed Mr. Sharp, "and it may not be fair to anticipate his matter." "I beg, gentlemen, you will have no scruples on that score, for my work will be rather philosophical and general, than of the particular nature of private anecdotes. Saunders, hand me the manuscript journal you will find on the shelf of our state-room, next to Sir George's patent tooth-pick case. This is the book; and now, gentlemen and ladies, I beg you to remember that these are merely the ideas as they arose, and not my more mature reflections." "Take a little punch, sir," interrupted the captain, again, whose hard nor'-west face was set in the most demure attention. "There is nothing like punch to clear the voice, Mr. Dodge; the acid removes the huskiness, the sugar softens the tones, the water mellows the tongue, and the Jamaica braces the muscles. With a plenty of punch, a man soon gets to be another--I forget the name of that great orator of antiquity,--it wasn't Vattel, however." "You mean Demosthenes, sir; and, gentlemen, I beg you to remark that this orator was a republican: but there can be no question that liberty is favourable to the encouragement of all the higher qualities. Would you prefer a few notes on Paris, ladies, or shall I commence with some extracts about the Rhine?" "_Oh! de grace, Monsieur_, be so very kind as not to overlook _Paris_!" said Mademoiselle Viefville. Mr. Dodge bowed graciously, and turning over the leaves of his private journal, he alighted in the heart of the great city named. After some preliminary hemming, he commenced reading in a grave didactic tone, that sufficiently showed the value he had attached to his own observations. "'_Dejjuned_ at ten, as usual, an hour, that I find exceedingly unreasonable and improper, and one that would meet with general disapprobation in America. I do not wonder that a people gets to be immoral and depraved in their practices, who keep such improper hours. The mind acquires habits of impurity, and all the sensibilities become blunted, by taking the meals out of the natural seasons. I impute much of the corruption of France to the periods of the day in which the food is taken--'" "_Voilà une drole d'idée!_" ejaculated Mademoiselle Viefville. "'--In which food is taken," repeated Mr. Dodge, who fancied the involuntary exclamation was in approbation of the justice of his sentiments. 'Indeed the custom of taking wine at this meal, together with the immorality of the hour, must be chief reasons why the French ladies are so much in the practice of drinking to excess'" "_Mais, monsieur!_" "You perceive, mademoiselle calls in question the accuracy of your facts," observed Mr. Blunt, who, in common with all the listeners, Sir George and Mr. Monday excepted, began to enjoy a scene which at first had promised nothing but _ennui_ and disgust. "I have it on the best authority, I give you my honour, or I would not introduce so grave a charge in a work of his contemplated importance. I obtained my information from an English gentleman who has resided twelve years in Paris; and he informs me that a very large portion of the women of fashion in that capital, let them belong to what country they will, are dissipated." "_A la bonne heure, monsieur!--mais_, to drink, it is very different." "Not so much so, mademoiselle, as you imagine," rejoined John Effingham. "Mr. Dodge is a purist in language as well as in morals, and he uses terms differently from us less-instructed prattlers. By dissipated, he understands a drunkard." "_Comment!_" "Certainly; Mr. John Effingham, I presume, will at least give us the credit in America in speaking our language better than any other known people. 'After dejjunying, took a _phyacre_ and rode to the palace, to see the king and royal family leave for Nully.--'" "_Pour où_?" "_Pour Neuilly, mademoiselle_," Eve quietly answered. "'--For Nully. His majesty went on horseback, preceding his illustrious family and all the rest of the noble party, dressed in a red coat, laced with white on the seams, wearing blue breeches and a cocked hat.'" "_Ciel!_" "'I made the king a suitable republican reverence as he passed, which he answered with a gracious smile, and a benignant glance of his royal eye. The Hon. Louis Philippe Orleans, the present sovereign of the French, is a gentleman of portly and commanding appearance, and in his state attire, which he wore on this occasion, looks 'every inch a king.' He rides with grace and dignity, and sets an example of decorum and gravity to his subjects, by the solemnity of his air, that it is to be hoped will produce a beneficial and benign influence during this reign, on the manners of the nation. His dignity was altogether worthy of the schoolmaster of Haddonfield.'" "_Par exemple!_" "Yes, mam'selle, in the way of example, it is that I mean. Although a pure democrat, and every way opposed to exclusion, I was particularly struck with the royalty of his majesty's demeanour, and the great simplicity of his whole deportment. I stood in the crowd next to a very accomplished countess, who spoke English, and she did me the honour to invite me to pay her a visit at her hotel, in the vicinity of the Bourse." "_Mon Dieu--mon Dieu--mon Dieu!_" "After promising my fair companion to be punctual, I walked as far as Notter Dam--" "I wish Mr. Dodge would be a little more distinct in his names," said Mademoiselle Viefville, who had begun to take an interest in the subject, that even valueless opinions excite in us concerning things that touch the affections. "Mr. Dodge is a little profane, mademoiselle," observed the captain; "but his journal probably was not intended for the ladies, and you must overlook it. Well, sir, you went to that naughty place--" "To Notter Dam, Captain Truck, if you please, and I flatter myself that is pretty good French." "I think, ladies and gentlemen, we have a right to insist on a translation; for plain roast and boiled men, like Mr. Monday and myself, are sometimes weeping when we ought to laugh, so long as the discourse is in anything but old-fashioned English. Help yourself, Mr. Monday, and remember, you _never_ drink." "_Notter Dam_, I believe, mam'selle, means our Mother, the Church of our Mother.--Notter, or Noster, our,--Dam, Mother: Notter Dam. 'Here I was painfully impressed with the irreligion of the structure, and the general absence of piety in the architecture. Idolatry abounded, and so did holy water. How often have I occasion to bless Providence for having made me one of the descendants of those pious ancestors who cast their fortunes in the wilderness in preference to giving up their hold on faith and charity! The building is much inferior in comfort and true taste to the commoner American churches, and met with my unqualified disapprobation.'" "_Est il possible que cela soit vrai, ma chère!_" "_Je l'espère, bien, mademoiselle_." "You may _despair bien_, cousin Eve," said John Effingham, whose fine curvilinear face curled even more than usual with contempt. The ladies whispered a few explanations, and Mr. Dodge, who fancied it was only necessary to resolve to be perfect to achieve his end, went on with his comments, with all the self-satisfaction of a provincial critic. "'From Notter Dam I proceeded in a _cabrioly_ to the great national burying-ground, Pere la Chaise, so termed from the circumstance that its distance from the capital renders chaises necessary for the _convoys_--" "How's this, how's this!" interrupted Mr. Truck; "is one obliged to sail under a convoy about the streets of Paris?" "_Monsieur Dodge veut dire, convoi_. Mr. Dodge mean to say, _convoi_" kindly interposed Mademoiselle Viefville. "Mr. Dodge is a profound republican, and is an advocate for rotation in language, as well as in office: I must accuse you of inconstancy, my dear friend, if I die for it. You certainly do not pronounce your words always in the same way, and when I had the honour of carrying you out this time six months, when you were practising the continentals, as you call them, you gave very different sounds to many of the words I then had the pleasure and gratification of hearing you use." "We all improve by travelling, sir, and I make no question that my knowledge of foreign language is considerably enlarged by practice in the countries in which they are spoken." Here the reading of the journal was interrupted by a digression on language, in which Messrs. Dodge, Monday, Templemore, and Truck were the principal interlocutors, and during which the pitcher of punch was twice renewed. We shall not record much of this learned discussion, which was singularly common-place, though a few of the remarks may be given as a specimen of the whole. "I must be permitted to say," replied Mr. Monday to one of Mr. Dodge's sweeping claims to superiority in favour of his own nation, "that I think it quite extraordinary an Englishman should be obliged to go out of his own country in order to hear his own language spoken in purity; and as one who has seen your people, Mr. Dodge, I will venture to affirm that nowhere is English better spoken than in Lancashire. Sir George, I drink your health!" "More patriotic than just, Mr. Monday; every body allows that the American of the eastern states speaks the best English in the world, and I think either of these gentlemen will concede that." "Under the penalty of being nobody," cried Captain Truck; "for my own part, I think, if a man wishes to hear the language in perfection, he ought to pass a week or ten days in the river. I must say, Mr. Dodge, I object to many of your sounds, particularly that of inyon, which I myself heard you call onion, no later than yesterday." "Mr. Monday is a little peculiar in fancying that the best English is to be met with in Lancashire," observed Sir George Templemore; "for I do assure you that, in town, we have difficulty in understanding gentlemen from your part of the kingdom." This was a hard cut from one in whom Mr. Monday expected to find an ally, and that gentleman was driven to washing down the discontent it excited, in punch. "But all this time we have interrupted the _convoi_, or convoy, captain," said Mr. Sharp; "and Mr. Dodge, to say nothing of the mourners, has every right to complain. I beg that gentleman will proceed with his entertaining extracts." Mr. Dodge hemmed, sipped a little more liquor, blew his nose, and continued: "'The celebrated cemetery is, indeed, worthy of its high reputation. The utmost republican simplicity prevails in the interments, ditches being dug in which the bodies are laid, side by side, without distinction of rank, and with regard only to the order in which the convoys arrive.' I think this sentence, gentlemen, will have great success in America, where the idea of any exclusiveness is quite odious to the majority." "Well, for my part," said the captain, "I should have no particular objection to being excluded from such a grave: one would be afraid of catching the cholera in so promiscuous a company." Mr. Dodge turned over a few leaves, and gave other extracts. "'The last six hours have been devoted to a profound investigation of the fine arts. My first visit was to the _gullyteen;_ after which I passed an instructive hour or two in the galleries of the Musy.'--" "Où, done?" "Le Musée, mademoiselle." "--'Where I discovered several very extraordinary things, in the way of sculpture and painting. I was particularly struck with the manner in which a plate was portrayed in the celebrated marriage of Cana, which might very well have been taken for real Delft, and there was one finger on the hand of a lady that seemed actually fitted to receive and to retain the hymeneal ring.'" "Did you inquire if she were engaged?--Mr. Monday, we will drink her health." "'Saint Michael and the Dragon is a _shefdowory_.'--" "Un quoi?" "Un chef-d'oeuvre, mademoiselle." "--' The manner in which the angel holds the dragon with his feet, looking exactly like a worm trodden on by the foot of a child, is exquisitely plaintive and interesting. Indeed these touches of nature abound in the works of the old masters, and I saw several fruit-pieces that I could have eaten. One really gets an appetite by looking at many things here, and I no longer wonder that a Raphael, a Titian, a Correggio, a Guide-o.'--" "Un qui?" "Un Guido, mademoiselle." "Or a Cooley." "And pray who may he be?" asked Mr. Monday. "A young genius in Dodgetown, who promises one day to render the name of an American illustrious. He has painted a new sign for the store, that in its way is quite equal to the marriage of Cana. 'I have stood with tears over the despair of a Niobe,'" continuing to read, "'and witnessed the contortions of the snakes in the Laocoon with a convulsive eagerness to clutch them, that has made me fancy I could hear them hiss." That sentence, I think, will be likely to be noticed even in the New-Old-New-Yorker, one of the very best reviews of our days, gentlemen." "Take a little more punch, Mr. Dodge," put in the attentive captain; "this grows affecting, and needs alleviation, as Saunders would say. Mr. Monday, you will get a bad name for being too sober, if you never empty your glass. Proceed, in the name of Heaven! Mr. Dodge." "'In the evening I went to the Grand Opery.'--" "Où, done?" "Au grand Hoppery, mademoiselle," replied John Effingham. "--'To the _Grand Opery_,'" resumed Mr. Dodge, with emphasis, his eyes beginning to glisten by this time, for he had often applied to the punch for inspiration, "'where I listened to music that is altogether inferior to that which we enjoy in America, especially at the general trainings, and on the Sabbath. The want of science was conspicuous; and if _this_ be music, then do I know nothing about it!'" "A judicious remark!"'exclaimed the captain.--"Mr. Dodge has great merit as a writer, for he loses no occasion to illustrate his opinions by the most unanswerable facts. He has acquired a taste for Zip Coon and Long Tail Blue, and it is no wonder he feels a contempt for your inferior artists." "'As for the dancing,'" continued the editor of the Active Inquirer, "'it is my decided impression that nothing can be worse. The movement was more suited to a funeral than the ball-room, and I affirm, without fear of contradiction, that there is not an assembly in all America in which a _cotillion_ would not be danced in one-half the time that one was danced in the _bally_ to-night.'" "Dans le quoi?" "I believe I have not given the real Parisian pronunciation to this word, which the French call bal-_lay_", continued the reader, with great candour. "Belay, or make all fast, as we say on ship-board. Mr. Dodge, as master, of this vessel, I beg to return you the united, or as Saunders would say, the condensed thanks of the passengers, for this information; and next Saturday we look for a renewal of the pleasure. The ladies are getting to be sleepy, I perceive, and as Mr. Monday _never_ drinks and the other gentlemen have finished their punch, we may as well retire, to get ready for a hard day's work to-morrow." Captain Truck made this proposal, because he saw that one or two of the party were _plenum punch_, and that Eve and her companion were becoming aware of the propriety of retiring. It was also true that he foresaw the necessity of rest, in order to be ready for the exertions of the morning. After the party had broken up, which it did very contrary to the wishes of Messrs. Dodge and Monday, Mademoiselle Viefville passed an hour in the state-room of Miss Effingham, during which time she made several supererogatory complaints of the manner in which the editor of the Active Inquirer had viewed things in Paris, besides asking a good many questions concerning his occupation and character. "I am not quite certain, my dear mademoiselle, that I can give you a very learned description of the animal you think worthy of all these questions, but, by the aid of Mr. John Effingham's information, and a few words that have fallen from Mr. Blunt, I believe it ought to be something as follows:--America once produced a very distinguished philosopher, named Franklin--" "Comment, ma chère! Tout le monde le connait!" "--This Monsieur Franklin commenced life as a printer; but living to a great age, and rising to high employments, he became a philosopher in morals, as his studies had made him one in physics. Now, America is full of printers, and most of them fancy themselves Franklins, until time and failures teach them discretion." "_Mais_ the world has not seen but _un seul Franklin!_" "Nor is it likely to see another very soon. In America the young men are taught, justly enough, that by merit they may rise to the highest situations; and, always according to Mr. John Effingham, too many of them fancy that because they are at liberty to turn any high qualities they may happen to have to account, they are actually fit for anything. Even he allows this peculiarity of the country does much good, but he maintains that it also does much harm, by causing pretenders to start up in all directions. Of this class he describes Mr. Dodge to be. This person, instead of working at the mechanical part of a press, to which he was educated, has the ambition to control its intellectual, and thus edits the Active Inquirer." "It must be a very useful journal!" "It answers his purposes, most probably. He is full of provincial ignorance, and provincial prejudices, you perceive; and, I dare say, he makes his paper the circulator of all these, in addition to the personal rancour, envy, and uncharitableness, that usually distinguish a pretension that mistakes itself for ambition. My cousin Jack affirms that America is filled with such as he." "And, Monsieur Effingham?" "Oh! my dear father is all mildness and charity, you snow, mademoiselle, and he only looks at the bright side of the picture, for he maintains that a great deal of good results from the activity and elasticity of such a state of things. While he confesses to a great deal of downright ignorance that is paraded as knowledge; to much narrow intolerance that is offensively prominent in the disguise of principle, and a love of liberty; and to vulgarity and personalities that wound all taste, and every sentiment of right, he insists on it that the main result is good." "In such a case there is need of an umpire. You mentioned the opinion of Mr. Blunt. Comme ce jeune homme parle bien Français!" Eve hesitated, and she changed colour slightly, before she answered. "I am not certain that the opinion of Mr. Blunt ought to be mentioned in opposition to those of my father and cousin Jack, on such a subject," she said. "He is very young, and it is, now, quite questionable whether he is even an American at all." "Tant mieux, ma chère. He has been much in the country, and it is not the native that make the best judge, when the stranger has many opportunities of seeing." "On this principle, mademoiselle, you are, then, to give up your own judgment about France, on all those points in which I have the misfortune to differ from you," said Eve, laughing. "_Pas tout à fait_," returned the governess goodhumouredly. "Age and experience must pass _pour quelque chose. Et Monsieur Blunt_?--" "Monsieur Blunt leans nearer to the side of cousin Jack, I fear, than to that of my dear, dear father. He says men of Mr. Dodge's character, propensities, malignancy, intolerance, ignorance, vulgarity, and peculiar vices abound in and about the American press. He even insists that they do an incalculable amount of harm, by influencing those who have no better sources of information; by setting up low jealousies and envy in the place of principles and the right; by substituting--I use his own words, mademoiselle," said Eve, blushing with the consciousness of the fidelity of her memory--"by substituting uninstructed provincial notions for true taste and liberality; by confounding the real principles of liberty with personal envies, and the jealousies of station; and by losing sight entirely of their duties to the public, in the effort to advance their own interests. He says that the government is in truth a _press-ocracy_, and a press-ocracy, too, that has not the redeeming merit of either principles, tastes, talents or knowledge." "Ce Monsieur Blunt has been very explicit, and _suffisamment eloquent_," returned Mademoiselle Viefville, gravely; for the prudent governess did not fail to observe that Eve used language so very different from that which was habitual to her, as to make her suspect she quoted literally. For the first time the suspicion was painfully awakened, that it was her duty to be more vigilant in relation to the intercourse between her charge and the two agreeable young men whom accident had given them as fellow-passengers. After a short but musing pause, she again adverted to the subject of their previous conversation. "Ce Monsieur Dodge, est il ridicule!" "On that point at least, my dear mademoiselle, there can be no mistake. And yet cousin Jack insists that this stuff will be given to his readers, as views of Europe worthy of their attention." "Ce conte du roi!--mais, c'est trop fort!" "With the coat laced at the seams, and the cocked hat!" "Et l'honorable Louis Philippe d'Orleans!" "Orleans, mademoiselle; d'Orleans would be anti-republican." Then the two ladies sat looking at each other a few moments in silence, when both, although of a proper _retenue_ of manner in general, burst into a hearty and long-continued fit of laughter. Indeed, so long did Eve, in the buoyancy of her young spirits, and her keen perception of the ludicrous, indulge herself, that her fair hair fell about her rosy cheeks, and her bright eyes fairly danced with delight. Chapter XVI. And there he went ashore without delay, Having no custom-house or quarantine,-- To ask him awkward questions on the way About the time and place where he had been. BYRON. Captain Truck was in a sound sleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. With the exception of the ladies, the others soon followed his example; and as the people were excessively wearied, and the night was so tranquil, ere long only a single pair of eyes were open on deck: those of the man at the wheel. The wind died away, and even this worthy was not innocent of nodding at his post. Under such circumstances, it will occasion no great surprise that the cabin was aroused next morning with the sudden and startling information that the land was close aboard the ship. Every one hurried on deck, where, sure enough, the dreaded coast of Africa was seen, with a palpable distinctness, within two miles of the vessel. It presented a long broken line of sand-hills, unrelieved by a tree, or by so few as almost to merit this description, and with a hazy background of remote mountains to the north-east. The margin of the actual coast nearest to the ship was indented with bays; and even rocks appeared in places; but the general character of the scene was that of a fierce and burning sterility. On this picture of desolation all stood gazing in awe and admiration for some minutes, as the day gradually brightened, until a cry arose from forward, of "a ship!" "Whereaway?" sternly demanded Captain Truck; for the sudden and unexpected appearance of this dangerous coast had awakened all that was forbidding and severe in the temperament of the old master; "whereaway, sir?" "On the larboard quarter, sir, and at anchor." "She is ashore!" exclaimed half-a-dozen voices at the same instant, just as the words came from the last speaker. The glass soon settled this important point. At the distance of about a league astern of them were, indeed, to be seen the spars of a ship, with the hull looming on the sands, in a way to leave no doubt of her being a wreck. It was the first impression of all, that this, at last, was the Foam; but Captain Truck soon announced the contrary. "It is a Swede, or a Dane," he said, "by his rig and his model. A stout, solid, compact sea-boat, that is high and dry on the sands, looking as if he had been built there. He does not appear even to have bilged, and most of his sails, and all of his yards, are in their places. Not a living soul is to be seen about her! Ha! there are signs of tents made of sails on shore, and broken bales of goods! Her people have been seized and carried into the desert, as usual, and this is a fearful hint that we must keep the Montauk off the bottom. Turn-to the people, Mr. Leach, and get up your sheers that we may step our jury-masts at once; the smallest breeze on the land would drive us ashore, without any after-sail." While the mates and the crew set about completing the work they had prepared the previous day, Captain Truck and his passengers passed the time in ascertaining all they could concerning the wreck, and the reasons of their being themselves in a position so very different from what they had previously believed. As respects the first, little more could be ascertained; she lay absolutely high and dry on a hard sandy beach, where she had probably been cast during the late gale, and sufficient signs were made out by the captain, to prove to him that she had been partly plundered. More than this could not be discovered at that distance, and the work of the Montauk was too urgent to send a boat manned with her own people to examine. Mr. Blunt, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Monday, and the servants of the two former, however, volunteering to pull the cutter, it was finally decided to look more closely into the facts, Captain Truck himself taking charge of the expedition.--While the latter is getting ready, a word of explanation will suffice to tell the reader the reason why the Montauk had fallen so much to leeward. The ship being so near the coast, it became now very obvious she was driven by a current that set along the land, but which, it was probable, had set towards it more in the offing. The imperceptible drift between the observation of the previous day and the discovery of the coast, had sufficed to carry the vessel a great distance; and to this simple cause, coupled perhaps with some neglect in the steerage during the past night, was her present situation to be solely attributed. Just at this moment, the little air there was came from the land, and by keeping her head off-shore, Captain Truck entertained no doubt of his being able to escape the calamity that had befallen the other ship in the fury of the gale. A wreck is always a matter of so much interest with mariners, therefore, that taking all these things into view, he had come to the determination we have mentioned, of examining into the history of the one in sight, so far as circumstances permitted. The Montauk carried three boats; the launch, a large, safe, and well-constructed craft, which stood in the usual chucks between the foremast and mainmast; a jolly-boat, and a cutter. It was next to impossible to get the first into the water, deprived as the ship was of its mainmast; but the other hanging at davits, one on each quarter, were easily lowered. The packets seldom carry any arms beyond a light gun to fire signals with, the pistols of the master, and perhaps a fowling-piece or two. Luckily the passengers were better provided: all the gentlemen had pistols, Mr. Monday and Mr. Dodge excepted, if indeed they properly belonged to this category, as Captain Truck would say, and most of them had also fowling-pieces. Although a careful examination of the coast with the glasses offered no signs of the presence of any danger from enemies, these arms were carefully collected, loaded, and deposited in the boats, in order to be prepared for the worst. Provisions and water were also provided, and the party were about to proceed. Captain Truck and one or two of the adventurers were still on the deck, when Eve, with that strange love of excitement and adventure that often visits the most delicate spirits, expressed an idle regret that she could not make one in the expedition. "There is something so strange and wild in landing on an African desert," she said; "and I think a near view of the wreck would repay us, Mademoiselle, for the hazard." The young men hesitated between their desire to have such a companion, and their doubts of the prudence of the step; but Captain Truck declared there could be no risk, and Mr. Effingham consenting, the whole plan was altered so as to include the ladies; for there was so much pleasure in varying the monotony of a calm, and escaping the confinement of ship, that everybody entered into the new arrangement with zeal and spirit. A single whip was rigged on the fore-yard, a chair was slung, and in ten minutes both ladies were floating on the ocean in the cutter. This boat pulled six oars, which were manned by the servants of the two Messrs. Effinghams, Mr. Blunt, and Mr. Sharp, together with the two latter gentlemen in person. Mr. Effingham steered. Captain Truck had the jolly-boat, of which he pulled an oar himself, aided by Saunders, Mr. Monday, and Sir George Templemore; the mates and the regular crew being actively engaged in rigging their jury-mast. Mr. Dodge declined being of the party, feeding himself with the hope that the present would be a favourable occasion to peep into the state-rooms, to run his eye over forgotten letters and papers, and otherwise to increase the general stock of information of the editor of the Active Inquirer. "Look to your chains, and see all clear for a run of the anchors, Mr. Leach, should you set within a mile of the shore," called out the captain, as they pulled off from the vessel's side. "The ship is drifting along the land, but the wind you have will hardly do more than meet the send of the sea, which is on shore: should any thing go wrong show an ensign at the head of the jury-stick forward." The mate waved his hand, and the adventurers passed without the sound of the voice. It was a strange sensation to most of those in the boats, to find themselves in their present situation. Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville, in particular, could scarcely credit their senses, when they found the egg-shells that held them heaving and setting like bubbles on those long sluggish swells, which had seemed of so little consequence while in the ship, but which now resembled the heavy respirations of a leviathan. The boats, indeed, though always gliding onward, impelled by the oars, appeared at moments to be sent helplessly back and forth, like playthings of the mighty deep, and it was some minutes before either obtained a sufficient sense of security to enjoy her situation. As they receded fast from the Montauk, too, their situation seemed still more critical; and with all her sex's love of excitement, Eve heartily repented of her undertaking before they had gone a mile. The gentlemen, however, were all in good spirits, and as the boats kept near each other, Captain Truck enlivening their way with his peculiar wit, and Mr. Effingham, who was influenced by a motive of humanity in consenting to come, being earnest and interested, Eve soon began to entertain other ideas. As they drew near the end of their little expedition, entirely new feelings got the mastery of the whole party. The solitary and gloomy grandeur of the coasts, the sublime sterility,--for even naked sands may become sublime by their vastness,--the heavy moanings of the ocean on the beach, and the entire spectacle of the solitude, blended as it was with the associations of Africa, time, and the changes of history, united to produce sensations of a pleasing melancholy. The spectacle of the ship, bringing with it the images of European civilization, as it lay helpless and deserted on the sands, too, heightened all. This vessel, beyond a question, had been driven up on a sea during the late gale, at a point where the water was of sufficient depth to float her, until within a few yards of the very spot where she now lay; Captain Truck giving the following probable history of the affair: "On all sandy coasts," he said, "the return waves that are cast on the beach form a bar, by washing back with them a portion of the particles. This bar is usually within thirty or forty fathoms of the shore, and there is frequently sufficient water within it to float a ship. As this bar, however, prevents the return of all the water, on what is called the under-tow, narrow channels make from point to point, through which this excess of the element escapes. These channels are known by the appearance of the water over them, the seas breaking less at those particular places than in the spots where the bottom lies nearer to the surface, and all experienced mariners are aware of the fact. No doubt, the unfortunate master of this ship, finding himself reduced to the necessity of running ashore to save the lives of his crew, has chosen such a place, and has consequently forced his vessel up to a spot where she has remained dry as soon as the sea fell. So worthy a fellow deserved a better fate; for this wreck is not three days old, and yet no signs are to be seen of any who were in that stout ship." These remarks were made as the crew of the two boats lay on their oars, at a short distance without the line on the water, where the breaking of the sea pointed out the position of the bar. The channel, also, was plainly visible directly astern of the ship, the sea merely rising and falling in it without combing. A short distance to the southward, a few bold black rocks thrust themselves forward, and formed a sort of bay, in which it was practicable to land without risk; for they had come on the coast in a region where the monotony of the sands, as it appeared when close in, was little relieved by the presence of anything else. "If you will keep the cutter just without the breakers, Mr. Effingham," Captain Truck continued, after standing up a while and examining the shore, "I will pull into the channel, and land in yonder bay. If you feel disposed to follow, you may do so by giving the tiller to Mr. Blunt, on receiving a signal to that effect from me. Be steady, gentlemen, at your oars, and look well to the arms on landing, for we are in a knavish part of the world. Should any of the monkeys or ouran-outangs claim kindred with Mr. Saunders, we may find it no easy matter to persuade them to leave us the pleasure of his society." The captain made a sign, and the jolly-boat entered the channel. Inclining south, it was seen rising and falling just within the breakers, and then it was hid by the rocks. In another minute, Mr. Truck, followed by all but Mr. Monday, who stood sentinel at the boat, was on the rocks, making his way towards the wreck. On reaching the latter, he ascended swiftly even to the main cross-trees. Here a long examination of the plain, beyond the bank that hid it from the view of all beneath, succeeded, and then the signal to come on was made to those who were still in the boat. "Shall we venture?" cried Paul Blunt, soliciting an assent by the very manner in which he put the question. "What say you, dear father?" "I hope we may not yet be too late to succour some Christian in distress, my child. Take the tiller, Mr. Blunt, and in Heaven's good name, and for humanity's sake, let us proceed!" The boat advanced, Paul Blunt standing erect to steer, his ardour to proceed corrected by apprehensions on account of her precious freight. There was an instant when the ladies trembled, for it seemed as if the light boat was about to be cast upon the shore, like the froth of the sea that shot past them; but the steady hand of him who steered averted the danger, and in another minute they were floating at the side of the jolly-boat. The ladies got ashore without much difficulty, and stood on the summit of the rocks. "Nous voici donc, en Afrique," exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, with that sensation of singularity that comes over all when they first find themselves in situations of extraordinary novelty. "The wreck--the wreck," murmured Eve; "let us go to the wreck. There may be yet a hope of saving some wretched sufferer." Toward the wreck they all proceeded, after leaving two of the servants to relieve Mr. Monday on his watch. It was an impressive thing to stand at the side of a ship on the sands of Africa, a scene in which the desolation of an abandoned vessel was heightened by the desolation of a desert. The position of the vessel, which stood nearly erect, imbedded in the sands, rendered it less difficult than might be supposed for the ladies to ascend to, and to walk her decks, a rude staging having been made already to facilitate the passage. Here the scene became thrice exciting, for it was the very type of a hastily deserted and cherished dwelling. Before Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville gained the deck, the other party had ascertained that no living soul remained. The trunks, chests, furniture, and other appliances of the cabin, had been rummaged, and many boxes had been raised from the hold, and plundered, a part of their contents still lying scattered on the decks. The ship, however, had been lightly freighted, and the bulk of her cargo, which was salt, was apparently untouched. A Danish ensign was found bent to the halyards, a proof that Captain Truck's original conjecture concerning the character of the vessel was accurate, her name, too, was ascertained to be the Carrier, as translated into English, and she belonged to Copenhagen. More than this it was not easy to ascertain. No papers were found, and her cargo, or as much of it as remained, was so mixed, and miscellaneous, as Saunders called it, that no plausible guess could be given as to the port where it had been taken in, if indeed it had all been received on board at the same place. Several of the light sails had evidently been carried off, but all the heavy canvas was left on the yards which remained in their places. The vessel was large, exceedingly strong, as was proved by the fact that she had not bilged in beaching, and apparently well found. Nothing was wanting to launch her into the ocean but machinery and force, and a crew to sail her, when she might have proceeded on her voyage as if nothing unusual had occurred. But such a restoration was hopeless, and this admirable machine, like a man cut off in his youth and vigour, had been cast upon the shores of this inhospitable region, to moulder where it lay, unless broken up for the wood and iron by the wanderers of the desert. There was no object more likely to awaken melancholy ideas in a mind resembling that of Captain Truck's, than a spectacle of this nature. A fine ship, complete in nearly all her parts, virtually uninjured, and yet beyond the chance of further usefulness, in his eyes was a picture of the most cruel loss. He cared less for the money it had cost than for the qualities and properties that were thus destroyed. He examined the bottom, which he pronounced capital for stowing, and excellent as that of a sea-boat; he admired the fastenings: applied his knife to try the quality of the wood, and pronounced the Norway pine of the spars to be almost equal to anything that could be found in our own southern woods. The rigging, too, he regarded as one loves to linger over the regretted qualities of a deceased friend. The tracks of camels and horses were abundant on the sand around the ship, and especially at the bottom of the rude staging by which the party had ascended, and which had evidently been hastily made in order to carry articles from the vessel to the backs of the animals that were to bear them into the desert. The foot-prints of men were also to be seen, and there was a startling and mournful certainty in distinguishing the marks of shoes, as well as those of the naked foot. Judging from all these signs, Captain Truck was of opinion the wreck must have taken place but two or three days before, and that the plunderers had not left the spot many hours. "They probably went off with what they could carry at sunset last evening, and there can be no doubt that before many days, they, or others in their places, will be back again. God protect the poor fellows who have fallen into this miserable bondage! What an occasion would there now be to rescue one of them, should he happen to be hid near this spot!" The idea seized the whole party at once, and all eagerly turned to examine the high bank, which rose nearly to the summit of the masts, in the hope of discovering some concealed fugitive. The gentlemen went below again, and Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt called out in German, and English, and French, to invite any one who might be secreted to come forth. No sound answered these friendly calls. Again Captain Truck went aloft to look into the interior, but he beheld nothing more than the broad and unpeopled desert. A place where the camels had descended to the beach was at no great distance, and thither most of the party proceeded, mounting to the level of the plain beyond. In this little expedition, Paul Blunt led the advance, and as he rose over the brow of the bank, he cocked both barrels of his fowling-piece, uncertain what might be encountered. They found, however, a silent waste, almost without vegetation, and nearly as trackless as the ocean that lay behind them. At the distance of a hundred rods, an object was just discernible, lying on the plain half-buried in sand, and thither the young men expressed a wish to go, first calling to those in the ship to send a man aloft to give the alarm, in the event of any party of the Mussulmans being seen. Mr. Effingham, too, on being told their intention, had the precaution to cause Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville to get into the cutter, which he manned, and caused to pull out over the bar, where she lay waiting the issue. A camel's path, of which the tracks were nearly obliterated by the sands, led to the object; and after toiling along it, the adventurers soon reached the desired spot. It proved to be the body of a man who had died by violence. His dress and person denoted that of a passenger rather than that of a seaman, and he had evidently been dead but a very few hours, probably not twelve. The cut of a sabre had cleft his skull. Agreeing not to acquaint the ladies with this horrible discovery, the body was hastily covered with the sand, the pockets of the dead man having been first examined; for, contrary to usage, his person had not been stripped. A letter was found, written by a wife to her husband, and nothing more. It was in German, and its expressions and contents, though simple, were endearing and natural. It spoke of the traveller's return; for she who wrote it little thought of the miserable fate that awaited her beloved in this remote desert. As nothing else was visible, the party returned hastily to the beach, where they found that Captain Truck had ended his investigation, and was impatient to return. In the interest of the scene the Montauk had disappeared behind a headland, towards which she had been drifting when they left her. Her absence created a general sense of loneliness, and the whole party hastened into the jolly-boat, as if fearful of being left. When without the bar again, the cutter took in her proper crew, and the boats pulled away, leaving the Dane standing on the beach in his solitary desolation--a monument of his own disaster. As they got further from the land the Montauk came in sight again, and Captain Truck announced the agreeable intelligence that the jury mainmast was up, and that the ship had after-sail set, diminutive and defective as it might be. Instead of heading to the southward, however, as heretofore, Mr. Leach was apparently endeavouring to get back again to the northward of the headland that had shut in the ship, or was trying to retrace his steps. Mr. Truck rightly judged that this was proof his mate disliked the appearance of the coast astern of him, and that he was anxious to get an offing. The captain in consequence urged his men to row, and in little more than an hour the whole party were on the deck of the Montauk again, and the boats were hanging at the davits. Chapter XVII. I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak, Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flam'd amazement. TEMPEST. If Captain Truck distrusted the situation of his own ship when he saw that the mate had changed her course, he liked it still less after he was on board, and had an opportunity to form a more correct judgment. The current had set the vessel not only to the southward, but in-shore, and the send of the ground-swell was gradually, but inevitably, heaving her in towards the land. At this point the coast was more broken than at the spot where the Dane had been wrecked, some signs of trees appearing, and rocks running off in irregular reefs into the sea. More to the south, these rocks were seen without the ship, while directly astern they were not half a mile distant. Still the wind was favourable, though light and baffling, and Mr. Leach had got up every stitch of canvas that circumstances would at all allow; the lead, too, had been tried, and the bottom was found to be a hard sand mixed with rocks, and the depth of the water such as to admit of anchoring. It was a sign that Captain Truck did not absolutely despair after ascertaining all these facts, that he caused Mr. Saunders to be summoned; for as yet, none of those who had been in the boats had breakfasted. "Step this way, Mr. Steward," said the captain; "and report the state of the coppers. You were rummaging, as usual, among the lockers of yonder unhappy Dane, and I desire to know what discoveries you have made! You will please to recollect, that on all public expeditions of this nature, there must be no peculation or private journal kept. Did you see any stock-fish?" "Sir, I should deem this ship disgraced by the admission into her pantry of such an article, sir. We have tongues and sounds in plenty, Captain Truck, and no gentleman that has such diet, need ambition a stock-fish!" "I am not quite of your way of thinking; but the earth is not made of stock-fish. Did you happen to fall in with any butter?" "Some, sir, that is scarcely fit to slush a mast with, and I do think, one of the most atrocious cheeses, sir, it was ever my bad fortune to meet with. I do not wonder the Africans left the wreck." "You followed their example, of course, Mr. Saunders, and left the cheese." "I followed my own judgment, sir, for I would not stay in a ship with such a cheese, Captain Truck, sir, even to have the honour of serving under so great a commander as yourself. I think it no wonder that vessel was wrecked! Even the sharks would abandon her. The very thoughts of her impurities, sir, make me feel unsettled in the stomach." The captain nodded his head in approbation of this sentiment, called for a coal, and then ordered breakfast. The meal was silent, thoughtful, and even sad; every one was thinking of the poor Danes and their sad fate, while they who had been on the plain had the additional subject of the murdered man for their contemplation. "Is it possible to do nothing to redeem these poor people, father, from captivity?" Eve at length demanded. "I have been thinking of this, my child; but I see no other method than to acquaint their government of their situation." "Might we not contribute something from our own means to that effect? Money, I fancy, is the chief thing necessary." The gentlemen looked at each other in approbation, though a reluctance to be the first to speak kept most of them silent. "If a hundred pounds, Miss Effingham, will be useful," Sir George Templemore said, after the pause had continued an awkward minute, laying a banknote of that amount on the table, "and you will honour us by becoming the keeper of the redemption money, I have great pleasure in making the offer." This was handsomely said, and as Captain Truck afterwards declared, handsomely done too, though it was a little abrupt, and caused Eve to hesitate and redden. "I shall accept your gift, sir," she said; "and with your permission will transfer it to Mr. Effingham, who will better know what use to put it to, in order to effect our benevolent purpose. I think I can answer for as much more from himself." "You may, with certainty, my dear--and twice as much, if necessary. John, this is a proper occasion for your interference." "Put me down at what you please," said John Effingham, whose charities in a pecuniary sense were as unlimited, as in feeling they were apparently restrained. "One hundred or one thousand, to rescue that poor crew!" "I believe, sir, we must all follow so good an example," Mr. Sharp observed; "and I sincerely hope that this scheme will not prove useless. I think it may be effected by means of some of the public agents at Mogadore." Mr. Dodge raised many objections, for it really exceeded his means to give so largely, and his character was formed in a school too envious and jealous to confess an inferiority on a point even as worthless as that of money. Indeed, he had so long been accustomed to maintain that "one man was as good as another," in opposition to his senses, that, like most of those who belong to this impracticable school, he had tacitly admitted in his own mind, the general and vulgar ascendency of mere wealth; and, quite as a matter of course, he was averse to confessing his own inferiority on a point that he had made to be all in all, while loudest in declaiming against any inferiority whatever. He walked out of the cabin, therefore, with strong heart-burnings and jealousies, because others had presumed to give that which it was not really in his power to bestow. On the other hand, both Mademoiselle Viefville and Mr. Monday manifested the superiority of the opinions in which they had been trained. The first quietly handed a Napoleon to Mr. Effingham, who took it with as much attention and politeness as he received any of the larger contributions; while the latter produced a five-pound note, with a hearty good-will that redeemed the sin of many a glass of punch in the eyes of his companions. Eve did not dare to look towards Paul Blunt, while this collection was making; but she felt regret that he did not join in it. He was silent and thoughtful, and even seemed pained, and she wondered if it were possible that one, who certainly lived in a style to prove that his income was large, could be so thoughtless as to have deprived himself of the means of doing that which he so evidently desired to do. But most of the company was too well-bred to permit the matter to become the subject of conversation, and they soon rose from table in a body. The mind of Eve, however, was greatly relieved when her father told her that the young man had put a hundred sovereigns in gold into his hands as soon as possible, and that he had seconded this offering with another, of embarking for Mogadore in person, should they get into the Cape de Verds, or the Canaries, with a view of carrying out the charitable plan with the least delay. "He is a noble-hearted young man," said the pleased father, as he communicated this fact to his daughter and cousin; "and I shall not object to the plan." "If he offer to quit this ship one minute sooner than is necessary, he does, indeed, deserve a statue of gold," said John Effingham; "for it has all that can attract a young man like him, and all too that can awaken his jealousy." "Cousin Jack!" exclaimed Eve reproachfully, quite thrown off her guard by the abruptness and plainness of this language. The quiet smile of Mr. Effingham proved that he understood both, but he made no remark. Eve instantly recovered her spirits, and angry at herself for the girlish exclamation that had escaped her, she turned on her assailant. "I do not know that I ought to be seen in an aside with Mr. John Effingham," she said, "even when it is sanctioned with the presence of my own father." "And may I ask why so much sudden reserve, my offended beauty?" "Merely that the report is already active, concerning the delicate relation in which we stand towards each other." John Effingham looked surprised, but he suppressed his curiosity from a long habit of affecting an indifference he did not always feel. The father was less dignified, for he quietly demanded an explanation. "It would seem," returned Eve, assuming a solemnity suited to a matter of interest, "that our secret is discovered. While we were indulging our curiosity about this unfortunate ship, Mr. Dodge was gratifying the laudable industry of the Active Inquirer, by prying into our state-rooms." "This meanness is impossible!" exclaimed Mr. Effingham. "Nay," said John, "no meanness is impossible to a demagogue,--a pretender to things of which he has even no just conception,--a man who lives to envy and traduce; in a word, a _quasi_ gentleman. Let us hear what Eve has to say." "My information is from Ann Sidley, who saw him in the act. Now the kind letter you wrote my father, cousin Jack, just before we left London, and which you wrote because you would not trust that honest tongue of yours to speak the feelings of that honest heart, is the subject of my daily study; not on account of its promises, you will believe me, but on account of the strong affection it displays to a girl who is not worthy of one half you feel and do for her." "Pshaw!" "Well, let it then be pshaw! I had read that letter this very morning, and carelessly left it on my table. This letter Mr. Dodge, in his undying desire to lay everything before the public, as becomes his high vocation, and as in duty bound, has read; and misconstruing some of the phrases, as will sometimes happen to a zealous circulator of news, he has drawn the conclusion that I am to be made a happy woman as soon as we reach America, by being converted from Miss Eve Effingham into Mrs. John Effingham." "Impossible! No man can be such a fool, or quite so great a miscreant!" "I should rather think, my child," added the milder father, "that injustice has been done Mr. Dodge. No person, in the least approximating to the station of a gentleman, could even think of an act so base as this you mention." "Oh! if this be all your objection to the tale," observed the cousin, "I am ready to swear to its truth. But Eve has caught a little of Captain Truck's spirit, of mystifying, and is determined to make a character by a bold stroke in the beginning. She is clever, and in time may rise to be a quiz." "Thank you for the compliment, cousin Jack, which, however, I am forced to disclaim, as I never was more serious in my life. That the letter was read, Nanny, who is truth itself, affirms she saw. That Mr. Dodge has since been industriously circulating the report of my great good fortune, she has heard from the mate, who had it from the highest source of information direct, and that such a man would be likely to come to such a conclusion, you have only to recall the terms of the letter yourself, to believe." "There is nothing in my letter to justify any notion so silly." "An Active Inquirer might make discoveries you little dream of, dear cousin Jack. You speak of its being time to cease roving, of settling yourself at last, of never parting, and, prodigal as you are, of making Eve the future mistress of your fortune. Now to all this, recreant, confess, or I shall never again put faith in man." John Effingham made no answer, but the father warmly expressed his indignation, that any man of the smallest pretensions to be admitted among gentlemen, should be guilty of an act so base. "We can hardly tolerate his presence. John, and it is almost a matter of conscience to send him to Coventry." "If you entertain such notions of decorum, your wisest way, Edward, will be to return to the place whence you have come; for, trust me, you will find scores of such gentlemen where you are going!" "I shall not allow you to persuade me I know my own country so little. Conduct like this will stamp a man with disgrace in America as well as elsewhere." "Conduct like this would, but it will no longer. The pell-mell that rages has brought honourable men into a sad minority, and even Mr. Dodge will tell you the majority must rule. Were he to publish my letter, a large portion of his readers would fancy he was merely asserting the liberty of the press. Heavens save us! You have been dreaming abroad, Ned Effingham, while your country has retrograded, in all that is respectable and good, a century in a dozen years!" As this was the usual language of John Effingham, neither of his listeners thought much of it, though Mr. Effingham more decidedly expressed an intention to cut off even the slight communication with the offender, he had permitted himself to keep up, since they had been on board. "Think better of it, dear father," said Eve; "for such a man is scarcely worthy of even your resentment. He is too much your inferior in principles, manners, character, station, and everything else, to render him of so much account; and then, were we to clear up this masquerade into which the chances of a ship have thrown us, we might have our scruples concerning others, as well as concerning this wolf in sheep's clothing." "Say rather an ass, shaved and painted to resemble a zebra," muttered John. "The fellow has no property as respectable as the basest virtue of a wolf." "He has at least rapacity." "And can howl in a pack. This much, then, I will concede to you: but I agree with Eve, we must either punish him affirmatively, by pulling his ears, or treat him with contempt, which is always negative or silent. I wish he had entered the state-room of that fine young fellow, Paul Blunt, who is of an age and a spirit to give him a lesson that might make a paragraph for his Active Inquirer, if not a scissors' extract of himself." Eve knew that the offender had been there too, but she had too much prudence to betray him. "This will only so much the more oblige him," she said, laughingly; "for Mr. Blunt, in speaking of the editor of the Active Inquirer, said that he had the failing to believe that this earth, and all it contained, was created merely to furnish materials for newspaper paragraphs." The gentlemen laughed with the amused Eve, and Mr. Effingham remarked, that "there did seem to be men so perfectly selfish, so much devoted to their own interests, and so little sensible of the rights and feelings of others, as to manifest a desire to render the press superior to all other power; not," he concluded, "in the way of argument, or as an agent of reason, but as a master, coarse, corrupt, tyrannical and vile; the instrument of selfishness, instead of the right, and when not employed as the promoter of personal interests, to be employed as the tool of personal passions." "Your father will become a convert to my opinions. Miss Effingham," said John, "and he will not be home a twelve-month before he will make the discovery that the government is a press-ocracy, and its ministers, self-chosen and usurpers, composed of those who have the least at stake, even as to character." Mr. Effingham shook his head in dissent, but the conversation changed in consequence of a stir in the ship. The air from the land had freshened, and even the heavy canvas on which the Montauk was now compelled principally to rely, had been asleep, as mariners term it, or had blown out from the mast, where it stood inflated and steady, a proof at sea, where the water is always in motion, that the breeze is getting to be fresh. Aided by this power, the ship had overcome the united action of the heavy ground-swell and of the current, and was stealing out from under the land, when the air murmured for an instant, as if about to blow still fresher, and then all the sails flapped. The wind had passed away like a bird, and a dark line to sea-ward, denoted the approach of the breeze from the ocean. The stir in the vessel was occasioned by the preparations to meet this change. The new wind brought little with it beyond the general danger of blowing on shore. The breeze was light, and not more than sufficient to force the vessel through the water, in her present condition, a mile and a half in the hour, and this too in a line nearly parallel with the coast. Captain Truck saw therefore at a glance, that he should be compelled to anchor. Previously, however, to doing this, he had a long talk with his mates, and a boat was lowered. The lead was cast, and the bottom was found to be still good, though a hard sand, which is not the best holding ground. "A heavy sea would cause the ship to drag," Captain Truck remarked, "should it come on to blow, and the lines of dark rocks astern of them would make chips of the Pennsylvania in an hour, were that great ship to lie on it." He entered the boat, and pulled along the reefs to examine an inlet that Mr. Leach reported to have been seen, before he got the ship's head to the northward. Could an entrance be found at this point, the vessel might possibly be carried within the reef, and a favourite scheme of the captain's could be put in force, one to which he now attached the highest importance. A mile brought the boat up to the inlet, where Mr. Truck found the following appearances: The general formation of the coast in sight was that of a slight curvature, within which the ship had so far drifted as to be materially inside a line drawn from headland to headland. There was, consequently, little hope of urging a vessel, crippled like the Montauk, against wind, sea and current, out again into the ocean. For about a league abreast of the ship the coast was rocky, though low, the rocks running off from the shore quite a mile in places, and every where fully half that distance. The formation was irregular, but it had the general character of a reef, the position of which was marked by breakers, as well as by the black heads of rocks that here and there showed themselves above the water. The inlet was narrow, crooked, and so far environed by rocks as to render it questionable whether there was a passage at all, though the smoothness of the water had raised hopes to that effect in Mr. Leach. As soon as captain Truck arrived at the mouth of this passage, he felt so much encouraged by the appearance of things that he gave the concerted signal for the ship to veer round and to stand to the southward. This was losing ground in the way of offing, but tack the Montauk could not with so little wind, and the captain saw by the drift she had made since he left her, that promptitude was necessary. The ship might anchor off the inlet, as well as anywhere else, if reduced to anchoring outside at all, and then there was always the chance of entering. As soon as the ship's head was again to the southward, and Captain Truck felt certain that she was lying along the reef at a reasonably safe distance, and in as good a direction as he could hope for, he commenced his examination. Like a discreet seaman he pulled off from the rocks to a suitable distance, for should an obstacle occur outside, he well knew any depth of water further in would be useless. The day was so fine, and in the absence of rivers, the ocean so limpid in that low latitude, that it was easy to see the bottom at a considerable depth. But to this sense, of course, the captain did not trust, for he kept the lead going constantly, although all eyes were also employed in searching for rocks. The first cast of the lead was in five fathoms, and these soundings were held nearly up to the inlet, where the lead struck a rock in three fathoms and a half. At this point, then, a more careful examination was made, but three and a half was the shallowest cast. As the Montauk drew nearly a fathom less than this, the cautious old master proceeded closer in. Directly in the mouth of the inlet was a large flat rock, that rose nearly to the surface of the sea, and which, when the tide was low, was probably bare. This rock Captain Truck at first believed would defeat his hopes of success, which by this time were strong; but a closer examination showed him that on one side of it was a narrow passage, just wide enough to admit a ship. From this spot the channel became crooked, but it was sufficiently marked by the ripple on the reef; and after a careful investigation, he found it was possible to carry three fathoms quite within the reef, where a large space existed that was gradually filling up with sand, but which was nearly all covered with water when the tide was in, as was now the case, and which had channels, as usual, between the banks. Following one of these channels a quarter of a mile, he found a basin of four fathoms of water, large enough to take a ship in, and, fortunately, it was in close proximity to a portion of the reef that was always bare, when a heavy sea was not beating over it. Here he dropped a buoy, for he had come provided with several fragments of spars for this purpose; and, on his return, the channel was similarly marked off, at all the critical points. On the flat rock, in the inlet, one of the men was left, standing up to his waist in-the water, it being certain that the tide was failing. The boat now returned to the ship, which it met at the distance of half a mile from the inlet. The current setting southwardly, her progress had been more rapid than when heading north, and her drift had been less towards the land. Still there was so little wind, so steady a ground-swell, and it was possible to carry so little after-sail, that great doubts were entertained of being able to weather the rocks sufficiently to turn into the inlet. Twenty times in the next half hour was the order to let go the anchor, on the point of being given, as the wind baffled, and as often was it countermanded, to take advantage of its reviving. These were feverish moments, for the ship was now so near the reef as to render her situation very insecure in the event of the wind's rising, or of a sea's getting up, the sand of the bottom being too hard to make good holding-ground. Still, as there was a possibility, in the present state of the weather, of kedging the ship off a mile into the offing, if necessary, Captain Truck stood on with a boldness he might not otherwise have felt. The anchor hung suspended by a single turn of the stopper, ready to drop at a signal, and Mr. Truck stood between the knight-heads, watching the slow progress of the vessel, and accurately noticing every foot of leeward set she made, as compared with the rocks. All this time the poor fellow stood in the water, awaiting the arrival of his friends, who, in their turn, were anxiously watching his features, as they gradually grew more distinct. "I see his eyes," cried the captain cheerily; "take a drag at the bowlines, and let her head up as much as she will, Mr. Leach, and never mind those sham topsails Take them in at once, sir; they do us, now, more harm than good." The clewline blocks rattled, and the top-gallant sails, which were made to do the duty of top-sails, but which would hardly spread to the lower yards, so as to set on a wind, came rapidly in. Five minutes of intense doubt followed, when the captain gave the animating order to--"Man the main-clew garnets, boys, and stand by to make a run of it!" This was understood to be a sign that the ship was far enough to windward, and the command to "in mainsail," which soon succeeded, was received with a shout. "Hard up with the helm, and stand by to lay the fore-yard square," cried Captain Truck, rubbing his hands. "Look that both bowers are clear for a run; and you, Toast, bring me the brightest coal in the galley." The movements of the Montauk were necessarily slow; but she obeyed her helm, and fell off until her bows pointed in towards the sailor in the water. This fine fellow, the moment he saw the ship approaching, waded to the verge of the rock, where it went off perpendicularly to the bottom, and waved to them to come on without fear. "Come within ten feet of me," he shouted. "There is nothing to spare on the other side." As the captain was prepared for this, the ship was steered accordingly, and as she hove slowly past on the rising and falling water, a rope was thrown to the man, who was hauled on board. "Port!" cried the captain, as soon as the rock was passed; "port your helm, sir, and stand for the first buoy." In this manner the Montauk drove slowly but steadily on, until she had reached the basin, where one anchor was let go almost as soon as she entered. The chain was paid out until the vessel was forced over to some distance, and then the other bower was dropped. The foresail was hauled up and handed, and chain was given the ship, which was pronounced to be securely moored. "Now," cried the captain, all his anxiety ceasing with the responsibility, "I expect to be made a member of the New York Philosophical Society at least, which is learned company for a man who has never been at college, for discovering a port on the coast of Africa, which harbour, ladies and gentlemen, without too much vanity, I hope to be permitted to call Port Truck. If Mr. Dodge, however should think this too anti-republican, we will compromise the matter by calling it Port Truck and Dodge; or the town that no doubt will sooner or later arise on its banks, may be called Dodgeborough, and I will keep the harbour to myself." "Should Mr. Dodge consent to this arrangement, he will render himself liable to the charge of aristocracy," said Mr. Sharp; for as all felt relieved by finding themselves in a place of security, so all felt disposed to join in the pleasantry. "I dare say his modesty would prevent his consenting to the plan." "Why, gentlemen," returned the subject of these remarks, "I do not know that we are to refuse honours that are fairly imposed on us by the popular voice; and the practice of naming towns and counties after distinguished citizens, is by no means uncommon with us. A few of my own neighbours have been disposed to honour me in this way already, and my paper is issued from a hamlet that certainly does bear my own unworthy name. So you perceive there will be no novelty in the appellation." "I would have made oath to it," cried the captain, "from your well-established humility. Is the place as large as London?" "It can boast of little more than my own office, a tavern, a store, and a blacksmith's shop, captain, as yet; but Rome was not built in a day." "Your neighbours, sir, must be people of extraordinary discernment; but the name?" "That is not absolutely decided. At first it was called Dodgetown, but this did not last long, being thought vulgar and common-place. Six or eight weeks afterwards, we--" "We, Mr. Dodge!" "I mean the people, sir,--I am so much accustomed to connect myself with the people, that whatever they do, I think I had a hand in." "And very properly, sir," observed John Effingham, "as probably without you, there would have been no people at all." "What may be the population of Dodgetown, sir?" asked the persevering captain, on this hint. "At the census of January, it was seventeen; but by the census of March, there were eighteen. I have made a calculation that shows, if we go on at this rate, or by arithmetical progression, it will be a hundred in about ten years, which will be a very respectable population for a country place. I beg pardon, sir, the people six or eight weeks afterwards, altered the name to Dodgeborough; but a new family coming in that summer, a party was got up to change it to Dodge-ville, a name that was immensely popular, as ville means city in Latin; but it must be owned the people like change, or rotation in names, as well as in office, and they called the place Butterfield Hollow, for a whole month, after the new inhabitant, whose name is Butterfield. He moved away in the fall; and so, after trying Belindy, (_Anglice_ Belinda,) Nineveh, Grand Cairo, and Pumpkin Valley, they made me the offer to restore the ancient name, provided some _addendum_ more noble and proper could be found than town, or ville, or borough; it is not yet determined what it shall be, but I believe we shall finally settle down in Dodgeople, or Dodgeopolis." "For the season; and a very good name it will prove for a short cruise, I make no question. The Butterfield Hollow _was_ a little like rotation in office, in truth, sir." "I didn't like it, captain, so I gave Squire Butterfield to understand, privately; for as he had a majority with him, I didn't approve of speaking too strongly on the subject. As soon as I got him out of the tavern, however, the current set the other way." "You fairly uncorked him!" "That I did, and no one ever heard of him, or of his hollow, after his retreat. There are a few discontented and arrogant innovators, who affect to call the place by its old name of Morton; but these are the mere vassals of a man who once owned the patent, and who has now been dead these forty years. We are not the people to keep his old musty name, or to honour dry bones." "Served him right, sir, and like men of spirit! If he wants a place called after himself, let him live, like other people. A dead man has no occasion for a name, and there should be a law passed, that when a man slips his cables, he should bequeath his name to some honest fellow who has a worse one. It might be well to compel all great men in particular, to leave their renown to those who cannot get any for themselves." "I will venture to suggest an improvement on the name, if Mr. Dodge will permit me," said Mr. Sharp, who had been an amused listener to the short dialogue. "Dodgeople is a little short, and may be offensive by its _brusquerie_. By inserting a single letter, it will become Dodge-people; or, there is the alternative of Dodge-adrianople, which will be a truly sonorous and republican title. Adrian was an emperor, and even Mr. Dodge might not disdain the conjunction." By this time, the editor of the Active Inquirer began to be extremely elevated--for this was assailing him on his weakest side--and he laughed and rubbed his hands as if he thought the joke particularly pleasant. This person had also a peculiarity of judgment that was singularly in opposition to all his open professions, a peculiarity, however, that belongs rather to his class than to the individual member of it. Ultra as a democrat and an American, Mr. Dodge had a sneaking predilection in favour of foreign opinions. Although practice had made him intimately acquainted with all the frauds, deceptions, and vileness of the ordinary arts of paragraph-making, he never failed to believe religiously in the veracity, judgment, good faith, honesty and talents of anything that was imported in the form of types. He had been weekly, for years, accusing his nearest brother of the craft, of lying, and he could not be altogether ignorant of his own propensity in the same way; but, notwithstanding all this experience in the secrets of the trade, whatever reached him from a European journal, he implicitely swallowed whole. One, who knew little of the man, might have supposed he feigned credulity to answer his own purposes; but this would be doing injustice to his faith, which was perfect, being based on that provincial admiration, and provincial ignorance, that caused the countryman, who went to London for the first time, to express his astonishment at finding the king a man. As was due to his colonial origin, his secret awe and reverence for an Englishman was in proportion to his protestations of love for the people, and his deference for rank was graduated on a scale suited to the heart-burning and jealousies he entertained for all whom he felt to be his superiors. Indeed, one was the cause of the other; for they who really are indifferent to their own social position, are usually equally indifferent to that of others, so long as they are not made to feel the difference by direct assumptions of superiority. When Mr. Sharp, whom even Mr. Dodge had discovered to be a gentleman,--and an English gentleman of course,--entered into the trifling of the moment, therefore, so far from detecting the mystification, the latter was disposed to believe himself a subject of interest with this person, against whose exclusiveness and haughty reserve, notwithstanding, he had been making side-hits ever since the ship had sailed. But the avidity with which the Americans of Mr. Dodge's temperament are apt to swallow the crumbs of flattery that fall from the Englishman's table, is matter of history, and the editor himself was never so happy as when he could lay hold of a paragraph to republish, in which a few words of comfort were doled out by the condescending mother to the never-dying faith of the daughter. So far, therefore, from taking umbrage at what had been said, he continued the subject long after the captain had gone to his duty, and with so much perseverance that Paul Blunt, as soon as Mr. Sharp escaped, took an occasion to compliment that gentleman on his growing intimacy with the refined and single-minded champion of the people. The other admitted his indiscretion; and if the affair had no other consequences, it afforded these two fine young men a moment's merriment, at a time when anxiety had been fast getting the ascendency over their more cheerful feelings. When they endeavoured to make Miss Effingham share in the amusement, however, that young lady heard them with gravity; for the meanness of the act discovered by Nanny Sidley, had indisposed her to treat the subject of their comments with the familiarity of even ridicule. Perceiving this, though unable to account for it, the gentlemen changed the discourse, and soon became sufficiently grave by Contemplating their own condition. The situation of the Montauk was now certainly one to excite uneasiness in those who were little acquainted with the sea, as well as in those who were. It was very much like that for which Miss Effingham's nurse had pined, having many rocks and sands in sight, with the land at no great distance. In order that the reader may understand it more clearly, we shall describe it with greater minuteness. To the westward of the ship lay the ocean, broad, smooth, glittering, but, heaving and setting, with its eternal breathings, which always resemble the respiration of some huge monster. Between the vessel and this waste of water, and within three hundred feet of the first, stretched an irregular line of ripple, dotted here and there with the heads of low naked rocks, marking the presence and direction of the reef. This was all that would interpose between the basin and the raging billows, should another storm occur; but Captain Truck thought this would suffice so far to break the waves as to render the anchorage sufficiently secure. Astern of the ship, however, a rounded ridge of sand began to appear as the tide fell, within forty fathoms of the vessel, and as the bottom was hard, and difficult to get an anchor into it, there was the risk of dragging on this bank. We say that the bottom was hard, for the reader should know that it is not the weight of the anchor that secures the ship, but the hold its pointed fluke and broad palm get of the ground. The coast itself was distant less than a mile, and the entire basin within the reef was fast presenting spits of sand, as the water fell on the ebb. Still there were many channels, and it would have been possible, for one who knew their windings, to have sailed a ship several leagues among them, without passing the inlet; these channels forming a sort of intricate net-work, in every direction from the vessel. When Captain Truck had coolly studied all the peculiarities of his position, he set about the duty of securing his ship, in good earnest. The two light boats were brought under the bows, and the stream anchor was lowered, and fastened to a spar that lay across both. This anchor was carried to the bank astern, and, by dint of sheer strength, was laid over its summit with a fluke buried to the shank in the hard sand. By means of a hawser, and a purchase applied to its end, the men on the banks next roused the chain out, and shackled it to the ring. The bight was hove-in, and the ship secured astern, so as to prevent a shift of wind, off the land, from forcing her on the reef. As no sea could come from this quarter, the single anchor and chain were deemed sufficient for this purpose. As soon as the boats were at liberty, and before the chain had been got ashore, two kedges were carried to the reef, and laid among the rocks, in such a way that their flukes and stocks equally got hold of the projections. To these kedges lighter chains were secured; and when all the bights were hove-in, to as equal a strain as possible. Captain Truck pronounced his ship in readiness to ride out any gale that would be likely to blow. So far as the winds and waves might affect her, the Montauk was, in truth, reasonably safe; for on the side where danger was most to be apprehended, she had two bowers down, and four parts of smaller chain were attached to the two kedges. Nor had Captain Truck fallen into the common error of supposing he had so much additional strength in his fastenings, by simply running the chains through the rings, but he had caused each to be separately fastened, both in-board and to the kedges, by which means each length of the chain formed a distinct and independent fastening of itself. So absolute is the sovereignty of a ship, that no one had presumed to question the master as to his motives for all this extraordinary precaution, though it was the common impression that he intended to remain where they were until the wind became favourable, or at least, until all danger of being thrown upon the coast, from the currents and the ground-swell, should have ceased, Paul Blunt observed, that he fancied it was the intention to take advantage of the smooth water within the reef, to get up a better and a more efficient set of jury-masts. But Captain Truck soon removed all doubts by letting the truth be known. While on board the Danish wreck, he had critically examined her spars, sails, and rigging, and, though adapted for a ship two hundred tons smaller than the Montauk, he was of opinion they might be fitted to the latter vessel, and made to answer all the necessary purposes for crossing the ocean, provided the Mussulmans and the weather would permit the transfer. "We have smooth water and light airs," he said, when concluding his explanation, "and the current sets southwardly along this coast; by means of all our force, hard working, a kind Providence, and our own enterprise, I hope yet to see the Montauk enter the port of New York, with royals set, and ready to carry sail on a wind. The seaman who cannot rig his ship with sticks and ropes and blocks enough, might as well stay ashore, Mr. Dodge, and publish an hebdomadal. And so, my dear young lady, by looking along the land, the day after to-morrow, in the northern board here, you may expect to see a raft booming down upon you that will cheer your heart, and once more raise the hope of a Christmas dinner in New York, in all lovers of good fare." Chapter XVIII Here, in the sands. Thee I'll rake up-- LEAR His mind made up, his intentions announced, and his ship in readiness, Captain Truck gave his orders to proceed with promptitude and clearness. The ladies remaining behind, he observed that the two Messrs. Effingham, as a matter of course, would stay with them as protectors, though little could harm them where they were. "I propose to leave the ship in the care of Mr. Blunt," he said, "for I perceive something about that gentleman which denotes a nautical instinct. If Mr. Sharp choose to remain also, your society will be the more agreeable, and in exchange, gentlemen, I ask the favour of the strong arms of all your servants. Mr. Monday is my man in fair or foul, and so, I flatter myself, will be Sir George Templemore; and as for Mr. Dodge, if he stay behind, why the Active Inquirer will miss a notable paragraph, for there shall be no historian to the expedition, but one of my own appointing. Mr. Saunders shall have the honour of cooking for you in the meanwhile, and I propose taking every one else to the Dane." As no serious objections could be made to this arrangement, within an hour of the time when the ship was fastened, the cutter and jolly-boat departed, it being the intention of Captain Truck to reach the wreck that evening, in season to have his sheers ready to raise by daylight in the morning; or he hoped to be back again in the course of the succeeding day. No time was to be lost, he knew, the return of the Arabs being hourly expected, and the tranquillity of the open sea being at all times a matter of the greatest uncertainty. With the declared view of making quick work, and with the secret apprehension of a struggle with the owners of the country, the captain took with him every officer and man in his ship that could possibly be spared, and as many of the passengers as he thought might be useful. As numbers might be important in the way of intimidation, he cared almost as much for appearances as for any thing else, or certainly he would not have deemed the presence of Mr. Dodge of any great moment; for to own the truth, he expected the editor of the Active Inquirer would prove the quality implied by the first word of the title of his journal, as much in any other way as in fighting. Neither provisions nor water, beyond what might be necessary in pulling to the wreck, nor ropes, nor blocks, nor any thing but arms and ammunition, were taken in the boats; for the examination of the morning had shown the captain, that, notwithstanding so much had been plundered, a sufficiency still remained in the stranded vessel. Indeed, the fact that so much had been left was one of his reasons for hastening off himself, as he deemed it certain that they who had taken away what was gone, would soon return for the remainder. The fowling-pieces and pistols, with all the powder and ball in the ship, were taken: a light gun that was on board, for the purpose of awaking sleepy pilots, being left loaded, with the intention of serving for a signal of alarm, should any material change occur in the situation of the ship. The party included thirty men, and as most had fire-arms of one sort or another, they pulled out of the inlet with spirit and great confidence in their eventual success. The boats were crowded, it is true, but there was room to row, and the launch had been left in its place on deck, because it was known that two boats were to be found in the wreck, one of which was large: in short, as Captain Truck had meditated this expedient from the moment he ascertained the situation of the Dane, he now set about carrying it into effect with method and discrimination. We shall first accompany him on his way, leaving the small party in the Montauk for our future attention in another chapter. The distance between the two vessels was about four leagues, and a headland intervening, those in the boats in less than an hour lost sight of their own ship, as she lay shorn of her pride anchored within the reef. At almost the same moment, the wreck came into view, and Captain Truck applied his glass with great interest, in order to ascertain the state of things in that direction. All was tranquil--no signs of any one having visited the spot since morning being visible. This intelligence was given to the people, who pulled at their oars the more willingly under the stimulus of probable success, driving the boats ahead with increasing velocity. The sun was still some distance above the horizon, when the cutter and jolly-boat rowed through the narrow channel astern of the wreck, and brought up, as before, by the side of the rocks. Leaping ashore, Captain Truck led the way to the vessel, and, in five minutes, he was seen in the forward cross-trees, examining the plain with his glass. All was as solitary and deserted as when before seen, and the order was immediately given to commence operations without delay. A gang of the best seamen got out the spare topmast and lower-yard of the Dane, and set about fitting a pair of sheers, a job that would be likely to occupy them several hours. Mr. Leach led a party up forward, and the second mate went up with another further aft, each proceeding to send down its respective top-gallant-mast, top-sail-yard, and top-mast; while Captain Truck, from the deck, superintended the same work on the mizen-mast. As the men worked with spirit, and a strong party remained below to give the drags, and to come up the lanyards, spar came down after spar with rapidity, and just as the sun dipped into the ocean to the westward, everything but the lower-masts was lying on the sands, alongside of the ship; nothing having been permitted to touch the decks in descending. Previously, however, to sending down the lower-yards, the launch had been lifted from its bed and landed also by the side of the vessel. Ail hands were now mustered on the sands, and the boat was launched, an operation of some delicacy, as heavy rollers were occasionally coming in. As soon as it floated, this powerful auxiliary was swept up to the rocks, and then the men began to load it with the standing rigging and sails, the latter having been unbent, as fast as each spar came down. Two kedges were found, and a hawser was bent to one, when the launch was carried outside of the bar and anchored. Lines being brought in, the yards were hauled out to the same place, and strongly lashed together for the night. A great deal of running rigging, many blocks, and divers other small articles, were put into the boats of the Montauk, and the jolly-boat of the wreck, which was still hanging at her stern, was also lowered and got into the water. With these acquisitions, the party had now four boats, one of which was heavy and capable of carrying a considerable freight. By this time it was so late and so dark, that Captain Truck determined to suspend his labours until morning. In the course of a few hours of active toil, he had secured all the yards, the sails, the standing and running rigging, the boats, and many of the minor articles of the Dane; and nothing of essential importance remained, but the three lower masts. These, it is true, were all in all to him, for without them he would be but little better off than he was before, since his own ship had spare canvas and spare yards enough to make a respectable show above the foundation. This foundation, however, was the great requisite, and his principal motive in taking the other things, was to have a better fit than could be obtained by using spars and sails that were not intended to go together. At eight o'clock, the people got their suppers, and prepared to turn in for the night. Some conversation passed between Captain Truck and his mates, concerning the manner of disposing of the men while they slept, which resulted in the former's keeping a well-armed party of ten with him in the ship, while the remainder were put in the boats, all of which were fastened to the launch, as she lay anchored off the bar. Here they made beds of the sails, and, setting a watch, the greater portion of both gangs were soon as quietly asleep as if lying in their own berths on board the Montauk. Not so with Captain Truck and his mates. They walked the deck of the Dane fully an hour after the men were silent, and for some time after Mr. Monday had finished the bottle of wine he had taken the precaution to bring with him from the packet, and had bestowed his person among some old sails in the cabin. The night was a bright starlight, but the moon was not to be expected until near morning. The wind came off the sands of the interior in hot puffs, but so lightly as to sound, that it breathed past them like the sighings of the desert. "It is lucky, Mr. Leach," said the Captain, continuing the discourse he had been holding with his mate in a low voice, under the sense of the insecurity of their situation; "it is lucky, Mr. Leach, that we got out the stream anchor astern, else we should have had the ship rubbing her copper against the corners of the rocks. This air seems light, but under all her canvas, the Montauk would soon flap her way out from this coast, if all were ready." "Ay, ay, sir, if all were ready!" repeated Mr. Leach, as if he knew how much honest labour was to be expended before that happy moment could arrive. "If all were ready. I think we may be able to whip these three sticks out of this fellow by breakfast-time in the morning, and then a couple of hours will answer for the raft; after which, a pull of six or eight more will take us back to our own craft." "If all goes well, it may be done, sir." "Well or ill, it must be done. We are not in a situation to play at jack-straws!" "I hope if may be done, sir." "Mr. Leach!" "Captain Truck!" "We are in a d----le category, sir, if the truth must be spoken." "That is a word I am not much acquainted with, but we have an awkward berth of it here, if that be what you mean!" A long pause, during which these two seamen, one of whom was old, the other young, paced the deck diligently. "Mr. Leach!" "Captain Truck!" "Do you ever pray?" "I have done such a thing in my time, sir; but, since I have sailed with you, I have been taught to work first and pray afterwards; and when the difficulty has been gotten over by the work, the prayers have commonly seemed surplusage." "You should take to, your thanksgivings. I think your grandfather was a parson Leach." "Yes, he was, sir, and I have been told your father followed the same trade." "You have been told the truth, Mr. Leach. My father was as meek, and pious, and humble a Christian as ever thumped a pulpit. A poor man, and, if truth must be spoken, a poor preacher too; but a zealous one, and thoroughly devout. I ran away from him at twelve, and never passed a week at a time under his roof afterwards. He could not do much for me, for he had little education and no money, and, I believe, carried on the business pretty much by faith. He was a good man, Leach, notwithstanding there might be a little of a take-in for such a person to set up as a teacher; and, as for my mother, if there ever was a pure spirit on earth it was in her body!" "Ay, that is the way commonly with the mothers, sir." "She taught me to pray," added the captain, speaking a little thick, "but since I've been in this London line, to own the truth, I find but little time for any thing but hard work, until, for want of practice, praying has got to be among the hardest things I can turn my hand to." "That is the way with all of us; it is my opinion, Captain Truck, these London and Liverpool liners will have a good many lost souls to answer for." "Ay, ay, if we could put it on them, it would do well enough; but my honest old father always maintained, that every man must stand in the gap left by his own sins; though he did assert, also, that we were all fore-ordained to shape our courses starboard or port, even before we were launched." "That doctrine makes an easy tide's-way of life; for I see no great use in a man's carrying sail and jamming himself up in the wind, to claw off immoralities, when he knows he is to fetch up upon them after all his pains." "I have worked all sorts of traverses to get hold of this matter, and never could make any thing of it. It is harder than logarithms. If my father had been the only one to teach it, I should have thought less about it, for he was no scholar, and might have been paying it out just in the way of business; but then my mother believed it, body and soul, and she was too good a woman to stick long to a course that had not truth to back it." "Why not believe it heartily, sir, and let the wheel fly? One gets to the end of the v'y'ge on this tack as well as on another." "There is no great difficulty in working up to or even through the passage of death, Leach, but the great point is to know the port we are to moor in finally. My mother taught me to pray, and when I was ten I had underrun all the Commandments, knew the Lord's Creed, and the Apostles' Prayer, and had made a handsome slant into the Catechism; but, dear me, dear me, it has all oozed out of me, like the warmth from a Greenlander." "Folks were better educated in your time, Captain Truck, than they are now-a-days, by all I can learn." "No doubt of that in the world. In my time, younkers were taught respect for their betters, and for age, and their Catechism, and piety, and the Apostles' Prayer, and all those sort of things. But America has fallen astern sadly in manners within the last fifty years. I do not flatter myself with being as good as I was when under my excellent dear mother's command, but there are worse men in the world, and out of Newgate, too, than John Truck. Now, in the way of vices, Leach, I never swear." "Not you, sir; and Mr. Monday _never_ drinks." As the protestation of sobriety on the part of their passenger had got to be a joke with the officers and men of the ship, Captain Truck had no difficulty in understanding his mate, and though nettled at a retort that was like usurping his own right to the exclusive quizzing of the vessel, he was in a mood much too sentimental and reflecting to be angry. After a moment's pause, he resumed the dialogue, as if nothing had been said to disturb its harmony. "No, I _never_ swear; or, if I do, it is in a small gentlemanly way, and with none of your foul-mouthed oaths, such as are used by the horse-jockeys that formerly sailed out of the river." "Were they hard swearers?" "Is a nor'-wester a hard wind? Those fellows, after they have been choked off and jammed by the religion ashore for a month or two, would break out like a hurricane when they had made an offing, and were once fairly out of hearing of the parsons and deacons. It is said that old Joe Bunk began an oath on the bar that he did not get to the end of until his brig was off Montauk. I have my doubts, Leach, if any thing be gained by screwing down religion and morals, like a cotton bale, as is practised in and about the river!" "A good many begin to be of the same way of thinking; for when our people _do_ break out, it is like the small-pox!" "I am an advocate for education; nor do I think I was taught in my own case more than was reasonable. I think even a prayer is of more use to a ship-master than Latin, and I often have, even now, recourse to one, though it may not be exactly in Scripture language. I seldom want a wind without praying for it, mentally, as it might be; and as for the rheumatis', I am always praying to be rid of it, when I'm not cursing it starboard and larboard. Has it never struck you that the world is less moral since steamboats were introduced than formerly?" "The boats date from before my birth, sir." "Very true--you are but a boy. Mankind appear to be hurried, and no one likes to stop to pray, or to foot up his sins, as used to be the case. Life is like a passage at sea. We feel our way cautiously until off soundings on our own coast, and then we have an easy time of it in the deep water; but when we get near the shoals again; we take out the lead, and mind a little how we steer. It is the going off and coming on the coast, that gives us all the trouble." "You had some object in view, Captain Truck, when you asked me if I ever prayed!" "Certain. If I were to set to work to pray myself just now, it would be for smooth water to-morrow, that we may have a good time in towing the raft to the ship--hist! Leach did you hear nothing?" "There was a sound different from what is common in the air from the land! It is probably some savage beast, for Africa is full of them." "I think we might manage a lion from this fortress. Unless the fellow found the stage, he could hardly board us, and a plank or two thrown from that, would make a draw-bridge of it at once. Look yonder! there is something moving on the bank, or my eyes are two jewel-blocks." Mr. Leach looked in the required direction, and he, too, fancied he saw something in motion on the margin of the bank. At the point where the wreck lay, the beach was far from wide, and her flying jib-boom, which was still out, projected so near the low acclivity, where the coast rose to the level of the desert, as to come within ten feet of the bushes by which the latter was fringed. Although the spar had drooped a little in consequence of having lost the support of the stays, its end was still sufficiently high to rise above the leaves, and to permit one seated on it to overlook the plain as well as the starlight would allow. Believing the duty to be important, Captain Truck, first giving his orders to Mr. Leach, as to the mode of alarming the men, should it become necessary, went cautiously out on the bowsprit, and thence by the foot-ropes, to the farther extremity of the booms. As this was done with the steadiness of a seaman and with the utmost care to prevent discovery, he was soon stretched on the spar, balancing his body by his legs beneath, and casting eager glances about, though prevented by the obscurity from seeing either far or very distinctly. After lying in this position a minute, Captain Truck discovered an object on the plains, at the distance of a hundred yards from the bushes, that was evidently in motion. He was now all watchfulness, for, had he not seen the proofs that the Arabs or Moors had already been at the wreck, he knew that parties of them were constantly hovering along the coast, especially after every heavy gale that blew from the westward, in the hope of booty. As all his own people were asleep, the mates excepted, and the boats could just be discovered by himself, who knew their position, he was in hopes that, should any of the barbarians be near, the presence of his own party could hardly be known. It is true, the alteration in the appearance of the wreck, by the removal of the spars, must strike any one who had seen it before, but this change might have been made by another party of marauders, or those who had now come, if any there were, might see the vessel for the first time. While such thoughts were rapidly glancing through his mind, the reader will readily imagine that the worthy master was not altogether at his ease. Still he was cool, and as he was resolved to fight his way off, even against an army, he clung to the spar with a species of physical resolution that would have done credit to a tiger. The object on the plain moved once more, and the clouds opening beyond he plainly made out the head and neck of a dromedary. There was but one, however; nor could the most scrupulous examination show him a human being. After remaining a quarter of an hour on the boom, during all which time the only sounds that were heard were the sighings of the night-air, and the sullen and steady wash of the surf, Captain Truck came on deck again, where he found his mate waiting his report with intense anxiety. The former was fully aware of the importance of his discovery, but, being a cool man, he had not magnified the danger to himself. "The Moors are down on the coast," he said, in an undertone; "but I do not think there can be more than two or three of them at the most; probably spies or scouts; and, could we seize them, we may gain a few hours on their comrades, which will be all we want; after which they shall be welcome to the salt and the other dunnage of the poor Dane. Leach, are you the man to stand by me in this affair?" "Have I ever failed you, Captain Truck, that you put the question?" "That you have never, my fine fellow; give me a squeeze of your honest hand, and let there be a pledge of life or death in it." The mate met the iron grasp of his commander, and each knew that he received an assurance on which he might rely. "Shall I awake the men, sir?" asked Mr. Leach. "Not one of them. Every hour of sleep the people get will be a lower mast saved. These sticks that still remain are our foundation, and even one of them is of more account to us, just now, than a fleet of ships might be at another time. Take your arms and follow me; but first we will give a hint to the second-mate of what we are about." This officer was asleep on the deck, for he had been so much wearied with his great exertions that afternoon as to catch a little rest as the sweetest of all gifts. It had been the intention of Captain Truck to dismiss him to the boats: but, observing him to be overcome with drowsiness, he had permitted him to catch a nap where he lay. The look-out, too, was also slumbering under the same indulgence; but both were now awakened, and made acquainted with the state of things on shore. "Keep your eyes open, but keep a dead silence," concluded Captain Truck; "for it is my wish to deceive these scouts, and to keep them ignorant of our presence. When I cry out 'Alarm!' you will muster all hands, and clear away for a brush, but not before. God bless you, my lads! mind and keep your eyes open. Leach, I am ready." The captain and his companion cautiously descended to the sands, and passing astern of the ship, they first took their way to the jolly-boat, which lay at the rocks in readiness to carry off the two officers to the launch. Here they found the two men in charge so soundly asleep, that nothing would have been easier than to bind them without giving the alarm. After a little hesitation, it was determined to let them dream away their sorrows, and to proceed to the spot where the bank was ascended. At this place it became necessary to use the greatest precaution, for it was literally entering the enemy's country. The steepness of the short ascent requiring them to mount nearly on their hands and feet, this part of their progress was made without much hazard, and the two adventurers stood on the plain, sheltered by some bushes. "Yonder is the camel," whispered the captain: "you see his crooked neck, with the head tossing at moments. The fellow is not fifty yards from the body of the poor German! Now let us follow along this line of bushes, and keep a sharp look-out for the rider." They proceeded in the manner mentioned, until they came to a point where the bushes ceased, and there was an opening that overlooked the beach quite near the wreck. "Do you see the boats, Leach, here away, in a line with the starboard davit of the Dane? They look like dark spots on the water, and an ignorant Arab might be excused for taking them for rocks." "Except that they rise and fall with the rollers; he must be doubly a Turk who could make such a blunder!" "Your wanderers of the desert are not so particular. The wreck has certainly undergone some changes since yesterday, and I should not wonder if even a Mussulman found them out, but--" The gripe of Mr. Leach, whose fingers almost entered the flesh of his arm, and a hand pointed towards the bushes on the other side of the opening, silenced the captain's whisper, A human form was seen standing on the fringe of the bank, directly opposite the jib-boom. It was swaddled in a sort of cloak, and the long musket that was borne in a hollow of an arm, was just discernible, diverging from the line of the figure. The Arab, for such it could only be, was evidently gazing on the wreck, and presently he ventured out more boldly, and stood on the spot that was clear of bushes. The death-like stillness on the beach deceived him, and he advanced with less caution towards the spot where the two officers were in ambush, still keeping his own eye on the ship. A few steps brought him within reach of Captain Truck, who drew back his arm until the elbow reached his own hip, when he darted it forward, and dealt the incautious barbarian a severe blow between the eyes. The Arab fell like a slaughtered ox, and before his senses were fairly recovered, he was bound hands and feet, and rolled over the bank down upon the beach, with little ceremony, his fire-arms remaining with his captors. "That lad is in a category," whispered the captain; "it now remains to be seen if there is another." A long search was not rewarded with success, and it was determined to lead the camel down the path, with a view to prevent his being seen by any wanderer in the morning. "If we get the lower masts out betimes," continued the captain, "these land pirates will have no beacons in sight to steer by, and, in a country in which one grain of sand is so much like another, they might hunt a week before they made a happy landfall." The approach of the two towards the camel was made with less caution than usual, the success of their enterprise throwing them off their guard, and exciting their spirits. They believed in short, that their captive was either a solitary wanderer, or that he had been sent ahead as a scout, by some party that would be likely to follow in the morning. "We must be up and at work before the sun, Mr. Leach," said the captain, speaking clearly, but in a low tone, as they approached the camel. The head of the animal was tossed; then it seemed to snuff the air, and it gave a shriek. In the twinkling of an eye an Arab sprang from the sand, on which he had been sleeping, and was on the creature's back. He was seen to look around him, and before the startled mariners had time to decide on their course, the beast, which was a dromedary trained to speed, was out of sight in the darkness. Captain Truck had thrown forward his fowling-piece, but he did not fire. "We have no right to shoot the fellow," he said, "and our hope is now in the distance he will have to ride to join his comrades. If we have got a chief, as I suspect, we will make a hostage of him, and turn him to as much account, as he can possibly turn one of his own camels. Depend on it we shall see no more of them for several hours, and we will seize the opportunity to get a little sleep. A man must have his watch below, or he gets to be as dull and as obstinate as a top-maul." The captain having made up his mind to this plan was not slow in putting it in execution. Returning to the beach they liberated the legs of their prisoner, whom they found lying like a log on the sands, and made him mount the staging to the deck of the ship. Leading the way into the cabin, Mr. Truck examined the fellow by a light, turning him round and commenting on his points very much as he might have done had the captive been any other animal of the desert. The Arab was a swarthy, sinewy man of forty, with all his fibres indurated and worked down to the whip-cord meagreness and rigidity of a racer, his frame presenting a perfect picture of the sort of being one would fancy suited to the exhausting motion of a dromedary, and to the fare of a desert. He carried a formidable knife, in addition to the long musket of which he had been deprived, and his principal garment was the coarse mantle of camel's hair, that served equally for cap, coat and robe. His wild dark eyes gleamed, as Captain Truck passed the lamp before his face, and it was sufficiently apparent that he fancied a very serious misfortune had befallen him. As any verbal communication was out of the question, some abortive attempts were essayed by the two mariners to make themselves understood by signs, which, like some men's reasoning, produced results exactly contrary to what had been expected. "Perhaps the poor fellow fancies we mean to eat him, Leach," observed the captain, after trying his skill in pantomime for some time without success; "and he has some grounds for the idea, as he was felled like an ox that is bound to the kitchen. Try and let the miserable wretch understand, at least, that we are not cannibals." Hereupon the mate commenced an expressive pantomime, which described, with sufficient clearness, the process of skinning, cutting up, cooking, and eating the carcass of the Arab, with the humane intention of throwing a negative over the whole proceeding, by a strong sign of dissent at the close; but there are no proper substitutes for the little monosyllables of "yes" and "no," and the meaning of the interpreter got to be so confounded that the captain himself was mystified. "D--n it, Leach," he interrupted, "the man fancies that he is not good eating, you make so many wry and out-of-the-way contortions. A sign is a jury-mast for the tongue, and every seaman ought to know how to practise them, in case he should be wrecked on a savage and unknown coast. Old Joe Bunk had a dictionary of them, and in calm weather he used to go among his horses and horned cattle, and talk with them by the hour. He made a diagram of the language, and had it taught to all us younkers who were exposed to the accidents of the bea. Now, I will try my hand on this Arab, for I could never go to sleep while the honest black imagined we intended to breakfast on him." The captain now recommenced his own explanations in the language of nature. He too described the process of cooking and eating the prisoner--for this he admitted was indispensable by way of preface--and then, to show his horror of such an act, he gave a very good representation of a process he had often witnessed among his sea-sick passengers, by way of showing his loathing of cannibalism in general, and of eating this Arab in particular. By this time the man was thoroughly alarmed, and by way of commentary on the captain's eloquence, he began to utter wailings in his own language, and groans that were not to be mistaken. To own the truth, Mr. Truck was a good deal mortified with this failure, which, like all other unsuccessful persons, he was ready to ascribe to anybody but himself. "I begin to think, Mr. Leach," he said, "that this fellow is too stupid for a spy or a scout, and that, after all, he is no more than a driveller who has strayed from his tribe, from a want of sense to keep the road in a desert. A man of the smallest information must have understood me, and yet you perceive by his lamentations and outcries that he knows no more what I said than if he were in another parallel of latitude. The chap has quite mistaken my character; for if I really did intend to make a beast of myself, and devour my species, no one of the smallest knowledge of human nature would think I'd begin on a nigger! What is your opinion of the man's mistake, Mr. Leach?" "It is very plain, sir, that he supposes you mean to broil him, and then to eat so much of his steaks, that you will be compelled to heave up like a marine two hours out; and, if I must say the truth, I think most people would have inferred the same thing from your signs, which are as plainly cannibal as any thing of the sort I ever witnessed." "And what the devil did he make of yours, Master Cookery-Book?" cried the captain with some heat. "Did he fancy you meant to mortify the flesh with a fortnight's fast? No, no, sir; you are a very respectable first officer, but are no more acquainted with Joe Bunk's principles of signs, than this editor here knows of truth and propriety. It is your blundering manner of soliloquizing that has set the lad on a wrong traverse. He has just grafted your own idea on my communication, and has got himself into a category that a book itself would not reason him out of, until his fright is passed. Logic is thrown away on all 'skeary animals,' said old Joe Bunk. Hearkee, Leach, I've a mind to set the rascal adrift, condemning the gun and the knife for the benefit of the captors. I think I should sleep better for the certainty that he was trudging along the sand, satisfied he was not to be barbecued in the morning." There is no use in detaining him, sir, for his messmate, who went off on the dromedary, will sail a hundred feet to his one, and if an alarm is really to be given to their party, it will not come from this chap. He will be unarmed, and by taking away his pouch we shall get some ammunition for this gun of his, which will throw a shot as far as Queen Anne's pocket-piece. For my part, sir, I think there is no great use in keeping him, for I do not think he would understand us, if he stayed a month, and went to school the whole time." "You are quite right, and as long as he is among us, we shall be liable to unpleasant misconceptions; so cut his lashings, and set him adrift, and be d---d to him." The mate, who by this time was drowsy, did as desired, and in a moment the Arab was at liberty. At first the poor creature did not know what to make of his freedom, but a smart application, _à posteriori_, from the foot of Captain Truck, whose humanity was of the rough quality of the seas, soon set him in motion up the cabin-ladder. When the two mariners reached the deck, their prisoner was already leaping down the staging, and in another minute his active form was obscurely seen clambering up the bank, on gaining which he plunged into the desert, and was seen no more. None but men indurated in their feelings by long exposure would be likely to sleep under the circumstances in which these two seamen were placed; but they were both too cool, and too much accustomed to arouse themselves on sudden alarms, to lose the precious moments in womanish apprehensions, when they knew that all their physical energies would be needed on the morrow, whether the Arabs arrived or not. They accordingly regulated the look-outs, gave strong admonitions of caution to be passed from one to another, and then the captain stretched himself in the berth of the poor Dane who was now a captive in the desert, while Mr. Leach got into the jolly-boat, and was pulled off to the launch. Both were sound asleep in less than five minutes after their heads touched their temporary pillows. Chapter XIX. Ay, he does well enough, if he be disposed, And so do I too; he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural. TWELFTH NIGHT. The sleep of the weary is sweet. Of all the party that lay thus buried in sleep, on the verge of the Great Desert, exposed at any moment to an assault from its ruthless and predatory occupants, but one bethought him of the danger; though _he_ was, in truth, so little exposed as to have rendered it of less moment to himself than to most of the others, had he not been the possessor of a fancy that served oftener to lead him astray than for any purposes that were useful of pleasing. This person was in one of the boats, and as they lay at a reasonable distance from the land, and the barbarians would not probably have known how to use any craft had they even possessed one, he was consequently safe from everything but a discharge from their long muskets. But this remote risk sufficed to keep him awake, it being very different things to foster malice, circulate gossip, write scurrilous paragraphs, and cant about the people, and to face a volley of fire-arms. For the one employment, nature, tradition, education, and habit, had expressly fitted Mr. Dodge; while for the other, he had not the smallest vocation. Although Mr. Leach, in setting his look-outs on board the boats, had entirely overlooked the editor of the Active Inquirer, never before had that vigilant person's inquiries been more active than they were throughout the whole of that long night, and twenty times would he have aroused the party on false alarms, but for the cool indifference of the phlegmatic seamen, to whom the duty more properly belonged. These brave fellows knew too well the precious qualities of sleep to allow that of their shipmates to be causelessly disturbed by the nervous apprehensions of one who carried with him an everlasting stimulant to fear in the consciousness of demerit. The night passed away undisturbed, therefore, nor was the order of the regular watch broken until the look-outs in the wreck, agreeably to their orders, awoke Captain Truck and his mates. It was now precisely at the moment when the first, and as it might be the fugitive, rays of the sun glide into the atmosphere, and, to use a quaint expression, "dilute its darkness." One no longer saw by starlight, or by moonlight, though a little of both were still left; but objects, though indistinct and dusky, had their true outlines, while every moment rendered their surfaces more obvious. When Captain Truck appeared on deck, his first glance was at the ocean; for, were its tranquillity seriously disturbed, it would be a death-blow to all his hopes. Fortunately, in this particular, there was no change. "The winds seem to have put themselves out of breath in the last gale, Mr. Leach," he said, "and we are likely to get the spars round as quietly as if they were so many saw-logs floating in a mill-pond. Even the ground-swell has lessened, and the breakers on the bar look like the ripple of a wash-tub. Turn the people up, sir, and let us have a drag at these sticks before breakfast, or we may have to broil an Arab yet." Mr. Leach hailed the boats, and ordered them to send their gang of labourers on shore. He then gave the accustomed raps on the deck, and called "all hands" in the ship. In a minute the men began to appear, yawning and stretching their arms--for no one had thrown aside his clothes--most of them launching their sea-jokes right and left, with as much indifference as if they lay quietly in the port to which they were bound. After some eight or ten minutes to shake themselves, and to get "aired," as Mr. Leach expressed it, the whole party was again mustered on the deck of the Dane, with the exception of a hand or two in the launch, and Mr. Dodge. The latter had assumed the office of sentinel over the jolly-boat, which, as usual, lay at the rocks, to carry such articles off as might be wanted. "Send a hand up into the fore-top, Mr. Leach," said the captain, gaping like a greyhound; "a fellow with sharp eyes; none of your chaps who read with their noses down in the cloudy weather of an almanack; and let him take a look at the desert, in search of Arabs." Although the lower rigging was down and safe in the launch, a girt-line, or as Captain Truck in the true Doric of his profession pronounced it, a "_gunt_-line," was rove at each mast, and a man was accordingly hauled up forward as soon as possible. As it was still too dusky to distinguish far with accuracy, the captain hailed him, and bade him stay where he was until ordered down, and to keep a sharp look-out. "We had a visit from one chap in the night," he added, "and as he was a hungry-looking rascal, he is a greater fool than I think him, or he will be back before long, after some of the beef and stock-fish of the wreck. Keep a bright look-out." The men, though accustomed to their commander's manner, looked at each other more seriously, glanced around at their arms, and then the information produced precisely the effect that had been intended, that of inducing them to apply to their work with threefold vigour. "Let the boys chew upon that, instead of their tobacco," observed the captain to Mr. Leach, as he hunted for a good coal in the galley to light his cigar with. "I'll warrant you the sheers go up none the slower for the information, desperate philosophers as some of these gentry are!" This prognostic was true enough, for instead of gaping and stretching themselves about the deck, as had been the case with most of them a minute before, the men now commenced their duty in good earnest, calling to each other to come to the falls and the capstan-bars, and to stand by the heels of the sheers. "Heave away!" cried the mate, smiling to see how quick the captain's hint had been taken; "heave round with a will, men, and let us set these legs on end, that they may walk." As the order was obeyed to the letter, the day had not fairly opened when the sheers were in their places and secured. Every man was all activity, and as their work was directed by those whose knowledge was never at fault, a landsman would have been surprised at the readiness with which the crew next raised a spar as heavy as the mainmast, and had it suspended, top and all, in the air, high enough to be borne over the side. The lowering was a trifling affair, and the massive stick was soon lying at its length on the sands. Captain Truck well knew the great importance of this particular spar, for he might make out with the part of the foremast that remained in the packet, whereas, without this mast he could not possibly rig any thing of much available use aft. He called out to the men therefore, as he sprang upon the staging, to follow him and to launch the spar into the water before they breakfasted. "Let us make sure of this fellow, men," he added, "for it is our main-stay. With this stick fairly in our raft, we may yet make a passage; no one must think of his teeth till it is out of all risk. This stick we must have, if we make war on the Emperor of Morocco for its possession." The people knew the necessity for exertion, and they worked accordingly. The top was knocked off, and carried down to the water; the spar was then cut round, and rolled after it, not without trouble, however, as the trestle trees were left on; but the descent of the sands favoured the labour. When on the margin of the sea, by the aid of hand-spikes, the head was got afloat, or so nearly so, as to require but little force to move it, when a line from the boats was fastened to the outer end, and the top was secured alongside. "Now, clap your hand-spikes under it, boys, and heave away!" cried the captain. "Heave together and keep the stick straight--heave, and his head is afloat!--Haul, haul away in the boat!--heave all at once, and as if you were giants!--you gained three feet that tug, my hearties--try him again, gentlemen, as you are--and move together, like girls in a _cotillion_--Away with it!--What the devil are you staring at, in the fore-top there? Have you nothing better to do than to amuse yourself in seeing us heave our insides out?" The intense interest attached to the securing of this spar had extended to the look-out in the top, and instead of keeping his eye on the desert, as ordered, he was looking down at the party on the beach, and betraying his sympathy in their efforts by bending his body, and appearing to heave in common with his messmates. Admonished of his neglect by this sharp rebuke, he turned round quickly towards the desert, and gave the fearful alarm of "The Arabs!" Every man ceased his work, and the Whole were on the point of rushing in a body towards their arms, when the greater steadiness of Captain Truck prevented it. "Whereaway?" he demanded sternly. "On the most distant hillock of sand, may be a mile and a half inland." "How do they head?" "Dead down upon us, sir." "How do they travel?" "They have camels, and horses: all are mounted, sir." "What is their number?". The man paused, as if to count, and then he called out, "They are strong-handed, sir; quite a hundred I think. They have brought up, sir, and seem to be sounding about them for an anchorage." Captain Truck hesitated, and he looked wistfully at the mast. "Boys!" said he, shaking his hand over the bit of massive wood, with energy, "this spar is of more importance to us than our mother's milk in infancy. It is our victuals and drink, life and hopes. Let us swear we will have it in spite of a thousand Arabs. Stoop to your hand-spikes, and heave at the word--'heave as if you had a world to move,--heave, men, heave!" The people obeyed, and the mast advanced more than half the necessary distance into the water. But the man now called out that the Arabs wore advancing swiftly towards the ship. "One more effort, men," said Captain Truck, reddening in the face with anxiety, and throwing down his hat to set the example in person,--"heave!" The men hove, and the spar floated. "Now to your arms, boys, and you, sir, in the top, keep yourself hid behind the head of the mast. We must be ready to show these gentry we are not afraid of them." A sign, of the hand told the men in the launch to haul away, and the all-important spar floated slowly across the bar, to join the raft. The men now hurried up to the ship, a post that Captain Truck declared he could maintain against a whole tribe, while Mr. Dodge began incontinently to scull the jolly-boat, in the best manner he could, off to the launch. All remonstrance was useless, as he had got as far as the bar before he was perceived. Both Sir George Templemore and Mr. Monday loudly denounced him for deserting the party on the shore in this scandalous manner, but quite without affect. Mr. Dodge's skill, unfortunately for his success, did not quite equal his zeal; and finding, when he got on the bar, that he was unable to keep the boat's head to the sea, or indeed to manage it at all, he fairly jumped into the water and swam lustily towards the launch. As he was expert at this exercise, he arrived safely, cursing in his heart all travelling, the desert, the Arabs, and mankind in general, wishing himself quietly back in Dodgeopolis again, among his beloved people. The boat drove upon the sands, of course, and was eventually taken care of by two of the Montauk's crew. As soon as Captain Truck found himself on the deck of the Dane, the arms were distributed among the people. It was clearly his policy not to commence the war, for he had nothing, in an affirmative sense, to gain by it, though, without making any professions, his mind was fully made up not to be taken alive, as long as there was a possibility of averting such a disaster. The man aloft gave constant notice of the movements of the Arabs, and he soon announced that they had halted at a pistol's shot from the bank, where they were securing their camels, and that his first estimate of their force was true. In the mean time, Captain Truck was far from satisfied with his position. The bank was higher than the deck of the ship, and so near it as to render the bulwarks of little use, had those of the Dane been of any available thickness, which they were not. Then, the position of the ship, lying a little on one side, with her bows towards the land, exposed her to being swept by a raking fire; a cunning enemy having it in his power, by making a cover of the bank, to pick off his men, with little or no exposure to himself. The odds were too great to sally upon the plain, and although the rocks offered a tolerable cover towards the land, they had none towards the ship. Divide his force he dared not do,--and by abandoning the ship, he would allow the Arabs to seize her, thus commanding the other position, besides the remainder of the stores, which he was desirous of securing. Men think fast in trying circumstances, and although the captain was in a situation so perfectly novel, his practical knowledge and great coolness rendered him an invaluable commander to those under his orders. "I do not know, gentlemen," he said, addressing his passengers and mates, "that Vattel has laid down any rule to govern this case. These Arabs, no doubt, are the lawful owners of the country, in one sense; but it is a desert--and a desert, like a sea, is common property for the time being, to all who find themselves in it. There are no wreck-masters in Africa, and probably no law concerning wrecks, but the law of the strongest. We have been driven in here, moreover, by stress of weather--and this is a category on which Vattel has been very explicit. We have a _right_ to the hospitality of these Arabs, and if it be not freely accorded, d--n me, gentlemen, but I feel disposed to take just as much of it as I find I shall have occasion for! Mr. Monday, I should like to hear your sentiments on this subject." "Why, sir," returned Mr. Monday, "I have the greatest confidence in your knowledge, Captain Truck, and am equally ready for peace or war, although my calling is for the first. I should try negotiation to begin with, sir, if it be practicable, and you will allow me to express an opinion, after which I would offer war." "I am quite of the same mind, sir; but in what way are we to negotiate with a people we cannot make understand a word we say? It is true, if they were versed in the science of signs, one might do something with them; but I have reason to know that they are as stupid as boobies on all such subjects. We shall get ourselves into a category at the first _protocol_, as the writers say." Now, Mr. Monday thought there was a language that any man might understand, and he was strongly disposed to profit by it. In rummaging the wreck, he had discovered a case of liquor, besides a cask of Hollands, and he thought an offering of these might have the effect to put the Arabs in good humour at least. "I have known men, who, treated with dry, in matters of trade, were as obstinate as mules, become reasonable and pliable, sir, over a bottle," he said, after explaining where the liquor was to be found; "and I think, if we offer the Arabs this, after they have been in possession a short time, we shall find them better disposed towards us. If it should not prove so, I confess, for one, I should feel less reluctance in shooting them than before." "I have somewhere heard that the Mussulmans never drink," observed Sir George; "in which case we shall find our offering despised. Then there is the difficulty of a first possession; for, if these people are the same as those that were here before, they may not thank us for giving them so small a part of that, of which they may lay claim to all. I'm very sure, were any one to offer me my patent pistols, as a motive for letting him carry away my patent razors, or the East India dressing-case, or any thing else I own, I should not feel particularly obliged to him." "Capitally put, Sir George, and I should be quite of your way of thinking, if I did not believe these Arabs might really be mollified by a little drink. If I had a proper ambassador to send with the offering, I would resort to the plan at once." Mr. Monday, after a moment's hesitation, spiritedly offered to be one of two, to go to the Arabs with the proposal, for he had sufficient penetration to perceive that there was little danger of his being seized, while an armed party of so much strength remained to be overcome--and he had sufficient nerve to encounter the risk. All he asked was a companion, and Captain Truck was so much struck with the spirit of the volunteer, that he made up his mind to accompany him himself. To this plan, however, both the mates and all the crew, stoutly but respectfully objected. They felt his importance too much to consent to this exposure, and neither of the mates, even, would be allowed to go on an expedition of so much hazard, without a sufficient motive. They might fight, if they pleased, but they should not run into the mouth of the lion unarmed and unresisting. "It is of no moment," said Mr. Monday; "I could have liked a gentlemen for my companion; but no one of the brave fellows will have any objection to passing an hour in company with an Arab Sheik over a bottle. What say you my lads, will any one of you volunteer?" "Ay, ay, sir!" cried a dozen in a breath. "This will never do," interrupted the captain; "I have need of the men, for my heart is still set on these two sticks that remain, and we have a head-sea and a stiff breeze to struggle with in getting back to the ship. By George, I have it! What do you say to Mr. Dodge for a companion, Mr. Monday? He is used to committees, and likes the service: and then he has need of some stimulant, after the ducking he has received. Mr. Leach, take a couple of hands, and go off in the jolly-boat and bring Mr. Dodge on shore. My compliments to him, and tell him he has been unanimously chosen to a most honourable and lucrative--ay, and a popular employment." As this was an order, the mate did not scruple about obeying it. He was soon afloat, and on his way towards the launch. Captain Truck now hailed the top, and inquired what the Arabs were about. The answer was satisfactory, as they were still busy with their camels and in pitching their tents. This did not look much like an immediate war, and bidding the man aloft to give timely notice of their approach, Mr. Truck fancied he might still have time to shift his sheers, and to whip out the mizzen-mast, and he accordingly set about it without further delay. As every one worked, as it might be for life, in fifteen minutes this light spar was suspended in the falls. In ten more its heel was clear of the bulwarks, and it was lowered on the sands almost by the run. To knock off the top and roll it down to the water took but a few minutes longer, and then the people were called to their breakfast; the sentinel aloft reporting that the Arabs were employed in the same manner, and in milking their camels. This was a fortunate relief, and every body ate in peace, and in the full assurance that those whom they so much distrusted were equally engaged in the same pacific manner. Neither the Arabs nor the seamen, however, lost any unnecessary time at the meal. The former were soon reported to be coming and going in parties of fifteen or twenty, arriving and departing in an eastern direction. Occasionally a single runner went or came alone, on a fleet dromedary, as if communications were held with other bodies which lay deeper in the desert. All this intelligence rendered Captain Truck very uneasy, and he thought it time seriously to take some decided measures to bring this matter to an issue. Still, as time gained was all in his favour if improved, he first ordered the men to begin to shift the sheers forward, in hopes of being yet able to carry off the foremast; a spar that would be exceedingly useful, as it would save the necessity of fishing a new head to the one which still stood in the packet. He then went aside with his two ambassadors, with a view to give his instructions. Mr. Dodge had no sooner found himself safe in the launch than he felt his courage revive, and with his courage, his ingenuity, self-love and assurance. While in the water, a meeker man there was not on earth; he had even some doubts as to the truth of all his favourite notions of liberty and equality, for men think fast in danger, and there was an instant when he might have been easily persuaded to acknowledge himself a demagogue and a hypocrite in his ordinary practices; one whose chief motive was self, and whose besetting passions were envy, distrust and malice; or, in other words, very much the creature he was. Shame came next, and he eagerly sought an excuse for the want of manliness he had betrayed; but, passing over the language he had held in the launch, and the means Mr. Leach found to persuade him to land again, we shall give his apology in his own words, as he now somewhat hurriedly delivered it, to Captain Truck, in his own person. "I must have misunderstood your arrangement, captain," he said; "for somehow, though _how_ I do not exactly know--but _somehow_ the alarm of the Arabs was no sooner given than I felt as if I _ought_ to be in the launch to be at my post; but I suppose it was because I knew that the sails and spars that brought us here are mostly there, and that this was the spot to be most resolutely defended. I _do_ think, if they had waded off to us, I should have fought like a tiger!" "No doubt you would, my dear sir, and like a wild cat too! We all make mistakes in judgment, in war, and in politics, and no fact is better known than that the best soldiers in the end are they who give a little ground at the first attack. But Mr. Leach has explained to you the plan of Mr. Monday, and I rely on your spirit and zeal, which there is now an excellent opportunity to prove, as before it was only demonstrated." "If it were only an opportunity of meeting the Arabs sword in hand, captain." "Pooh! pooh! my dear friend, take _two_ swords if you choose. One who is full of fight can never get the battle on his own terms. Fill the Arabs with the _schnaps_ of the poor Dane, and if they should make the smallest symptom of moving down towards us, I rely on you to give the alarm, in order that we may be ready for them. Trust to us for the _overture_ of the _piece_, as I trust to you for the overtures of peace." "In what way can we possibly do this, Mr. Monday? How _can_ we give the alarm in season? "Why," interposed the unmoved captain, "you may just shoot the sheik, and that will be killing two birds with one stone; you will take your pistols, of course, and blaze away upon them, starboard and larboard; rely on it, we shall hear you." "Of that I make no doubt, but I rather distrust the prudence of the step. That is, I declare, Mr. Monday, it looks awfully like tempting Providence! I begin to have conscientious scruples. I hope you are quite certain, captain, there is nothing in all this against the laws of Africa? Good moral and religious influences are not to be overlooked. My mind is quite exercised in the premises!" "You are much too conscientious for a diplomatic man," said Mr. Truck, between the puffs at a fresh cigar. "You need not shoot any of the women, and what more does, a man want? Come, no more words, but to the duty heartily. Every one expects it of you, since no one can do it half so well; and if you ever get back to Dodgeopolis, there will be matter for a paragraph every day of the year for the next six months. If any thing serious happen to you, trust to me to do your memory justice." "Captain, captain, this trifling with the future is blasphemous! Men seldom talk of death with impunity, and it really hurts my feelings to touch on such awful subjects so lightly. I will go, for I do not well see how the matter is to be helped; but let us go amicably, and with such presents as will secure a good reception and a safe return." "Mr. Monday takes the liquor-case of the Dane, and you are welcome to any thing that is left, but the foremast. _That_ I shall fight for, even if lions come out of the desert to help the Arabs." Mr. Dodge had many more objections, some of which he urged openly, and more of which he felt in his inmost spirit. But for the unfortunate dive into the water, he certainly would have pleaded his immunities as a passenger, and plumply refused to be put forward on such an occasion; but he felt that he was a disgraced man, and that some decided act of spirit was necessary to redeem his character. The neutrality observed by the Arabs, moreover, greatly encouraged him; for he leaned to an opinion Captain Truck had expressed, that so long as a strong-armed party remained in the wreck, the sheik, if a man of any moderation and policy, would not proceed to violence. "You may tell him, gentlemen," continued Mr. Truck, "that as soon as I have whipped the foremast out of the Dane, I will evacuate, and leave him the wreck, and all it contains. The stick can do him no good, and I want it in my heart's core. Put this matter before him plainly, and there is no doubt we shall part the best friends in the world. Remember one thing, however, we shall set about lifting the spar the moment you quit us, and should there be any signs of an attack, give us notice in season, that we may take to our arms." By this reasoning Mr. Dodge suffered himself to be persuaded to go on the mission, though his ingenuity and fears supplied an additional motive that he took very good care not to betray. Should there be a battle, he knew he would be expected to fight, if he remained with his own party, and if with the other, he might plausibly secrete himself until the affair was over; for, with a man of his temperament, eventual slavery had less horrors than immediate death. When Mr. Monday and his co-commissioner ascended the bank, bearing the case of liquors and a few light offerings, that the latter had found in the wreck, it was just as the crew, assured that the Arabs still remained tranquil, had seriously set about pursuing their great object. On the margin of the plain, Captain Truck took his leave of the ambassadors, though he remained some time to reconnoitre the appearance of things in the wild-looking camp, which was placed within two hundred yards of the spot on which he stood. The number of the Arabs had not certainly been exaggerated, and what gave him the most uneasiness was the fact that parties appeared to be constantly communicating with more, who probably lay behind a ridge of sand that bounded the view less than a mile distant inland, as they all went and came in that direction. After waiting to see his two _envoyés_ in the very camp, he stationed a look-out on the bank, and returned to the wreck, to hurry on the all-important work. Mr. Monday was the efficient man of the two commissioners, so soon as they were fairly embarked in their enterprise. He was strong of nerves, and without imagination to fancy dangers where they were not very obvious, and had a great faith in the pacific virtues of the liquor-case. An Arab advanced to meet them, when near the tents; and although conversation was quite out of the question, by pure force of gesticulations, aided by the single word "sheik," they succeeded in obtaining an introduction to that personage. The inhabitants of the desert have been so often described that we shall assume they are known to our readers, and proceed with our narrative the same as if we had to do with Christians. Much of what has been written of the hospitality of the Arabs, if true of any portion of them, is hardly true of those tribes which frequent the Atlantic coast, where the practice of wrecking would seem to have produced the same effect, on their habits and morals that it is known to produce elsewhere. But a ship protected by a few weather-worn and stranded mariners, and a ship defended by a strong and an armed party, like that headed by Captain Truck, presented very different objects to the cupidity of these barbarians. They knew the great advantage they possessed by being on their own ground, and were content to await events, in preference to risking a doubtful contest. Several of the party had been at Mogadore, and other parts, and had acquired tolerably accurate ideas of the power of vessels; and as they were confident the men now at work at the wreck had not the means of carrying away the cargo, their own principal object, curiosity and caution, connected with certain plans that were already laid among their leaders, kept them quiet, for the moment at least. These people were not so ignorant as to require to be told that some other vessel was at no great distance, and their scouts had been out in all directions to ascertain the fact, previously to taking their ultimate measures; for the sheik himself had some pretty just notions of the force of a vessel of war, and of the danger of contending with one. The result of his policy, therefore, will better appear in the course of the narrative. The reception of the two envoys of Captain Truck was masked by that smiling and courteous politeness which seems to diminish as one travels west, and to increase as he goes eastward; though it was certainly less elaborate than would have been found in the palace of an Indian rajah. The sheik was not properly a sheik, nor was the party composed of genuine Arabs, though we have thus styled them from usage. The first, however, was a man in authority, and he and his followers possessed enough of the origin and characteristics of the tribes east of the Red Sea, to be sufficiently described by the appellation we have adopted. Mr. Monday and Mr. Dodge were invited by signs to be seated, and refreshments were offered. As the last were not particularly inviting, Mr. Monday was not slow in producing his own offering, and in recommending its quality, by setting an example of the way in which it ought to be treated. Although Mussulmans, the hosts did not scruple about tasting the cup, and ten minutes of pantomime, potations, and grimaces, brought about a species of intimacy between the parties. The man who had been so unceremoniously captured the previous night by Captain Truck, was now introduced, and much curiosity was manifested to know whether his account of the disposition in the strangers to eat their fellow creatures was true. The inhabitants of the desert, in the course of ages, had gleaned certain accounts of mariners eating their shipmates, from their different captives, and vague traditions to that effect existed among them, which the tale of this man had revived. Had the sheik kept a journal, like Mr. Dodge, the result of these inquiries would probably have been some entries concerning the customs and characters of the Americans, that were quite as original as those of the editor of the Active Inquirer concerning the different nations he had visited. Mr. Monday paid great attention to the pantomime of the Arab, in which that worthy endeavoured to explain the disposition of Captain Truck to make a barbecue of him: when it was ended, he gravely informed his companions that the sheik had invited them to stay for dinner,--a proposition that he was disposed to accept; but the sensitiveness of Mr. Dodge viewed the matter otherwise, for, with a conformity of opinion that really said something in favour of the science of signs, he arrived at the same conclusion as the poor Arab himself--with the material difference, that he fancied that the Arabs were disposed to make a meal of himself. Mr. Monday, who was a hearty beef and brandy personage, scouted the idea, and thought the matter settled, by pointing to two or three young camels and asking the editor if he thought any man, Turk or Christian, would think of eating one so lank, meagre, and uninviting, as himself, when they had so much capital food of another sort at their elbow. "Take your share of the liquor while it is passing, man, and set your heart at ease as to the dinner, which I make no doubt will be substantial and decent. Had I known of the favour intended us, I should have brought out the sheik a service of knives and forks from Birmingham; for he really seems a well-disposed and gentleman-like man. A very capital fellow, I dare say, we shall find him, after he has had a few camel's steaks, and a proper allowance of _schnaps_. Mr. Sheik, I drink your health with all my heart." The accidents of life could scarcely have brought together, in circumstances so peculiar, men whose characters were more completely the converse of each other than Mr. Monday and Mr. Dodge. They were, perfect epitomes of two large classes in their respective nations, and so diametrically opposed to each other, that one could hardly recognise in them scions from a common stock. The first was dull, obstinate, straight-forward, hearty in his manners, and not without sincerity, though wily in a bargain, with all his seeming frankness; the last, distrustful, cunning rather than quick of comprehension, insincere, fawning when he thought his interests concerned, and jealous and detracting at all other times, with a coldness of exterior that had at least the merit of appearing to avoid deception. Both were violently prejudiced, though in Mr. Monday, it was the prejudice of old dogmas, in religion, politics, and morals; and in the other, it was the vice of provincialism, and an education that was not entirely free from the fanaticism of the seventeenth century. One consequence of this discrepancy of character was a perfectly opposite manner of viewing matters in this interview. While Mr. Monday was disposed to take things amicably, Mr. Dodge was all suspicion; and had they then returned to the wreck, the last would have called to arms, while the first would have advised Captain Truck to go out and visit the sheik, in the manner one would visit a respectable and agreeable neighbour. Chapter XX. 'Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious 'Than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain! Oh let it not elude thy grasp! COTTON Things were in this state, the sheik and his guests communicating by signs, in such a way as completely to mystify each other; Mr. Monday drinking, Mr. Dodge conjecturing, and parties quitting the camp and arriving every ten minutes, when an Arab pointed eagerly with his finger in the direction of the wreck. The head of the foremast was slowly rising, and the look-out in the top was clinging to the spar, which began to cant, in order to keep himself from falling. The sheik affected to smile; but he was evidently disturbed, and two or three messengers were sent out into the camp. In the meanwhile, the spar began to lower, and was soon entirely concealed beneath the bank. It was now apparent that the Arabs thought the moment had arrived when it was their policy to interfere. The sheik, therefore, left his guests to be entertained by two or three others who had joined in the potations, and making the best assurances he could by means of signs, of his continued amity, he left the tent. Laying aside all his arms, attended by two or three old men like himself, he went boldly to the plank, and descended quietly to the sands, where he found Captain Truck busied in endeavouring to get the spar into the water. The top was already afloat, and the stick itself was cut round in the right position for rolling, when the foul but grave-looking barbarians appeared among the workmen. As the latter had been apprised of their approach, and of the fact of their being unarmed, no one left his employment to receive them, with the exception of Captain Truck himself. "Bear a hand with the spar, Mr. Leach," he said, "while I entertain these gentlemen. It is a good sign that they come to us without arms, and it shall never be said that we are behind them in civility. Half an hour will settle our affairs, when these gentry are welcome to what will be left of the Dane.--Your servant, gentlemen; I'm glad to see you, and beg the honour to shake hands with all of you, from the oldest to the youngest." Although the Arabs understood nothing that was said, they permitted Captain Truck to give each of them a hearty shake of the hand, smiling and muttering their own compliments with as much apparent good will as was manifested by the old seaman himself. "God help the Danes, if they have fallen into servitude among these blackguards!" said the captain, aloud, while he was shaking the sheik a second time most cordially by the hand, "for a fouler set of thieves I never laid eyes on, Leach. Mr. Monday has tried the virtue of the _schnaps_ on them, notwithstanding, for the odour of gin is mingled with that of grease, about the old scoundrel.--Roll away at the spar, boys! half-a-dozen more such heaves, and you will have him in his native element, as the newspapers call it.--I'm glad to see you, gentlemen; we are badly off as to chairs, on this beach, but to such as we have you are heartily welcome.--Mr. Leach, the Arab sheik;--Arab sheik, Mr. Leach.--On the bank there!" "Sir." "Any movement among the Arabs?" "About thirty have just ridden back into the desert, mounted on camels, sir; nothing more." "No signs of our passengers?" Ay, ay, sir. Here comes Mr. Dodge under full sail, heading for the bank, as straight as he can lay his course!" "Ha!--Is he pursued?" The men ceased their work, and glanced aside at their arms. "Not at all, sir. Mr. Monday is calling after him, and the Arabs seem to be laughing. Mr. Monday is just splicing the main-brace with one of the rascals." "Let the Atlantic ocean, then, look out for itself, for Mr. Dodge will be certain to run over it. Heave away, my hearties, and the stick will be afloat yet before that gentleman is fairly docked." The men worked with good will, but their zeal was far less efficient than that of the editor of the Active Inquirer, who now broke through the bushes, and plunged down the bank with a velocity which, if continued, would have carried him to Dodgeopolis itself within the month. The Arabs started at this sudden apparition, but perceiving that those around them laughed, they were disposed to take the interruption in good part. The look-out now announced the approach of Mr. Monday, followed by fifty Arabs; the latter, however, being without arms, and the former without his hat. The moment was critical, but the steadiness of Captain Truck did not desert him. Issuing a rapid order to the second mate, with a small party previously selected for that duty, to stand by the arms, he urged the rest of the people to renewed exertions. Just as this was done, Mr. Monday appeared on the bank, with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, calling aloud to Mr. Dodge to return and drink with the Arabs. "Do not disgrace Christianity in this unmannerly way," he said; "but show these gentlemen of the desert that we know what propriety is. Captain Truck, I beg of you to urge Mr. Dodge to return. I was about to sing the Arabs 'God save the King,' and in a few more minutes we should have had 'Rule Britannia,' when we should have been the best friends and companions in the world. Captain Truck, I've the honour to drink your health." But Captain Truck viewed the matter differently. Both his ambassadors were now safely back, for Mr. Monday came down upon the beach, followed, it is true, by all the Arabs, and the mast was afloat, He thought it better, therefore, that Mr. Dodge should remain, and that the two parties should be as quietly, but as speedily as possible, separated. He ordered the hauling line to be fastened to the mast, and as the stick was slowly going out through the surf, he issued the order for the men to collect their implements, take their arms, and to assemble in a body at the rocks, where the jolly-boat still lay. "Be quick, men, but be steady; for there are a hundred of these rascals on the beach already, and all the last-comers are armed. We might pick up a few more useful things from the wreck, but the wind is coming in from the westward, and our principal concern now will be to save what we have got. Lead Mr. Monday along with you, Leach, for he is so full of diplomacy and _schnaps_ just now that he forgets his safety. As for Mr. Dodge, I see he is stowed away in the boat already, as snug as the ground-tier in a ship loaded with molasses. Count the men off, sir, and see that no one is missing." By this time, the state of things on the beach had undergone material changes. The wreck was full of Arabs, some of whom were armed and some not; while mauls, crows hand-spikes, purchases, coils of rigging, and marling-spikes were scattered about on the sands, just where they had been dropped by the seamen. A party of fifty Arabs had collected around the rocks, where, by this time, all the mariners were assembled, intermingling with the latter, and apparently endeavouring to maintain the friendly relations which had been established by Mr. Monday. As a portion of these men were also armed, Captain Truck disliked their proceedings; but the inferiority of his numbers, and the disadvantage under which he was placed, compelled him to resort to management rather than force, in order to extricate himself. The Arabs now crowded around and intermingled with the seamen, thronged the ship, and lined the bank, to the number of more than two hundred. It became evident that their true force had been underrated, and that additions were constantly making to it, from those who lay behind the ridges of sand. All those who appeared last, had arms of one kind or another, and several brought fire-arms, which they gave to the sheik, and to those who had first descended to the beach. Still, every face seemed amicable, and the men were scarcely permitted to execute their orders, from the frequent interruptions to exchange tokens of friendship. But Captain Truck fully believed that hostilities were intended, and although he had suffered himself in some measure to be surprised, he set about repairing his error with great judgment and admirable steadiness. His first step was to extricate his own people from those who pressed upon them, a thing that was effected by causing a few to take a position, that might be defended, higher among the rocks, as they afforded a good deal of cover, and which communicated directly with the place where they had landed; and then ordering the remainder of the men to fall back singly. To prevent an alarm, each man was called off by name, and in this manner the whole party had got within the prescribed limits, before the Arabs, who were vociferating and talking altogether, seemed to be aware of the movement. When some of the latter attempted to follow, they were gently repulsed by the sentinels. All this time Captain Truck maintained the utmost cordiality towards the sheik, keeping near him, and amongst the Arabs himself. The work of plunder, in the meantime, had begun in earnest in the wreck, and this he thought a favourable symptom, as men thus employed would be less likely to make a hostile attack. Still he knew that prisoners were of great account among these barbarians, and that an attempt to tow the raft off from the land, in open boats, where his people would be exposed to every shot from the wreck, would subject them to he greatest danger of defeat, were the former disposed to prevent it. Having reflected a few minutes on his situation. Captain Truck issued his final orders. The jolly-boat might carry a dozen men at need, though they would be crowded and much exposed to fire; and he, therefore, caused eight to get into her, and to pull out to the launch. Mr. Leach went with this party, for the double purpose of directing its movements, and of being separated from his commander, in order that one of those who were of so much importance to the packet, might at least stand a chance of being saved. This separation also was effected without alarming the Arabs, though Captain Truck observed that the sheik watched the proceeding narrowly. As soon as Mr. Leach had reached the launch, he caused a light kedge to be put into the jolly-boat, and coils of the lightest rigging he had were laid on the top of it, or were made on the bows of the launch. As soon as this was done, the boat was pulled a long distance off from the land, paying out the ropes first from the launch, and then from the boat itself, until no more of the latter remained. The kedge was then dropped, and the men in the launch began to haul in upon the ropes that were attached to it. As the jolly-boat returned immediately, and her crew joined in the work, the line of boats, the kedge by which they had previously ridden having been first raised, began slowly to recede from the shore. Captain Truck had rightly conjectured the effect of this movement. It was so unusual and so gradual, that the launch and the raft were warped up to the kedge, before the Arabs fully comprehended its nature. The boats were now more than a quarter of a mile from the wreck, for Mr. Leach had run out quite two hundred fathoms of small rope, and of course, so distant as greatly to diminish the danger from the muskets of the Arabs, though still within reach of their range. Near an hour was passed in effecting this point, which, as the sea and wind were both rising, could not probably have been effected in any other manner, half as soon, if at all. The state of the weather, and the increasing turbulence of the barbarians, now rendered it extremely desirable to all on the rocks to be in their boats again. A very moderate blow would compel them to abandon their hard-earned advantages, and it began to be pretty evident, from the manners of those around them, that amity could not much longer be maintained. Even the old sheik retired, and, instead of going to the wreck, he joined the party on the beach, where he was seen in earnest conversation with several other old men, all of whom gesticulated vehemently, as they pointed towards the boats and to the party on the rocks. Mr. Leach now pulled in towards the bar, with both the jolly-boats and the cutter, having only two oars each, half his men being left in the launch. This was done that the people might not be crowded at the critical moment, and that, at need, there might be room to fight as well as to row; all these precautions having been taken in consequence of Captain Truck's previous orders. When the boats reached the rocks, the people did not hurry into them; but a quarter of an hour was passed in preparations, as if they were indifferent about proceeding, and even then the jolly-boat alone took in a portion, and pulled leisurely without the bar. Here she lay on her oars, in order to cover the passage of the other boats, if necessary, with her fire. The cutter imitated this manoeuvre, and the boat of the wreck went last. Captain Truck quitted the rock after all the others, though his embarkation was made rapidly by a prompt and sudden movement. Not a shot was fired, however, and, contrary to his own most ardent hopes, the captain found himself at the launch, with all his people unhurt, and with all the spars he had so much desired to obtain. The forbearance of the Arabs was a mystery to him, for he had fully expected hostilities would commence, every moment, for the last two hours. Nor was he yet absolutely out of danger, though there was time to pause and look about him, and to take his succeeding measures more deliberately. The first report was a scarcity of both food and water. For both these essentials the men had depended on the wreck, and, in the eagerness to secure the foremast, and subsequently to take care of themselves, these important requisites had been overlooked, quite probably, too, as much from a knowledge that the Montauk was so near, as from hurry. Still both were extremely desirable, if not indispensable, to men who had the prospect of many hours' hard work before them; and Captain Truck's first impulse was to despatch a boat to the ship for supplies. This intention was reluctantly abandoned, however, on account of the threatening appearance of the weather. There was no danger of a gale, but a smart sea breeze was beginning to set in, and the surface of the ocean was, as usual, getting to be agitated. Changing all his plans therefore, the Captain turned his immediate attention to the safety of the all-important spars. "We can eat to-morrow, men," he said; "but if we lose these sticks, our chance for getting any more will indeed be small. Take a gang on the raft, Mr. Leach, and double all the lashings, while I see that we get an offing. If the wind rises any more, we shall need it, and even then be worse off than we could wish." The mate passed upon the raft, and set about securing all the spars by additional fastenings; for the working, occasioned by the sea, already rendered them loose, and liable to separate. While this was in train, the two jolly-boats took in lines and kedges, of which, luckily, they had one that was brought from the packet, besides two found in the wreck, and pulled off into the ocean. As soon as one kedge was dropped, that by which the launch rode was tripped, and the boats were hauled up to it, the other jolly-boat proceeding on to renew the process. In this manner, in the course of two more hours, the whole, raft and all, were warped broad off from the land, and to windward, quite two miles, when the water became so deep that Captain Truck reluctantly gave the order to cease. "I would gladly work our way into the offing in this mode, three or four leagues," he said, "by which means we might make a fair wind of it. As it is, we must get all clear, and do as well as we can. Rig the masts in the launch, Mr. Leach, and we will see what can be done with this dull craft we have in tow." While this order was in course of execution, the glass was used to ascertain the manner in which the Arabs were occupied. To the surprise of all in the boats, every soul of them had disappeared. The closest scrutiny could not detect one near the wreck, on the beach, nor even at the spot where the tents had so lately stood. "They are all off, by George!" cried Captain Truck, when fully satisfied of the fact. "Camels, tents, and Arabs! The rascals have loaded their beasts already, and most probably have gone to hide their plunder, that they may be back and make sure of a second haul, before any of their precious brother vultures, up in the sands, get a scent of the carrion. D--n the rogues; I thought at one time they had me in a category! Well, joy be with them! Mr. Monday, I return you my hearty thanks for the manly, frank, and diplomatic manner in which you have discharged the duties of your mission. Without you, we might not have succeeded in getting the foremast. Mr. Dodge, you have the high consolation of knowing that, throughout this trying occasion, you have conducted yourself in a way no other man of the party could have done." Mr. Monday was sleeping off the fumes of the _schnaps_, but Mr. Dodge bowed to the compliment, and foresaw many capital things for the journal, and for the columns of the Active Inquirer. He even began to meditate a book. Now commenced much the most laborious and critical part of the service that Captain Truck had undertaken, if we except the collision with the Arabs--that of towing all the heavy spars of a large ship, in one raft, in the open sea, near a coast, and with the wind blowing on shore. It is true he was strong-handed, being able to put ten oars in the launch, and four in all the other boats; but, after making sail, and pulling steadily for an hour, it was discovered that all their exertions would not enable them to reach the ship, if the wind stood, before the succeeding day. The drift to leeward, or towards the beach, was seriously great, every heave of the sea setting them bodily down before it; and by the time they were half a mile to the southward, they were obliged to anchor, in order to keep clear of the breakers, which by this time extended fully a mile from shore. Decision was fortunately Captain Truck's leading quality. He foresaw the length and severity of the struggle that was before them, and the men had not been pulling ten minutes, before he ordered Mr. Leach, who was in the cutter, to cast off his line and to come alongside the launch. "Pull back to the wreck, sir," he said, "and bring off all you can lay hands on, in the way of bread, water, and other comforts. We shall make a night of it, I see. We will keep a look-out for you, and if any Arabs heave in sight on the plain, a musket will be fired; if so many as to render a hint to abscond necessary, two muskets will be fired, and the mainsail of the launch will be furled for two minutes; more time than that we cannot spare you." Mr. Leach obeyed this order, and with great success. Luckily the cook had left the coppers full of food, enough to last twenty-four hours, and this had escaped the Arabs, who were ignorant where to look for it. In addition, there was plenty of bread and water, and "a bull of Jamaica" had been discovered, by the instinct of one of the hands, which served admirably to keep the people in good humour. This timely supply had arrived just as the launch anchored, and Mr. Truck welcomed it with all his heart; for without it, he foresaw he should soon be obliged to abandon his precious prize. When the people were refreshed, the long and laborious process of warping off the land was resumed, and, in the course of two hours more, the raft was got fully a league into the offing, a shoal permitting the kedges to be used farther out this time than before. Then sail was again made, and the oars were once more plied. But the sea still proved their enemy, though they had struck the current which began to set them south. Had there been no wind and sea, the progress of the boats would now have been comparatively easy and quick; but these two adverse powers drove them in towards the beach so fast, that they had scarcely made two miles from the wreck when they were compelled a second time to anchor. No alternative remained but to keep warping off in this manner, and then to profit by the offing they had made as well as they could, the result bringing them at sunset nearly up with the headland that shut out the view of their own vessel, from which Captain Truck now calculated that he was distant a little less than two leagues. The wind had freshened, and though it was not by any means so strong as to render the sea dangerous, it increased the toil of the men to such a degree, that he reluctantly determined to seek out a proper anchorage, and to give his wearied people some rest. It was not in the power of the seamen to carry their raft into any haven, for to the northward of the headland, or on the side on which they were, there was no reef, nor any bay to afford them shelter. The coast was one continued waving line of sand-banks, and in most places, when there was a wind, the water broke at the distance of a mile from the beach; the precise spot where the Dane had stranded his vessel, having most probably been chosen for that purpose, with a view to save the lives of the people. Under these circumstances nothing remained but to warp off again to a safe distance, and to secure the boats as well as they could for the night. This was effected by eight o'clock, and Captain Truck gave the order to let go two additional kedges, being determined not to strike adrift in the darkness, if it was in his power to prevent it. When this was done, the people had their suppers, a watch was set, and the remainder went to sleep. As the three passengers had been exempted from the toil, they volunteered to look out for the safety of the boats until midnight, in order that the men might obtain as much rest as possible; and half an hour after the crew were lost in the deep slumber of seamen, Captain Truck and these gentlemen were seated in the launch, holding a dialogue on the events of the day. "You found the Arabs conversable and ready at the cup, Mr. Monday?" observed the captain, lighting a cigar, which with him was a never-failing sign for a gossip. "Men that, if they had been sent to school young, taught to dance, and were otherwise civilized, might make reasonably good ship mates, in this roving world of ours?" "Upon my word, sir, I look upon the sheik as uncommon gentleman-like, and altogether as a good fellow. He took his glass without any grimaces, smiled whenever he said any thing, though I could not understand a word he said, and answered all my remarks quite as civilly as if he spoke English. I must say, I think Mr. Dodge manifested a want of consideration in quitting his company with so little ceremony. The gentleman was hurt, I'll answer for it, and he would say as much if he could only make out to explain himself on the subject. Sir George, I regret we had not the honour of your company on the occasion, for I have been told these Arabs have a proper respect for the nobility and gentry. Mr. Dodge and myself were but poor substitutes for a gentleman like yourself." The trained humility of Mr. Monday was little to the liking of Mr. Dodge, who by the sheer force of the workings of envy had so long been endeavouring to persuade others that he was the equal of any and every other man--a delusion, however, in which he could not succeed in persuading himself to fall into--and he was not slow in exhibiting the feeling it awakened. "Sir George Templemore has too just a sense of the rights of nations to make this distinction, Mr. Monday," he said. "If I left the Arab sheik a little abruptly, it was because I disliked his ways; for I take it Africa is a free country, and that no man is obliged to remain longer in a tent than it suits his own convenience. Captain Truck knows that I was merely running down the beach to inform him that the sheik intended to follow, and he no doubt appreciates my motive." "If not, Mr. Dodge," put in the captain, "like other patriots, you must trust to posterity to do you justice. The joints and sinews are so differently constructed in different men, that one never knows exactly how to calculate on speed; but this much I will make affidavit to, if you wish it, on reaching home, and that is, that a better messenger could not be found than Mr. Steadfast Dodge, for a man in a hurry. Sir George Templemore, we have had but a few of your opinions since you came out on this expedition, and I should be gratified to hear your sentiments concerning the Arabs, and any thing else that may suggest itself at the moment." "Oh, captain! I think the wretches odiously dirty, and judging from appearances, I should say sadly deficient in comforts." "In the way of breeches in particular; for I am inclined to think, Sir George, you are master of more than are to be found in their whole nation. Well, gentlemen, one must certainly travel who wishes to see the world; but for this sheer down here upon the coast of Africa, neither of us might have ever known how an Arab lives, and what a nimble wrecker he makes. For my own part, if the choice lay between filling the office of Jemmy Ducks, on board the Montauk, and that of sheik in this tribe, I should, as we say in America, Mr. Dodge, leave it to the people, and do all in my power to obtain the first situation. Sir George, I'm afraid all these _county tongues_, as Mr. Dodge calls them, in the way of wind and weather, will quite knock the buffalo hunt on the Prairies in the head, for this fall at least." "I beg, Captain Truck, you will not discredit my French in this way. I do not call a disappointment '_county tongues_,' but '_contra toms_;' the phrase probably coming from some person of the name of _tom_, who was _contra_, or opposed to every one else." "Perfectly explained, and as clear as bilge-water. Sir George, has Mr. Dodge mentioned to you the manner in which these Arabs enjoy life? The gentlemen, by way of saving; dish-water, eat half-a-dozen at a time out of the same plate. Quite republican, and altogether without pride, Mr. Dodge, in their notions!" "Why, sir, many of their habits struck me as being simple and praiseworthy, during the short time I remained in their country; and I dare say, one who had leisure to study them might find materials for admiration. I can readily imagine situations in which a man has no right to appropriate a whole dish to himself." "No doubt, and he who wishes a thing so unreasonable must be a great hog! What a thing is sleep! Here are these fine fellows as much lost to their dangers and toils as if at home, and tucked in by their careful and pious mothers. Little did the good souls who nursed them, and sung pious songs over their cradles, fancy the hardships they were bringing them up to! But we never know our fates, or miserable dogs most of us would be. Is it not so, Sir George?" The baronet started at this appeal, which crossed the quaint mind of the captain as a cloud darkens a sunny view, and he muttered a hasty expression of hope that there was now no particular reason to expect any more serious obstacles to their reaching the ship. "It is not an easy thing to tow a heavy raft in light boats like these, exactly in the direction you wish it to go," returned the captain, gaping. "He who trusts to the winds and waves, trusts an uncertain friend, and one who may fail him at the very moment when there is most need of their services. Fair as things now seem, I would give a thousand dollars of a small stock, in which no single dollar has been lightly earned, to see these spars safely on board the Montauk, and snugly fitted to their proper places. Sticks, gentlemen, are to a ship what limbs are to a man. Without them she rolls and tumbles about as winds, currents, and seas will; while with them she walks, and dances, and jumps Jim Crow; ay, almost talks. The standing rigging are the bones and gristle; the running gear the veins in which her life circulates; and the blocks the joints." "And which is the heart?" asked Sir George. "Her heart is the master. With a sufficient commander no stout ship is ever lost, so long as she has a foot of water beneath her false keel, or a ropeyarn left to turn to account." "And yet the Dane had all these." "All but the water. The best craft that was ever launched, is of less use than a single camel, if laid high and dry on the sands of Africa. These poor wretches truly! And yet their fate might have been ours, though I thought little of the risk while we were in the midst of the Arabs. It is still a mystery to me why they let us escape, especially as they so soon deserted the wreck. They were strong-handed, too; counting all who came and went, I think not less than several hundreds." The captain now became silent and thoughtful, and, as the wind continued to rise, he began to feel uneasiness about his ship. Once or twice he expressed a half-formed determination to pull to her in one of the light boats, in order to look after her safety in person, and then he abandoned it, as he witnessed the rising of the sea, and the manner in which the massive raft caused the cordage by which it was held to strain. At length he too fell asleep, and we shall leave him and his party for awhile, and return to the Montauk, to give an account of what occurred on board that ship. Chapter XXI. Nothing beside remains! Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. SHELLEY As Captain Truck was so fully aware of the importance of rapid movements to the success of his enterprise, it will be remembered that he left in the ship no seaman, no servant, except Saunders the steward, and, in short, no men but the two Messrs. Effingham, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt, and the other person just mentioned. If to these be added, Eve Effingham, Mademoiselle Viefville, Ann Sidley, and a French _femme de chambre_, the whole party will be enumerated. At first, it had been the intention of the master to leave one of his mates behind him, but, encouraged by the secure berth he had found for his vessel, the great strength of his moorings, the little hold the winds and waves could get of spars so robbed of their proportions, and of a hull so protected by the reef, and feeling a certain confidence in the knowledge of Mr. Blunt, who, several times during the passage, had betrayed a great familiarity with ships, he came to the decision named, and had formally placed the last named gentleman in full charge, _ad interim_, of the Montauk. There was a solemn and exciting interest in the situation of those who remained in the vessel, after the party of bustling seamen had left them. The night came in bland and tranquil, and although there was no moon, they walked the deck for hours with strange sensations of enjoyment, mingled with those of loneliness and desertion. Mr. Effingham and his cousin retired to their rooms long before the others, who continued their exercise with a freedom and an absence of restraint, that they had not before felt, since subjected to the confinement of the ship. "Our situation is at least novel," Eve observed, "for a party of Parisians, Viennois, Romans, or by whatever name we may be properly styled." "Say Swiss, then," returned Mr. Blunt; "for I believe that even the cosmopolite has a claim to choose his favourite residence." Eve understood the allusion, which carried her back to the weeks they had passed in company, among the grand scenery of the Alps; but she would not betray the consciousness, for, whatever may be the ingenuousness of a female, she seldom loses her sensitiveness on the subject of her more cherished feelings. "And do you prefer Switzerland to all the other countries of your acquaintance?" asked Mr. Sharp: "England I leave out of the question, for, though we, who belong to the island, see so many charms in it, it must be conceded that strangers seldom join us very heartily in its praises. I think most travellers would give the palm to Italy." "I am quite of the same opinion," returned the other; "and were I to be confined to a choice of a residence for life, Italy should be my home. Still, I think, that we like change in our residence, as well as in the seasons. Italy is summer, and one, I fear, would weary of even an eternal June." "Is not Italy rather autumn, a country in which the harvest is gathered and where one begins already to see the fall of the leaf?" "To me," said Eve, "it would be an eternal summer; as things are eternal with young ladies. My ignorance would be always receiving instruction, and my tastes improvement. But, if Italy be summer, or autumn, what is poor America?" "Spring of course," civilly answered Mr. Sharp. "And, do you, Mr. Blunt, who seem to know all parts of the world equally well, agree in giving _our_ country, _my_ country at least, this encouraging title?" "It is merited in many respects, though there are others in which the term winter would, perhaps, be better applied. America is a country not easily understood; for, in some particulars, like Minerva, it has been born full-grown: while, in others, it is certainly still an infant." "In what particulars do you especially class it with the latter?" inquired Mr. Sharp. "In strength, to commence," answered the other, slightly smiling; "in opinions, too, and in tastes, and perhaps in knowledge. As to the latter essential, however, and practical things as well as in the commoner comforts, America may well claim to be in midsummer, when compared with other nations. I do not think you Americans, Miss Effingham, at the head of civilisation, certainly, as so many of your own people fancy; nor yet at the bottom, as so many of those of Mademoiselle Viefville and Mr. Sharp so piously believe." "And what are the notions of the countrymen of Mr. Blunt, on the subject?" "As far from the truth, perhaps, as any other. I perceive there exist some doubts as to the place of my nativity," he added, after a pause that denoted a hesitation, which all hoped was to end in his setting the matter at rest, by a simple statement of the fact; "and I believe I shall profit by the circumstance, to praise and condemn at pleasure, since no one can impeach my candour, or impute either to partialities or prejudices." "That must depend on the justice of your judgments. In one thing, however, you will have me on your side, and that is in giving the _pas_ to delicious, dreamy Italy! Though Mademoiselle Viefville will set this down as _lèse majesté_ against _cher Paris_; and I fear, Mr. Sharp will think even London injured." "Do you really hold London so cheap?" inquired the latter gentleman, with more interest than he himself was quite aware of betraying. "Indeed, no. This would be to discredit my own tastes and knowledge. In a hundred things, I think London quite the finest town of Christendom. It is not Rome, certainly, and were it in ruins fifteen centuries, I question if people would flock to the banks of the Thames to dream away existence among its crumbling walls; but, in conveniences, beauty of verdure, a mixture of park-like scenery and architecture, and in magnificence of a certain sort, one would hardly know where to go to find the equal of London." "You say nothing of its society, Miss Effingham?" "It would be presuming, in a girl of my limited experience to speak of this. I hear so much of the good sense of the nation, that I dare not say aught against its society, and it would be affectation for me to pretend to commend it; but as for your females, judging by my own poor means, they strike me as being singularly well cultivated and accomplished; and yet---" "Go on, I entreat you. Recollect we have solemnly decided in a general congress of states to be cosmopolites, until safe within Sandy Hook, and that _la franchise_ is the _mot d'ordre_." "Well, then, I should not certainly describe you English as a talking people," continued Eve, laughing. "In the way of society, you are quite as agreeable as a people, who never laugh and seldom speak, can possibly make themselves." "_Et les jeunes Americaines_?" said Mademoiselle Viefville, laconically. "My dear mademoiselle, your question is terrific! Mr. Blunt has informed me that _they_ actually giggle!" "_Quelle horreur_!" "It is bad enough, certainly; but I ascribe the report to calumny. No; if I must speak, let me have Paris for its society, and Naples for its nature. As respects New York, Mr. Blunt, I suspend my judgment." "Whatever may be the particular merit which shall most attract your admiration in favour of the great emporium, as the grandiloquent writers term the capital of your own state, I think I can venture to predict it will be neither of those just mentioned. Of society, indeed, New York has positively none: like London, it has plenty of company, which is disciplined something like a regiment of militia composed of drafts from different brigades, and which sometimes mistakes the drum-major for the colonel." "I had fancied you a New Yorker, until now," observed Mr. Sharp. "And why not now? Is a man to be blind to facts as evident as the noon-day sun, because he was born here or there? If I have told you an unpleasant truth, Miss Effingham, you must accuse _la franchise_ of the offence. I believe _you_ are not a Manhattanese?" "I am a mountaineer; having been born at my father's country residence." "This gives me courage then, for no one here will have his filial piety shocked," "Not even yourself?" "As for myself," returned Paul Blunt, "it is settled I am a cosmopolite in fact, while you are only a cosmopolite by convention. Indeed, I question if I might take the same liberties with either Paris or London, that I am about to take with palmy Manhattan. I should have little confidence in the forbearance of my auditors: Mademoiselle Viefville would hardly forgive me: were I to attempt a criticism on the first, for instance." "_C'est impossible_! you could not, Monsieur Blunt; _vous parlez trop bien Français_ not to love _Paris_." "I _do_ love _Paris_, mademoiselle; and, what is more, I love _Londres_, or even _la Nouvelle Yorck_. As a cosmopolite, I claim this privilege, at least, though I can see defects in all. If you will recollect, Miss Effingham, that New York is a social bivouac, a place in which families encamp instead of troops, you will see the impossibility of its possessing a graceful, well-ordered, and cultivated society. Then the town is commercial; and no place of mere commerce can well have a reputation for its society. Such an anomaly, I believe, never existed. Whatever may be the usefulness of trade, I fancy few will contend that it is very graceful." "Florence of old?" said Eve. "Florence and her commerce were peculiar, and the relations of things change with circumstances. When Florence was great, trade was a monopoly, in a few hands, and so conducted as to remove the principals from immediate contact with its affairs. The Medici traded in spices and silks, as men traded in politics, through agents. They probably never saw their ships, or had any farther connexion with their commerce, than to direct its spirit. They were more like the legislator who enacts laws to regulate trade, than the dealer who fingers a sample, smells at a wine, or nibbles a grain. The Medici were merchants, a class of men altogether different from the mere factors, who buy of one to sell to another, at a stated advance in price, and all of whose enterprise consists in extending the list of safe customers, and of doing what is called a 'regular business.' Monopolies do harm on the whole, but they certainly elevate the favoured few. The Medici and the Strozzi were both princes and merchants, while those around them were principally dependants. Competition, in our day, has let in thousands to share in the benefits; and the pursuit, while it is enlarged as a whole, has suffered in its parts by division." "You surely do not complain that a thousand are comfortable and respectable to-day, for one that was _il magnifico_ three hundred years since?" "Certainly not. I rejoice in the change; but we must not confound names with things. If we have a thousand mere factors for one merchant, society, in the general signification of the word, is clearly a gainer; but if we had one Medici for a thousand factors, society, in its particular signfication, might also be a gainer. All I mean is, that, in lowering the pursuit, we have necessarily lowered its qualifications; in other words, every man in trade in New York, is no more a Lorenzo, than every printer's devil is a Franklin." "Mr. Blunt cannot be an American!" cried Mr. Sharp; "for these opinions would be heresy." "_Jamais, jamais_" joined the governess. "You constantly forget the treaty of cosmopolitism. But a capital error is abroad concerning America on this very subject of commerce. In the way of merchandise alone, there is not a Christian maritime nation of any extent, that has a smaller portion of its population engaged in trade of this sort than the United States of America. The nation, as a nation, is agricultural, though the state of transition, in which a country in the course of rapid settlement must always exist, causes more buying and selling of real property than is usual. Apart from this peculiarity, the Americans, as a whole people, have not the common European proportions of ordinary dealers." "This is not the prevalent opinion," said Mr. Sharp. "It is not, and the reason is, that all American towns, or nearly all that are at all known in other countries, are purely commercial towns. The trading portion of a community is always the concentrated portion, too, and of course, in the absence of a court, of a political, or of a social capital, it has the greatest power to make itself heard and felt, until there is a direct appeal to the other classes. The elections commonly show quite as little sympathy between the majority and the commercial class as is consistent with the public welfare. In point of fact, America has but a very small class of real merchants, men who are the cause and not a consequence of commerce, though she has exceeding activity in the way of ordinary traffic. The portion of her people who are engaged as factors,--for this is the true calling of the man who is a regular agent between the common producer and the common consumer,--are of _a_ high class as factors, but not of _the_ high class of merchants. The man who orders a piece of silk to be manufactured at Lyons, at three francs a yard, to sell it in the regular course of the season to the retailer at three francs and a half, is no more a true merchant, than the attorney, who goes through the prescribed forms of the court in his pleadings, is a barrister." "I do not think these sentiments will be very popular at home, as Mr. Dodge says," Eve laughingly remarked; "but when shall we reach that home! While we are talking of these things, here are we, in an almost deserted ship, within a mile of the great Desert of Sahara! How beautiful are the stars, mademoiselle! we have never before seen a vault so studded with brilliants." "That must be owing to the latitude," Mr. Sharp observed. "Certainly. Can any one say in what latitude we are precisely?" As Eve asked this question, she unconsciously turned towards Mr. Blunt; for the whole party had silently come to the conclusion that he knew more of ships and navigation than all of them united. "I believe we are not far from twenty-four, which is bringing us near the tropics, and places us quite sixteen degrees to the southward of our port. These two affairs of the chase and of the gale have driven us fully twelve hundred miles from the course we ought to have taken." "Fortunately, mademoiselle, there are none to feel apprehensions on our account, or, none whose interest will be so keen as to create a very lively distress. I hope, gentlemen, you are equally at ease on this score?" This was the first time Eve had ever trusted herself to out an interrogatory that might draw from Paul Blunt any communication that would directly touch upon his connexions. She repented of the speech as soon as made, but causelessly, as it drew from the young man no answer. Mr. Sharp observed that his friends in England could scarcely know of their situation, until his own letters would arrive to relieve their minds. As for Mademoiselle Viefville, the hard fortune which reduced her to the office of a governess, had almost left her without natural ties. "I believe we are to have watch and ward to-night," resumed Eve, after the general pause had continued some little time. "Is it not possible for the elements to put us in the same predicament as that in which we found the poor Dane?" "Possible, certainly, but scarcely probable," returned Mr. Blunt. "The ship is well moored, and this narrow ledge of rocks, between us and the ocean, serves admirably for a break-water. One would not like to be stranded, helpless as we are, at this moment, on a coast like this!" "Why so particularly helpless? You allude to the absence of our crew?" "To that, and to the fact that, I believe, we could not muster as much as a pocket-pistol to defend ourselves with, everything in the shape of fire-arms having been sent with the party in the boats." "Might we not lie on the beach, here, for days, even weeks," inquired Mr. Sharp, "without being discovered by the Arabs?" "I fear not. Mariners have told me that the barbarians hover along the shores, especially after gales, in the hope of meeting with wrecks, and that it is surprising how soon they gain intelligence of any disaster. It is seldom there is even an opportunity to escape in a boat." "I hope here, at least, we are safe?" cried Eve, in a little terror, and shuddering, as much in playfulness as in real alarm. "I see no grounds of concern where we are, so long as we can keep the ship off the shore. The Arabs have no boats, and if they had, they would not dare to attack a vessel that floated, in one, unless aware of her being as truly helpless as we happen at this moment to be." "This is a chilling consolation, but I shall trust in your good care, gentlemen. Mademoiselle, it is drawing near midnight, I believe." Eve and her companion then courteously wished the two young men good night, and retired to their state-rooms; Mr. Sharp remained an hour longer with Mr. Blunt, who had undertaken to watch the first few hours, conversing with a light heart, and gaily; for, though there was a secret consciousness of rivalry between these two young men on the subject of Eve's favour, it was a generous and manly competition, in which each did the other ample justice. They talked of their travels, their views of customs and nations, their adventures in different countries, and of the pleasure each had felt in visiting spots renowned by association or the arts; but not a word was hazarded by either concerning the young creature who had just left them, and whom each still saw in his mind's eye, long after her light and graceful form had disappeared. At length Mr. Sharp went below, his companion insisting on being left alone, under the penalty of remaining up himself during the second watch. From this time, for several hours, there was no other noise in the ship than the tread of the solitary watchman. At the appointed period of the night, a change took place, and he who had watched, slept; while he who had slept, watched. Just as day dawned, however, Paul Blunt, who was in a deep sleep, felt a shake at his shoulder. "Pardon me," cautiously whispered Mr. Sharp: "I fear we are about to have a most unpleasant interruption to our solitude." "Heavenly powers!--Not the Arabs?" "I fear no less: but it is still too dark to be certain of the fact. If you will rise, we can consult on the situation in which we are placed. I beg you to be quick." Paui Blunt had hastily risen on an arm, and he now passed a hand over his brow, as if to make certain that he was awake. He had not undressed himself, and in another moment he stood on his feet in the middle of the state-room. "This is too serious to allow of mistake. We will not alarm her, then; we will not give any alarm, sir, until certain of the calamity." "In that I entirely agree with you," returned Mr. Sharp who was perfectly calm, though evidently distressed. "I may be mistaken, and wish your opinion. All on board but us two are in a profound sleep." The other drew on his coat, and in a minute both were on deck. The day had not yet dawned, and the light was scarce sufficient to distinguish objects even near as those on the reef, particularly when they were stationary. The rocks, themselves, however, were visible in places, for the tide was out, and most of the upper portion of the ledge was bare. The two gentlemen moved cautiously to the bows of the vessel, and, concealed by the bulwarks, Mr. Sharp pointed out to his companion the objects that had given him the alarm. "Do you see the pointed rock a little to the right of the spot where the kedge is placed?" he said, pointing in the direction that he meant. "It is now naked, and I am quite cenain there was an object on it, when I went below, that has since moved away." "It may have been a sea-bird; for we are so near the day, some of them are probably in motion. Was it large?" "Of the size of a man's head, apparently; but this is by no means all. Here, farther to the north, I distinguished three objects in motion, wading in the water, near the point where the rocks are never bare." "They may have been herons; the bird is often found in these low latitudes, I believe. I can discover nothing." "I would to God, I may have been mistaken, though I do not think I could be so much deceived." Paul Blunt caught his arm, and held it like one who listened intently. "Heard you that?" he whispered hurriedly. "It sounded like the clanking of iron." Looking around, the other found a handspike, and passing swiftly up the heel of the bowsprit, he stood between the knight-heads. Here he bent forward, and looked intently towards the lines of chains which lay over the bulwarks, as bow-fasts. Of these chains the parts led quite near each other, in parallel lines, and as the ship's moorings were taut, they were hanging in merely a slight curve. From the rocks, or the place where the kedges were laid to a point within thirty feet of the ship, these chains were dotted with living beings crawling cautiously upward. It was even easy, at a second look, to perceive that they were men stealthily advancing on their hands and feet. Raising the handspike, Mr. Blunt struck the chains several violent blows. The effect was to cause the whole of the Arabs--for it could be no others--suddenly to cease advancing, and to seat themselves astride the chains. "This is fearful," said Mr. Sharp; "but we must die, rather than permit them to reach the ship." "We must. Stand you here, and if they advance, strike the chains. There is not an instant to lose." Paul Blunt spoke hurriedly, and, giving the other the handspike, he ran down to the bitts, and commenced loosening the chains from their fastenings. The Arabs heard the clanking of the iron-rings, as he threw coil after coil on the deck, and they did not advance. Presently two parts yielded together beneath them, and then two more. These were the signals for a common retreat, and Mr. Sharp now plainly counted fifteen human forms as they scrambled back towards the reef, some hanging by their arms, some half in the water, and others lying along the chains, as best they might. Mr. Blunt having loosened the chains, so as to let their bights fall into the sea, the ship slowly drifted astern, and rode by her cables. When this was done, the two young men stood together in silence on the forecastle, as if each felt that all which had just occurred was some illusion. "This is indeed terrible," exclaimed Paul Blunt. "We have not even a pistol left! No means of defence--nothing but this narrow belt of water between us and these barbarians! No doubt, too, they have fire-arms; and, as soon as it is light, they will render it unsafe to remain on deck." Mr. Sharp took the hand of his companion and pressed it fervently. "God bless you!" he said in a stifled voice. "God bless you, for even this brief delay. But for this happy thought of yours, Miss Effingham--the others--we should _all_ have been, by this time, at the mercy of these remorseless wretches. This is not a moment for false pride or pitiful deceptions. I think either of us would willingly die to rescue that beautiful and innocent creature from a fate like this which threatens her in common with ourselves?" "Cheerfully would I lay down my life to be assured that she was, at this instant, safe in a civilized and Christian country." These generous young men squeezed each other's hands, and at that moment no feeling of rivalry, or of competition even, entered the heart of either. Both were influenced by a pure and ardent desire to serve the woman they loved, and it would be true to say, that scarce a thought of any but Eve was uppermost in their minds. Indeed so engrossing was their common care in her behalf, so much more terrible than that of any other person did her fate appear on being captured, that they forgot, for the moment, there were others in the ship, and others, too, who might be serviceable in arresting the very calamity they dreaded. "They may not be a strong party," said Paul Blunt, after a little thought, "in which case, failing of a surprise, they may not be able to muster a force sufficient to hazard an open attack until the return of the boats. We have, God be praised! escaped being seized in our sleep, and made unconscious victims of so cruel a fate. Fifteen or twenty will scarcely dare attempt a ship of this size, without a perfect knowledge of our feebleness, and particularly of our want of arms. There is a light gun on board, and it is loaded; with this, too, we may hold them at bay, by not betraying our weakness. Let us awake the others, for this is not a moment for sleep. We are safe, at least, for an hour or two; since, without boats, they cannot possibly find the means to board us in less than that time." The two young men went below, unconsciously treading lightly, like those who moved about in the presence of an impending danger. Paul Blunt was in advance, and to his great surprise he met Eve at the door of the ladies' cabin, apparently awaiting their approach. She was dressed, for apprehension, and the novelty of their situation, had caused her to sleep in most of her clothes, and a few moments had sufficed for a hasty adjustment of the toilet. Miss Effingham was pale, but a concentration of all her energies seemed to prevent the exhibition of any womanly terror. "Something is wrong!" she said, trembling in spite of herself, and laying her hand unwittingly on the arm of Paul Blunt: "I heard the heavy fall of iron on the deck." "Compose yourself, dearest Miss Effingham, compose yourself, I entreat you. I mean, that we have come to awaken the gentlemen." "Tell me the worst, Powis, I implore you. I am equal,--I think I am equal, to hearing it." "I fear your imagination has exaggerated the danger." "The coast?" "Of that there is no cause for apprehension. The sea is calm, and our fasts are perfectly good." "The boats?" "Will doubtless be back in good time." "Surely--surely," said Eve, recoiling a step, as if she saw a monster, "not the Arabs?" "They cannot enter the ship, though a few of them are hovering about us. But for the vigilance of Mr. Sharp, indeed, we might have all been captured in our sleep. As it is, we have warning, and there is now little doubt of our being able to intimidate the few barbarians who have shown themselves, until Captain Truck shall return." "Then from my soul, I thank you, Sir George Templemore, and for this good office will you receive the thanks of a father, and the prayers of all whom you have so signally served." "Nay, Miss Effingham, although I find this interest in me so grateful that I have hardly the heart to lessen your gratitude, truth compels me to give it a juster direction. But for the promptitude of Mr. Blunt--or as I now find I ought to address him, Mr. Powis--we should truly have all been lost." "We will not dispute about your merits, gentlemen. You have both deserved our most heartfelt thanks, and if you will awaken my father and Mr. John Effingham, I will arouse Mademoiselle Viefville and my own women. Surely, surely, this is no time to sleep!" The summons was given at the state-room doors, and the two young men returned to the deck, for they felt it was not safe to leave it long at such a moment. All was quite tranquil above, however, nor could the utmost scrutiny now detect the presence of any person on the reef. "The rocks are cut off from the shore, farther to the southward by deeper water," said Paul Blunt--for we shall continue to call both gentlemen, except on particular occasions, by their _noms de guerre_--"and when the tide is up the place cannot be forded. Of this the Arabs are probably aware; and having failed in their first attempt, they will probably retire to the beach as the water is rising, for they might not like to be left on the riband of rock that will remain in face of the force that would be likely to be found in such a vessel." "May they not be acquainted with the absence of most of our people, and be bent upon seizing the vessel before they can return?" "That indeed is the gloomy side of the conjecture, and it may possibly be too true; but as the day is beginning to break, we shall soon learn the worst, and anything is better than vague distrust." For some time the two gentlemen paced the quarter-deck together in silence. Mr. Sharp was the first to speak. "The emotions natural to such an alarm," he said, "have caused Miss Effingham to betray an incognito of mine, that I fear you find sufficiently absurd. It was quite accidental, I do assure you; as much so, perhaps, as it was motiveless." "Except as you might distrust American democracy," returned Paul, smiling, "and feel disposed to propitiate it by a temporary sacrifice of rank and title." "I declare you do me injustice. My man, whose name _is_ Sharp, had taken the state-room, and, finding myself addressed by his appellation, I had the weakness to adopt it, under the impression it might be convenient in a packet. Had I anticipated, in the least, meeting with the Effinghams, I should not have been guilty of the folly, for Mr. and Miss Effingham are old acquaintances." "While you are thus apologising for a venial offence, you forget it is to a man guilty of the same error. I knew your person, from having seen you on the Continent; and finding you disposed to go by the homely name of Sharp, in a moment of thoughtlessness, I took its counterpart, Blunt. A travelling name is sometimes convenient, though sooner or later I fancy all deceptions bring with them their own punishments." "It is certain that falsehood requires to be supported by falsehood. Having commenced in untruth, would it not be expedient to persevere until we reach America? I, at least, cannot now assert a right to my proper name, without deposing an usurper!" "It _will_ be expedient for you, certainly, if it be only to escape the homage of that double-distilled democrat, Mr. Dodge. As for myself, few care enough about me to render it a matter of moment how I am styled; though, on the whole, I should prefer to let things stand as they are, for reasons I cannot well explain." No more was said on the subject, though both understood that the old appellations were to be temporarily continued. Just as this brief dialogue ended, the rest of the party appeared on deck. All preserved a forced calmness, though the paleness of the ladies betrayed the intense anxiety they felt. Eve struggled with her fears on account of her father, who had trembled so violently, when the truth was first told him, as to be quite unmanned, but who now comported himself with dignity, though oppressed with apprehension almost to anguish. John Effingham was stern, and in the bitterness of his first sensations he had muttered a few imprecations on his own folly, in suffering himself to be thus caught without arms. Once the terrible idea of the necessity of sacrificing Eve, in the last resort, as an expedient preferable to captivity, had flashed across his mind; but the real tenderness he felt for her, and his better nature, soon banished the unnatural thought. Still, when he joined the party on deck, it was with a general but vague impression, that the moment was at hand when circumstances had required that they were all to die together. No one was more seemingly collected than Mademoiselle Viefville. Her life had been one of sacrifices, and she had now made up her mind that it was to pass away in a scene of violence; and, with a species of heroism that is national, her feelings had been aroused to a sort of Roman firmness, and she was prepared to meet her fate with a composure equal to that of the men. These were the first feelings and impressions of those who had been awakened from the security of the night, to hear the tale of their danger; but they lessened as the party collected in the open air, and began to examine into their situation by means of the steadily increasing light. As the day advanced, Paul Blunt, in particular, carefully examined the rocks near the ship, even ascending to the fore-top, from which elevation he overlooked the whole line of the reef; and something like hope revived in every bosom, when he proclaimed the joyful intelligence that nothing having life was visible in that direction. "God be praised!" he said with fervour, as his foot touched the deck again on descending; "we have at least a respite from the attacks of these barbarians. The tide has risen so high that they dare not stay on the rocks, lest they might be cut off; for they probably think us stronger than we are, and armed. The light gun on the forecastle is loaded, gentlemen, though not shotted; for there are no shot in the vessel, Saunders tells me; and I would suggest the propriety of firing it, both to alarm the Arabs, and as a signal to our friends. The distance from the wreck is not so great but it might be heard, and I think they would at least send a boat to our relief. Sound flies fast, and a short time may bring us succour. The water will not be low enough for our enemies to venture on the reef again, under six or eight hours, and all may yet be well." This proposal was discussed, and it proving, on inquiry, that all the powder in the ship, after loading the gun for this very purpose of firing a signal, had been taken in the boats, and that no second discharge could be made, it was decided to lose no more time, but to let their danger be known to their friends at once, if it were possible to send the sound so far. When this decision was come to, Mr. Blunt, aided by Mr. Sharp, made the necessary preparations without delay. The latter, though doing all he could to assist, envied the readiness, practical skill and intelligence, with which his companion, a man of cultivated and polished mind in higher things, performed every requisite act that was necessary to effect their purpose. Instead of hastily discharging the piece, an iron four-pound gun, Mr. Blunt first doubled the wad, which he drove home with all his force, and then he greased the muzzle, as he said, to increase the report. "I shall not attempt to explain the philosophy of this," he added with a mournful smile, "but all lovers of salutes and salvos will maintain that it is useful; and be it so or not, too much depends on our making ourselves heard, to neglect any thing that has even a chance of aiding that one great object. If you will now assist me, Sir George, we will run the gun over to starboard, in order that it may be fired on the side next the wreck." "Judging from the readiness you have shown on several occasions, as well as your familiarity with the terms, I should think you had served," returned the real baronet, as he helped his companion to place the gun at a port on the northern side of the vessel. "You have not mistaken my trade. I was certainly bred, almost born, a seaman; and though as a traveller I have now been many years severed from my early habits, little of what I knew has been lost. Were there five others here, who had as much familiarity as myself with vessels, I think we could carry the ship outside the reef, crippled as she is, and set the Arabs at defiance. Would to God our worthy captain had never brought her inside." "He did all for the best, no doubt?" "Beyond a question; and no more than a commendable prudence required. Still he has left us in a most critical position. This priming is a little damp, and I distrust it. The coal, if you please." "Why do you not fire?" "At the last moment, I almost repent of my own expedient. Is it quite certain no pistols remain among any of our effects?" "I fear not. Saunders reports that all, even to those of the smallest size, were put in requisition for the boats." "The charge in this gun might serve for many pistols, or for several fowling-pieces. I might even sweep the reef, on an emergency, by using old iron for shot! It appears like parting with a last friend, to part with this single precious charge of gunpowder." "Nay, you certainly know best; though I rather think the Messrs. Effingham are of your first opinion." "It is puerile to waver on such a subject, and I will hesitate no longer. There are moments when the air seems to float in the direction of our friends; on the first return of one of those currents, I will fire." A minute brought the opportunity, and Paul Blunt, or Paul Powis, as his real name would now appear to be, applied the coal. The report was sharp and lively; but as the smoke floated away, he again expressed his doubts of the wisdom of what had just been done. Had he then known that the struggling sounds had diffused themselves in their radii, without reaching the wreck, his regrets would have been increased fourfold. This was a fact, however, that could not be then ascertained, and those in the packet were compelled to wait two or three hours before they even got the certainty of their failure. As the light increased a view was obtained of the shore, which seemed as silent and deserted as the reef. For half an hour the whole party experienced the revulsion of feeling that accompanies all great changes of emotion, and the conversation had even got to be again cheerful, and to turn into its former channels, when suddenly a cry from Saunders renewed the alarm. The steward was preparing the breakfast in the galley, from which he gave occasional glances towards the land, and his quick eye had been the first to detect a new and still more serious danger that now menaced them. A long train of camels was visible, travelling across the desert, and holding its way towards the part of the reef which touched the shore. At this point, too, were now to be seen some twenty Arabs, waiting the arrival, of their friends; among whom it was fair to conclude were those who had attempted to carry the ship by surprise. As the events which next followed were closely connected with the policy and forbearance of the party of barbarians near the wreck, this will be a suitable occasion to explain the motives of the latter, in not assailing Captain Truck, and the real state of things among these children of the desert. The Dane had been driven ashore, as conjectured, in the last gale, and the crew had immediately been captured by a small wandering party of the Arabs, with whom the coast was then lined; as is usually the case immediately after tempestuous weather. Unable to carry off much of the cargo, this party had secured the prisoners, and hurried inland to an oasis, to give the important intelligence to their friends; leaving scouts on the shore, however, that they might be early apprised of any similar disaster, or of any change in the situation of their present prize. These scouts had discovered the Montauk, drifting along the coast, dismasted and crippled, and they had watched her to her anchorage within the reef. The departure of her boats had been witnessed, and though unable to foresee the whole object of this expedition, the direction taken pointed out the wreck as the point of destination. All this, of course, had been communicated to the chief men of the different parties on the coast, of which there were several, who had agreed to unite their forces to secure the second ship, and then to divide the spoils. When the Arabs reached the coast near the wreck, that morning, the elders among them were not slow in comprehending the motives of the expedition; and having gained a pretty accurate idea of the number of men employed about the Dane, they had come to the just conclusion that few were left in the vessel at anchor. They had carried off the spy-glass of their prize too, and several among them knew its use, from having seen similar things in other stranded ships. By means of this glass, they discovered the number and quality of those on board the Montauk, as soon as there was sufficient light, and directed their own operations accordingly. The parties that had appeared and disappeared behind the sandy ridges of the desert, about the time at which we have now arrived in the narrative, and those who have been already mentioned in a previous chapter, were those who came from the interior, and those who went in the direction of the reef; the first of the latter of which Saunders had just discovered. Owing to the rounded formation of the coast, and to the intervention of a headland, the distance by water between the two ships was quite double that by land between the two encampments, and those who now arrived abreast of the packet, deliberately pitched their tents, as if they depended more on a display of their numbers for success than on concealment and as if they felt no apprehension of the return of the crew. When the gentlemen had taken a survey of this strong party, which numbered more than a hundred, they held a consultation of the course it would be necessary to pursue. To Paul Blunt, as an avowed seaman, and as one who had already shown the promptitude and efficiency of his resources, all eyes were turned in expectation of an opinion. "So long as the tide keeps in," this gentleman observed, "I see no cause for apprehensions. We are beyond the reach of musketry, or at all events, any fire of the Arabs, at this distance, must be uncertain and harmless; and we have always the hope of the arrival of the boats. Should this fail us, and the tide fall this afternoon as low as it fell in the morning, our situation will indeed become critical. The water around the ship may possibly serve as a temporary protection, but the distance to the reef is so small that it might be passed by swimming." "Surely we could make good the vessel against men raising themselves out of the water, and clambering up a vessel's side?" said Mr. Sharp. "It is probable we might, if unmolested from the shore. But, imagine twenty or thirty resolute swimmers to put off together for different parts of the vessel, protected by the long muskets these Arabs carry, and you will easily conceive the hopelessness of any defence. The first man among us, who should show his person to meet the boarders, would be shot down like a dog." "It was a cruel oversight to expose us to this horrible fate!" exclaimed the appalled father. "This is easier seen now than when the mistake was committed," observed John Effingham. "As a seaman, and with his important object in view, Captain Truck acted for the best, and we should acquit him of all blame, let the result be what it may. Regrets are useless, and it remains for us to devise some means to arrest the danger by which we are menaced, before it be too late. Mr. Blunt, you must be our leader and counsellor: is it not possible for us to carry the ship outside of the reef, and to anchor her beyond the danger of our being boarded?" "I have thought of this expedient, and if we had a boat it might possibly be done, in this mild weather; without a boat, it is impossible." "But we have a boat," glancing his eye towards the launch that stood in the chocks or chucks. "One that would be too unwieldy for our purposes, could it be got into the water; a thing in itself that would be almost impracticable for us to achieve." A long silence succeeded, during which the gentlemen were occupied in the bootless effort of endeavouring to devise expedients to escape the Arabs; bootless, because on such occasions, the successful measure is commonly the result of a sort of sudden inspiration, rather than of continued and laborious thought. Chapter XXII. With religious awe Grief heard the voice of Virtue. No complaint The solemn silence broke. Tears ceased to flow. GLOVER. Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies. So long as there is a plausible ground to expect relief from any particular quarter, men will relax their exertions in the face of the most imminent danger, and they cling to their expectations long after reason has begun to place the chances of success on the adverse side of the scale. Thus it was with the party in the Montauk. Two or three precious hours were lost in the idle belief that the gun would be heard by Captain Truck, and that they might momentarily look for the appearance of, at least, one of the boats. Paul Blunt was the first to relinquish this delusion. He knew that, if it reached their friends at all, the report must have been heard in a few seconds, and he knew, also, that it peculiarly belonged to the profession of a seaman to come to quick decisions. An hour of smart rowing would bring the cutter from the wreck to the headland, where it would be visible, by means of a glass, from the fore-top. Two hours had now passed away and no signs of any boat were to be discovered, and the young man felt reluctantly compelled to yield all the strong hopes of timely aid that he had anticipated from this quarter. John Effingham, who had much more energy of character than his kinsman, though not more personal fortitude and firmness, was watching the movements of their young leader, and he read the severe disappointment in his face, as he descended the last time from the top, where he had often been since the consultation, to look out for the expected succour. "I see it in your countenance," said that gentleman, "we have nothing to look for from the boats. Our signal has not been heard." "There is no hope, and we are now thrown altogether on our own exertions, aided by the kind providence of God." "This calamity is so sudden and so dire, that I can scarcely credit it! Are we then truly in danger of becoming prisoners to barbarians? Is Eve Effingham, the beautiful, innocent, good, angelic daughter of my cousin, to be their victim!--perhaps the inmate of a seraglio!" "There is the pang! Had I a thousand bodies, a thousand lives, I could give all of the first to unmitigated suffering, lay down all the last to avert so shocking a calamity. Do you think the ladies are sensible of their real situation?" "They are uneasy rather than terrified. In common with us all, they have strong hopes from the boats, though the continued arrival of the barbarians, who are constantly coming into their camp, has helped to render them a little more conscious of the true nature of the danger." Here Mr. Sharp, who stood on the hurricane-house, called out for the glass, in order to ascertain what a party of the Arabs, who were collected near the in-shore end of the reef, were about. Paul Blunt went up to him, and made the examination. His countenance fell as he gazed, and an expression like that of hopelessness was again apparent on his fine features, when he lowered the glass. "Here is some new cause of uneasiness!" "The wretches have got a number of spars, and are lashing them together to form a raft. They are bent on our capture, and I see no means of preventing it." "Were we alone, men only, we might have the bitter consolation of selling our lives dearly; but it is terrible to have those with us whom we can neither save nor yet devote to a common destruction with our enemies!" "It is indeed terrible, and the helplessness of our situation adds to its misery." "Can we not offer terms?--Might not a promise of ransom, with hostages, do something? I would cheerfully remain in the hands of the barbarians, in order to effect the release of the rest of the party." Mr. Blunt grasped his hand, and for a moment he envied the other the generous thought. But smiling bitterly, he shook his head, as if conscious of the futility of even this desperate self-devotion. "Gladly would I be your companion; but the project is, in every sense, impracticable. Ransom they might consent to receive with us all in their power, but not on the condition of our being permitted to depart. Indeed, no means of quitting them would be left; for, once in possession of the ship, as in a few hours they must be, Captain Truck, though having the boats, will be obliged to surrender for want of food, or to run the frightful hazard of attempting to reach the islands, on an allowance scarcely sufficient to sustain life under the most favourable circumstances. These flint-hearted monsters are surrounded by the desolation of their desert, and they are aware of all their appalling advantages." "The real state of things ought to be communicated to our friends, in order that they may be prepared for the worst." To this Mr. Blunt agreed, and they went together to inform John Effingham of the new discovery. This stern-minded man was, in a manner, prepared for the worst, and he now agreed on the melancholy propriety of letting his kinsman know the actual nature of the new danger that threatened them. "I will undertake this unpleasant office," he said, "though I could, in my inmost soul, pray that the necessity for it might pass away. Should the worst arrive, I have still hopes of effecting something by means of a ransom; but what will have been the fate of the youthful, and delicate, and lovely, ere we can make ourselves even comprehended by the barbarians? A journey in the desert, as these journeys have been described to me, would be almost certain death to all but the strongest of our party, and even gold may fail of its usual power, when weighed against the evil nature of savages." "Is there no hope, then, really left us?" demanded Mr. Sharp, when the last speaker had left them to descend to the cabins. "Is it not possible to get the boat into the water, and to make our escape in that?" "That is an expedient of which I have thought, but it is next to impracticable. As anything is better than capture, however, I will make one more close examination of the proceedings of the demons, and look nearer into our own means." Paul Blunt now got a lead and dropped it over the side of the ship, in the almost forlorn hope that possibly she might lie over some hole on the bottom. The soundings proved to be, as indeed he expected, but a little more than three fathoms. "I had no reason to expect otherwise," he said, as he drew in the line, though he spoke like a disappointed man. "Had there been sufficient water the ship might have been scuttled, and the launch would have floated off the deck; but as it is, we should lose the vessel without a sufficient object. It would appear heroic were you and I to contrive to get on the reef, and to proceed to the shore with a view to make terms with the Arabs; but there could be no real use in it, as the treachery of their character is too well established to look for any benefit from such a step." "Might they not be kept in play, until our friends returned? Providence may befriend us in some unexpected manner in our uttermost peril." "We will examine them once more with the glass. By a movement among the Arabs, there has probably been a new accession to their numbers." The two gentlemen now ascended to the top of the hurricane-house again, in feverish haste, and once more they applied the instrument. A minute of close study induced Mr. Blunt to drop the glass, with an expression that denoted increased concern. "Can any thing possibly make our prospects worse?" eagerly inquired his companion. "Do you not remember a flag that was on board the Dane--that by which we identified his nation?" "Certainly: it was attached to the halyards, and lay on the quarter-deck." "That flag is now flying in the camp of these barbarians! You may see it, here, among the tents last pitched by the party that arrived while we were conversing forward." "And from this, you infer--" "That our people are captives! That flag was in the ship when we left it; had the Arabs returned before our party got there, the captain would have been back long ere this; and in order to obtain this ensign they must have obtained possession of the wreck, after the arrival of the boats; an event that could scarcely occur without a struggle; I fear the flag is a proof on which side the victory has fallen." "This then would seem to consummate our misfortunes!" "It does indeed; for the faint hope that existed, of being relieved by the boats, must now be entirely abandoned." "In the name of God, look again, and see in what condition the wretches have got their raft!" A long examination followed, for on this point did the fate of all in the ship now truly seem to depend. "They work with spirit," said Mr. Blunt, when his examination had continued a long time; "but it seems less like a raft than before--they are lashing spars together lengthwise--here is a dawning of hope, or what would be hope, rather, if the boats had escaped their fangs!" "God bless you for the words!--what is there encouraging?" "It is not much," returned Paul Blunt, with a mournful smile; "but trifles become of account in moments of extreme jeopardy. They are making a floating stage, doubtless with the intention to pass from the reef to the ship, and by veering on the chains we may possibly drop astern sufficiently to disappoint them in the length of their bridge. If I saw a hope of the final return of the boats, this expedient would not be without its use, particularly if delayed to the last moment, as it might cause the Arabs to lose another tide, and a reprieve of eight or ten hours is an age to men in our situation." Mr. Sharp caught eagerly at this suggestion and the young men walked the deck together for half an hour, discussing its chances, and suggesting various means of turning it to the best account. Still, both felt convinced that the trifling delay which might thus be obtained, would, in the end, be perfectly useless, should Captain Truck and his party have really fallen into the hands of the common enemy. They were thus engaged, sometimes in deep despondency, and sometimes buoyant with revived expectations, when Saunders, on the part of Mr. Effingham summoned them below. On reaching the cabin, whither both immediately hastened, the two gentlemen found the family party in the distress that the circumstances would naturally create. Mr. Effingham was seated, his daughter's head resting on a knee, for she had thrown herself on the carpet, by his side. Mademoiselle Viefville paced the cabin, occasionally stopping to utter a few words of consolation to her young charge, and then again reverting in her mind to the true dangers of their situation, with a force that completely undid all she had said, by betraying the extent of her own apprehensions. Ann Sidley knelt near her young mistress, sometimes praying fervently, though in silence, and at other moments folding her beloved in her arms, as if to protect her from the ruffian grasp of the barbarians. The _femme de chambre_ was sobbing in a state-room, while John Effingham leaned, with his arms folded against a bulk-head, a picture of stern submission rather than of despair. The whole party was now assembled, with the exception of the steward, whose lamentations throughout the morning had not been noiseless, but who was left on deck to watch the movements of the Arabs. The moment was not one of idle forms, and Eve Effingham, who would have recoiled, under other circumstances, at being seen by her fellow travellers in her present situation, scarce raised her head, in acknowledgement of their melancholy salute, as they entered. She had been weeping, and her hair had fallen in profusion around her shoulders. The tears fell no longer, but a warm flushed look, one which denoted that a struggle of the mind had gotten the better of womanly emotions, had succeeded to deadly paleness, and rendered her loveliness of feature and expression bright and angelic. Both of the young men thought she had never seemed so beautiful, and both felt a secret pang, as the conviction forced itself on them, at the same instant, that this surpassing beauty was now likely to prove her most dangerous enemy. "Gentlemen," said Mr. Effingham, with apparent calmness, and a dignity that no uneasiness could disturb, "my kinsman has acquainted us with the hopeless nature of our condition, and I have begged the favour of this visit on your own account. _We_ cannot separate; the ties of blood and affection unite us, and our fate must be common; but, on _you_ there is no such obligation. Young, bold, and active, some plan may suggest itself, by which you may possibly escape the barbarians, and at least save yourselves, I know that generous temperaments like yours will not be disposed to listen, at first, to such a suggestion: but reflection will tell you that it is for the interest of us all. You may let our fate be known, earlier than it otherwise would be, to those who will take immediate measures to procure our ransoms." "This is impossible!" Mr. Sharp said firmly. "We can never quit you; could never enjoy a moment's peace under the consciousness of having been guilty of an act so selfish!" "Mr. Blunt is silent," continued Mr. Effingham, after a short pause, in which he looked from one of the young men to the other. "He thinks better of my proposition, and will listen to his own best interests." Eve raised her head quickly, but without being conscious of the anxiety she betrayed, and gazed with melancholy intentness at the subject of this remark. "I do credit to the generous feelings of Mr. Sharp," Paul Blunt now hurriedly answered, "and should be sorry to admit that my own first impulses were less disinterested; but I confess I have already thought of this, and have reflected on all the chances of success or failure. It might be practicable for one who can swim easily to reach the reef; thence to cross the inlet, and possibly to gain the shore under cover of the opposite range of rocks, which are higher than those near us; after which, by following the coast, one might communicate with the boats by signal, or even go quite to the wreck if necessary. All of this I have deliberated on, and once I had determined to propose it; but--" "But what?" demanded Eve quickly. "Why not execute this plan, and save yourself? Is it a reason, because case is hopeless, that you should perish?" Go, then, at once, for the moments are precious; an hour hence, it may be too late." "Were it merely to save myself, Miss Effingham, do you really think me capable of this baseness?" "I do not call it baseness. Why should we draw you down with us in our misery? You have already served us, Powis, in a situation of terrible trial, and it is not just that you should always devote yourself in behalf of those who seem fated never to do you good. My father will tell you he thinks it your duty now to save yourself if possible." "I think it the duty of every man," mildly resumed Mr. Effingham, "when no imperious obligation requires otherwise, to save the life and liberty which God has bestowed. These gentlemen have doubtless ties and claims on them that are independent of us, and why should they inflict a pang on those who love them, in order to share in our disaster?" "This is placing useless speculations before a miserable certainty," observed John Effingham. "As there can be no hope of reaching the boats, it is vain to discuss the propriety of the step." "Is this true, Powis? Is there truly no chance of your escaping. You will not deceive us--deceive yourself--on a vain point of empty pride!" "I can say with truth, almost with joy, for I thank God I am spared the conflict of judging between my duty and my feelings, that there can no longer be any chance of finding the wreck in the possession of our friends," returned Paul fervently. "There were moments when I thought the attempt should be made; and it would perhaps have properly fallen to my lot to be the adventurer; but we have now proof that the Arabs are masters, and if Captain Truck has escaped at all, it is under circumstances that scarcely admit the possibility of his being near the land. The whole coast must be watched and in possession of the barbarians, and one passing along it could hardly escape being seen." "Might you not escape into the interior, notwithstanding?" asked Eve, impetuously. "With what motive? To separate myself from those who have been my fellows in misfortune, only to die of want, or to fall into the hands of another set of masters? It is every way our interest to keep together, and to let those already on the coast become our captors, as the booty of two ships may dispose them to be less exacting with their prisoners." "Slaves!" muttered John Effingham. His cousin bowed his head over the delicate form of Eve, which he folded with his arms, as if to shield it from the blasts and evils of the desert. "As we may be separated immediately on being taken," resumed Paul Blunt, "it will be well to adopt some common mode of acting, and a uniform account of ourselves, in order that we may impress the barbarians with the policy of carrying us, as soon as possible, into the vicinity of Mogadore, with a view to obtaining a speedy ransom." "Can any thing be better than the holy truth?" exclaimed Eve. "No, no, no! Let us not deform this chastening act of God by colouring any thought or word with deception." "Deception in our case will hardly be needed; but by understanding those facts which will most probably influence the Arabs, we may dwell the most on them. We cannot do better than by impressing on the minds of our captors the circumstance that this is no common ship, a fact their own eyes will corroborate, and that we are not mere mariners, but passengers, who will be likely to reward their forbearance and moderation." "I think, sir," interrupted Ann Sidley, looking up with tearful eyes from the spot where she still knelt, "that if these people knew how much Miss Eve is sought and beloved, they might be led to respect her as she deserves, and this at least would 'temper the wind to the shorn lamb!'" "Poor Nanny!" murmured Eve, stretching forth a hand towards her old nurse, though her face was still buried in her own hair, "thou wilt soon learn that there is another leveller beside the grave!" "Ma'am!" "Thou wilt find that Eve, in the hands of barbarians, is not thy Eve. It will now become my turn to become a handmaiden, and to perform for others offices a thousand times more humiliating than any thou hast ever performed for me." Such a consummation of their misery had never struck the imagination of the simple-minded Ann, and she gazed at her child with tender concern, as if she distrusted her senses. "This is too improbable, dear Miss Eve," she said, "and you will distress your father by talking so wildly. The Arabs are human beings though they are barbarians, and they will never dream of anything so wicked as this." Mademoiselle Viefville made a rapid and fervent ejaculation in her own language, that was keenly expressive of her own sense of misery, and Ann Sidley, who always felt uneasiness when anything was said affecting Eve that she could not understand, looked from one to the other, as if she demanded an explanation. "I'm sure Mamerzelle cannot think any such thing likely to take place," she continued more positively; "and, sir, you at least will not permit Miss Eve to torment herself with any notions as unreasonable, as monstrous as this!" "We are in the hands of God, my worthy Ann, and you may live to see all your fixed ideas of propriety violated," returned Mr. Effingham. "Let us pray that we may not be separated, for there will at least be a tender consolation in being permitted to share our misery in company. Should we be torn asunder, then indeed will the infliction be one of insupportable agony!" "And who will think of such a cruelty, sir? _Me_ they cannot separate from Miss Eve, for I am her servant, her own long-tried, faithful attendant, who first held her in arms, and nursed her when a helpless infant; and you too, sir, you are her father, her own beloved revered parent; and Mr. John, is he not her kinsman, of her blood and name? And even Mamerzelle also has claims to remain with Miss Eve, for she has taught her many things, I dare say, that it is good to know. Oh! no, no, no! no one has a right to tear us asunder, and no one will have the heart to do it." "Nanny, Nanny," murmured Eve, "you do not, cannot know the cruel Arabs!" "They cannot be crueller and more unforgiving than our own savages, ma'am, and they keep the mother with the child; and when they spare life, they take the prisoners into their huts, and treat them as they treat their own. God has caused so many of the wicked to perish for their sins, in these eastern lands, that I do not think a man can be left that is wretch enough to harm one like Miss Eve. Take courage then, sir, and put your trust in his Holy Providence. I know the trial is hard to a tender father's heart, but should their customs require them to keep the men and women asunder, and to separate you from your daughter, for a short time, remember that I shall be with her, as I was in her childhood, when, by the mercy of God, we carried her through so many mortal diseases in safety, and have got her, in the pride of her youth, without a blemish or a defect, the perfect creature she is." "If the world had no other tenants but such as you, devoted and simple-hearted woman, there would indeed be little cause for apprehension; for you are equally unable to imagine wrong yourself, or to conceive it in others. It would remove a mountain from my heart, could I indeed believe that even you will be permitted to remain near this dependent and fragile girl during the months of suffering and anguish that are likely to occur." "Father," said Eve, hurriedly drying her eyes, and rising to her feet with a motion so easy, and an effort so slight, that it appeared like the power of mere volition,--the superiority of the spirit over her light frame,--"father, do not let a thought of me distress you at this awful moment. You have known me only in happiness and prosperity,--an indulged and indolent girl; but I feel a force which is capable of sustaining me, even in this blank desert. The Arabs can have no other motive than to preserve us all, as captives likely to repay their care with a rich ransom. I know that a journey, according to their habits, will be painful and arduous, but it may be borne. Trust, then, more to my spirit than to my feeble body, and you will find that I am not as worthless as I fear you fancy." Mr. Effingham passed his arm round the slender waist of his child, and folded her almost frantically to his bosom. But Eve was aroused, and gently extricating herself, with bright tearless eyes, she looked round at her companions, as if she would reverse the order of their sympathies, and drive them to their own wants and hazards. "I know you think me the most exposed by this dreadful disaster," she said; "that I may not be able to bear up against the probable suffering, and that I shall sink first, because I am the feeblest and frailest in frame; but God permits the reed to bend, when the oak is destroyed. I am stronger, able to bear more than you imagine, and we shall all live to meet again, in happier scenes, should it be our present hard fortune to be separated." As Eve spoke, she cast affectionate looks on those dear to her by habit, and blood, and services; nor did she permit an unnecessary reserve at such a moment to prevent glances of friendly interest towards the two young men, whose very souls seemed wrapped in her movements. Words of encouragement from such a source, however, only served to set the frightful truth more vividly before the minds of her auditors, and not one of them heard what she said who did not feel an awful presentiment that a few weeks of the suffering of which she made so light, did she even escape a crueller fate, would consign that form, now so winning and lovely, to the sands. Mr. Effingham now rose, and for the first time the flood of sensations that had been so long gathering in his bosom, seemed ready to burst through the restraints of manhood. Struggling to command himself, he turned to his two young male companions, and spoke with an impressiveness and dignity that carried with them a double force, from the fact of his ordinary manners being so tempered and calm. "Gentlemen," he said, "we may serve each other, by coming to an understanding in time; or at least you may confer on me a favour that a life of gratitude would not repay. You are young and vigorous, bold and intelligent, qualities that will command the respect of even savages. The chances that one of you will survive to reach a Christian land are much greater than those of a man of my years, borne down as I shall be with the never-dying anxieties of a parent." "Father! father!" "Hush! darling: let me entreat these gentlemen to bear us in mind, should they reach a place of safety; for, after all, youth may do that in your behalf, which time will deny to John and myself. Money will be of no account, you know, to rescue my child from a fate far worse than death, and it may be some consolation to you, young men, to recollect, at the close of your own careers, which I trust will yet be long and happy, that a parent, in his last moments, found a consolation in the justifiable hopes he had placed on your generous exertions." "Father, I cannot bear this! For you to be the victim of these barbarians is too much; and I would prefer trusting all to a raft on the terrible ocean, to incurring the smallest chance of such a calamity. Mademoiselle, you will join me in the entreaty to the gentlemen to prepare a few planks to receive us, where we can perish together, and at least have the consolation of knowing that our eyes will be closed by friends. The longest survivor will be surrounded and supported by the spirits of those who have gone before, into a world devoid of care." "I have thought this from the first," returned Mademoiselle Viefville in French, with an energy of manner that betokened a high and resolved character: "I would not expose gentlewomen to the insults and outrages of barbarians; but did not wish to make a proposition that the feelings of others might reject." "It is a thousand times preferable to capture, if indeed it be practicable," said John Effingham, looking inquiringly towards Paul. The latter, however, shook his head in the negative, for, the wind blowing on shore, he knew it would be merely meeting captivity without the appearance of a self-reliance and dignity, that might serve to impress their captors favourably. "It is impossible," said Eve, reading the meaning of the glances, and dropping on her knees before Mr. Effingham; "well, then, may our trust be in God! We have yet a few minutes of liberty, and let them not be wasted idly, in vain regrets. Father, kiss me, and give me once more that holy and cherished blessing, with which you used to consign me to sleep, in those days when we scarce dreamed of, never realised, misfortune." "Bless you, bless you, my babe; my beloved, my cherished Eve!" said the father solemnly, but with a quivering lip. "May that dread Being whose ways, though mysterious, are perfect wisdom and mercy, sustain you in this trial, and bring you at last, spotless in spirit and person, to his own mansions of peace. God took from me early thy sainted mother, and I had impiously trusted in the hope that thou wert left to be my solace in age. Bless you, my Eve; I shall pray God, without ceasing, that thou mayest pass away as pure and as worthy of His love, as her to whom thou owest thy being." John Effingham groaned; the effort he made to repress his feelings causing the out-breaking of his soul to be deep though smothered. "Father, let us pray together. Ann, my good Ann, thou who first taught me to lisp a thanksgiving and a request, kneel here by my side--and you, too, mademoiselle; though of a different creed, we have a common God! Cousin John, you pray often, I know, though so little apt to show your emotions; there is a place for you, too, with those of your blood. I know not whether these gentlemen are too proud to pray." Both the young men knelt with the others, and there was a long pause in which the whole party put up their supplications, each according to his or her habits of thought. "Father!" resumed Eve, looking up as she still knelt between the knees of Mr. Effingham, and smiling fondly in the face of him she so piously loved; "there is one precious hope of which even the barbarians cannot rob us: we may be separated here, but our final meeting rests only with God!" Mademoiselle Viefville passed an arm round the waist of her sweet pupil, and pressed her against her heart. "There is but one abode for the blessed, my dear mademoiselle, and one expiation for us all." Then rising from her knees, Eve said with the grace and dignity of a gentlewoman, "Cousin Jack, kiss me; we know not when another occasion may offer to manifest to each other our mutual regard. You have been a dear and an indulgent kinsman to me, and should I live these twenty years a slave, I shall not cease to think of you with kindness and regret." John Effingham folded the beautiful and ardent girl in his arms, with the freedom and fondness of a parent. "Gentlemen," continued Eve, with a deepening colour, but eyes that were kind and grateful, "I thank you, too, for lending your supplications to ours. I know that young men in the pride of their security, seldom fancy such a dependence on God necessary; but the strongest are overturned, and pride is a poor substitute for the hope of the meek, I believe you have thought better of me than I merit, and I should never cease to reproach myself with a want of consideration, did I believe that any thing more than accident has brought you into this ill-fated vessel. Will you permit me to add one more obligation to the many I feel to you both?" advancing nearer to them, and speaking lower; "you are young, and likely to endure bodily exposure better than my father--that we shall be separated I feel persuaded--and it might be in your power to solace a heart-broken parent.--I see, I know, I may depend on your good offices." "Eve--my blessed daughter--my only, my beloved child!" exclaimed Mr. Effingham, who overheard her lowest syllable, so death-like was the stillness of the cabin--"come to me, dearest; no power on earth shall ever tear us asunder!" Eve turned quickly, and beheld the arms of her parent extended. She threw herself into them, when the pent and irresistible emotions broke loose in both, for they wept together, as she lay on his bosom, with a violence that in a man it was awfully painful to witness. Mr. Sharp had advanced to take the offered hand of Eve when she suddenly left him for the purpose just mentioned, and he now felt the grasp of Paul's fingers on his arm, as if they were about to penetrate the bone. Fearful of betraying the extent of their feelings, the two young men rushed on deck together, where they paced backward and forward for many minutes, quite unable to exchange a word, or even a look. Chapter XXIII. O Domine Deus! speravi in te, O care mi Jesu, nune libera me;-- In durâ catenâ, In miserâ poenâ, Desidero te-- Languendo, gemendo Et genuflectendo, Adora, imploro, ut liberes me. _Queen Mary._ The sublime consolations of religion were little felt by either of the two generous-minded and ardent young men who were pacing the deck of the Montauk. The gentle and the plastic admit the most readily of the divine influence; and of all on board the devoted vessel at that moment, they who were the most resigned to their fate were those who by their physical force were the least able to endure it. "This heavenly resignation," said Mr. Sharp, half whispering, "is even more heart-rending than the out-breakings of despair." "It is frightful!" returned his companion. "Any thing is better than passive submission in such circumstances. I see but little, indeed no hope of escape; but idleness is torture. If I endeavour to raise this boat, will you aid me?" "Command me like your slave. Would to Heaven there were the faintest prospects of success!" "There is but little; and should we even succeed, there are no means of getting far from the ship in the launch, as all the oars have been carried off by the captain, and I can hear of neither masts nor sails. Had we the latter, with this wind which is beginning to blow, we might indeed prolong the uncertainty, by getting on some of those more distant spits of sand." "Then, in the name of the blessed Maria!" exclaimed one behind them in French, "delay not an instant, and all on board will join in the labour!" The gentlemen turned in surprise, and beheld Mademoiselle Viefville standing so near them as to have overheard their conversation. Accustomed to depend on herself; coming of a people among whom woman is more energetic and useful, perhaps, than in any other Christian nation, and resolute of spirit naturally, this cultivated and generous female had come on deck purposely to see if indeed there remained no means by which they might yet escape the Arabs. Had her knowledge of a vessel at all equalled her resolution, it is probable that many fruitless expedients would already have been adopted; but finding herself in a situation so completely novel as that of a ship, until now she had found no occasion to suggest any thing to which her companions would be likely to lend themselves. But, seizing the hint of Paul, she pressed it on him with ardour, and, after a few minutes of urging, by her zeal and persuasion she prevailed on the two gentlemen to commence the necessary preparations without further delay. John Effingham and Saunders were immediately summoned by Mademoiselle Viefville herself, who, once engaged in the undertaking, pursued it fervently, while she went in person into the cabins to make the necessary preparations connected with their subsistence and comforts, should they actually succeed in quitting the vessel. No experienced mariner could set about the work with more discretion, or with a better knowledge of what was necessary to be done, than Mr, Blunt now showed. Saunders was directed to clear the launch, which had a roof on it, and still contained a respectable provision of poultry, sheep and pigs. The roof he was told not to disturb, since it might answer as a substitute for a deck; but everything was passed rapidly from the inside of the boat, which the steward commenced scrubbing and cleaning with an assiduity that he seldom manifested in his cabins. Fortunately, the tackles with which Mr. Leach had raised the sheers and stepped the jury-mast the previous morning were still lying on the deck, and Paul was spared the labour of reeving new ones. He went to work, therefore, to get up two on the substitute for a main-stay; a job that he had completed, through the aid of the two gentlemen on deck, by the time Saunders pronounced the boat to be in a fit condition to receive its cargo. The gripes were now loosened, and the fall of one of the tackles was led to the capstan. By this time Mademoiselle Viefville, by her energy and decision, had so far aroused Eve and her woman, that Mr. Effingham had left his daughter, and appeared on deck among those who were assisting Paul. So intense was the interest, however, which all took in the result, that the ladies, and even Ann Sidley, with the _femme de chambre_, suspended their own efforts, and stood clustering around the capstan as the gentlemen began to heave, almost breathless between their doubts and hopes; for it was a matter of serious question whether there was sufficient force to lift so heavy a body at all. Turn after turn was made, the fall gradually tightening, until those at the bars felt the full strain of their utmost force. "Heave together, gentlemen," said Paul Blunt, who directed every thing, besides doing so much with his own hands. "We have its weight now, and all we gain is so much towards lifting the boat." A steady effort was continued for two or three minutes, with but little sensible advantage, when all stopped far breath. "I fear it will surpass our strength," observed Mr. Sharp. "The boat seems not to have moved, and the ropes are stretched in a way to menace parting." "We want but the force of a boy added to our own," said Paul, looking doubtingly towards the females; "in such cases, a pound counts for a ton." "_Allons_!" cried Mademoiselle Viefville, motioning to the _femme de chambre_ to follow; "we will not be defeated for the want of such a trifle." These two resolute women applied their strength to the bars, and the power, which had been so equally balanced, preponderated in favour of the machine. The capstan, which a moment before was scarcely seen to turn, and that only by short and violent efforts, now moved steadily but slowly round, and the end of the launch rose. Eve was only prevented from joining the labourers by Nanny, who held her folded in her arms, fearful that some accident might occur to injure her. Paul Blunt now cheerfully announced the certainty that they had a force sufficient to raise the boat, though the operation would still be long and laborious. We say, cheerfully; for while this almost unhoped-for success promised little relief in the end, there is always something buoyant and encouraging in success of any sort. "We are masters of the boat," he said, "provided the Arabs do not molest us; and we may drift away, by means of some contrivance of a sail, to such a distance as will keep us out of their power, until all chance of seeing our friends again is finally lost." "This, then, is a blessed relief!" exclaimed Mr. Effingham; "and God may yet avert from us the bitterest portion of this calamity!" The pent emotions again flowed, and Eve once more wept in her father's arms, a species of holy joy mingling with her tears. In the mean time, Paul, having secured the fall by which they had just been heaving, brought the other to the capstan, when the operation was renewed with the same success. In this manner in the course of half an hour the launch hung suspended from the stay, at a sufficient height to apply the yard-tackles. As the latter, however, were not aloft, Paul having deemed it wise to ascertain their ability to lift the boat at all, before he threw away so much toil, the females renewed their preparations in the cabins, while the gentlemen assisted the young sailor in getting up the purchases. During this pause in the heaving, Saunders was sent below to search for sails and masts, both of which Paul thought must be somewhere in the ship, as he found the launch was fitted to receive them. It was apparent, in the mean time, that the Arabs watched their proceedings narrowly; for the moment Paul appeared on the yard a great movement took place among them, and several muskets were discharged in the direction of the ship, though the distance rendered the fire harmless. The gentlemen observed with concern, however, that the balls passed the vessel, a fearful proof of the extraordinary power of the arms used by these barbarians. Luckily the reef, which by this time was nearly bare ahead of the ship, was still covered in a few places nearer to the shore to a depth that forbade a passage, except by swimming. John Effingham, however, who was examining the proceedings of the Arabs with a glass, announced that a party appeared disposed to get on the naked rocks nearest the ship, as they had left the shore, dragging some light spars after them, with which they seemed to be about to bridge the different spots of deep water, most of which were sufficiently narrow to admit of being passed in this manner. Although the operation commenced by the Arabs would necessarily consume a good deal of time, this intelligence quickened the movements of all in the ship. Saunders, in particular, who had returned to report his want of success, worked with redoubled zeal; for, as is usual with those who are the least fortified by reason, he felt the greatest horror of falling into the hands of barbarians. It was a slow and laborious thing, notwithstanding, to get upon the yards the heavy blocks and falls; and had not Paul Blunt been quite as conspicuous for personal strength as he was ready and expert in a knowledge of his profession, he would not have succeeded in the unaided effort;--unaided aloft, though the others, of course, relieved him much by working at the whips on deck. At length this important arrangement was effected, the young man descended, and the capstan was again manned. This time the females were not required, it being in the power of the gentlemen to heave the launch out to the side of the ship, Paul managing the different falls so adroitly, that the heavy boat was brought so near and yet so much above the rail, as to promise to clear it. John Effingham now stood at one of the stay-tackle falls, and Paul at the other, when the latter made a signal to ease away. The launch settled slowly towards the side of the vessel until it reached the rail, against which it lodged. Catching a turn with his fall, Mr. Blunt sprang forward, and bending beneath the boat, he saw that its keel had hit a belaying-pin. One blow from a capstan-bar cleared away this obstruction, and the boat swung off. The stay-tackle falls were let go entirely, and all on board saw, with an exultation that words can scarcely describe, the important craft suspended directly over the sea. No music ever sounded more sweetly to the listeners than the first plash of the massive boat as it fell heavily upon the surface of the water. Its size, its roof, and its great strength gave it an appearance of security, that for the moment deceived them all; for, in contemplating the advantage they had so unexpectedly gained, they forgot the many obstacles that existed to their availing themselves of it. It was not many minutes before Paul was on the roof of the launch, had loosened the tackles, and had breasted the boat to, at the side of the ship, in readiness to receive the stores that the females had collected. In order that the reader may better understand the nature of the ark that was about to receive those who remained in the Montauk, however, it may be well to describe it. The boat itself was large, strong, and capable of resisting a heavy sea when well managed, and, of course, unwieldy in proportion. To pull it, at a moderate rate, eight or ten large oars were necessary; whereas, all the search of the gentlemen could not find one. They succeeded, however, in discovering a rudder and tiller, appliances not always used in launches, and Paul Blunt shipped them instantly. Around the gunwales of the boat, stanchions, which sustained a slightly-rounded roof, were fitted; a provision that it is usual to make in the packets, in order to, protect the stock they carry against the weather. This stock having been turned loose on the deck, and the interior cleaned, the latter now presented a snug and respectable cabin; one coarse and cramped, compared with those of the ship certainly, but on the other hand, one that might be well deemed a palace by shipwrecked mariners. As it would be possible to retain this roof until compelled by bad weather to throw it away, Paul, who had never before seen a boat afloat with such a canopy, regarded it with delight; for it promised a protection to that delicate form he so much cherished in his inmost heart, that he had not even dared to hope for. Between the roof and the gunwale of the boat, shutters buttoned in, so as to fill the entire space and when these were in their places, the whole of the interior formed an enclosed apartment, of a height sufficient to allow even a man to stand erect without his hat. It is true, this arrangement rendered the boat clumsy, and, to a certain extent, top-heavy and unmanageable; but so long as it could be retained, it also rendered it infinitely more comfortable than it could possibly be without it. The roof, moreover, might be cut away in five minutes, at any time, should circumstances require it. Paul had just completed a hasty survey of his treasure, for such he now began to consider the launch, when casting his eye upward, with the intention to mount the ship's side, he saw Eve looking down at him, as if to read their fate in the expression of his own countenance. "The Arabs," she hurriedly remarked, "are moving along the reef, as my father says, faster than he could wish, and all our hopes are centred in you and the boat. The first, I know, will not fail us, so long as means allow; but can we do anything with the launch?" "For the first time, dearest Miss Effingham, I see a little chance of rescuing ourselves from the grasp of these barbarians. There is no time to lose, but everything must be passed into the boat with as little delay as possible." "Bless you, bless you, Powis, for this gleam of hope! Your words are cordials, and our lives can scarcely serve to prove the gratitude we owe you." This was said naturally, and as one expresses a strong feeling, without reflection, or much weighing of words; but even at that fearful moment, it thrilled on every pulse of the young man. The ardent look that he gave the beautiful girl caused her to redden to the temples, and she hastily withdrew. The gentlemen now began to pass into the boat the different things that had been provided, principally by the foresight of Mademoiselle Viefville, where they were received by Paul who thrust them beneath the roof without stopping to lose the precious moments in stowage. They included mattresses, the trunks that contained their ordinary sea-attire, or those that were not stowed in the baggage-room, blankets, counterpanes, potted meats, bread, wine, various condiments and prepared food, from the stores of Saunders, and generally such things as had presented themselves in the hurry of the moment. Nearly half of the articles were rejected by Paul, as unnecessary, though he received many in consideration of the delicacy of his feebler companions, which would otherwise have been cast aside. When he found, however, that food enough had been passed into the boat to supply the wants of the whole party for several weeks, he solicited a truce, declaring it indiscreet to render themselves uselessly uncomfortable in this manner, to say nothing of the effect on the boat. The great requisite, water, was still wanting, and he now desired that the two domestics might get into the boat to arrange the different articles, while he endeavoured to find something that might serve as a substitute for sails, and obtain the all-important supply. His attention was first given to the water, without which all the other preparations would be rendered totally useless. Before setting about this, however, he stole a moment to look into the state of things among the Arabs. It was indeed time, for the tide had now fallen so low as to leave the rocks nearly bare, and several hundreds of the barbarians were advancing along the reef, towing their bridge, the slow progress of which alone prevented them from coming up at once to the point opposite the ship. Paul saw there was not a moment to lose, and, calling Saunders, he hurried below. Three or four small casks were soon found, when the steward brought them to the tank to be filled. Luckily the water had not to be pumped off, but it ran in a stream into the vessel that was placed to receive it. As soon as one cask was ready, it was carried on deck by the gentlemen, and was struck into the boat with as little delay as possible. The shouts of the Arabs now became audible, even to those who were below, and it required great steadiness of nerve to continue the all-important preparation. At length the last of the casks was filled, when Paul rushed on deck, for, by this time, the cries of the barbarians proclaimed their presence near the ship. When he reached the rail, he found the reef covered with them, some hailing the vessel, others menacing, hundreds still busied with their floating bridge, while a few endeavoured to frighten those on board by discharging their muskets over their heads. Happily, aim was impossible, so long as care was taken not to expose the body above the bulwarks. "We have not a moment to lose!" cried Mr. Effingham, on whose bosom Eve lay, nearly incapable of motion. "The food and water are in the boat, and in the name of a merciful God, let us escape from this scene of frightful barbarity?" "The danger is not yet so inevitable," returned Paul, steadily. "Frightful and pressing as it truly seems, we have a few minutes to think in. Let me entreat that Miss Effingham and Mademoiselle Viefville will receive a drop of this cordial." He poured into a glass a restorative from a bottle that had been left on the capstan as superfluous, in the confusion of providing stores, and held it to the pallid lips of Eve. As she swallowed a mouthful, nearly as helpless as the infant that receives nourishment from the hand of its nurse, the blood returned, and raising herself from her father's arms, she smiled, though with an effort, and thanked him for his care. "It was a dread moment," she said, passing a hand over her brow; "but it is past, and I am better. Mademoiselle Viefville will be obliged to you, also, for a little of this." The firm-minded and spirited Frenchwoman, though pale as death, and evidently suffering under extreme apprehension, put aside the glass courteously, declining its contents. "We are sixty fathoms from the rocks," said Paul calmly, "and they must cross this ditch yet, to reach us. None of them seem disposed to attempt it by swimming, and their bridge, though ingeniously put together, may not prove long enough." "Would it be safe for the ladies to get into the boat where she lies, exposed as they would be to the muskets of the Arabs?" inquired Mr. Sharp. "All that shall be remedied," returned Paul. "I cannot quit the deck; would you," slightly bowing to Mr. Sharp, "go below again, with Saunders, and look for some light sail? without one, we cannot move away from the ship, even when in the boat. I see a suitable spar and necessary rigging on deck; but the canvas must be looked for in the sail-room. It is a nervous thing, I confess, to be below at such a moment; but you have too much faith in us to dread being deserted." Mr. Sharp grasped the hand as a pledge of a perfect reliance on the other's faith, but he could not speak. Calling Saunders, the steward received his instructions, when the two went hastily below. "I could wish the ladies were in the boat with their women," said Paul, for Ann Sidley and the _femme de chambre_ were still in the launch, busied in disposing of its mixed cargo of stores, though concealed from the Arabs by the roof and shutters; "but it would be hazardous to attempt it while exposed to the fire from the reef. We shall have to change the position of the ship in the end, and it may as well be done at once." Beckoning to John Effingham to follow, he went forward to examine into the movements of the Arabs, once more, before he took any decided step. The two gentlemen placed themselves behind the high defences of the forecastle, where they had a fair opportunity of reconnoitring their assailants, the greater height of the ship's deck completely concealing all that had passed on it from the sight of those on the rocks. The barbarians, who seemed to be, and who in truth were, fully apprised of the defenceless and feeble condition of the party on board, were at work without the smallest apprehension of receiving any injury from that quarter. Their great object was to get possession of the ship, before the returning water should again drive them from the rocks. In order to effect this, they had placed all who were willing and sufficiently subordinate on the bridge, though a hundred were idle, shouting, clapping their hands, menacing, and occasionally discharging a musket, of which there were probably fifty in their possession. "They work with judgment at their pontoon," said Paul, after he had examined the proceedings of those on the reef for a few minutes. "You may perceive that they have dragged the outer end of the bridge up to windward, and have just shoved it from the rocks, with the intention to permit it to drift round, until it shall bring up against the bows of the ship, when they will pour on board like so many tigers. It is a disjointed and loose contrivance, that the least sea would derange; but in this perfectly smooth water it will answer their purpose. It moves slowly, but will surely drift round upon us in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes more; and of this they appear to be quite certain themselves, for they seem as well satisfied with their work as if already assured of its complete success." "It is, then, important to us to be prompt, since our time will be so brief." "We will be prompt, but in another mode. If you will assist me a little, I think this effort, at least, may be easily defeated, after which it will be time enough to think of escape." Paul, aided by John Effingham, now loosened the chains altogether from the bitts, and suffered the ship to drop astern. As this was done silently and stealthily, it occupied several minutes; but the wind being by this time fresh, the huge mass yielded to its power with certainty; and when the bridge had floated round in a direct line from the reef, or dead to leeward, there was a space of water between its end and the ship of more than a hundred feet. The Arabs had rushed on it in readiness to board; but they set up a yell of disappointment as soon as the truth was discovered. A tumult followed; several fell from the wet and slippery spars; but, after a short time wasted in confusion and clamour, the directions of their chiefs were obeyed, and they set to work with energy to break up their bridge, in order to convert its materials into a raft. By this time Mr. Sharp and Saunders had returned, bringing with them several light sails, such as spare royals and top-gallant studding-sails. Paul next ordered a spare mizzen-top-gallant mast, with a top-gallant studding-sail boom, and a quantity of light rope to be laid in the gangway, after which he set about the final step. As time now pressed in earnest, the Arabs working rapidly and with increasing shouts, he called upon all the gentlemen for assistance, giving such directions as should enable them to work with intelligence. "Bear a hand, Saunders," he said, having taken the steward forward with him, as one more accustomed to ships than the others; "bear a hand my fine fellow, and light up this chain. Ten minutes just now are of more value than a year at another time." "'Tis awful, Mr. Blunt, sir--werry awful, I do confirm," returned the steward, blubbering and wiping his eyes between the drags at the chains. "Such a fate to befall such cabins, sir!--And the crockery of the werry best quality out of London or New York! Had I diwined such an issue for the Montauk, sir, I never would have counselled Captain Truck to lay in half the stores we did, and most essentially not the new lots of vines. Oh! sir, it is truly awful to have such a calamity wisit so much elegant preparation!" "Forget it all, my fine fellow, and light up the chain. Ha!--she touches abaft! Ten or fifteen fathoms more will answer." "I've paid great dewotion to the silver, Mr. Blunt, sir, for it's all in the launch, even to the broken mustard-spoon; and I do hope, if Captain Truck's soul is permitted to superintend the pantry any longer, it will be quite beatified and encouraged with my prudence and oversight. I left all the rest of the table furniture, sir; though I suppose these _muscle_-men will not have much use for any but the oyster-knives, as I am informed they eat with their fingers. I declare it is quite oppressive and unhuman to have such wagabonds rummaging one's lockers!" "Rouse away, my man, and light up! the ship has caught the breeze on her larboard bow, and begins to take the chain more freely. Remember that precious beings depend on us for safety!" "Ay, ay, sir; light up, it is. I feel quite a concern for the ladies, sir, and more especially for the stores we abandon to the underwriters. A better-found ship never came out of St. Catherine's Docks or the East River, particularly in the pantry department; and I wonder what these wretches will do with her. They will be quite abashed with her conveniences, sir, and unable to enjoy them. Poor Toast, too! he will have a monstrous unpleasant time with the _muscle_-men; for he never eats fish; and has quite a genteel and ameliorated way with him. I shouldn't wonder if he forgot all I have taken so much pains to teach him, sir, unless he's dead; in which case it will be of no use to him in another world." "That will do," interrupted Paul, ceasing his labour, "the ship is aground from forward aft. We will now hurry the spars and sails into the boat, and let the ladies get into her." In order that the reader may better understand the present situation of the ship, it may be necessary to explain what Mr. Powis and the steward had been doing all this time. By paying out the chains, the ship had fallen farther astern, until she took the ground abaft on the edge of the sand-bank so often mentioned; and, once fast at that end, her bows had fallen off, pressed by the wind, as long as the depth of the water would allow. She now lay aground forward and aft, with her starboard side to the reef, and the launch between the vessel and the naked sands was completely covered from the observations and assaults of the barbarians by the former. Eve, Mademoiselle Viefville, and Mr. Effingham now got into the launch, while the others still remained in the ship to complete the preparations. "They get on fast with their raft," said Paul, while he both worked himself and directed the labour of the others, "though we shall be safe here until they actually quit the rocks. Their spars will be certain to float down upon the ship; but the movement will necessarily be slow, as the water is too deep to admit of setting, even if they had poles, of which I see none. Throw these spare sails on the roof of the launch, Saunders. They may be wanted before we reach a port, should God protect us long enough to effect so much. Pass two compasses also into the boat, with all the carpenter's tools that have been collected." While giving these orders, Paul was busied in sawing off the larger end of the pole-mizzen-top-gallant-mast, to convert it into a spar for the launch. This was done by the time he ceased speaking; a step was made, and, jumping down on the roof of the boat, he cut out a hole to receive it, at a spot he had previously marked for that purpose. By the time he had done, the spar was ready to be entered, and in another minute they had the satisfaction of seeing a very sufficient mast in its place. A royal was also stretched to its yard, and halyards, tack and sheet, being bent, everything was ready to run up a sail at a moment's warning. As this supplied the means of motion, the gentlemen began to breathe more freely, and to bethink them of those minor comforts and essentials that in the hurry of such a scene would be likely to be overlooked. After a few more busy minutes, all was pronounced to be ready, and John Effingham began seriously to urge the party to quit the ship; but Paul still hesitated. He strained his eyes in the direction of the wreck, in the vain hope of yet receiving succour from that quarter; but, of course, uselessly, as it was about the time when Captain Truck was warping off with his raft, in order to obtain an offing. Just at this moment a party of twenty Arabs got upon the spars, which they had brought together into a single body, and began to drift down slowly upon the ship. Paul cast a look about him to see if anything else that was useful could be found, and his eyes fell upon the gun. It struck him that it might be made serviceable as a scarecrow in forcing their way through the inlet, and he determined to lodge it on the roof of the launch, for the present, at least, and to throw it overboard as soon as they got into rough water, if indeed they should be so fortunate as to get outside of the reef at all. The stay and yard tackles offered the necessary facilities, and he instantly slung the piece. A few rounds of the capstan lifted it from the deck, a few more bore it clear of the side, and then it was easily lowered on the roof, Saunders being sent into the boat to set up a stanchion beneath, in order that its weight might do no injury. The gentlemen at last got into the launch, with the exception of Paul, who still lingered in the ship watching the progress of the Arabs, and making his calculations for the future. It required great steadiness of nerve, perfect self-reliance, and an entire confidence in his resources and knowledge, for one to remain a passive spectator of the slow drift of the raft, while it gradually settled down on the ship. As it approached, Paul was seen by those on it, and, with the usual duplicity of barbarians, they made signs of amity and encouragement. These signs did not deceive the young man, however, who only remained to be a close observer of their conduct, thinking some useful hint might thus be obtained, though his calmness so far imposed on the Arabs that they even made signs to him to throw them a rope. Believing it now time to depart, he answered the signal favourably, and disappeared from their sight. Even in descending to the boat, this trained and cool young seaman betrayed no haste. His movements were quick, and everything was done with readiness and knowledge certainly, but no confusion or trepidation occasioned the loss of a moment. He hoisted the sail, brought down the tack, and then descended beneath the roof, having first hauled in the painter, and given the boat a long and vigorous shove, to force it from the side of the vessel. By this last expedient he at once placed thirty feet of water between the boat and the Montauk, a space that the Arabs had no means of overcoming. As soon as he was beneath the roof the sheet was hauled in, and Paul seized the tiller; which had been made, by means of a narrow cut in the boards, to play in one of the shutters. Mr. Sharp took a position in the bows, where he could see the sands and channels through the crevices, directing the other how to steer; and just as a shout announced the arrival of the raft at the other side of the ship, the flap of their sail gave those in the boat the welcome intelligence that they had got so far from her cover as to feel the force of the wind. Chapter XXIV. Speed, gallant bark! richer cargo is thine, Than Brazilian gem, or Peruvian mine; And the treasures thou bearest thy destiny wait, For they, if thou perish, must share in thy fate. PARK The departure of the boat was excellently timed. Had it left the side of the ship while the Arabs on the raft were unoccupied, and at a little distance, it would have been exposed to their fire; for at least a dozen of those who boarded had muskets; whereas the boat now glided away to leeward, while they were busy in getting up her side, or were so near the ship as not to be able to see the launch at all. When Paul Powis, who was looking astern through a crevice, saw the first Arab on the deck of the Montauk, the launch was already near a cable's length from her, running with a fresh and free wind into one of the numerous little channels that intersected the naked banks of sand. The unusual construction of the boat, with its enclosed roof, and the circumstance that no one was visible on board her, had the effect to keep the barbarians passive, until distance put her beyond the reach of danger. A few muskets were discharged, but they were fired at random, and in the bravado of a semi-savage state of feeling. Paul kept the launch running off free, until he was near a mile from the ship, when, finding he was approaching the reef to the northward and eastward, and that a favourable sand-bank lay a short distance ahead, he put down the helm, let the sheet fly, and the boat's forefoot shot upon the sands. By a little management, the launch was got broadside to the bank, the water being sufficiently deep, and, when it was secured, the females were enabled to land through the opening of a shutter. The change from the apparent hopelessness of their situation, was so great, as to render the whole party comparatively happy. Paul and John Effingham united in affirming it would be quite possible to reach one of the islands to leeward in so good a boat, and that they ought to deem themselves fortunate, under the circumstances, in being the masters of a little bark so well found in every essential. Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville, who had fervently returned their thanks to the Great Ruler of events, while in the boat, walked about the hard sand with even a sense of enjoyment, and smiles began again to brighten the beautiful features of the first. Mr. Effingham declared, with a grateful heart, that in no park, or garden, had he ever before met with a promenade that seemed so delightful as this spot of naked and moistened sand, on the sterile coast of the Great Desert. Its charm was its security, for its distance from every point that could be approached by the Arabs, rendered it, in their eyes, a paradise. Paul Powis, however, though he maintained a cheerful air, and the knowledge that he had been so instrumental in saving the party lightened his heart of a load, and disposed him even to gaiety, was not without some lingering remains of uneasiness. He remembered the boats of the Dane, and, as he thought it more than probable Captain Truck had fallen into the hands of the barbarians, he feared that the latter might yet find the means to lay hands on themselves. While he was at work fitting the rigging, and preparing a jigger, with a view to render the launch more manageable, he cast frequent uneasy glances to the northward, with a feverish apprehension that one of the so-long-wished-for boats might at length appear. Their friends he no longer expected, but his fears were all directed towards the premature arrival of enemies from that quarter. None appeared, however, and Saunders actually lighted a fire on the bank, and prepared the grateful refreshment of tea for the whole party; none of which had tasted food since morning, though it was now drawing near night. "Our caterers," said Paul, smiling, as he cast his eyes over the repast which Ann Sidley had spread on the roof of the boat, where they were all seated on stools, boxes, and trunks, "our caterers have been of the gentler sex, as any one may see, for we have delicacies that are fitter for a banquet than a desert." "I thought Miss Eve would relish them, sir," Nanny meekly excused herself by saying; "she is not much accustomed to a coarse diet; and mamerzelle, too, likes niceties, as I believe is the case with all of French extraction." Eve's eyes glistened, though she felt it necessary to say something by way of apology. "Poor Ann has been so long accustomed to humour the caprices of a petted girl," she said, "that I fear those who will have occasion for all their strength may be the sufferers. I should regret it for ever, Mr. Powis, if _you_, who are every way of so much importance to us, should not find the food you required." "I have very inadvertently and unwittingly drawn down upon myself the suspicion of being one of Mr. Monday's _gourmets_, a plain roast and boiled person," the young man answered laughingly, "when it was merely my desire to express the pleasure I had in perceiving that those whose comfort and ease are of more account than any thing else, have been so well cared for. I could almost starve with satisfaction, Miss Effingham, if I saw you free from suffering under the extraordinary circumstances in which we are placed." Eve looked grateful, and the emotion excited by this speech restored all that beauty which had so lately been chilled by fear. "Did I not hear a dialogue between you and Mr. Saunders touching the merits of sundry stores that had been left in the ship?" asked John Effingham, turning to Paul by way of relieving his cousin's distress. "Indeed you might; he relieved the time we were rousing at the chains with a beautiful Jeremiad on the calamities of the lockers. I fancy, steward, that you consider the misfortunes of the pantry as the heaviest disaster that has befallen the Montauk!" Saunders seldom smiled. In this particular he resembled Captain Truck; the one subduing all light emotions from an inveterate habit of serious comicality, and the responsibility of command; and the other having lost most of his disposition to merriment, as the cart-horse loses his propensity to kick, from being overworked. The steward, moreover, had taken up the conceit that it was indicative of a "nigger" to be merry; and, between dignity, a proper regard to his colour--which was about half-way between that of a Gold Coast importation, and a rice-plantation overseer, down with the fever in his third season--and dodged submission to unmitigated calls on his time, the prevailing character of the poor fellow's physiognomy was that of a dolorous sentimentality He believed himself to be materially refined by having had so much intimate communication with gentlemen and ladies, suffering under sea-sickness, and he knew that no man in the ship could use language like that he had always at his finger's ends. While so strongly addicted to melancholy, therefore, he was fond of hearing himself talk; and, palpably encouraged as he had now been by John Effingham and Paul, and a little emboldened by the familiarity of a shipwreck, he did not hesitate about mingling in the discourse, though holding the Effinghams habitually in awe. "I esteem it a great privilege, ladies and gentlemen," he observed, as soon as Paul ceased, "to have the honour of being _wracked_ (for so the steward, in conformity with the Doric of the forecastle, pronounced the word,) in such company. I should deem it a disgrace to be cast away in some society I could name, although I will predicate, as we say in America, nothing on their absence. As to what inwolves the stores, it surgested itself to me that the ladies would like delicate diet, and I intermated as much to Mrs. Sidley and t'other French waiting-woman. Do you imagine, gentlemen, that the souls of the dead are permitted to look back at such ewents of this life as touches their own private concerns and feelings?" "That would depend, I should think, steward, on the nature of the employment of the souls themselves," returned John Effingham. "There must be certain souls to which any occupation would be more agreeable than that of looking behind them. But, may I ask why you inquire?" "Because, Mr. John Effingham, sir, I do not believe Captain Truck can ever be happy in heaven, as long as the ship is in the hands of the Arabs! If she had been honourably and fairly wracked, and the captain suffercated by drowning, he could go to sleep like another Christian; but, I do think, sir, if there be any special perdition for seamen, it must be to see their vessel rummaged by Arabs. I'll warrant, now, those blackguards have had their fingers in everything already; sugar, chocolate, raisins, coffee, cakes, and all! I wonder who they think would like to use articles they have handled! And there is poor Toast, gentlemen, an aspiring and improving young man; one who had the materials of a good steward in him, though I can hardly say they were completely deweloped. I did look forward to the day when I could consign him to Mr. Leach as my own predecessor, when Captain Truck and I should retire, as I have no doubt we should have done on the same day, but for this distressing accident. I dewoutly pray that Toast is deceased, for I would rather any misfortune should befall him in the other world than that he should be compelled to associate with Arab niggers in this. Dead or alive, ladies, I am an advocate for a man's keeping himself respectable, and in proper company." So elastic had the spirits of the whole become by their unlooked-for escape, that Saunders was indulged to the top of his humour, and while he served the meal, passing between his fire on the sands and the roof of the launch, he enjoyed a heartier gossip than any he had had since they left the dock; not even excepting those sniggering scenes with Mr. Toast in the pantry, in which he used to unbend himself a little, forgetting his dignity as steward in the native propensities of the black. Paul Powis entered but a moment into the trifling, for on him rested the safety of all. He alone could navigate, or even manage the boat in rough water; and, while the others confided so implicitly in his steadiness and skill, he felt the usual burden of responsibility. When the supper was ended, and the party were walking up and down the little islet of sand, he took his station on the roof therefore, and examined the proceedings of the Arabs with the glass; Mr. Sharp, with a species of chivalrous self-denial that was not lost on his companion, foregoing the happiness of walking at the side of Eve, to remain near him. "The wretches have laid waste the cabins already!" observed Mr. Sharp, when Paul had been looking at the ship some little time. "That which it took months to produce they will destroy in an hour." "I do not see that," returned Paul; "there are but about fifty in the ship, and their efforts seem to be directed to hauling her over against the rocks. They have no means of landing their plunder where she lies; and I suspect there is a sort of convention that all are to start fair. One or two, who appear to be chiefs, go in and out of the cabins; but the rest are actively engaged in endeavouring to move the ship." "And with what success?" "None, apparently. It exceeds their knowledge of mechanics to force so heavy a mass from its position. The wind has driven the ship firmly on the bank, and nothing short of the windlass, or capstan, can remove her. These ignorant creatures have got two or three small ropes between the vessel and the reef, and are pulling fruitlessly at both ends! But _our_ chief concern will be to find an outlet into the ocean, when we will make the best of our way towards the Cape de Verds." Paul now commenced a long and close examination of the reef, to ascertain by what openings he might get the launch on the outside. To the northward of the great inlet there was a continued line of rocks, on which he was sorry to perceive armed Arabs beginning to show themselves; a sign that the barbarians still entertained the hope of capturing the party. Southward of the inlet there were many places in which a boat might pass at half-tide, and he trusted to getting through one of them as soon as it became dark. As the escape in the boat could not have been foreseen, the Arabs had not yet brought down upon them the boats of the wreck; but should morning dawn and find them still within the reef, he saw no hope of final escape against boats that would posess the advantage of oars, ignorant as the barbarians might be of their proper use. Every thing was now ready. The interior of the launch was divided into two apartments by counterpanes, trunks, and boxes; the females spreading their mattresses in the forward room, and the males in the other. Some of those profound interpreters of the law, who illustrate legislation by the devices of trade, had shipped in the Montauk several hundred rude leaden busts of Napoleon, with a view to save the distinction in duties between the metal manufactured and the metal unmanufactured. Four or five of these busts had been struck into the launch as ballast. They were now snugly stowed, together with the water, and all the heavier articles, in the bottom of the boat. The jigger had been made and bent, and a suitable mast was stepped by means of the roof. In short, every provision for comfort or safety that Paul could think of had been attended to: and every thing was in readiness to re-embark as soon as the proper hour should arrive. The gentler portion of the party were seated on the edge of the roof, watching the setting sun, and engaged in a discourse with feelings more attempered to their actual condition than had been the case immediately after their escape. The evening had a little of that wild and watery aspect which, about the same hour, had given Captain Truck so much concern, but the sun dipped gorgeously into the liquid world of the West, and the whole scene, including the endless desert, the black reef, the stranded ship, and the movements of the bustling Arabs, was one of gloomy grandeur. "Could we foretell the events of a month," said John Effingham, "with what different feelings from the present would life be chequered! When we left London, the twenty days since, our eyes and minds were filled with the movements, cares, refinements, and interest of a great and polished capital, and here we sit, houseless wanderers, gazing at an eventide on the coast of Africa! In this way, young men, and young ladies too, will you find, as life glides away that the future will disappoint the expectations of the present moment!" "All futures are not gloomy, cousin Jack," said Eve; "nor is all hope doomed to meet with disappointment. A merciful God cares for us when we are reduced to despair on our own account, and throws a ray of unexpected light on our darkest hours. Certainly we, of all his creatures, ought not to deny this!" "I do not deny it. We have been rescued in a manner so simple as to seem unavoidable, and yet so unexpected as to be almost miraculous. Had not Mr. Blunt, or Mr. Powis, as you call him--although I am not in the secret of the masquerade--but, had not this gentleman been a seaman, it would have surpassed all our means to get this boat into the water, or even to use her properly were she even launched. I look upon his profession as being the first great providential interference, or provision, in our behalf; and his superior skill and readiness in that profession as a circumstance of no less importance to us." Eve was silent; but the glow in the western sky was scarcely more radiant and bright than the look she cast on the subject of the remark. "It is no great merit to be a seaman, for the trade is like another, a mere matter of practice and education," observed Paul, after a moment of awkward hesitation. "If, as you say, I have been instrumental in serving you, I shall never regret the accidents--cruel accidents of my early life I had almost called them--that cast my fortunes so early on the ocean." A falling pin would have been heard, and all hoped the young man would proceed; but he chose to be silent. Saunders happened to overhear the remark, for he was aiding Ann Sidley in the boat, and he took up the subject where it was left by the other, in a little aside with his companion. "It is a misfortune that Mr. Dodge is not here to question the gentleman," said the steward to his assistant, "and then we might hear more of his adwentures, which, I make no doubt, have been werry pathetic and romantical. Mr. Dodge is a genuine inquisitor, Mistress Ann; not such an inquisitor as burns people and flays them in Spain, where I have been, but such an inquisitor as torments people, and of whom we have lots in America." "Let the poor man rest in peace," said Nanny, sighing. "He's gone to his great account, steward; and I fear we shall none of us make as good a figure as we might at the final settling. Besides Miss Eve, I never knew a mortal that wasn't more or less a sinner." "So they all say; and I must allow that my experience leans to the wicked side of the question. Captain Truck, now, was a worthy man; but he had his faults, as well as Toast. In the first place he would swear when things took him aback; and then, he had no prewarication about speaking his mind of a fellow-creature, if the coffee happened to be thick, or the poultry didn't take fat kindly. I've known him box the compass with oaths if the ship was got in irons." "It's very sinful; and it is to be feared that the poor man was made to think of all this in his latter moments." "If the Arabs undertook to cannibalize him, I think he must have given it to them right and left," continued Saunders, wiping an eye, for between him and the captain there had existed some such affection as the prisoner comes to feel for the handcuffs with which he amuses his _ennui_, "some of his oaths would choke a dog." "Well, let him rest--let him rest. Providence is kind, and the poor man may have repented in season." "And Toast, too! I'm sure, Mrs. Ann, I forgive Toast all the little mistakes he made, from the bottom of my heart, and particularly that affair of the beefsteak that he let fall into the coffee the morning that Captain Truck took me so flat aback about it; and I pray most dewoutly that the captain, now he has dropped this mortal coil, and that there is nothing left of him but soul, may not find it out, lest it should breed ill-blood between them in heaven." "Steward, you scarcely know what you say," interrupted Ann, shocked at his ignorance, "and I will speak of it no more." Mr. Saunders was compelled to acquiesce, and he amused himself by listening to what was said by those on the roof. As Paul did not choose to explain farther, however, the conversation was resumed as if he had said nothing. They talked of their escape, their hopes, and of the supposed fate of the rest of the party; the discourse leaving a feeling of sadness on all, that harmonized with the melancholy, but not unpicturesque, scene in which they were placed. At length the night set in; and as it threatened to be dark and damp, the ladies early made their arrangements to retire. The gentlemen remained on the sands much later; and it was ten o clock before Paul Powis and Mr. Sharp, who had assumed the watch, were left alone. This was about an hour later than the period already described as the moment when Captain Truck disposed himself to sleep in the launch of the Dane. The weather had sensibly altered in the brief interval, and there were signs that, to the understanding of our young seaman, denoted a change. The darkness was intense. So, deep and pitchy black, indeed, had the night become, that even the land was no longer to be distinguished, and the only clues the two gentlemen had to its position were the mouldering watch-fires of the Arab camp, and the direction of the wind. "We will now make an attempt," said Paul, stopping in his short walk on the sand, and examining the murky vault over head. "Midnight is near; and by two o'clock the tide will be entirely up. It is a dark night to thread these narrow channels in, and to go out upon the ocean, too, in so frail a bark! But the alternative is worse." "Would it not be better to allow the water to rise still higher? I see by these sands that it has not yet done coming in." "There is not much tide in these low latitudes, and the little rise that is left may help us off a bank, should we strike one. If you will get upon the roof, I will bring in the grapnels and force the boat off." Mr. Sharp complied, and in a few minutes the launch was floating slowly away from the hospitable bank of sand. Paul hauled out the jigger, a small sprit-sail, that kept itself close-hauled from being fastened to a stationary boom, and a little mast stepped quite aft, the effect of which was to press the boat against the wind. This brought the launch's head up, and it was just possible to see, by close attention, that they had a slight motion through the water. "I quit that bank of sand as one quits a tried friend," said Paul, all the conversation now being in little more than whispers: "when near it, I know where we are; but presently we shall be absolutely lost in this intense darkness." "We have the fires of the Arabs for lighthouses still." "They may give us some faint notions of our position but light like that is a very treacherous guide in so dark a night. We have little else to do but to keep an eye on the water, and to endeavour to get to windward." Paul set the lug-sail, into which he had converted the royal, and seated himself directly in the eyes of the boat, with a leg hanging down on each side of the cutwater. He had rigged lines to the tiller, and with one in each hand he steered, as if managing a boat with yoke-lines. Mr. Sharp was seated at hand, holding the sheet of the mainsail; a boat-hook and a light spar lying on the roof near by, in readiness to be used should they ground. While on the bank, Paul had observed that, by keeping the boat near the wind, he might stretch through one of the widest of the channels for near two miles unless disturbed by currents, and that, when at its southern end, he should be far enough to windward to fetch the inlet, but for the banks of sand that might lie in his way. The distance had prevented his discerning any passage through the reef at the farther end of this channel; but, the boat drawing only two feet of water, he was not without hopes of being able to find one. A chasm, that was deep enough to prevent the passage of the Arabs when the tide was in, would, he thought, certainly suffice for their purpose. The progress of the boat was steady, and reasonably fast; but it was like moving in a mass of obscurity. The gentleman watched the water ahead intently, with a view to avoid the banks, but with little success; for, as they advanced, it was merely one pile of gloom succeeding another. Fortunately the previous observation of Paul availed them, and for more than half an hour their progress was uninterrupted. "They sleep in security beneath us," said Paul, "while we are steering almost at random. This is a strange and hazardous situation in which we are placed. The obscurity renders all the risks double." "By the watch-fires, we must have nearly crossed the bay, and I should think we are now quite near the southern reef." "I think the same; but I like not this baffling of the wind. It comes fresher at moments, but it is in puffs, and fear there will be a shift It is now my best pilot." "That and the fires." "The fires are treacherous always. It looks darker than ever ahead!" The wind ceased blowing altogether, and the sail fell in heavily. Almost at the same moment the launch lost its way, and Paul had time to thrust the boot-hook forward just in season to prevent its striking a rock. "This is a part of the reef, then, that is never covered," said he. "If you will get on the rocks and hold the boat, I will endeavour to examine the place for a passage. Were we one hundred feet to the southward and westward, we should be in the open ocean, and comparatively safe." Mr. Sharp complied, and Paul descended carefully on the reef, feeling his way in the intense darkness by means of the boat-hook. He was absent ten minutes, moving with great caution, as there was the danger of his falling into the sea at every step. His friend began to be uneasy, and the whole of the jeopardy of their situation presented itself vividly to his mind in that brief space of time, should accident befall their only guide. He was looking anxiously in the direction in which Paul had disappeared, when he felt a gripe of his arm. "Breathe even with care!" whispered Paul hurriedly. "These rocks are covered with Arabs, who have chosen to remain on the dry parts of the reef, in readiness for their plunder in the morning. Thank Heaven! I have found you again; for I was beginning to despair. To have called to you would have been certain capture, as eight or ten of the barbarians are sleeping within fifty feet of us. Get on the roof with the least possible noise, and leave the rest to me." As soon as Mr. Sharp was in the boat, Paul gave it a violent shove from the rocks, and sprang on the roof at the same moment. This forced the launch astern, and procured a momentary safety. But the wind had shifted. It now came baffling, and in puffs, from the Desert, a circumstance that brought them again to leeward. "This is the commencement of the trades," said Paul, "they have been interrupted by the late gale, but are returning. Were we outside the reef, our prayers could not be more kindly answered than by giving us this very wind but here, where we are, it comes unseasonably. Ha!--this, at least, helps her!" A puff from the land filled the sails, and the ripple of the water at the stern was just audible. The helm was attended to, and the boat drew slowly from the reef and ahead. "We have all reason for gratitude! That danger, at least, is avoided. Ha! the boat is aground!" Sure enough the launch was on the sands. They were still so near the rocks, as to require the utmost caution in their proceedings. Using the spar with great care, the gentlemen discovered that the boat hung astern, and there remained no choice but patience. "It is fortunate the Arabs have no dogs with them on the rocks: you hear them howling incessantly in their camps." "It is, truly. Think you we can ever find the inlet in this deep obscurity?" "It is our only course. By following the rocks we should be certain to discover it; but you perceive they are already out of sight, though they cannot be thirty fathoms from us. The helm is free, and the boat must be clear of the bottom again. This last puff has helped us." Another silence succeeded, during which the launch moved slowly onward, though whither, neither of the gentlemen could tell. But a single fire remained in sight, and that glimmered like a dying blaze. At times the wind came hot and arid, savouring of the Desert, and then intervals of death-like calm would follow. Paul watched the boat narrowly for half an hour, turning every breath of air to the best account, though he was absolutely ignorant of his position. The reef had not been seen again, and three several times they grounded, the tide as often floating them off. The course, too, had been repeatedly varied. The result was that painful and profound sensation of helplessness that overcomes us all when the chain of association is broken, and reason becomes an agent less useful than instinct. "The last fire is out," whispered Paul. "I fear that the day will dawn and find us still within the reef." "I see an object near us. Can it be a high bank?" The wind had entirely ceased, and the boat was almost without motion. Paul saw a darkness more intense even than common ahead of him, and he leaned forward, naturally raising a hand before him in precaution. Something he touched, he knew not what; but feeling a hard smooth surface, that he at first mistook for a rock, he raised his eyes slowly, and discerned, by the little light that lingered in the vault of heaven, a dim tracery that he recognized. His hand was on the quarter of the ship! "'Tis the Montauk!" he whispered breathlessly, "and her decks must be covered with Arabs. Hist!--do you hear nothing?" They listened, and smothered voices, those of the watch, mingled with low laughter, were quite audible. This was a crisis to disturb the coolness of one less trained and steady than Paul; but he preserved his self-possession. "There is good as well as evil in this," he whispered. "I now know our precise position; and, God be praised! the inlet is near, could we but reach it.--By a strong shove we can always force the launch from the vessel's side, and prevent their boarding us; and I think, with extreme caution, we may even haul the boat past the ship undetected." This delicate task was undertaken. It was necessary to avoid even a tread heavier than common, a fall of the boat-hook, or a collision with the vessel, as the slightest noise became distinctly audible in the profound stillness of deep night. Once enlightened as to his real position, however, Paul saw with his mind's eye obstructions that another might not have avoided. He knew exactly where to lay his hand, when to bear off, and when to approach nearer to the side of the ship, as he warily drew the boat along the massive hull.--The yard of the launch luckily leaned towards the reef, and offered no impediment. In this manner, then, the two gentlemen hauled their boat as far as the bows of the ship, and Paul was on the point of giving a last push, with a view to shove it to as great a distance possible ahead of the packet, when its movement was suddenly and violently arrested. Chapter XXV. And when the hours of rest Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine Hushing its billowy breast-- The quiet of that moment, too, is thine; It breathes of him who keeps The vast and helpless city while it sleeps. BRYANT. It was chilling to meet with this unexpected and sudden check at so critical a moment. The first impression was, that some one of the hundreds of Arabs, who were known to be near, had laid a hand on the launch; but this fear vanished on examination. No one was visible, and the side of the boat was untouched. The boat-hook could find no impediment in the water, and it was not possible that they could again be aground. Raising the boat-hook over his head, Paul soon detected the obstacle. The line used by the barbarians in their efforts to move the ship was stretched from the forecastle to the reef, and it lay against the boat's mast. It was severed with caution; but the short end slipped from the hand of Mr. Sharp, who cut the rope, and fell into the water. The noise was heard, and the watch on the deck of the ship made a rush towards her side. No time was to be lost; but Paul, who still held the outer end of the line, pulled on it vigorously, hauling the boat swiftly from the ship, and, at the same time, a little in advance. As soon as this was done, he dropped the line and seized the tiller-ropes, in order to keep the launch's head in a direction between the two dangers--the ship and the reef. This was not done without some little noise; the footfall on the roof, and the plash of the water when it received the line, were audible; and even the element washing under the bows of the boat was heard. The Arabs of the ship called to those on the reef, and the latter answered. They took the alarm, and awoke their comrades, for, knowing as they did, that the party of Captain Truck was still at liberty, they apprehended an attack. The clamour and uproar that succeeded were terrific. Muskets were discharged at random, and the noises from the camp echoed the cries and tumult from the vessel and the rocks. Those who had been sleeping in the boat were rudely awaked, and Saunders joined in the cries through sheer fright. But the two gentlemen on deck soon caused their companions to understand their situation, and to observe a profound silence. "They do not appear to see us," whispered Paul to Eve as he bent over, so as to put his head at an open window; "and a return of the breeze may still save us. There is a great alarm among them and no doubt they know we are not distant; but so long as they cannot tell precisely where, we are comparatively safe.--Their cries do us good service as landmarks, and you may be certain I shall not approach the spots were they are heard. Pray Heaven for a wind, dearest Miss Effingham, pray Heaven for a wind!" Eve silently, but fervently did pray, while the young man gave all his attention again to the boat.--As soon as they were clear of the lee of the ship, the baffling puffs returned, and there were several minutes of a steady little breeze, during which the boat sensibly moved away from the noises of the ship. On the reef, however, the clamour still continued, and the gentlemen were soon satisfied that the Arabs had stationed themselves along the whole line of rocks, wherever the latter were bare at high water, as was now nearly the case, to the northward as well as to the southward of the opening. "The tide is still entering by the inlet," said Paul, "and we have its current to contend with. It is not strong, but a trifle is important at a moment like this!" "Would it not be possible to reach the bank inside of us, and to shove the boat ahead by means of these light spars?" asked Mr. Sharp. The suggestion was a good one; but Paul was afraid the noise in the water might reach the Arabs, and expose the party to their fire, as the utmost distance between the reef and the inner bank at that particular spot did not exceed a hundred fathoms. At length another puff of air from the land pressed upon their sails, and the water once more rippled beneath the bows of the boat. Paul's heart beat hard, and as he managed the tiller-lines, he strained his eyes uselessly in order to penetrate the massive-looking darkness. "Surely," he said to Mr. Sharp, who stood constantly at his elbow, "these cries are directly ahead of us! We are steering for the Arabs!" "We have got wrong in the dark then. Lose not a moment to keep the boat away, for here to leeward there are noises." As all this was self-evident, though confused in his reckoning, Paul put up the helm, and the boat fell off nearly dead before the wind. Her motion being now comparatively rapid, a few minutes produced an obvious change in the direction of the different groups of clamorous Arabs, though they also brought a material lessening in the force of the air. "I have it!" said Paul, grasping his companion almost convulsively by the arm. "We are at the inlet, and heading, I trust, directly through it! You hear the cries on our right; they come from the end of the northern reef, while these on our left are from the end of the southern. The sounds from the ship, the direction of the land breeze, our distance--all confirm it, and Providence again befriends us!" "It will be a fearful error should we be mistaken!" "We cannot be deceived, since nothing else will explain the circumstances. There!--the boat feels the ground-swell--a blessed and certain sign that we are at the inlet! Would that this tide were done, or that we had more wind!" Fifteen feverish minutes succeeded. At moments the puffs of night-air would force the boat ahead, and then again it was evident by the cries that she fell astern under the influence of an adverse current. Neither was it easy to keep her on the true course, for the slightest variation from the direct line in a tide's way causes a vessel to sheer. To remedy the latter danger, Paul was obliged to watch his helm closely, having no other guide than the noisy and continued vociferations of the Arabs. "These liftings of the boat are full of hope," resumed Paul; "I think, too, that they increase." "I perceive but little difference, though I would gladly see all you wish." "I am certain the swell increases, and that the boat rises and falls more frequently. You will allow there is a swell?" "Quite obviously: I perceived it before we kept the boat away. This variable air is cruelly tantalizing!" "Sir George Templemore--Mr. Powis," said a soft voice at a window beneath them. "Miss Effingham!" said Paul, so eager that he suffered the tiller-line to escape him. "These are frightful cries!--Shall we never be rid of them!" "If it depended on me--on either of us--they should distress you no more. The boat is slowly entering the inlet, but has to struggle with a head-tide. The wind baffles, and is light, or in ten minutes we should be out of danger." "Out of this danger, but only to encounter another!" "Nay, I do not think much of the risk of the ocean in so stout a boat. At the most, we may be compelled to cut away the roof, which makes our little bark somewhat clumsy in appearance, though it adds infinitely to its comfort. I think we shall soon get the trades, before which our launch, with its house even, will be able to make good weather." "We are certainly nearer those cries than before!" Paul felt his cheek glow, and his hand hurriedly sought the tiller-line, for the boat had sensibly sheered towards the northern reef. A puff of air helped to repair his oversight, and all in the launch soon perceived that the cries were gradually but distinctly drawing more aft. "The current lessens," said Paul, "and it is full time; for it must be near high water. We shall soon feel it in our favour, when all will be safe!" "This is indeed blessed tidings! and no gratitude can ever repay the debt we owe you, Mr. Powis!" The puffs of air now required all the attention of Paul, for they again became variable, and at last the wind drew directly ahead in a continued current for half an hour. As soon as this change was felt, the sails were trimmed to it, and the boat began to stir the water under her bows. "The shift was so sudden, that we cannot be mistaken in its direction," Paul remarked; "besides, those cries still serve as pilots. Never was uproar more agreeable." "I feel the bottom with this spar!" said Mr. Sharp suddenly. "Merciful Providence protect and shield the weak and lovely----" "Nay, I feel it no longer: we are already in deeper water." "It was the rock on which the seamen stood when we entered!" Paul exclaimed, breathing more freely. "I like those voices settling more under our lee, too. We will keep this tack" (the boat's head was to the northward) "until we hit the reef, unless warned off again by the cries." The boat now moved at the rate of five miles in the hour, or faster than a man walks, even when in quick motion. Its rising and falling denoted the long heavy swell of the ocean, and the wash of water began to be more and more audible, as she settled into the sluggish swells. "That sounds like the surf on the reef," continued Paul; "every thing denotes the outside of the rocks." "God send it prove so!" "That is clearly a sea breaking on a rock! It is awkwardly near, and to leeward, and yet it is sweet to the ear as music." The boat stood steadily on, making narrow escapes from jutting rocks, as was evinced by the sounds, and once or twice by the sight even; but the cries shifted gradually, and were soon quite astern. Paul knew that the reef trended east soon after passing the inlet, and he felt the hope that they were fast leaving its western extremity, or the part that ran the farthest into the ocean; after effecting which, there would be more water to leeward, his own course being nearly north, as he supposed. The cries drew still farther aft, and more distant, and the sullen wash of the surf was no longer so near as to seem fresh and tangible. "Hand me the lead and line, that lie at the foot of the mast, it you please," said Paul. "Our water seems sensibly to deepen, and the seas have become more regular." He hove a cast, and found six fathoms of water; a proof, he thought, that they were quite clear of the reef. "Now, dear Mr. Effingham, Miss Effingham, Mademoiselle," he cried cheerfully, "now I believe we may indeed deem ourselves beyond the reach of the Arabs, unless a gale force us again on their inhospitable shores." "Is it permitted to speak?" asked Mr. Effingham, who had maintained a steady but almost breathless silence. "Freely: we are quite beyond the reach of the voice; and this wind, though blowing from a quarter I do not like, is carrying us away from the wretches rapidly." It was not safe in the darkness, and under the occasional heaves of the boat, for the others to come on the roof; but they opened the shutters, and looked out upon the gloomy water with a sense of security they could not have deemed possible for people in their situation. The worst was over for the moment, and there is a relief in present escape that temporarily conceals future dangers. They could converse without the fear of alarming their enemies, and Paul spoke encouragingly of their prospects. It was his intention to stand to the northward until he reached the wreck, when, failing to get any tidings of their friends, they might make the best of their way to the nearest island to leeward. With this cheering news the party below again disposed themselves to sleep, while the two young men maintained their posts on the roof. "We must resemble an ark," said Paul laughing, as he seated himself on a box near the stem of the boat, "and I should think would frighten the Arabs from an attack, had they even the opportunity to make one. This house we carry will prove a troublesome companion, should we encounter a heavy and a head sea." "You say it may easily be gotten rid of." "Nothing would be easier, the whole apparatus being made to ship and unship. _Before_ the wind we might carry it a long time, and it would even help us along; but _on_ a wind it makes us a little top-heavy, besides giving us a leeward set. In the event of rain, or of bad weather of any sort, it would be a treasure to us all, more especially to the females, and I think we had better keep it as long as possible." The half hour of breeze already mentioned sufficed to carry the boat some distance to the northward, when it failed, and the puffs from the land returned. Paul supposed they were quite two miles from the inlet, and, trying the lead, he found ten fathoms of water, a proof that they had also gradually receded from the shore. Still nothing but a dense darkness surrounded them, though there could no longer be the smallest doubt of their being in the open ocean. For near an hour the light baffling air came in puffs, as before, during which time the launch's head was kept, as near as the two gentlemen could judge, to the northward, making but little progress; and then the breeze drew gradually round into one quarter, and commenced blowing with a steadiness that they had not experienced before that night. Paul suspected this change, though he had no certain means of knowing it; for as soon as the wind baffled, his course had got to be conjectural again. As the breeze freshened, the speed of the boat necessarily augmented, though she was kept always on a wind; and after half an hour's progress, the gentlemen became once more uneasy as to the direction. "It would be a cruel and awkward fate to hit the reef again," said Paul; "and yet I cannot be sure that we are not running directly for it." "We have compasses: let us strike a light and look into the matter." "It were better had we done this more early, for a light might now prove dangerous, should we really have altered the course in this intense darkness. There is no remedy, however, and the risk must be taken. I will first try the lead again." A cast was made, and the result was two and a half fathoms of water. "Put the helm down!" cried Paul, springing to the sheet: "lose not a moment, but down with the helm!" The boat did not work freely under her imperfect sail and with the roof she carried, and a moment of painful anxiety succeeded. Paul managed, however, to get a part of the sail aback, and he felt more secure. "The boat has stern-way: shift the helm, Mr. Sharp." This was done, the yard was dipped, and the two young men felt a relief almost equal to that they had experienced on clearing the inlet, when they found the launch again drawing ahead, obedient to her rudder. "We are near something, reef or shore," said Paul, standing with the lead-line in his hand, in readiness to heave. "I think it can hardly be the first, as we hear no Arabs." Waiting a few minutes, he hove the lead, and, to his infinite joy, got three fathoms fairly. "That is good news. We are hauling off the danger, whatever it may be," he said, as he felt the mark: "and now for the compass." Saunders was called, a light was struck, and the compasses were both examined. These faithful but mysterious guides, which have so long served man while they have baffled all his ingenuity to discover the sources of their power, were, as usual, true to their governing principle. The boat was heading north-north-west; the wind was at north-east, and before they tacked they had doubtless been standing directly for the beach, from which they could not have been distant a half quarter of a mile, if so much. A few more minutes would have carried them into the breakers, capsized the boat, and most probably drowned all below the roof, if not those on it. Paul shuddered as these facts forced themselves on his attention, and he determined to stand on his present course for two hours, when daylight would render his return towards the land without danger. "This is the trade," he said, "and it will probably stand. We have a current to contend with, as well as a head-wind; but I think we can weather the cape by morning, when we can get a survey of the wreck by means of the glass. If we discover nothing, I shall bear up at once for the Cape de Verds." The two gentlemen now took the helm in turns, he who slept fastening himself to the mast, as a precaution against being rolled into the sea by the motion of the boat. In fifteen fathoms water they tacked again, and stood to the east-south-east, having made certain, by a fresh examination of the compass, that the wind stood in the same quarter as before. The moon rose soon after, and, although the morning was clouded and lowering, there was then sufficient light to remove all danger from the darkness. At length this long and anxious night terminated in the usual streak of day, which gleamed across the desert. Paul was at the helm, steering more by instinct than any thing else, and occasionally nodding at his post; for two successive nights of watching and a day of severe toil had overcome his sense of danger, and his care for others. Strange fancies beset men at such moments; and his busy imagination was running over some of the scenes of his early youth, when either his sense or his wandering faculties made him hear the usual brief, spirited hail of, "Boat ahoy!" Paul opened his eyes, felt that the tiller was in his hand, and was about to close the first again, when the words were more sternly repeated, "Boat ahoy!--what craft's that? Answer, or expect a shot!" This was plain English, and Paul was wide awake in an instant. Rubbing his eyes, he saw a line of boats anchored directly on his weather bow, with a raft of spars riding astern. "Hurrah!" shouted the young man. "This is Heaven's own tidings! Are these the Montauk's?" "Ay, ay. Who the devil are you?" The truth is, Captain Truck did not recognize his own launch in the royal, roof, and jigger. He had never before seen a boat afloat in such a guise; and in the obscurity of the hour, and fresh awakened from a profound sleep, like Paul, his faculties were a little confused. But the latter soon comprehended the whole matter. He clapped his helm down, let fly the sheet, and in a minute the launch of the packet was riding alongside of the launch of the Dane. Heads were out of the shutters, and every boat gave up its sleepers, for the cry was general throughout the little flotilla. The party just arrived alone felt joy. They found those whom they had believed dead, or captives, alive and free, whereas the others now learned the extent of the misfortune that had befallen them. For a few minutes this contrast in feeling produced an awkward meeting; but the truth soon brought all down to the same sober level. Captain Truck received the congratulations of his friends like one in a stupor; Toast looked amazed as his friend Saunders shook his hand; and the gentlemen who had been to the wreck met the cheerful greetings of those who had just escaped the Arabs like men who fancied the others mad. We pass over the explanations that followed, as every one will readily understand them. Captain Truck listened to Paul like one in a trance, and it was some time after the young man had done before he spoke. With a wish to cheer him, he was told of the ample provision of stores that had been brought off in the launch, of the trade winds that had now apparently set in, and of the great probability of their all reaching the islands in safety. Still the old man made no reply; he got on the roof of his own launch, and paced backwards and forwards rapidly, heeding nothing. Even Eve spoke to him unnoticed, and the consolations offered by her father were not attended to. At length he stopped suddenly, and called for his mate. "Mr. Leach?" "Sir." "Here is a category for you!" "Ay, ay, sir; it's bad enough in its way; still we are better off than the Danes." "You tell me, sir," turning to Paul, "that these foul blackguards were actually on the deck of the ship?" "Certainly, Captain Truck. They took complete possession; for we had no means of keeping them off." "And the ship is ashore?" "Beyond a question." "Bilged?" "I think not. There is no swell within the reef, and she lies on sand." "We might have spared ourselves the trouble, Leach, of culling these cursed spars, as if they had been so many toothpicks." "That we might, sir; for they will not now serve as oven-wood, for want of the oven." "A damnable category, Mr. Effingham! I'm glad you are safe, sir; and you, too, my dear young lady--God bless you!--God bless you!--It were better the whole line should be in their power than one like you!" The old seaman's eyes filled as he shook Eve by the hand, and for a moment he forgot the ship. "Mr. Leach?" "Sir." "Let the people have their breakfasts, and bear a hand about it. We are likely to have a busy morning, sir. Lift the kedge, too, and let us drift down towards these gentry, and take a look at them. We have both wind and current with us now, and shall make quick work of it." The kedge was raised, the sails were all set, and, with the two launches lashed together, the whole line of boats and spars began to set to the southward at a rate that would bring them up with the inlet in about two hours. "This is the course for the Cape de Verds, gentlemen," said the captain bitterly. "We shall have to pass before our own door to go and ask hospitality of strangers. But let the people get their breakfasts, Mr. Leach; just let the boys have one comfortable meal before they take to their oars." Eat himself, however, Mr. Truck would not. He chewed the end of a cigar, and continued walking up and down the roof. In half an hour the people had ended their meal, the day had fairly opened, and the boats and raft had made good progress. "Splice the main-brace, Mr. Leach," said the captain, "for we are a littled jammed. And you, gentlemen, do me the favour to step this way for a consultation. This much is due to your situation." Captain Truck assembled his male passengers in the stern of the Dane's launch, where he commenced the following address: "Gentlemen," he said, "every thing in this world has its nature and its principles. This truth I hold you all to be too well informed and well educated to deny. The nature of a traveller is to travel, and see curiosities; the nature of old men is to think on the past, of a young man to hope for the future. The nature of a seaman is to stick by his ship, and of a ship to be treated like a vessel, and not to be ransacked like a town taken by storm, or a nunnery that is rifled,--You are but passengers, and doubtless have your own wishes and occupations, as I have mine. Your wishes are, beyond question, to be safe in New York among your friends; and mine are to get the Montauk there too, in as little time and with as little injury as possible. You have a good navigator among you; and I now propose that you take the Montauk's launch, with such stores as are necessary, and fill away at once for the islands, where, I pray God, you may all arrive in safety, and that when you reach America you may find all your relations in good health, and in no manner uneasy at this little delay. Your effects shall be safely delivered to your respective orders, should it please God to put it in the power of the line to honour your drafts." "You intend to attempt recapturing the ship!" exclaimed Paul, "I do, sir," returned Mr. Truck, who, having thus far opened his mind, for the first time that morning gave a vigorous hem! and set about lighting a cigar.--"We may do it, gentlemen, or we may not do it. If we do it, you will hear farther from me; if we fail, why, tell them at home that we carried sail as long as a stitch would draw." The gentlemen looked at each other, the young waiting in respect for the counsel of the old, the old hesitating in deference to the pride and feelings of the young. "We must join you in this enterprise, captain," said Mr. Sharp quietly, but with the manner of a man of spirit and nerve. "Certainly, certainly," cried Mr. Monday; "we ought to make a common affair of it; as I dare say Sir George Templemore will agree with me in maintaining; the nobility and gentry are not often backward when their persons are to be risked." The spurious baronet acquiesced in the proposal as readily as it had been made by him whom he had temporarily deposed; for, though a weak and a vain young man, he was far from being a dastard. "This is a serious business," observed Paul, "and it ought to be ordered with method and intelligence. If we have a ship to care for, we have those also who are infinitely more precious." "Very true, Mr. Blunt, very true," interrupted Mr. Dodge, a little eagerly. "It is my maxim to let well alone; and I am certain shipwrecked people can hardly be better off and more comfortable than we are at this very moment. I dare say these gallant sailors, if the question was fairly put to them, would give it by a handsome majority in favour of things as they are. I am a conservative, captain--and I think an appeal ought to be made to the ballot-boxes before we decide on a measure of so much magnitude." The occasion was too grave for the ordinary pleasantry, and this singular proposition was heard in silence, to Mr. Dodge's great disgust. "I think it the duty of Captain Truck to endeavour to retake his vessel," continued Paul; "but the affair will be serious, and success is far from certain. The Montauk's launch ought to be left at a safe distance with all the females, and in prudent keeping; for any disaster to the boarding party would probably throw the rest of the boats into the hands of the barbarians, and endanger the safety of those left in the launch.--Mr. Effingham and Mr. John Effingham will of course remain with the ladies." The father assented with the simplicity of one who did not distrust his own motives, but the eagle-shaped features of his kinsman curled with a cool and sarcastic smile. "Will _you_ remain in the launch?" the latter asked pointedly, turning towards Paul. "Certainly it would be greatly out of character were to think of it. My trade is war; and I trust that Captain Truck means to honour me with the command of one of the boats." "I thought as much, by Jove!" exclaimed the captain, seizing a hand which he shook with the utmost cordiality. 'I should as soon expect to see the sheet-anchor wink, or the best-bower give a mournful smile, as to see you duck.' Still, gentlemen, I am well aware of the difference in our situations. I ask no man to forget his duties to those on shore on my account; and I fancy that my regular people, aided by Mr. Blunt, who can really serve me by his knowledge, will be as likely to do all that can be done as all of us united. It is not numbers that carry ships as much as spirit, promptitude, and resolution." "But the question has not yet been put to the people," said Mr. Dodge, who was a little mystified by the word last used, which he had yet to learn was strictly technical as applied to a vessel's crew. "It shall, sir," returned Captain Truck, "and I beg you to note the majority. My lads," he continued, rising on a thwart, and speaking aloud, "you know the history of the ship. As to the Arabs, now they have got her, they do not know how to sail her, and it is no more than a kindness to take her out of their hands. For this business I want volunteers; those who are for the reef, and an attack, will rise up and cheer; while they who like an offing have only to sit still and stay where they are." The words were no sooner spoken than Mr. Leach jumped up on the gunwale and waved his hat. The people rose as one man, and taking the signal from the mate, they gave three as hearty cheers as ever rung over the bottle. "Dead against you, sir!" observed the captain, nodding to the editor; "and I hope you are now satisfied." "The ballot might have given it the other way," muttered Mr. Dodge; "there can be no freedom of election without the ballot." No one, however, thought any longer of Mr. Dodge or his scruples; but the whole disposition for the attack was made with promptitude and caution. It was decided that Mr. Effingham and his own servant should remain in the launch; while the captain compelled his two mates to draw lots which of them should stay behind also, a navigator being indispensable. The chance fell on the second mate, who submitted to his luck with an ill grace. A bust of Napoleon was cut up, and the pieces of lead were beaten as nearly round as possible, so as to form a dozen leaden balls, and a quantity of slugs, or langrage. The latter were put in canvas bags; while the keg of powder was opened, a flannel shirt or two were torn, and cart ridges were filled. Ammunition was also distributed to the people, and Mr. Sharp examined their arms. The gun was got off the roof of the Montauk's launch, and placed on a grating forward in that of the Dane. The sails and rigging were cleared out of the boat and secured on the raft when she was properly manned, and the command of her was given to Paul. The three other boats received their crews, with John Effingham at the head of one, the captain and his mate commanding the others. Mr. Dodge felt compelled to volunteer to go in the launch of the Dane, where Paul had now taken his station, though he did it with a reluctance that escaped the observation of no one who took the pains to observe him. Mr, Sharp and Mr. Monday were with the captain, and the false Sir George Templemore went with Mr. Leach. These arrangements completed, the whole party waited impatiently for the wind and current to set them down towards the reef, the rocks of which by this time were plainly visible, even from the thwarts of the several boats. Chapter XXVI. Hark! was it not the trumpet's voice I heard? The soul of battle is awake within me. The fate of ages and of empires hangs On this dread hour. MASSINGER The two launches were still sailing side by side, and Eve now appeared at the open window next the seat of Paul. Her face was pale as when the scene of the cabin occurred, and her lip trembled. "I do not understand these warlike proceedings" she said, "but I trust, Mr. Blunt, _we_ have no concern with the present movement." "Put your mind at ease on this head, dearest Miss Effingham, for what we now do we do in compliance with a general law of manhood. Were your interests and the interests of those with you alone consulted, we might come to a very different decision: but I think you are in safe hands should our adventure prove unfortunate." "Unfortunate! It is fearful to be so near a scene like this! I cannot ask you to do any thing unworthy of yourself; but, all that we owe you impels me to say, I trust you have too much wisdom, too much true courage, to incur unnecessary risks." The young man looked volumes of gratitude; but the presence of the others kept its expression within due bounds. "We old sea dogs," he answered, smiling, "are rather noted for taking care of ourselves. They who are trained to a business like this usually set about it too much in a business-like manner to hazard anything for mere show." "And very wisely; Mr. Sharp, too,"--Eve's colour deepened with a consciousness that Paul would have given worlds to understand--"he has a claim on us we shall never forge. My father can say all this better than I." Mr. Effingham now expressed his thanks for all that had passed, and earnestly enjoined prudence on the young men. After which Eve withdrew her head, and was seen no more. Most of the next hour was passed in prayer by those in the launch. By this time the boats and rail were within half a mile of the inlet; and Captain Truck ordered the kedge, which had been transferred to the launch of the Montauk, to be let go. As soon as this was done, the old seaman threw down his hat, and stood on a thwart in his grey hair. "Gentlemen, you have your orders," he said with dignity; for from that moment his manner rose with the occasion, and had something of the grandeur of the warrior. "You see the enemy. The reef must first be cleared, and then the ship shall be carried. God knows who will live to see the end; but that end must be success, on the bones of John Truck shall bleach on these sands! Our cry is 'The Montauk and our own!' which is a principle Vattel will sustain us in. Give way, men! a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether; each boat in its station!" He waved his hand, and the oars fell into the water at the same instant. The heavy launch was the last, for she had double-fasts to the other boat. While loosening that forward the second mate deserted his post, stepping nimbly on board the departing boat, and concealing himself behind the foremost of the two lug-sails she carried. Almost at the same instant Mr. Dodge reversed this manoeuvre by pretending to be left clinging to the boat of the Montauk, in his zeal to shove off. As the sails were drawing; hard, and the oars dashed the spray aside, it was too late to rectify either of these mistakes, had it been desirable. A few minutes of a stern calm succeeded, each boat keeping its place with beautiful precision. The Arabs had left the northern reef with the light; but, the tide being out, hundreds were strung along the southern range of rocks, especially near the ship. The wind carried the launch ahead, as had been intended, and she soon drew near the inlet. "Take in the sails," said Mr. Blunt. "See your gun clear forward." A fine, tall, straight, athletic young seaman stood near the grating, with a heated iron lying in a vessel of live coals before him, in lieu of a loggerhead, the fire being covered with a tarpaulin. As Paul spoke, this young mariner turned towards him with the peculiar grace of a man-of-war's-man, and touched his hat. "Ay, ay, sir. All ready, Mr. Powis." Paul started, while the other smiled proudly, like one who knew more than his companions. "We have met before," said the first. "That have we sir, and in boat-duty, too. You were the first on board the pirate on the coast of Cuba, and I was second." A look of recognition and a wave of the hand passed between them, the men cheering involuntarily. It was too late for more, the launch being fairly in the inlet, where she received a general but harmless fire from the Arabs. An order had been given to fire the first shot over the heads of the barbarians; but this assault changed the plan. "Depress the piece, Brooks," said Paul, "and throw in a bag of slugs." "All ready, sir," was uttered in another minute. "Hold water, men--the boat is steady--let them have it." Men fell at that discharge; but how many was never known, as the bodies were hurried off the reef by those who fled. A few concealed themselves along the rocks, but most scampered towards the shore. "Bravely done!" cried Captain Truck, as his boat swept past. "Now for the ship, sir!" The people cheered again, and dashed their oars into the water. To clear the reef was nothing; but to carry the ship was a serious affair. She was defended by four times the number of those in the boats, and there was no retreat. The Arabs, as has already been seen, had suspended their labour during the night, having fruitlessly endeavoured to haul the vessel over to the reef before the tide rose. More by accident than by calculation, they had made such arrangements by getting a line to the rocks as would probably have set the ship off the sands, when she floated at high water; but this line had been cut by Paul in passing, and the wind coming on shore again, during the confusion and clamour of the barbarians, or at a moment when they thought they were to be attacked, no attention was paid to the circumstance, and the Montauk was suffered to drive up still higher on the sands, where she effectually grounded at the very top of the tide. As it was now dead low water, the ship had sewed materially, and was now lying on her bilge partly sustained by the water, and partly by the bottom. During the short pause that succeeded, Saunders, who was seated in the captain's boat as a small-arms-man, addressed his subordinate in a low voice. "Now, Toast," he said, "you are about to contend in battle for the first time; and I diwine, from experience, that the ewent gives you some sentiments that are werry original. My adwice to you is, to shut both eyes until the word is given to fire, and then to open them suddenly, as if just awaking from sleep; after which you may present and pull the trigger. Above all, Toast, take care not to kill any of our own friends, most especially not Captain Truck, just at this werry moment." "I shall do my endeavours, Mr. Saunders," muttered Toast, with the apathy and submissive dependence on others with which the American black usually goes into action. "If I do any harm, I hope it will be overlooked, on account of my want of experience." "Imitate me, Toast, in coolness and propriety, and you'll be certain not to offend. I do not mean that you too are to kill the werry same _Muscle_-men that I kill, but that when I kill one you are to kill another. And be werry careful not to hurt Captain Truck, who'll be certain to run right afore the muzzle of our guns, if he sees any thing to be done there." Toast growled an assent, and then there was no other noise in the boat than that which was produced by the steady and vigorous falling of the oars. An attempt had been made to lighten the vessel by unloading her, and the bank of sand was already covered with bales and boxes, which had been brought up from the hold by means of a stage, and by sheer animal force. The raft had been extended in size, and brought round to the bank by the stern of the vessel, with the intention to load it, and to transfer the articles already landed to the rocks. Such was the state of things about the Montauk when the boats came into the channel that ran directly up to the bank. The launch led again, her sails having been set as soon as the reef was swept, and she now made another discharge on the deck of the ship, which, inclining towards the gun, offered no shelter. The effect was to bring every Arab, in the twinkling of an eye, down upon the bank. "Hurrah!" shouted Captain Truck; "that grist has purified the old bark! And now to see who is to own her! 'The thieves are out of the temple,' as my good father would have said." The four boats were in a line abreast, the launch under one sail only. A good deal of confusion existed on the bank but the Arabs sought the cover of the bales and boxes, and opened a sharp though irregular fire. Three times, as they advanced, the second mate and that gallant-looking young seaman called Brooks discharged the gun, and at each discharge the Arabs were dislodged and driven to the raft. The cheers of the seamen became animated, though they still plied the oars. "Steadily, men," said Captain Truck, "and prepare to board." At this moment the launch grounded, though still twenty yards from the bank, the other boats passing her with loud cheers. "We are all ready, sir," cried Brooks. "Let 'em have it. Take in the sail, boys." The gun was fired, and the tall young seaman sprang upon the grating and cheered. As he looked backward, with a smile of triumph, Paul saw his eyes roll. He leaped into the air, and fell at his length dead upon the water; for such is the passage of a man in battle, from one state of existence to another. "Where do we hang?" asked Paul steadily; "forward or aft?" It was forward, and deeper water lay ahead of them. The sail was set again, and the people were called aft. The boat tipped, and shot ahead towards the sands, like a courser released from a sudden pull. All this time the others were not idle. Not a musket was fired from either boat until the whole three struck the bank, almost, at the same instant, though at as many different points. Then all leaped ashore, and threw in a fire so close, that the boxes served as much for a cover to the assailants as to the assailed. It was at this critical moment, when the seamen paused to load, that Paul, just clear of the bottom, with his own hand applying the loggerhead, swept the rear of the bank with a most opportune discharge. "Yard-arm and yard-arm!" shouted Captain Truck. "Lay 'em aboard, boys, and give 'em Jack's play!" The whole party sprang forward, and from that moment all order ceased. Fists, hand-spikes, of which many were on the bank, and the butts of muskets, were freely used, and in a way that set the spears and weapons of the Arabs at defiance. The Captain, Mr. Sharp, John Effingham, Mr. Monday, the _soi-disant_ Sir George Templemore, and the chief mate, formed a sort of Macedonian phalanx, which penetrated the centre of the barbarians, and which kept close to the enemy, following up its advantages with a spirit that admitted of no rallying. On their right and left pressed the men, an athletic, hearty, well-fed gang. The superiority of the Arabs was in their powers of endurance; for, trained to the whip-cord rigidity of racers, force was less their peculiar merit than bottom. Had they acted in concert, how ever, or had they been on their own desert, mounted, and with room for their subtle evolutions, the result might have been very different; but, unused to contend with an enemy who brought them within reach of the arm, their tactics were deranged, and all their habits violated. Still, their numbers were formidable, and it is probable that the accident to the launch, after all, decided the matter. From the moment the _mêlée_ began not a shot was fired, but the assailants pressed upon the assailed, until a large body of the latter had collected near the raft. This was just as the launch reached the shore, and Paul perceived there was great danger that the tide might roll backward from sheer necessity. The gun was loaded, and filled nearly to the muzzle with slugs. He caused the men to raise it on their oars, and to carry it to a large box, a little apart from the confusion of the fight. All this was done in a moment, for three minutes had not yet passed since the captain landed. Instead of firing, Paul called aloud to his friends to cease fighting. Though chafing like a vexed lion, Captain Truck complied, surprise effecting quite as much as obedience. The Arabs, hardest pressed upon, profited by the pause to fall back on the main body of their friends, near the raft. This was all Paul could ask, and he ordered the gun to be pointed at the centre of the group, while he advanced himself towards the enemy, making a sign of peace. "Damn 'em, lay 'em aboard!" cried the captain: "no quarter to the blackguards!" "I rather think we had better charge again," added Mr. Sharp, who was thoroughly warmed with his late employment. "Hold, gentlemen; you risk all needlessly. I will show these poor wretches what they have to expect, and they will probably retire. We want the ship, not their blood." "Well, well," returned the impatient captain, "give 'em plenty of Vattel, for we have 'em now in a category." The men of the wilderness and of the desert seem to act as much by instinct as by reason. An old sheik advanced, smiling, towards Paul, when the latter was a few yards in advance of his friends, offering his hand with as much cordiality as if they met merely to exchange courtesies. Paul led him quietly to the gun, put his hand in, and drew out a bag of slugs, replaced it, and pointed significantly at the dense crowd of exposed Arabs, and at the heated iron that was ready to discharge the piece. At all this the old Arab smiled, and seemed to express his admiration. He was then showed the strong and well-armed party, all of whom by this time had a musket or a pistol ready to use. Paul then signed to the raft and to the reef, as much as to tell the other to withdraw his party. The sheik exhibited great coolness and sagacity, and, unused to frays so desperate, he signified his disposition to comply. Truces, Paul knew, were common in the African combats, which are seldom bloody, and he hoped the best from the manner of the sheik, who was now permitted to return to his friends. A short conference succeeded among the Arabs, when several of them smilingly waved their hands, and most of the party crowded on the raft. Others advanced, and asked permission to bear away their wounded, and the bodies of the dead, in both of which offices they were assisted by the seamen, as far as was prudent; for it was all-important to be on the guard against treachery. In this extraordinary manner the combatants separated, the Arabs hauling themselves over to the reef by a line, their old men smiling, and making signs of amity, until they were fairly on the rocks. Here they remained but a very few minutes, for the camels and dromedaries were seen trotting off towards the Dane on the shore; a sign that the compact between the different parties of the barbarians was dissolved, and that each man was about to plunder on his own account. This movement produced great agitation among the old sheiks-and their followers on the reef, and set them in motion with great activity towards the land. So great was their hurry, indeed, that the bodies of all the dead, and of several of the wounded, were fairly abandoned on the rocks, at some distance from the shore. The first step of the victors, as a matter of course, was to inquire into their own loss. This was much less than would have otherwise been, on account of their good conduct. Every man, without a solitary exception, had ostensibly behaved well; one of the most infallible means of lessening danger. Several of the party had received slight hurts, and divers bullets had passed through hats and jackets. Mr. Sharp, alone, had two through the former, besides one through his coat. Paul had blood drawn on an arm, and Captain Truck, to use his own language, resembled "a horse in fly-time," his skin having been rased in no less than five places. But all these trifling hurts and hair-breadth escapes counted for nothing, as no one was seriously injured by them, or felt sufficient inconvenience even to report himself wounded. The felicitations were warm and general; even the seamen asking leave to shake their sturdy old commander by the hand. Paul and Mr. Sharp fairly embraced, each expressing his sincere pleasure that the other had escaped unharmed. The latter even shook hands cordially with his counterfeit, who had acted with spirit from the first to the last. John Effingham alone maintained the same cool indifference after the affair that he had shown in it, when it was seen that he had played his part with singular coolness and discretion, dropping two Arabs with his fowling-piece on landing, with a sort of sportsman-like coolness with which he was in the habit of dropping woodcocks at home. "I fear Mr. Monday is seriously hurt," this gentleman said to the captain, in the midst of his congratulations: "he sits aloof on the box yonder, and looks exhausted." "Mr. Monday! I hope not, with all my heart and soul He is a capital _diplomate_, and a stout boarder. And Mr Dodge, too! I miss Mr. Dodge." "Mr. Dodge must have remained behind to console the ladies," returned Paul, "finding that your second mate had abandoned them, like a recreant that he is." The captain shook his disobedient mate by the hand a second time, and swore he was a mutineer for violating his orders, and ended by declaring that the day was not distant when he and Mr. Leach should command two as good liners as ever sailed out of America. "I'll have nothing to do with either of you as soon as we reach home," he concluded. "There was Leach a foot or two ahead of me the whole time; and, as for the second officer, I should be justified in logging him as having run. Well, well; young men will be young men; and so would old men too, Mr. John Effingham, if they knew how. But Mr. Monday does look doleful; and I am afraid we shall be obliged to overhaul the medicine-chest for him." Mr. Monday, however, was beyond the aid of medicine. A ball had passed through his shoulder-blade in landing, notwithstanding which he had pressed into the _mêlée_, where, unable to parry it, a spear had been thrust into his chest. The last wound appeared grave, and Captain Truck immediately ordered the sufferer to be carried into the ship: John Effingham, with a tenderness and humanity that were singularly in contrast to his ordinary sarcastic manner, volunteering to take charge of him. "We have need of all our forces," said Captain Truck, as Mr. Monday was borne away; "and yet it is due to our friends in the launch to let them know the result. Set the ensign, Leach; that will tell them our success, though a verbal communication can alone acquaint them with the particulars." "If," interrupted Paul, eagerly, "you will lend me the launch of the Dane, Mr. Sharp and myself will beat her up to the raft, let our friends know the result, and bring the spars down to the inlet. This will save the necessity of any of the men's being absent. We claim the privilege, too, as belonging properly to the party that is now absent." "Gentlemen, take any privilege you please. You have stood by me like heroes; and I owe you all more than the heel of a worthless old life will ever permit me to pay." The two young men did not wait for a second invitation but in five minutes the boat was stretching through one of the channels that led landward; and in five more it was laying out of the inlet with a steady breeze. The instant Captain Truck retrod the deck of his ship was one of uncontrollable feeling with the weather-beaten old seaman. The ship had sewed too much to admit of walking with ease, and he sat down on the coaming of the main hatch, and fairly wept like an infant. So high had his feelings been wrought that this out-breaking was violent, and the men wondered to see their grey-headed, stern, old commander, so completely unmanned. He seemed at length ashamed of the weakness himself, for, rising like a worried tiger, he began to issue his orders as sternly and promptly as was his wont. "What the devil are you gaping at, men!" he growled; "did you never see a ship on her bilge before? God knows, and for that matter you all know, there is enough to do, that you stand like so many marines, with their 'eyes right!' and 'pipe-clay.'" "Take it more kindly, Captain Truck," returned an old sea-dog, thrusting out a hand that was all knobs, a fellow whose tobacco had not been displaced even by the fray; "take it kindly, and look upon all these boxes and bales as so much cargo that is to be struck in, in dock. We'll soon stow it, and, barring a few slugs, and one four-pounder, that has cut up a crate of crockery as if it had been a cat in a cupboard, no great harm is done. I look upon this matter as no more than a sudden squall, that has compelled us to bear up for a little while, but which will answer for a winch to spin yarns on all the rest of our days. I have fit the French, and the English, and the Turks, in my time; and now I can say I have had a brush with the niggers." "D--n me, but you are right, old Tom! and I'll make no more account of the matter. Mr. Leach, give the people a little encouragement. There is enough left in the jug that you'll find in the stern-sheets of the pinnace; and then turn-to, and strike in all this dunnage, that the Arabs have been scattering on the sands. We'll stow it when we get the ship into an easier bed than the one in which she is now lying." This was the signal for commencing work; and these straight-forward tars, who had just been in the confusion and hazards of a fight, first took their grog, and then commenced their labour in earnest. As they had only, with their knowedge and readiness, to repair the damage done by the ignorant and hurried Arabs, in a short time every thing was on board the ship again, when their attention was directed to the situation of the vessel itself. Not to anticipate events, however, we will now return to the party in the launch. The reader will readily imagine the feelings with which Mr. Effingham and his party listened to the report of the first gun. As they all remained below, they were ignorant who the individual really was that kept pacing the roof over their heads, though it was believed to be the second mate, agreeably to the arrangement made by Captain Truck. "My eyes grow dim," said Mr. Effingham, who was looking through a glass; "will you try to see what is passing, Eve?" "Father, I cannot look," returned the pallid girl. "It is misery enough to hear these frightful guns." "It is awful!" said Nanny, folding her arms about her child, "and I wonder that such gentlemen as Mr. John and Mr. Powis should go on an enterprise so wicked!" "_Voulez-vous avoir la complaisance, monsieur_?" said Mademoiselle Viefville, taking the glass from the unresisting hand of Mr. Effingham. "_Ha! le combat commence en effet_!" "Is it the Arabs who now fire?" demanded Eve, unable, in spite of terror, to repress her interest. "_Non, c'est cet admirable jeune homme, Monsieur Blunt, qui dévance tous les autres_!" "And now, mademoiselle, _that_ must surely be the barbarians?" "_Du tout. Les sauvages fuient. C'est encore du ba teau de Monsieur Blunt qu'on tire. Quel beau courage! son bateau est toujours des premiers_!" "That shout is frightful! Do they close?" "_On crie des deux parts, je crois. Le vieux capitaine est en avant à present, et Monsieur Blunt s'arrête_!" "May Heaven avert the danger! Do you see the gentlemen at all, Mademoiselle?" "_La fumée est trop épaisse. Ah! les viola! On tire encore de son bateau_." "_Eh bien, mademoiselle_?" said Eve tremulously, after a long pause. "_C'est déjà fini. Les Arabes se retirent et nos amis se sont emparés du bâtiment. Cela a été l'affaire d'un moment, et que le combat a été glorieux! Ces jeunes gens sont vraiment dignes d'être Français, et le vieux capitaine, aussi_.' "Are there no tidings for us, mademoiselle?" asked Eve, after another long pause, during which she had poured out her gratitude in trembling, but secret thanksgivings. "_Non, pas encore. Ils se félicitent, je crois_." "It's time, I'm sure, ma'am," said the meek-minded Ann, "to send forth the dove, that it may find the olive branch. War and strife are too sinful to be long indulged in." "There is a boat making sail in this direction," said Mr. Effingham, who had left the glass with the governess, in complaisance to her wish. "_Oui, c'est le bateau de Monsieur Blunt_." "And who is in it?" demanded the father, for the meed of a world could not have enabled Eve to speak. "_Je vois Monsieur Sharp--oui, c'est bien lui_." "Is he alone?" "_Non, il y en a deux--mais--oui--c'est Monsieur Blunt,--notre jeune heros_!" Eve bowed her face, and even while her soul melted in gratitude to God, the feelings of her sex caused the tell-tale blood to suffuse her features to the brightness of crimson. Mr. Effingham now took the glass from the spirited Frenchwoman, whose admiration of brilliant qualities had overcome her fears, and he gave a more detailed and connected account of the situation of things near the ship, as they presented themselves to a spectator at that distance. Notwithstanding they already knew so much, it was a painful and feverish half hour to those in the launch, the time that intervened between this dialogue and the moment when the boat of the Dane came alongside of their own. Every face was at the windows, and the young men were received like deliverers, in whose safety all felt a deep concern. "But, cousin Jack," said Eve, across whose speaking countenance apprehension and joy cast their shadows and gleams like April clouds driving athwart a brilliant sky, "my father has not been able to discover his form among those who move about on the bank." The gentlemen explained the misfortune of Mr. Monday, and related the manner in which John Effingham had assumed the office of nurse. A few delicious minutes passed; for nothing is more grateful than the happiness that first succeeds a victory, and the young men proceeded to lift the kedge, assisted by the servant of Mr. Effingham. The sails were set; and in fifteen minutes the raft--the long-desired and much-coveted raft--approached the inlet. Paul steered the larger boat, and gave to Mr. Sharp directions how to steer the other. The tide was flowing into the passage; and, by keeping his weatherly position, the young man carried his long train of spars with so much precision into its opening, that, favoured by the current, it was drawn through without touching a rock, and brought in triumph to the very margin of the bank. Here it was secured, the sails and cordage were brought ashore, and the whole party landed. The last twenty hours seemed like a dream to all the females, as they again walked the solid sand in security and hope. They had now assembled every material of safety, and all that remained was to get the ship off the shore, and to rig her; Mr. Leach having already reported that she was as tight as the day she left London. Chapter XXVII. Would I were in an ale-house in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety HENRY VTH. Mademoiselle Viefville, with a decision and intelligence that rendered her of great use in moments of need hastened to offer her services to the wounded man, while Eve, attended by Ann Sidley, ascended the ship and made her way into the cabins, in the best manner the leaning position of the vessel allowed. Here they found less confusion than might have been expected, the scene being ludicrous, rather than painful, for Mr. Monday was in his state-room excluded from sight. In the first place, the _soi-disant_ Sir George Templemore was counting over his effects, among which he had discovered a sad deficiency in coats and pantaloons. The Arabs had respected the plunder, by compact, with the intention of making a fair distribution on the reef; but, with a view to throw a sop to the more rapacious of their associates, one room had been sacked by the permission of the sheiks. This unfortunate room happened to be that of Sir George Templemore, and the patent razors, the East Indian dressing case, the divers toys, to say nothing of innumerable vestments which the young man had left paraded in his room, for the mere pleasure of feasting his eyes on them, had disappeared. "Do me the favour, Miss Effingham," he said, appealing to Eve, of whom he stood habitually in awe, from the pure necessity of addressing her in his distress, or of addressing no one, "do me the favour to look into my room, and see the unprincipled manner in which I have been treated. Not a comb nor a razor left; not a garment to make myself decent in! I'm sure such conduct is quite a disgrace to the civilization of barbarians even, and I shall make it a point, to have the affair duly represented to his majesty's minister the moment I arrive in New York. I sincerely hope you have been better treated, though I think, after this specimen of their principles, there is little hope for any one: I'm sure we ought to be grateful they did not strip the ship. I trust we shall all make common cause against them the moment we arrive." "We ought, indeed, sir," returned Eve, who, while she had known from the beginning of his being an impostor, was willing to ascribe his fraud to vanity, and who now felt charitable towards him on account of the spirit he had shown in the combat; "though I trust we shall have escaped better. Our effects were principally in the baggage-room, and that, I understand from Captain Truck, has not been touched." "Indeed you are very fortunate, and I can only wish that the same good luck had happened to myself. But then, you know, Miss Effingham, that one has need of his little comforts, and, as for myself, I confess to rather a weakness in that way." "Monstrous prodigality and wastefulness!" cried Saunders, as Eve passed on towards her own cabin, willing to escape any more of Sir George's complaints. "Just be so kind, Miss Effingham, ma'am, to look into this here pantry, once! Them niggers, I do believe, have had their fingers in every thing, and it will take Toast and me a week to get things decorous and orderly again. Some of the shrieks" (for so the steward styled the chiefs) "have been yelling well in this place, I'll engage, as you may see, by the manner in which they have spilt the mustard and mangled that cold duck. I've a most mortal awersion to a man that cuts up poultry against the fibers; and, would you think it, Miss Effingham, ma'am, that the last gun Mr. Blunt fired, dislocated, or otherwise diwerted, about half a dozen of the fowls that happened to be in the way; for I let all the poor wretches out of the coops, that they might make their own livings should we never come back. I should think that as polite and experienced a gentleman as Mr. Blunt might have shot the Arabs instead of my poultry!" "So it is," thought Eve, as she glanced into the pantry and proceeded. "What is considered happiness to-day gets to be misery to-morrow, and the rebukes of adversity are forgotten the instant prosperity resumes its influence. Either of these men, a few hours since, would have been most happy to have been in this vessel, as a home, or a covering for their heads, and now they quarrel with their good fortune because it is wanting in some accustomed superfluity or pampered indulgence." We shall leave her with this wholesome reflection uppermost, to examine into the condition of her own room, and return to the deck. As the hour was still early, Captain Truck having once quieted his feelings, went to work with zeal, to turn the late success to the best account. The cargo that had been discharged was soon stowed again, and the next great object was to get the ship afloat previously to hoisting in the new spars. As the kedges still lay on the reef, and all the anchors remained in the places where they had originally been placed, there was little to do but to get ready to heave upon the chains as soon as the tide rose. Previously to commencing this task, however, the intervening time was well employed in sending, down the imperfect hamper that was aloft, and in getting up shears to hoist out the remains of the foremast, as well as the jury mainmast, the latter of which, it will be remembered, was only fitted two days before. All the appliances used on that occasion being still on deck, and every body lending a willing hand, this task was completed by noon. The jury-mast gave little trouble, but was soon lying on the bank; and then Captain Truck, the shears having been previously shifted, commenced lifting the broken foremast, and just as the cooks announced that the dinner was ready for the people, the latter safely deposited the spar on the sands. "'Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowline,'" said Captain Truck to Mr. Blunt, as the crew came up the staging in their way to the galley, in quest of their meal. "I have not beheld the Montauk without a mast since the day she lay a new-born child at the ship-yards. I see some half a dozen of these mummified scoundrels dodging about on the shore yet, though the great majority, as Mr. Dodge would say, have manifested a decided disposition to amuse them selves with a further acquaintance with the Dane. In my humble opinion, sir, that poor deserted ship will have no more inside of her by night, than one of Saunders' ducks that have been dead an hour. That hearty fellow, Mr. Monday, is hit, I fear, between wind and water, Leach?" "He is in a bad way, indeed, as I understand from Mr John Effingham, who very properly allows no one to disturb him, keeping the state-room door closed on all but himself and his own man." 'Ay, ay, that is merciful; a man likes a little quiet when he is killed. As soon as the ship is more fit to be seen however, it will become my duty to wait on him in order to see that nothing is wanting. We must offer the poor man the consolations of religion, Mr. Blunt." "They would certainly be desirable had we one qualified for the task." "I can't say as much in that way for myself, perhaps, as I might, seeing that my father was a priest. But then, we masters of packets have occasion to turn our hands to a good many odd jobs. As soon as the ship is snug, I shall certainly take a look at the honest fellow. Pray, sir, what became of Mr. Dodge in the skirmish?" Paul smiled, but he prudently answered, "I believe he occupied himself in taking notes of the combat, and I make no doubt will do you full justice in the Active Inquirer, as soon as he gets its columns again at his command." "Too much learning, as my good father used to say, has made him a little mad. But I have a grateful heart to-day, Mr. Blunt, and will not be critical. I did not perceive Mr. Dodge in the conflict, as Saunders calls it, but there were so many of those rascally Arabs, that one had not an opportunity of seeing much else. We must get the ship outside of this reef with as little delay as possible, for to tell you a secret"--here the captain dropped his voice to a whisper--"there are but two rounds a-piece left for the small arms, and only one cartridge for the four-pounder. I own to you a strong desire to be in the offing." "They will hardly attempt to board us, after the specimen they have had of what we can do." "No one knows, sir; no one knows. They keep pouring down upon the coast like crows on the scent of a carrion, and once done with the Dane, we shall see them in hundreds prowling around us like wolves. How much do we want of high water?" "An hour, possibly. I do not think there is much time to lose before the people get to work at the windlass." Captain Truck nodded, and proceeded to look into the condition of his ground-tackle. It was a joyous but an anxious moment when the hand-spikes were first handled, and the slack of one of the chains began to come in. The ship had been upright several hours, and no one could tell how hard she would hang on the bottom. As the chain tightened, the gentlemen, the officers included, got upon the bows and looked anxiously at the effect of each heave; for it was a nervous thing to be stranded on such a coast, even after all that had occurred. "She winks, by George!" cried the captain; "heave together, men, and you will stir the sand!" The men did heave, gaining inch by inch, until no effort could cause the ponderous machine to turn. The mates, and then the captain, applied their strength in succession, and but half a turn more was gained. Everybody was now summoned, even to the passengers, and the enormous strain seemed to threaten to tear the fabric asunder; and still the ship was immoveable. "She hangs hardest forward, sir," said Mr. Leach: "suppose we run up the stern-boat?" This expedient was adopted, and so nearly were the counteracting powers balanced, that it prevailed. A strong heave caused the ship to start, an inch more of tide aided the effort, and then the vast hull slowly yielded to the purchase, gradually turning towards the anchor, until the quick blows of the pall announced that the vessel was fairly afloat again. "Thank God for that, as for all his mercies!" said Captain Truck. "Heave the hussy up to her anchor, Mr. Leach, when we will cast an eye to her moorings." All this was done, the ship being effectually secured, with due attention to a change in the wind, that now promised to be permanent. Not a moment was lost; but, the sheers being still standing, the foremast of the Dane was floated alongside, fastened to, and hove into its new berth, with as much rapidity as comported with care. When the mast was fairly stepped, Captain Truck rubbed his hands with delight, and immediately commanded his subordinate to rig it, although by this time the turn of the day had considerably passed. "This is the way with us seamen, Mr. Effingham," he observed; "from the fall to the fight, and then again from the fight to the fall. Our work, like women's, is never done; whereas you landsmen knock off with the sun, and sleep while the corn grows. I have always owed my parents a grudge for bringing me up to a dog's life." "I had understood it was a choice of your own, captain." "Ay--so far as running away and shipping without their knowledge was concerned, perhaps it was; but then it was their business to begin at the bottom, and to train me up in such a manner that I would not run away. The Lord forgive me, too, for thinking amiss of the two dear old people; for, to be candid with you, they were much too good to have such a son; and I honestly believe they loved me more than I loved myself. Well, I've the consolation of knowing I comforted the old lady with many a pound of capital tea after I got into the China trade, ma'amselle." "She was fond of it?" observed the governess politely. "She relished it very much, as a horse takes to oats, or a child to custard. That, and snuff and grace, composed her principal consolations." "_Quoi?_" demanded the governess, looking towards Paul for an explanation. "_Grace, mademoiselle; la grace de Dieu._" "_Bien!"_ "It's a sad misfortune, after all, to lose a mother, ma'amselle. It is like cutting all the headfasts, and riding altogether by the stern; for it is letting go the hold of what has gone before to grapple with the future. It is true that I ran away from my mother when a youngster, and thought little of it! but when she took her turn and ran away from me, I began to feel that I had made a wrong use of my legs. What are the tidings from poor Mr. Monday?" "I understand he does not suffer greatly, but that he grows weaker fast," returned Paul. "I fear there is little hope of his surviving such a hurt." The captain had got out a cigar, and had beckoned to Toast for a coal; but changing his mind suddenly, he broke the tobacco into snuff, and scattered it about the deck. "Why the devil is not that rigging going up, Mr. Leach?" he cried, fiercely. "It is not my intention to pass the winter at these moorings, and I solicit a little more expedition." "Ay, ay, sir," returned the mate, one of a class habitually patient and obedient; "bear a hand, my lads, and get the strings into their places." "Leach," continued the captain, more kindly, and still working his fingers unconsciously, "come this way, my good friend. I have not expressed to you, Mr. Leach, all I wish to say of your good conduct in this late affair. You have stood by me like a gallant fellow throughout the whole business, and I shall not hesitate about saying as much when we get in. It is my intention to write a letter to the owners, which no doubt they'll publish; for, whatever they have got to say against America, no one will deny it is easy to get any thing published. Publishing is victuals and drink to the nation. You may depend on having justice done you." "I never doubted it, Captain Truck." "No, sir; and you never winked. The mainmast does not stand up in a gale firmer than you stood up to the niggers." "Mr. Effingham, sir--and Mr. Sharp--and particularly Mr. Blunt--" "Let me alone to deal with them. Even Toast acted like a man. Well, Leach, they tell me poor Monday must slip, after all." "I am very sorry to hear it, sir; Mr. Monday laid about him like a soldier!" "He did, indeed; but Bonaparte himself has been obliged to give up the ghost, and Wellington must follow him some day; even old Putnam is dead. Either you or I, or both of us, Leach, will have to throw in some of the consolations of religion on this mournful occasion." "There is Mr. Effingham, sir, or Mr. John. Effingham, elderly gentlemen with more scholarship." "That will never do. All they can offer, no doubt, will be acceptable, but we owe a duty to the ship. The officers of a packet are not graceless-horse-jockeys, but sober, discreet men, and it becomes them to show that they have some education, and the right sort of stuff in them on an emergency. I expect you will stand by me, Leach, on this melancholy occasion, as stoutly as you stood by me this morning." "I humbly hope, sir, not to disgrace the vessel, but it is likely Mr. Monday is a Church-of-England-man, and we both belong to the Saybrook Platform!" "Ah! the devil!--I forgot that! But religion is religion; old line or new line; and I question if a man so near unmooring will be very particular. The great thing is consolation, and that we must contrive to give him, by hook or by crook, when the proper moment comes; and now, Mr. Leach, let the people push matters, and we shall have every, thing up forward, and that mainmast stepped yet by 'sunset;' or it would be more literal to say '_sun-down_;'" Captain Truck, like a true New-England-man, invariably using a provincialism that has got to be so general in America. The work proceeded with spirit, for every one was anxious to get the ship out of a berth that was so critical, as well from the constant vicinity of the Arabs as from the dangers of the weather. The wind baffled too, as it is usual on the margin of the trades, and at times it blew from the sea, though it continued light, and the changes were of short continuance. As Captain Truck hoped, when the people ceased work at night, the fore and fore-top-sail-yards were in their places, the top-gallant-mast was fitted, and, with the exception of the sails, the ship was what is called a-tanto, forward. Aft, less had been done, though by the assistance of the supernumeraries, who continued to lend their aid, the two lower masts were stepped, though no rigging could be got over them. The men volunteered to work by watches through the night, but to this Captain Truck would not listen, affirming that they had earned their suppers and a good rest, both of which they should have. The gentlemen, who merely volunteered an occasional drag, cheerfully took the look-outs, and as there were plenty of fire-arms, though not much powder, little apprehension was entertained of the Arabs. As was expected, the night passed away tranquilly, and every one arose with the dawn refreshed and strengthened. The return of day, however, brought the Arabs down upon the shore in crowds; for the last gale, which had been unusually severe, and the tidings of the wrecks, which had been spread by means of the dromedaries far and wide, had collected a force on the coast that began to be formidable through sheer numbers. The Dane had been effectually emptied, and plunder had the same effect on these rapacious barbarians that blood is known to produce on the tiger. The taste had begotten an appetite, and from the first appearance of the light, those in the ship saw sighs of a disposition to renew the attempt on their liberty. Happily, the heaviest portion of the work was done, and Captain Truck determined, rather than risk another conflict with a force that was so much augmented, to get the spars on board, and to take the ship outside of the reef, without waiting to complete her equipment. His first orders, therefore, when all hands were mustered, were for the boats to get in the kedges and the stream anchor, and otherwise to prepare to move the vessel. In the mean time other gangs were busy in getting the rigging over the mast-heads, and in setting it up. As the lifting of the anchors with boats was heavy work, by the time they were got on board and stowed it was noon, and all the yards were aloft, though not a sail was bent in the vessel. Captain Truck, while the people were eating, passed through the ship examining every stay and shroud: there were some make-shifts it is true, but on the whole he was satisfied, though he plainly saw that the presence of the Arabs had hurried matters a little, and that a good many drags would have to be given as soon as they got beyond danger, and that some attention must be paid to seizings still, what had been done would answer very well for moderate weather, and it was too late to stop to change. The trade wind had returned, and blew steadily as if finally likely to stand; and the water outside of the reef was smooth enough to permit the required alterations, now that the heavier spars were in their places. The appearance of the Montauk certainly was not as stately and commanding as before the wreck, but there was an air of completeness about it that augured well. It was that of a ship of seven hundred tons, fitted with spars intended for a ship of five hundred. The packet a little resembled a man of six feet, in the coat of a man of five feet nine, and yet the discrepancy would not be apt to be noticed by any but the initiated. Everything essential was in its place, and reasonably well secured, and, as the Dane had been rigged for a stormy sea, Captain Truck fell satisfied he might, in his present plight, venture on the American coast even in winter, without incurring unusual hazard. As soon as the hour of work arrived, therefore, a boat was sent to drop a kedge as near the inlet as it would be safe to venture, and a little to windward of it. By making a calculation, and inspecting his buoys, which still remained where he had placed them, Captain Truck found that he could get a narrow channel of sufficient directness to permit the ship to be warped as far as this point in a straight line. Every thing but the boats was now got on board, the anchor by which they rode was hove up, and the warp was brought to the capstan, when the vessel slowly began to advance towards the inlet. This movement was a signal to the Arabs, who poured down on both reefs in hundreds, screaming and gesticulating like maniacs. It required good nerves and some self-reliance to advance in the face of such a danger, and this so much the more, as the barbarians showed themselves in the greatest force on the northern range of rocks, which offered a good shelter for their persons, completely raked the channel, and, moreover, lay so near the spot where the kedge had been dropped, that one might have jerked a stone from the one to the other. To add to the awkwardness of the affair, the Arabs began to fire with those muskets that are of so little service in close encounters, but which are notorious for sending their shot with great precision from a distance. The bullets came thick upon the ship, though the stoutness of the bulwarks forward, and their height, as yet protected the men. In this dilemma, Captain Truck hesitated about continuing to haul ahead, and he sent for Mr. Blunt and Mr. Leach for a consultation. Both these gentlemen advised perseverance, and as the counsel of the former will succinctly show the state of things, it shall be given in his own words. "Indecision is always discouraging to one's friends, and encouraging to one's enemies," he said, "and I recommend perseverance. The nearer we haul to the rocks, the greater will be our command of them, while the more the chances of the Arabs' throwing their bullets on our decks will be diminished. Indeed, so long as we ride head to wind, they cannot fire low enough to effect their object from the northern reef, and on the southern they will not venture very near, for want of cover. It is true it will be impossible for us to bend our sails or to send out a boat in the face of so heavy a fire, while our assailants are so effectually covered; but we may possibly dislodge them with the gun, or with our small-arms, from the decks. If not, I will head a party into the tops, from which I will undertake to drive them out of the reach of our muskets in five minutes." "Such a step would be very hazardous to those who ventured aloft." "It would not be without danger, and some loss must be expected; but they who fight must expect risks." "In which case it will be the business of Mr. Leach and myself to head the parties aloft. If we are obliged to console the dying, damn me, but we are entitled to the privilege of fighting the living." "Ay, ay, sir," put in the mate; "that stands to reason." "There are three tops, gentlemen," returned Paul, mildly, "and I respect your rights too much to wish to interfere with them. We can each take one, and the effect will be in proportion to the greater means we employ,--one vigorous assault being worth a dozen feints." Captain Truck shook Paul heartily by the hand, and adopted his advice. When the young man had retired, he turned to the mate, and said-- "After all, these men-of-war's men are a little beyond us in the science of attack and defence, though I think I could give him a hint in the science of signs. I have had two or three touches at privateering in my time, but no regular occupation in your broadside work. Did you see how Mr. Blunt handled his boat yesterday? As much like two double blocks and a steady drag, as one belaying-pin is like another, and as coolly as a great lady in London looks at one of us in a state of nature. For my part, Leach, I was as hot as mustard, and ready to cut the throat of the best friend I had on earth; whereas he was smiling as I rowed past him, though I could hardly see his face for the smoke of his own gun." "Yes, sir, that's the way with your regular builts. I'll warrant you he began young, and had kicked all the passion out of himself on old salts, by the time he was eighteen. He doesn't seem, neither, like one of the true d--n-my-eye breed; but it's a great privilege to a man in a passion to be allowed to kick when and whom he likes." "Not he. I say Leach, perhaps he might lend us a hand when it comes to the pinch with poor Monday. I have a great desire that the worthy fellow should take his departure decently." "Well, sir, I think you had better propose it. For my part, I'm quite willing to go into all three of the tops alone, rather than disappoint a dying man." The captain promised to look to the matter, and then they turned their attention to the ship, which in a few more minutes was up as near the kedge as it was prudent to haul her. Chapter XXVIII. Speed, gallant bark, the tornado is past; Staunch and secure thou hast weather'd the blast; Now spread thy full sails to the wings of the morn, And soon the glad haven shall greet thy return. _Park_. The Montauk now lay close to the inlet, and even a little to windward of its entrance; but the channel was crooked, not a sail was bent, nor was it possible to bend one properly without exposing the men to the muskets of the Arabs, who, from firing loosely, had got to be more wary and deliberate, aiming at the places where a head or an arm was occasionally seen. To prolong this state of things was merely to increase the evil, and Captain Truck determined to make an effort at once to dislodge his enemies. With this view the gun was loaded in-board, filled nearly to the muzzle with slugs, and then it was raised with care to the top-gallant-forecastle, and cautiously pushed forward near the gunwale. Had the barbarians understood the construction of a vessel, they might have destroyed half the packet's crew while they were thus engaged about the forecastle by firing through the planks; but, ignorant of the weakness of the defences, they aimed altogether at the openings, or over the rails. By lowering the gaff the spanker was imperfectly bent; that is to say, it was bent on the upper leach. The boom was got in under cover of the hurricane-house, and of the bundle of the sail; the out-hauler was bent, the boom, replaced, the sail being hoisted with a little and a hurried lacing, to the luff. This was not effected without a good deal of hazard, though the nearness of the bows of the vessel to the rocks prevented most of the Arabs from perceiving what passed so far aft. Still, others nearer to the shore caught glimpses of the actors, and several narrow escapes were the consequence. The second mate, in particular, had a shot through his hat within an inch of his head. By a little management, notwithstanding, the luff of the spanker was made to stand tolerably well; and the ship had at least the benefit of this one sail. The Dane had been a seaman of the old school; and, instead of the more modern spenser, his ship had been fitted with old-fashioned stay-sails. Of these it was possible to bend the main and mizzen stay-sails in tolerable security, provided the ends of the halyards could be got down. As this, however, would be nearly all aftersail, the captain determined to make an effort to overhaul the buntlines and leachlines of the foresail, at the same time that men were sent aloft after the ends of the halyards. He also thought it possible to set a fore-topmast stay-sail flying. No one was deceived in this matter. The danger and the mode of operating were explained clearly, and then Captain Truck asked for volunteers. These were instantly found; Mr. Leach and the second mate setting the example by stepping forward as the first two. In order that the whole procedure may be understood, however, it shall be explained more fully. Two men were prepared to run up on the fore-yard at the word. Both of these, one of whom was Mr. Leach, carried three small balls of marline, to the end of each of which was attached a cod-hook, the barb being filed off in order to prevent its being caught. By means of these hooks the balls were fastened to the jackets of the adventurers. Two others stood ready at the foot of the main and mizzen riggings. By the gun lay Paul and three men; while several of the passengers, and a few of the best shots among the crew, were stationed on the forecastle, armed with muskets and fowling-pieces. "Is everybody ready?" called out the captain from the quarter-deck. "All ready!" and "Ay! ay, sir!" were answered from the different points of the ship. "Haul out the spanker!" As soon as this sail was set, the stern of the ship swung round towards the inlet, so as to turn the bow on which the gun was placed towards the part of the reef where the Arabs were in greatest numbers. "Be steady, men! and do not hurry yourselves, though active as wild-cats! Up, and away!" The two fore-yard men, and the two by the after-masts, sprang into the rigging like squirrels, and were running aloft before the captain had done speaking.--At the same instant one of the three by the gun leaped on the bowsprit, and ran out towards the stay. Paul, and the other two, rose and shoved the gun to its berth; and the small-arms men showed themselves at the rails. So many, all in swift motion, appearing at the same moment in the rigging, distracted the attention of the Arabs for an instant, though scattering shots were fired. Paul knew that the danger would be greatest when the men aloft Were stationary, and he was in no haste. Perhaps for half a minute he was busy in choosing his object, and in levelling the gun, and then it was fired. He had chosen the moment well; for Mr. Leach and his fellow adventurers were already on the fore-yard, and the Arabs had arisen from their covers in the eagerness of taking aim. The small-arms men poured in their volley, and then little more could be done in the way of the offensive, nearly all the powder in the ship having been expended. It remains to tell the result of this experiment.--Among the Arabs a few fell, and those most exposed to the fire from the ship were staggered, losing near a minute in their confusion; but those more remote maintained hot discharges after the first surprise. The whole time occupied in what we are going to relate was about three minutes; the action of the several parts going on simultaneously. The adventurer forward, though nearest to the enemy, was least exposed. Partly covered by the bowsprit, he ran nimbly out on that spar till he reached the stay. Here he cut the stop of the fore-topmast halyards, overhauled the running part, and let the block swing in. He then hooked a block that he had carried out with him, and in which the bight of a rope had been rove through the thimble, and ran in as fast as possible. This duty, which had appeared the most hazardous of all the different adventures, on account of the proximity of the bowsprit to the reef, was the first done, and with the least real risk; the man being partly concealed by the smoke of the gun, as well as by the bowsprit. He escaped uninjured. As the two men aft pursued exactly the same course, the movements of one will explain those of the other. On reaching the yard, the adventurer sprang on it, caught the hook of the halyard-block, and threw himself off without an instant's hesitation, overhauling the halyards by his weight. Men stood in readiness below to check the fall by easing off the other end of the rope, and the hardy fellow reached the deck in safety. This seemed a nervous undertaking to the landsmen; but the seamen who so well understood the machinery of their vessel, made light of it. On the fore-yard, Mr. Leach passed out on one yard-arm, and his co-adventurer, a common seaman, on the other. Each left a hook in the knot of the inner buntline, as he went out, and dropped the ball of marline on deck. The same was done at the outer buntlines, and at the leachlines. Here the mate returned, according to his orders, leaped upon the rigging, and thence upon a backstay, when he slid on deck with a velocity that set aim at defiance. Notwithstanding the quickness of his motions, Mr. Leach received a trifling hit on the shoulder, and several bullets whizzed near him. The seaman on the other yard-arm succeeded equally well, escaping the smallest injury, until he had secured the leachline, when, knowing the usefulness of, obtaining it, for he was on the weather side of the ship, he determined to bring in the end of the reef-tackle with him. Calling out to let go the rope on the deck, he ran out to the lift, bent over and secured the desired end, and raised himself erect, with the intention to make a run in, on the top of the yard. Captain Truck and the second mate had both commanded him to desist in vain, for impunity from harm had rendered him fool-hardy. In this perilous position he even paused to give a cheer. The cry was scarcely ended when he sprang off the yard several feet upwards and fell perpendicularly towards the sea, carrying the rope in his hand. At first, most on board believed the man had jumped into the water as the least hazardous means of getting down, depending on the rope, and on swimming, for his security; but Paul pointed out the spot of blood that stained the surface of the sea, at the point where he had fallen. The reef-tackle was rounded cautiously in, and its end rose to the surface without the hand that had so lately grasped it. The man himself never re-appeared. Captain Truck had now the means of setting three stay-sails, the spanker, and the fore-course; sails sufficient, he thought, to answer his present purposes.--The end of the reef-tackle, that had been so dearly bought, was got in, by means of a light line, which was thrown around it. The order was now given to brail the spanker, and to clap on and weigh the kedge, which was done by the run. As soon as the ship was free of the bottom, the fore-topmast-stay-sail was set flying, like a jib-top-sail, by hauling out the tack, and swaying upon the halyards. The sheet was hauled to windward, and the helm put down; of course the bows of the ship began to fall off, and, as soon, as her head was sufficiently near her course, the sheet was drawn, and the wheel shifted. Captain Truck now ordered the foresail, which, by this time was ready, to be set. This important sail was got on the vessel, by bending the buntlines and leachlines to its head, and by hauling out the weather-head-cringle by means of the reef tackle. As soon as this broad spread of canvas was on the ship, her motion was accelerated, and she began to move away from the spot, followed by the furious cries and menaces of the Arabs. To the latter no one paid any heed, but they were audible until drowned in distance. Although aided by all her spars, and the force of the wind on her hull, a body as large as the Montauk required some little time to overcome the _vis inertiæ_, and several anxious minutes passed before she was so far from the cover of the Arabs as to prevent their clamour from seeming to be in the very ears of those on board. When this did occur, it brought inexpressible relief, though it perhaps increased the danger, by increasing the chances of the bullets hitting objects on deck. The course at first was nearly before the wind, when the flat rock, so often named, being reached, the ship was compelled to haul up on an easy bowline, in order to pass to windward of it. Here the stay-sails aft and the spanker were set, which aided in bringing the vessel to the wind, and the fore-tack was brought down. By laying straight out of the pass, a distance of only a hundred yards, the vessel would be again clear of every thing, and beyond all the dangers of the coast, so long as the present breeze stood. But the tide set the vessel bodily towards the rock, and her condition did not admit of pressing hard upon a bowline. Captain Truck was getting to be uneasy, for he soon perceived that they were nearing the danger, though very gradually, and he began to tremble for his copper. Still the vessel drew steadily ahead, and he had hopes of passing the outer edge of the rocks in safety. This outer edge was a broken, ragged, and pointed fragment, that would break in the planks should the vessel rest upon it an instant, while falling in that constant heaving and setting of the ocean, which now began to be very sensibly felt. After all his jeopardy, the old mariner saw that his safety was at a serious hazard, by one of those unforeseen but common risks that environ the seaman's life. "Luff! luff! you can," cried Captain Truck, glancing his eye from the rock to the sails, and from the sails to the rock. "Luff, sir--you are at the pinch!" "Luff it is sir!" answered the man at the wheel, who stood abaft the hurricane-house, covered by its roof, over which he was compelled to look, to get a view of the sails. "Luff I may, and luff it is, sir." Paul stood at the captain's side, the crew being ordered to keep themselves as much covered as possible, on account of the bullets of the Arabs, which were at this time pattering against the vessel, like hail at the close of a storm. "We shall not weather that point of ragged rock," exclaimed the young man, quickly; "and if we touch it the ship will be lost." "Let her claw off," returned the old man sternly. "Her cutwater is up with it already. Let her claw off." The bows of the ship were certainly up with the danger, and the vessel was slowly drawing ahead; but every moment its broadside was set nearer to the rock, which was now within fifty feet of them. The fore-chains were past the point, though little hope remained of clearing it abaft. A ship turns on her centre of gravity as on a pivot, the two ends inclining in opposite directions; and Captain Truck hoped that as the bows were past the danger, it might be possible to throw the after-part of the vessel up to the wind, by keeping away, and thus clear the spot entirely. "Hard up with your helm!" he shouted, "hard up!--Haul down the mizzen-stay-sail, and give her sheet!" The sails were attended to, but no answer came from the wheel, nor did the vessel change her course. "Hard up, I tell you, sir--hard up--hard up, and be d---d to you!" The usual reply was not made. Paul sprang through the narrow gangway that led to the wheel. All that passed took but a minute, and yet it was the most critical minute that had yet befallen the Montauk; for had she touched that rock but for an instant, human art could hardly have kept her above water an hour. "Hard up, and be d---d to you!" repeated Captain Truck, in a voice of thunder, as Paul darted round the corner of the hurricane-house. The seaman stood at the wheel, grasping its spokes firmly, his eyes aloft as usual, but the turns of the tiller rope showed that the order was not obeyed. "Hard up, man, hard up! are you mad?" Paul uttered these words as he sprang to the wheel, which he made whirl with his own hands in the required direction. As for the seaman, he yielded his hold without resistance, and fell like a log, as the wheel flew round. A ball had entered his back, and passed through his heart, and yet he had stood steadily to the spokes, as the true mariner always clings to the helm while life lasts. The bows of the ship fell heavily off, and her stern pressed up towards the wind; but the trifling delay so much augmented the risk, that nothing saved the vessel but the formation of the run and counter, which, by receding as usual, allowed room to escape the dangerous point, as the Montauk hove by on a swell. Paul could not see the nearness of the escape, but the purity of the water permitted Captain Truck and his mates to observe it with a distinctness that almost rendered them breathless. Indeed there was an instant when the sharp rock was hid beneath the counter, and each momentarily expected to hear the grating of the fragment, as it penetrated the vessel's bottom. "Relieve that man at the wheel, and send him hither this moment," said Captain Truck, in a calm stern voice, that was more ominous than an oath. The mate called a seaman, and passed aft himself to execute the order. In a minute he and Paul returned, bearing the body of the dead mariner, when all was explained. "Lord, thy ways are unsearchable!" muttered the old master, uncovering himself, as the corpse was carried past, "and we are but as grains of seed, and as the vain butterflies in thy hand!" The rock once cleared, an open ocean lay to leeward of the packet, and bringing the wind a little abaft the beam, she moved steadily away from those rocks that had been the witnesses of all her recent dangers. It was not long before she was so distant that all danger from the Arabs ceased. The barbarians, notwithstanding, continued a dropping fire and furious gesticulations, long after their bullets and menaces became matters of indifference to those on board. The body of the dead man was laid between the masts, and the order was passed to bend the sails. As all was ready, in half an hour the Montauk was standing off the land under her three topsails, the reef now distant nearly a league. The courses came next, when the top-gallant yards were crossed and the sails set; the lighter canvas followed, and some time before the sun disappeared, the ship was under studding-sails, standing to the westward, before the trades. For the first time since he received the intelligence that the Arabs were the masters of the ship, Captain Truck now felt real relief. He was momentarily happy after the combat, but new cares had pressed upon him so soon, that he could scarcely be said to be tranquil. Matters were now changed. His vessel was in good order, if not equipped for racing, and, as he was in a low latitude, had the trade winds to befriend him, and no longer entertained any apprehension of his old enemy the Foam, he felt as if a mountain had been removed from his breast. "Thank God," he observed to Paul, "I shall sleep to-night without dreaming of Arabs or rocks, or scowling faces at New York. They may say that another man might have shown more skill in keeping clear of such a scrape, but they will hardly say that another man could have got out of it better. All this handsome outfit, too, will cost the owners nothing--literally nothing; and I question if the poor Dane will ever appear to claim the sails and spars. I do not know that we are in possession of them exactly according to the law of Africa, for of that code I know little; or according to the law of nations, for Vattel, I believe, has nothing on the subject; but we are in possession so effectually, that, barring the nor'-westers on the American coast, I feel pretty certain of keeping them until we make the East River." "It might be better to bury the dead," said Paul; for he knew Eve would scarcely appear on deck as long as the body remained in sight. "Seamen, you know, are superstitious on the subject of corpses." "I have thought of this; but hoped to cheat those two rascals of sharks that are following in our wake, as if they scented their food. It is an extraordinary thing, Mr. Blunt, that these fish should know when there is a body in a ship, and that they will follow it a hundred leagues to make sure of their prey." "It would be extraordinary, if true; but in what manner has the fact been ascertained?" "You see the two rascally pirates astern?" observed Mr. Leach. "Very true; but we might also see them were there no dead body about the ship. Sharks abound in this latitude, and I have seen several about the reef since we went in. "They'll be disappointed as to poor Tom Smith," said the mate, "unless they dive deep for him. I have lashed one of Napoleon's busts to the fine fellow's feet, and he'll not fetch up until he's snugly anchored on the bottom." "This is a fitting hour for solemn feelings," said the captain, gazing about him at the heavens and the gathering gloom of twilight. "Call all hands to bury the dead, Mr. Leach. I confess I should feel easier myself as to the weather, were the body fairly out of the ship." While the mate went forward to muster the people, the captain took Paul aside with a request that he would perform the last offices for the deceased. "I will read a chapter in the Bible myself," he said; "for I should not like the people to see one of the crew go overboard, and the officers have no word to say in the ceremonies; it might beget disrespect, and throw a slur on our knowledge; but you man-of-war's-men are generally more regularly brought up to prayers than us liners, and if you have a proper book by you, I should feel infinitely obliged if you would give us a lift on this melancholy occasion." Paul proposed that Mr. Effingham should be asked to officiate, as he knew that gentleman read prayers in his cabin, to his own party, night and morning. "Does he?" said the captain; "then he is my man, for he must have his hand in, and there will be no stammering or boggling. Ay, ay; he will fetch through on one tack. Toast, go below, and present my compliments to Mr. Effingham, and say I should like to speak to him; and, harkee, Toast, desire him to put a prayer-book in his pocket, and then step into my state-room, and bring up the Bible you will find under the pillow. The Arabs had a full chance at the plunder; but there is something about the book that always takes care of it. Few rogues, I've often remarked, care about a Bible. They would sooner steal ten novels than one copy of the sacred writ. This of mine was my mother's, Mr. Blunt, and I should have been a better man had I overhauled it oftener." We pass over most of the arrangements, and come at once to the service, and to the state of the ship, just as her inmate were assembled on an occasion which no want of formality can render any thing but solemn and admonitory. The courses were hauled up, and the main-topsail had been laid to the mast, a position in which a ship has always an air of stately repose. The body was stretched on a plank that lay across a rail, the leaden bust being enclosed in the hammock that enveloped it. A spot of blood on the cloth alone betrayed the nature of the death. Around the body were grouped the crew, while Captain Truck and his mates stood at the gangway. The passengers were collected on the quarter-deck, with Mr. Effingham, holding a prayer-book, a little in advance. The sun had just dipped into the ocean, and the whole western horizon was glorious with those soft, pearly, rainbow hues that adorn the evening and the morning of a low latitude, during the soft weather of the autumnal months. To the eastward, the low line of coast was just discernible by the hillocks of sand, leaving the imagination to portray its solitude and wastes. The sea in all other directions was dark and gloomy, and the entire character of the sunset was that of a grand picture of ocean magnificence and extent, relieved by a sky in which the tints came and went like the well-known colours of the dolphin; to this must be added the gathering gloom of twilight. Eve pressed the arm of John Effingham, and gazed with admiration and awe at the imposing scene. "This is the seaman's grave!" she whispered. "And worthy it is to be the tomb of so gallant a fellow. The man died clinging to his post; and Powis tells me that his hand was loosened from the wheel with difficulty." They were silent, for Captain Truck uncovered himself, as did all around him, placed his spectacles, and opened the sacred volume. The old mariner was far from critical in his selections of readings, and he usually chose some subject that he thought would most interest his hearers, which were ordinarily those that most interested himself. To him Bible was Bible, and he now turned to the passage in the Acts of the Apostles in which the voyage of St. Paul from Judea to Rome is related. This he read with steadiness, some quaintness of pronunciation, and with a sort of breathing elasticity, whenever he came to those verses that touched particularly on the navigation. Paul maintained his perfect self-command during this extraordinary exhibition, but an unbidden smile lingered around the handsome and chiseled mouth of Mr. Sharp. John Effingham's curved face was sedate and composed, while the females were too much impressed to exhibit any levity. As to the crew, they listened in profound attention, occasionally exchanging glances whenever any of the nautical expedients struck them as being out of role. As soon as this edifying chapter was ended, Mr. Effingham commenced the solemn rites for the dead. At the first sound of his voice, a calm fell on the vessel as if the spirit of God had alighted from the clouds, and a thrill passed through the frames of the listeners. Those solemn words of the Apostle commencing with "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet he shall live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, he shall never die," could not have been better delivered. The voice, intonation, utterance, and manner, of Mr. Effingham, were eminently those of a gentleman; without pretension, quiet, simple, and mellow, while, on the other hand, they were feeling, dignified, distinct, and measured. When he pronounced the words "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though, after my skin, worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God," &c. &c. the men stared about them as if a real voice from heaven had made the declaration, and Captain Truck looked aloft like one expecting a trumpet-blast. The tears of Eve began to flow as she listened to the much-loved tones; and the stoutest heart in that much tried ship quailed. John Effingham made the responses of the psalm steadily, and Mr. Sharp and Paul soon joined him. But the profoundest effect was produced when the office reached those consoling but startling words from the Revelations commencing with, "I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me write, from henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," &c. Captain Truck afterwards confessed that he thought he heard the very voice, and the men actually pressed together in their alarm. The plunge of the body was also a solemn instant. It went off the end of the plank feet foremost, and, carried rapidly down by the great weight of the lead, the water closed above it, obliterating every trace of the seaman's grave. Eve thought that its exit resembled the few brief hours that draw the veil of oblivion around the mass of mortals when they disappear from earth. Instead of asking for the benediction at the close of the ceremony, Mr. Effingham devoutly and calmly commenced the psalm of thanksgiving for victory, "If the Lord had not been on our side, now may we say, if the Lord himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us, they would have swallowed us up quick, when they were so wrathfully displeased with us." Most of the gentlemen joined in the responses, and the silvery voice of Eve sounded sweet and holy amid the breathings of the ocean. _Te Deum Laudamus,_ "We praise thee, O God! we acknowledge thee to be the Lord!" "All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting;" closed the offices, when Mr. Effingham dismissed his congregation with the usual layman's request for the benediction. Captain Truck had never before been so deeply impressed with any religious ceremony, and when it ceased he looked wistfully over the side at the spot where the body had fallen, or where it might be supposed to have fallen--- for the ship had drifted some distance--as one takes a last look at the grave of a friend. "Shall we fill the main-topsail, sir?" demanded Mr. Leach, after waiting a minute or two in deference to his commander's feelings; "or shall we hook on the yard-tackles, and stow the launch?" "Not yet, Leach; not yet. It will be unkind to poor Jack to hurry away from his grave so indecently. I have observed that the people about the river always keep in sight till the last sod is stowed, and the rubbish is cleared away. The fine fellow stood to those spokes as a close-reefed topsail in a gale stands the surges of the wind, and we owe him this little respect." "The boats, sir?" "Let them tow awhile longer. It will seem like deserting him to be rattling the yard-tackles and stowing boats directly over his head. Your gran'ther was a priest, Leach, and I wonder you don't see the impropriety of hurrying away from a grave. A little reflection will hurt none of us." The mate admired at a mood so novel for his commander, but he was fain to submit. The day was fast closing notwithstanding, and the skies were losing their brilliancy in hues that were still softer and more melancholy, as if nature delighted, too, in sympathizing with the feelings of these lone mariners! Chapter XXIX. Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain. LEAR. The barbarians had done much less injury to the ship and her contents than under the circumstances could have been reasonably hoped. The fact that nothing could be effectually landed where she lay was probably the cause, the bales that had actually been got out of the ship, having been put upon the bank with a view to lighten her, more than for any other reason. The compact, too, between the chiefs had its influence probably, though it could not have lasted long with so strong temptations to violate it constantly before the eyes of men habitually rapacious. Of course, one of the first things after each individual had ascertained his own losses, was to inquire into those of his neighbours, and the usual party in the ladies' cabin was seated around the sofa of Eve, about nine in the evening, conversing on this topic, after having held a short but serious discourse on their recent escape. "You tell me, John, that Mr. Monday has a desire to sleep?" observed Mr. Effingham, in the manner in which one puts an interrogation. "He is easier, and dozes. I have left my man with him, with orders to summon me the instant he awakes." A melancholy pause succeeded, and then the discourse took the channel from which it had been diverted. "Is the extent of our losses in effects known?" asked Mr. Sharp. "My man reports some trifling _deficit_, but nothing of any value." "Your counterfeit," returned Eve, smiling, "has been the principal sufferer. One would think by his plaints, that not a toy is left in Christendom." "So long as they have not stolen from him his good name, I shall not complain, as I may have some use for it when we reach America, of which now, God be praised! there are some flattering prospects." "I understand from my connexions that the person who is known in the main cabin as Sir George Templemore, is not the person who is known as such in this," observed John Effingham, bowing to Mr. Sharp, who returned his salute as one acknowledges an informal introduction. "There are certainly weak men to be found in high stations all over the world, but you will probably think I am doing honour to my own sagacity, when I say, that I suspected from the first that he was not the true Amphitryon. I had heard of Sir George Templemore, and had been taught to expect more in him than even a man of fashion--a man of the world--while this poor substitute can scarcely claim to be either." John Effingham so seldom complimented that his kind words usually told, and Mr. Sharp acknowledged the politeness, more gratified than he was probably willing to acknowledge to himself. The other could have heard of him only from Eve and her father, and it was doubly grateful to be spoken of favourably in such a quarter: he thought there was a consciousness in the slight suffusion that appeared on the face of the daughter, which led him to hope that even the latter had not considered him unworthy of recollection; for he cared but little for the remembrances of Mr. Effingham, if they could all be transferred to his child. "This person, who does me the honour to relieve me from the trouble of bearing my own name," he resumed, "cannot be of very lofty pretensions, or he would have aspired higher. I suspect him of being merely one of those silly young countrymen of mine, of whom so many crowd stage-coaches and packets, to swagger over their less ambitious fellow-mortals with the strut and exactions of the hour." "And yet, apart from his folly in 'sailing under false colours,' as our worthy captain would call it, the man seems well enough." "A folly, cousin Jack," said Eve with laughing eyes though she maintained a perfect demureness with her beautiful features--"that he shares in common with so many others!" "Very true, though I suspect he has climbed to commit it, while others have been content to descend. The man himself behaved well yesterday, showing steadiness as well as spirit in the fray." "I forgive him his usurpation for his conduct on that occasion," returned Mr. Sharp, "and wish with all my heart the Arabs had discovered less affection for his curiosities. I should think that they must find themselves embarrassed to ascertain the uses of some of their prizes; such for instance, as the button-hooks, the shoe-horn, knives with twenty blades, and other objects that denote a profound civilization." "You have not spoken of your luck, Mr. Powis," added Mr. Effingham; "I trust you have fared as well as most of us, though had they visited their enemies according to the injury received from them, you would be among the heaviest of the sufferers." "My loss," replied Paul, mournfully, "is not much in pecuniary value, though irreparable to me." A look of concern betrayed the general interest, for as he really seemed sad, there was a secret apprehension that his loss even exceeded that which his words would give them reason to suppose. Perceiving the curiosity that was awakened, and which was only suppressed by politeness, the young man added, "I miss a miniature that, to me, is of inestimable value." Eve's heart throbbed, while her eyes sunk to the carpet. The others seemed amazed, and after a brief pause, Mr. Sharp observed-- "A painting on its own account would hardly possess much value with such barbarians. Was the setting valuable?" "It was of gold, of course, and had some merit in the way of workmanship. It has probably been taken as curious rather than for its specific value; though to me, as I have just said, the ship itself could scarcely be of more account--certainly not as much prized." "Many light articles have been merely mislaid; taken away through curiosity or idleness, and left where the individual happened to be at the moment of changing his mind," said John Effingham: "several things of mine have been scattered through the cabins in this manner, and I understand that divers vestments of the ladies have found their way into the state-rooms of the other cabin; particularly a nightcap of Mademoiselle Viefville's, that has been discovered in Captain Truck's room, and which that gallant seaman has forthwith condemned as a lawful waif. As he never uses such a device on his head, he will be compelled to wear it next his heart. He will be compelled to convert it into a _liberty_-cap." "_Ciel!_ if the excellent captain will carry us safe to New York," coolly returned the governess, "he shall have the prize, _de tout mon coeur; c'est un homme brave, et c'est aussi un brave homme, à sa façon_" "Here are _two_ hearts concerned in the affair already, and no one can foresee the consequences; but," turning to Paul, "describe, this miniature, if you please, for there are many in the vessel, and yours is not the only one that has been mislaid." "It was a miniature of a female, and one, too, I think, that would be remarked for her beauty." Eve felt a chill at her heart. "If, sir, it is the miniature of an elderly lady," said Ann Sidley, "perhaps it is this which I found in Miss Eve's room, and which I intended to give to Captain Truck in order that it might reach the hands of its right owner." Paul took the miniature, which he regarded coldly for a moment, and then returned to the nurse. "Mine is the miniature of a female under twenty," he said, colouring as he spoke; "and is every way different from this." This was the painful and humiliating moment when Eve Effingham was made to feel the extent and the nature of the interest she took in Paul Powis. On all the previous occasions in which her feelings had been strongly awakened on his account, she had succeeded in deceiving herself as to the motive, but now the truth was felt in that overwhelming form that no sensitive heart can distrust. No one had seen the miniature, though all observed the emotion with which Paul spoke of it, and all secretly wondered of whom it could be. "The Arabs appear to have some such taste for the fine arts as distinguishes the population of a mushroom American city," said John Effingham; "or one that runs to portraits, which are admired while the novelty lasts, and then are consigned to the first spot that offers to receive them." "Are _your_ miniatures all safe, Eve?" Mr. Effingham inquired with interest; for among them was one of her mother that he had yielded to her only through strong parental affection, but which it would have given him deep pain to discover was lost, though John Effingham, unknown to him, possessed a copy. "It is with the jewellery in the baggage-room, dearest father, and untouched of course. We are fortunate that our passing wants did not extend beyond our comfort and luckily they are not of a nature to be much prized by barbarians. Coquetry and a ship have little in common, and Mademoiselle Viefville and myself had not much out to tempt the marauders." As Eve uttered this, both the young men involuntarily turned their eyes towards her, each thinking that a being so fair stood less in need than common of the factitious aid of ornaments. She was dressed in a dark French chintz, that her maid had fitted to her person in a manner that it would seem none but a French assistant can accomplish, setting off her falling shoulders, finely moulded bust, and slender-rounded waist, in a way to present a modest outline of their perfection. The dress had that polished medium between fashion and its exaggeration, that always denotes a high association, and perhaps a cultivated mind--certainly a cultivated taste--offending neither usage on the one hand, nor self-respect and a chaste appreciation of beauty on the other. Indeed Eve was distinguished for that important acquisition to a gentlewoman, an intellectual or refined toilette; not intellect and refinement in extravagance and caricature, but as they are displayed in fitness, simplicity, elegance, and the proportions. This much, perhaps, she owed to native taste, as the slight air of fashion, and the high air of a gentlewoman, that were thrown about her person and attire, were the fruits of an intimate connexion with the best society of half the capitals of the European continent. As an unmarried female, modesty, the habits of the part of the world in which she had so long dwelt, and her own sense of propriety, caused her to respect simplicity of appearance; but through this, as it might be in spite of herself, shone qualities of a superior order. The little hand and foot, so beautiful and delicate, the latter just peeping from the dress under which it was usually concealed, appeared as if formed expressly to adorn a taste that was every way feminine and alluring. "It is one of the mysteries of the grand designs of Providence, that men should exist in conditions so widely distant from each other," said John Effingham abruptly, "with a common nature that can be so much varied by circumstances. It is almost humiliating to find one's-self a man, vhen beings like these Arabs are to be classed as fellows." "The most instructed and refined, cousin Jack, may get a useful lesson, notwithstanding your disrelish for the consanguinity, from this very identity of nature," said Eve, who made a rally to overcome feelings that she deemed girlish and weak. "By showing us what we might be ourselves, we get an admonition of humility; or by reflecting on the difference that is made by education, does it not strike you that there is an encouragement to persevere until better things are attained?" "This globe is but a ball, and a ball, too, insignificant, even when compared with the powers of man," continued the other. "How many navigators now circle it! even you, sir, may have done this, young as you still are," turning to Paul, who made a bow of assent; "and yet, within these narrow limits, what wonderful varieties of physical appearance, civilization, laws, and even of colour, do we find, all mixed up with points of startling affinity." "So far as a limited experience has enabled me to judge," observed Paul, "I have every where found, not only the same nature, but a common innate sentiment of justice that seems universal; for even amidst the wildest scenes of violence, or of the most ungovernable outrages, this sentiment glimmers through the more brutal features of the being. The rights of property, for instance, are every where acknowledged; the very wretch who steals whenever he can, appearing conscious of his crime, by doing it clandestinely, and as a deed that shuns observation. All seem to have the same general notions of natural justice, and they are forgotten only through the policy of systems, irresistible temptation, the pressure of want, or the result of contention." "Yet, as a rule, man every where oppresses his weaker fellow." "True; but he betrays consciousness of his error, directly or indirectly. One can show his sense of the magnitude of his crime even by the manner of defending it. As respects our late enemies, I cannot say I felt any emotion of animosity while the hottest engaged against them, for their usages have rendered their proceedings lawful." "They tell me," interrupted Mr. Effingham, "that it is owing to your presence of mind and steadiness that more blood was not shed unnecessarily." "It may be questioned," continued Paul, noticing this compliment merely by an inclination of the head, "if civilized people have not reasoned themselves, under the influence of interest, into the commission of deeds quite as much opposed to natural justice as anything done by these barbarians. Perhaps no nation is perfectly free from the just imputation of having adopted some policy quite as unjustifiable in itself as the system of plunder maintained among the Arabs." "Do you count the rights of hospitality as nothing?" "Look at France, a nation distinguished for refinement, among its rulers, at least. It was but the other day that the effects of the stranger who died in her territory were appropriated to the use of a monarch wallowing in luxury. Compare this law with the treaties that invited strangers to repair to the country, and the wants of the monarch who exhibited the rapacity, to the situation of the barbarians from whom we have escaped, and the magnitude of the temptation we offered, and it does not appear that the advantage is much with Christians. But the fate of shipwrecked mariners all over the world is notorious. In countries the most advanced in civilization they are plundered, if there is an opportunity, and, at need, frequently murdered." "This is a frightful picture of humanity," said Eve shuddering. "I do not think that this charge can be justly brought against America." "That is far from certain. America has many advantages to weaken the temptation to crime, but she is very far from perfect. The people on some of her coasts have been accused of resorting to the old English practice of showing false lights, with a view to mislead vessels, and of committing cruel depredations on the wrecked. In all things I believe there is a disposition in man to make misfortune weigh heaviest on the unfortunate. Even the coffin in which we inter a friend costs more than any other piece of work of the same amount of labour and materials." "This is a gloomy picture of humanity, to be drawn by one so young," Mr. Effingham mildly rejoined. "I think it true. All men do not exhibit their selfishness and ferocity in the same way; but there are few who do not exhibit both. As for America, Miss Effingham, she is fast getting vices peculiar to herself and her system, and, I think, vices which bid fair to bring her down, ere long, to the common level, although I do not go quite so far in describing her demerits as some of the countrymen of Mademoiselle Viefville have gone." "And what may that have been?" asked the governess eagerly, in English. "_Pourrie avant d'être mûre. Mûre_, America is certainly far from being; but I am not disposed to accuse her yet of being quite_pourrie._" "We had flattered ourselves," said Eve, a little reproachfully, "with having at last found a countryman in Mr. Powis." "And how would that change the question? Or do you admit that an American can be no American, unless blind to the faults of the country, however great?" "Would it be generous for a child to turn upon a parent that all others assail?" "You put the case ingeniously, but scarcely with fairness. It is the duty of the parent to educate and correct the child, but it is the duty of the citizen to reform and improve the character of his country. How can the latter be done, if nothing but eulogies are dealt in? With foreigners, one should not deal too freely with the faults of his country, though even with the liberal among them one would wish to be liberal, for foreigners cannot repair the evil; but with one's countrymen I see little use and much danger, in observing a silence as to faults. The American, of all others, it appears to me, should be the boldest in denouncing the common and national vices, since he is one of those who, by the institutions themselves, has the power to apply the remedy." "But America is an exception, I think, or perhaps it would be better to say I _feel_, since all other people deride at, mock her, and dislike her. You will admit this yourself, Sir George Templemore?" "By no means: in England, now, I consider America to be particularly well esteemed." Eve held up her pretty hands, and even Mademoiselle Viefville, usually so well-toned and self-restrained, gave a visible shrug. "Sir George means in his country," dryly observed John Effingham. "Perhaps the parties would better understand each other," said Paul, coolly, "were Sir George Templemore to descend to particulars. He belongs himself to the liberal school, and may be considered a safe witness." "I shall be compelled to protest against a cross-examination on such a subject," returned the baronet, laughing. "You will be satisfied, I am certain, with my simple declaration. Perhaps we still regard the Americans as _tant soit peu_ rebels; but that is a feeling that will soon cease." "That is precisely the point on which I think liberal Englishman usually do great justice to America, while it is on other points that they betray a national dislike." "England believes America hostile to herself; and if love creates love, dislike creates dislike." "This is at least something like admitting the truth of the charge, Miss Effingham," said John Effingham, smiling, "and we may dismiss the accused. It is odd enough that England should consider America as rebellious, as is the case with many Englishmen, I acknowledge, while, in truth, England herself was the rebel, and this, too, in connexion with the very questions that produced the American revolution." "This is quite new," said Sir George, "and I confess some curiosity to see how it can be made out." John Effingham did not hesitate about stating his case. "In the first place you are to forget professions and names," he said, "and to look only at facts and things. When America was settled, a compact was made, either in the way of charters or of organic laws, by which all the colonies had distinct rights, while, on the other hand, they confessed allegiance to the king. But in that age the English monarch _was_ a king. He used his veto on the laws, for instance, and otherwise exercised his prerogatives. Of the two, he influenced parliament more than parliament influenced him. In such a state of things, countries separated by an ocean might be supposed to be governed equitably, the common monarch feeling a common parental regard for all his subjects. Perhaps distance might render him even more tender of the interest of those who were not present to protect themselves." "This is putting the case loyally, at least," said Sir George, as the other paused for a moment. "It is precisely in that light that I wish to present it. The degree of power that parliament possessed over the colonies was a disputed point; but I am willing to allow that parliament had all power." "In doing which, I fear, you will concede all the merits," said Mr. Effingham. "I think not. Parliament then ruled the colonies absolutely and legally, if you please, under the Stuarts; but the English rebelled against these Stuarts, dethroned them, and gave the crown to an entirely new family--one with only a remote alliance with the reigning branch. Not satisfied with this, the king was curtailed in his authority; the prince, who might with justice be supposed to feel a common interest in all his subjects, became a mere machine in the hands of a body who represented little more than themselves, in fact, or a mere fragment of the empire, even in theory; transferring the control of the colonial interest from the sovereign himself to a portion of his people, and that, too, a small portion. This was no longer a government of a prince who felt a parental concern for all his subjects, but a government of a _clique_ of his subjects, who felt a selfish concern only for their own interests." "And did the Americans urge this reason for the revolt?" asked Sir George. "It sounds new to me." "They quarreled with the results, rather than with the cause. When they found that legislation was to be chiefly in the interests of England, they took the alarm, and seized their arms, without stopping to analyse causes. They probably were mystified too much with names and professions to see the real truth, though they got some noble glimpses of it." "I have never before heard this case put so strongly," cried Paul Powis, "and yet I think it contains the whole merit of the controversy as a principle." "It is extraordinary how nationality blinds us," observed Sir George, laughing. "I confess, Powis,"--the late events had produced a close intimacy and a sincere regard between these two fine young men,--"that I stand in need of an explanation." "You can conceive of a monarch," continued John Effingham, "who possesses an extensive and efficient power?" "Beyond doubt; nothing can be plainer than that." "Fancy this monarch to fall into the hands of a fragment of his subjects, who reduce his authority to a mere profession, and begin to wield it for their own especial benefit, no longer leaving, him a free agent, though always using the authority in his name." "Even that is easily imagined." "History is full of such instances. A part of the subjects, unwilling to be the dupes of such a fraud, revolt against the monarch in name, against the cabal in fact. Now who are the real rebels? Profession is nothing. Hyder Ally never seated himself in the presence of the prince he had deposed, though he held him captive during life." "But did not America acquiesce in the dethronement of the Stuarts?" asked Eve, in whom the love of the right was stronger even than the love of country. "Beyond a doubt, though America neither foresaw nor acquiesced in all the results. The English themselves, probably, did not' foresee the consequences of their own revolution; for we now find England almost in arms against the consequences of the very subversion of the kingly power of which I have spoken. In England it placed a portion of the higher classes in possession of authority, at the expense of all the rest of the nation; whereas, as respects America, it set a remote people to rule over her, instead of a prince, who had the same connexion with his colonies as with all the rest of his subjects. The late English reform is a peaceable revolution; and America would very gladly have done the same thing, could she have extricated herself from the consequences, by mere acts of congress. The whole difference is, that America, pressed upon by peculiar circumstances, preceded England in the revolt about sixty years, and that this revolt was against an usurper, and not against the legitimate monarch, or against the sovereign himself." "I confess all this is novel to me," exclaimed Sir George. "I have told you, Sir George Templemore, that, if you stay long enough in America, many novel ideas will suggest themselves. You have too much sense to travel through the country seeking for petty exceptions that may sustain your aristocratical prejudices, or opinions, if you like that better; but will be disposed to judge a nation, not according to preconceived notions, but according to visible facts." "They tell me there is a strong bias to aristocracy in America; at least such is the report of most European travellers." "The report of men who do not reflect closely on the meaning of words. That there are real aristocrats in opinion in America is very true; there are also a few monarchists, or those who fancy themselves monarchists." "Can a man be deceived on such a point?" "Nothing is more easy. He who would set up a king merely in name, for instance, is not a monarchist, but a visionary, who confounds names with things." "I see you will not admit of a balance in the state." "I shall contend that there must be a preponderating authority in every government, from which it derives its character; and if this be not the king, that government is not a real monarchy, let the laws be administered in whose name they may. Calling an idol Jupiter does not convert it into a god. I question if there be a real monarchist left in the English empire at this very moment. They who make the loudest professions that way strike me as being the rankest aristocrats, and a real political aristocrat is, and always has been, the most efficient enemy of kings." "But we consider loyalty to the prince as attachment to the system." "That is another matter; for in that you may be right enough, though it is ambiguous as to terms." "Sir--gentlemen--Mr. John Effingham, sir," interrupted Saunders, "Mr. Monday is awake, and so werry conwalescent--I fear he will not live long. The ship herself is not so much conwerted by these new spars as poor Mr. Monday is conwerted since he went to sleep." "I feared this," observed John Effingham, rising. "Acquaint Captain Truck with the fact, steward: he desired to be sent for at any crisis." He then quitted the cabin, leaving the rest of the party wondering that they could have been already so lost to the situation of one of their late companions, however different from themselves he might be in opinions and character. But in this they merely showed their common connexion with all the rest of the great family of man, who uniformly forget sorrows that do not press too hard on self, in the reaction of their feelings. Chapter XXX. Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? ISAIAH. The principal hurt of Mr. Monday was one of those wounds that usually produce death within eight-and-forty hours. He had borne the pain with resolution; and, as yet, had discovered no consciousness of the imminent danger that was so apparent to all around him. But a film had suddenly past from before his senses; and, a man of mere habits, prejudices, and animal enjoyments, he had awakened at the very termination of his brief existence to something like a consciousness of his true position in the moral world, as well as of his real physical condition. Under the first impulse of such an alarm, John Effingham had been sent for; and he, as has been seen, ordered Captain Truck to be summoned. In consequence of the previous understanding these two gentlemen and Mr. Leach appeared at the state-room door at the same instant. The apartment being small it was arranged between them that the former should enter first, having been expressly sent for; and that the others should be introduced at the pleasure of the wounded man. "I have brought my Bible, Mr. Leach," said the captain when he and the mate were left alone, "for a chapter is the very least we can give a cabin-passenger, though I am a little at a loss to know what particular passage will be the most suitable for the occasion. Something from the book of Kings would be likely to suit Mr. Monday, as he is a thorough-going king's man." "It is so long since I read that particular book, sir," returned the mate, diligently thumbing his watch-key, "that I should be diffident about expressing an opinion. I think, however, a little Bible might do him good." "It is not an easy matter to hit a conscience exactly between wind and water. I once thought of producing an impression on the ship's company by reading the account of Jonah and the whale as a subject likely to attract their attention, and to show them the hazards we seamen run; but, in the end, I discovered that the narration struck them all aback as a thing not likely to be true. Jack can stand any thing but a fish story, you know, Leach." "It is always better to keep clear of miracles at sea, I believe, sir, when the people are to be spoken to: I saw some of the men this evening wince about that ship of St. Paul's carrying out anchors in a gale." "The graceless rascals ought to be thankful they are not at this very moment trotting through the great desert lashed to dromedaries' tails! Had I known that, Leach, I would have read the verse twice! But Mr. Monday is altogether a different man, and will listen to reason. There is the story of Absalom, which is quite interesting; and perhaps the account of the battle might be suitable for one who dies in consequence of a battle; but, on the whole, I remember my worthy old father used to say that a sinner ought to be well shaken up at such a moment." "I fancy, sir, Mr. Monday has been a reasonably steady man as the world goes. Seeing that he is a passenger, I should try and ease him off handsomely, and without any of these Methodist surges." "You may be right, Leach, you may be right; do as foil would be done by is the golden rule after all. But, here comes Mr. John Effingham; so I fancy we may enter." The captain was not mistaken, for Mr. Monday had just taken a restorative, and had expressed a desire to see the two officers. The state-room was a small, neat, and even beautifully finished apartment, about seven feet square. It had originally been fitted with two berths; but, previously to taking possession of the place, John Effingham had caused the carpenter to remove the upper, and Mr. Monday now lay in what had been the lower bed. This situation placed him below his attendant, and in a position where he might be the more easily assisted. A shaded lamp lighted the room, by means of which the captain caught the anxious expression of the dying man's eye, as he took a seat himself. "I am grieved to see you in this state, Mr. Monday." said the master, "and this all the more since it has happened in consequence of your bravery in fighting to regain my ship. By rights this accident ought to have befallen one of the Montauk's people, or Mr. Leach, here, or even myself, before it befel you." Mr. Monday looked at the speaker as if the intended consolation had failed of its effect, and the captain began to suspect that he should find a difficult subject for his new ministrations. By way of gaining time, he thrust an elbow into the mate's side as a hint that it was now his turn to offer something. "It might have been worse, Mr. Monday," observed Leach, shifting his attitude like a man whose moral and physical action moved _pari passu:_ "it might have been much worse, I once saw a man shot in the under jaw, and he lived a fortnight without any sort of nourishment!" Still Mr. Monday gazed at the mate as if he thought matters could not be much worse. "That _was_ a hard case," put in the captain; "why, the poor fellow had no opportunity to recover without victuals. "No, sir, nor any drink. He never swallowed a mouthful of liquor of any sort from the time he was hit, until he took the plunge when we threw him overboard." Perhaps there is truth in the saying that "misery loves company," for the eye of Mr. Monday turned towards the table on which the bottle of cordial still stood, and from John Effingham, had just before helped him to swallow, under the impression that it was of no moment what he took. The captain understood the appeal, and influenced by the same opinion concerning the hopelessness of the patient's condition, besides being kindly anxious to console him, he poured out a small glass, all of which he permitted the other to drink. The effect was instantaneous, for it would seem this treacherous friend is ever to produce a momentary pleasure as a poor compensation for its lasting pains. "I don't feel so bad, gentleman," returned the wounded man with a force of voice that startled his visitors. "I feel better--much better, and am very glad to see you. Captain Truck, I have the honor to drink your health." The captain looked at the mate as if he thought their visit was twenty-four hours too soon, for live, all felt sure, Mr. Monday could not. But Leach, better placed to observe the countenance of the patient, whispered his commander that it was merely "a catspaw, and will not stand." "I am very glad to see you both, gentlemen," continued Mr. Monday, "and beg you to help yourselves." The captain changed his tactics. Finding his patient so strong and cheerful, he thought consolation would be more easily received just at that moment, than it might be even half an hour later. "We are all mortal, Mr. Monday--" "Yes, sir; all very mortal." "And even the strongest and boldest ought occasionally to think of their end." "Quite true, sir; quite true. The strongest and boldest. When do you think we shall get in, gentlemen?" Captain Truck afterwards affirmed that he was "never before taken so flat aback by a question as by this." Still he extricated himself from the dilemma with dexterity, the spirit of proselytism apparently arising within him in proportion as the other manifested indifference to his offices. "There is a port to which we are all steering, my dear sir," he said; "and of which we ought always to bear in mind the landmarks and beacons, and that port is heaven." "Yes," answered Mr Leach, "a port that, sooner or later, will fetch us all up." Mr. Monday gazed from one to the other, and something like the state of feeling, from which he had been aroused by the cordial, began to return. "Do you think me so bad, gentlemen?" he inquired, with a little of the eagerness of a startled man. "As bad as one bound direct to so good a place as I hope and trust is the case with you, can be," returned the captain, determined to follow up the advantage he had gained. "Your wound, we fear, is mortal, and people seldom remain long in this wicked world with such sort of hurts." "If he stands that," thought the captain, "I shall turn him over, at once, to Mr. Effingham." Mr. Monday did not stand it. The illusion produced by the liquor, although the latter still sustained his pulses, had begun to evaporate, and the melancholy truth resumed its power. "I believe, indeed, that I am near my end, gentlemen," he said faintly; and am thankful--for--for this consolation." "Now will be a good time to throw in the chapter," whispered Leach; "he seems quite conscious, and very contrite." Captain Truck, in pure despair, and conscious of his own want of judgment, had determined to leave the question of the selection of this chapter to be decided by chance. Perhaps a little of that mysterious dependence on Providence which renders all men more or less superstitions, influenced him; and that he hoped a wisdom surpassing his own might direct him to a choice. Fortunately, the book of Psalms is near the middle of the sacred volume, and a better disposition of this sublime repository of pious praise and spiritual wisdom could not have been made; for the chance-directed peruser of the Bible will perhaps oftener open among its pages than at any other place. If we should say that Mr. Monday felt any very profound spiritual relief from the reading of Captain Truck, we should both overrate the manner of the honest sailor, and the intelligence of the dying man. Still the solemn language of praise and admiration had an effect, and, for the first time since childhood, the soul of the latter was moved. God and judgment passed before his imagination, and he gasped for breath in a way that induced the two seamen to suppose the fatal moment had come, even sooner than they expected. The cold sweat stood upon the forehead of the patient, and his eyes glared wildly from one to the other. The paroxysm, however, was transient, and he soon settled down into a state of comparative calmness, pushing away the glass that Captain Truck offered, in mistaken kindness, with a manner of loathing. "We must comfort him, Leach," whispered the captain; "for I see he is fetching up in the old way, as was duly laid down by our ancestors in the platform. First, groanings and views of the devil, and then consolation and hope. We have got him into the first category, and we ought now, in justice, to bring to, and heave a strain to help him through it." "They generally give 'em prayer, in the river, in this stage of the attack," said Leach. "If you can remember a short prayer, sir, it might ease him off." Captain Truck and his mate, notwithstanding the quaintness of their thoughts and language, were themselves solemnly impressed with the scene, and actuated by the kindest motives. Nothing of levity mingled with their notions, but they felt the responsibility of officers of a packet, besides entertaining a generous interest in the fate of a stranger who had fallen, fighting manfully at their side. The old man looked awkwardly about him, turned the key of the door, wiped his eyes, gazed wistfully at the patient, gave his mate a nudge with his elbow to follow his example, and knelt down with a heart momentarily as devout as is often the case with those who minister at the altar. He retained the words of the Lord's prayer, and these he repeated aloud, distinctly, and with fervour, though not with a literal conformity to the text. Once Mr. Leach had to help him to the word. When he rose, the perspiration stood on his forehead, as if he had been engaged in severe toil. Perhaps nothing could have occurred more likely to strike the imagination of Mr. Monday than to see one, of the known character and habits of Captain Truck, thus wrestling with the Lord in his own behalf. Always obtuse and dull of thought, the first impression was that of wonder; awe and contrition followed. Even the mate was touched, and he afterwards told his companion on deck, that "the hardest day's work he had ever done, was lending a hand to rouse the captain through that prayer." "I thank you, sir," gasped Mr. Monday, "I thank you--Mr. John Effingham--now, let me see Mr. John Effingham. I have no time to lose, and wish to see _him_" The captain rose to comply, with the feelings of a man who had done his duty, and, from that moment, he had a secret satisfaction at having so manfully acquitted himself, Indeed, it has been remarked by those who have listened to his whole narrative of the passage, that he invariably lays more stress on the scene in the state-room, than on the readiness and skill with which he repaired the damages sustained by his own ship, through the means obtained from the Dane, or the spirit with which he retook her from the Arabs. John Effingham appeared in the state-room, where the captain and Mr. Leach left him alone with the patient Like all strong-minded men, who are conscious of their superiority over the rest of their fellow creatures, this gentleman felt disposed to concede most to those who were the least able to contend with him. Habitually sarcastic and stern, and sometimes forbidding, he was now mild and discreet. He saw, at a glance, that Mr. Monday's mind was alive to novel feelings, and aware that the approach of death frequently removes moral clouds that have concealed the powers of the spirit while the animal part of the being was in full vigour, he was surprised at observing the sudden change that was so apparent in the countenance of the dying man. "I believe, sir, I have been a great sinner," commenced Mr. Monday, who spoke more feebly as the influence of the cordial evaporated, and in short and broken sentences. "In that you share the lot of all," returned John Effingham. "We are taught that no man of himself, no unaided soul, is competent to its own salvation. Christians look to the Redeemer for succour." "I believe I understand you, but I am a business man, sir, and have been taught that reparation is the best atonement for a wrong." "It certainly should be the _first_" "Yes, indeed it should, sir. I am but the son of poor parents, and may have been tempted to some things that are improper. My mother, too, I was her only support. Well, the Lord will pardon it, if it were wrong, as I dare say it might have been. I think I should have drunk less and thought more, but for this affair--perhaps it is not yet too late." John Effingham listened with surprise, but with the coolness and sagacity that marked his character. He saw the necessity, or at least the prudence, of there being another witness present. Taking advantage of the exhaustion of the speaker, he stepped to the door of Eve's cabin, and signed Paul to follow him. They entered the state-room together, when John Effingham took Mr. Monday soothingly by the hand, offering him a nourishment less exciting than the cordial, but which had the effect to revive him. "I understand you, sir," continued Mr. Monday, looking at Paul; "it is all very proper; but I have little to say--the papers will explain it all. Those keys, sir--the upper drawer of the bureau, and the red morocco case--take it all--this is the key. I have kept everything together, from a misgiving that an hour would come. In New York you will have time--it is not yet too late." As the wounded man spoke at intervals, and with difficulty, John Effingham had complied with his directions before he ceased. He found the red morocco case, took the key from the ring, and showed both to Mr. Monday, who smiled and nodded approbation. The bureau contained paper, wax, and all the other appliances of writing. John Effingham inclosed the case in a strong envelope, and affixed to it three seals, which he impressed with his own arms; the then asked Paul for his watch, that the same might be done with the seal of his companion. After this precaution, he wrote a brief declaration that the contents had been delivered to the two, for the purpose of examination, and for the benefit of the parties concerned, whoever they might be, and signed it. Paul did the same, and the paper was handed to Mr. Monday, who had still strength to add his own signature. "Men do not usually trifle at such moments," said John Effingham, "and this case may contain matter of moment to wronged and innocent persons. The world little knows the extent of the enormities that are thus committed. Take the case, Mr. Powis, and lock it up with your effects, until the moment for the examination shall come." Mr. Monday was certainly much relieved after this consignment of the case into safe hands, trifles satisfying the compunctions of the obtuse. For more than an hour he slumbered. During this interval of rest, Captain Truck appeared at the door of the state-room to inquire into the condition of the patient, and, hearing a report so favourable, in common with all whose duty did not require them to watch, he retired to rest. Paul had also returned, and offered his services, as indeed did most of the gentlemen; but John Effingham dismissed his own servant even, and declared it was his intention not to quit the place that night. Mr. Monday had reposed confidence in him, appeared to be gratified by his attentions and presence, and he felt it to be a sort of duty, under such circumstances, not to desert a fellow-creature in his extremity. Any thing beyond some slight alleviation of the sufferer's pains was hopeless; but this, he rightly believed, he was as capable of administering as another. Death is appalling to those of the most iron nerves, when it comes quietly and in the stillness and solitude of night. John Effingham was such a man; but he felt all the peculiarity of his situation as he sat alone in the state-room by the side of Mr. Monday, listening to the washing of the waters that the ship shoved aside, and to the unquiet breathing of his patient. Several times he felt a disposition to steal away for a few minutes, and to refresh himself by exercise in the pure air of the ocean; but as often was the inclination checked by jealous glances from the glazed eye of the dying man, who appeared to cherish his presence as his own last hope of life. When John Effingham wetted the feverish lips, the look he received spoke of gratitude and thanks, and once or twice these feelings were audible in whispers. He could not desert a being so helpless, so dependent; and, although conscious that he was of no material service beyond sustaining his patient by his presence, he felt that this was sufficient to exact much heavier sacrifices. During one of the troubled slumbers of the dying man, his attendant sat watching the struggles of his countenance, which seemed to betray the workings of the soul that was about to quit its tenement, and he mused on the character and fate of the being whose departure for the world of spirits he himself was so singularly called on to witness! "Of his origin I know nothing," thought John Effingham, "except by his own passing declarations, and the evident fact that, as regards station, it can scarcely have reached mediocrity. He is one of those who appear to live for the most vulgar motives that are admissible among men of any culture, and whose refinement, such as it is, is purely of the conventional class of habits. Ignorant, beyond the current opinions of a set; prejudiced in all that relates to nations, religions, and characters; wily, with an air of blustering honesty; credulous and intolerant; bold in denunciations and critical remarks, without a spark of discrimination, or any knowledge but that which has been acquired under a designing dictation; as incapable of generalizing as he is obstinate in trifles; good-humoured by nature, and yet querulous from imitation:--for what purposes was such a creature brought into existence to be hurried out of it in this eventful manner?" The conversation of the evening recurred to John Effingham, and he inwardly said, "If there exist such varieties of the human race among nations, there are certainly as many species, in a moral sense, in civilized life itself. This man has his counterpart in a particular feature in the every-day American absorbed in the pursuit of gain; and yet how widely different are the two in the minor points of character! While the other allows himself no rest, no relaxation, no mitigation of the eternal gnawing of the vulture rapacity, this man has made self-indulgence the constant companion of his toil; while the other has centered all his pleasures in gain, this Englishman, with the same object in view, but obedient to national usages, has fancied he has been alleviating his labours by sensual enjoyments. In what will their ends differ? From the eyes of the American the veil will be torn aside when it is too late, perhaps, and the object of his earthly pursuit will be made the instrument of his punishment, as he sees himself compelled to quit it all for the dark uncertainty of the grave; while the blusterer and the bottle-companion sinks into a forced and appalled repentance, as the animal that has hitherto upheld him loses its ascendency." A groan from Mr. Monday, who now opened his glassy eyes, interrupted these musings. The patient signed for the nourishment, and he revived a little. "What is the day of the week?" he asked, with an anxiety that surprised his kind attendant. "It is, or rather it _was_, Monday; for we are now past midnight." "I am glad of it, sir--very glad of it." "Why should the day of the week be of consequence to you now?" "There is a saying, sir--I have faith in sayings--they told me I was born of a Monday, and should die of a Monday." The other was shocked at this evidence of a lingering and abject superstition in one who could not probably survive many hours, and he spoke to him of the Saviour, and of his mediation for man. All this could John Effingham do at need; and he could do it well, too, for few had clearer perceptions of this state of probation than himself. His weak point was in the pride and strength of his character; qualities that indisposed him in his own practice to rely on any but himself, under the very circumstances which would impress on others the necessity of relying solely on God. The dying man heard him attentively, and the words made a momentary impression. "I do not wish to die, sir," Mr. Monday said suddenly, after a long pause. "It is the general fate; when the moment arrives, we ought to prepare ourselves to meet it." "I am no coward, Mr. Effingham." "In one sense I know you are not, for I have seen you proved. I hope you will not be one in any sense. You are now in a situation in which manhood will avail you nothing: your dependence should be placed altogether on God." "I know it, sir--I try to feel thus; but I do not wish to die." "The love of Christ is illimitable," said John Effingham, powerfully affected by the other's hopeless misery. "I know it--I hope it--I wish to believe it. Have _you_ a mother, Mr. Effingham?" "She has been dead many years." "A wife?" John Effingham gasped for breath, and one might have mistaken him, at the moment, for the sufferer. "None: I am without parent, brother, sister, wife, or child. My nearest relatives are in this ship." "I am of little value; but, such as I am, my mother will miss me. We can have but one mother, sir." "This is very true. If you have any commission or message for your mother, Mr. Monday, I shall have great satisfaction in attending to your wishes." "I thank you, sir; I know of none. She has her notions on religion, and--I think it would lessen her sorrow to hear that I had a Christian burial." "Set your heart at rest on that subject: all that our situation will allow, shall be done." "Of what account will it all be, Mr. Effingham? I wish I had drunk less, and thought more." John Effingham could say nothing to a compunction that was so necessary, though so tardy. "I fear we think too little of this moment in our health and strength, sir." "The greater the necessity, Mr. Monday, of turning our thoughts towards that divine mediation which alone can avail us, while there is yet opportunity." But Mr. Monday was startled by the near approach of death, rather than repentant. He had indurated his feelings by the long and continued practice of a deadening self-indulgence, and he was now like a man who unexpectedly finds himself in the presence of an imminent and overwhelming danger, without any visible means of mitigation or escape. He groaned and looked around him, as if he sought something to cling to, the spirit he had shown in the pride of his strength availing nothing. All these, however, were but passing emotions, and the natural obtusity of the man returned. "I do not think, sir," he said, gazing intently at John Effingham, "that I have been a very great sinner." "I hope not, my good friend; yet none of us are so free from spot as not to require the aid of God to fit us for his holy presence." "Very true, sir--very true, sir. I was duly baptized and properly confirmed." "Offices which are but pledges that we are expected to redeem." "By a regular priest and bishop, sir;--orthodox and dignified clergymen!" "No doubt: England wants none of the forms of religion. But the contrite heart, Mr. Monday, will be sure to meet with mercy." "I feel contrite, sir; very contrite." A pause of half an hour succeeded, and John Effingham thought at first that his patient had again slumbered; but, looking more closely at his situation, he perceived that his eyes often opened and wandered over objects near him. Unwilling to disturb this apparent tranquillity, the minutes were permitted to pass away uninterrupted, until Mr. Monday spoke again of his own accord. "Mr. Effingham--sir--Mr. Effingham," said the dying man. "I am near you, Mr. Monday, and will not leave the room." "Bless you, bless you, do not _you_ desert me!" "I shall remain: set your heart at rest, and let me know your wants." "I want life, sir!" "That is the gift of God, and its possession depends solely on his pleasure. Ask pardon for your sins, and remember the mercy and love of the blessed Redeemer." "I try, sir. I do not think I have been a _very_ great sinner." "I hope not: but God can pardon the penitent, however great their offences." "Yes, sir, I know it--I know it. This affair has been so unexpected, I have even been at the communion-table, sir: yes, my mother made me commune. Nothing was neglected, sir." John Effingham was often proud and self-willed in his communications with men, the inferiority of most of his fellow-creatures to himself, in principles as well as mind, being too plainly apparent not to influence the opinions of one who did not too closely study his own failings; but, as respects God, he was habitually reverent and meek. Spiritual pride formed no part of his character, for he felt his own deficiency in the Christian qualities, the main defect arising more from a habit of regarding the infirmities of others than from dwelling too much on his own merits. In comparing himself with perfection, no one could be more humble; but in limiting the comparison to those around him, few were prouder, or few more justly so, were it permitted to make such a comparison at all. Prayer with him was not habitual, or always well ordered, but he was not ashamed to pray; and when he did bow down his spirit in this manner, it was with the force, comprehensiveness, and energy of his character. He was now moved by the feeble and common-place consolations that Mr. Monday endeavoured to extract from his situation. He saw the peculiarly deluding and cruel substitution of forms for the substance of piety that distinguishes the policy of all established churches, though, unlike many of his own countrymen, his mind was superior to those narrow exaggerations that, on the other hand, too often convert innocence into sin, and puff up the votary with the conceit of a sectarian and his self-righteousness. "I will pray with you, Mr. Monday," he said, kneeling at the side of the dying man's bed: "we will ask mercy of God together, and he may lessen these doubts." Mr. Monday made a sign of eager assent, and John Effingham prayed in a voice that was distinctly audible to the other. The petition was short, beautiful, and even lofty in language, without a particle of Scripture jargon, or of the cant of professed devotees; but it was a fervent, direct, comprehensive, and humble appeal to the Deity for mercy on the being who now found himself in extremity. A child might have understood it, while the heart of a man would have melted with its affecting and meek sincerity. It is to be hoped that the Great Being, whose Spirit pervades the universe, and whose clemency is commensurate with his power, also admitted the force of the petition, for Mr. Monday smiled with pleasure when John Effingham arose. "Thank you, sir--a thousand thanks," muttered the dying man, pressing the hand of the other. "This is better than all." After this Mr. Monday was easier, and hours passed away in nearly a continued silence. John Effingham was now convinced that his patient slumbered, and he allowed himself to fall into a doze. It was after the morning watch was called, that he was aroused by a movement in the berth. Relieving his patient required nourishment, or some fluid to moisten his lips, John Effingham offered both, but they were declined. Mr. Monday had clasped his hands on his breast, with the fingers uppermost, as painters and sculptors are apt to delineate them when they represent saints in the act of addressing the Deity, and his lips moved, though the words were whispered. John Effingham kneeled, and placed his ear so close as to catch the sounds. His patient was uttering the simple but beautiful petition transmitted by Christ himself to man, as the model of all prayer. As soon as the other had done, John Effingham repeated the same prayer fervently and aloud himself, and when he opened his eyes, after this solemn homage to God, Mr. Monday was dead. Chapter XXXI. Let me alone:--dost thou use to write Thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an Honest, plain-dealing man? JACK CADE. At a later hour, the body of the deceased was consigned to the ocean with the forms that had been observed the previous night at the burial of the seaman. These two ceremonies were sad remembrancers of the scene the travellers had passed through; and, for many days, the melancholy that they naturally excited pervaded the ship. But, as no one connected by blood with any of the living had fallen, and it is not the disposition of men to mourn always, this feeling gradually subsided, and at the end of three weeks the deaths had lost most of their influence, or were recalled only at moments by those who thought it wise to dwell on such solemn subjects. Captain Truck had regained his spirits; for, if he felt mortified at the extraordinary difficulties and dangers that had befallen his ship, he also felt proud of the manner in which he had extricated himself from them. As for the mates and crew, they had already returned to their ordinary habits of toil and fun, the accidents of life making but brief and superficial impressions on natures accustomed to vicissitudes and losses. Mr. Dodge appeared to be nearly forgotten during the first week after the ship succeeded in effecting her escape; for he had the sagacity to keep himself in the background, in the hope that all connected with himself might be overlooked in the hurry and excitement of events. At the end of that period, however, he resumed his intrigues, and was soon actively engaged in endeavouring to get up a "public opinion," by means of which he proposed to himself to obtain some reputation for spirit and courage. With what success this deeply-laid scheme was likely to meet, as well as the more familiar condition of the cabins, may be gathered by a conversation that took place in the pantry, where Saunders and Toast were preparing the hot punch for the last of the Saturday nights that Captain Truck expected to be at sea. This discourse was held while the few who chose to join in jollification that peculiarly recalled the recollection of Mr. Monday, were slowly assembling round the great table at the urgent request of the master. "Well, I must say, Mr. Toast," the steward commenced, as he kept stirring the punch, "that I am werry much rejoiced Captain Truck has resuscertated his old nature, and remembers the festivals and fasts, as is becoming the master of a liner. I can see no good reason because a ship is under jury-masts, that the passengers should forego their natural rest and diet. Mr. Monday made a good end, they say, and he had as handsome a burial as I ever laid eyes on at sea. I don't think his own friends could have interred him more efficaciously, or more piously, had he been on shore." "It is something, Mr. Saunders, to be able to reflect beforehand on the respectable funeral that your friends have just given you. There is a great gratification to contemplate on such an ewent." "You improve in language, Toast, that I will allow; but you sometimes get the words a little wrong. We suspect before a thing recurs, and reflect on it after it has ewentuated. You might have suspected the death of poor Mr. Monday after he was wounded, and reflected on it after he was interred in the water. I agree with you that it is consoling to know we have our funeral rights properly delineated. Talking of the battle, Mr. Toast, I shall take this occasion to express to you the high opinion I entertain of your own good conduct. I was a little afraid you might injure Captain Truck in the conflict; but, so far as I have ascertained, on close inwestigation, you hurt nobody. We coloured people have some prejudices against us, and I always rejoice when I meet with one who assists to put them down by his conduck." "They say Mr. Dodge didn't do much harm, either," returned Toast. "For my part I saw nothing of him after I opened my eyes; though I don't think I ever stared about me so much in my life." Saunders laid a finger on his nose, and shook his head significantly. "You may speak to me with confidence and mistrust, Toast," he said, "for we are friends of the same colour, besides being officers in the same pantry. Has Mr. Dodge conwersed with you concerning the ewents of those two or three werry ewentful days?" "He has insinevated considerable, Mr. Saunders; though I do not think Mr. Dodge is ever a werry free talker." "Has he surgested the propriety of having an account of he whole affair made out by the people, and sustained by affidavits?" "Well, sir, I imagine he has. At all ewents, he has been much on the forecastle lately, endeavouring to persuade the people that _they_ retook the ship, and that the passengers were so many encumbrancers in the affair." "And, are the people such _non composses_ as to believe him, Toast?" "Why, sir, it is agreeable to humanity to think well of ourselves. I do not say that anybody actually _believes_ this; but, in my poor judgment, Mr. Saunders, there are men in the ship that would find it _pleasant_ to believe it, if they could." "Werry true; for that is natural. Your hint, Toast, has enlightened my mind on a little obscurity that has lately prewailed over my conceptions. There are Johnson, and Briggs, and Hewson, three of the greatest skulks in the ship, the only men who prewaricated in the least, so much as by a cold look, in the fight; and these three men have told me that Mr. Dodge was the person who had the gun put on the box; and that he druv the Arabs upon the raft. Now, I say, no men with their eyes open could have made such a mistake, except they made it on purpose. Do you corroborate or contrawerse this statement, Toast?" "I contrawerse it, sir; for in my poor judgment it was Mr. Blunt." "I am glad we are of the same opinion. I shall say nothing till the proper moment arrives, and then I shall exhibit my sentiments, Mr. Toast, without recrimination or anxiety, for truth is truth." "I am happy to observe that the ladies are quite relaxed from their melancholy, and that they now seem to enjoy themselves ostensibly." Saunders threw a look of envy at his subordinate, whose progress in refinement really alarmed his own sense of superiority; but suppressing the jealous feeling, he replied with, dignity, "The remark is quite just, Mr. Toast, and denotes penetration. I am always rejoiced when I perceive you elewating your thoughts to superior objects, for the honour of the colour." "Mister Saunders," called out the captain from his seal in the arm-chair, at the head of the table. "Captain Truck, sir." "Let us taste your liquors." This was the signal that the Saturday-night was about to commence, and the officers of the pantry presented their compounds in good earnest. On this occasion the ladies had quietly, but firmly declined being present, but the earnest appeals of the well-meaning captain had overcome the scruples of the gentlemen, all of whom, to avoid the appearance of disrespect to his wishes, had consented to appear. "This is the last Saturday night, gentlemen, that I shall probably ever have the honour of passing in your good company," said Captain Truck, as he disposed of the pitchers and glasses before him, so that he had a perfect command of the appliances of the occasion, "and I feel it to be a gratification with which I would not willingly dispense. We are now to the westward of the Gulf, and, according to my observations and calculations, within a hundred miles of Sandy Hook, which, with this mild south-west wind, and our weatherly position, I hope to be able to show you some time about eight o'clock to-morrow morning. Quicker passages have been made certainly, but forty days, after all, is no great matter for the westerly run, considering that we have had a look at Africa, and are walking on crutches." "We owe a great deal to the trades," observed Mr. Effingham; "which have treated us as kindly towards the end of the passage, as they seemed reluctant to join us in the commencement. It has been a momentous month, and I hope we shall all retain healthful recollections of it as long as we live." "No one will retain as _grateful_ recollections of it as myself, gentlemen," resumed the captain. "You had no agency in getting us into the scrape, but the greatest possible agency in getting us out of it. Without the knowledge, prudence, and courage that you have all displayed, God knows what would have become of the poor Montauk, and from the bottom of my heart I thank you, each and all while I have the heartfelt satisfaction of seeing you around me, and of drinking to your future health, happiness and prosperity." The passengers acknowledged their thanks in return, by bows, among which, that of Mr. Dodge was the most elaborate and conspicuous. The honest captain was too much touched, to observe this little piece of audacity, but, at that moment, he could have taken even Mr. Dodge in his arms and pressed him to his heart. "Come, gentlemen," he continued; "let us fill and do honour to the night. God has us all in his holy keeping, and we drift about in the squalls of life, pretty much as he orders the wind to blow. 'Sweethearts and wives!' and, Mr. Effingham, we will not forget beautiful, spirited, sensible, and charming daughters." After this piece of nautical gallantry, the glass began to circulate. The captain. Sir George Templemore--as the false baronet was still called in the cabin, and believed to be by all but those who belonged to the _coterie_ of Eve--and Mr. Dodge, indulged freely, though the first was too careful of the reputation of his ship, to forget that he was on the American coast in November. The others partook more sparingly, though even they submitted in a slight degree to the influence of good cheer, and for the first time since their escape, the laugh was heard in the cabin as was wont before to be the case. An hour of such indulgence produced again some of the freedom and ease which mark the associations of a ship, after the ice is fairly broken, and even Mr. Dodge began to be tolerated. This person, notwithstanding his conduct on the occasion of the battle, had contrived to maintain his ground with the spurious baronet, by dint of assiduity and flattery, while the others had rather felt pity than aversion, on account of his abject cowardice. The gentlemen did not mention his desertion at the critical moment, (though Mr. Dodge never forgave those who witnessed it,) for they looked upon his conduct as the result of a natural and unconquerable infirmity, that rendered him as much the subject of compassion as of reproach. Encouraged by this forbearance, and mistaking its motives, he had begun to hope his absence had not been detected in the confusion of the fight, and he had even carried his audacity so far, as to make an attempt to persuade Mr. Sharp that he had actually been one of those who went in the launch of the Dane, to bring down the other boat and raft to the reef, after the ship had been recaptured. It is true, in this attempt, he had met with a cold repulse, but it was so gentlemanlike and distant, that he had still hopes of succeeding in persuading the other to believe what he affirmed; by way of doing which, he endeavoured all he could to believe it himself. So much confusion existed in his own faculties during the fray, that Mr. Dodge was fain to fancy others also might not have been able to distinguish things very accurately. Under the influence of these feelings, Captain Truck, when the glass had circulated a little freely, called on the Editor of the Active Inquirer, to favour the company with some more extracts from his journal. Little persuasion was necessary, and Mr. Dodge went into his state-room to bring forth the valuable records of his observations and opinions, with a conviction that all was forgotten, and that he was once more about to resume his proper place in the social relations of the ship. As for the four gentlemen who had been over the ground the other pretended to describe, they prepared to listen, as men of the world would be apt to listen to the superficial and valueless comments of a tyro, though not without some expectations of amusement. "I propose that we shift the scene to London," said Captain Truck, "in order that a plain seaman, like myself, may judge of the merits of the writer--which, I make no doubt, are very great; though I cannot now swear to it with as free a conscience as I could wish." "If I knew the pleasure of the majority," returned Mr. Dodge, dropping the journal, and looking about him inquiringly, "I would cheerfully comply with it; for I think the majority should always rule. Paris, or London, or the Rhine, are the same to me; I have seen them all, and am just, as well qualified to describe the one as to describe the other." "No one doubts it, my dear sir; but I am not as well qualified to understand one of your descriptions as I am to understand another. Perhaps, evon you, sir, may express yourself more readily, and have better understood what was said to you, in English, than in a foreign tongue." "As for that, I do not think the value of my remarks is lessened by the one circumstance, or enhanced by the other, sir. I make it a rule always to be right, if possible; and that, I fancy, is as much as the natives of the countries themselves can very well effect. You have only to decide, gentlemen, whether it shall be England, or France, or the Continent." "I confess an inclination to the _Continent_," said John Effingham; "for one could scarcely wish to limit a comprehensiveness like that of Mr. Dodge's to an island, or even to France." "I see how it is," exclaimed the captain; "we must put the traveller through all his paces, and have a little of both; so Mr. Dodge will have the kindness to touch on all things in heaven and earth, London and Paris inclusive." On this hint the journalist turned over a few pages carelessly, and then commenced: "'Reached _Bruxelles_ (Mr. Dodge pronounced this word Brucksills) at seven in the evening, and put up at the best house in the place, called the Silver Lamb, which is quite near the celebrated town-house, and, of course in the very centre of the _beau_ quarter. As we did not leave until after breakfast next morning, the reader may expect a description of this ancient capital. It lies altogether on a bit of low, level land-----'" "Nay, Mr. Dodge," interrupted the _soi-disant_ Sir George, "I think _that_ most be an error. I have been at Brussels, and I declare, now, it struck me as lying a good deal on the side of a very steep hill!" "All a mistake, sir, I do assure you. There is no more hill at _Brucksills_ than on the deck of this ship. You have been in too great a hurry, my dear Sir George; that is the way with most travellers; they do not give themselves time to note particulars. You English especially, my dear Sir George, are a little apt to be precipitate; and I dare say, you travelled post, with four horses, a mode of getting on by which a man may very well transfer a hill, in his imagination, from one town to another. I travelled chiefly in a _voitury_, which afforded leisure for remarks." Here Mr. Dodge laughed; for he felt that he had got the best of it. "I think you are bound to submit, _Sir George Templemore"_ said John Effingham, with an emphasis on the name that raised a smile among his friends; "Brussels certainly lies on a flat; and the hill you saw has, doubtless, been brought up with you from Holland in your haste. Mr. Dodge enjoyed a great advantage in his mode of travelling; for, by entering a town in the evening, and quitting it only in the morning, he had the whole night to look about him." "That was just my mode of proceeding, Mr. John Effingham; I made it a rule to pass an entire night in every large town I came to." "A circumstance that will give a double value to your opinions with our countrymen, Mr. Dodge, since they very seldom give themselves half that leisure when once in motion. I trust you have not passed over the institutions of Belgium, sir; and most particularly the state of society in the capital, of which you saw so much?" "By no means; here are my remarks on these subjects: "--'Belgium, or _The Belges_, as the country is now called, is one of the upstart kingdoms that have arisen in our times; and which, from signs that cannot be mistaken, is fated soon to be overturned by the glorious principles of freedom. The people are ground down, as usual, by the oppression of hard task-masters, and bloody-minded priests. The monarch, who is a bigoted Catholic of the House of Saxony, being the son of the king of that country, and a presumptive heir to the throne of Great Britain, in right of his first wife, devoting all his thoughts to miracles and saints. The nobles form a class by themselves, indulging in all sorts of vices.'--I beg pardon, Sir George, but the truth must be told in our country, or one had better never speak.--'All sorts of vices, and otherwise betraying the monstrous tendencies of the system.'" "Pray, Mr. Dodge," interrupted John Effingham, "have you said nothing as to the manner in which the inhabitants relieve the eternal _ennui_ of always walking on a level surface?" "I am afraid not, sir. My attention was chiefly given to the institutions, and to the state of society, although I can readily imagine they must get to be heartily tired of a dead flat" "Why, sir, they have contrived to run a street up and down the roof of the cathedral; and up and down this street they trot all hours of the day." Mr. Dodge looked distrustful; but John Effingham maintained his gravity. After a pause the former continued:-- "'The usages of _Brucksills_ are a mixture of Low Dutch and High Dutch habits, as is the language. The king being a Polander, and a grandson of Augustus, king of Poland, is anxious to introduce the customs of the Russians into his court; while his amiable young queen, who was born in New Jersey when her illustrious father kept the school at Haddonfield, early imbibed those notions of republicanism which so eminently distinguish his Grace the Honourable Louis Philippe Orleans, the present King of the French.'" "Nay, Mr. Dodge," said Mr. Sharp, "you will have all the historians ready to cut your throat with envy!" "Why, sir, I feel it a duty not to throw away the great opportunities I have enjoyed; and America is a country in which an editor may never hope to mystify his readers. We deal with them in facts, Mr. Sharp; and although this may not be your English practice, we think that truth is powerful and will prevail. To continue,--'The kingdom of _the Belges_ is about as large as the north-east corner of Connecticut, including one town in Rhode Island; and the whole population may be about equal to that of _our_ tribe of Creek Indians, who dwell in the wilder parts of _our_ state of Georgia.'" "This particularity is very convincing," observed Paul, "and then it has the merit, too, of coming from an eye-witness" "I will now, gentlemen, return with you to Paris, where I stayed all of three weeks, and of the society of which my knowledge of the language will, of course, enable me to give a still more valuable account." "You mean to publish these hints, I trust, sir?" inquired the captain. "I shall probably collect them, and enlarge them in the way of a book; but they have already been laid before the American public in the columns of the Active Inquirer, I can assure you, gentlemen, that my colleagues of the press have spoken quite favourably of the letters as they appeared. Perhaps you would like to hear some of their opinions?" Hereupon Mr. Dodge opened a pocket-book, out of which he took six or eight slips of printed paper, that had been preserved with care, though obviously well thumbed. Opening one, he read as follows: "'Our friend Dodge, of the Active Inquirer, is instructing his readers, and edifying mankind in general, with some very excellent and pungent remarks on the state of Europe, which part of the world he is now exploring with some such enterprise and perseverance as Columbus discovered when he entered on the unknown waste of the Atlantic. His opinions meet with our unqualified approbation, being sound, American, and discriminating. We fancy these Europeans will begin to think in time that Jonathan has some pretty shrewd notions concerning themselves, the critturs!' This was extracted from the People's Advocate, a journal edited with great ability, by Peleg Pond, esquire, a thorough-going republican, and a profound observer of mankind." "In his own parish in particular," quaintly added John Effingham. "Pray, sir, have you any more of these critical _morceaux_?" "At least a dozen," beginning to read again.--"Steadfast Dodge, esquire, the editor of the Active Inquirer, is now travelling in Europe, and is illuminating the public mind at home by letters that are Johnsonian in style, Chesterfieldian in taste and in knowledge of the world, with the redeeming qualities of nationality, and republicanism, and truth. We rejoice to perceive by these valuable contributions to American literature, that Steadfast Dodge, esquire, finds no reason to envy the inhabitants of the Old World any of their boasted civilization; but that, on the contrary, he is impressed with the superiority of our condition over all countries, every post that he progresses. America has produced but few men like Dodge; and even Walter Scott might not be ashamed to own some of his descriptions. We hope he may long continue to travel.'" "_Voitury_" added John Effingham gravely. "You perceive, gentlemen, how modestly these editors set forth their intimacy with the traveller--'our friend Dodge, of the Active Inquirer,' and 'Steadfast Dodge, esquire!'--a mode of expression that speaks volumes for their own taste, and their profound deference for their readers!" "We always speak of each other in this manner, Mr. John Effingham--that is our _esprit du corps_." "And I should think that there would be an _esprit de corps_ in the public to resist it," observed Paul Blunt. The distinction was lost on Mr. Dodge, who turned over to one of his most elaborate strictures on the state of society in France, with all the self-complacency of besotted ignorance and provincial superciliousness. Searching out a place to his mind, this profound observer of men and manners, who had studied a foreign people, whose language when spoken was gibberish to him, by travelling five days in a public coach, and living four weeks in taverns and eating-houses, besides visiting three theatres, in which he did not understand a single word that was uttered, proceeded to lay before his auditors the results of his observations. "'The state of female society in France is truly awful,' he resumed, 'the French Revolution, as is universally known, having left neither decorum, modesty, nor beauty in the nation. I walk nightly in the galleries of the Palais Royal, where I locate myself, and get every opportunity of observing the peculiarities of ladies of the first taste and fashion in the metropolis of Europe. There is one duchess in particular, whose grace and _embonpoint_ have, I confess, attracted my admiration. This lady, as my _lacquais de_ _place_ informs me, is sometimes termed _la mère du peuple_, from her popularity and affability. The young ladies of France, judging from the specimens I have seen here--which must be of the highest class in the capital, as the spot is under the windows of one of the royal palaces--are by no means observable for that quiet reserve and modest diffidence that distinguish the fair among our own young countrywomen; but it must be admitted they are remarkable for the manner in which, they walk alone, in my judgment a most masculine and unbecoming practice. Woman was not made to live alone, and I shall contend that she was not made to walk alone. At the same time, I confess here is a certain charm in the manner in which these ladies place a hand in each pocket of their aprons, and balance their bodies, as they move like duchesses through the galleries. If I might humbly suggest, the American fair might do worse than imitate this Parisian step; for, as a traveller I feel it a duty to exhibit any superior quality that other nations possess. I would also remark on the general suavity of manners that the ladies of quality' (this word Mr Dodge pronounced _qua-a-lity_,) 'observe in their promenades in and about this genteel quarter of Paris.'" "The French ladies ought to be much flattered with this notice of them," cried the captain, filling Mr. Dodge's glass. "In the name of truth and penetration, sir, proceed." "'I have lately been invited to attend a ball in one of the first families of France, which resides in the Rue St. Jaques, or the St. James' of Paris. The company was select, and composed of many of the first persons in the kingdom of _des Français_. The best possible manners were to be seen here, and the dancing was remarkable for its grace and beauty. The air with which the ladies turned their heads on one side, and inclined their bodies in advancing and retiring, was in the first style of the court of Terpsichore. They were all of the very first families of France. I heard one excuse herself for going away so early, as _Madame la Duchesse_ expected her; and another observed that she was to leave town in the morning with _Madame la Vicomtesse_. The gentlemen, with few exceptions, were in fancy dresses, appearing in coats, some of sky-blue, some green, some scarlet, and some navy-blue, as fancy dictated, and all more or less laced on the seams much in the manner as was the case with the Honourable the King the morning I saw him leave for _Nully_. This entertainment was altogether the best conducted of any I ever attended, the gentlemen being condescending, and without the least pride, and the ladies all grace.'" "Graces would be more expressive, if you will excuse my suggesting a word, sir," observed John Effingham, as the other paused to take breath. "'I have observed that the people in most monarchies are abject and low-minded in their deportment. Thus the men take off their hats when they enter churches, although the minister be not present; and even the boys take off their hats when they enter private houses. This is commencing servility young. I have even seen men kneeling on the cold pavements of the churches in the most abject manner, and otherwise betraying the feeling naturally created by slavish institutions." "Lord help 'em!" exclaimed the captain, "if they begin so young, what a bowing and kneeling set of blackguards they will get to be in time." "It is to be presumed that Mr. Dodge has pointed out the consequences in the instance of the abject old men mentioned, who probably commenced their servility by entering houses with their hats off," said John Effingham. "Just so, sir," rejoined the editor. "I throw in these little popular traits because I think they show the differences between nations." "From which I infer," said Mr. Sharp, "that in your part of America boys do not take off their hats when they enter houses, nor men kneel in churches?" "Certainly not, sir. Our people get their ideas of manliness early; and as for kneeling in churches, we have some superstitious-sects--I do not mention them; but, on the whole, no nation can treat the house of God more rationally than we do in America." "That I will vouch for," rejoined John Effingham; "for the last time I was at home I attended a concert in one of them, where an _artiste_ of singular nasal merit favoured the company with that admirable piece of conjoined sentiment and music entitled 'Four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row!'" "I'll engage for it," cried Mr. Dodge, swelling with national pride; "and felt all the time as independent and easy as if he was in a tavern. Oh! superstition is quite extinct in _Ameriky!_ But I have a few remarks on the church in my notes upon England: perhaps you would like to hear them?" "Let me entreat you to read them," said the true Sir George Templemore, a little eagerly. "Now, I protest against any liberality," added the false Sir George, shaking his finger. Mr. Dodge disregarded both; but, turning to the place, he read aloud with his usual self-complacency and unction. "'To-day, I attended public worship in St.---church, Minories. The congregation was composed of many of the first people of England, among whom were present Sir Solomon Snore, formerly HIGH sheriff of London, a gentleman of the first consideration in the empire, and the celebrated Mr. Shilling, of the firm of Pound, Shilling, and Pence. There was certainly a fine air of polite life in the congregation, but a little too much idolatry. Sir Solomon and Mr. Shilling were both received with distinction, which was very proper, when we remember their elevated rank; but the genuflexions and chaunting met with my very unqualified disapprobation.'" "Sir Solomon and the other personage you mention were a little _pursy_, perhaps," observed Mr. Sharp, "which destroyed their grace." "I disapprove of all kneeling, on general principles, sir. If we kneel to one, we shall get to kneel to another, and no one can tell where it will end. 'The exclusive manner in which the congregation were seated in pews, with sides so high that it was difficult to see your nearest neighbour; and these pews' (Mr. Dodge pronounced this word _poohs_,) 'have often curtains that completely enclose their owners, a system of selfishness that would not be long tolerated in _Ameriky_.'" "Do individuals own their pews in America?" inquired Mr. Sharp. "Often," returned John Effingham; always, "except in those particular portions of the country where it is deemed invidious, and contrary to the public rights, to be better off than one's neighbour, by owning any thing that all the community has not a better claim to than its proprietor." "And canot the owner of a pew curtain it, with a view to withdrawn into it himself at public worship?" "America and England are the antipodes of each other in all these things. I dare say, now, that you have come among us with an idea that our liberty is so very licentious, that a man may read a newspaper by himself?" "I confess, certainly, to that much," returned Mr. Sharp, smiling. "We shall teach him better than this, Mr. Dodge, before we let him depart. No, sir, you have very contracted ideas of liberty, I perceive. With us every thing is settled by majorities. We eat when the majority eats; drink, when the majority drinks; sleep, when the majority sleeps; pray, when the majority prays. So far from burying ourselves in deep wells of pews, with curtains round their edges, we have raised the floors, amphitheatre fashion, so that every body can see every body; have taken away the sides of the pews, which we have converted into free and equal seats, and have cut down the side of the pulpit so that we can look at the clergyman; but I understand there is actually a project on foot to put the congregation into the pulpit, and the parson into the aisle, by way of letting the latter see that he is no better than he should be. This would be a capital arrangement, Mr. Dodge, for the 'Four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row.'" The editor of the Active Inquirer was a little distrustful of John Effingham, and he was not sorry to continue his extracts, although he was obliged to bring himself still further under the fire of his assailant. "'This morning,' Mr. Dodge resumed, I stepped into the coffee-room of the 'Shovel and Tongs,' public-house, to read the morning paper, and, taking a seat by the side of a gentleman who was reading the 'Times,' and drawing to me the leaves of the journal, so that it would be more convenient to peruse, the man insolently and arrogantly demanded of me, 'What the devil I meant?' This intolerance in the English character is owing to the narrowness of the institutions, under which men come to fancy liberty applies to persons instead of majorities.'" "You perceive, Mr. Sharp," said John Effingham, "how much more able a stranger is to point out the defects of national character than a native. I dare say that in indulging your individuality, hitherto, you have imagined you were enjoying liberty." "I fear I have committed some such weakness--but Mr. Dodge will have the goodness to proceed." The editor complied as follows:--"'Nothing has surprised me more than the grovelling propensities of the English on the subject of names. Thus this very inn, which in America would be styled the 'Eagle Tavern,' or the 'Oriental or Occidental Hotel,' or the 'Anglo-Saxon Democratical Coffee-house,' or some other equally noble or dignified appellation, is called the 'Shovel and Tongs.' One tavern, which might very appropriately be termed 'The Saloon of Peace,' is very vulgarly called 'Dolly's Chop-house.'" All the gentlemen, not excepting Mr. Sharp, murmured their disgust at so coarse a taste. But most of the party began now to tire of this pretending ignorance and provincial vulgarity, and, one by one, most of them soon after left the table. Captain Truck, however, sent for Mr. Leach, and these two worthies, with Mr. Dodge and the spurious baronet, sat an hour longer, when all retired to their berths. Chapter XXXII. I'll meet thee at Philippi. SHAKESPEARE. Happy is the man who arrives on the coast of New York, with the wind at the southward, in the month of November. There are two particular conditions of the weather, in which the stranger receives the most unfavourable impressions of the climate that has been much and unjustly abused, but which two particular conditions warrant all the evil that has been said of it. One is a sweltering day in summer, and the other an autumnal day, in which the dry north wind scarce seems to leave any marrow in the bones. The passengers of the Montauk escaped both these evils, and now approached the coast with a bland south-west breeze, and a soft sky. The ship had been busy in the night, and when the party assembled on deck in the morning, Captain Truck told them, that in an hour they should have a sight of the long-desired western continent. As the packet was inning in at the rate of nine knots, under topmast and top-gallant studding-sails, being to windward of her port, this was a promise that the gallant vessel seemed likely enough to redeem. "Toast!" called out the captain, who had dropped into his old habits as naturally as if nothing had occurred, "bring me a coal; and you, master steward, look well to the breakfast this morning. If the wind stands six hours longer, I shall have the grief of parting with this good company, and you the grief of knowing you will never set another meal before them. These are moments to awaken sentiment, and yet I never knew an officer of the pantry that did not begin to grin as he drew near his port." "It is usually a cheerful moment with every one, I believe, Captain Truck," said Eve, "and most of all, should it be one of heartfelt gratitude with us." "Ay, ay, my dear young lady; and yet I fancy Mr. Saunders will explain it rather differently. Has no one sung out 'land,' yet, from aloft, Mr. Leach? The sands of New Jersey ought to be visible before this." "We have seen the haze of the land since daylight, but not land itself." "Then, like old Columbus, the flowered doublet is mine--land, ho!" The mates and the people laughed, and looking ahead, they nodded to each other, and the word "land" passed from mouth to mouth, with the indifference with which mariners first see it in short passages. Not so with the rest. They crowded together, and endeavoured to catch a glimpse of the coveted shore, though, with the exception of Paul, neither could perceive it. "We must call on you for assistance," said Eve, who now seldom addressed the handsome young seaman without a flush on her own beautiful face; "for we are all so luberly that none of us can see that which we so earnestly desire." "Have the kindness to look over the stock of that anchor," said Paul, glad of an excuse to place himself nearer to Eve; and you will discover an object on the water." "I do," said Eve, "but is it not a vessel?" "It is; but a little to the right of that vessel, do you not perceive a hazy object at some elevation above the sea?" "The cloud, you mean--a dim, ill-defined, dark body of vapour?" "So it may seem to you, but to me it appears to be the land. That is the bluff-like termination of the celebrated high lands of Navesink. By watching it for half an hour you will perceive its form and surface grow gradually more distinct." Eve eagerly pointed out the place to Mademoiselle Vielville and her father, and from that moment, for near an hour, most of the passengers kept it steadily in view. As Paul had said, the blue of this hazy object deepened; then its base became connected with the water, and it ceased to resemble a cloud at all. In twenty more minutes, the faces and angles of the hills became visible, and trees started out of their sides. In the end a pair of twin lights were seen perched on the summit. But the Montauk edged away from these highlands, and shaped her course towards a long low spit of sand, that lay several miles to the northward of them. In this direction, fifty small sail were gathering into, or diverging from, the pass, their high, gaunt-looking canvas resembling so many church towers on the plains of Lombardy. These were coasters, steering towards their several havens. Two or three outward-bound ships were among them, holding their way in the direction of China, the Pacific Ocean, or Europe. About nine, the Montauk met a large ship standing on bowline, with every thing set that would draw, and heaping the water under her bows. A few minutes after, Captain Truck, whose attention had been much diverted from the surrounding objects by the care of his ship, came near the group of passengers, and once more entered into conversation. "Here we are, my dear young lady," he cried, "within five leagues of Sandy Hook, which lies hereaway, under our lee bow; as pretty a position as heart could wish. The lank, hungry-looking schooner in-shore of us, is a new vessel, and, as soon as she is done with the brig near her we shall have her in chase, when there will be a good opportunity to get rid of all our spare lies. This little fellow to leeward, who is clawing up towards us, is the pilot; after whose arrival, my functions cease, and I shall have little to do but to rattle off Saunders and Toast, and to feed the pigs." "And who is this gentleman ahead of us, with his main-topsail to the mast, his courses in the brails, and his helm a-lee?" asked Paul. "Some chap who has forgotten his knee-buckles, and has been obliged to send a boat up to town to hunt for them," coolly rejoined the captain, while he sought the focus of the glass, and levelled it at the vessel in question. The look was long and steady, and twice Captain Truck lowered the instrument to wipe the moisture from his own eye. At length, he called out, to the amazement of every body, "Stand by to in all studding-sails, and to ware to the eastward. Be lively, men, be lively! The eternal Foam, as I am a miserable sinner!" Paul laid a hand on the arm of Captain Truck, and stopped him, as the other was about to spring towards the forecastle, with a view to aid and encourage his people. "You forget that we have neither spars nor sails suited to a chase," said the young man. "If we haul off to sea-ward on any tack we can try, the corvette will be too much for us now, and excuse me if I say that a different course will be advisable." The captain had learned to respect the opinion of Paul, and he took the interference kindly. "What choice remains, but to run down into the very jaws of the lion," he asked, "or to wear round, and stand to the eastward?" "We have two alternatives. We may pass unnoticed, the ship being so much altered; or we may haul up on the tack we are on, and get into shallow water." "He draws as little as this ship, sir, and would follow. There is no port short of Egg Harbour, and into that I should be bashful about entering with a vessel of this size; whereas, by running to the eastward, and doubling Montauk, which would owe us shelter on account of our name, I might get into the Sound, or New London, at need, and then claim the sweepstakes, as having won the race." "This would be impossible, Captain Truck, allow me to say. Dead before the wind, we cannot escape, for the land would fetch us up in a couple of hours; to enter by Sandy Hook, if known, is impossible, on account of the corvette, and, in a chase of a hundred and twenty miles, we should be certain to be overtaken." "I fear you are right, my dear sir, I fear you are right. The studding-sails are now in, and. I will haul up for the highlands, and anchor under them, should it be necessary. We can then give this fellow Vattel in large quantities, for I hardly think he will venture to seize us while we have an anchor fast to good American ground." "How near dare you stand to the shore?" "Within a mile ahead of us; but to enter the Hook, the bar must be crossed a league or two off." "The latter is unlucky; but, by all means, get the vessel in with the land; so near as to leave no doubt as to our being in American waters." "We'll try him, sir, we'll try him. After having escaped the Arabs, the deuce is in it, if we cannot weather upon John Bull! I beg your pardon, Mr. Sharp; but this is a question that must be settled by some of the niceties of the great authorities." The yards were now braced forward, and the ship was brought to the wind, so as to head in a little to the northward of the bathing-houses at Long Branch. But for this sudden change of course, the Montauk would have run down dead upon the corvette, and possibly might have passed her undetected, owing to the change made in her appearance by the spars of the Dane. So long as she continued "bows on," standing towards them, not a soul on board the Foam suspected her real character, though, now that she acted so strangely, and offered her broadside to view, the truth became known in an instant. The main-yard of the corvette was swung, and her sails were filled on the same course as that on which the packet was steering. The two vessels were about ten miles from the land, the Foam a little ahead, but fully a league to leeward. The latter, however, soon tacked and stood in-shore. This brought the vessels nearly abreast of each other, the corvette a mile or more, dead to leeward, and distant now some six miles from the coast. The great superiority of the corvette's sailing was soon apparent to all on board both vessels, for she apparently went two feet to the packet's one. The history of this meeting, so unexpected to Captain Truck, was very simple. When the gale had abated, the corvette, which had received no damage, hauled up along the African coast, keeping as near as possible to the supposed track of the packet, and failing to fall in with her chase, she had filled away for New York. On making the Hook she took a pilot, and inquired if the Montauk had arrived. From the pilot she learned that the vessel of which she was in quest had not yet made its appearance, and she sent an officer up to the town to communicate with the British Consul. On the return of this officer, the corvette stood away from the land, and commenced cruising in the offing. For a week she had now been thus occupied, it being her practice to run close in, in the morning, and to remain hovering about the bar until near night, when she made sail for an offing. When first seen from the Montauk, she had been lying-to, to take in stores sent from the town, and to communicate with a news-boat. The passengers of the Montauk had just finished their breakfast, when the mate reported that the ship was fast shoaling her water, and that it would be necessary to alter the course in a few minutes, or to anchor. On repairing to the deck, Captain Truck and his companions perceived the land less than a mile ahead of them, and the corvette about half that distance to the leeward, and nearly abeam. "That is a bold fellow," exclaimed the captain, "or he has got a Sandy Hook pilot on board him." "Most probably the latter," said Paul: "he would scarcely be here on this duty, and neglect so simple a precaution." "I think this would satisfy Mr. Vattel, sir," returned Captain Truck, as the man in the chains sung out, 'and a half hree!' "Hard up with the helm, and lay the yards square, Mr. Leach." "Now we shall soon know the virtue of Vattel," said John Effingham, "as ten minutes will suffice to raise the question very fairly." The Foam put her helm down, and tacked beautifully to the south-east. As soon as the Montauk, which vessel was now running along shore, keeping in about four fathoms water, the sea being as smooth as a pond, was abeam, the corvette wore round, and began to close with her chase, keeping on her eastern, or outer board. "Were we an enemy, and a match for that sloop," said Paul, "this smooth water and yard-arm attitude would make quick work." "Her captain is in the gangway, taking our measure," observed Mr. Truck: "here is the glass; I wish you to examine his face, and tell me if you think him a man with whom the law of nations will avail anything. See the anchor clear, Mr. Leach, for I'm determined to bring up all standing, if the gentleman intends to renew the old tricks of John Bull on our coast. What do you make of him, Mr. Blunt?" Paul did not answer, but laying down the glass, he paced the deck rapidly with the manner of one much disturbed. All observed this sudden change, though no one presumed to comment on it. In the mean time the sloop-of-war came up fast, and in a few minutes her larboard fore-yard-arm was within twenty feet of the starboard main-yard-arm of the Montauk, the two vessels running on parallel lines. The corvette now hauled up her fore-course, and let her top-gallant sails settle on the caps, though a dead silence reigned in her. "Give me the trumpet," said Captain Truck, stepping to the rail; "the gentleman is about to give us a piece of his mind." The English captain, who was easily known by his two epaulettes, also held a trumpet; but neither of the two commanders used his instrument, the distance being sufficiently near for the natural voice, "I believe, sir," commenced the man-of-war's-man, "that I have the pleasure to see Captain Truck, of the Montauk, London packet?" "Ay, ay; I'll warrant you he has my name alongside of John Doe and Richard Roe," muttered Mr. Truck, "spell as carefully as it could be in a primer.--I am Captain Truck, and this is the Montauk. May I ask the name of your vessel, and your own, sir?" "This is his Britannic Majesty's ship, the Foam, Captain Ducie." "The Honourable Captain Ducie!" exclaimed Mr. Sharp. "I thought I recognised the voice: I know him intimately well." "Will he stand Vattel?" anxiously demanded Mr. Truck. "Nay, as for that, I must refer you to himself." "You appear to have suffered in the gale," resumed Captain Ducie, whose smile was very visible, as he thus addressed them like an old acquaintance. "We fared better ourselves, for I believe we did not part a ropeyarn." "The ship pitched every stick out of her," returned Captain Truck, "and has given us the trouble of a new outfit." "In which you appear to have succeeded admirably. Your spars and sails are a size or two too small; but every thing stands like a church." "Ay, ay, now we have got on our new clothes, we are not ashamed to be seen." "May I ask if you have been in port to do all this?" "No, sir; picked them up along-shore." The Honourable Captain Ducie thought he was quizzed, and his manner became a little more cold, though it still retained its gentlemanlike tone. "I wish much to see you in private, sir, on an affair of some magnitude, and I greatly regret it was not in my power to speak you the night you left Portsmouth. I am quite aware you are in your own waters, and I feel a strong reluctance to retain your passengers when so near their port; but I shall feel it as a particular favour if you will permit me to repair on board for a few minutes." "With all my heart," cried Captain Truck: "if you will give me room, I will back my main-topsail, but I wish to lay my head off shore. This gentleman understands Vattel, and we shall have no trouble with him. Keep the anchor clear Mr. Leach, for 'fair words butter no parsnips.' Still, he is a gentleman;--and, Saunders, put a bottle of the old Madeira on the cabin table." Captain Ducie now left the rigging in which he had stood, and the corvette luffed off to the eastward, to give room to the packet, where she hove-to with her fore-topsail aback. The Montauk followed, taking a position under her lee. A quarter-boat was lowered, and in five minutes its oars were tossed at the packet's lee-gangway, when the commander of the corvette ascended the ship's side, followed by a middle-aged man in the dress of a civilian, and a chubby-faced midshipman. No one could mistake Captain Ducie for anything but a gentleman. He was handsome, well-formed, and about five-and-twenty. The bow he made to Eve, with whose beauty and air he seemed instantly struck, would have become a drawing-room; but he was too much of an officer to permit any further attention to escape him until he had paid his respects to, and received the compliments of, Captain Truck. He then turned to the ladies and Mr. Effingham, and repeated his salutations. "I fear," he said, "my duty has made me the unwilling instrument of prolonging your passage, for I believe few ladies love the ocean sufficiently, easily to forgive those who lengthen its disagreeables." "We are old travellers, and know how to allow for the obligations of duty," Mr. Effingham civilly answered. "That they do, sir," put in Captain Truck; "and it was never my good fortune to have a more agreeable set of passengers. Mr. Effingham, the Honourable Captain Ducie;--the Honourable Captain Ducie, Mr. Effingham;--Mr. John Effingham, Mam'selle V.A.V." endeavouring always to imitate Eve's pronunciation of the name;--"Mr. Dodge, the Honourable Captain Ducie; the Honourable Captain Ducie, Mr. Dodge." The Honourable Captain Ducie and all the others, the editor of the Active Inquirer excepted, smiled slightly, though they respectively bowed and curtseyed; but Mr. Dodge, who conceived himself entitled to be formally introduced to every one he met, and to know all he saw, whether introduced or not, stepped forward promptly, and shook Mr. Ducie very cordially by the hand. Captain Truck now turned in quest of some one else to introduce; Mr. Sharp stood near the capstan, and Paul had retired as far aft as the hurricane-house. "I am happy to see you in the Montauk," added Captain Truck, insensibly leading the other towards the capstan, "and am sorry I had not the satisfaction of meeting you in England. The Honourable Captain Ducie, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Sharp, the Honourable Captain--" "George Templemore!" exclaimed the commander of the corvette, looking from one to the other. "Charles Ducie!" exclaimed the _soi-disant_ Mr. Sharp. "Here then is an end of part of my hopes, and we have been on a wrong scent the whole time." "Perhaps not, Ducie: explain yourself." "You must have perceived my endeavours to speak you, from the moment you sailed?" "To _speak_ us!" cried Captain Truck. "Yes, sir, we _did_ observe your endeavours to _speak_ us." "It was because I was given to understand that one _calling_ himself Sir George Templemore, an impostor, however, had taken passage in this ship; and here I find that we have been misled, by the real Sir George Templemore's having chosen to come this way instead of coming by the Liverpool ship. So much for your confounded fashionable caprices, Templemore, which never lets you know in the morning whether you are to shoot yourself or to get married before night." "And is this gentleman Sir George Templemore?" pithily demanded Captain Truck. "For that I can vouch, on the knowledge of my whole life." "And we know this to be true, and have known it since the day we sailed," observed Mr. Effingham. Captain Truck was accustomed to passengers under false names, but never before had he been so completely mystified. "And pray, sir," he inquired of the baronet, "are you a member of Parliament?" "I have that honour." "And Templemore Hall is your residence, and you have come out to look at the Canadas?" "I am the owner of Templemore Hall, and hope to look at the Canadas before I return." "And," turning to Captain Ducie, "you sailed in quest of another Sir George Templemore--a false one?" "That is a part of my errand," returned Captain Ducie, smiling. "Nothing else?--you are certain, sir, that this is the whole of your errand?" "I confess to another motive," rejoined the other, scarce knowing how to take Captain Truck's question; "but this one will suffice for the present, I hope." "This business requires frankness. I mean nothing disrespectful; but I am in American waters, and should be sorry, after all, to be obliged to throw myself on Vattel." "Let me act as mediator," interrupted Sir George Templemore. "Some one has been a defaulter, Ducie; is it not so?" "This is the simple truth; an unfortunate, but silly young man, of the name of Sandon. He was intrusted with a large sum of the public money, and has absconded with quite forty thousand pounds." "And this person, you fancy, did me the honour to travel under my name?" "Of that we are certain. Mr. Green here," motioning to the civilian, "comes from the same office, and traced the delinquent, under your name, some distance on the Portsmouth road. When we heard that a Sir George Templemore had actually embarked in the Montauk, the admiral made no scruple in sending me after the packet. This has been an unlucky mistake for me, as it would have been a feather in the cap of so young a commander to catch the rogue." "You may choose your feather, sir," returned Captain Truck, "for you will have a right to wear it. The unfortunate young man you seek is, out of question, in this ship." Captain Truck now explained that there was a person below who had been known to him as Sir George Templemore, and who, doubtless, was the unhappy delinquent sought. But Captain Ducie did not betray the attention or satisfaction that one would have expected from this information, his eye being riveted on Paul, who stood beneath the hurricane-house. When the latter saw that he attracted attention he advanced slowly, even reluctantly, upon the quarter-deck. The meeting between these two gentlemen was embarrassed, though each maintained his self-possession. "Mr. Powis, I believe?" said the officer bowing haughtily "Captain Ducie, if I am not mistaken?" returned the other, lifting his hat steadily, though his face became flushed. The manner of the two, however, was but little noticed at the moment, though all heard the words. Captain Truck drew a long "whe--e--e--w!" for this was rather more than even he was accustomed to, in the way of masquerades. His eye was on the two gentlemen as they walked aft together, and alone, when he felt a touch upon his arm. It was the little hand of Eve, between whom and the old seaman there existed a good deal of trifling, blended with the most entire good-will. The young lady laughed with her sweet eyes, shook her fair curls, and said mockingly, "Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt; Mr. Blunt, Mr. Sharp!" "And were you in the secret all this time, my dear young lady?" "Every minute of it; from the buoys of Portsmouth to this very spot." "I shall be obliged to introduce my passengers all over again!" "Certainly; and I would recommend that each should show a certificate of baptism, or a passport, before you announce his or her name." "_You_ are, at least, the beautiful Miss Effingham, my dear young lady?" "I'll not vouch for that, even," said Eve, blushing and laughing. "That is Mr. John Effingham, I hope!" "For that I _can_ vouch. There are not _two_ cousin Jacks on earth." "I wish I knew what the other business of this gentleman is! He seems amicably disposed, except as regards Mr. Blunt. They looked coldly and suspiciously at each other." Eve thought so too, and she lost all her desire for pleasantry. Just at this moment Captain Ducie quitted his companion, both touching their hats distantly, and returned to the group he had so unceremoniously left a few minutes before. "I believe, Captain Truck, you now know my errand," he said, "and can say whether you will consent to my examining the person whom you have mentioned?" "I know _one_ of your errands, sir; you spoke of having _two_." "Both will find their completion in this ship, with your permission." "Permission! That sounds well, at least, my dear young lady. Permit me to inquire, Captain Ducie, has either of your errands the flavour of tobacco about it?" The young man looked surprised, and he began to suspect another mystification. "The question is so singular that it is not very intelligible." "I wish to know, Captain Ducie, if you have anything to say to this ship in the way of smuggling?" "Certainly not. I am not a custom-house officer, sir, nor on the revenue duty; and I had supposed this vessel a regular packet, whose interest is too plain to enter into such a pursuit." "You have supposed nothing but the truth, sir; though we cannot always answer for the honesty or discretion of our people. A single pound of tobacco might forfeit this noble ship; and, observing the perseverance with which you have chased me, I was afraid all was not right with the excise." "You have had a needless alarm then, for my two objects in coming to America are completely answered by meeting with Mr. Powis and the Mr. Sandon, who, I have been given to understand, is in his state-room below." The party looked at each other, but nothing was said. "Such being the facts, Captain Ducie, I beg to offer you every facility so far as the hospitality of my ship is concerned." "You will permit us to have an interview with Mr. Sandon?" "Beyond a doubt. I see, sir, you have read Vattel, and understand the rights of neutrals, or of independent nations. As this interview most probably will be interesting, you may desire to have it held in private, and a state-room will be too small for the purpose. My dear young lady, will you have the complaisance to lend us your cabin for half an hour?" Eve bowed assent, and Captain Truck then invited the two Englishmen below. "My presence at this interview is of little moment," observed Captain Ducie; "Mr. Green is master of the whole affair, and I have a matter of importance to arrange with Mr. Powis. If one or two of you gentlemen will have the kindess to be present, and witnesses of what passes between Mr. Sandon and Mr. Green, it would be a great favour. Templemore, I may claim this of you?" "With all my heart, though it is an unpleasant office to see guilt exposed. Should I presume too much by asking Mr. John Effingham to be of our party?" "I was about to make the same request," put in the captain. "We shall then be two Englishmen and two Yankees,--if Mr. John Effingham will allow me so to style him?" "Until we get within the Hook, Captain Truck, I am a Yankee; once _in_ the country, I belong to the Middle States, if you will allow me the favour to choose." The last speaker was stopped by a nudge from Captain Truck, who seized an opportunity to whisper, "Make no such distinction between outside and inside, I beg of you, my dear sir. I hold that the ship is, at this identical moment, in the United States of America in a positive sense, as well as by a legal fiction; and I think Vattel will bear me out in it." "Let it pass for that, then. I will be present at your interview with the fugitive. If the case is not clear against him, he shall be protected." Things were now soon arranged; it being decided that Mr. Green, who belonged to one of the English offices, accompanied by the gentlemen just named, should descend to the cabin of Miss Effingham, in order to receive the delinquent; while Captain Ducie should have his interview with Paul Powis in the state-room of the latter. The first party went below immediately; but Captain Ducie remained on deck a minute or two to give an order to the midshipman of his boat, who immediately quitted the Montauk, and pulled to the corvette. During this brief delay Paul approached the ladies, to whom he spoke with a forced indifference, though it was not possible to avoid seeing his concern. His servant, too, was observed watching his movements with great interest; and when the two gentlemen went below in company, the man shrugged his shoulders, and actually held up his hands, as one is wont to do at the occurrence of any surprising or distressing circumstance. Chapter XXXIII. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavy doom, Which I with some unwillingness pronounce. SHAKSPEARE. The history of the unfortunate young man, who, after escaping all the hazards and adventures of the passage was now so unexpectedly overtaken as he was about to reach what he fancied an asylum, was no more than one of those common-place tissue of events that lead, through vanity and weakness, to crime. His father had held an office under the British government. Marrying late, and leaving a son and daughter just issuing into life at the time of his decease, the situation he had himself filled had been given to the first, out of respect to the unwearied toil of a faithful servant. The young man was one of those who, without principles or high motives, live only for vanity. Of prominent vices he had none, for there were no salient points in his character on which to hang any quality of sufficient boldness to encourage crime of that nature. Perhaps he owed his ruin to the circumstance that he had a tolerable person, and was six feet high, as much as to any one other thing. His father had been a short, solid, square-built little man, whose ambition never towered above his stature, and who, having entered fairly on the path of industry and integrity early in life, had sedulously persevered in it to the end. Not so with the son. He read so much about aristocratic stature, aristocratic ears, aristocratic hands, aristocratic feet, and aristocratic air, that he was delighted to find that in all these high qualities he was not easily to be distinguished from most of the young men of rank he occasionally saw riding in the parks, or met in the streets, and, though he very well knew he was not a lord, he began to fancy it a happiness to be thought one by strangers, for an hour or two in a week. His passion for trifles and toys was inherent, and it had been increased by reading two or three caricatures of fashionable men in the novels of the day, until his happiness was chiefly centered in its indulgence. This was an expensive foible; and its gratification ere long exhausted his legitimate means. One or two trifling and undetected peculations favoured his folly, until a large sum happening to lie at his sole mercy for a week or two, he made such an inroad on it as compelled a flight. Having made up his mind to quit England, he thought it would be as easy to escape with forty thousand pounds as with the few hundreds he had already appropriated to himself. This capital mistake was the cause of his destruction; for the magnitude of the sum induced the government to take unusual steps to recover it, and was the true cause of its having despatched the cruiser in chase of the Montauk. The Mr. Green who had been sent to identify the fugitive, was a cold, methodical man, every way resembling the delinquent's father, whose office-companion he had been, and in whose track of undeviating attention to business and negative honesty he had faithfully followed. He felt the peculation, or robbery, for it scarce deserved a milder term, to be a reproach on the corps to which he belonged, besides leaving a stigma on the name of one to whom he had himself looked up as to a model for his own imitation and government. It will readily be supposed, therefore, that this person was not prepared to meet the delinquent in a very forgiving mood. "Saunders," said Captain Truck in the stern tone with which he often hailed a-top, and which implied that instant obedience was a condition of his forbearance, "go to the state-room of the person who has _called_ himself Sir George Templemore--give him my compliments--be very particular, Mr. Saunders--and say Captain Truck's compliments, and then tell him I expect the honour of his company in this cabin--the _honour_ of his company, remember, in this cabin. If that don't bring him out of his state-room, I'll contrive something that shall." The steward turned up the white of his eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and proceeded forthwith on the errand. He found time, however, to stop in the pantry, and to inform Toast that their suspicions were at least in part true. "This elucidates the circumstance of his having no attendant with him, like other gentlemen on board, and a wariety of other incidents, that much needed dewelopement. Mr. Blunt, I do collect from a few hints on deck, turns out to be a Mr. Powis, a much genteeler name; and as they spoke to some one in the ladies' cabin as 'Sir George,' I should not be overcome with astonishment should Mr. Sharp actually eventuate as the real baronite." There was time for no more, and Saunders proceeded to summon the delinquent. "This is the most unpleasant part of the duty of a packet-master between England and America," continued Captain Truck, as soon as Saunders was out of sight. "Scarce a ship sails that it has not some runaway or other, either in the steerage or in the cabins, and we are often called on to aid the civil authorities on both sides of the water." "America seems to be a favourite country with our English rogues," observed the office-man, drily. "This is the third that has gone from our own department within as many years." "Your department appears to be fruitful of such characters, sir," returned Captain Truck, pretty much in the spirit in which the first remark had been given. Mr. Green was as thorough-going an Englishman as any of his class in the island. Methodical, plodding, industrious, and regular in all his habits, he was honest by rule, and had no leisure or inclination for any other opinions than those which were obtained with the smallest effort. In consequence of the limited sphere in which he dwelt, in a moral sense at least, he was a mass of the prejudices that were most prevalent at the period when he first obtained his notions. His hatred of France was unconquerable, for he had early learned to consider her as the fast enemy of England; and as to America, he deemed her to be the general asylum of all the rogues of his own country--the possession of a people who had rebelled against their king because the restraints of law were inherently disagreeable to them. This opinion he had no more wish to proclaim than he felt a desire to go up and down declaring that Satan was the father of sin; but the fact in the one case was just as well established in his mind as in the other. If he occasionally betrayed the existence of these sentiments, it was as a man coughs; not because he particularly wishes to cough, but because he cannot help it. Finding the subject so naturally introduced, therefore, it is no wonder if some of his peculiar notions escaped him in the short dialogue that followed. "We have our share of bad men, I presume, sir," he rejoined to the thrust of Captain Truck; "but the thing that has most attracted comment with us, is the fact that they all go to America." "And we receive our share of rogues, I presume, sir; and it is the subject of animadversion with _us_ that they all come from England." Mr. Green did not feel the force of this retort; but he wiped his spectacles as he quietly composed his features into look of dignified gravity. "Some of your most considerable men in America, I believe, sir," he continued, "have been Englishmen, who preferred a residence in the colonies to a residence at home." "I never heard of them," returned the captain; "will you have the goodness to name just one?" "Why, to begin, there was your Washington. I have often heard my father say that he went to school with him in Warwickshire, and that he was thought anything but very clever, too, while he lived in England." "You perceive, then, that we made something of him when we got him over on this side; for he turned out in the end to be a very decent and respectable sort of person. Judging from the language of some of your prints, sir, I should suppose that King William enjoyed the reputation of being a respectable man in your country?" Although startled to hear his sovereign spoken of in this irreverent manner, Mr. Green answered promptly,---- "He is a king, sir, and comports himself as a king." "And all the better, I dare say, for the thrashing he got when a youngster, from the Vermont tailor." Now Captain Truck quite as religiously believed in this vulgar tale concerning the prince in question, as Mr. Green believed that Washington had commenced his career as one no better than he should be, or as implicitly as Mr. Steadfast Dodge gave credit to the ridiculous history of the schoolmaster of Haddonfield; all three of the legends belonging to the same high class of historical truths. Sir George Templemore looked with surprise at John Effingham, who gravely remarked,---- "Elegant extracts, sir, from the vulgar rumours of two great nations. We deal largely in these legends, and you are not quite guiltless of them. I dare say, now, if you would be frank, that you yourself have not always been deaf to the reports against America." "You surely do not imagine that I am so ignorant of the career of Washington?" "Of that I fully acquit you; nor do I exactly suppose that your present monarch was flogged by a tailor in Vermont, or that Louis Phillipe kept school in New Jersey. Our position in the world raises us beyond these elegancies; but do you not fancy some hard things of America, more especially concerning her disposition to harbour rogues, if they come with full pockets." The baronet laughed, but he coloured. He wished to be liberal, for he well knew that liberality distinguishes the man of the world, and was an indispensable requisite for a gentleman; but it is very hard for an Englishman to manifest true liberality towards the _ci-devant_ colonies, and this he felt in the whole of his moral system, notwithstanding every effort to the contrary. "I will confess that case of Stephenson made an unfavourable impression in England," he said with some reluctance. "You mean the absconding member of Parliament," returned John Effingham, with emphasis on the four last words. "You cannot mean to reproach us with his selection of a place of refuge; for he was picked up at sea by a foreign ship that was accidentally bound to America." "Certainly not with that circumstance, which, as you say, was purely an accident. But was there not something extraordinary in his liberation from arrest!" "Sir George Templemore, there are few Englishmen with whom I would dwell an instant on this subject," said John Effingham gravely; "but you are one of those who have taught me to respect you, and I feel a strong regret whenever I trace any of these mistaken notions in a man of your really generous disposition. A moment's reflection will show you that no civilized society could exist with the disposition you hint at; and as for the particular case you have mentioned, the man did not bring money of any moment with him, and was liberated from arrest on a principle common to all law, where law is stronger than political power, and which principle we derive directly from Great Britain. Depend on it, so far from there being a desire to receive rich rogues in America from other countries, there is a growing indisposition to receive emigrants at all; for their number is getting to be inconvenient to the native population." "Why does not America pass reciprocal laws with us then, for the mutual delivery of criminals." "One insuperable objection to such a reciprocity arises from the nature of our government, as a confederation, since there is no identity in our own criminal jurisprudence: but a chief reason is the exceedingly artificial condition of your society, which is the very opposite of our own, and indisposes the American to visit trifling crimes with so heavy punishments. The American, who has a voice in this matter, you will remember, is not prepared to hang a half-starved wretch for a theft, or to send a man to Botany Bay for poaching. The facility with which men obtain a livelihood in America has hitherto converted most rogues into comparatively honest men when they get there; though I think the day is near, now your own police is so much improved, when we shall find it necessary in self-defence to change our policy. The common language, as I am told, induces many knaves, who now find England too hot to hold them, to migrate to America." "Captain Ducie is anxious to know whether Mr. Truck will quietly permit this criminal to be transferred to the Foam." "I do not think he will permit it at all without being overpowered, if the request be urged in any manner as a right. In that case, he will very properly think that the maintenance of his national character is of more importance than the escape of a dozen rogues. _You_ may put a harsh construction on his course; but _I_ shall think him right in resisting an unjust and an illegal invasion of his rights. I had thought Captain Ducie, however, more peaceably disposed from what has passed." "Perhaps I have expressed myself too strongly. I know he would wish to take back the criminal; but I scarce think that he meditates more than persuasion. Ducie is a fine fellow, and every way a gentleman." "He appears to have found an acquaintance in our young friend, Powis." "The meeting between these two gentlemen has surprised me, for it can scarcely be termed amicable: and yet it seems to occupy more of Ducie's thoughts just now than the affair of the runaway." Both now became silent and thoughtful, for John Effingham had too many unpleasant suspicions to wish to speak, and the baronet was too generous to suggest a doubt concerning one whom he felt to be his rival, and whom, in truth, he had begun sincerely to respect, as well as to like. In the mean time, a discussion, which had gradually been growing more dogged and sullen on the part of Mr. Green and more biting and caustic on that of Captain Truck, was suddenly terminated by the reluctant and tardy appearance of Mr. Sandon. Guilt, that powerful vindicator of the justice of Providence, as it proves the existence of the inward monitor, conscience, was painfully impressed on a countenance that, in general, expressed little beyond a vacant vanity. Although of a tall and athletic person, his limbs trembled in a way to refuse to support him, and when he saw the well-known face of Mr. Green, the unhappy young man sank into a seat from a real inability to stand. The other regarded him sternly through his spectacles, for more than a minute. "This is a melancholy picture, Henry Sandon!" he at length said. "I am, at least, glad that you do not affect to brazen out your crime, but that you show a proper sense of its enormity. What would your upright and painstaking father have said, had he lived to see his only son in this situation?" "He is dead!" returned the young man, hoarsely. "He is dead, and never can know any thing about it." The unhappy delinquent experienced a sense of frightful pleasure as he uttered these words. "It is true, he is dead; but there are others to suffer by your misconduct. Your innocent sister is living, and feels all your disgrace." "She will marry Jones, and forget it all. I gave her a thousand pounds, and she is married before this." "In that you are mistaken. She has returned the money, for she is, indeed, John Sandon's daughter, and Mr. Jones refuses to marry the sister of a thief." The delinquent was vain and unreflecting, rather than selfish, and he had a natural attachment to his sister, the only other child of his parents. The blow, therefore, fell on his conscience with double force, coming from this quarter. "Julia can compel him to marry her," said the startled brother; "he is bound by a solemn engagement, and the law will protect her." "No law can make a man marry against his will, and your poor unfortunate sister is too tender of your feelings whatever you may havee been of hers, to wish to give Mr. Jones an opportunity of defending himself by exposing your crime. But this is wasting words, Mr. Sandon, for I am wanted in the office, where I have left things in the hands of an inexperienced substitute. Of course you are not prepared to defend an act, that your conscience must tell you is inexcusable." "I am afraid, Mr. Green, I have been a little thoughtless or, perhaps, it would be better to say, unlucky." Mr. Sandon had fallen into the general and delusive mistake of those who err, in supposing himself unfortunate rather than criminal. With an ingenuity, that, exercised in a better cause, would have made him a respectable man, he had been endeavouring to excuse his crime to himself, on various pleas of necessity, and he had even got at last to justify his act, by fancying that some trifling wrong he had received, or which he fancied he had received in the settlement of his own private account, in some measure excused his fraud, although his own denied claim amounted merely to the sum of twenty pounds, and that which he had taken was so large. It was under the influence of such feelings that he made the answer just given. "A little thoughtless! unlucky! And is this the way Henry Sandon, that you name a crime that might almost raise your upright father from his grave? But I wilt speak no more of feelings that you do not seem to understand. You confess to have taken forty thousand pounds of the public money, to which you have no right or claim?" "I certainly have in my hands some money, which I do not deny belongs to government." "It is well; and here is my authority to receive it from you. Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to see that my powers are regular and authentic?" John Effingham and others cast their eyes over the papers, which seemed to be in rule, and they said as much. "Now, sir," resumed Mr. Green, "in the first place, I demand the bills you received in London for this money, and your regular endorsement in my favour." The culprit appeared to have made up his mind to this demand, and, with the same recklessness with which he had appropriated the money to his own use, he was now ready to restore it, without proposing a condition for his own safety The bills were in his pocket, and seating himself at a table, he made the required endorsement, and handed them to Mr Green. "Here are bills for thirty-eight thousand pounds," said that methodical person, after he had examined the drafts, one by one, and counted their amount; "and you are known to have taken forty thousand. I demand the remainder." "Would you leave me in a strange country penniless?" exclaimed the culprit, in a tone of reproach. "Strange country! penniless!" repeated Mr. Green, looking over his spectacles, first at Mr. Truck, and then at Mr. Sandon. "That to which you have no claim must be restored, though it strip you to the skin. Every pound you have belongs to the public, and to no one else." "Your pardon, Mr. Green, and green enough you are, if you lay down that doctrine," interrupted Captain Truck, "in which neither Vattel, nor the revised statutes will bear you out. A passenger cannot remove his effects from a ship, until his passage be first paid." "That, sir, I dispute, in a question affecting the king's revenues. The claims of government precede all others, and the money that has once belonged to the crown, and which has not been regularly paid away by the crown, is the crown's still." "Crowns and coronations! Perhaps, Master Green, you think you are in Somerset House at this present speaking?" Now Mr. Green was so completely a star of a confined orbit, that his ideas seldom described a tangent to their ordinary revolutions. He was so much accustomed to hear of England ruling colonies, the East and the West, Canada, the Cape, and New South Wales, that it was not an easy matter for him to conceive himself to be without the influence of the British laws. Had he quitted home with the intention to emigrate, or even to travel, it is probable that his mind would have kept a more equal pace with his body, but summoned in haste from his desk, and with the office spectacles on his nose, it is not so much a matter of wonder that he hardly realized the truths of his present situation. The man-of-war, in which everything was His Majesty's, sustained this feeling, and it was too sudden a change to expect such a man to abandon all his most cherished notions at a moment's warning. The irreverent exclamation of Captain Truck shocked him, and he did not fail to show as much by the disgust pictured in his countenance. "I am in one of His Majesty's packets, sir, I presume, where, you will permit me to say, a greater deference for the high ceremonies of the kingdom ought to be found." "This would make even old Joe Bunk laugh. You are in a New York liner, sir, over which no majesty has any control, but their majesties John Griswold and Co. Why, my good sir, the sea has unsettled your brain!" Now, Mr. Green did know that the United States of America had obtained their independence, but the whole proceeding was so mixed up with rebellion, and a French alliance, in his mind, that he always doubted whether the new republic had a legal existence at all, and he had been heard to express his surprise that the twelve judges had not long since decided this state of things to be unconstitutional, and overturned the American government by _mandamus._ His disgust increased, accordingly, as Captain Truck's irreverence manifested itself in stronger terms, and there was great danger that the harmony, which had hitherto prevailed between the parties, would be brought to a violent termination. "The respect for the crown in a truly loyal subject, sir," Mr. Green returned sharply, "is not to be unsettled by the sea; not in my case, at least, whatever it might have been, in your own." "My own! why, the devil, sir, do you take me for a _subject_?" "A truant one, I fear, though you may have been born in London itself." "Why, my dear sir," said Captain Truck, taking the other by a button, as if he pitied his hallucination, "you don't breed such men in London. I came from the river, which never had a subject in it, or any other majesty, than that of the Saybrook Platform. I begin to understand you, at last: you are one of those well-meaning men who fancy the earth but a casing to the island of Great Britain. Well, I suppose it is more the fault of your education than of your nature, and one must overlook the mistake. May I ask what is your farther wish, in reference to this unhappy young man?" "He must refund every pound of the public money that remains in his possession." "That is just, and I say yea." "And all who have received from him any portion of this money, under whatever pretences, must restore it to the crown." "My good sir, you can have no notion of the quantity of champaigne and other good things this unfortunate young man has consumed in this ship. Although but a sham baronet, he has fared like a real lord; and you cannot have the heart to exact from the owners the keeping of your rogues." "Government makes no distinction, sir, and always claims its own." "Nay, Mr. Green," interrupted Sir George Templemore, "I much question if government would assert a right to money that a peculator or a defaulter fairly spends, even in England; much less does it seem to me it can pretend to the few pounds that Captain Truck has lawfully earned." "The money has not been lawfully earned, sir. It is contrary to law to assist a felon to quit the kingdom, and I am not certain there are no penalties for that act alone; and as for the public money, it can never legally quit the Treasury without the proper office forms." "My dear Sir George," put in the captain, "leave me to settle this with Mr. Green, who, no doubt, is authorized to give a receipt in full. What is to be done with the delinquent, sir, now that you are in possession of his money?" "Of course he will be carried back in the Foam, and, I mourn to be compelled to say, that he must be left in the hands of the law." "What, with or without my permission?" Mr. Green stared, for his mind was precisely one of those which would conceive it to be a high act of audacity in a _ci-devant_ colonist to claim the rights of an old country, even did he really understand the legality and completeness of the separation. "He has committed forgery, sir, to conceal his peculation. It is an awful crime; but they that commit it cannot hope to escape the consequences." "Miserable impostor! is this true!" Captain Truck sternly demanded of the trembling culprit. "He calls an oversight forgery, sir," returned the latter huskily. "I have done nothing to affect my life or liberty." At this moment Captain Ducie, accompanied by Paul Powis, entered the cabin, their faces flushed, and their manner to each other a little disturbed, though it was formally courteous. At the same instant, Mr. Dodge, who had been dying to be present at the secret conference, watched his opportunity to slip in also. "I am glad you have come, sir," said Mr. Green, "for here may be occasion for the services of his Majesty's officers. Mr. Sandon has given up these bills, but two thousand pounds remain unaccounted for, and I have traced thirty-five, quite clearly, to the master of this ship, who has received it in the way of passage-money." "Yes, sir, the fact is as plain as the highlands of Navesink from the deck," drily added Captain Truck. "One thousand of this money has been returned by the defaulter's sister," observed Captain Ducie. "Very true, sir; I had forgotten to give him credit for that." "The remainder has probably been wasted in those silly trifles of which you have told me the unhappy man was so fond, and for which he has bartered respectability and peace of mind. As for the money paid this ship for the passage, it has been fairly earned, nor do I know that government has any power to reclaim it." Mr. Green heard this opinion with still greater disgust than he had felt towards the language of Captain Truck; nor could he very well prevent his feelings escaping, him in words. "We truly live in perilous times," he muttered, speaking more particularly to John Effingham, out of respect to his appearance, "when the scions of the nobility entertain notions so loose. We have vainly fancied in England that the enormities of the French revolution were neutralized by Billy Pitt; but, sir, we still live in perilous times, for the disease has fairly reached the higher classes. I hear that designs are seriously entertained against the wigs of the judges and bishops, and the next thing will be the throne! All our venerable institutions are in danger." "I should think the throne might indeed be in danger, sir," returned John Effingham, gravely, "if it reposes on wigs." "It is my duty, Captain Truck," continued Captain Ducie, who was a man so very different from his associate that he scarcely seemed to belong to the same species, "to request you will deliver to us the person of the culprit, with his effects, when we can relieve you and your passengers from the pain of witnessing any more of this unpleasant scene." At the sound of the delivery of his person, all the danger of his situation rushed forcibly before the imagination of the culprit. His face flushed and became pale, and his legs refused to support him, though he made a desperate effort to rise. After an instant of silence, he turned to the commander of the corvette, and, in piteous accents, appealed to him for mercy. "I have been punished severely already," he continued, as his voice returned, "for the savage Arabs robbed me of everything I had of any value. These gentlemen know that they took my dressing-case, several other curious and valuable articles for the toilet, and nearly all my clothes." "This man is scarcely a responsible being," said John Effingham, "for a childish vanity supplies the place of principles, self-respect, and duty. With a sister scorned on account of his crimes, conviction beyond denial, and a dread punishment staring him in the face, his thoughts still run on trifles." Captain Ducie gave a look of pity at the miserable young man, and, by his countenance, it was plain to see that he felt no relish for his duty. Still he felt himself bound to urge on Captain Truck a compliance with his request. The master of the packet was a good deal divided by an inherent dislike of seeming to yield anything to a British naval officer, a class of men whom he learned in early life most heartily to dislike; his kind feelings towards this particular specimen of the class; a reluctance to give a man up to a probable death, or some other severe punishment; and a distaste to being thought desirous of harbouring a rogue. In this dilemma, therefore, he addressed himself to John Effingham for counsel. "I should be pleased to hear your opinion, sir, on this matter," he said, looking at the gentleman just named, "for I own myself to be in a category. Ought we, or not, to deliver up the culprit?" "_Fiat justitia ruat coelum_" answered John Effingham, who never fancied any one could be ignorant of the meaning of these familiar words. "That I believe indeed to be Vattel," said Captain Truck; "but exceptions alter rules. This young man has some claims on us on account of his conduct when in front of the Arabs." "He fought for himself, sir, and has the merit of preferring liberty in a ship to slavery in the desert." "I think with Mr. John Effingham," observed Mr. Dodge, "and can see no redeeming quality in his conduct on that occasion. He did what we all did, or, as Mr. John Effingham has so pithily expressed it, he preferred liberty in our company to being an Arab's slave." "You will not deliver me up, Captain Truck!" exclaimed the delinquent. "They will hang me, if once in their power. Oh I you will not have the heart to let them hang me!" Captain Truck was startled at this appeal, but he sternly reminded the culprit that it was too late to remember the punishment, when the crime was committed. "Never fear, Mr. Sandon," said the office-man with a sneer; "these gentlemen will take you to New York, for the sake of the thousand pounds, if they can. A rogue is pretty certain of a kind reception in America, I hear." "Then, sir," exclaimed Captain Truck, "you had better go in with us." "Mr Green, Mr. Green, this is indiscreet, to call it by no worse a term," interposed Captain Ducie, who, while he was not free from a good deal of the prejudices of his companion, was infinitely better bred, and more in the habit of commanding himself. "Mr. John Effingham, you have heard this wanton insult," continued Captain Truck, suppressing his wrath as well as he could: "in what mariner ought it to be resented?" "Command the offender to quit your ship instantly," said John Effingham firmly. Captain Ducie started, and his face flushed; but disregarding him altogether, Captain Truck walked deliberately up to Mr. Green, and ordered him to go into the corvette's boat. "I shall allow of neither parley nor delay," added the exasperated old seaman, struggling to appear cool and dignified, though his vocation was little for the latter. "Do me the favour, sir, to permit me to see you into your boat, sir. Saunders, go on deck, and tell Mr. Leach to have the side manned--with _three_ side boys, Saunders;--and now I ask it as the greatest possible favour, that you will walk on deck with me, or--or--damn me, but I'll drag you there, neck and heels!" It was too much for Captain Truck to seem calm when he was in a towering passion, and the outbreak at the close of this speech was accompanied by a gesture with a hand which was open, it is true, but from which none of the arts of his more polite days could erase the knobs and hue that had been acquired in early life. "This is strong language, sir, to use to a British officer, under the guns of a British cruiser," exclaimed the commander of the corvette. "And his was strong language to use to a man in his own country and in his own ship. To you, Captain Ducie I have nothing to say, unless it be to say you are welcome. But your companion has indulged in a coarse insult on my country, and damn me if I submit to it, if I never see St. Catherine's Docks again. I had too much of this when a young man, to wish to find it repeated while an old one." Captain Ducie bit his lip, and he looked exceedingly vexed. Although he had himself blindly imbibed the notion that America would gladly receive the devil himself if he came with a full pocket, he was shocked with the coarseness that would throw such an innuendo into the very faces of the people of the country. On the other hand, his pride as an officer was hurt at the menace of Captain Truck, and all the former harmony of the scene was threatened with a sudden termination. Captain Ducie had been struck with the gentlemanlike appearance of both the Effinghams, to say nothing of Eve, the instant his foot touched the deck of the Montauk, and he now turned with a manner of reproach to John Effingham, and said, "Surely, sir, _you_ cannot sustain Mr. Truck in his extraordinary conduct!" "You will pardon me if I say I do. The man has been permitted to remain longer in the ship than I would have suffered." "And, Mr. Powis, what is your opinion?" "I fear," said Paul, smiling coldly, "that I should have knocked him down on the spot." "Templemore, are you, too, of this way of thinking?" "I fear the speech of Mr. Green has been without sufficient thought. On reflection he will recall it." But Mr. Green would sooner part with life than part with a prejudice, and he shook his head in the negative in a way to show that his mind was made up. "This is trifling," added Captain Truck. "Saunders, go on deck, and tell Mr. Leach to send down through the skylight a single whip, that we may whip this polite personage on deck; and, harkee, Saunders, let there be another on the yard, that we may send him into his boat like an anker of gin!" "This is proceeding too far," said Captain Ducie. "Mr Green, you will oblige me by retiring; there can be no suspicion cast on a vessel of war for conceding a little to an unarmed ship." "A vessel of war should not insult an unarmed ship, sir!" rejoined Captain Truck, pithily. Captain Ducie again coloured; but as he had decided on his course, he had the prudence to remain silent. In the mean time Mr. Green sullenly took his hat and papers, and withdrew into the boat; though, on his return to London he did not fail to give such a version of the affair as went altogether to corroborate all his own, and his friends' previous notions of America; and, what is equally singular, he religiously believed all he had said on the occasion. "What is now to be done with this unhappy man?" inquired Captain Ducie when order was a little restored. The misunderstanding was an unfortunate affair for the culprit. Captain Truck felt a strong reluctance to deliver him up to justice after all they had gone through together, but the gentlemanlike conduct of the English commander, the consciousness of having triumphed in the late conflict, and a deep regard for the law, united on the other hand to urge him to yield the unfortunate and weak-minded offender to his own authorities. "You do not claim a right to take him out of an American ship by violence, if I understand you, Captain Ducie?" "I do not. My instructions are merely to demand him." "That is according to Vattel. By demand you mean, to request, to ask for him?" "I mean to request, to ask for him," returned the Englishman, smiling. "Then take him, of God's name; and may your laws be more merciful to the wretch than he has been to himself, or to his kin." Mr. Sandon shrieked, and he threw himself abjectly on his knees between the two captains, grasping the legs of both. "Oh! hear me! hear me!" he exclaimed in a tone of anguish. "I have given up the money, I will give it all up! all to the last shilling, if you will let me go! You, Captain Truck, by whose side I have fought and toiled, you will not have the heart to abandon me to these murderers!" "It's d--d hard!" muttered the captain, actually wiping his eyes; "but it is what you have drawn upon yourself, I fear. Get a good lawyer, my poor fellow, as soon as you arrive; and it's an even chance, after all, that you go free!" "Miserable wretch!" said Mr. Dodge, confronting the still kneeling and agonized delinquent, "Wretch! these are the penalties of guilt. You have forged and stolen, acts that meet with my most unqualified disapprobation, and you are unfit for respectable society.--I saw from the very first what you truly were, and permitted myself to associate with you, merely to detect and expose you, in order that you might not bring disgrace on our beloved country. An impostor has no chance in America; and you are fortunate in being taken back to your own hemisphere." Mr. Dodge belonged to a tolerably numerous class, that is quaintly described as being "law honest;" that is to say, he neither committed murder nor petty larceny. When he was guilty of moral slander, he took great care that it should not be legal slander; and, although his whole life was a tissue of mean and baneful vices, he was quite innocent of all those enormities that usually occupy the attention of a panel of twelve men. This, in his eyes, raised him so far above less prudent sinners as to give him a right to address his quondam associate as has been just related. But the agony of the culprit was past receiving an increase from this brutal attack; he merely motioned the coarse-minded sycophant and demagogue away, and continued his appeals to the two captains for mercy. At this moment Paul Powis stepped up to the editor, and in a low but firm voice ordered him to quit the cabin. "I will pray for you--be your slave--do all you ask, if you will not give me up!" continued the culprit, fairly writhing in his agony. "Oh! Captain Ducie, as an English nobleman, have mercy on me." "I must transfer the duty to subordinates," said the English commander, a tear actually standing in his eye. "Will you permit a party of armed marines to take this unhappy being from your ship, sir." "Perhaps this will be the best course, as he will yield only to a show of force. I see no objection to this, Mr John Effingham?" "None in the world, sir. It is your object to clear your ship of a delinquent, and let those among whom he committed the fault be the agents." "Ay--ay! this is what Vattel calls the comity of nations. Captain Ducie, I beg you will issue your orders." The English commander had foreseen some difficulty, and, in sending away his boat when he came below, he had sent for a corporal's guard. These men were now in a cutter, near the ship, lying off on their oars, in a rigid respect to the rights of a stranger, however,--as Captain Truck was glad to see, the whole party having gone on deck as soon as the arrangement was settled. At an order from their commander the marines boarded the Montauk, and proceeded below in quest of their prisoner. Mr. Sandon had been left alone in Eve's cabin; but as soon as he found himself at liberty, he hurried into his own state-room. Captain Truck went below, while the marines were entering the ship; and, having passed a minute in his own room, he stepped across the cabin, to that of the culprit. Opening the door without knocking, he found the unhappy man in the very act of applying a pistol to his head, his own hand being just in time to prevent the catastrophe. The despair portrayed in the face of the criminal prevented reproach or remonstrance, for Captain Truck was a man of few words when it was necessary to act. Disarming the intended suicide, he coolly counted out to him thirty-five pounds, the money paid for his passage, and told him to pocket it. "I received this on condition of delivering you safe in New York," he said; "and as I shall fail in the bargain, I think it no more than just to return you the money. It may help you on the trial." "Will they hang me?" asked Mr. Sandon hoarsely, and with an imbecility like that of an infant. The appearance of the marines prevented reply, the prisoner was secured, his effects were pointed out, and his person was transferred to the boat with the usual military promptitude. As soon as this was done the cutter pulled away from the packet, and was soon hoisted in again on the corvette's deck. That day month the unfortunate victim of a passion for trifles committed suicide in London, just as they were about to transfer him to Newgate; and six months later his unhappy sister died of a broken heart. Chapter XXXIV. We'll attend you there: Where, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed In our first way. CORIOLANUS. Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville had been unwilling spectators of a portion of the foregoing scene, and Captain Ducie felt a desire to apologise for the part he had been obliged to act in it. For this purpose he had begged his friend the baronet to solicit a more regular introduction than that received through Captain Truck. "My friend Ducie is solicitous to be introduced, Miss Effingham, that he may urge something in his own behalf concerning the commotion he has raised among us." A graceful assent brought the young commander forward, and as soon as he was named he made a very suitable expression of his regret to the ladies, who received it as a matter of course, favourably. "This is a new duty to me, the arrest of criminals," added Captain Ducie. The word _criminals_ sounded harsh to the ear of Eve, and she felt her cheek becoming pale. "Much as we regret the cause," observed the father "we can spare the person you are about to take from us without much pain; for _we_ have known him for an impostor from the moment he appeared.--Is there not some mistake? That is the third trunk that I have seen passed into the boat marked P. P." Captain Ducie smiled, and answered,-- "You will call it a bad pun if I say P. P. see," pointing to Paul, who was coming from the cabin attended by Captain Truck. The latter was conversing warmly, gesticulating towards the corvette, and squeezing his companion's hand. "Am I to understand," said Mr. Effingham earnestly, "that Mr. Powis, too, is to quit us?" "He does me the favour, also,"--Captain Ducie's lip curled a little at the word _favour_,--"to accompany me to England." Good breeding and intense feeling caused a profound suspense, until the young man himself approached the party. Paul endeavoured to be calm, and he even forced a smile as he addressed his friends. "Although I escape the honours of a marine guard," he said,--and Eve thought he said it bitterly, "I am also to be taken out of the ship. Chance has several times thrown me into your society, Mr. Effingham--- Miss Effingham--and, should the same good fortune ever again occur, I hope I may be permitted to address you at once as an old acquaintance." "We shall always entertain a most grateful recollection of your important services, Mr. Powis," returned the father, "and I shall not cease to wish that the day may soon arrive when I can have the pleasure of receiving you under my own roof." Paul now offered to take the hand of Mademoiselle Viefville, which he kissed gallantly. He did the same with Eve's, though she felt him tremble in the attempt. As these ladies had lived much in countries in which this graceful mode of salutation prevails among intimates, the act passed as a matter of course. With Sir George Templemore, Paul parted with every sign of good-will. The people, to whom he had caused a liberal donation to be made, gave him three cheers, for they understood his professional merits at least; and Saunders, who had not been forgotten, attended him assiduously to the side of the ship. Here Mr. Leach called, "the Foam's away!" and Captain Ducie's gig was manned. At the gangway Captain Truck again shook Paul cordially by the hand, and whispered something in his ear. Every thing being now ready, the two gentlemen prepared to go into the boat. As Eve watched all that passed with an almost breathless anxiety, a little ceremonial that now took place caused her much pain. Hitherto the manner of Captain Ducie, as respected his companion, had struck her as equivocal. At times it was haughty and distant, while at others it had appeared more conciliatory and kind. All these little changes she had noted with a jealous interest, and the slightest appearance of respect or of disrespect was remarked, as if it could furnish a clew to the mystery of the whole procedure. "Your boat is ready, sir," said Mr. Leach, stepping out of the gangway to give way to Paul, who stood nearest to the ladder. The latter was about to proceed, when he was touched lightly on the shoulder by Captain Ducie, who smiled, Eve thought haughtily, and intimated a desire to precede him. Paul coloured, bowed, and falling back, permitted the English officer to enter his own boat first. "_Apparemment ce captaine Anglais est un pen sans façon--Voilà qui est poli!_" whispered Mademoiselle Viefville. "These commanders of vessels of war are little kings," quietly observed Mr. Effingham, who had unavoidably noticed the whole procedure. The gig was soon clear of the ship, and both the gentlemen repeated their adieus to those on deck. To reach the corvette, to enter her, and to have the gig swinging on her quarter occupied but five minutes. Both ships now filled away, and the corvette began to throw out one sheet of cloth after another until she was under a cloud of canvas, again standing to the eastward with studding-sails alow and aloft. On the other hand, the Montauk laid her yards square, and ran down to the Hook. The pilot from the corvette had been sent on board the packet, and, the wind standing, by eleven o'clock the latter had crossed the bar. At this moment the low dark stern of the Foam resembled a small black spot on the sea sustaining a pyramid of cloud. "You were not on deck, John, to take leave of our young friend Powis," said Mr. Effingham, reproachfully. "I do not wish to witness a ceremony of this extraordinary nature. And yet it might have been better if I had." "Better, cousin Jack!" "Better. Poor Monday committed to my care certain papers that, I fancy, are of moment to some one, and these I intrusted to Mr. Powis, with a view to examine them together when we should get in. In the hurry of parting, he has carried them off." "They may be reclaimed by writing to London," said Mr. Effingham quietly. "Have you his address?" "I asked him for it; but the question appeared to embarrass him." "Embarrass, cousin Jack!" "Embarrass, Miss Effingham." The subject was now dropped by common consent. A few moments of awkward silence succeeded, when the interest inseparable from a return home, after an absence of years, began to resume its influence, and objects on the land were noticed. The sudden departure of Paul was not forgotten, however; for it continued the subject of wonder with all for weeks, though little more was said on the subject. The ship was soon abreast of the Hook, which Eve compared, to the disadvantage of the celebrated American haven with the rocky promontories and picturesque towers of the Mediterranean. "This portion of our bay, at least, is not very admirable," she said, "though there is a promise of something better above." "Some New-York cockney, who has wandered from the crackling heat of his Nott stove, has taken it into his poetical imagination to liken this bay to that of Naples," said John Effingham; "and his fellow-citizens greedily swallow the absurdity, although there is scarcely a single feature in common to give the foolish opinion value." "But the bay above _is_ beautiful!" "Barely pretty: when one has seen it alone, for many years, and has forgotten the features of other bays, it does not appear amiss; but _you_, fresh from the bolder landscapes of Southern Europe, will be disappointed." Eve, an ardent admirer of nature, heard this with regret, for she had as much confidence in the taste of her kinsman as in his love of truth. She knew he was superior to the vulgar vanity of giving an undue merit to a thing because he had a right of property in it; was a man of the world, and knew what he uttered on all such matters; had not a particle of provincial admiration or of provincial weakness MI his composition; and, although as ready as another, and far more able than most, to defend his country and her institutions from the rude assault of her revilers, that he seldom made the capital mistake of attempting to defend a weak point. The scenery greatly improved, in fact, however, as the ship advanced; and while she went through the pass called the Narrows, Eve expressed her delight. Mademoiselle Viefville was in ecstasies, not so much with the beauties of the place as with the change from the monotony of the ocean to the movement and liveliness of the shore. "You think this noble scenery?" said John Effingham. "As far from it as possible, cousin Jack. I see much meanness and poverty in the view, but at the same time it has fine parts. The islands are not Italian, certainly; nor these hills, nor yet that line of distant rocks; but, together, they form a pretty bay, and a noble one in extent and uses at least." "All this is true. Perhaps the earth does not contain another port with so many advantages for commerce. In this respect I think it positively unequalled; but I know a hundred bays that surpass it in beauty. Indeed in the Mediterranean it is not easy to find a natural haven that does not." Eve was too fresh from the gorgeous coast of Italy to be in ecstasies with the meagre villages and villas that, more or less, lined the bay of New-York; but when they reached a point where the view of the two rivers, separated by the town, came before them, with the heights of Brooklyn, heights comparatively if not positively, on one side, and the receding wall of the palisadoes on the other, Eve insisted that the scene was positively fine. "You have well chosen your spot," said John Effingham; "but even this is barely good. There is nothing surpassing about it." "But it is home, cousin Jack." "It is _home_, Miss Effingham," he answered, gaping, "and as you have no cargo to sell, I fear you will find it an exceedingly dull one." "We shall see--we shall see," returned Eve, laughing. Then, looking about her for a few minutes, she added with a manner in which real and affected vexation were prettily blended, "In one thing I do confess myself disappointed." "You will be happy, my dear, if it be in only one." "These smaller vessels are less picturesque than those I have been accustomed to see." "You have hit upon a very sound criticism, and, by going a little deeper into the subject, you will discover a singular deficiency in this part of an American landscape. The great-height of the spars of all the smaller vessels of these waters, when compared with the tame and level coast, river banks, and the formation of the country in general, has the effect to diminish still more the outlines of any particular scene. Beautiful as it is, beyond all competition, the Hudson would seem still more so, were it not for these high and ungainly spars." The pilot now began to shorten sail, and the ship drew into that arm of the sea which, by a misnomer peculiarly American, it is the fashion to call the East River. Here our heroine candidly expressed her disappointment, the town seeming mean and insignificant. The Battery, of which she remembered a little, and had heard so much, although beautifully placed, disappointed her, for it had neither the extent and magnificence of a park, nor the embellishments and luxurious shades of a garden. As she had been told that her countrymen were almost ignorant of the art of landscape gardening, she was not so much disappointed with this spot, however, as with the air of the town, and the extreme filth and poverty of the quays. Unwilling to encourage John Effingham in his diposition to censure, she concealed her opinions for a time. "There is less improvement here than even I expected," said Mr. Effingham, as they got into a coach on the wharf. They had taught me, John, to expect great improvements. "And great, very great improvements have been made in your absence. If you could see this place as you knew it in youth, the alterations would seem marvellous." "I cannot admit this. With Eve, I think the place mean in appearance, rather than imposing, and so decidedly provincial as not to possess a single feature of a capital." "The two things are not irreconcilable, Ned, if you will take the trouble to tax your memory. The place _is_ mean and provincial; but thirty years since it was still meaner and more provincial than it is to-day. A century hence it will begin to resemble a large European town." "What odious objects these posts are!" cried Eve. "They give the streets the air of a village, and I do not see their uses." "These posts are for awnings, and of themselves they prove the peculiar country character of the place. If you will reflect, however, you will see it could net well be otherwise. This town to-day contains near three-hundred thousand souls, two-thirds of whom are in truth emigrants from the interior of our own, or of some foreign country; and such a collection of people cannot in a day give a town any other character than that which belongs to themselves. It is not a crime to be provincial and rustic; it is only ridiculous to fancy yourselves otherwise, when the fact is apparent." "The streets seem deserted. I had thought New York a crowded town." "And yet this is Broadway, a street that every American will tell you is so crowded as to render respiration impossible." "John Effingham excepted," said Mr. Effingham smiling. "Is _this_ Broadway?" cried Eve, fairly appalled. "Beyond a question. Are you not smothered?" Eve continued silent until the carriage reached the door of her father's house. On the other hand, Mademoiselle Viefville expressed herself delighted with all she saw, a circumstance that might have deceived a native of the country, who did not know how to explain her raptures. In the first place she was a Frenchwoman, and accustomed to say pleasant things; then she was just relieved from an element she detested, and the land was pleasant in her eyes. But the principal reason is still in reserve: Mademoiselle Viefville, like most Europeans, had regarded America not merely as a provincial country, and this without a high standard of civilization for a province, as the truth would have shown, but as a semi-barbarous quarter of the world; and the things she saw so much surpassed her expectations, that she was delighted, as it might be, by contrast. As we shall have a future occasion to speak of the dwelling of Mr. Effingham, and to accompany the reader much further in the histories of our several characters, we shall pass over the feelings of Eve when fairly established that night under her own roof. The next morning, however, when she descended to breakfast, she was met by John Effingham, who gravely pointed to the following paragraph in one of the daily journals. "The Montauk, London packet, which has been a little out of time, arrived yesterday, as reported in our marina news. This ship has met with various interesting adventures, that, we are happy to hear, will shortly be laid before the world by one of her passengers, a gentleman every way qualified for the task. Among the distinguished persons arrived in this ship is our contemporary, Steadfast Dodge, Esquire, whose amusing and instructing letters from Europe are already before the world.--We are glad to hear that Mr Dodge returns home better satisfied than ever with his own country, which he declares to be quite good enough for him It is whispered that our literary friend has played a conspicuous part in some recent events on the coast of Africa, though his extreme and well known modesty renders him indisposed to speak of the affair; but we forbear ourselves out of respect to a sensibility that we know how to esteem. "His Britannic Majesty's ship, Foam, whose arrival we noticed a day or two since, boarded the Montauk off the Hook, and took out of her two criminals, one of whom, we are told, was a defaulter for one hundred and forty thousand pounds, and the other a deserter from the king's service, though a scion of a noble house. More of this to-morrow." The morrow never came, for some new incident took the place of the promised narration. A people who do not give themselves time to eat, and with whom "go ahead" has got to be the substitute of even religion, little troubling themselves to go back twenty-four hours in search of a fact. "This must be a base falsehood, cousin Jack," said Eve, as she laid down the paper, her brow flushed with an indignation that, for the moment, proved too strong for even apprehension. "I hope it may turn out to be so, and yet I consider the affair sufficiently singular to render suspicion at least natural." How Eve both thought and acted in the matter, will appear hereafter. THE END.