Kitobni o'qish: «The Coxswain's Bride; also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue», sahifa 3

Story 1 – Chapter 4

The indications of bad weather which had been observed were not misleading, for it not only became what Terrence O’Connor had termed “durty,” but it went on next day to develop a regular gale, insomuch that every rag of canvas, except storm-sails, had to be taken in and the hatches battened down, thus confining the passengers to the cabins.

These passengers looked at matters from wonderfully different points of view, and felt accordingly. Surroundings had undoubtedly far greater influence on some of them than was reasonable. Of course we refer to the landsmen only. In the after-cabin, where all was light, cosy, and comfortable, and well fastened, and where a considerable degree of propriety existed, feelings were comparatively serene. Most of the ladies sought the retirement of berths, and became invisible, though not necessarily inaudible; a few, who were happily weather-proof, jammed themselves into velvety corners, held on to something fixed, and lost themselves in books. The gentlemen, linking themselves to articles of stability, did the same, or, retiring to an appropriate room, played cards and draughts and enveloped themselves in smoke. Few, if any of them, bestowed much thought on the weather. Beyond giving them, occasionally, a little involuntary exercise, it did not seriously affect them.

Very different was the state of matters in the steerage. There the difference in comfort was not proportioned to the difference in passage-money. There was no velvet, not much light, little space to move about, and nothing soft. In short, discomfort reigned, so that the unfortunate passengers could not easily read, and the falling of tin panikins and plates, the crashing of things that had broken loose, the rough exclamations of men, and the squalling of miserable children, affected the nerves of the timid to such an extent that they naturally took the most gloomy view of the situation.

Of course the mere surroundings had no influence whatever on the views held by Bob Massey and Joe Slag.

“My dear,” said the latter, in a kindly but vain endeavour to comfort Mrs Mitford, “rumpusses below ain’t got nothin’ to do wi’ rows overhead—leastways they’re only an effect, not a cause.”

“There! there’s another,” interrupted Mrs Mitford, with a little scream, as a tremendous crash of crockery burst upon her ear.

“Well, my dear,” said Slag, in a soothing, fatherly tone, “if all the crockery in the ship was to go in universal smash into the lee scuppers, it couldn’t make the wind blow harder.”

Poor Mrs Mitford failed to derive consolation from this remark. She was still sick enough to be totally and hopelessly wretched, but not sufficiently so to be indifferent to life or death. Every superlative howl of the blast she echoed with a sigh, and each excessive plunge of the ship she emphasised with a weak scream.

“I don’t know what you think,” she said, faintly, when two little boys rolled out of their berths and went yelling to leeward with a mass of miscellaneous rubbish, “but it do seem to be as if the end of the world ’ad come. Not that the sea could be the end of the world, for if it was, of course it would spill over and then we would be left dry on the bottom—or moist, if not dry. I don’t mean that, you know, but these crashes are so dreadful, an’ my poor ’ead is like to split—which the planks of this ship will do if they go on creakin’ so. I know they will, for ’uman-made things can’t—”

“You make your mind easy, my woman,” said her husband, coming forward at the moment and sitting down to comfort her. “Things are lookin’ a little better overhead, so one o’ the men told me, an’ I heard Terrence say that we’re goin’ to have lobscouse for dinner to-day, though what that may be I can’t tell—somethin’ good, I suppose.”

“Something thick, an’ luke-warm, an’ greasy, I know,” groaned Peggy, with a shudder.

There was a bad man on board the ship. There usually is a bad man on board of most ships; sometimes more than one. But this one was unusually bad, and was, unfortunately, an old acquaintance of the Mitfords. Indeed, he had been a lover of Mrs Mitford, when she was Peggy Owen, though her husband knew nothing of that. If Peggy had known that this man—Ned Jarring by name—was to be a passenger, she would have prevailed on her husband to go by another vessel; but she was not aware of it until they met in the fore-cabin the day after leaving port.

Being a dark-haired, sallow-complexioned man, he soon became known on board by the name of Black Ned. Like many bad men, Jarring was a drunkard, and, when under the influence of liquor, was apt to act incautiously as well as wickedly. On the second day of the gale he entered the fore-cabin with unsteady steps, and looked round with an air of solemn stupidity. Besides being dark and swarthy, he was big and strong, and had a good deal of the bully in his nature. Observing that Mrs Mitford was seated alone in a dark corner of the cabin with a still greenish face and an aspect of woe, he staggered towards her, and, sitting down, took her hand affectionately.

“Dear Peggy,” he began, but he got no further, for the little woman snatched her hand away, sprang up and confronted him with a look of blazing indignation. Every trace of her sickness vanished as if by magic. The greenish complexion changed to crimson, and the woebegone tones to those of firm resolution, as she exclaimed—

“Ned Jarring, if you ever again dare to take liberties with me, I’ll tell my ’usband, I will; an’ as sure as you’re a-sittin’ on that seat ’e’ll twist you up, turn you outside in, an’ fling you overboard!”

Little Mrs Mitford did not wait for a response, but, turning sharply round, left the cabin with a stride which, for a woman of her size and character, was most impressive.

Jarring gazed after her with an expression of owlish and unutterable surprise on his swarthy countenance. Then he smiled faintly at the unexpected and appalling—not to say curious—fate that awaited him; but reflecting that, although lugubrious and long, Mitford was deep-chested, broad-shouldered, and wiry, he became grave again, shook his head, and had the sense to make up his mind never again to arouse the slumbering spirit of Peggy Mitford.

It was a wild scene that presented itself to the eyes of the passengers in the Lapwing when the hatches were at last taken off, and they were permitted once more to go on deck. Grey was the prevailing colour. The great seas, which seemed unable to recover from the wild turmoil into which they had been lashed, were of a cold greenish grey, flecked and tipped with white. The sky was steely grey with clouds that verged on black; and both were so mingled together that it seemed as if the little vessel were imbedded in the very heart of a drizzling, heaving, hissing ocean.

The coxswain’s wife stood leaning on her stalwart husband’s arm, by the foremast, gazing over the side.

“It do seem more dreary than I expected,” she said. “I wouldn’t be a sailor, Bob, much as I’ve bin used to the sea, an’ like it.”

“Ah, Nell, that’s ’cause you’ve only bin used to the sea-shore. You haven’t bin long enough on blue water, lass, to know that folks’ opinions change a good deal wi’ their feelin’s. Wait till we git to the neighbour’ood o’ the line, wi’ smooth water an’ blue skies an’ sunshine, sharks, and flyin’ fish. You’ll have a different opinion then about the sea.”

“Right you are, Bob,” said Joe Slagg, coming up at that moment. “Most people change their opinions arter gittin’ to the line, specially when it comes blazin’ hot, fit to bile the sea an’ stew the ship, an’ a dead calm gits a hold of ’e an’ keeps ye swelterin’ in the doldrums for a week or two.”

“But it wasn’t that way we was lookin’ at it, Joe,” returned Nellie, with a laugh. “Bob was explainin’ to me how pleasant a change it would be after the cold grey sea an’ sky we’re havin’ just now.”

“Well, it may be so; but whatever way ye may look at it, you’ll change yer mind, more or less, when you cross the line. By the way, that minds me that some of us in the steerage are invited to cross the line to-night—the line that separates us from the cabin—to attend a lectur’ there—an’ you’ll niver guess the subjec’, Bob.”

“I know that, Joe. I never made a right guess in my life, that I knows on. Heave ahead, what is it?”

“A lectur’ on the ‘Lifeboat,’ no less! But it aint our lifeboat sarvice: it’s the American one, cause it’s to be given by that fine young fellow, Dr Hayward, who looks as if suthin’ had damaged his constitootion somehow. I’m told he’s a Yankee, though he looks uncommon like an Englishman.”

“He’s tall an’ ’andsome enough, anyhow,” remarked Massey.

“Ay, an’ he’s good enough for anything,” said Nellie, with enthusiasm. “You should see the kind way he speaks to poor Ian when he comes to see him—which is pretty much every day. He handles him, too, so tenderly—just like his mother; but he won’t give him medicine or advice, for it seems that wouldn’t be thought fair by the ship’s doctor. No more it would, I suppose.”

“D’ee know what’s the matter wi’ him?” asked Mitford, who had joined the group.

“Not I,” returned Massey. “It seems more like gineral weakness than anything else.”

“I can tell you,” said a voice close to them. The voice was that of Tomlin, who, although a first-class passenger, was fond of visiting and fraternising with the people of the fore-cabin. “He got himself severely wounded some time ago when protecting a poor slave-girl from her owner, and he’s now slowly recovering. He is taking a long voyage for his health. The girl, it seems, had run away from her owner, and had nearly escaped into Canada, where of course, being on British soil, she would be free—”

“God bless the British soil!” interrupted little Mrs Mitford, in a tone of enthusiasm which caused a laugh all round; but that did not prevent some of the bystanders from responding with a hearty “Amen!”

“I agree with you, Mrs Mitford,” said Tomlin; “but the owner of the poor slave did not think as you and I do. The girl was a quadroon—that is, nearly, if not altogether, white. She was also very beautiful. Well, the owner—a coarse brute—with two followers, overtook the runaway slave near a lonely roadside tavern—I forget the name of the place—but Dr Hayward happened to have arrived there just a few minutes before them. His horse was standing at the door, and he was inside, talking with the landlord, when he heard a loud shriek outside. Running out, he found the girl struggling wildly in the hands of her captors. Of course, he demanded an explanation, though he saw clearly enough how matters stood.

“‘She’s my slave,’ said the owner, haughtily. He would not, perhaps, have condescended even with that much explanation if he had not seen that the landlord sympathised with the doctor.

“This was enough, however, for Hayward, who is a man of few words and swift action. He was unarmed, but carried a heavy-handled whip, with this he instantly felled the slave-owner and one of his men to the ground before they had time to wink, but the third man drew a pistol, and, pointing it straight at the doctor’s head, would have blown out his brains if the landlord had not turned the weapon aside and tripped the man up. Before he could recover Hayward had swung the girl on his horse, leaped into the saddle, and dashed off at full speed. He did not draw rein till he carried her over the frontier into Canada, and had placed her beyond the reach of her enemies.”

“Brayvo! the doctor,” exclaimed Slag, heartily.

“Then he found,” continued Tomlin, “that he had been wounded in the chest by the ball that was meant for his head, but made light of the wound until it was found to be serious. The ball was still in him, and had to be extracted, after which he recovered slowly. The romantic part of it is, however, that he fell in love with Eva—that was the girl’s name—and she with him, and they were married—”

“Ah, poor thing,” said Mitford; “then she died and he married again?”

“Not at all,” returned Tomlin, “she did not die, and he did not marry again.”

“How—what then about that splendid wife that he’s got in the after-cabin now?” asked Mitford.

“That’s her. That’s Eva, the quadroon. She’s not only as white as Mrs Massey or Mrs Mitford there, but she’s been educated and brought up as a lady and among ladies, besides having the spirit of a real lady, which many a born one hasn’t got at all.”

There were many fore-cabin passengers who “crossed the line” that night in order to hear the gallant American lecture, but chiefly to see the beautiful lady who had been so romantically rescued from slavery.

“Not a drop of black blood in her body!” was Mrs Mitford’s verdict after the lecture was over.

“An’ what if there was?” demanded Slag, in a tone of indignation. “D’ee think that white blood is worth more than black blood in the eyes o’ the Almighty as made ’em both?”

The lecture itself was highly appreciated, being on a subject which Bob and Joe had already made interesting to the steerage passengers. And the lecturer not only treated it well, but was himself such a fine, lion-like, yet soft-voiced fellow that his audience were quite charmed.

Soon the Lapwing was gliding through the warm waters of the equatorial seas, and those of the passengers who had never visited such regions before were immensely interested by the sight of dolphins, sharks, and especially flying-fish.

“I don’t believe in ’em,” said Mrs Mitford to Mrs Massey one day as they stood looking over the side of the ship.

“I do believe in ’em,” said Mrs Massey, “because my Bob says he has seen ’em.”

Not long after this double assertion of opinion there was a sudden cry that flying-fish were to be seen alongside, and Mrs Mitford actually beheld them with her own eyes leap out of the sea, skim over the waves a short distance, and then drop into the water again; still she was incredulous! “Flyin’” she exclaimed, “nothin’ of the sort; they only made a long jump out o’ the water, an’ wriggled their tails as they went; at least they wriggled something, for I couldn’t be rightly sure they ’ad tails to wriggle, any more than wings—never ’avin’ seen ’em except in pictures, which is mostly lies. Indeed!”

“Look-out!” exclaimed Slag at the moment, for a couple of fish flew over the bulwarks just then, and fell on deck almost at Mrs Mitford’s feet. When she saw them there floundering about, wings and all, she felt constrained to give in.

“Well, well,” she said, raising her hands and eyes to heaven, as though she addressed her remarks chiefly to celestial ears, “did ever mortal see the likes? Fish wi’ wings an’ no feathers! I’ll believe anything after that!”

Peggy Mitford is not the first, and won’t be the last woman—to say nothing of man—who has thus bounded from the depths of scepticism to the heights of credulity.

Story 1 – Chapter 5

Dr Hayward, who had given great satisfaction with his lecture, possessed so much urbanity and power of anecdote and song, that he soon became a general favourite alike with steerage and cabin passengers.

One sultry forenoon Terrence O’Connor, the assistant steward, went aft and whispered to him that Ian Stuart, the sick boy, wanted very much to see him.

“I think he’s dying, sor,” said Terrence, in a low tone.

“Has the doctor seen him this morning?” asked Hayward, as he rose quickly and hurried forward.

“He’s seed him twice, sor,” said Terrence, “an’ both times he shook his head as he left him.”

It was evident that the steerage passengers felt death to be hovering over them, for they were unusually silent, and those who were in the fore-cabin at the time Hayward passed cast solemn glances at him as he descended and went to the berth of the poor boy. It was a comparatively large berth, and, being at the time on the weather side of the ship, had the port open to admit fresh air.

“My poor boy, do you suffer much?” said the doctor, in soothing tones, as he sat down beside Ian, and took his hand.

It was obvious that Ian suffered, for an expression of weariness and pain sat on his emaciated countenance, but on the appearance of Hayward the expression gave place to a glad smile on a face which was naturally refined and intellectual.

“Oh, thank you—thanks—” said Ian, in a low hesitating voice, for he was almost too far gone to speak.

“There, don’t speak, dear boy,” said the doctor, gently. “I see you have been thinking about our last conversation. Shall I read to you?”

“No—no. Jesus is speaking—to me. His words are crowding on me. No need for—reading when He speaks; ‘Come—unto Me—I will never—leave—’”

His breath suddenly failed him, and he ceased to speak, but the glad look in his large eyes showed that the flow of Divine words, though inaudible, had not ceased.

“Mother—father,” he said, after a short pause, “don’t cry. You’ll soon join me. Don’t let them cry, Dr Hayward. The parting won’t be for long.”

The Doctor made no reply, for at that moment the unmistakable signs of dissolution began to overspread the pinched features, and in a few minutes it became known throughout the ship that the “King of Terrors” had been there in the guise of an Angel of Light to pluck a little flower and transplant it into the garden of God.

Hayward tried to impress this fact on the bereaved parents, but they would not be comforted.

They were a lowly couple, who could not see far in advance of them, even in regard to things terrestrial. The last words of their child seemed to have more weight than the comfort offered by the doctor.

“Cheer up, David,” said the poor wife, grasping her husband’s hand, and striving to check her sobs, “Ian said truth, it won’t be long afore we jine him, the dear, dear boy.”

But even as she uttered the words of cheer her own heart failed her, and she again gave way to uncontrollable grief, while her husband, dazed and motionless, sat gazing at the face of the dead.

The funeral and its surroundings was as sad as the death. Everything was done to shroud the terrible reality. The poor remains were tenderly laid in a black deal coffin and carried to the port side of the ship by kind and loving hands. A young Wesleyan minister, who had been an unfailing comforter and help to the family all through the boy’s illness, gave a brief but very impressive address to those who stood around, and offered up an earnest prayer; but nothing could blind the mourners, especially the parents, to the harsh fact that the remains were about to be consigned to a never resting grave, and that they were going through the form rather than the reality of burial, while, as if to emphasise this fact, the back fin of a great shark was seen to cut the calm water not far astern. It followed the ship until the hollow plunge was heard, and the weighted coffin sank into the unknown depths of the sea.

An impression that never faded quite away was made that day on some of the more thoughtful and sensitive natures in the ship. And who can say that even amongst the thoughtless and the depraved no effect was produced! God’s power is not usually exerted in visibly effective processes. Seeds of life may have been sown by that death which shall grow and flourish in eternity. Certain it is that some of the reckless were solemnised for a time, and that the young Wesleyan was held in higher esteem throughout the ship from that day forward.

Some of the passengers, however, seemed very soon to forget all about the death, and relapsed into their usual frames of mind. Among these was Ned Jarring. For several days after the funeral he kept sober, and it was observed that the Wesleyan minister tried to get into conversation with him several times, but he resisted the good man’s efforts, and, when one of his chums laughingly remarked that he, “seemed to be hand and glove wi’ the parson now,” Black Ned swung angrily round, took to drinking again, and, as is usually the case in such circumstances, became worse than before.

Thus the little world of ship-board went on from day to day, gradually settling down into little coteries as like-minded men and women began to find each other out. Gradually, also, the various qualities of the people began to be recognised, and in a few weeks—as in the greater world—each man and woman was more or less correctly gauged according to worth. The courageous and the timid, the sensible and the vain, the weak and the strong, the self-sacrificing and the selfish, all fell naturally into their appropriate positions, subject to the moderate confusion resulting from favouritism, abused power, and other forms of sin. It was observable also that here, as elsewhere, all the coteries commented with considerable freedom on each other, and that each coterie esteemed itself unquestionably the best of the lot, although it might not absolutely say so in words. There was one exception, namely in the case of the worst or lowest coterie, which, so far from claiming to be the best, openly proclaimed itself the worst, gloried in its shame, and said that, “it didn’t care a button,” or words, even more expressive, to the same effect.

Ned Jarring belonged to this last class. He was probably the worst member of it.

One night an incident occurred which tested severely some of the qualities of every one on board. It was sometime after midnight when the dead silence of the slumbering ship was broken by perhaps the most appalling of all sounds at sea—the cry of “Fire!”

Smoke had been discovered somewhere near the fore-cabin. Fortunately the captain had just come up at the time to speak with the officer of the watch on deck. At the first cry he ran to the spot pointed out, telling the officer to call all hands and rig the pumps, and especially to keep order among the passengers.

The first man who leaped from profound slumber into wide-awake activity was Dr Hayward. Having just lain down to sleep on a locker, as he expected to be called in the night to watch beside a friend who was ill, he was already dressed, and would have been among the first at the scene of the fire, but for an interruption. At the moment he was bounding up the companion-ladder, a young man of feeble character—who would have been repudiated by the sex, had he been born a woman—sprang down the same ladder in abject terror. He went straight into the bosom of the ascending doctor, and they both went with a crash to the bottom.

Although somewhat stunned, Hayward was able to jump up and again make for the region of the fire, where he found most of the men and male passengers working with hose and buckets in the midst of dire confusion. Fortunately the seat of the conflagration was soon discovered; and, owing much to the cool energy of the captain and officers, the fire was put out.

It was about a week after this thrilling event that Mrs Massey was on the forecastle talking with Peggy Mitford. A smart breeze was blowing—just enough to fill all the sails and carry the ship swiftly on her course without causing much of a sea. The moon shone fitfully through a mass of drifting clouds, mingling its pallid light with the wondrous phosphoric sheen of the tropical seas.

Mrs Mitford had been regaling her companion with a long-winded and irrelevant, though well-meant, yarn about things in general and nothing in particular; and Nellie, who was the personification of considerate patience, had seated herself on the starboard rail to listen to and comment on her lucubrations.

“Yes, as I was sayin’, Nellie,” remarked Peggy, in her soft voice, after a brief pause, during which a variety of weak little expressions crossed her pretty face, “I never could abide the sea. It always makes me sick, an’ when it doesn’t make me sick, it makes me nervish. Not that I’m given to bein’ nervish; an’, if I was, it wouldn’t matter much, for the sea would take it out o’ me, whether or not. That’s always the way—if it’s not one thing, it’s sure to be another. Don’t you think so, Nellie? My John says ’e thinks so—though it isn’t to be thought much of what ’e says, dear man, for ’e’s got a way of sayin’ things when ’e don’t mean ’em—you understand?”

“Well, I don’t quite understand,” answered Mrs Massey, cutting in at this point with a laugh, “but I’m quite sure it’s better to say things when you don’t mean them, than to mean things when you don’t say them!”

“Perhaps you’re right, Nellie,” rejoined Mrs Mitford, with a mild nod of assent; “I’ve sometimes thought on these things when I’ve ’ad one o’ my sick ’eadaches, which prevents me from thinkin’ altogether, almost; an’, bless you, you’d wonder what strange idears comes over me at such times. Did you ever try to think things with a sick ’eadache, Nellie?”

With a laugh, and a bright look, Mrs Massey replied that she had never been in a position to try that curious experiment, never having had a headache of any kind in her life.

While she was speaking, a broad-backed wave caused the ship to roll rather heavily to starboard, and Mrs Massey, losing her balance, fell into the sea.

Sedate and strong-minded though she was, Nellie could not help shrieking as she went over; but the shriek given by Mrs Mitford was tenfold more piercing. It was of a nature that defies description. Its effect was to thrill the heart of every one who heard it. But Peggy did more than shriek. Springing on the rail like an antelope, she would have plunged overboard to the rescue of her friend, regardless of her own inability to swim, and of everything else, had not a seaman, who chanced to be listening to the conversation—caught her with a vice-like grip.

“Hold on, Peggy!” he cried.

But Peggy shrieked and struggled, thus preventing the poor fellow from attempting a rescue, while shouts and cries of “man overboard” rang through the ship from stem to stern, until it became known that it was a woman. Then the cries redoubled. In the midst of the hubbub the strong but calm voice of the captain was heard to give orders to lower a boat and port the helm—“hard a-port.”

But, alas! for poor Nellie that night if her life had depended on shouters, strugglers, shriekers, or boatmen.

At the moment the accident happened two men chanced to be standing on the starboard side of the ship—one on the quarter-deck, the other on the forecastle. Both men were ready of resource and prompt in action, invaluable qualities anywhere, but especially at sea! The instant the cry arose each sprang to and cut adrift a life-buoy. Each knew that the person overboard might fail to see or catch a buoy in the comparative darkness. He on the forecastle, who chanced to see Nellie fall over, at once followed her with the life-buoy in his arms. Ignorant of this act the man near the stern saw something struggling in the water as the ship flew past. Without an instant’s hesitation he also plunged into the sea with a life-buoy in his grasp.

The faint light failed to reveal who had thus boldly plunged to the rescue, but the act had been observed both at bow and stern, and a cheer of hope went up as the ship came up to the wind, topsails were backed, and the boat was dropped into the water.

Twenty minutes elapsed before there was any sign of the boat returning, during which time the ship’s bell was rung continually. It may be better imagined than described the state of poor Bob Massey, who had been asleep on a locker in the fore-cabin when the accident occurred, and who had to be forcibly prevented, at first, from jumping into the sea when he heard that it was Nellie who was overboard.

At last oars were heard in the distance.

“Stop that bell! boat ahoy!” shouted the captain.

“Ship aho–o–oy!” came faintly back on the breeze, while every voice was hushed and ear strained to listen, “All right! all saved!”

A loud “Thank the Lord!” burst from our coxswain’s heaving chest, and a wild ringing cheer leaped upwards alike from passengers and crew, while warm tears overflowed from many an eye that was more intimate with cold spray, for a noble deed and a life saved have always the effect of stirring the deepest enthusiasm of mankind.

A few minutes more and three dripping figures came up the gangway. First came Nellie herself; dishevelled and pale, but strong and hearty nevertheless, as might be expected of a fisher-girl and a lifeboat coxswain’s wife! She naturally fell into, or was caught up by, her husband’s arms, and was carried off to the cabin.

Following her came two somewhat exhausted men.

The cheer that greeted them was not unmingled with surprise.

“The best an’ the worst men i’ the ship!” gasped Joe Slag, amid laughter and hearty congratulations.

He was probably right, for it was the young Wesleyan minister and Ned Jarring who had effected this gallant rescue.

The performance of a good action has undoubtedly a tendency to elevate, as the perpetration of a bad one has to demoralise.

From that day forward Black Ned felt that he had acquired a certain character which might be retained or lost. Without absolutely saying that he became a better man in consequence, we do assert that he became more respectable to look at, and drank less!

Thus the voyage progressed until the good ship Lapwing sailed in among some of the innumerable islands of the Southern seas.