Chapter XII · THE YACHT.

On the evening of one of those same summer days which Horace was spending so sadly among the green slopes outside the fortress of Yaila, a beautiful English yacht was seen standing before a fair wind between the European and the Asiatic shores, between the fortress of Karibdsche on its barren rocks, and the lighthouse of Anatali Kawak.

At this place, the narrowest part of the Bosphorus—the waters of "the Sacred Opening"—the waves seemed to be sleeping in golden light. A strong flush of splendour from the sun, then sinking towards the Thracian chain of Hæmus, fell in all its glory on "Olympus high and hoar," and all the undulations of the Bithynian range; the purity of the atmosphere, bringing clearly to the eye the shining windows of many a gaily-painted and gilded kiosk, the marble peristyle and leaden dome of many a little mosque; the pretty villages, the gigantic cypresses, and the beautiful groves of fig trees; the water being so transparently pure and clear, that nearly all these objects were reflected downward in its glassy depths, exactly as if in a mirror.

The yacht was a smart little schooner of some two hundred tons, straight and low in the water, and coppered to the bends with metal bright as burnished brass. She carried a vast spread of fore-and-aft canvas, which was white as snow; the masts raked well aft; the deck was flush, the only encumbrance being six small brass carronades, for ornament rather than use, though a garland of shot for them was round the coamings of the hatchways.

The elaborately carved figure-head was the effigy of a handsome woman, with flowing tresses, bearing a gilded wand, which was always unshipped when the yacht went to sea; and now the empty hand was pointed as if directingly towards the Black Sea. The yards were light, and the spars tapered away aloft like fishing-rods; the union-jack and ensign of the Royal Yacht Club were duly displayed, one at the gaff-peak and the other at the mainmast-head in answer to the crescent and star on the ramparts of Karibdsche.

The tiny companionway, all walnut wood and brass, was like a toy staircase, and the cabin was furnished like a lady's boudoir, save that it was hung with coloured prints of operatic favourites and dancing-girls, in the shortest of skirts, photographs of "some fellows of ours" in the Household Brigade, French crayon heads and studies, some of them slightly objectionable in character—for this was the yacht of the Master of Ernescleugh, and that handsome girl with the fine features so delicately pale and minute, with dark eyes and hair, to whose fashionable costume a piquancy was given by the dark-green Sardinian Bersagliere plume which she wore in her little velvet hat, and who was gazing through her lorgnette alternately at the European and the Asian shore, is Gwendoleyne Wedderburn.

Lady Ernescleugh and Lady Wedderburn were below. They had been more than once to the East before, and the Bosphorus was nothing new to them. A heavy gale had been encountered the preceding night in the sea of Marmora, and they were now lying on the luxurious velvet cabin sofas, each fanning herself, bathing her face with Rimmel, in which a handkerchief was dipped, and both eager for the time, when after traversing some three hundred and odd miles of the Black Sea, they should be able to embrace their sons. The yacht did not anchor at Constantinople, as Lady Wedderburn had been given to understand that Cyril had left Scutari for headquarters.

"Oh, the foolish fellow!" she exclaimed, "to risk himself again, when he might have come home with honour!"

She was anxious that Cyril should see Gwenny as soon as possible; not that the trenches before Sebastopol were quite the place for marrying or giving in marriage, or a Crimean hut the place wherein to spend a honeymoon; but she had begun to have certain jealous fears of secret views entertained by her friend, the fair Ernescleugh, for her son, whose extravagance was boundless, and for whom the wealthy Indian heiress would prove a very seasonable match. Once, when she exclaimed in admiration—

"Oh, it is quite a fairy ship this!"

"Were my son to hear you, he would doubtless make you a present of it," replied Lady Ernescleugh, kissing her cheek. "Would you like to be mistress of it, child?"

"Gwenny!" exclaimed Lady Wedderburn, not knowing very well what to say.

"I am so enchanted with everything, and yonder beautiful shore!"

"If the Sultan heard you, Miss, he'd likely wish to make you mistress of that too!" said Bob Newnham, the commander of the yacht, with an air of gallantry.

Many a day at Cowes and Hyde had the Master of Ernescleugh figured on the deck of this yacht with other guardsmen, wearing sou'westers and the roughest of Petersham dreadnoughts, with glazed boots and scarlet neckties, and with shirt collars of marvellous size and pattern, all over ships and anchors, all thinking they "were doing the thing uncommonly well;" and now he was toiling in rags in the trenches, or the occupant of a hut inferior to his dog-kennel at home, while more than one of his brother yachtsmen—poor fellows!—were lying quietly in their graves on Cathcart's Hill, or in the valley of Inkerman.

And now as the yacht bore on, careening gracefully over, when the wind drew more abeam, a breeze which, however gentle, sufficed to make the sea chafe in surf about the Cyanean rocks, Gwenny filled up her time by chatting gaily with Newnham, who, though a soured and somewhat homespun character, could not but be charmed by her beauty and vivacity.

To Gwenny, secluded so long as she had been at Willowdean, this voyage to the East had been a source of uninterrupted joy. Gibraltar with all its batteries, Malta with its churches and streets of stairs, and but lately the Cyclades—Sirpho with its steep mountains, Thermia with its caverns, barren Joura (the Botany Bay of ancient Rome), Andros with its mountains covered with arbutus, and all the other "Islands of the Blest;" and then, came the Dardanelles and Constantinople, her crowning wonder, for she saw only its beauties and knew nothing of its streets of mud.

A joyous and light-hearted girl of eighteen to be transported into a world of such novel sights and sounds, new scenes and tastes, new pleasures and daily excitements—more than all, to be going to behold with her own bright eyes that great beleaguered city, of which all the world was talking, thinking, or writing, where daily and nightly her mysterious—was it possible?—naughty Horace, who had ceased to write to her for so long, was facing danger—all proved a source of thrilling excitement.

Bob Newnham, the commander of the yacht, was as enchanted by her questions as she was bewildered by the utter incomprehensibility of many of his answers, for nautical terms were as Hebrew to her. He was somewhat tall for a sailor, with a fair but saddened face, in the lines of which disappointment was too evidently written. He was nearer fifty than forty years of age, quite bald, only a lieutenant R.N. yet, and never hoped to be more, even in this time of war. Poor Bob Newnham! He had neither patronage nor interest; ambition was dead within him now, and he was content to be a kind of "upper servant," as he sometimes said in the bitterness of his honest heart; for he thought the skipper of a lord's yacht was only a degree better than his butler or gamekeeper ashore, and not half so comfortable a berth as either had; and he had more than once lost his situation for threatening to "colt," or ropes-end, for their aggressive insolence, some of the young sprigs and parvenus in whose service he had been since he was last paid off in Hamoaze, after long service in the horrid Africa squadron, where he had learned too well to know the truth of the sad rhyme,—

Newnham was by birth a gentleman; but he had gone early to sea in the rough old sailing-ship times, when steamers were stigmatized as "smoke-jacks;" when the midshipmen's berth of Marryat's days was not much improved since those of Tobias Smollett; and he had been more used to tar and slush, than white kids and perfume, or even a white tablecloth, "though," as he often said, "he was obliged to affect all these sort of things now."

Lady Ernescleugh thought his solecisms dreadful, deeming him a creature only to be tolerated because "that absurd boy Everard rather likes him, for they played chess, cards, smoked and made much noisy fun together, when the former chose to be nautical, and have a few miles' voyage in the yacht with a few friends from London;" and the maintenance of the said craft, with her crew of some twenty-two hands, all told, cost a pretty sum annually, when added to the little brigade expenses of the Honourable Everard.

"And those little cannon, they are so beautiful and clean!" continued Gwenny, who was still enchanted with everything.

"We generally give 'em a polish on Sundays, Miss, when the men are idle," replied Newnham, who stood near her with a telescope under one arm and his hand thrust into the pockets of his reefing jacket,—a semi-uniform, as it had gilt buttons and gold lace.

"I think I could fire one myself! Would you permit me?"

"With pleasure."

"But I mean if the Russians attacked us."

Newnham laughed, and while looking down on the bright face and its wonderful long eyelashes, replied, "Thank God that, for your sake, there is no fear of the Russians attacking us, Miss. All their craft are choke full of stones, and lying low enough at the bottom of Sebastopol harbour. We are as safe here as if we were off Blackwall!"

"You would like to fight them though, I suppose?"

A gleam passed over his clear blue eyes, and the colour deepened in his cheek, as he replied, "You talk of practical fighting—I can't get the chance,—but that would be nothing to me. I am one of those luckless dogs, Miss Wedderburn, who in the mighty battle of life have had to fight before the mast, thankful that I could keep my place there, and maintain myself and my poor mother—for she is living yet. But to fight a Russian gunboat, however small," he added, laughing, "and with these toy carronades, would be exactly like scuttling a ship to get rid of the rats—we should lose her anyway."

"And our liberty?"

"Yes, if we did not lose our lives."

"Oh, that would be dreadful!"

"Though there is no fear of that sort of thing; there are some frightful squalls at times in these waters, and my advice to Lady Ernescleugh should be, that as soon as she has landed at Balaclava harbour all the good things we have for her son, the preserved meats, cases of wine and stout, (Rimmel's perfumes)" he added, parenthetically, and with a peculiar smile; "and after she has seen him—that is, if he ain't already under the turf, we should haul up for Constantinople, and wait awhile there, to see what turns up in the Crimea. The infernal work can't last much longer there. We are to have a rough night, I fear."

"Worse than the storm of last night?"

"Storm—bless me, Miss Wedderburn, it was only a capful of wind. We had the mainsail and fore and aft foresail close reefed, to be sure, and the sea made some breaches over the deck, washing a few buckets to leeward, but that was all; she went through it like a duck. Unfortunately we were too near the Isle of Prote, and when it blows I like a good offing and plenty of sea room. We are not in the Mediterranean now, and I believe (even when there) with the old Admiral Doria, that 'its three best harbours are June, July, and Carthagena.' It is freshening already, by jingo!" he added suddenly, as the lofty schooner careened over more heavily to leeward; "and I didn't like the look of the sun, as he went down behind the hills, looking yellow and pale at last."

"It is coming much stronger, sir," said the mate, in a low voice, and after a consultation, and much anxious gazing at one particular quarter of the sky, where to Gwenny's amazement nothing was to be seen; but where, with the true instincts of seamen, they seemed to discern much to excite solicitude.

"House those carronades alongside (we only showed our little teeth as we passed Constantinople, Miss Wedderburn); lower away and lash the gun ports fast, for I see that it will be a night of close-reefed canvas again," said Newnham. And ere long the wind increased so much that sea after sea pooped the yacht, and her commander donned his oilskins, while she rolled fearfully on the long and heavy swell which is so peculiar to that ocean. Gwenny was compelled to go below, and Newnham handed her down just as the light of Faranaki-in-Asia began to glitter like a star across the darkening water, and Mount Hæmus on the opposite shore was sinking faint and blue, while the schooner bore on her course, northeastward, into the lonely Euxine, for not a sail or trace of smoke was visible as gloom and obscurity descended on the sea.