A YARN OF THE P. AND O.

As there were but very few passengers on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer Sicilia, outward bound for the Far East, we did not anticipate the usual amount of fun and festivity which are, strangely enough, more remarkable features of life on outward-bound than on homeward-bound steamers. But what we missed in frolic we certainly had made up to us in the shape of excitement. We numbered about a dozen in all; but of these, three only need individual description.

The principal personage, in accordance with the ancient dictum that a woman is at the bottom of everything, was a pretty young widow, a Londoner, who was on her way to join her friends living in Shanghai. The worship of the fair sex is nowhere more ardent than aboard ship, partly, perhaps, because its members contrive to put on under such exceptional circumstances their most captivating airs and graces; and chiefly, it must be admitted, although the admission is ungallant, because, beyond eating and sleeping, there is little else to do than to offer homage to whatever goddess presents herself. Hence Mrs Fuller, as she was named, reigned sole and unapproached monarch of the ship. Had she been other than she was, she would have occupied this position; but being tall and fair and graceful, she assuredly merited every tribute of admiration laid at her feet. The darts she unconsciously shot around fixed themselves most firmly in the hearts of the remaining members of the prominent trio to be described. The first was a young Englishman named Goodhew, going out to the consular service in Yedo; the other was a young Irishman named MacWhirter, going to the same city in the Japanese government Telegraph Department. Goodhew was as typical an Englishman as was MacWhirter a typical Irishman, indeed, more so, for Mac was a victim to a most un-Milesian failing—he could not take a joke. Goodhew was a big, broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced, blue-eyed, fair-haired fellow, who ate like an alderman, was always laughing when he was not eating or sleeping, and was half the life and soul of our little community. Terence MacWhirter was the other half. He could sing a capital song and tell a capital story, his story-telling powers eclipsing his song-singing, inasmuch as with the gravest conceivable demeanour he would endeavour to foist upon us the most palpable fiction as the most solemn truth. ‘As true as oi’m standing here,’ was a concluding phrase of his, which soon became a catchword on board, and synonymous with what was most extravagant and improbable.

The apple of discord which the fair Londoner was destined to throw amongst us fell between Goodhew and Mac, who, long before she joined us at Brindisi, had singled out each other as opponents upon the one particular question of belief or disbelief in ghosts. Strangely enough, Goodhew, who had won the Humane Society’s medal for saving life, was a firm believer in the theory that the departed from this life revisit their old haunts. Equally strange was it that Mac, although a fervid, imaginative Irishman, pooh-poohed ghosts and omens and visions and dreams and second-sight as being unworthy of the consideration of a practical nineteenth-century human being; and the more instances Goodhew quoted in support of his creed, the more violently would Mac exclaim: ‘Now, look ye here, Mister Goodhew; oi’ll stand the man an onlimited dinner up to a couple of sovereigns who can prove that he has ever seen a ghost; an’ if a man can show me a ghost, bedad, oi’ll show him what oi’ll do wid it!’

The arguing matches and disputes between the two opponents formed our principal amusement during the tedious passage from Southampton to Brindisi. Then Mrs Fuller came on board, and their antagonism assumed a new shape. Goodhew helped her on board. Score No. 1 for the Englishman. But Mac lent her his cane-chair, and equalised matters. Goodhew sat next to her at table; but Mac sat opposite, which was as good, for in talking to her, he was obliged to raise his voice, and by so doing obtained a monopoly of the conversation. To her credit it must be said that she behaved exactly as a young lady placed in such peculiar circumstances should behave. She showed no partiality to one more than to the other. She laughed heartily at Mac’s jokes, and listened attentively to Goodhew’s quiet common-sense and commonplaces. If one of them gained a trifling advantage one day, it was made up to the other the next; and so, whilst conscientiously she believed she was pleasing both, in reality she was stirring up a fire between the two which was fated ultimately to burst into a tragedy.

So matters went on. By the time Alexandria was reached, we, the audience, agreed that Goodhew held a slight advantage, inasmuch as the passage across the Mediterranean having been stormy, poor Mac spent the greater part of his time in his berth; whilst Goodhew, who was a good sailor, was brought into uninterrupted contact with Mrs Fuller, who was also mal-de-mer proof.

It may be imagined that when we were sick of quoits and ‘bull-board’ and deck-cricket and walking-races, the little comedy played by the trio formed our chief amusement. Its ups and downs, its various phases, its situations, were subjects of attentive watchfulness on our part. We were like a party of special correspondents taking notes of an important campaign. We received from one another news of victory or defeat, of attacks foiled, of successful stratagems, of bold strokes, of new moves, with as much earnestness as if our own interests were at stake with the issue of the contest. If one of us hurried for’ard with a joyful face, it was not to tell of a confident prophecy on the part of the skipper that we should have an easy time in the monsoon, or that we should make Aden ahead of schedule-time; but to relate some splendid stroke on the part of Mac, or an admirable counter delivered by Goodhew. Occasionally, there were uninteresting lulls in the conflict, and during these periods we were driven to our wits’ end for amusement, and the time passed slowly and heavily; but when the battle was in full swing, the long hours of the tropical day sped but too quickly. Our doctor took an especial interest in the drama, and by virtue of his official position, was enabled to see far more of its ins and outs and by-play than we outsiders, and often when matters seemed to slacken a bit, would infuse fresh life and fire by some adroit, mischievous remark.

Open hostility soon became the order of the day between Mac and Goodhew. Hitherto, they had been simply cold and distant to one another, interlarding their conversation profusely with ‘Sirs’ and ‘I beg your pardons;’ but by the time we reached Penang, they were hardly civil to each other. The climax was reached at Penang. According to the usual custom, a party was made up to visit the celebrated waterfall. Most of us went: Skipper, Doctor, Mrs Fuller, Goodhew, Mac, and half a dozen of us outsiders. We arrived at the waterfall after the well-known broiling ascent, rhapsodised over it, sketched the joss-house, partook of a sumptuous tiffin beneath its roof, and were about to return to the quay, when Mrs Fuller espied a dead buzzard floating in the waters of the pool. ‘Oh, how I should like a few feathers from that beautiful bird!’ she exclaimed.

Mac and Goodhew rushed to execute the commission. We outsiders never dreamed of interference, as we foresaw an important scene in the drama. Mac was armed with his walking-stick, Goodhew had seized a long bamboo stem. Mac was upon one side of the pool, Goodhew on the other, and the buzzard floated in the middle between them.

The faces and figures of the two men were perfect studies of sternness and resolution; they stretched and craned, they knelt, they floundered, they hopped up and jumped down; for the time-being the entire universe of each of them was concentrated in that palm-shaded pool. But the bird stuck resolutely in the middle, in spite of coaxing and flopping and all sorts of cunning endeavours to waft it to one side or the other. Suddenly a puff of wind carried it towards Mac. His face lighted up with joy, and he uttered a smothered ‘Hooroo!’ In a moment his walking-stick was under it, he was slowly but surely pulling it towards him; when there was a vision of a sort of fishing-rod in mid-air, a momentary struggle and splash, and Goodhew triumphantly dragged it towards him. Mac made a desperate dash at the retreating spoil, missed his footing, and fell plump into the pool. Our long-restrained feelings were no more to be kept in, and the laughter which followed awakened the echoes of the solitary Penang waterfall. To emerge from the water, hatless, dripping, and vanquished, was humiliating enough for poor Mac; but when he looked at Mrs Fuller, and saw that she was endeavouring to stifle immoderate laughter with her pocket-handkerchief, his cup of misery was full, and without another word, he strode off ahead of us on the path leading to the Settlement, and was soon lost to view.

We sailed that evening for Singapore. Mac was not visible. Next evening, however, as we were sitting on deck after dinner smoking our cigars and gazing at the peerless panorama of the tropical heavens, we saw him come on deck. We hushed our talk, for we felt that something was pending. Goodhew was sitting by Mrs Fuller’s chair—that is, poor Mac’s chair—at some distance from us. Mac seeing this, strode up and down the deck behind them. Presently, Mrs Fuller rose, wished us good-night, and disappeared below. We nudged one another, watched round the corners of our eyes, and listened.

Mac strode up to Goodhew, who was approaching us. ‘Mister Goodhew,’ he said, ‘oi call that a dirty mane trick!’

‘What do you mean, sir?’ angrily retorted Goodhew, stopping short.

‘Oi mane what oi say, sir,’ said Mac. ‘It was a dirty mane trick. Mrs Fuller asked me to get the bird for her, and oi got it; and you come in with a pole like a mast, and you fish it out under me very oyes!’

‘Under your very stick, you mean, Mac,’ said Goodhew, laughing.

‘No matter what oi mane!’ exclaimed the infuriated Irishman. ‘Oi mane, that when one gintleman recaives a commission from a lady, and another gintleman executes it by a mane trick, the other gintleman’s no gintleman at all at all—but a cad, Mister Goodhew, a cad!’

‘I say, Mac, draw it mild,’ said Goodhew, in his turn irritated; ‘we’re not all bogtrotters here!’

‘Is it bogtrotter ye’re callin’ me!’ exclaimed Mac in a frenzy. ‘Bedad, oi’ll tache ye to call a MacWhirter a bogtrotter, ye spalpeen!’ And he sprang at Goodhew furiously.

Goodhew seized him by the waist, and in another minute would have certainly dropped Mac overboard, had we not all jumped up and interposed. Mac danced and kicked and struggled and used every vilifying expression he could. Goodhew also was endeavouring to wrest himself from our grasp; but we held on, and the opponents seeing that they could not get at each other, gradually desisted from trying.

‘Doctor!’ said Mac, after a breathing-space, ‘this is an affair for immadiate settlement.’

‘Pooh! my dear fellow,’ said the officer, ‘who can fight duels on the deck of a P. and O. steamer? Better wait till we get to Hong-kong; there’s plenty of room there.’

‘Hong-kong be it then,’ said Mac.—‘Mister Goodhew, oi’ll send ye me card in the morning.’

‘All right, Mac,’ replied Goodhew, who was recovering his good temper. ‘Send as many as you like. But don’t you think we’re a couple of fools, to be going on in this absurd way about a trifle?’

‘A trifle ye call it?’ roared Mac. ‘An’ if there’s a fool hereabouts, it isn’t Terence MacWhirter; but ye needn’t travel very far to find him.’

The doctor whispered in Goodhew’s ear. The latter nodded and smiled, and said: ‘All right, Mac. You challenge me to a duel. I accept it. Pistols?’

‘Of coorse,’ replied Mac. ‘Ye didn’t think oi mane fishing-rods? Insulting a MacWhirter’s no trifle, oi tell ye.’

So they separated.

It may be imagined that the chief topic on board during the interval between Singapore and Hong-kong was the approaching duel. Mac had given out more than once that he was no novice; and he certainly had shown himself a dead-shot with a rook-rifle at bottles or pieces of wood; but whether, considering the extreme excitability of his nature, he would preserve his calmness on the field of battle sufficiently to make any use of his accomplishment, we were inclined to doubt. Goodhew had never fired a pistol in his life; but there was an easy, calm confidence about him that foretold no want of nerve on his part.

‘Pat,’ said the doctor, on the evening before our arrival at Hong-kong, ‘haven’t you a qualm of conscience about going to shoot this poor fellow?’

‘Faith, doctor,’ replied Mac, ‘the odds are even. If he wins the toss, he shoots me.’

‘You’re not afraid of the consequences of manslaughter?’ continued the doctor. ‘I don’t mean the judicial consequences, but the remorse, the fear of being haunted’——

‘Doctor,’ said Mac, ‘oi took ye for the only sensible man on the ship, and ye go and talk blarney about haunting and all that. Oi tell ye, doctor, oi’m not a believer in spirits; and if oi kill Goodhew, and his ghost makes a pother about me afterwards, oi’ll have to settle him as well. Look ye, doctor, ye and the whole lot of ’em want to get me off this duel; but oi’ve been insulted; and if oi put up with it, oi’ll not be worthy of the name of MacWhirter at all at all.’

The next evening we steamed into Hong-kong harbour. Mrs Fuller was on deck, admiring the effects of the great mountain shadows upon the moonlit water, and of the innumerable twinkling lights from the shore, which mount up and up until they seem to mingle with the stars.

Mac was standing by her chair. ‘Mrs Fuller,’ he said, in a low impressive voice, ‘this is a beauteous scene. It remoinds me of Doblin Bay or the Cove of Cark. It is a sad scene.’

‘A sad scene, Mr MacWhirter!’ said Mrs Fuller. ‘Why, I was just thinking it was a gay scene, with all those lights, and’——

‘It is a sad scene for those who are looking at it for the last toime, Mrs Fuller,’ said Mac in an almost sepulchral tone.

‘Gracious! Mr MacWhirter, what do you mean?’ asked Mrs Fuller. ‘What a dreadfully uncomfortable thing to say!’

‘Oi mane, Mrs Fuller,’ replied Mac, ‘that this toime to-morrow noight there’ll be one less passenger on board the Sicilia.’

‘Why, of course, Mr MacWhirter; for I suppose our little company will be broken up here, and it is never pleasant separating from kind friends.’

‘Ye mistake me,’ said Mac. ‘The moon that will shoine to-morrow noight will look upon the corpse of either Mister Goodhew or of Terence MacWhirter; and it’ll be all for the sake of yerself, Mrs Fuller.’

Mrs Fuller saw that Mac was serious, and the idea flashed across her mind that the two rivals for her hand were about to fight a duel on her account, so she resolved to take the earliest opportunity of speaking to the captain about it.

She did speak to the captain, who spoke certain words to her in return.

Very early the next morning, before even the sun had peered round the corner of the Victoria Peak, the captain’s gig put off from the Sicilia. In it were the captain himself, the doctor, Goodhew, Mac, and we outsiders. We were soon alongside the Bund, and in a few seconds were being whisked away in the direction of the Happy Valley as fast as chairmen could take us. We went swiftly by the cemetery gate and the Grand Stand to the extreme end of the Valley, where there was no chance of interruption.

After each of the combatants had been armed with one of the captain’s pistols, the doctor measured fifteen paces. The coin was spun into the air. Mac won the toss, and took up his position, as did Goodhew.

‘Captain,’ said Goodhew, ‘if—if I fall, you’ll find a memorandum as to the disposition of my property in a tin box in my cabin. Here’s the key.’

‘At the word Three,’ said the captain, ‘Mr MacWhirter will fire.’

Mac raised his pistol, half closed his left eye, and took aim.

‘One! Two! Three!’

He fired. Goodhew, with a cry, pressed his hands to his head, and then fell like a stone with one deep groan. The red stain on the right temple told Mac the fatal truth. The Irishman’s vaunts and threats had been justified.

‘You’ve done it, Mac!’ whispered the captain in a voice of agony. ‘Come away as fast as you can. The doctor will attend to the poor fellow, if life still remains.’

And so Mac and the captain hastened away, leaving Goodhew on the ground, with us gathered around him.

As we were to shift over to the smaller steamer which was to convey us to Yokohama the next day, and were to bid farewell to Mrs Fuller and the captain and the old Sicilia, the banquet that evening was of an unusually lavish description: the champagne went merrily round with jest and gibe, as if there had never been such a being as poor Goodhew in existence. Even Mac aroused himself after a few glasses, although at first he was rather solemn, and remarked: ‘Ye’re a rum lot, all of ye. If oi’d been killed instead of Mister Goodhew, ye’d have enjoyed your dinner and drink all the same. Oi’m sorry for him; but it’ll be a lesson to Sassenachs not to insult Oirishmen.’

Then Mrs Fuller’s health was drunk, and the captain’s, and every one else’s, and not until a small-hour of the morning did we think of breaking up.

‘I say, Mac,’ said the doctor, ‘aren’t you afraid of seeing poor Goodhew to-night?’

‘Whisht, doctor; ye’ve taken more than’s good for ye!’ was the contemptuous reply.

As the ship’s bell tolled two o’clock, we prepared to turn into bed, when the saloon door opened quietly, and a tall figure, ghastly white, with a crimson patch on its face, glided a few inches in. Mac was seated next to the door, and saw it. His cigar fell from his fingers, beads of perspiration burst upon his forehead, and he trembled violently.

‘What on earth is the matter, Mac?’ we asked.

‘Why!—Don’t ye see? There, at the door!—Him! Mister Goodhew!’ stammered Mac.

‘Nonsense, man; you’re dreaming. There’s nobody there at all!’ we said.

‘Strikes me you’ve had a drop too much, Mac,’ said the doctor, quietly.

The figure still stood there with its eyes fixed on Mac, who, after remaining for a few moments petrified with horror, rushed with a shriek into his cabin.

Such a night as the poor fellow passed will never be known to any one but himself, although it was manifest that he was undergoing extreme agony by the groans and smothered cries which we heard for a long time after he had turned in. He was not visible at breakfast the next morning; nothing was seen of him during the process of transferring passengers, mails, and baggage from the Sicilia to the Yokohama steamer; and we began to fear that the poor fellow had really been affected by what he had seen, and had taken some rash step. However, about an hour before our starting-time, it was reported that Mac had come on board. There was a festive assembly in the saloon, the captain, doctor, and officers of the Sicilia being our guests, although an unusual spruceness in the general costume proclaimed that the affair was something more than a mere return of the compliment paid us by the captain of the Sicilia on the previous evening.

The doctor had risen to his feet, was clearing his throat preparatory to an important speech, when the saloon door was pushed open, and Mac looked in—not the careless, swaggering Mac of past days, but Mac haggard, weird, scarcely human, with unkempt locks and bloodshot eyes. Goodhew was seated next to the pretty Londoner. ‘Hillo, Mac, old fellow; come in, come in; you’re just in time,’ he said.

‘By the powers!’ exclaimed Mac, ‘ye’re not dead, Mister Goodhew!’

‘No, old fellow,’ replied Goodhew, with a laugh. ‘But if your pistol had carried a bullet, I should have been.’

‘But the blood on your forehead—I saw it!’ cried Mac.—‘And Mrs Fuller—she’s wid ye, I see!’

‘No, no, Mac; wrong this time,’ returned Goodhew, smiling. ‘There was no blood on my forehead; and it isn’t Mrs Fuller that’s beside me.’

‘Whisht, man! I’m not draming now; I know what I’m talking about,’ exclaimed Mac. ‘D’ye mane that there was no blood on your forehead after I’d hit ye, and d’ye mane that it isn’t Mrs Fuller alongside of ye at all?’

‘Yes, old fellow,’ said Goodhew, rising, and stretching out his hand to the bewildered Irishman. ‘The mark on my forehead was only a little red paint carried in the palm of my hand, and ready to be slapped on the moment you discharged your deadly weapon; and the lady’——

‘Yes, yes, the lady?’ interposed Mac with eagerness.

‘The lady was made Mrs Goodhew about a couple of hours back,’ calmly replied the Englishman. ‘Give us your hand, and drink our healths.’

Mac did both, and ever after remained a firm friend of Goodhew’s, although always a little touchy on the subject of ghosts.