Volume 67 / Part 9 — THE GREEN HAND. A “SHORT” YARN. PART IX.

“More than once that night,” resumed Captain Collins, “I woke up with a start, at thought of our late adventures in the river Nouries—fancying I was still waiting for the turn of tide to bring down the boats or the schooner, and had gone to sleep, when that horrible sound through the cabin skylight seemed full in my ears again. However, the weltering wash of the water under the ship’s timbers below one’s head was proof enough we were well to sea; and, being dog-tired, I turned over each time with a new gusto:—not to speak of the happy sort of feeling that ran all through me, I scarce knew why; though no doubt one might have dreamt plenty of delightful dreams without remembering them, more especially after such a perfect seventh heaven as I had found myself in for a moment or two, when Violet Hyde’s hand first touched mine, and when I carried her in after she had actually saved my life. The broad daylight through our quarter-gallery window roused me at last altogether; and on starting up I saw Tom Westwood half dressed, shaving himself by an inch or two of broken looking-glass in regular nautical style—that’s to say, watching for the rise of the ship—as she had the wind evidently on her opposite beam, and there appeared to be pretty much of a long swell afloat, with a breeze brisk enough to make her heel to it; while the clear horizon, seen shining through the port to north-westward, over the dark blue heave of water, showed it was far on in the morning. “Well, Ned,” said Westwood, turning round, “you seemed to be enjoying it, in spite of the warm work you must have had last night on board here! Why, I thought you had been with us in the boats, after all, till I found, by the good joke the cadets made of it, that that puppy of a mate had left you still locked up, on account of some fancy he had got into his head of your being in partnership with the schooner! For heaven’s sake, though, my dear fellow, wash your face and shave—you look fearfully suspicious just now!” “No wonder!” said I: and I gave him an account of the matter, leaving out most of what regarded the young lady; Westwood telling me, in his turn, so much about their boat expedition as I didn’t know before from the planter. Everything went to certify what I believed all along, ’till this sudden affair in the river. The schooner’s people had plainly some cue in keeping hold of our passengers, but hadn’t expected to see us so soon again, or perhaps at all—as was shown by their hailing the boats at once in a pretended friendly way, whenever they came in sight up the creek; while Ford and the rest shouted with delight, off her bulwarks, at sound of the mate’s voice.

“I tell you what, Collins,” continued Westwood, “this may be all very well for you, who are continually getting into scrapes and out of them, and don’t seem to care much whether you ship on board an Indiaman or a corn-brig—you can always find something to do—but to me the service is everything!” “Well, well,” said I hastily, “I’m much mistaken if we don’t find something to do in India, Tom,—only wait, and that uncle of yours will make all right; for all we know, there may be news from Europe to meet us, and I must say I don’t like the notion of being born too late for turning out an admiral! I’m sure, for my part, I wish old Nap well out of that stone cage of his!” “No, no, Ned,” said Westwood, “I ought to clear myself at home first, and sorry I am that I gave in to you by leaving England, when I should have faced the consequences whatever they were. Running only made matters worse, Collins!” “No doubt,” I said; “and as it was my fault, why, deuce take me, Tom, if I don’t manage to carry you out scot-free! Depend on it, Captain Duncombe’s friends would have you strung up like a dog, with the interest he had, and sharp as discipline is just now.” Westwood shuddered at the thought. “I fear it would go hard with me, Ned,” said he, “and I shan’t deny that these few weeks have brought me back a taste for life. But, in spite of all, I’d deliver myself up to the first king’s ship we speak, or go home in some Indiaman from the Cape—but for one thing, Collins!” “Ah!” said I, “what’s that?” Westwood gave me a curious half look, and said—“One person, I mean, Ned—and I shouldn’t like her to hear of me being—” “Yes, yes,” said I stiffly, “I know.” “It must have been by guess, then!” answered he. “Often as we’ve talked of her during the voyage, I thought you didn’t know we had met frequently in London before you came home, and—and—the fact is, I wasn’t sure you would like me to—” “Westwood,” said I quickly, “Tom Westwood—what I have to ask is—do you love her?” “If ever a man loved a woman, Ned,” was his answer, “I do her; but if you—” “Have you any chance, then?” I broke out. “Ay, true—true enough, you have the best of chances—your way is as clear as could be, Westwood, if you knew it! Only I must know if she is willing—does she—” “I got leave to write to her in London,” answered Westwood, “and I did so pretty often, you may be sure; but I only had one short little note in answer to the last, I think it was—which I had in my breast that morning on Southsea beach, when I expected the bullet would come through it!” Here Westwood stooped down to his trunk, and took out a rose-coloured note wrapped in a bit of paper; I standing the while fixed to the deck, not able to speak, till he was handing it to me. “No, no!” said I, turning from him angrily, and like to choke, “that’s too much, Mr Westwood—pray keep your own love-letters for your own reading!” “There’s nothing particular in it, Ned,” answered he, flushing a little, “only there’s a few words in it I’d like you to see—don’t look at it just now, but tell me afterwards what you think—you ought to see it, as the matter seems to depend on you, Ned; and if you object, you may be sure, so far as I’m concerned, ’tis all over!” Somehow or other, the look of the little folded piece of paper, with the touch and the scent of it, as Westwood slipped it into my hand, made it stick to me. I caught one glance of the address on the back, written as if fairy fingers had done it, and I suppose I slipped it into my coat as I went out of the berth, meaning to go aloft in the foretop and sicken over the thought at my leisure, of Violet Hyde’s having ever favoured another man so far, and that man Tom Westwood. The strangeness of the whole affair, as I took it, never once struck me; all that I minded was the wretched feeling I had in me, as I wished I could put the Atlantic betwixt me and them all; in fact a hundred things before we sailed, and during the passage, seemed all at once to agree with what I’d just heard; and I’d have given thousands that moment it had been some one else than Westwood, just that I might wait the voyage out coolly, for the satisfaction of meeting him at twelve paces the first morning ashore.

On the larboard side of the berth-gangway, opposite our door, I saw the old planter’s standing half open, and Mr Rollock himself with his shirt and trousers on, taking in his boots. “Hallo, Collins, my boy,” he sang out eagerly, “come here a moment, I’ve got something to show you!” “Look,” said he, standing on tiptoe to see better through the half-port, “there’s something new been put in my picture-frame here overnight, I think—ha! ha!” The first thing that caught my eye, accordingly, was the gleam of a sail rising from over the swell to windward, far away off our larboard quarter; seemingly rolling before the south-easter; while the Indiaman hove her big side steadily out of water, with her head across the other’s course, and gave us a sight of the strange sail swinging to the fair wind, every time we rose on the surge. “What is it, eh?” said the planter turning to me, “back or face, Collins? for, bless me, if I can distinguish tub from bucket, with all this bobbing about—great deal of capital indigo wasted hereabouts, my dear fellow!” “Why, you may make out the two breasts of her royals,” said I—“a brig, I think, sir.” “Not that abominable schooner in her first shape again, I hope!” exclaimed he, “perhaps bringing back the Yankee.” “Too square-shouldered for that, Mr Rollock,” I said; “in fact she seems to be signalling us; yes, by Jove! there’s the long pennant at her fore-royal mast-head—she’s a brig of war. They’re surely asleep, on deck, and we shall have a shot directly, if they don’t look sharp!” “You’d better say nothing about the Yankee’s absence, Collins,” put in the planter, “till we’re fairly away. For my part, I really have no notion of waiting for any one—particularly a fellow who must have some go-ahead scheme in his noddle, which we Indians don’t want. Quietly speaking, my dear fellow, I shall be glad if we’re rid of him!” On my mentioning what sort of “notions” were found in Mr Snout’s berth, and the drowning of his heathen images, the worthy planter went into perfect convulsions, till I thought I should have to slap him on the back to give him breath. “What the deuce!” said he at last; “Daniel must really have something worth his while to expect, before he’d fail to look after such a treasure!” “Ah,” said I, not attending to him, as I heard a stir on deck, “there we go at last, cluing up the topsails, I suppose.” “Seriously, now,” continued Mr Rollock, “I can not fathom that vessel and her designs; but I bless my stars at getting clear off from the company of that tall Frenchman with his mustache—can’t bear a mustache, Collins—always reminds me of those cursed Mahrattas that burnt my factory once. Couldn’t the man shave like a Christian, I wonder? I defy you to enjoy Mulligatawny soup and not make a beast of yourself, with ever so much hair over your mouth. By the way, Collins,” added he, eyeing me, “since I saw you last, you’ve let your whiskers grow, and look more like one of your nauticals than Ford himself!—should scarce have known you! Any of it owing to the fair one up yonder, eh?” And the jolly old chap, whose own huge white whiskers gave him the cut of a royal Bengal tiger, pointed with his thumb over his shoulder towards the roundhouse above, with a wink of his funny round eye, that looked at you like a bird’s. “What do you suppose the Frenchman to be then, sir?” asked I, gloomily. “Oh, either a madman, a spy, or something worse! Just guess what he asked me suddenly one morning,—why, if I weren’t a distinguished savant, and wouldn’t like to study the botany of some island! ‘No, Monsieur, not at all,’ replied I, in fearfully bad French. ‘The geology, then?’ persisted he, with a curious gleam in his fierce black eyes—‘does the research of Monsieur lie in that direction?’ ‘Why no,’ I answered carelessly, ‘I don’t care a sacre about stones, or anything of the kind, indeed; indigo is my particular line, which may be called botany, in a way—I’m perhaps prejudiced in favour of it, Monsieur!’ The Frenchman leant his tufted chin on his hand,” continued Mr Rollock, “meditated a bit, then glanced at me again, as if he didn’t care though I were studying sea-weed in the depths of the ocean rolling round us, and stalked down stairs. Then he took to Mrs Brady again, and lastly to the Yankee, whose conversations with him, I fancy, had a twang of both commerce and politics.” “What do you think of it all, Mr Rollock?” inquired I, rather listlessly. “It didn’t strike me at the time,” said the planter, “but now, I just ask you, Collins, if there ain’t a certain great personage studying geology at present in a certain island, not very far away, I suppose, where there’s plenty of it, and deuced little botany, too, I imagine?” To this question of the old gentleman’s I gave nothing but a half stupid sort of stare, thinking as I was at the same time of something else I cared more about.

“By Jupiter! though,” cried I on a sudden, “instead of heaving the ship to, I do believe we’ve set topmast-stu’nsails, judging from the way she pitches into the water; there’s the brig nearing the wind a point or two in chase, too;—why, the fellow that has charge of the deck must be mad, sir!” Next minute the fire out of one of her bow-chasers flashed out behind the blue back of a swell, and the sudden thud of it came rolling down to leeward over the space betwixt us, angrily, so to speak; as the brig’s fore-course mounted with a wave, the sun shining clear on the seams and reef-points, till you caught sight of the anchor hanging from one bow, and the men running in her lee stu’nsail-booms upon the yardarms. The planter and I went on deck at once, where we found a fine breeze blowing, far out of sight of land, the Indiaman rushing ahead stately enough; while our young fourth officer appeared to have just woke up, and the watch were still rubbing their eyes, as if every man had been “caulking it,” after last night’s work. Even Mr Finch, when he came hastily up, seemed rather doubtful what to do, till the salt old third-mate assured him the brig was a British sloop-of-war, as any one accustomed to reckoning sticks and canvass at sea could tell by this time; upon which our topsails were clued up, stu’nsails boom-ended, and the ship hove into the wind to wait for the brig.

When the brig’s mainyard swung aback within fifty fathoms of our weather-quarter, hailing us as she brought to, I had plenty to think of, for my part. There she was, as square-countered and flat-breasted a ten-gun model as ever ran her nose under salt water, or turned the turtle in a Bahama squall; though pleasant enough she looked, dipping as we rose, and prancing up opposite us again with a curtsey, the brine dripping from her bright copper sheathing, the epaulets and gold bands glancing above her black bulwark, topped by the white hammock-cloth; marines in her waist, the men clustering forward to see us, and squinting sharp up at our top-hamper. It made one ashamed, to take in the taunt, lightsome set her spars had, tall and white, with a rake in them, and every rope running clean to its place; not a spot about her, hull or rig, but all English and ship-shape, to the very gather of her courses and top-gallant sails in the lines, and the snowy hollow her two broad topsails made for the wind, as they brought it in betwixt them to keep her steady on the spot. “His Britannic Majesty’s sloop Podargus!” came back in exchange for our mate’s answer; and though ’twas curious to me to think of meeting the uniform again in five minutes, I saw plainly this was one of the nice points that Westwood and I might have to weather. Your brig-cruisers are the very sharpest fellows alive, so far as regards boarding a merchant craft; if they find the least smell of a rat, they’ll overhaul your hold to the very dunnage about the keelson; and I knew that, if they made out Westwood, they’d be sure to have me too; so you may fancy that, during the short time her boat took to drop and pull under our quarter, I was making up my mind as to the course. In fact, I was almost resolved to leave the ship at any rate, feeling as I did after what I’d heard; but while most of the passengers were running about and calling below for their shoes, and what not, the Judge and his daughter came out of the roundhouse, and I caught a single glance from her for a moment, as she turned to look at the brig, that held me at the instant like an anchor in a strong tideway. I kept my breath as the lieutenant’s hand laid hold of the manrope at the head of the side-ladder, expecting his first question; while he swung himself actively on deck, looking round for a second, and followed by another; the wide-awake-looking young middy in the boat folding his arms, and squinting up sideways at the ladies with an air as knowing as if he’d lived fifty years in the world, instead of perhaps thirteen.

The younger of the lieutenants took off his cap most politely, eyeing the fair passengers with as much respect as he gave cool indifference to the cadets; the other, who was a careful-like, working first luff, said directly to Mr Finch—“Well, sir, you seemed inclined to lead us a bit of a chase—but I don’t think,” added he, smiling from the Indiaman to the brig, “you’d have cost us much trouble after all!” Here Finch hurried out his explanation, in a half-sulky way, when the naval man cut him short by saying that “Captain Wallis desired to know” if we had touched at St Helena. “May I ask, sir,” went on the officer, finding we had preferred the Cape, “if you command this vessel—or is the master not on deck—Captain—Captain Wilson, I think you said?” The mate said something in a lower voice, and the lieutenant bared his head more respectfully than before, seeing the Company’s ensign, which had been lowered half-apeak while the boat was under our side; after which Finch drew him to the capstan, telling him, as I guessed, the whole affair of the schooner, by way of a great exploit, with hints of her being a pirate or suchlike. The brig’s officer, however, was evidently too busy a man, and seemingly in too great a hurry to get back, for listening much to such a rigmarole, as he no doubt thought it; they had been at the Cape, and were bound for St Helena again, where she was one of the cruisers on guard; so that what with Finch’s story, and what with the crowd round the second lieutenant, all anxious to get the news, I saw it wouldn’t cost Westwood and me great pains to keep clear of notice. There were some riots in London, and three men hanged for a horrid murder, the Duke of Northumberland’s death, not to speak of a child born with two heads, or something—all since we left England. Then there was Lord Exmouth come home from Algiers, and Fort Hattrass, I think it was, taken in India, which made every cadet prick up his ears; Admiral Plampin was arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, too, in the Conqueror, seventy-four, and on his way steering for St Helena, to take Sir Pulteney Malcolm’s place. All of a sudden, I heard the young luff begin to mention a captain of a frigate’s having been shot two months ago, by his own first lieutenant, on Southsea Beach, and the lieutenant being supposed to have gone off in some outward-bound ship. “By the bye,” said the officer to Mr Rollock, “you must have left about that time—did you touch at Portsmouth?” “Why, yes,” answered the planter, “we did. What were the parties’ names?” I edged over to Westwood near the head of the companion, and whispered to him to go below to our berth, in case of their happening to attend to us more particularly; and the farther apart we two kept, the better, I thought. The officer at once gave Captain Duncombe’s name, but didn’t remember the other, on which he turned to his first lieutenant with, “I say, Mr Aldridge, d’you recollect the man’s name that shot the captain of the N’Oreste, as they called her?” “What, that bad business?” said the other; “no, Mr Moore, I really don’t—I hope he’s far enough off by this time!” My breath came again at this, for it had just come into my mind that Finch, who was close by, had got hold of the name, although he fancied it mine. I was sauntering down the stair, thinking how much may hang at times on a man’s good memory, when I heard the first lieutenant say, “By the bye, though, now I recollect, wasn’t it Westwood?” “Yes, yes, Westwood it was!” said the other; then came an exclamation from Finch, and shortly after he and the first lieutenant stepped down together, talking privately of the matter, I suppose; to the cuddy, where I had gone myself. The lieutenant looked up at me seriously once or twice, then went on deck, and a few minutes afterwards the brig’s boat was pulling towards her again, while the passengers flocked below to breakfast. I saw the thing was settled; the mate could scarce keep in his triumph, as he eyed me betwixt surprise and dislike, though rather more respectfully than before. As for Westwood, he sat down with the rest, quite ignorant of what had turned up; notwithstanding he threw an uneasy look or two through the cuddy port at the brig, still curveting to windward of us, with her mainyard aback: for my part, I made up my mind, in the meanwhile, to bear the brunt of it.

’Twas no matter to me now where I went; whereas, with Westwood, it was but a toss-up betwixt a rope and a prison, if they sent him back to England. No fear of my being tried in his place, of course; but if there had been, why, to get away both from him and her, I’d have run the chance! There was a bitter sort of a pleasure, even, in the thought of taking one’s-self out of the way—to some purpose, too, if I saved a fellow like my old schoolmate from a court-martial sentence, and a man far worthier to win the heart of such a creature than myself; while the worst of it was, I was afraid I’d have come to hate Tom Westwood, if we had staid near each other much longer. Accordingly, I no sooner heard the dip of the gig’s oars coming alongside again, than one of the stewards brought me a quiet message from Mr Finch, that he wanted to see me on deck; upon which I rose off my chair just as quietly, and walked up the companion. The fact was—as the fellow could scarce have ventured to look his passengers in the face again after a low piece of work like this—’twas his cue to keep all underhand, and probably lay it to the score of my actions aboard, or something; however, he couldn’t throw any dust of the kind in the second lieutenant’s eyes, who gave him a cold glance as he stepped on deck, and, picking me out at once where I stood, inquired if I were the person. The first mate nodded, whereupon the brig’s officer walked towards me, with a gentlemanly enough bow, and, “I regret to have to state, sir,” said he, “that Captain Wallis desires to see you, particularly, aboard the brig.” “Indeed, sir,” answered I, showing very little surprise, I daresay, gloomy as I felt; “then the sooner the better, I suppose.” “Why, yes,” said the lieutenant, seemingly confused lest he should meet my eye, “we’re anxious to make use of this breeze, you—you know, sir.” “Hadn’t Mr Collins—this gentleman—better take his traps with him, Lieutenant Moore?” said Finch, free and easy wise. “No, sir,” said the young officer, sternly, “we can spare time to send for them, if necessary; of course you will keep the Indiaman in the wind, sir, till the brig squares her mainyard.” I gave Finch a single look of sheer contempt, and swung myself down by the manropes from the gangway into the boat; the lieutenant followed me, and next minute we were pulling for the brig’s quarter. The moment I found myself out of the Seringapatam, however, my heart nigh-hand failed me, more especially at sight of the quarter-gallery window I had seen the light from, on the smooth of the swell, that first night we got to sea. I even began to think if there weren’t some way of passing myself clear off, without hauling in Westwood; but it wouldn’t do. Before I well knew, we were on board, and the lieutenant showing me down the after hatchway to the captain’s cabin.

The captain was sitting with one foot upon the carronade in his outer cabin, looking through the port at the heavy Indiaman, as she slued about and plunged in the blue surge, with all sorts of ugly ropes hanging from her bows, dirty pairs of trousers towing clear of the water when she lifted, and rusty stains at her hawse-holes. A stout-built, hard-featured man he was, with bushy black eyebrows, and grizzled black hair and whiskers, not to speak of a queer, anxious, uneasy look in the keen of his eyes when he turned to me. However, he got half up on my coming in, and I saw he was lame a little of one foot, while he overhauled me all over with his eye. “I’m sorry to have to send for you in this way, sir,” said he, rather surprised at my rig, apparently—“curst sorry, sir, and no more about it; but I can’t help it, confound me—must do my duty.” “Certainly, sir,” I said. “In fact,” said Captain Wallis, “the Admiral ordered us to see after you—him, that’s to say—at the Cape, you know.” “Ay, ay, sir,” said I, watching the Indiaman’s poop-nettings through the port over his head, as he sat down. “Pooh, pooh,” continued he, “you can’t be the man—just say you don’t belong to the service—confound it, I’ll pass you!” “Why, sir,” said I, “I can’t exactly say that.” “I hear you’re Westwood of the Orestes, though,” said he; “now I don’t ask you to say no, sir—but everybody knew the Orestes, and I don’t like the thing, I must say—so perhaps you’re able to swear he is not aboard the Indiaman—just now, you know, sir, just now, eh?” This tack of his rather dumfoundered me, seeing the captain of the brig meant it well; but deuced unlucky kindness it was, since I couldn’t swear to the very thing he fancied so safe, and his glance was as quick as lightning, so he caught the sense of my blank look in a moment; as I fancied, at least. “The fact is, sir,” added he, “the surgeon told me just now he knows Lieutenant Westwood well enough by sight, so they locked him up! You see we could have made you out at any rate, sir—however, we’ll let the doctor stay till we’re clear of the Indiaman, I think!” “Then you take me for the gentleman you speak of, Captain Wallis?” asked I faintly; for at the same moment I could see a light-coloured dress and a white ribbon fluttering on the Seringapatam’s poop, the look of which sent the blood about my heart. ’Twas hard to settle betwixt a feeling of the kind, and fear for Westwood; it struck me Captain Wallis wasn’t very eager in the affair, and ’twas on my lips to assure him I wasn’t the man. “Harkee,” broke in he, with almost a wink, and a smile ready to break out on his mouth, “the short and the long of it is, I’ll take you! We must have somebody to show in the case; though now I remember, there was some one else said to’ve gone off with you—but we won’t trouble him! If we’ve brought away the wrong man, why, hang it, so much the better! If you’re Westwood, I can tell you, they’ll run ye up to a yardarm, sir! Much more comfortable than ten years or so in a jail, too, as—as no one knows better than I do myself.” Here the captain’s face darkened, his eye gleamed, and he rose with a limp to ring a hand-bell on the table. “White,” said he to the marine that put his head in at the door, with his hand up to it, “Desire the first lieutenant, from me, to send a boat aboard for this gentleman’s things.” “I’m afraid, sir,” continued he gravely to me, “you’ll have to reckon yourself under arrest,—but you’ll find the gentlemen in the gun-room good company, I hope, for a day or two, till we make St Helena.” I saw the captain’s mind was made up, and for the life of me I didn’t know what to say against it; but speak I could not, so with a stiff bow and a sick sort of a smile I turned out of the door, and walked along to the gun-room, which was empty. I could see the boat soon after under the ship’s side, dipping and rising as they handed down my couple of portmanteaus to the man-o’-war’s-men; the young reefer came down again as nimble as a monkey, with some letters in his hand, took off his cap to some ladies above, and sang out to give way; five or six flashing feathers of the oars in the sunlight, and they were coming round the brig’s stern. The brig was just squaring away her mainyard at the whistle from the boatswain’s mates, when the whole run of the Indiaman’s bulwarks was crowded with the passengers’ and men’s faces, watching the brig gather way to pass ahead; I could hear the officers on deck hail the India mates, wishing them a good voyage; the ladies bowing and waving their handkerchiefs to the British union-jack. Some sort of confusion seemed to get up, however, about the ship’s taffrail, where Rollock, Ford, and some others were standing together; the planter jumped up all at once on the quarter-mouldings nearest the brig, then jumped down again, and his straw hat could be seen hurrying toward the quarterdeck. Next I caught a bright glimpse of Violet Hyde’s face, as the sun shot on it free of the awnings—her eyes wandering with the brig’s motion, I fancied, along the deck above me; till suddenly she seemed to start, and Westwood appeared behind her. The next thing I saw was the black-faced figure-head of the Seringapatam rising below her bowsprit, about sixty yards from the gun-room port where I was, and down she went again with a heavy plash, as Tom Westwood himself leapt up between the knight-heads at the bow, hailing the brig’s deck with a voice like a trumpet, “Ahoy!—the Podargus ahoy!—for mercy’s sake heave to again, sir!” he sung out; “I’m the man you want!” “The Indiaman ahoy!” I heard Captain Wallis himself hail back, “what d’ye say?” The creak of our yards, with the flap of the jib, and the men’s feet, drowned Westwood’s second hail, as it came sharp up to windward; the sailors in the Indiaman’s bows were grinning at him behind, while the first lieutenant of the brig shouted gruffly that she had no time to wait for more letters; and I heard the gun-room steward say to the marine, on going out with the dirty breakfast cloth, he wondered if “that parson cove thought the Pedarkis vanted a chapling!” or was only “vun of these fellers that’s so troublesome to see the French Hemperor!” “Well,” said the marine, “’twas pretty queer if he took the Pedarkis for the ship to carry him there! I don’t think the captain would let a rat into the island, if he could help it!” “Not he,” said the steward; “plenty of ’em in already, Vite, my man—I do think they used to swim off on board here, by the way the cheese vent!” All this time I never stirred from the port, watching with my chin on the muzzle of the gun till the Indiaman was half a mile to windward of us, her big hull still rising and falling on the same swells, topped with clusters of heads; her topsails lowered in honour of the flag, the ensign blowing out half-mast high for the death of Captain Williamson: a long wash of the water ran outside the brig’s timbers, surge after surge, and the plunge at her bows showed how fast she began to run nor’-westward before the wind. You may well fancy my state, after all I’d done for weeks; in fact, one scarce knew the extent of what he’d felt, what he’d looked forward to, till he found himself fairly adrift from it: ’twould even have been nothing, after all, could I just have thought of Violet Hyde as I’d done two hours ago, on waking, with last night in the river on my mind. As it was, ’twould have taken little to make me jump out of the port into the sweep of blue water swelling toward the brig’s counter; the Seringapatam being by this time astern. I couldn’t even see her, or aught save the horizon, to windward; but at this moment the young second lieutenant came below, and, seeing me, he began in a polite enough way, with a kindly manner about it, trying to raise my spirits. “I suppose, sir,” said I, rather sulkily, I daresay, “I can have a berth just now?” “Oh, certainly,” said he, “the steward has orders to see to it at once. Will you come on deck a minute or two, in the meantime, sir?”

I looked back from the ship astern to the brig-of-war’s clean white decks, flush fore and aft, with the men all forward at their stations, neatly dressed in regular man-o’-war style, every one alike—a sight that would have done me good at another time, small as she was by comparison; but the very thought of the Indiaman’s lumbering poop and galleries was too much for me—’twas as if you’d knocked out those two roundhouse doors of hers, and let in a gush of bare sky instead. The ship-shape man-o’-war cut of things was nothing, I fancied, to the snug spot under those top-gallant bulwarks of hers, and the breezy poop all a-flutter with muslin of an evening, where you found books and little basket affairs stuck into the coils of rope: I thought the old Seringapatam never looked so well, as she commenced trimming sail on a wind, beginning to go drive ahead, with a white foam at her bows, and her whole length broadside-on to us. All at once we saw her clue up courses and to’-gallant sails, till she was standing slowly off under the three topsails and jib; the two lieutenants couldn’t understand what she was about, and the captain put the glass to his eye, after which he said something to the second lieutenant, who went forward directly. The next thing I saw was the Indiaman coming up in the wind again for about a minute; she had her stern nearly to us, when the moment after, as she rose upon a long sea, you saw something flash white off her lee-gangway in the sunlight, that dropped against it into the hollow of a wave. The next minute she fell off again with her topsails full, and the first shower of spray was rising across her forefoot, when the flash of a gun broke out of her side, and the sound came down to us; then a second and a third. The brig gave her the same number in answer, and as soon as the smoke betwixt us had cleared away, the ship could be seen under full sail to the south-westward by west. “That’s her poor skipper’s hammock dropped alongside, gentlemen!” said Captain Wallis to his officers; “God be with him!” “Amen!” said the first lieutenant, and we put our caps on again. “Set stu’nsails, Mr Aldridge,” said the captain, limping down the hatchway: as for me, I leant I don’t know how long over the brig’s taffrail, watching the ship’s canvass grow in one, through the width of air betwixt us; my heart full, as may be supposed, not to say what notions came into my head of what might happen to her under Finch’s charge, ere she reached Bombay. No one belonging to the brig spoke to me, out of kindness, no doubt; and the ship was hull-down on the horizon, to my fancy with somewhat of a figure like hers, when she stood with the Cashmere shawl over her head in the dusk. Then I went gloomily down to my berth, where I kept close by myself till I fell asleep, though the gun-room steward was sent more than once to ask me to join the officers.

It wasn’t till the next day, in fact, when I went on the quarterdeck at noon, wearied for a fresher gulp of air, that I saw any of them; and the breeze having fallen lighter that morning, they were too busy trimming sail and humouring her to give me much notice. I must say I had seldom seen a commander seem more impatient about the sailing of his craft, in time of peace, than the captain of the Podargus appeared to be; walking the starboard side as fast as the halt in his gait would let him, and the anxious turn of his eyes plainer than before, while he looked from the brig’s spread of stu’nsails to the horizon, through the glass, which, I may say, he never once laid down. From where the brig spoke the Indiamen, to St Helena, would be about two or three days’ sail with a fair wind, at the ordinary strength of the south-east trade; though, at this rate, it might cost us twice the time. I noticed the men on the forecastle look to each other now and then knowingly, at some fresh sign of the captain’s impatience; and the second lieutenant told me in a low voice, with his head over the side near mine, Captain Wallis had been out of sorts ever since they lost sight of the island. “You’d suppose, sir,” said he, laughing, “that old Nap was his sweetheart, by the way he watches over him; and now, I fancy, he’s afraid St Helena may be sunk in blue water while we were away! In fact, Mr Westwood,” added he, “it looks devilish like as if it had come up from Davy Jones, all standing; so I don’t see why it shouldn’t go down to him again some day; I can tell you it’s tiresome work cruising to windward there, though, and we aren’t idle at all!” “Did you ever see the French Emperor yourself, sir?” asked I—for I must say the thought of nearing the prison such a man was in made me a little curious. “Never, sir, except at a mile’s distance,” said the second lieutenant; “indeed, it’s hard to get a pass, unless you know the governor. But I’ve a notion,” continued he, “the governor’s carefulness is nothing to our skipper’s! Indeed, they tell a queer story of how Sir Hudson Lowe was gulled for months together, when he was governor of Capri island, in the Mediterranean. As for the captain, again, you’d seek a long time ere you found a better seaman—he’s as wide awake, too, as Nelson himself—while the curious thing is, I believe, he never once clapped eyes on Bonaparte in his life! But good cause he has to hate him, you know, Mr Westwood!” “Indeed,” said I, taking a moment’s interest in the thing; and I was just going to ask the reason, when the first lieutenant came over to say. Captain Wallis would be glad if I would dine with him in the cabin.

At dinner-time, accordingly, I put on a coat, for the first time, less like those the cadets in the Seringapatam wore, and went aft, where I found the first lieutenant and a midshipman with the captain. He did his best to soften my case, as I saw by his whole manner during dinner; after which, no sooner had the reefer had his one glass of wine, than he was sent on deck to look out to windward. “Well, sir,” said Captain Wallis thereupon, turning from his first luff to me, “I’m sorry for this disagreeable business! I believe you deny being the person at all, though?” “Why, sir,” said I, “I am certainly no more the first lieutenant of the Orestes than yourself, Captain Wallis! ’Twas all owing to a mistake of that India mate, who owed me a grudge.” “Oh, oh, I see!” replied he, beginning to smile, “the whole matter’s as plain as a handspike, Mr Aldridge! But I couldn’t do less, on the information!” “However, sir,” put in the first lieutenant, “there’s no doubt the real man must have been in the ship, or the mistake could not have happened, sir!” “Well—you look at things too square, Aldridge,” said the captain. “All you’ve got to do, I hope, sir, is just to prove you’re not Westwood; and if you want still to go out to the East Indies, why, I daresay you won’t be long of finding some outward-bound ship or other off James Town. Only, I’d advise you, sir, to have your case over with Sir Pulteney, before Admiral Plampin comes in—as I fear he would send you to England.” “It matters little to me, sir,” I answered; “seeing the reason I had for going out happens to be done with.” Here I couldn’t help the blood rising in my face; while Captain Wallis’s steady eye turned off me, and I heard him say in a lower key to the lieutenant, he didn’t think it was a matter for a court-martial at all. “Pooh, Aldridge!” said he, “some pretty girl amongst the passengers in the case, I wager!” “Why,” returned Aldridge, carelessly, “I heard Mr Moore say some of the ladies were pretty enough, especially one—some India judge or other’s young daughter—I believe he was in raptures about, sir.” This sort of thing, as you may suppose, was like touching one on the raw with a marlin-spike; when the captain asked me, partly to smooth it over, maybe,—“By the bye, sir, Mr Aldridge tells me there was something about a pirate schooner, or slaver, or some craft of the kind, that frightened your mates—that’s all stuff, I daresay—but what I want to know is, in what quarter you lost sight of her, if you recollect?” “About nor’west by north from where we were at the time, sir,” said I. “A fast-looking craft was she?” asked he. “A thorough-built smooth-going clipper, if ever there was one,” I said. At this the captain mused for a little, till at last he said to his lieutenant—“They daren’t risk it; I don’t think there’s the Frenchman born, man enough to try such a thing by water, Aldridge?” “Help him out, you mean, sir?” said the luff; “why, if he ever got as far as the water’s edge, I’d believe in witchcraft, sir!” “Give a man time, Mr Aldridge,” answered the captain, “and he’ll get out of anything where soldiers are concerned—every year he’s boxed up, sharpens him till his very mind turns like a knife, man! It makes one mad on every point beside, I tell you, sir—whereas after he’s free, perhaps, it’s just on that only his brain has a twist in it!” “No doubt, Captain Wallis,” said Aldridge, glancing over to me, as his commander got up and began walking about the cabin, spite of his halt. “D’ye know,” continued he, “I’ve thought at times what I should like best would be to have him ahead of the brig, in some craft or other, and we hard in chase—I’d go after that man to the North Pole, sir, and bring him back! Without once going aboard to know he was there, I’d send word it was Jack Wallis had him in tow!” “What is Bonaparte like, then, after all, sir?” I asked, just to fill up the break. “I never saw him, nor he me,” replied Captain Wallis, stopping in his walk, “but every day he may have a sight of the brig cruising to windward; and as for the island, we see plenty of it, I think, Aldridge?” “Ay, ay, sir,” said Aldridge, “that we do! For my part, I can’t get the ugly stone steeples of it out of my head!” “Well,” continued the captain, “at times, when we’re beating round St Helena of a night, I’ll be hanged if I haven’t thought it began to loom as if the French Emperor stood on the top of it, like a shadow looking out to sea the other way,—and I’ve gone below lest he’d turn round till I saw his face. I’ve a notion, Mr Aldridge, if I once saw his face I’d lose what I feel against him,—just as I used always to fancy, the first five years in the Temple, if he were only to see me, he would let me out! But they say he’s got a wonderful way of coming over every one, if he likes!” After this, Captain Wallis sat down and passed the decanters, the first lieutenant observing he supposed Bonaparte was a great man in his way, but nothing to Nelson. “Don’t tack them together, Aldridge!” said his commander, quickly; “Nelson was a man all over,—he’d got the feelings of a man, and his faults—but I call him, yonder, a perfect demon let loose upon the world! To my mind all the blood those republicans shed, with their murdered king’s at bottom of it, got somehow into him, till he thought no more of human beings, or aught concerning ’em, than I do of so many cockroaches! But the terrible thing was, sir, his infernal schemes, and his cunning—why, he’d twist you one country against another, and get hold of both, like a man bending stun-sail halliards—there were men grew up round him quick as mushrooms, fit to carry out everything he wanted; so one could’nt wonder at him enough, Mr Aldridge, if it was only natural! I can’t tell you anything like what I felt,” he went on, “when I was in Sir Sidney Smith’s ship, cruising down Channel, and we used to see the gunboats and flat-bottoms he got together for crossing the straits—or one night, with poor Captain Wright, that we stood in near enough to get a shot sent at us off the heights—the whole shore about Boulogne was one twinkle of lights and camp-fires, and you heard the sound of the hammers on planks and iron, with the carts and gun-carriages creaking—not to speak of a hum from soldiers enough, you’d have thought, to eat old England up! And where are they now?” “I don’t know, sir, indeed,” said the first lieutenant gravely, supposing by the captain’s look, no doubt, that it was a question. “What, Captain Wallis!” exclaimed I, “were you with Captain Wright, then, sir?” Of course, like every one in the service, I had heard Captain Wright’s story often, with ever so many versions; there was a mystery about his sad fate that made me curious to hear more, of what gave the whole navy, I may say, a hatred to Bonaparte not at all the same you regard a fair enemy with.

“With him, say you, sir?” repeated the captain of the Podargus, “ay was I! I was his first lieutenant, and good cause I had to feel for the end he came to,—as I’ll let you hear. One night Captain Wright went ashore, as he’d often done, into the town of Beville, dressed like a smuggler; for the fact was the French winked at the smuggling, only I must say we used to land men instead of goods. I didn’t like the thing that night, and advised him not to go, as they’d begun to suspect something of late; however, the captain by that time was foolhardy, owing to having run so many risks, and he was bent on going in before we left the coast; though, after all, I believe it was only to get a letter that any fisherman could have brought off. The boat was lying off and on behind a rocky point, and we waited and waited, hearing nothing but the sound of the tide making about the big weedy stones, in the shadow from the lights of the town; when at last the French landlord of the little tavern he put up at, came down upon the shingle and whistled to us. He gave me a message from Captain Wright, with the private word we had between us, saying he wanted me to come up to the town on a particular business. Accordingly, I told the men to shove out again, and away I went with the fellow. No sooner did I open the door of the room, however, than three or four gens-d’-armes had hold of me, and I was a prisoner: as for Captain Weight, I never saw him more. The morning broke as they brought me up on horseback in the middle of them, along the road to Paris, from whence I could make out the cutter heeling to the breeze a mile or two off the land, with two or three gunboats hard in chase.”

“Well, sir, at Paris they clapped me into a long gloomy-like piece of mason-work called the Temple, close alongside of the river, where plenty of our countrymen were; Captain Wright and Sir Sidney Smith himself among the rest, as I found out afterwards. The treatment wasn’t so bad at first; but when you climbed up to the windows, there was nothing to be seen but the top of a wall, and roofs of houses all round, save where you’d a glimpse of the dirty river and some pig-trough of a boat. One day I got a letter from Captain Wright—how they let me have it I don’t well know—saying he was allowed a good deal of comfort in the mean time, but he suspected some devilish scheme in it, to make him betray the British government, or something of the kind; that he’d heard one of the French royalist generals had choked himself in his prison, but never to believe he’d do the same thing, though every night he woke up thinking he heard the key turn in the door. The next thing I heard of was that Captain Wright had made away with himself, sir!” Here Captain Wallis got up again, walking across the cabin, seemingly much moved. “Well, after that I slept with the dinner-knife in my breast, till the jailer took it away; for I thought at the time that poor Wright had been murdered, though I found cause to change my mind when I knew what loneliness does with a man, not to speak of the notion being put before him to take his own life. For a while, too, Captain Shaw was in the same cell; by which time we had such bad food, and so little of it, that one day when a pigeon lighted on the window, which used to come there for a crumb or two every afternoon, right along with the gold gleam of the sun as it shot over the dark houses to that window—I jumped up and caught it. Shaw and I actually tore it in bits, and eat it raw on the spot; though ’twas long ere I could get rid of the notion of the poor bird fluttering and cooing against the bars, and looking at me with its round little soft eye as it pecked off the slab. But what was that to the thought of my old father that had hurt himself to keep me in the navy, and me able, now, to make his last days comfortable—or the innocent young girl I had married the moment I got my commission of first lieutenant, expecting to be flush of prize-money! It even came into my head often, when I sat by myself in the cell they afterwards put me into, alone,—how that little blue pigeon might have carried a letter to England for me—at any rate it was the only thing like a chance, or a friend, I ever saw the whole time I was there,—and foolish as the notion may look, why the window was too high in a smooth wall, for me once to reach it. I heard all Paris humming round the thick of the stone, every day, and sometimes the sound of thousands of soldiers tramping past below, over the next bridge, with music and suchlike—no doubt when the First Consul, as they called him, went off to some campaign or other: then I’d dream I felt the deck under me in a fresh breeze at night, till the soul sickened in me to wake up and find the stones as still as before, and now and then hear the sentries challenging on their rounds.

“Well, one day a fellow in a cloak, with a slouch hat over his forehead, was let in to try, as I thought, if there was anything to be got out of me, as they tried two or three times at first; some spy he was, belonging to that police devil, Fouché. What did he offer me, d’ye think, after beating about the bush for half an hour, but the command of a French seventy-four under the Emperor, as he was by that time, and, if I would take it, I was free! On this I pretended to be thinking of it, when the police-fellow sidled near me, to show a commission signed with the Emperor’s name at the foot.

“In place of taking hold of it, however, I jumped up and seized the villain’s nose and chin before he saw my purpose, stuffed the parchment into his mouth by way of a gag, and made him dance round the cell, with his cloak over his head and his sword dangling alongside of him, to keep his stern clear of my foot; till the turnkey heard the noise, and he made bolt out as soon as the door was opened. You’d wonder how long that small matter served me to laugh over, for my spirit wasn’t broken yet, you see; but even then, in the very midst of it, I would all of a sudden turn sick at heart, and sit wondering when the exchange of prisoners would be made, that I looked for. The worst of it was, at times a horrid notion would come into my head of the French seventy-four being at sea at the moment, and me almost wishing they’d give me the offer over again—I fancied I felt the very creak of her, straining in the trough of a sea, and saw the canvass of her topsails over me, standing on her poop with a glass in my hand,—till she rose on a crest, and there were the Agamemnon’s lighted ports bearing down to leeward upon us, till I heard Nelson’s terrible voice sing out, “Give it to ’em, my lads!” when the flash of her broadside showed me his white face under the cocked hat, and it came whizzing over like a thirty-two pound shot right into my breast, as I sunk to the bottom, and found myself awake in the prison.

“I don’t know how long it was after, but they moved me to another berth, where a man had shot himself through the head, for we actually met his body being carried along the passage; and more than that, sir, they hadn’t taken the trouble to wash his brains off the wall they were scattered on! There I sat one day after another, watching the spot marked by them turn dry, guessing at everything that had gone through them as long as he was alive in the place, till my own got perfectly stupid; I was as helpless as a child, and used to cry at other times when the jailer didn’t bring me my food in time. I fancied they’d forget all about me in England; and as for time, I never counted it, except by the notion I had been two or three years in. At last the turnkey got so used to me, thinking me no doubt such a harmless sort of a poor man, that he would sit by and talk to me, giving accounts of the Emperor’s battles and victories, and such matters. I must say I began to feel as if he was some sort of a God upon earth there was no use to strive against, just as the turnkey seemed to do, more especially when I heard of Nelson’s death; so when he told me, one time, it wouldn’t do for Fouché or the Emperor to let me out yet, I said nothing more. “Will the Emperor not let me out now?” asked I, a long time after. “Diable!” said the man, “do you think his Majesty has time to think of such a poor fellow as you, amongst such great matters? No, no, pauvr’ homme!” continued he; “you’re comfortable here, and wouldn’t know what to do if you were out! No fear of your doing as your Capitaine Ourite did, since you’ve lived here so long, monsieur!” “How long is it, now, good Pierre?” asked I, with a sigh, as he was going out at the door; and the turnkey counted on his fingers. “Ulm—Austerlitz—Jena,” said he slowly; “oui, oui—I scarcely thought it so much—it wants only six or seven months of ten years!” and he shut to the door. I sprang up off the bed I was sitting on, wild at the thought—I may say, for a day or two I was mad—ten years! ten years!—and all this time where was my poor innocent Mary, and the child she expected to bear, when I left Exeter—where was my old father? But I couldn’t bear to dwell on it. Yes, Aldridge, by the God above, they had kept me actually ten years there, in that cursed Temple, while he was going on all the time with his victories, and his shows, and his high-flown bulletins! Yet he wasn’t too high, it seems, to stoop to give out, through his tools, how Wright and I had both killed ourselves for fear of bringing in the British government—nor to offer me a seventy-four in a dungeon—me, a man used to wind and water, that loved a breeze at sea like life! ’Twas the very devil’s temptation, sir; but I’ll tell you what, both Captain Wright and myself had been with Sir Sidney Smith at Acre, when he was baffled for the first time in his days—that was the thing, I believe from my soul, that he hated us for! I had a right to be exchanged ten times over, though he might have called Wright a spy; but what was my poor wife and her newborn baby, or my old father’s grey hairs, to him, and his damnable ambition to make everything his own—and when the very thought of me in my hole at the Temple would strike him in the midst of his victories, where he hadn’t time, forsooth, to trouble himself about a poor man like me! The fact was, I could tell how he offered a British seaman, that had had a finger in nettling him, the command of one of his seventy-fours, which he had nobody fit to manage—and that in a prison where I’d be glad even of fresh air!

“’Twas then, in fact, the purpose rose firmer and firmer in me, out of the fury that was like to drive me mad, how I’d get out of his clutches, and spend my life against the very pitch of his power I knew so well about. Till that time I used to look through the bars of the window at the Seine, without ever fancying escape, low down as it was, compared with my last cell. There was a mark in the stone floor with my walking back and forward, since they put me in; and by this time I had the cunning of a beast, let alone its strength, in regard of anything I took into my head: often I used to think I saw the end of my finger, or the corner of a stone, more like the way a fly sees them, than a man. The turnkey, Pierre, would never let me have a knife to eat my food with, lest I should do as he said all we English were apt to do—kill myself—which, by the way, is a lie; and I think that fiend of an Emperor yonder must have taught them to blame us with their own crime! However, latterly he let me have a fork for half an hour at dinner; and for a quarter of an hour every day, except those when he staid to talk to me as I ate it, did I climb up and work with that fork at the top and bottom of one of the window-bars, taking care not to break the fork, and jumping down, always, in time to finish the meal. It took me four whole months, sir, to loosen them! Such deadly fear as I was in, too, lest he’d find it out, or lest they moved me to another cell—you’d have thought I was fond of the walls round the place, where hundreds of men before me had scrawled their last words; and the one that shot himself had written, “Liberté—anéantissement! Liberty—annihilation!” just over where the spatter of his brains had stuck when he laid his head to the spot! If Pierre had noticed what I’d been about, my mind was made up to kill him, and then make the trial before they missed him; but that I had a horror of, after all, seeing the man had taken a sort of liking to me, and I knew he had a wife.

“Well, at last, one day I had the thing finished; when midnight came I trembled like a leaf, till I began to fear I couldn’t carry it through: I tore my shirt and the blanket in strips, to twist into a line, got out the bar by main force, squeezed through, and let myself down. The line was just long enough to let me swing against the cold wall, over a sentry’s head going round the parapet below; as soon as he was past I dropped on the edge of the wall, and fell along it, my fingers scraping the smooth stone to no purpose, till I was sliding off into the dark, with the river I didn’t know how far below me, though I heard it lapping against some boats at the other side. For a few moments I was quite senseless, from the fall into the water; the splash roused the sentinels, and three or four bullets whizzed into it about me, as I struck out for the shore. Still the night was thick enough to help me clear off among the dark lanes in the city;—and the upshot of it was, that I found out some royalists, who supplied me with a pedlar’s dress; till, in the end, after I can’t tell you how many ticklish chances, where my luck hung upon a hair, I reached the coast, and was taken off to a British frigate. At home, sir—at home, I found I’d been given up long ago for a dead man in Bonaparte’s prisons, and—and—the old man had been buried seven years, Aldridge—but not so long as my—wife. The news of my taking my own life in the Temple saved her the rest—’twas too much for her at the time, Aldridge—both she and her little one had lain in the mould nine years, when I stood looking at the grass under Exeter Cathedral! I was a young man almost, still; but my hair was as grizzled when I got out of the Temple in 1813, as you see it now, and I’ll never walk the deck fairly again. Aldridge,” added the captain of the Podargus, turning round and standing still, with a low sort of a deep whisper, “’tis a strange thing, the Almighty’s way of working—but I never thought—in the Temple yonder, longing for a heave of the water under me—I little thought John Wallis would ever come to keep guard over his Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon!”

When Captain Wallis stopped, the long send of the sea lifting the brig below us, with a wild, yearning kind of ripple from her bows back to her counter, and weltering away astern,—one felt it, I may say, somewhat like an answer to him, for the breeze had begun to freshen: it had got all of a sudden nearly quite dark, too, as is the case inside the tropics, without the moon. “Let’s go on deck, gentlemen,” said the captain, coming to himself; “now clap on those other topmost stuns’ls, Mr Aldridge, and make her walk, sir!” “No saying,” I heard him mutter, as he let us go up before him—“no saying what the want of the Podargus might do, off the island, these dark nights—with water alongside, one can’t be sure—I warrant me if that man’s dreams came true, as mine did, he would be at the head of his thousands again, ruining the whole world, with men rotting out of sight in dungeons while the wind blows! Ay, dreams, young gentleman!” said he to me as we stood on deck; “I’ll never get rid of that prison, in my head, nor the way that dead man’s brain seemed to come into mine, off the wall! But for my part, off St Helena, ’tis Napoleon Bonaparte’s dreams that enter into my head. If you’ll believe it, sir, I’ve heard them as it were creeping and tingling round the black heights of the island at dead of night, like men in millions ready to break out in war music, as I used to hear them go over the bridge near the Temple—or in shrieks and groans; we all the time forging slowly ahead, and the surf breaking in at the foot of the rocks. I know then, who’s asleep at the time up in Longwood!”

The brig-of-war was taking long sweeps and plunges before the wind; the Southern Cross right away on her larboard quarter, and the very same stars spread all out aloft, that I’d watched a couple of nights before, close by Violet Hyde. The whole of what I’d just heard was nothing to me in a single minute, matched with the notion of never seeing her more. Everything I’d thought of since we left England was gone, even one’s heart for the service; and what to do now, I didn’t know. I scarce noticed it commence to rain, till a bit of a squall had come on, and they were hauling down stu’nsails; the dark swells only to be seen rising with the foam on them, and a heavier cover of dull cloud risen off the brig’s beam, as well as ahead; so that you merely saw her canvass lift before you against the thick of the sky, and dive into it again. ’Twas just cleared pretty bright off the stars astern of us, however, wind rather lighter than before the squall, when the captain thought he made out a sail near about the starboard beam, where the clouds came on the water-line; a minute or two after she was plain enough in the clear, though looming nearly end-on, so that one couldn’t well know her rig. Thinking at first sight it might be the schooner, Captain Wallis was for bracing up, to stand in chase and overhaul her; but shortly after she seemed either to yaw a little, or fall off again before the wind like ourselves, at any rate showing three sticks on the horizon with square canvass spread, and evidently a small ship. “Some homeward-bound craft meaning to touch at the island!” said Captain Wallis, telling the first lieutenant to keep all fast; by which time she was lost in the dusk again, and I wasn’t long of going below. A fancy had got hold of me for the moment, I can’t deny, of its being the Seringapatam after us, on Westwood’s owning himself; whereupon I persuaded myself Captain Wallis might perhaps take the risk on him of letting us both go. For my part, I felt by this time as if I’d rather be in the same ship with her, hopeless though it was, than steer this way for the other side of the Line; and I went down with a chill at my heart like the air about an iceberg.

Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side. The brig had hauled her wind from aft onto her starboard quarter, making less way than before it, of course; I heard the captain’s voice near the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes, and went quietly up. The Podargus was running through the long broad swells usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond the brig’s fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as impatient; though I couldn’t at first make out the reason of her being off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the clouds, which for a moment you’d have supposed was the moon rising red and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds; through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of canvass fluttering across on the yard. ’Twas neither more nor less than a ship on fire—no doubt the vessel seen abeam of us that evening—a sight at which Captain Wallis seemingly forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in the eagerness shown by all aboard to save the poor fellows. Suddenly there was another wild gleam from the burning craft, and we thought it was over altogether, when up shot a wreath of fire and smoke again, then a fierce flash with a blue burst of flame, full of sparks and all sorts of black spots and broken things, as if she had blown up while she heaved the last time on the swell. Everything was pitch dark next minute in her place, as if a big blot of ink had come instead; the brig-of-war herself rolling with a flap of her headsails up against the long heavy bank of cloud that blocked the horizon. “Keep her away, sirrah!” shouted Captain Wallis, and the Podargus surged ahead as before, all of us standing too breathless to speak, but counting the heads of the waves as they flickered past her weather beam. “God’s sake!” exclaimed the captain at last, “this is terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled her, as I meant at first, we might have helped them in time; for no doubt the fire must have been commenced when we noticed her yawing yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.” “I think not, sir,” said his lieutenant, “we were against the clear; and if they’d been in danger then, she’d have fired a distress-gun. There couldn’t have been much powder aboard, sir—more likely rum, I think!”

“For heaven’s sake!” continued the captain, “let’s look about—she must surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge? The best thing we can do is to fire a few times as we bear down—see that bow-gun cleared away, Mr Moore, and do it!”

We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was last seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on under everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the clouds, with the black glitter of the swells below them, I fancied I caught a moment’s glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was too short to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light, seemingly hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half a mile upon the brig’s lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain enough when it rose. Down went the Podargus for the spot, sending the foam off her cut-water; and it was no long time before a wild hail from several voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after she was brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft of casks and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled down on a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after which the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board.

Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer of the lanterns; the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make him out for the crowd about him, and he didn’t seem able to speak; accordingly, both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with ear-rings and a seaman’s dress, who was the spokesman on the quarterdeck to the captain’s questions—plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl. “Are there no more of you afloat?” was the first thing asked, to which the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said, from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; he was mate himself, and the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on fire; so, finding they couldn’t get it under, besides being wearied at the pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room and got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry for bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had jumped overboard: the passenger was a learned sort of a man, he said, and his servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room officers: however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of their reckonings a long way. “Somehow south of the Line, I guess?” said he; but, on being told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round him, seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied. “Well,” said he, “I guess we’re considerable unlucky—but I consider to turn in, if agreeable!” The man had a way, in fact, half free-and-easy, half awkward, that struck me; especially when he said, as he went below, he supposed “this was a war-brig,” and hoped there “wasn’t war between the States and the old country?” “No, my man,” said the captain, “you may set your mind at ease on that point—but I’m afraid, nevertheless, we’ll have to land you at St Helena!” “What, mister?” said the American, starting, “that’s where you’ve got Boneyparty locked up? Well now, if you give me a good berth for a few, mister, I guess I’ll rayther ship aboard you, till I get a better! What’s your wage just now, if I may ask, captain?” “Well, well,” said the captain, laughing, “we’ll see to-morrow, my man!”—and the American went below. “Set stu’nsails again, Mr Aldridge,” continued Captain Wallis, “and square yards. Why, rather than have such a fellow in the ship’s company, Aldridge, I’d land him without Sir Hudson’s leave!”

“For my own part, next day, I should have given more notice to our new shipmates while the brig steered fair before the wind—the blacks and the mate leaning about her forecastle, and the other two being expected by the surgeon to come pretty well round before night, though the captain had gone to see them below; but a thing turned up all at once that threw me once more full into the thought of Violet Hyde, till I was perfectly beside myself with the helpless case I was in. The note Tom Westwood had shown me was still in the pocket of my griffin’s coat, though I hadn’t observed it till now; and what did I feel at finding out, that, instead of one from her to Westwood, it was a few words from my own sister, little Jane, saying in a pretty, bashful sort of a way, that her brother Ned must come home before she could engage to anything! You may fancy how I cursed myself for being so blind; but a fellow never thinks his own sister charming at all—and what else could I have done at any rate? All I hoped for was to get aboard of some Indiaman at St Helena, and there was nothing else I wearied to see the island again for. I may say I walked the brig’s lee quarterdeck till daybreak; but anyhow the look-out from the foreyard had scarce sung out “St Helena on the weather-bow!” when I was up, making out the round blue cloud in the midst of the horizon, with a white streak across it, like a bird afloat in the hazy blue, with the clear gleam from eastward off our starboard quarter running round to it.”

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